A stirring and private account of an American C-47 ‘Dakota’ pilot who earned three Air Medals, seven Battle Stars, and flew twenty-seven combat missions during the Second World War. As a young US pilot, Harry Watson arrived in Britain as the Battle of Normandy was reaching its crescendo. Thrown immediately into the fray, Harry, along with more than 200 aircraft, set off to carry supplies to the troops fighting in France. But with visibility reduced to zero, the aircraft were ordered to turn back – all did except Harry, who successfully delivered his life-saving cargo of blood and US Army nurses.
Harry continued to take risks, which resulted in many hair-raising episodes. The episodes include almost being caught on the ground while on an urgent fuel resupply mission for a platoon of General Patton’s tanks by a German Mk. IV panzer and a battalion of supporting infantry.
He flew throughout Operation Market Garden, losing a close friend to German anti-aircraft fire while taking some hits to his plane. After that, he led a flight of five Dakotas on a desperate mission to evacuate a mobile field hospital that was about to be overrun by the SS. Only four of the five planes made it back as they came under direct fire just before they could take off with scores of casualties and medical personnel crammed aboard each plane.
Around midnight, in early April 1945, he was sent on a secret mission to fly to a point near Nuremberg, which was behind enemy lines at the time. He needed to locate an empty meadow in the dark, land, load a party of US soldiers and their captives, and take off again. He pulled it off. Among those prisoners was Franz von Papen, who had persuaded President Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Von Papen had been seized at his own home by First Lieutenant Thomas McKinley and his men from the US 194th Glider Infantry Regiment.
Based on his recollections, as described to the author Marcus A. Nannini, through a series of in-person interviews, this is Harry Watson’s exciting account of the air war told, unusually, through the words of a transport pilot.
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