AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2016 - 112
PILOTS
WORLD WAR II BOMBER PILOT
Gideon Jones
Still flying after all these years
LOGBOOK
WHO | Gideon Jones, WWII veteran
Owner of La Porte (Texas) Flight Line
WHAT | Awarded POW medal in 2015
EXTRA | "The Luftwaffe did try hard
to help us, they really did. I turned 20
in prison camp."
BY PHIL SCOT T
DURING WORLD WAR II, Gideon Jones lost two bombers. In the
autumn of 1944, he and his crew had just departed their base in
southern Italy when the Consolidated B-24 Liberator's right gear
lost hydraulic pressure and dropped out of the wing. They elected
to complete the mission anyway, and bombed a synthetic oil factory
in Blechhammer, Poland. "I was 19 years old. Four of us in the crew
were 19," Jones said. "We dragged that wheel all the way to Poland
and back." Jones milked the airplane to the coast so they could bail
out over friendly territory.
A couple of months later, they were hit by flak while bombing
a strategic bridge in northern Italy. "We began to lose altitude, lost
some engines, and I had an engineer who was badly shot up," Jones
said. He pointed the nose down the middle of Italy, and once they
thought they were past the German lines, he gave the order to bail
out. Everyone but the tail gunner and ball-turret gunner was captured. Jones went out last and ended up alone, and, after walking
south a couple of days, he was captured and sent to Stalag Luft III.
By late January 1945 the Russians were just 17 miles away. "It
was cold, rainy, and snowy; it must have been 15 degrees; and we
were told, 'Get your stuff ready within 30 minutes,'" he said. The
Germans marched the entire camp 90 kilometers east and loaded
them on a train to Stalag 7A, outside of Munich. On a Sunday morning in early May, tanks from the U.S. Army 14th Armored Division
rolled up. "One of the first vehicles through the gates was a Red
Cross doughnut truck," Jones said. "They were very welcome."
Despite seven months in a German POW camp, Jones was slated
for the invasion of Japan. He was on 10-day leave when the United
States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and he was on his
way to a reassignment base in Florida when the second bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki. "So instead of reassignment it just became a
victory parade-a wild, wild time," he said.
"After flying people home I got a chance to stay in or get out. I
got out, and I didn't fly for years." In 1960 he bought an interest in
a Taylorcraft, and then he earned his instructor certificate. When
the Light Sport category was created, he and his son, Stanley, saw
an opportunity. "In 2006 we bought four aircraft, and we have four
hangars at T41 [La Porte Municipal Airport]." He's still instructing.
And you know what? He turns 92 on November 8.
AOPA
MICHAEL HART
112 | AOPA PILOT December 2016
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