Merry Christmas Lt. Erickson

My father Lt. Ernest Anders Erickson in February of 1944 standing with a big grin on his face in front of the Red Feather Club at Horham Airfield in England. He had been looking forward to getting to England with the 95th Bomb Group, attached to the 334th Squadron and his combat flight assignment. He had awaited with some trepidation for months awaiting an assignment, since being presented with his wings at Blackland Airfield in Texas in October of 1943.

My dad was finally in the midst of it now, and he was excited and ready to go. Flying a B-17 in combat had been his dream ever since he jumped off the train in early 1942 onto the station platform in San Antonio. Flying dreams, like so many young aviators who had signed up in 1942, were a constant at training facilities all over the states. Ernest Anders' imagination had gone wild ever since he first saw a barnstormer perform in Painted Woods, North Dakota in the late 1920s. From that moment on, he knew he would someday fly.

The second photograph below of my father gives a feeling of what it was really like to be a pilot on the ground. He looks confident, ready to fly and as in most of his photos, always smiling. But the dozens and dozens of photos presented here on the website that I worked on, began to open my eyes to the dangers my father faced every time he took off from Horham and headed east over Nazi occupied Europe.

Today, we can look back on those missions as seen through the jittery lens of an onboard gun camera, or the newsreel footage originally shown in movie houses during the war. Those films tell the story in black and white. The words of the crew members, describing their final moments aboard an airplane spiraling uncontrollably toward the ground, appear in real fictionally sounding color. Perhaps more vividly these images describe the terrifyingly real dangers which faced the bomber crews on every mission. Quiet reminders of what our fathers, grandfather's, uncles witnessed every time they crossed the English Channel.

Ernest Anders would accomplish 35 missions, flying aboard 12 different B-17s from early 1944 till his last mission on August 26th, 1944. He stayed on at Horham till late September, test flying repaired and new aircraft for combat flying. That month he put in a transfer to fly B-29s, the Super Fortress. He again waited patiently for news to come in on that.

The 12 ships piloted:
* Lili of the Lamplight (44-6085) * Taint A Bird II (42-30342)
* Fireball Red (42-31876) * Able Mable (42-31920) * Mirandy (42-31992)
* Gen'ril Oop & Lili Brat (42-31993) * Ten Aces (42-38178)
* Smilin' Sandy Sanchez (42-97290) * Paisano (42-102450)
* Stand By / Goin' My Way (42-107204)
* The Doodle Bug / What’s Cookin? (42-107047) * To Hell Or Glory (42-38123)

Lt. Erickson's complete 35 mission list is below, along with a photograph of him standing below the B-17, 'Lady Fortune - Carmen’s Folly' (42-97858) at Horham in the Summer of 1944.