Danger on a Daylight Bombing Mission

Heroes Remember

Danger on a Daylight Bombing Mission

Transcript

I did nine daylight missions which they thought were dangerous for our type of bombing, but the second mission was a daylight raid and there were tremendous explosions continuously and of course in the tail you don’t see anything ’til after and the pilot was saying, “Oh there goes another of our friend down.” And he was counting these, so I called out, I said, “For god sake be quiet, you’re going to drive us crazy.” I said, “those can’t be planes going down, they must be a wing or a turret or a wheel fall off.” And I thought they were scare crows, but I read since I come back that they were no scare crows, but they were quite a few planes shot down on that trip. And we were going over these explosions through the flak and it seemed like the whole belly of the plane would be ripped off. It just was noisy like tin cans or something. We like to think we were close together, you figure it was protection if you were close together. Sometimes we were too close and hit each other. I think there were more probably went down than they admit that way. And occasionally bombs from above fell through the wings of the plane. We never had one fly through the wings, but I saw one come down between the tail plane and the wing and it was a little too close for comfort. I don’t really admit I was afraid. I think they taught you so well and you were so busy you didn’t have time to think about it. You were just searching the sky, turning the turret continuously and looking for trouble.

Description

Mr. Kerry describes his sense of security and danger while in close formation flying, and a close call at the hands of an overhead bomber.

Ivan Kerry

Ivan Kerry was born on November 3, 1925, in Port Perry, Ontario. He was one of six children. His father farmed, but the depression made life difficult for his family. Mr. Kerry recalls the generosity of Eastern Canada in sending relief shipments. He then left school at the age of fifteen to work in an egg processing plant. His enlistment followed the path of two uncles who had served in the First World War and a brother who was in the Navy. He enlisted in the Air Force as, and joined the Bomber Command as a tail gunner. Mr. Ketty was fortunate to survive one of the most dangerous and vulnerable combat roles of the war.

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