COMMENTS & NOTES
MEMO 1:
CREW
2ND LT EDWARD N. McKAY P CPT 25 APRIL 44 DIJON, FRANCE SN#0745717
2ND LT THOMAS H. MULLEN CP CPT 25 APRIL 44 DIJON, FRANCE
2ND LT JACK A. YOUNG NAV CPT 25 APRIL 44 DIJON, FRANCE
2ND LT STUART W. McFEELY BOM CPT 25 APRIL 44 DIJON, FRANCE TAPS: FEB 1988
S/SGT JOHN E. TROUT RWG POW/WIA 24 MAY 44 BERLIN /WITH J.R. GEARY CREW TAPS: 14 APR 1980)
SGT LOUIS P. PALTRINERI ROG POW/WIA 24 MAY 44 BERLIN /WITH J.R. GEARY CREW
SGT FRANCIS ACKER TTE POW 24 MAY 44 BERLIN /WITH J.R. GEARY CREW TAPS: 18 OCT 1971
SGT CARL F. SCHUSTER BTG POW 24 MAY 44 BERLIN /WITH J.R. GEARY CREW
SGT JACK W. DOMENIG LWG POW/WIA 24 MAY 44 BERLIN /WITH J.R. GEARY CREW TAPS 27 SEP 1971
SGT RALPH T. GRAHAM TG CPT 29 JUNE 44 BOHLEN
350TH SQDN…CREW, AS ABOVE, JOINED THE 100TH ON October 15, 1943
A/C "Big Stoop" #941 (flew last 4-5 missions on this plane) , A/C Alice from Dallas II (flew 15 plus missions).
Crew spent Dec 44 doing practice missions. C.O. wanted each man to have at least 50 hours of practice missions before going into combat. (Lt McKay march 2001)
Crew completed tour, Officers were given new assignments in the States but the enlisted men volunteered for 5 additional missions.
Lt McKay felt the enlisted men should have taken a leave before doing the additional 5 missions. Lt McKay ended up in the hospital after his last mission with Pneumonia and was moved to a private hospital near High Wycombe.
On the McKay crew. The enlisted men didn't volunteer for another tour of 25 missions. They agreed to fly another FIVE missions (amounting to another OLC). Lou Paltrineri has told me this several times. The latest time was in June (06) Jack O'Leary.
Naming the Plane: "The radio operator Sgt Paltrineri named the plane. During the war Milton Caniff had a cartoon in Stars and Stripes called Steve Canyon. One of his girlfriends was called Delta and her bodyguard was called "Big Stoop" and he would rescue her and protect her from danger. Sgt Paltrineri thought that would make a good name for the plane because the Plane would always bring the crew home from danger. This was never painted on the plane." Lt Edward McKay March 2001 (mpf)
List of Missions for 2nd Lt Edward McKay (mpf 2001)
1. 19/11/43 GELSENKIRCHEN -flying with Lt. Herb Devore Crew w/Col. Chick Harding as command pilot
2. 14/01/44 NO-BALL-FRANCE
3. 21/01/44 NO-BALL-FRANCE
4. 24/01/44 FRANKFURT
5. 3/02/44 WILHELMSHAVEN
6. 5/02/44 ROMILLY sur SEINE
7. 13/02/44 NO-BALL-LIVOSSART
8. 24/02/44 ROSTOCK & POSEN
9. 25/02/44 REGENSBURG -(ROG stitched the tail of the horizontal stabilizer)
10. 28/02/44 NO-BALL-FRANCE
11. 2/03/44 CHARTES
12. 3/03/44 BERLIN-weather recall
13. 15/03/44 BRUNSWICK
14. 16/03/44 AUGSBURG
15. 18/03/44 MUNICH
16. 19/03/44 NO-BALL-FRANCE
17. 23/03/44 BRUNSWICK
18. 27/O3/44 BORDEAUX
19. 28/03/44 CHATEAUDUN
FLAK LEAVE
20. 11/04/44 POSEN & ROSTOCK
21. 12/04/44 LEIPZIG
22. 18/04/44 BERLIN
23. 19/04/44 LIPPSTADT
24. 20/04/44 MARQUENVILLE
25. 25/04/44 DIJON
Lt McKay says that his Lucky Bastard Cirtificate has him completing 26 missions, can only account for 25.
