My father, James C. Nye was a member
of the 747th squadron. He
was a nose gunner. His pilot
was William Croft. He currently lives in Hesperia, California.
He is 79 years old in 2002.
In December, 2001, he and his wife,
Jonnie, flew to San Antonio and visited with Bill Croft for the first time
since they left Italy in 1945.
Above is a picture of my Dad’s
crew. Handwritten on the back
of the picture is;
“our crew minus Greilich and 3
xtra crewmen for pathfinder, cameraman”
The names of the men, back row:
Charles D. Cole,
top turret gunner; William Croft,
pilot; Kenneth Meyers,
co-pilot; ? Scott, bombardier; Charles Jenkins,
engineer; Georges Greeves,
tail gunner
Front row:;
James Nye,
nose gunner; Unknown;
William Mondak, ball
turret gunner; Unknown; Unknown. Also: William
Greilich, radio, and Willis
Castleman,
navigator, not in picture.
Regarding the story, “Mission
207” about Robert Lind, my Dad
knew Robert Lind well. He
talked to Lind on the morning of Mission 207.
Here is a short version of how my Dad remembers the day:
My Dad and his crew, piloted by Bill
Croft were in the plane, “Bonnie Cathleen”
according to my Dad, engines running ready to go, when the operations
officer came up on foot and yelled up to Croft, “hey, how many does this
make for you guys?” Croft
replied, “We’ve done five in a row.” The ops officer replied, “that’s too many” and told
them to get out of the plane. He
then substituted Lind’s stand-by crew for my Dad’s crew.
Croft’s crew spent the day in town.
When my Dad returned late in the day, a guy in the tent turned white
as a ghost, and said…”what are you doing here?
I heard you guys went down.”
Dad knew Lind from flight
school. Lind was normally a
nose gunner. That’s why they
knew each other so well. Blonde
kid. Norwegian. The morning of
Mission 207, my Dad and Lind washed their mess kits together and talked.
Another
thing. When Robert
Carlin arrived, my Dad was nearing the end of his tour.
He flew with Carlin’s crew on their first mission.
I
was with my Dad and Croft in December 2001, and they remembered a
particularly bad mission (for their crew) to Florisdorf refinery outside
Vienna on March 12, 1945. They
were in flak for 28 minutes, lost two engines and had to drop out of
formation. They had to fly at
about 14,000 feet all the way back. At
that altitude, they had another close call over a 12,000-foot pass and had
to dodge some 40mm stuff. They
arrived back at base very late, after dark, and very low on fuel.
They were in the air a total of 8 hours and 55 minutes.
They were assumed shot down. There
were guards on their tent. When
the mechanics tried to taxi the plane off the end of the runway, it ran out
of gas. Croft received the
distinguished service medal for that mission, but he credited his navigator,
Willis Castleman, for getting them back.
A
very interesting observation I made listening to them was that my Dad, a
nose gunner, remembered a lot of details about the missions and watched and
remembered what went on in formation around the plane.
Croft, the pilot, on the other hand, didn’t remember as much detail
about the various missions. It
occurred to me that he was too busy keeping the plane in formation to pay
attention to all the stuff that was going on outside.
However, Croft remembered more about what they did when they were on
the ground, including an excruciating level of detail regarding all the
women he met.
