by Joe Kowalski
Publisher
My father John and Uncle Joe saw each other about a week before D-Day in England.
Uncle Joe was a pilot in the Army Air Corp and he flew to my father’s army base to take him for a ride. My father was a staff sergeant in the 28th Infantry Division from Pennsylvania.
Ironically, no one in our family knew of my uncle’s fate other than he was shot down in the early morning of June 6th, 1944. He was the co-pilot of the C-47 flying G Company, 101st Airborne.
Then, family of a 101st Airborne soldier were just visiting Normandy this year and happened upon a memorial plaque and saw my uncle’s name. They were friends of my cousin and related the finding of the memorial and information about the doomed flight.
So we can all appreciate the sacrifice, I am providing the lengthy account from a British historian who now lives near the crash site:
June the 5th 1944 – RAF Welford, England
Early in the evening of the 5th June, 45 C47 aircraft (with four in reserve) were parked along the perimeter track of the English air field known as RAF Welford near to Newbury in Berkshire. Munitions were stacked by each plane and the ‘Go’ having been given, take off had been set for 22.45. Everett, along with 127 men of ‘G’ company 101st airborne, stood waiting to board their aircraft. For Everett and 35 other men of ‘G’ Company they had only three more hours to live.
Being British summer time, early June sees sunset very late and it was around 9.30 p.m. and still not yet dusk, when Everett and the men of ‘G’ company, faces now blackened with camouflage, each man carrying additional equipment, moved towards the door of the C47 chalk marked with the number #16 on the side – their personal reference number.
Strung about each young paratrooper were pounds of additional equipment in the form of mortar bombs, extra ammunition and mines, in some cases up to 80 lbs. Added to the rest of a parachutists kit of pack, rifle, grenades and sundry equipment, it meant that rather than climb aboard the C-47 they had to shuffle in line to the aircraft and be both pulled up by the jump masters as well as pushed on by their colleagues behind them just to get aboard.
Once seated, the minutes would have ticked by and as D-Day had been cancelled once already, each man would have wondered to himself if it would be cancelled again. Shortly after boarding, Everett decided that in order to jump with his technical sergeant he would change to Lt. Hamblin’s aircraft from Lt Harrison’s aircraft.
Boarding #18 Everett asked paratrooper Don Kane to change places and move across the tarmac to Harrison’s aircraft. Kane later said that burdened down as he was with chute and 80 lbs of equipment he was annoyed at having to disembark from #18 and shuffle across the apron to board an aircraft for a second time. Such is the flip of the coin that decides fates on such an evening – as this act saved Kane’s life. Unlike Everett, Harrison’s aircraft made the drop and returned safely to England.
Visiting the site of the plane wreck in 2006 this veteran very emotionally said that without that last minute change by Everett his name would have also been on the memorial plaque marking where the aircraft came down.
1st Lt James J Hamblin from Newark, New Jersey was the Pilot of C47 Douglas Dakota No 42-24077 designated chalk ‘18’. At approximately 22.45 they lifted off from RAF Welford into a clear moonlit night sky and circled until the full complement of 45 aircraft was airborne and their assigned position in formation. Like some 800 other C47 aircraft that were allocated to the initial airborne mission, Hamblin’s serial of aircraft made their slow turn to the south West and headed for the English coast.
The formation – Everett’s aircraft is Red – far left
Everett, being the officer in charge, would have sat by the open door as the aircraft climbed to 2500 feet for the crossing of the English Channel. After a 90 mile flight the C47 crossed the English coast at what is called ‘Portland Bil’ and looking down Everett would have seen the largest invasion force in history starting out on its 80 mile cross channel journey to the shores of Normandy. Looking to the rear at around 30 minutes past midnight the English coastline, the last friendly soil he and his men would ever see, would have slowly faded into the gloom and disappeared.
Seventy miles of flying further on and located near to the island of Guernsey, was a floating radio directional beacon code named ‘Hoboken’ mounted on a submarine. Here, as they crossed the beacon, James Hamblin, along with the other 44 pilots, would have turned his aircraft almost 90 degrees to port levelling out on a course of 140.
It was 00.45 in the first hour of 6th June and they were now on the penultimate leg of the flight – and they had just 35 minutes left to live.
Showing the route from RAF Welford to the crash site
Whilst the path of the C47s crossed carefully between known German flak positions on both Guernsey and the French coast, the noise of several hundred twin engined aircraft would have made it obvious that something out of the ordinary was happening.
One hour earlier, C47s carrying the Pathfinders, who were to mark (by radio beacons and lights) the drop zones for the units of 101st and the 82nd Airborne, had been dropped on the peninsula. This gave an advance warning to the Germans and the flak batteries would have been alerted and manned.
