Posted:
By: Steve York
On: 12/06/2009
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After hearing my dad, John Owen York, tell the stories of his WWI experiences over all these years, I recently had the inspiration to see what I could find on the internet and I found your great site - and after much searching I eventually found my dad in the crew of J.E. Lindsey in the 614th squadron.
John Owen York is still living in Waconia MN - 83 years-old, and he has always talked about 27 missions including one to Schweinfurt and another mission where they returned on only one engine. The list of missions for the crew of J.E. Lindsey only indicates 21 missions, and did not include Schweinfurt - so I am thinking that perhaps he was with another crew for a few missions. Is that possible? Any ideas on how to research that?
I talked to my dad, J.O. York, about the information in this website and he had a few comments, corrections:
"W.H. Sanders is listed as Togglier, but I remembered him as the Ball Turret Gunner - we called him "Short Round Sanders". Sam Ippolito was the radio operator and I remember the time he was almost killed by a chunk of shrapnel 7 inches long. E.A. Portier was the tail gunner and I was the waist gunner so I guess they have a few things mixed up in this listing. One my first crew I was trained as engineer so most of the time on Lindsey's crew I actually was the one to pull the pins and open the bomb-bay doors. I remember one of the missions was to Schweinfurt and if the listing for Lindsey's crew didn't have that, then perhaps it was a secondary target - or perhpas the records got messed up at the end? I recall that my last mission was to Berlin, but according to this Lindsey's last mission was to Falkenburg. Perhaps some of this is inaccurate because I trained with one crew and then I broke my leg and after it healed I was assigned to Lindsey's crew. My first crew were all killed on their 25th mission when flak exploded right in the open bomb-bay..."
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