PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: Number7 on May 25, 2025, 07:37:46 PM
-
Who has a loved one that gave all for the USA?
Let’s start a Pilot Spin Halll of Fame
My uncle Dug. Given that name because of his advice to a local troublemaker who felt ten feet tall after one too many shots of moonshine. When the twit braced him in front of many witnesses, Dug slowly turned to him and said, “Boy… I hope you dug your own grave before heading out here to fuck with me…”
Fought against the japs in the Pacific and died killing Japanese prison camp guards for abusing a crippled American GI.
Dug… I stand and salute your memory this weekend!
My father’s brother Bill. Shot twice, one a thru and thru his stomach, as he parachuted out of a burning bomber. The cunts offered no medical care and his stomach wound healed open, meaning you could look into his stomach.
Died in his early seventies a broken, damaged, hero of the highest order.
God rest you Uncle Bill.
Who has someone to add?
-
POA???
-
My father’s cousin Everitt Briggs was a P-51 pilot. He was shot down over Burma in 1943, survived and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He lived a year in the prison camp before dying there, no doubt from the horrific conditions and abuse. Salute to your Dug for giving it to the guards!
During attempted repatriation of his remains, the transport plane crashed, again in Burma, and the authorities never found/identified/returned his body. The excuse given was the religion in the region forbad “disturbing the peace” of the dead, but there is no formal dogma along those lines and it was likely given as an excuse due to the expensive and logistical difficulty of locating, identifying and returning remains. The transport may have crashed in a remote inaccessible area.
However, we do have an empty grave in our family plot with a monument already erected for him, and the family never stopped trying to get him back home. At this point, whoever the hell rules Burma now, there is zero chance they’ll do anything. It’s a lost cause.
Edit: His name was misspelled somewhere. I corrected it here.
-
I’ve been fortunate in that none of my relatives that I know/knew have died in combat or from wounds received while in the service.
I am grateful for those that served and sacrificed
-
My family has also been very fortunate to have everyone return from the service. One cousin was wounded in Viet Nam. My grandfather got pneumonia in the trenches in WWI. Otherwise all have returned safely.
-
I’ve been fortunate in that none of my relatives that I know/knew have died in combat or from wounds received while in the service.
I am grateful for those that served and sacrificed
Everette is the only one in our family I know of. We totally missed Korea and Vietnam just by happenstance, nobody even went, and several other family members served in both world wars but survived to die of natural causes later in life.
-
My family has also been very fortunate to have everyone return from the service. One cousin was wounded in Viet Nam. My grandfather got pneumonia in the trenches in WWI. Otherwise all have returned safely.
Same. My family history (US) starts with the Revolutionary War and someone has participated in every war since. The only deaths were two (cousins) that died defending the Alamo.
-
My father’s cousin Everette Briggs was a P-51 pilot. He was shot down over Burma in 1943, survived and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He lived a year in the prison camp before dying there, no doubt from the horrific conditions and abuse. Salute to your Dug for giving it to the guards!
During attempted repatriation of his remains, the transport plane crashed, again in Burma, and the authorities never found/identified/returned his body. The excuse given was the religion in the region forbad “disturbing the peace” of the dead, but there is no formal dogma along those lines and it was likely given as an excuse due to the expensive and logistical difficulty of locating, identifying and returning remains. The transport may have crashed in a remote inaccessible area.
However, we do have an empty grave in our family plot with a monument already erected for him, and the family never stopped trying to get him back home. At this point, whoever the hell rules Burma now, there is zero chance they’ll do anything. It’s a lost cause.
The greatest generation really was…
-
Always will be grateful Nixon pulled us out of Vietnam the year my brother turned 18 and registered.
My Dad was a gunnery sergeant in the European theater. He came home in 1946 and married Mom, got a mechanical engineering degree on the GI bill while she worked. He was an engineer at the Hanford Site, designing the tanks that would hold the nuclear waste from bomb making work there. He also farmed Concord grapes, retiring from engineering in 1991 to farm full time. Gave back to his community in many ways. Always one of the most hard working and grateful men I’ve ever known. My parents were married 63 years. Mom says the first 10 years he would sometimes wake in the night screaming from war memories.
All your relatives, my Dad, thank you, thank you. I never forget the cost of freedom.