Some 30 minutes after turning at the Hoboken beacon, about 01.10, Everett’s aircraft would have crossed the coast near to the small fishing village of Portbail on the West coast of the Cotentin peninsula.
As they had approached the coast of France the weather had gone from moonlit conditions over the sea to a bank of cloud and fog stretching in front of them. Trying to keep formation the C47s dropped through the clouds to their drop height of 600 feet and James Hamblin made a turn, his last, to 080 degrees for the final leg – the run in to the drop zone. They were now less than 24 miles from drop zone ‘C’ and had approximately 10 minutes to live.
Emerging from the clouds, the heavy German anti-aircraft batteries near to Sainte Saveur le Viconte opened up and the various formations of aircraft started to weave, become scattered and to fall apart as the young inexperienced pilots took whatever avoiding action they could.
Everett’s men, like so many others that night, would have been anxious and fearful of the nightmare going on around them as tracer fire and explosions rent the air. These young men would have been thrown around the inside of the aircraft, falling and stumbling as the young pilots took action to avoid the world of hell that was exploding around them. Whilst the 101st Airborne were superbly trained, none had seen action before and this was one hellish baptism of fire.
Inside the fuselage, by the door and to Everett’s left, were two lights, one green and one red. On crossing the coast and 10 minutes from the drop zone James Hamblin would have switched on the red light and later as they neared the drop zone he would switch on the green light – the signal for Everett and his Paratroopers to jump.
Everett, at the red light, would have stood up and motioning with both hands, palms up, would have shouted over the roar of the engines ‘Stand up’. The paratroopers would have stood with difficulty facing towards him and the rear exit door and over the roar of the flak and engines he would have indicated with his right hand, his index finger forming a hook shape, to ‘Hook up’. Each trooper would have clicked his cord onto the plane’s static line. Another shouted order from Everett ‘Equipment check’ and each man would have checked his belts and equipment for the last time as they awaited the ‘green light’ – their signal to jump.
But for Everett and his men the green light never came on.
Somewhere west of Picauville, some five miles from their assigned drop zone, both Everett’s and Lt Sullivan’s aircraft were hit by flak and fell from formation – Sullivan’s aircraft crashing one mile later with only three of the paratroopers escaping – 16 others and the crew perished. Everett’s aircraft lost height rapidly with both the port wing tank and engine alight and James Hamblin must have struggled with the controls to keep enough height for the Paratroopers to exit the aircraft.
It may be that Everett’s plane was hit once again near to my house and accounts report it being ‘a ball of flames’ as it lit up the early morning air.
At less than 400 feet and travelling at 130 miles an hour. Everett’s aircraft took only a few, merciful seconds to crash, blazing into the garden of the house at the end of my Hamlet – some 50 yards from my Manoir.
Flight path and intended drop zone for Everett’s aircraft
507th PIR trooper Charles Cleveland was by the church in Picauville and saw the aircraft pass over head. Here is what he wrote to me in February of 2001.
‘I am not a survivor of the C47 you refer to – there were none. I was on the ground for an hour before I saw the plane come over my head, it was on fire – port motor and wing tank – troopers couldn’t jump. The plane crashed, exploded and burned. That evening I and a small group fought by there, bodies scattered around the wreck.’
Another witness account is from the wife of a local historian. She was eight years old and her parents lived in the next hamlet – less than a mile from my Manoir. They had been sitting up for some time at their kitchen table as they realised, with the drones of so many aircraft passing low overhead, that something special was happening. Suddenly their house was lit up by a flash and then rocked by the explosion as Everett’s aircraft hit the ground.
In my small hamlet a fire fight was going on between German soldiers billeted there and a lone Pathfinder Paratrooper who had landed at 00.15. In the midst of this small battle Everett’s aircraft crashed into the orchard and it must have seemed like a scene from Dante’s inferno.
On, we believe, June 1, we beleive a photo was taken by these same Pathfinders outside of the house where Everett’s plane crashed. His aircraft fell to the right, behind the hedge and in a small orchard.
My research is ongoing and I will keep the family informed should I find out more.
Finally, may I say that I hold the utmost admiration for the young men of both our countries. They were born in the 1920’s, into an era of false prosperity, they spent much of their youth in the bitter reality of the depression and I am sure none of those young men wanted to go to war. They were not politically indoctrinated as were their German opponents and I’m sure they would have preferred to have been throwing cricket balls or base balls rather than hand grenades.
They were our citizen soldiers and when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned – they fought. They were the soldiers of our joint democracies – they were the heroes of D-day and in making the ultimate sacrifice it is to them that we owe the freedoms we enjoy today.
With my best regards
Ben Trumble
