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262416 John Matthew Donnelly Royal Canadian Air Force No. 166 Squadron from:Toronto, Ontario, Canada My father, John Donnelly volunteered in early 1944, shortly after his brother Tommy, a 405 PFF Squadron pilot, was Killed in Action over Schoenbeeck, the Netherlands. Subsequently, Dad joined No. 166 Squadron in late September, 1944. From early June of that year, he’d been flying as Mid Upper gunner with his soon-to-be operational skipper P/O Musselman.
Although he almost never told his wartime story, I have figured that he must’ve been proficient, since he became an air-to-air gunnery instructor. Nowhere in his logs is there any mention of confirmed, or even probable shoot-downs. That said, on their seventh mission he damaged a JU88 that had attacked Roger-squared. After the war, in an instance of pure kismet, he met the pilot of that JU88, who told him that in over 300 missions, he'd been shot down only once.
Through the Bomber Command Museum Facebook group, I have been able to piece together only some of what he and his crew-mates went through. And I have come to wish that I had known, way back in the 1960s, what I now have learned.
Of late, as the time since his time overseas has lengthened, I have kept his logbook beside me, beside my home computer. I refer to it often. It saddens me that our current world is falling back into those same deep, and horrid, divisions that Dad and so many fought to defeat. |
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