WWII bombers attract old crew Restored craft shown at Auburn airport

AUBURN – A visit by a pair of restored World War II bombers to an Airport Day celebration brought back memories for two Mainers who flew the planes on missions over Germany.

“I see some familiar things,” said Wayne Ellingwood, 77, of South Paris, as he made his way through the B-24 “Liberator.”

Ellingwood squeezed up through the tiny opening in the rear of the bomber. He stepped gingerly around the turret where the belly gunner sat and along a narrow passage, where soldiers once stacked 500-pound bombs.

Ellingwood was sure-footed and graceful in the aircraft. When he was 19, he flew aboard bombers just like it.

About 2,500 people visited Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport for the celebration Sunday, many of them to watch the silvery B-24 and a similarly restored B-17 “Flying Fortress” fly in, said Peter Drinkwater, the airport manager.

Ellingwood, a co-pilot in the 446th bomber group, flew 35 daylight missions between England and Germany from 1943 to 1945, striking at targets that included factories that made ball bearings and jet engines.

On his second mission, he flew over Munich and encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire.

“The sky was just a mass of exploding shells,” Ellingwood said, recalling how bits of shrapnel would bounce off the side of his plane. “It sounded like hail on a tin roof.”

There were bruises and close calls, but Ellingwood never lost a crewmate.

On his return from a particularly difficult mission, his crew counted the number of holes from enemy fire. “Two hundred holes and not one occupant was scratched,” Ellingwood said.

After the war, Ellingwood stayed in the military. He was a radar operator aboard planes that fed West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift. He eventually became an air traffic controller and retired from the Air Force with the rank of major.

Another B-24 veteran who attended on Sunday, E. Munroe Hawkins, said he missed the aircraft in a way.

“I guess I feel a little homesickness at times,” said Hawkins, who also flew 35 missions. He left the military after the war and became a banker in Farmington.

The death he saw during the war he rarely talks about, he said. “That’s past history. We had over 6,000 killed in our air division.”

Hawkins, 82, turned down an offer from his daughter to send him up Sunday on a 30-minute flight.

“I have no desire to fly again,” he said. “I pushed my luck as far as I care to.”