grown up in the Depression fixing our own cars and being mechanics. We had a smooth operation, and everything worked well—we just fixed the airplanes, fueled them, and sent them out. They left us alone because we got the airplanes ready to fly, and that was all they wanted. We had a lot of responsibility for 22 year old kids, but we managed it.” While some chores were routine,
there were a variety of other types of repairs, and Peek recalls an occasion when they made a little mistake. “The airplane came back after a mission and the elevator trim cable had been shot, so we changed it. No big deal, but what we forgot was that the cable crossed! So the guy gets in the airplane and starts to take off, and he wants to adjust the trim by turning the trim wheel (which was located down between the seats). He started to give it nose-down trim, and the nose came up! He didn’t know what to do,” chuckles Peek in retrospect, “and finally he and the copilot held their feet against the control yoke in order to hold the airplane’s nose down while they circled the field. They got it down and landed alright—but that little incident just shows that we weren’t always perfect.” The ground crews were mostly
spared seeing the very worst battle damage – although occasionally they were witness to some gruesome sights. But primarily, the B-17s which were horribly damaged didn’t make it back to Horham Airfield. “If an airplane was heading back to the field and the pilots were having trouble controlling it—for instance, if some of the flight-control cables had been shot—they were directed to a special runway down at Woodbridge, which was about 10 miles south of us. That concrete runway was a half-mile wide and three-miles long. Hopefully they could land the airplane there. If it was badly damaged, it never came back to us to be repaired.”
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Peek remembers that “It was very common to see feathered engines, and if there were wounded aboard, the air crew would fire red flares when they were above the airfield. Then they would keep the B-17s rolling from the end of the runway
right off onto the taxiway, and the medics would go to them.”
CRASH AT HORHAM Occasionally there were mishaps at Horham Airfield, well before an airplane departed on a mission.
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