Combat:
Of course there is no such thing as a " good war ", but for some it was better than for others. My crew and I fit that package. We flew together for most of my missions, and never had a purple heart. The first mission I flew, as a co-pilot, we were briefed for Maribor, Yougoslavia as a Milk Run, only about 15 flak guns. When we turned on the bomb run, all Hell broke loose. I was scared stiff. After we left the target, the pilot turned to me and said " Milk run hell, that was a real barn buster". When we were debriefed, we found out why. Ploesti, south of Maribor, had fallen, and Hitler was bringing the many guns deployed at Ploesti, back to defend Germany. We had resched there at the same time the German 88s did. We took a real pasting. That was my introduction to combat.
When we started flying as a crew, we had air superiority. This meant we had few strikes by fighters. However, the flak was ever thicker, and we flew most of our missions deeper and deeper into germany. This resulted in planes running out of gas due to losing one engine, or old war wearies burning fuel too fast, and then running out. If you ditched over the Adriatic, you had a good chance of being rescued. also, there was a small runway on the island of Vis which saved many a crew. We flew to Vienna, Munich, and other deep penetration raids, and never failed to make base. On the worst one, I had an engine out, and unbeknownst to me, a flat tire. This resuted in a horrible landiing, but we made it.
After the war was over, and while we were waiting for orders on getting home, we flew several "bean missions" to Udine Italy to resupply troops. Then we flew several trips with minimum crew and several ground personnel to show them where we had been bombing. After about 2 months of this, we got the word on who was to fly home in the combat 24s, and who would go home by troopship. We were lucky, and got the last assignment to a war weary that had flown 88 missions. One last note on combat. On one mission after I had been made a lead pilot, I was assigned to fly co-pilot to Col. Mooney, our commanding officer. When I got to the plane, he was already in the right seat. I asked if I was to fly left seat, and he answered yes, saying even though he was listed as pilot, he liked to have young, experienced pilots fly left seat whe he was lead pilot. We were air force lead that day, and I flew lead for 1000 planes. Quite a thrill!
more to come.