Enlisted men flew the following missions before being shot down:
Date Aircraft Nbr Target
5/11/1944 31941 LIEGE
5/12/1944 31941 BRUX, OIL REFINERY
5/13/1944 31941 OSNABRUCK
5/20/1944 31412 BRUSSELS
5/24/1944 97845 BERLIN
CREW
Capt James R.Geary P POW 24/5/44 BERLIN
Major Maurice J.Fitzgerald COM P POW 24/5/44 BERLIN
1st Lt Arthur J.Harris CP POW 24/5/44 BERLIN (Flying as Formation Officer in the Tail)
1st Lt A.Edwin Stern,Jr. BOM POW 24/5/44 BERLIN
2nd Lt Dort B.Payne NAV POW 24/5/44 BERLIN
T/Sgt Louis Paltrineri ROG POW(WIA) 24/5/44 BERLIN (From the E.McKay crew)
T/Sgt Francis Acker TTE POW 24/5/44 BERLIN (From the E.McKay crew)
S/Sgt Carl F.Schuster BTG POW 24/5/44 BERLIN (From the E.McKay crew)
S/Sgt John E.Trout RWG POW(WIA) 24/5/44 BERLIN (From the E.McKay crew)
S/Sgt Jack W.Domenig LWG POW(WIA) 24/5/44 BERLIN (From the E.McKay crew)
350th Sqdn. On 24/5/44 this was the lead ship of the Group formation. Major Fitzgerald was C.O. of the
350th and Capt Geary was a pilot who had completed a tour of operations with the 390th Bomb Group and
then been assigned to the 100th. Lt.A.J.Harris,as pilot of his own crew had been interned in Sweden on
20/2/44 with his crew but apparently had gotten back to Thorpe Abbotts by some means. It seems most
unusual that he would have been allowed to fly over Europe again because,for security reasons,Evadees &
Internees were invariably sent back to the U.S.A.
This crew bailed out over Ludwigslust,Germany and all were captured.
The 100th lost nine aircraft this day. MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY (p.249) says "Opposed by some 200
E/A,100BG became separated from bomber stream by weather and contrails and were subjected to heavy
attack."
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Edward McKay
April 26, 1919 – July 17, 2009
Our beloved father and grandfather, Edward McKay, age 90, passed away on July 17, 2009. Edward was born April 26, 1919 in Houston, Texas. He was a retired corporate industrial relations officer. He was a World War II veteran serving as a B-17 pilot in the 100th Bomb Group. He flew combat missions in the European Theater from January 1944, until May 1944. He was a member of Williams Memorial United Methodist Church, a past member of the First United Methodist Church of Bryan, Texas for 30 years and a mason.
He is survived by two sons, David McKay and his wife Elizabeth, of Texarkana, Texas and Michael McKay and his wife Jackie, of Plano, Texas and two grandchildren.
Graveside services will be 10 AM Monday, at Chapelwood Memorial Gardens with Rev. Danny Wayman officiating. Burial is under the direction of Chapelwood Funeral Home.
Those wishing to memorialize Mr. McKay may make contributions to First United Methodist Church, 506 East 28th St. Bryan, Texas.
MEMO 2:
A Belated Veterans Day Thank You To My Dad
Posted on November 11, 2016 Mike McFeely News
(NOTE: Here’s a column I wrote for Veterans Day 2015.)
The usual Veterans Day routine goes like this: Open the doors to the home-office closet, pull down the box filled with Dad’s military papers and mementoes, shut the office door, page through the stuff, wipe away a couple of tears, feel guilty, put the items back in the box, place the box back in the closet, then live another year before doing the same thing all over again.
It has been this way for several years now, since my mother gave me some boxes from her apartment and said, “You might want some of these things. You can go through it and decide. Some of it has Dad’s military papers and stuff from the war. I figured you’d be interested in that.”
The war was World War II. Stuart W. McFeely of Minneapolis was 19 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he wasted no time enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps. This was the predecessor of today’s Air Force.
Stuart earned his flying wings at Victorville Army Flying School in southern California in early 1942. He was trained as a bombardier on B-17s, the famed workhorse bombers of the 1930s and ’40s known commonly as “Flying Fortresses.”
Young Stuart (known by most everyone as Bill, because his middle name was Willis) eventually ascended to the rank of first lieutenant and flew 30 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe between Jan. 4, 1944, and May 19, 1944. He was a member of the famed 8th Air Force, 8th Bomber Command, 3rd Division Wing, 100th Bomb Group (H), 350th Bombardment Squadron. His B-17 was named “Alice From Dallas.”
He went through the war unscathed. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters. Eventually, Stuart was honorably discharged from the Air Corps and reserves and moved back to Minneapolis, where he met Olga Mihokanich. They married in 1951. He became a union printer in the Twin Cities area, the couple bought a house in the suburbs and raised four kids. The last, a little genius named Michael, was born in 1966.
