My B crew heading out for D-day mission. Isom of Ennis, TX on the left, then bombardier Chuck Bunting, then an engineer-gunner, then me with chest pack parachute on my knee, then a gunner, then Lonnie Justus, our copilot from LA. On a later mission Justus would confirm my single fighter kill: an FW at 60 yards. My first mission, May 3, , was to bomb the Nazi fighter-repair installations a Goering priority at Orly Airport.
En route to target we took out both long narrow black factories I caught my first breath-taking sight of the Eiffel Tower, in front of which my father had long ago posed for a Kodak moment, and where he went up in a WW1 steam-powered balloon tethered to the nearby Tuilleries Garden gate by a rope. The garden is just this side of the tower. The aftershock of the blast sucked the glass out of my room windows and jagged deadly fragments stippled the walls over my bed.
Marble Arch Park was also famous for its annual marble tournament. An old Bronx marble player, I tried to compete but my entry arrived too late. Sadly, the grievous care I took of my snapshots is visible in this frame. This was all before I found the phenomenal organizing maven, Erica DeGlopper, and she began archiving my work.
My then-hair was real, as was my inch waistline. Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a year career. First Lieut. Arthur Shay of Brooklyn saw D-Day from a Liberator, and two years later, last Thursday, wrote the following poem as a memorial-and a protest.
Just out of a semester of college in , he entered the Army as an air cadet. He flew 30 missions over Europe as lead naviga- tor in a B squadron, furloughed briefly in this country and went back overseas for a top-secret Air Transport Command job-flying in and out of neutral Sweden. Note: Art is in the Aviation Record Book for navigating a B Air Weather Service plane from San Francisco to Anchorage in 13 hours, at 30 feet altitude , pioneering blind flying by weather isobars.
