Mission 4: June 6, 1944- D – DAY 2ND MISSION
After posting the mission log book I interviewed my dad. I had a lot of questions about the occurances and the people involved. Dad didn’t enter certain kinds of information in his mission log. He just kept to the facts. On the log I have created hyperlinks to the information below.
“At mission briefings Major Norgaard and Colonel Vance would describe the mission. If the map they showed us had a lot of red areas (we called ‘ketchup’) on it, we knew we were in for a dangerous mission over anti-aircraft hotspots. Invariably, if Major Norgaard flew in the lead plane, we were in for it!”
“Tracers are a special kind of bullet that lit up. Every fifth bullet was a tracer. The anti-craft installations could see where they were shooting in relation to the planes.” “We could also tell where they were from those same tracers.”
“After a briefing we were told to stand near our plane. If a green flare shot into the sky, the mission commenced. An amber flare told us to stand by. A red flare meant that the mission had been cancelled.”
New info thanks to Paul Clouting: The second D-Day mission, your dad was flying in aircraft Y5-C. This aircraft would have been serial 42-95898, named “Merry Jerry”, and was most probably flown by the same pilot (1st Lt. Jack L Lyons). This particular aircraft force landed in France on 27th August 1944.
Thanks to Andrew Boehly and the Pima Air and Space Museum for the photo and information: “I did find one picture of Merry Jerry with bombardier T.T. Cole standing in front of the nose art. According to the captions in the photos Cole was the usual bombardier for pilot Joe Chiozza.
D-Day Second Mission Formation Diagram
Carrozza was in Y5-C Capt. Lyon