-
My Mother had a Brother that was killed in WWII 9-3-44
She had another brother that served in WWI and at some point wrote her v letter about his experience at war. Letter is posted in the next four posts
-
Page 2
-
Page 3
-
Page 4
-
My Mother had a Brother that was killed in WWII 9-3-44
She had another brother that served in WWI and at some point wrote her v letter about his experience at war. Letter is posted in the next four posts
Quite a read. Yesterday I was searching in my boxes for information about my uncle on my mother's side, who survived the war but I had forgotten what exactly he did. I seem to remember him telling me he was a gunner on a bomber but all I could find was that he was in the US Army Air Corps. Now he's dead and I can't ask him anymore.
So digging through old papers I came across a letter written by a relative around 1900, talking about his grandfather who was my great-great-grandfather, and who ran a construction company, died in 1886 but the letter writer told of his adventures with his grandfather when he (the letter writer) was a child. I had never read this letter before! It was stuck in an envelope that I must have brought home after cleaning out mom's stuff when she died. She must have kept it after Dad died, who kept it after his uncle died back in the 1970s.
Anyhow, in addition to the stories of the grandfather, he told the story of the grandfather's father (my great-great-great grandfather). THAT guy, had been orphaned when HIS father (my what is it now, 4 greats? grandfather) died young, and the guy who took the children in was a Tory during the Revolutionary War and got all his property AND the property of his little charges confiscated by the British.
Though poor now, the young kid was able to open a store which then got burned to the ground (probably by the British?) so he gave up and moved to where Raleigh had just been founded, and participated in helping lay out the first official streets. He then proceeded to have a bunch of kids of which this grandfather was one, who grew up only to face the Civil War which is another story I won't get into, but afterwards built his business empire and ended up with the little grandkid who wrote down the memories around 1900 in this letter I just found.
So I went down this rabbit hole all because of Memorial Day and found details about my ancestors I had no idea about.
So your letter, and the letter I found, are fascinating, not just dry history but painting personal full-color pictures of moments in the lives of these people. Making me sad not to have known them in real life. It strikes me how strong, courageous and resilient they were, contrasting with the soft spoiled life we have today.
-
I play with the ancestry.com website every now and then. My family has built up a fairly detailed family tree going WAY back. Things get harder to trace in the way back as my family goes back to Estonia, Finland, and Sweden and while the records are there, they are pretty hard to search. One strange branch goes back to England and Germany, and it's fun to see all the ruffians and nobility there.
-
My Great Uncle Robert Mansell was KIA over Palau on August 28, 1944.
He was a gunner in a B-24
https://www.facebook.com/groups/266750903815982
Always amazed at how young the crew is in the pictures on the facebook page.
-Dan
-
My Great Uncle Robert Mansell was KIA over Palau on August 28, 1944.
He was a gunner in a B-24
https://www.facebook.com/groups/266750903815982
Always amazed at how young the crew is in the pictures on the facebook page.
-Dan
RIP: Robert Mansell
Rest forever in a place where no wars are ever fought.
-
I play with the ancestry.com website every now and then. My family has built up a fairly detailed family tree going WAY back. Things get harder to trace in the way back as my family goes back to Estonia, Finland, and Sweden and while the records are there, they are pretty hard to search. One strange branch goes back to England and Germany, and it's fun to see all the ruffians and nobility there.
My father’s family on both sides came to the U.S. early, before the Revolution, and were mostly English and Scottish. My mother’s family were from the Austrian Empire, the peasant class as best we can determine. I can’t trace the family much farther than the ones who came over in the late 1800s (my great grandfather ran up a hill to escape death when he saw the great flood coming from the South Fork Dam break - he watched it flatten his house) and early 1900s (the grandfather who fought on the wrong side in WW1). My parents traveled to Europe to look for earlier records but found they had been destroyed in bombing during WW2.
My genes have French, German, the British Isles, eastern European, Scandinavian and a good dose of Neanderthal.
-
My Great Uncle Robert Mansell was KIA over Palau on August 28, 1944.
He was a gunner in a B-24
https://www.facebook.com/groups/266750903815982
Always amazed at how young the crew is in the pictures on the facebook page.
-Dan
They’re babies. My Dad’s cousin was only 24. Look at him, he’s a sweetie pie. It rips my heart out to think he was tormented by the Japanese for a year in captivity only to die at their hands. Makes me angry.
-
We went to Gettysburg over the weekend. Saturday morning we spent about an hour placing flags on the gravestones at Gettysburg National Cemetary. It should be a requirement for every American to visit.
-
BTW, this site is free (you need to register).
It's run by the Mormon church and has amazing data. I have traced family back to the Roman Empire using it.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/
-
BTW, this site is free (you need to register).
It's run by the Mormon church and has amazing data. I have traced family back to the Roman Empire using it.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/
I have used that site before. Been a while, I’ve probably lost my login info.