Temperature on outside kiln; 35 degrees
Music in the studio; Corrine Bailey Rae
kiln firings; none
Another few days goes by... I can't keep up. Obsessed with making wall tiles....
Also spent all afternoon on Friday at the printers and with my sister and her scanner.... the story goes like this;
While watching the WWII movie A Bridge Too Far last week, I decided to Google the name of my fathers crashed B-17 plane, Swing Shift Baby... And while I have done this before and garnered a few tidbits of information, this time I struck gold....
I noticed a link to Ebay which I had not seen before..
A dealer in NY state had listed an original photo of a crashed B-17, by the name of Swing Shift Baby!!! I nearly fell out of bed! A photo of my father's plane, on Ebay! holy moly.... I had to have it of course!! As it was listed for $99., I called my sister and asked her to share the cost of purchasing it with me.. As we were talking on the phone, I could hear her typing on her computer and after a minute or two, she said, "I got it, I just bought!" I wanted to cry I was sooo excited...
You have to understand that my brother, a Vietnam vet, is a military/family historian and has asked me many, many times that if I ever see a photo of Swing Shift Baby, complete with nose art, to let him know and please, please try to obtain it .. While I have seen a few photos on the internet, mostly WWII historical sites, I have certainly never held in my hands an original polaroid of the crash site.. After anxiously waiting 5 days for it to travel from the east coast to New Mexico, my sister and I finally had it in our hands...
Thus we spent all of Friday afternoon scanning it and making copies for the family before sending the original to our older brother Matt as a surprise early birthday present. And boy will he be surprised... Someone alerted him to the listing of the photo on his Facebook page, but it had already sold!! He will be floored that it was his sisters that had purchased it before anyone else...! Wish I could see his face when he opens the package on Wednesday...
We also made a few copies for the pilots' family in Alabama which I will also get in the mail this week. My father, Wade Beyeler, was the navigator and the last crew member to jump/get pushed out of the plane after getting shot down by the Nazi's..... the first member out the door became a German POW, while the rest of the crew also survived parachuting and landing in no-man's land... Dad ended up in the newly liberated Paris just in time to enjoy the party of the century!!!!
Wade Beyeler (the handsome one on the left..)
The pilot, James Davis, actually rode it all the way to the ground on one engine and you can see above the results of that adventure... His son Bob in Alabama is just about as excited as we are to obtain this 70-year-old precious piece of history... Bob also told me he went through his father's war photos and found one of my father standing in front of the plane! He will send what he has to me in a gesture of reciprocation. Can't wait to get another piece of photo documentation of our family history!
The year before my father died, he received a letter from a very small town in Luxembourg... The historical museum in that small village had found a piece of this plane and was planning an exhibit around the local events during the war... They had been searching for two years(!) for the "angels from above" and were so excited to find one still alive, my dad....
He hand-wrote and sent to them his personal account of the 13th mission of Swing Shift Baby... If I ever get back to Europe, I would love to go to southern Luxembourg and see the exhibit that they put together based on my father's recollections....
The story of Swing Shift Baby lives on...
Thanks for sharing. It's so very important we children of the B17 men keep their stories alive. Since many of them didnt tell their story, piecing it together and finding photos means so much. I came across a paper that sited the men and addresses of their contact during the war. It has helped me find 5 of the families as well as the tail gunner who got to tell us all of their crashing in Spain. We have shared our photos and documents acquired. Great photo of your Dad. Hope you get to Lux
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment! You are right, we must keep their stories alive... Thanks for sharing with me!,
DeleteMaggie, my uncle, John Johnston, was a B-17 pilot from Apr-Dec '43. Flew an aircraft called "Hell's Angels." In Dec they hit 25 missions and returned to the States to replace "Memphis Belle" on the war bond tour.
ReplyDeleteOne of his prized possessions was a book I got for him called "Might in Flight: Daily Diary of the 8th Air Force's Hell's Angels, 303rd Bombardment Group. Don't know if this was your Dad's group, but in the book there are several mentions of a 1LT E.R. Beyeler. Also noted that he was a navigator.
I had to find the book on Ebay after considerable search and probably paid more than it was worth, but it was great to have it. John passed away in '07 but he had managed to attend at least one reunion prior. Some amazing stories from that era. All best, Gordon
Thank you so much for this info. Not my father or bombing group alas, but very interesting! Your uncle sounds like he has some real adventure! Thanks again!
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