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I have been capturing some of our resident Packard expert's escapades
on video and I thought you might enjoy this one where he discusses the Packard Merlin engine:

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He's the only person I know that has both flown a Packard and driven a Packard.

There are a few more stories on this Facebook page
www.facebook.com/BurmaBanshees

This is the history that should be preserved. Thanks for posting. I bet that he has many stories to tell of his days in Burma and flying experiences before , during and after the war but it might be difficult for him like many veterans who faced the horrors of combat. These old vets are slowing slipping away so it is important to preserve their memories if they will tell them. I love that Virginia accent!

Thank you Clipper47, you are right that kind of history does need to be preserved. I grew up my whole life knowing scant details about his war experience for a couple of reasons.

One was that it is painful for him to talk about and he wouldn't until about fifteen years ago. Two was he said they were just doing their job so there really wasn't much to talk about.

I scanned his entire scrapbook from the war and sat down with him and asked him about each photo. I wanted to know who was in it, where they were and what they were doing.

About ten years ago, I built a website burmabanshees.com and posted all 240 photos I had. I really had no idea what was about to happen but things kind of took off. I won't go into all the details but one of the most important things to happen was other family members who also didn't know details about their father or uncle or grandfather began contacting me. It seems they also went through the experience of their family member not discussing what they did during the war and saw photos of their service member they had't seen before. That was very cool to be able to have them download photos for themselves.

Lately I've been collecting hours and hours of video when i can get him talking and posting clips on Facebook. Those are also finding family members.

It sees dear old dad is fairly well know in the P40 and P47 circles and a few of the Packard folks know him really well like Ross Miller and Dwight H. Dwight took him to Warren a couple years ago to do a presentation on Packard Merlin engines, maybe I can get him to find a copy if they made a video.

Anyway, here's another little snippet you might like. Packards and Planes have been intermingled for years with him

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Here's a photo of the P40 he is talking about

In May there was a fly over in DC for about 60 WWII vintage air planes, it was the same time as the Frederick Packard meet. Dad was invited to be the guest of honor and sit on a rooftop in DC to watch the flyover.

Guess what he chose to do? His first passion

Neat photo. The art work on WW-II aircraft is interesting. This P-40 is fitted with the Allison engine. The Merlin equipped P-40s did not have the snorkel on top of the engine cowling and had a larger lower cowling. Thanks for sharing.

(o{}o)