We just did what we were told to do, son.’” “Every time I brought it up with him, his eyes would tear up,” said his son, Tony Jr. “He was just shy about it,” said his wife, Jeannie, whom he married after the war. But the experience nonetheless lingered with him. Trutanich abhorred the glorification of war and through much his life all but refused to talk about his experiences in WWII. Trutanich would hear his buddy Wender’s voice for the rest of his life. “The plane off our right peeled off and we could see his engines, #2 and #1, burning – he never made it back…In that minute flak was very heavy, and Moe didn’t come out on the interphone as he usually does with ‘Make it good, dago.’ Bombs were away, and our formation peeled off to the right – then I got a taste of religion – my desk was blown from beneath me and my equipment and instruments shot away…” “Then we got hit, and we were lifted up some 100 ft.,” Trutanich continued. Moe Wender kept the flak plotted for me, and I gave ol’ skipper headings around the flak bursts – just a little evasive action.” A few seconds beyond our bomb run, the flak came – we were glad to know it was low and out at 9 o’clock – but it didn’t take them long to step it up and kill our course. “And so it was, up to the target, where we were told we would meet some 40 105 mm ack ack guns. “It was a job for the Pathfinders, and it was to be a milk run,” Trutanich wrote. Eighth Air Force and the British Royal Air Force – on which, in addition to bombing, they were to find and mark targets with flares for the rest of the bombing force to follow. It was a so-called “Pathfinder” mission – missions flown only by the most elite crews of the U.S. “The biggest thrill of my life.” He had already earned the Air Medal for “coolness, courage, and skill” as a navigator in attacks on Nazi installations prior to D-Day.īut on this day in August, only 10 weeks later, the crew of The Hit Parade was badly shaken. “Boy, what a show!” he told his hometown newspaper, the San Pedro News Pilot. Trutanich was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in D-Day. Trutanich, as navigator, in a real sense led the air assault. Trutanich, Blair, and their crew were the lead plane in the lead squadron and flew not only one, but two missions. On D-Day - J– they led the invasion of Normandy. They led bombing runs on key military and industrial targets in Germany and occupied France that required flying straight into the heavy flak of the famously accurate German anti-aircraft artillery fire and into the teeth of the mighty Luftwaffe. They had played a key role in the strategic bombing campaign aimed at liberating France. John Blair, were already among the most accomplished flyers in the European Theater of Operations. It was not an easily attained number – the life expectancy of the average crew was 14 missions, according to U.S. At this point in the war, bomber crew members were assigned no more than 25 missions due to the physical and mental duress of the undertaking. He and the other men of the B-24 dubbed The Hit Parade had just made a high speed “hot landing” in their battered plane. Today I led another mission – as usual, we got up very early, and most anxious to get in another mission, which would mean a mission nearer home. “Just got back about two hours ago – it’s dark out and everyone is tired – and sad, very sad, too. On this night, he’d just returned from a mission that had gone horribly awry. Trutanich was a 21 year old lieutenant and lead navigator for a squadron of bombers, sometimes leading thousands of men into airborne combat from which many would not return. Army Air Force base in England late on August 18, 1944, Trutanich wrote about a topic he would remain largely silent about for the rest of his life. But in a letter written to his newlywed wife, Doris, from a U.S. Like so many members of his generation, Tony Trutanich was a devoted correspondent to his loved ones. The letter was handwritten in a carefully printed script in the dark of night. Moe Wender (assistant navigator, injured). The Crew of bomber The Hit Parade: (standing left to right) Sgt.
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