The Coast News, March 22, 2013

A10 THE COAST NEWS
MARCH 22, 2013
JEAN
GILLETTE
Small Talk
Time for
spring break
madness
So, my son has been
madly prepping for “Step
1” of medical sc hool
exams, which future doctors
have to tak e at the
end of their second y ear.
This preparation must be
done in ad dition to the
regular med-school workload,
he explained, thus
securing the mom sympathy
vote.
In spite of all this, he
has been making the most
of being centrally located
on the East Coast. During
the past few months, he
has been skiing in
Vermont, visiting New
Hampshire and sightseeing
in D.C.
He then mentions he
and his girl are planning a
small vacation after the
big test in Ma y. OK. That
sounds reasonable. Key
West, they think, might be
nice. I agree. Warm. Not
hurricane season.
Mosquitos, maybe, will be
the biggest threat.
And, oh, by the way,
could I send the star ving
student just a little money
toward the trip? Well,
gosh. My baby boy has
been working pretty hard,
pushing through his second
year of med school in
Boston, so I wir e off the
cash with a smile.
No sooner does the
cash clear then I get a
new email. Gee, it says, we
got a fabulous deal on an
all-inclusive resort in
Cancun! As in Mexico. As
in, not on U.S. soil and in
that country filled with
drug cartel madness.
Mother is not
pleased. Mother has a
stomachache. Mother did
not hesitate to e xpress
her surprise and disma y
at their choice.
“Mom,” my son gently
replied, like the invulnerable
25-year-old that he is,
TURN TO SMALL TALK ON A15
For one veteran, ride in B-17 was a trip into past
By Tony Cagala
EL CAJON — His fir st
mission: a tar get over
Schweinfurt, Germany. The
date, April 13, 1944 — it w as
a Friday.
Douglas Dowell, then a
19-year-old kid, boarded his
B-17 bomber with a cr ew of
nine other kids his age and
prepared to tak e off fr om
their airfield in Kimbolton,
England.Their plane was one
of 550 other bomber s from
the 8th Air Force, 379th bomb
group.
Dowell, now 88 years old,
and who ser ved as the top
turret gunner and engineer
on his first plane the
Powerful Katrinka (named
after the pilot’ s wife), still
remembers the missions he
flew in, completing 33 in all.
“I remember the first
one very well,” Dowell said.
“We started with 550 airplanes
and we lost 55 exactly
over the tar get. So being a
whiz at mathematics e ven
then in those days, I lost some
of my virginity,” he added.
When he made it bac k
from that fir st mission, he
looked at his plane and
counted the mor e than 300
holes in it either from flak or
from enemy planes’ bullets.
“When you first start,
you think, ‘I’m never going to
get hit. The other guys get
hurt.’ But then when y ou see
10 percent gone in that fir st
mission, you begin to think,
I’ve got to fl y 24 mor e. You
think, ‘Well, am I going to
make it or not?’”
Dowell said that luc kily,
kids forget that. “And you
just keep going, which I did.”
Dowell and his crew kept
taking to the air.
“You didn’t have much
choice,” he said. “You’re in
service, and of course the war
(is) going on, they want you to
do something, you do it. And I
was happy. I enjoyed the Air
Force. I enjoyed all 26 y ears
being in the Air Force. It’s a
little scary at times,” he said.
Dowell served from 1942
to 1968.
His grandson is also in
the Air Force, following in his
footsteps, he said, something
that makes him very proud.
Dowell received a call
from Scott Maher with the
Liberty Foundation, a nonprofit
flying museum that
tours the countr y with historic
planes from World War
Douglas Dowell, 88, sits at the radio operator’s desk in a B-17 bomber. Dowell completed 33 missions during
World War II as an engineer and top turret gunner with the 8th Air Force, 379th bomb group. Photos by Tony
Cagala
II. The tours give people a
chance to see the militar y
machines that helped win a
war and intr oduce them to
the men who flew in the
planes.
Maher invited Dowell to
return to the plane that had
brought him through danger
and back to safety f or a
chance to fly once again.
It was a chance that
Dowell didn’t pass up.
And it was a rare chance,
too, this being one of onl y
eight of the B-17 airfr ames
still flying, according to
Liberty Foundation volunteer
pilot Bob Hill.The plane,
a replica of the Memphis
Belle, the first bomber to
complete 25 missions, (the
number of missions needing
to be completed before going
home) was also used in the
1990 film of the same name.
When Dowell completed
his 25th mission, the word he
used to describe the feeling:
“Happy.”
Though he w ould go on
to fly in eight mor e missions
during the war.
The first thing you realize
when fl ying in the B-17,
also referred to as the Flying
Fortress because of its dur ability,
was how cold it w as,
Dowell explained.
The Liberty Foundation is offering flights and tours of the B-17 Flying
Fortress March 23 and March 24 at Gillespie Field. The plane is a replica
of the Memphis Belle, the first to complete 25 missions. The plane
was also used in the 1990 movie of the same name.
“The B-17 had very, very
poor heaters,” he said. “And
if you fly in the w aist, and I
had flown in that waist a few
missions, the windows are
open…and your machine gun
was pointing out the windo w
and so the air w as coming in
and it w as somewhere
between -40 (degrees) and -60
(degrees) depending on what
altitude you were at. Cold,”
he said.
“And the heated suits
that we wore, the blue suits,
never worked properly… so
you were always cold. I guess
I’m still cold today,” he said.
For Dowell, it seemed
the memories of what he had
seen and been thr ough during
the w ar were still just
below the surf ace, fighting
back tears when asked about
the past.
He had some good memories,
he said, but also, he had
lost an a wful lot of friends,
even classmates from his
high school that fle w in his
same bomber g roup. “One
kid from Iowa City, which is
close to where I went to high
school, who I became v ery
close to, was flying in the
nose one time and the
(enemy) aircraft blew the
nose off. That got me, ”
Douglas said.
Much of what Dowell did
during his missions was
standing in the top turr et,
helping the pilot to sta y in
formation with the rest of the
bombers, or scanning the
skies for enemy fighters and
firing at the German ME-109s
and the FW -190s that came
in.
“And we did a lot of
that,” Dowell said. “As far as I
know, I never hit an airplane.
I would like to have, but I didn’t.”
Still, it was extremely
difficult to tell whether y ou
did or not, he explained. “You
got all of those air planes firing
at the enem y and y ou
never know, did my bullet hit,
or did his bullet hit, or did
none of them hit?”
As a v olunteer pilot of
the B-17, Hill said he was glad
that he only gets to play a B-
17 pilot instead of being an
18, 19, or 20-year-old kid flying
in the cold skies and getting
shot at over Europe.
“That must have been
nightmarish,” Hill said.
“When you speak to the v eterans,
they would tell y ou
that they didn’t mind the
fighters as m uch because
they could shoot bac k and
that, at least, gave them some
degree of satisfaction.
“But the anti-aircraft fire
that would be shot at the airplane,
which they termed,
‘flak,’ which is exploding
shells, and it just threw steel
all through the sk y, they
feared that because it w as
random.”
As for why it’s important
to remember these planes
and the men who fle w in
them, Dowell said he couldn’t
answer that, except to say, “I
think it’s good that the young
kids of today know that a lot
of work and a lot of people
died for them. And I hope
that they are instilled with
the same sense of duty that
we were.”
The Liberty F oundation
is hosting the Memphis Belle,
available for tours and f or
flights at Gillespie F ield
March 23 and March 24. Visit
libertyfoundation.org for
more information.