Ground Fire and Good Fortune

Heroes Remember

Ground Fire and Good Fortune

Transcript

Other trips that I made we were, you know, bombing railroad bridges and rail yards. The rail yards were the scariest ones because you were at 6,000 feet or 5,000 feet flying over the target in a straight line just ‘till you got everything away. And there was both fighter opposition and ground fire. But in most cases the navigator never saw a thing because once you got into your position to let the bomb aimer on the floor, I had to sit up on my desk with my feet planted on the ammunition boxes on the side and he was lying on the floor underneath me with the bomb sight in front. And all I could see was air plane around me. I really didn’t see much of what was going on except what I could see through the bomb aimer’s position, and he was blocking most of that. So, the navigator didn’t see much at the target, which I suppose was a good thing. Saw the ground fire coming up, you can... And when you see this tracer bullets coming towards you, you hope they were going to go under and not through the air plane. But we were very fortunate. Our aircraft, I think, was only … picked up a few stray bullets and that’s it.

Description

Mr. Hosegood talks about bombing rail yards, being shot at, and not being able to see what was going on.

William George Hosegood

William George Hosegood was born May 7th 1924. A carpenter’s son, Mr. Hosegood grew up with four brothers and five sisters in Fort William, Ontario. All of his brothers were in the military. “Money was scarce”, says Mr. Hosegood, who worked full time as a clerk at age 16, and held many other jobs before joining the army at 17 or 18. Originally placed in the reserve army, Mr. Hosegood joined the RCAF the next year. After graduating at the top of his navigational training class in Saskatoon, he was selected to go to Burma as a navigator. Mr. Hosegood says that his career in the military fashioned the rest of his life.

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