WWII Bombers Bring Back Glory Days for Aging Veterans at Norwood Airport-September 22, 1997

Historic heavy bombers that once flew over Europe and the Far East during World War II returned to the skies over Norwood Airport over the weekend, drawing a crowd of more than 2,000 visitors and offering aging veterans a poignant trip down memory lane.

Veterans Swap Combat Stories Around B-24 and B-25 Bombers

The airfield played host to iconic World War II aircraft, including B-24 and B-25 bombers, giving veterans who flew combat missions at 30,000 feet more than half a century ago an opportunity to swap stories and inspect the machinery they once called home.

Among the veterans attending the weekend exhibition were:

• Jim Smith of Braintree: A nose gunner in a B-24 Liberator with the 491st Bomb Group flying out of England, Smith completed 36 missions. He recalled being shot down over Holland while on a low-level mission to drop supplies to troops fighting at Arnhem, crash-landing between German and Allied lines before being rescued by an American artillery forward observer in a jeep.
• Bill Campbell of Clinton: Trained as a tail gunner at age 18 with the 466th Bomb Group, Campbell completed 30 missions before being wounded by flak over Osnabruck, Germany, on October 12, 1944. He noted that while the B-17 Flying Fortress gained widespread fame, the B-24 could fly faster and carried a larger bomb load.
• Dag Morse of Norwood: Joining the service at 18, Morse served as a ball-turret gunner on B-17s with the 487th Bomb Group. Though he flew only seven combat missions before the war ended, he vividly recalled encountering the German Messerschmitt Me 262—the war’s first jet fighters—which quickly downed three bombers in his 10-plane group. Morse also remembered flying “spam missions” to drop food supplies to starving civilians in Holland.

While a B-24 demonstration took place on Saturday, a scheduled B-17 remained grounded due to a mechanical issue with one of its four engines. For many visitors and veterans, however, simply standing beneath the massive wings offered a moving tribute. As one veteran remarked while gazing out at the airfield, “I often think of the great guys who didn’t make it and went down with their planes.”

Archival Note: This article has been dynamically reconstructed from the original public record print archives of the Patriot Ledger