I have many memories of World War II. I was an aircraft commander assigned to a heavy bomb group and flying missions from San Pancrazio in southern Italy to targets in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, Italy and France.

I was assigned to the 514th Squadron of the 376th Heavy Bomb Group, which was known as the Liberando's, and was one of the most decorated groups in WWII.

In July 1944 we had a heavy schedule and, due to heavy losses of aircraft and crews, I was scheduled on long and difficult missions on six of the first nine days of July, including the heavily defended Ploesti oil refinery in Roumania on July 9th.

On July 12th I was scheduled as part of a formation of B-24's to bomb a bridge over the Var River near Nice in southern France. This was to be an easy target, according to our intelligence briefing, as there were to be only 19 heavy guns defending the bridge.

There was heavy cloud cover over the Mediteranian as we approached France but the target area was clear, however the anti-aircraft fire was intense and accurate.

The bomb run was successful but my aircraft sustained a direct hit in the leading edge of the left wing from an 88 mm anti-aircraft weapon. The gas lines and all of the electrical wiring were severed, causing the loss of both engines on the left side. The engines could not be feathered due to the wiring damage and this caused additional drag. The gyro instruments were lost and necessitated a decent from 20,000 feet through heavy clouds with only basic flight instruments.

I was able to land on the island of Corsica at a field that was used by the French as a base for Spitfire fighters. A B-24 had crash-landed on the field previously and had been abandoned. This provided a source for spare parts to repair our plane. My crew removed the damaged leading edge of the wing and replaced the gas lines and a control cable while I used my civilian experience as a telephone cable splicer to trace and splice the bundle of severed wires.

After working day and night, the repair was completed by late evening on July 13, with the exception of one landing light and a couple of minor instruments. We immediately took off for our home base in Italy.

Upon our arrival at San Pancrazio we were informed that the field was closed for repair of the runway and we were to go to an alternate base. Since no one flew at night the naval base at Taranto assumed that we were enemy, but we avoided some fire while we convinced them that we were on their side.

We landed safely and were transported to San Pancrazio where some discussion took place about a court martial for flying an unsafe airplane. The next day the maintenance officer was dispatched to inspect the plane. He reported that we had done an exceptional job on the repair and then I was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

On July 15th I was again on a mission to Ploesti.