Blake Hall
Friday marked the 70th anniversary of V-E Day — May 8, 1945 — which ended World War II in Europe when the Allies (the United States obviously included) accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces.
To celebrate the date, thousands of veterans and dignitaries gathered in Washington, D.C. at the National World War II Memorial.
Yes, there were bagpipes and speeches and big-band music, but what everyone in attendance truly pined for was the “flyover”. That is, of vintage World War II aircraft like B-29 Bombers and B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators and P-15 Mustangs and Avengers.
They didn’t disappoint. See them soar proudly ver our nation’s capitol in spectacular fashion in the video above. It’s awesome.
Of course, the media was there, and it was a good thing they were, or else this great little interview that the Washington Post published would never have come to fruition.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Thomas Robert Vaucher, 96, of Bridgewater, New Jersey — World War II veteran and former B-29 Bomber pilot.
[Vaucher] was in the front row of VIPs as the planes flew over, and when a B-29 rumbled overhead, “it brought back a pile of memories,” he said.
His Superfortress was nicknamed “Miss Lace,” after a racy cartoon character drawn by famed cartoonist Milton Caniff. Vaucher said Caniff provided a drawing of the character, and an artist painted it on the plane.
“She was scantily dressed,” he remembered.
He recalled the heavy antiaircraft fire over Tokyo, and how, as long as you didn’t hear the thud of an impact on your plane, you were okay. During one mission in June 1945, he said, his airplane was hit so many times it was retired for spare parts.
He said he and his crew started counting holes after they returned from the mission, stopping at 400.
The B-29 — the plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — was capable of flying very long distances.
At one point, Vaucher said, his flights began in India, went over the Himalayas, stopped for gas in China, took off again to bomb Japan and then headed back.
“We flew them at maximum weight because we were flying them further than they were designed to be flown,” he said. “We were always taking off overweight. We were always using the entire runway. We didn’t get off the runway until the last brick.”
He said someone asked him Thursday if he was ever afraid.
“I said, ‘I was never, ever afraid. Sometimes concerned. But not afraid.’ That’s a very different thing, to be fearful,” he said. “You had so much going on, you didn’t have time to be afraid.”