None of this makes Dad particularly special. Millions of American men of that Greatest Generation went off to war, saved the world, returned home, went to work, started families, turned the U.S. economy into the strongest the world has known, made America the greatest superpower in history and then acted like it was all no big deal. To get most of these guys to talk about what they did was akin to extracting Shakespeare from a beagle. No chance.
I recall asking my father one question about the war when I was quite young: “Did your bombs kill anybody?”
The answer: “I suppose maybe they did. I never really thought about it.”
End of conversation. End of my questions about Stuart W. McFeely in World War II, although I did once get mouthy about his unwillingness to buy Japanese-made products (this was in the late 1970s when many products on American store shelves were still stamped “Made in Japan.”) Essentially, my message was: “Get over it.”
His response: “Learn your history. Go read about the Bataan Death March.”
I did. Never chided him about buying a Toyota again.
The information I’ve gleaned about Dad’s war exploits has come exclusively from the papers Mom gave me. And that’s where the guilt comes in. One of the great regrets of my life is that I never sat down, man to man, with Stuart W. McFeely and asked him about the war. Or about much of anything, frankly. Dad died in 1988, when the little genius Michael was 21 years old and much more worried about where the next case of Pfeiffer was coming from than anything else.
Stuart McFeely kept a diary of his 30 missions as a bombardier on a B-17 during World War II.
When Stuart was 21, he was flying missions over places like Kiel, Elberfeld, Frankfort, Brunswick and Berlin. He was taking out ball-bearing plants and rocket installations.
One of the documents included in his papers was a mission-by-mission diary of his 30 bomb runs.
“8. February 25, 1944 — Bombed Messerschmitt at Regensburg, Germany. ME 109 made pass at group on our right near Saarbrucken and shot (B-)17 down. Saw 8 chutes. Saw another 17 blow up in mid air. No chutes. Very heavy and accurate flak at target. B17 next to us had tail shot off and No. 4 engine shot out. FW’s and Mess attacked stragglers all the way back to France. Shot down one in front of us, saw 6 chutes. One straggler got 3 fighters before he was shot down. Lost Sam McClain on this mission.”
That was my dad, man. I’ve watched probably 100 documentaries and read dozens of books about World War II so I could learn about it. And right there in my living room for 21 years was a guy who lived the history, who was the history, and I asked him one stupid question. What an idiot. What a waste. What a loss for me and his seven grandchildren.
There is guilt, too, because I never had the opportunity to say “thank you.” He deserved that from me, as all veterans do from all Americans. Especially today, Veterans Day. When called, they’ve served. The lucky ones, like Stuart W. McFeely, came home. More than a million others, like Sam McClain, did not.
My dad was no more special than any other veteran of any war, except to me. Stuart W. McFeely flew 30 missions in a B-17 over Nazi-occupied Europe and helped defeat Hitler to save the world for democracy. He wasn’t the only one, by far, but that’s pretty cool.
Allow me say now what should’ve been said many years ago:
Thank you, sir. You are my hero. And I’m honored to be your son.
Mike McFeely
PHOTOS:
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Lt Stuart McFeely Oak Leaf Cluster paperwork for Air Medal. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Distinguished Flying Cross. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Victorville AAF Flying School. Photo courtesy of Son Mike McFeely |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 1. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 2. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 3. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 4. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 5. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 6. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 7. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Lt Stuart McFeely Mission Diary, page 8. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely. |
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Jan 1944 Form 5 for Stuart McFeely, Bombardier on Lt McKay Crew. this shows the days the crew flew both for practice and combat. These were used to calculate flight pay. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely |
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February 1944 Form 5 for Stuart McFeely, Bombardier on Lt McKay Crew. this shows the days the crew flew both for practice and combat. These were used to calculate flight pay. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely |
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March 1944 Form 5 for Stuart McFeely, Bombardier on Lt McKay Crew. this shows the days the crew flew both for practice and combat. These were used to calculate flight pay. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely |
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April 1944 Form 5 for Stuart McFeely, Bombardier on Lt McKay Crew. this shows the days the crew flew both for practice and combat. These were used to calculate flight pay. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely |
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May 1944 Form 5 for Stuart McFeely, Bombardier on Lt McKay Crew. this shows the days the crew flew both for practice and combat. These were used to calculate flight pay. Courtesy of Son Mike McFeely |
SERVED IN:
- MCKAY, Edward N. - P
- MULLEN, Thomas H. - CP
- YOUNG, Jack A. - NAV
- MCFEELY, Stuart W. - BOM
- ACKER, Francis - TTE
- PALTRINERI, Louis - ROG
- SCHUSTER, Carl F. - BTG
- DOMENIG, Jack W. - WG
- TROUT, John E. - WG
- GRAHAM, Ralph T. - TG
