Stalag Luft 1
POW Camp, Barth, Western Pomerania, Germany.
George's handwritten notes recalling his forced landing in Germany. They would have been written while he was in captivity.
A transcript of George's handwritten notes is presented above.
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George's log records that when he took off for his final mission he had logged 1243 hours and 15 minutes of flying time as a pilot.
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To assist in interpreting some of the lingo I offer the following:
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George mentions 'flack'. Flack is nasty stuff. It is explosive ordinance fired from various sizes of ground based canons of up to 88 mm in diameter. The shells were fused to explode, either at a preselected time period after being fired, or at a preselected altitude. As the war progressed German flack became more and more accurate.
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George uses the word 'homer'. A homer is simply the bearing and distance from George's current location to the nearest friendly airfield.
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George mentions that he lowered his seat to the floor because he had no crash pad for his sight. Here he is referring to his gyroscopic gunsight which was a fairly large instrument mounted at the top of the instrument panel. Many gunsights had a foam rubber pad along the front of the sight to protect the pilot's head in the event of a crash landing. Unfortunately the gunsight in George's Spitfire wasn't equipped with a crash pad, so he lowered his seat so that his head was below the gunsight.
In his notes he states that after his forced landing "I blew my I.F.F, unstrapped myself, and stepped out..." For clarity, an I.F.F. (Identification Friend or Foe) is an electronic device that sent an indication to radar operators that the return signal from an I.F.F. equipped plane was from a 'friendly' airplane as opposed to a German one. It was very important that the enemy did not get a working copy of an I.F.F. transmitter. So George pressed a button in his cockpit that activated a small charge to blow up his I.F.F.
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George notes that his mission leader on that day was Flight Lieutenant (F/L) Grant Aitchison. F/L Aitchison was killed in action 16 days later on March 31, 1945. He was 26 years old. Click on this line of text to read more about F/L Aitchison.
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B25 Mitchell Bomber
George notes that his mission on March 15, 1945, was to escort Mitchell B25 bombers on their bombing raid to Dorsten.
Image from airliners.net
General characteristics
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Crew: 5 (one pilot, navigator/bombardier, turret gunner/engineer, radio operator/waist gunner, tail gunner)
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Length: 52 ft 11 in (16.13 m)
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Wingspan: 67 ft 7 in (20.60 m)
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Height: 16 ft 4 in (4.98 m)
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Wing area: 618 sq ft (57.4 m2)
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Airfoil: root: NACA 23017; tip: NACA 4409R[49]
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Empty weight: 19,480 lb (8,836 kg)
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Max takeoff weight: 35,000 lb (15,876 kg)
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Powerplant: 2 × Wright R-2600-92 Twin Cyclone 14-cylinder two-row air-cooled radial piston engines, 1,700 hp (1,300 kW) each
Performance
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Maximum speed: 272 mph (438 km/h, 236 kn) at 13,000 ft (4,000 m)
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Cruise speed: 230 mph (370 km/h, 200 kn)
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Range: 1,350 mi (2,170 km, 1,170 nmi)
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Service ceiling: 24,200 ft (7,400 m)
Armament
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Guns: 12–18 × .50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns and 75 mm (2.95 in) T13E1 cannon
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Hardpoints: 2,000 lb (900 kg) ventral shackles to hold one external Mark 13 torpedo[50]
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Rockets: racks for eight 5 in (127 mm) high velocity aircraft rockets (HVAR)
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Bombs: 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) bombs
Stalag Luft 1
Illegible
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George Boudreau
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Taken March 28 . Pinnenburg. Written June 29 Queens Canteen by his friend the rear gunner Bill McLeod R205672. A mere Spit pilot, but he can say he knew a rear gunner.
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It's March of 1945. George is a prisoner in an enemy camp in Germany. He is 23 years old. He is 5,400 km from his home in Wedgeport. How would you have felt?
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Illegible
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Taken on March 28th. Pinnenburg Germany.
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He sure was young!
George's POW 'Dog Tags'. They would have been issued to him by his captors shortly after arriving at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany. I believe that even the twine is original.
Images of Stalag Luft 1; dates unknown. Images from iwm.org.uk and merkki.com.
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Click on this line of text to get much more information about Stalag Luft 1
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Correspondence to Family
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