I called my dad tonight while we were both watching a Detroit Tigers game.
He was sitting out on the lanai in Florida with Mom, watching the Tigers. I was watching the same game up here in Ludington, Michigan. This is something we’ve done for years—talking on the phone while the game is on.
He’s 83. I’m 56.
Somehow, like it often does, the conversation drifted into baseball history. Dad started talking about Babe Ruth and said he finished his career in Boston. He thought it was with the Red Sox, but I told him it was actually with the Boston Braves.
“He only hit a few home runs that game,” Dad said.
I told him, “I think he hit three in one of his last games.” So I looked it up—and it turned out we were both right. Ruth did hit three home runs in one of his final games.
Then I asked, “Who’s a guy who hit a home run in his last at-bat?”
Dad didn’t hesitate. “Ted Williams.”
He was right again—Ted Williams famously homered in his final at-bat.
I said, “Yeah… imagine if Ted Williams hadn’t missed five seasons because of the war and Korea.”
Dad said, “Yeah. He volunteered for that.”
I didn’t know that.
And somehow, that’s what shifted the conversation.
From Ted Williams…
to war…
to our own family.
“Uncle John was a bombardier,” Dad said.
That alone tells you something. In World War II, the bombardier wasn’t just another crew member. He was the one responsible for aiming and releasing the bombs—often from the nose of the aircraft, lying prone over a bombsight while flying into enemy fire.
Dad had more to say.
“He flew into Manistee once,” he told me. “They had the old planes there. He didn’t land there when he was in the war, but they brought one in later.”
Then he described something I had never heard before.
“They would open the bottom, and they would grab the bar and climb in that way.”
That sounds strange today, but it fits with how some of those bombers were built. Crews often entered through hatches in the belly of the plane, climbing up into a cramped, metal interior that wasn’t built for comfort—just function.
Dad remembered a local moment tied to those planes.
“One flew over a parade, and when it went over, they opened the bottom like the bombs were going to come out.”
You can imagine the crowd looking up—half in awe, half remembering what those planes had actually done during the war.
But what really stuck with me was how Dad described the job itself.
“The bombardier would take over for the pilot to drop the bomb.”
That part is true. In many U.S. bombers—like the B-17 and B-24—the bombardier used a device called the Norden bombsight. When the plane approached the target, the bombardier could actually control the aircraft’s direction through the autopilot system to line up the drop precisely.
“The pilot turned it over to the bombardier just before they got where they were going to drop the bombs.”
For those few moments, the bombardier wasn’t just aiming—he was effectively flying the plane.
Dad also remembered the danger.
“The engineer was way back. If the wheel shot off, the bombardier would die. A lot of bombardiers died during landing. The plane would hit the ground and slide.”
Bombardiers were positioned in the very front of the aircraft—the nose. That gave them the visibility they needed, but it also made them incredibly vulnerable. Hard landings, crashes, or even flak could make that position one of the most dangerous places to be.
Then, like conversations often do, it drifted forward in time.
“When I went to school, they were still bombing in Korea—north and south. That’s why I remember it,” Dad said.
That’s another reminder of how close these events really are. For his generation, World War II didn’t feel like distant history—it flowed right into the Korean War. Bombers were still flying. Bombardiers were still doing the same job Uncle John once did.
What started as a simple memory turned into something more.
A man climbing into a plane through the belly.
A bomber flying low over a hometown parade.
A crew trusting one man in the nose to guide them to the target.
And a son remembering what his father told him—years later—about a war that never felt all that far away.
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| A World War II bombardier sits in the glass nose of a bomber, positioned at the very front of the aircraft where he aimed and released bombs during combat missions. |
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| Close-up of a bomber’s plexiglass nose, showing the exposed position of the bombardier and the forward guns added later in the war to defend against head-on attacks. |
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| Inside the nose of a WWII bomber, a bombardier leans over the bombsight, guiding the aircraft’s final approach before releasing its payload. |
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| The bombardier’s compartment as seen from inside the aircraft—cramped, exposed, and centered around the bombsight used to line up targets below. |
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| Front view of a B-17 Flying Fortress, highlighting the rounded glass nose where the bombardier sat ahead of the rest of the crew. |
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| A WWII bomber nose section with crew visible inside, illustrating how far forward the bombardier operated compared to the pilot and the rest of the crew. |
