September 16 2020 Yes , I am extremely proud of every one of you guys!!!!!
Took a lot of guts to get up and get off the ground and not knowing if you’d return or not.
Myself? I took the easy way out – Navy ROTC at Illinois Tech ’62-67 then three years and three deployments off the coast of Vietnam…..got shot at but no scars to show for it…..USS Saint Paul CA-73 ….Like the B-24s you flew and are gone so are all the all gun cruisers…….made into razor blades or whatever.
Now for the fun part: How did I come across you guys: You see I was born February 18th to an Austrian mom and her German husband in Sierning, Austria. Before she passed away she was fond of telling people that I spent the first couple of days in a bomb shelter under the hospital…….the nurses etc. had left me in the whatever passed for a baby room and my mom in her hospital bed and panicked when the bombs started dropping. My mom got up and got me and after banging on the bomb shelter door got let in. The Austrians weren’t used to bomb raids back then whereas my mom had spent time with my dad in German cities so was somewhat familiar with the procedures……..So long story short 76 years later I started to follow up on her story and lo and behold it appears to be true as on Mission 30 you guys took of with thirty-one B-24H’s to bomb the ball bearing factories in Steyr, Austria ….5 miles or so as the crow flies from where I was born. So Congrats on a good mission as you missed me!!!!!!
We immigrated to the land of the free in ’56 and now I’m semi-retired in Port Charlotte, FL.
How time flies ……There was no Air Force back in ’44 and now you have a Space Force……….
Wishing and praying that you and yours survive this latest threat – COVID-19!!!
Olaf Hansen
Port Charlotte, FL
