Air Gunner: The Men who Manned the Turrets by Alan Cooper &

Author:Alan Cooper & , [Cooper, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783409143
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2009-04-20T21:00:00+00:00

A reunion in the Gold Coast in 2001. Left to right Jean Bigelow, Frank Casalegno, Joan Casalegno, Barbara Jones and Austin Jones. Jim Bigelow

He flew eleven operations as a nose or rear gunner on a Liberator. In total he logged 91 hours and 20 minutes by day and 38 hours by night and was assessed as ‘above average’ as a gunner. In November 1945, and now a Warrant Officer, he was demobbed. Many years after the war he became one of the founders and the first President of the Canadian Air Gunners Association which, as he himself said, “Not bad for a Ukrainian / Canadian boy from the North End of Winnipeg”.

On 22 September 1943 P/O Joseph Cohen, age 21, of the Royal Australian Air Force took off from Ceylon for an operation to the Car Nicabar. He failed to return and the Japanese reported having shot down F/L-939. But it did not go down without a fight because two Zeros had been shot down by the Liberators gunners. The crew have no known grave but their names are recorded on the Singapore Memorial.

At the end of the war many bomber aircraft were sent out to the Far East in preparation for the bombing of the Japanese mainland to end the war with Japan. One of those was the now famous 617 Squadron who had breached the Ruhr Dams in 1943 using white painted Lancasters.

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