54 FlightJournal.com
RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
Thierry Willaey lives in Provence. He belongs
to a SCUBA club and combines his love of
diving with his interest in those underwater
relics from WW II. One of his group’s
discoveries was the remains of a Martin B-26
that had ditched 50 meters off the coast of
Corsica in water just 13 meters deep. Initially,
they had identified it as a plane from the
17th BG, and their findings, including the N
number on the plane’s vertical stabilizer, were
published on the Internet. Franz Reisdorf,
historian for our 320th Bomb Group, saw
the article. “The ‘N’ number was 43-34234,”
Franz said, “and it stuck in my mind. I finally
looked through my slides, and there it was: N
43-34234, on the tail of Lt. Robert Dinwiddie’s
aircraft that got hit on August 22, 1944, over
Vergato, Italy.” The French were pleased to get
this positive identification. Franz was excited
when he called to tell me about the find, and
it got me thinking back to those incredible
days more than 60 years ago, when I was a
20-year-old pilot flying on that mission.It was in summer of 1944 that our crew
graduated from training flights to combat
missions. After a 10-day boat trip across the
Atlantic, we languished in Camp Canastel,
a replacement depot in Oran, North Africa,
for almost a month. At last, on July 4, a
battle-worn, olive-drab B-26 arrived to ferry
us to our new base on Sardinia. We were in
awe of the pilot, whose A-2 jacket sported 40
yellow bombs in neat rows of 10, one for each
mission he had flown!
The trip from Oran to Sardinia was 600
miles and took three hours. We had been
assigned to the 441st BS, 320th BG, flying
off Decimomannu, a unique airfield on the
south tip of the island. “Decimo” was a huge
dirt field, six oiled-down lanes wide and just
over 8,000 feet long. Two bomb groups were
based there, and we shared the field with the
319th. Each group had a complement of 96
Marauders, and takeoffs and landings were in
formation. On missions, the 319th pilots took
off six abreast at one-minute intervals and the
320th three abreast at 30-second intervals.
Without ever seeing it happen, I was positive I
would never be able to do this.
Our squadron area was a mix of tents and
“casas,” houses built with mud bricks. The
casas were painted in happy, pastel colors,
and they had stoves, electricity and even
showers. The showers were gravity-fed from
either 55-gallon drums or fighter drop tanks
mounted on the roof and solar heated, which
provided hot water. The old-timers lived in
the casas, while we “short-timers” lived six to
a tent. There was a definite caste system, and
the number of missions a crewman had was
the currency.
On July 10, I was scheduled for my first
mission, flying with Lt. Hubbard, who was
flying his 61st. When I met him at the plane,
I sensed that he was less than pleased that hisJane Brendlinger, my granddaughter, at age 15, sails on a
catamaran on the Mediterranean in summer 2006. She was
blissfully unaware of the wrecks at the bottom of this sea,
some with the crews still at their stations.French SCUBA diver, Thierry
Willaey, explores the ghost-
ly remains of the Marauder
that, he says, “Underwent
the attacks of the sea.” The
wings, a part of the fuselage
and the engines nacelles are
still together.