Dad passed away 25 April 2007. I sent you the information and you kindly published it in the newsletter which I always look forward to.
I have a question as I continue Dad’s memoir without his invaluable assistance. He had written his life story in longhand and I was transcribing, fact checking and adding footnotes to put the memories of his life story into historical context. I miss being able to talk with him about the details. Our conversations always elicited more interesting stories and information. His early years and the war years are most interesting.

QUESTIONS: I still wonder, however, because of his description of flying over the beaches at Normandy to his target on D-Day and what he said he could see of the scene below how high the B-24 bombers flew on 6 June 1944. Could he see the troops on the beach, for example? Could he see landing craft streaming in from the ships? I know mission reports will note hi right, lo right, etc., but would you be able to shed more light on the altitude range and what he would have been able to see?
It’s hard to express satisfactorily the unexpected gift and unique thrill of a lifetime I experienced at 1700, 17 September 2009, at Barnstable Municipal Airport, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I knew the touring B-24 Witchcraft and B-17 Nine-0-Nine were on the tarmac for two days. I had taken my Dad to tour the planes the year before he died, so that memory was already on my mind.
Then my husband called from work and asked if I would like to fly on the B-24. I told him it was too expensive. He said, I think you should do it. Nervous excitement followed, knowing already what the no-bones-about-it cramped quarters were like and how vulnerable you feel with wide-open waist gun windows. I chided myself, realizing that my half-hour adventure could never be compared to the perils of flight training, flying oversees and then miraculously surviving 30 missions aboard those lumbering bombers. (To illustrate, however, later as our group gathered to duck under the belly of Witchcraft to board through the bomb bay doors, there was a fleeting unraveling of nerve when our guide gave us safety instructions: Do not step off the catwalk onto the bomb bay doors; they are not structural. There’s a reason you signed a waiver. You could fall out of the plane. We were also warned to be careful what we grabbed to steady ourselves as we walked about to explore, took photos and marveled at the view of Nantucket Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. It was emphasized that unsheathed cables running along the interior skin the length of the ship were not good hand holds. If we grabbed onto one, we might find ourselves flying the ship.
Once again I put these safety tips into the context of my Dad, 1st Lt. Chester (Sandy) Sandford, flying missions aboard a plane that was designed without structural integrity that went beyond its primary function. Just as the ship had to be manufactured in short order to get it off the assembly line and into the air to the fronts, it was also expendable. Dad always said that as difficult as it was for everyone to confront their expendability, they always were aware that as an inevitable fact of the war effort, they might not come back. He knew all too well, too, that his was a replacement crew. It was right there in black and white in their orders. He writes in his memoir: Just two days before our arrival, two crews of officers who had occupied our new quarters went down on a raid to Brunswick, Germany. We had just settled in and hung up our B4 bags when a couple of our neighbors stepped in to tell us what it was like in combat. They pointed out the bomb fuse tags hanging on the wall in our hut identifying the missions our predecessors had accomplished. One string had 19 tags, the other 21.)
As I prepared to dash out of the house to drive to the airport, I felt Dad’s presence when on an impulse I pulled his original bomber jacket (now 66 years old) out of protective storage and put it on. I was thankful for the impulse, feeling comforted that I wore it to honor his service. Painted on the front of the jacket is the Sky Chief nose art of the B-24 Liberator he flew on missions 6 to 30. Mission 6 was on D-Day, the day Dad was assigned to his new ship and crew as lead bombardier.
I do not want to forget the feeling of flying in the last surviving B-24M ship or the sensations of the deafening, sonorous droning of the engines that would have accompanied the crew without letup. It was an amazing sight to look out the tail gun window and realize that the protruding structure was almost surrounded entirely on three sides by open airspace through which flak could find its mark unimpeded by the ship’s hull. It was moving, humbling and exhilarating at the same time to stand in the open port and starboard waist gun windows. The ship wind blew hard and steady against me in about 55-degree air temperature at 2,000 feet. I knew I could never fully grasp or imagine on this relatively temperate day what it must have been like on winter missions and at frigid higher altitudes of the troposphere. I crawled on hands and knees along a catwalk running under the cockpit on the starboard side to what would have been my father’s cramped bombardier station, a metal stool positioned in front of the Norden Bomb Site he admired and swore by. I admit to welling up a few times as emotions got the best of me.