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The Planes of Fame Museum also has some of “our planes” from WWII. One of the hangars is divided in two, with one room dedicated to the heavy carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). CV-6 was no stranger to the men on the Boston; she was one of the carriers they screened in raids on the Japanese Home Islands and the Battle of Iwo Jima in the early days of 1945.
The “Enterprise Room” is a great collection of stuff. It’s also home to several carrier planes common to the War in the Pacific. Today, we’ll concentrate on the TBM Avenger. Pictured below is their Avenger stored just as it would have been on a carrier – “wings up and back.”
below: from their website:
There were “heroes by the many hundreds” among the carrier pilots during the War. Here’s a guy you might have heard of before (from p. 290 – A Bird’s Eye View):
…… a squadron of Avenger torpedo bombers launched off the light carrier San Jacinto on September 2, 1944 attacked a radar installation on ChiChi Jima. They flew into a storm of antiaircraft fire, and the plane piloted by George H. Bush flamed down and crashed into the sea. Bush had successfully bombed his target before bailing out. The only survivor, he was rescued by a submarine and returned to his carrier a month later.
steve