California Trip #2 Pictures

Peter, As usual a good selection of Aviation pictures, tried to fault captions but as usual they are all correct :-))

Martin P

Thanks, Martin, we have just finished the last page (page 18)

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

Gentlemen, As you are all aware or not I have a large interest in aviation and specifically the 8th Airforce B17's. The reason I am writing this is because of a picture which Peter took of the Castle Airforce Base museums B17G which is painted in the colours of the planes captain one General Castle, the base was named after him. I recognised the tail code "Boxed A" which was Rougham Airfield "Bury St Edmunds" which is where my wife and my family come from. General Castle died in action on board another aircraft based at Lavenham which is only a few miles from Bury St Edmunds and was "Boxed P" the 487th also near by was the 486th "boxed W" Sudbury which when Lyn and I married we moved to. The purpose of my tale is that the echelons on the wings of the Castle plane were similar to Lavenham and Sudbury and I was fortunate whilst dredging a moat to find the remains of a piece of wing with the same markings on of Sudbury aircraft. The moat is at the end of the Sudbury runway and belonged to what was a large hall with a tower at one end and the son of the owner used to stand in the tower and watch the B17's take off except on one day a B17 was taking off fully loaded when one of the engines caught fire, being past the point of no return the plane took off and the crew shut down the dud engine unfortunately in the panic they shut its mate down could not make height and also veering off to one side because they now lost two one wing. The plane hit the tower and exploded killing the crew and the lad in the tower. The most part of the hall still stands and my piece of wing is now in a museum in Sudbury.

Martin P

"Peter A Forbes" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

The Castle AFB collection details are at:

The specific display aircraft details are (abbreviated) :-

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The aircraft on display at Castle Air Museum is painted as an aircraft of the 94th Bomb. Group which was commanded by Colonel Frederick Walker Castle from June of 1943 to April 1944 when he was promoted to Brigadier General and given command of the 4th Combat Wing. General Castle lost his life in the skies over France on December 24, 1944 while serving as combat wing commander. After his aircraft was heavily damaged, he ordered the crew to bail out of the aircraft, while he and the co-pilot kept the aircraft under control. Before they could escape themselves, the aircraft exploded, killing both men. Six of the crew survived. For his actions and leadership, General Castle was awarded the Medal of Honor, the United States highest military honor. It is for him that Merced Army Air Field was renamed Castle Air Force Base. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This taken directly from the Castle AFB Museum's web site.

Peter

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