And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
My wife & I went to a fine B & B in Unionville, NV. Only one there & not hard to find. Went to the main house for some famous 'Mitzi' fried eggs. As we walked in I noticed some WWii Naval Air memorabilia & thought to myself "pay attention this is gonna be good". Sat down at the kitchen table looked up and there it was, a crashed on deck shot to pieces Dauntless. "That's some photo there", says me. The chef's son said "yeah, my father was a gunner in that plane. They counted 261 bullet holes in it. When it came to a stop the deck crews were certain they would be pulling casualties from it but not so it turned out", "quite a story behind that photo actually". You don't say. I was transfixed as he told that was as much his story as it was his father Lou Jone's. As it goes they were on patrol when they began mixing it up w/ some Zeros in a serious way. One Zero pilot present was Japanese ace, Saburo Sakai, who misidentified the Dauntless Jones was in and shot up the side of it to bank a turn and begin a strafing run. To his surprise & horror was the top ball turret manned by Jones who promptly made Sakai pay for his mistake. As I'm listening I'm hearing refrains of 'the man who shot Liberty Valance' somewhere in the back of my head. Bit of a dreamer I. It was thought that Sakai had been killed but after the war Jones & Sakai met and we got to know the rest of the story. Sakai with his face half shot off, one eye missing and a badly damaged plane hobbled it back at wave top level 400 miles to Rabaul where he had been assigned to train & lead pilots defending the harbor. He maintained conciousness because alcohol based fluids in the now busted up instrument panel would spit out & hit his face shocking him alert till he got back to Rabaul. No one can accuse that man of not being a stud! However, his days of training & leading flyers out of Rabaul were over. Which was great because my then 20 year old not yet father flying with the 19th bomb group (B17s)out of Mareeba, Au was part of the initial effort to bomb that harbor about 4 weeks later. Who knows what Sakai's presence would have meant to those bomber crews. Maybe just maybe Lou Jone's story is as much mine (and many other Sons & Daughters as well) as it is surely his Son's.
Dauntless.
ReplyDeleteSBD Dauntless, 'slow but deadly'. Assuming its not colorized, its interesting how the factory gloss paint has weathered.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWhat's that on the leading edged of the right horizontal stab on 5?
Looks like a few feathers and other remains from some bird….
ReplyDelete…or else he caught a AA round that just barely clipped the stabilizer fin
ReplyDeleteThere's other damage too. Here's a higher res photo:
Deletehttps://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fa4ff7bfc-57f9-11ea-8d8f-51ad578bbcfe.jpg?crop=2904%2C1936%2C934%2C1262
And sturdy too.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IljthAOeTJE
My dad was a crew chief on these, Msgt E.R. Barker
ReplyDeleteThat plane & a lot of guts and brains saved our ass at Midway!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful photo! My father watched a whole squadron of them get shot down on Saipan. Slowly.
ReplyDeleteMy wife & I went to a fine B & B in Unionville, NV. Only one there & not hard to find. Went to the main house for some famous 'Mitzi' fried eggs. As we walked in I noticed some WWii Naval Air memorabilia & thought to myself "pay attention this is gonna be good". Sat down at the kitchen table looked up and there it was, a crashed on deck shot to pieces Dauntless. "That's some photo there", says me. The chef's son said "yeah, my father was a gunner in that plane. They counted 261 bullet holes in it. When it came to a stop the deck crews were certain they would be pulling casualties from it but not so it turned out", "quite a story behind that photo actually". You don't say. I was transfixed as he told that was as much his story as it was his father Lou Jone's. As it goes they were on patrol when they began mixing it up w/ some Zeros in a serious way. One Zero pilot present was Japanese ace, Saburo Sakai, who misidentified the Dauntless Jones was in and shot up the side of it to bank a turn and begin a strafing run. To his surprise & horror was the top ball turret manned by Jones who promptly made Sakai pay for his mistake. As I'm listening I'm hearing refrains of 'the man who shot Liberty Valance' somewhere in the back of my head. Bit of a dreamer I. It was thought that Sakai had been killed but after the war Jones & Sakai met and we got to know the rest of the story. Sakai with his face half shot off, one eye missing and a badly damaged plane hobbled it back at wave top level 400 miles to Rabaul where he had been assigned to train & lead pilots defending the harbor. He maintained conciousness because alcohol based fluids in the now busted up instrument panel would spit out & hit his face shocking him alert till he got back to Rabaul. No one can accuse that man of not being a stud! However, his days of training & leading flyers out of Rabaul were over. Which was great because my then 20 year old not yet father flying with the 19th bomb group (B17s)out of Mareeba, Au was part of the initial effort to bomb that harbor about 4 weeks later. Who knows what Sakai's presence would have meant to those bomber crews. Maybe just maybe Lou Jone's story is as much mine (and many other Sons & Daughters as well) as it is surely his Son's.
ReplyDeleteHi DAD.
ReplyDelete