Capt. William Ecker who flew a secret low-level photo-reconnaissance mission over Cuba in 1962 to capture Soviet nuclear missiles on film during the Cuban Missile Crisis died last Thursday (Nov. 5, 2009) at his home in Punta Gorda, FL. He was 85.
From March, 2010
Belgium Underground saves P-47 pilot shot down over Nazi territory
Their target was a railroad marshaling yard along the German-Belgium border. Second Lt. Robert Grace was making his initial pass over the target at Prum, Germany in a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter plane on May 29, 1944 when he was shot down.
Last of the 7 Bailey Brothers was Tuskegee Airman
Lt. Charles Bailey, Sr. was the last of the line. He was the last of Punta Gorda, Fla.’s “Fighting Bailey Brothers.” The last of a family of seven sons and two daughters who distinguished themselves in war and in life during World War II, Korea and much of the 20th Century.
His artillery unit landed in New Guinea and Luzon
Bob Liebold of Englewood Beach, Fla. wears a tan ball cap with a brown beak. On the front of his hit are two gold crossed cannons, a couple of campaign ribbons with three bronze stars and on the beak is a set of silver captain’s bars.
Airman first meets Lindbergh flying P-38 fighters in Port Moresby, New Guinea
Von Spahr, an Englewood, Fla. retiree, was a 19-year-old armorer in 1943 attached to the 431st Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group, 5th Air Corps based at Port Moresby, New Guinea during World War II. His company commander told him to take a Jeep and pick up a pilot flying into the local airstrip in a…
He flew as tail-gunner in a seaplane in the Atlantic and Pacific during WW II
Andy Knef joined the Navy in 1942 at 17 with his parent’s permission. Trained as an aviation machinist mate, he spent most of his time as a tail-gunner on a Martin Mariner (PBM) twin-engine seaplane flying combat missions in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Sgt. Chuck Walsh was among first Green Berets in South Vietnam
When Staff Sgt.Chuck Walsh’s Green Beret unit jumped into Dak Pek, in the highlands of South Vietnam in 1962 to fight alongside the Montagnards, the indigenous people, they were trail blazers.
Cpl. Bert Rockower wounded while capturing German pillboxes on Siegfried Line in WWII
Bert Rockower was a corporal in the 9th Army that landed on Omaha Beach five months after D-Day during World War II. By then U.S. troops had advanced across France and liberated Paris. American forces were at the Siegfried Line, the massive concrete and steel fortification protecting Germany’s Western Front.
Charged German Machine-guns
Harold Sandler didn’t start out to be a “Ninety-day Wonder” or a war hero, but that’s what he became by the time World War II was over.
They sank the Bismarck – Stanley Goode manned radar unit aboard HMS King George
The crippled German battleship Bismarck was just over the horizon, steaming erratically with two jammed rudders, the result of an earlier attack by ancient fabric-covered British torpedo bombers flying from the deck of the carrier HMS Ark Royal. The date was May 26, 1941.
War Tales 