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Gene Lioy
“Flying Fortress” gunner recalls harrowing missions.
At the age of 84, Bucks County veteran Gene Lioy still shudders when he recalls his harrowing missions over Germany, France, Belgium, and the Balkans during World War II.It was D-Day plus one when then 19-year-old Lioy took off in a B-17 from an airbase in England on the first of what would be about 30 bombing runs between 1943 and 1945.
By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com
At the age of 84, Bucks County veteran Gene Lioy still shudders when he recalls his harrowing missions over Germany, France, Belgium, and the Balkans during World War II.It was D-Day plus one when then 19-year-old Lioy took off in a B-17 from an airbase in England on the first of what would be about 30 bombing runs between 1943 and 1945.
Their mission was to bomb out ahead of the troops as they swarmed across the French countryside.But his first flight with the 544th Bomb Squadron of the 384th Bomb Group never made it to its destination. Lioy and his crew were forced to turn back when two of the plane’s engines failed.
The plane barely made it home, dumping its bombs into the English Channel before setting back down in England.Subsequent missions into an almost endless barrage of flak would change Lioy’s life forever. Up until that moment he felt invincible.
That changed when the realization of war came rushing home, stealing his youthful innocence away.“It was horrifying,” he said. “I was scared. We all were. I saw planes in front of me blow up with friends aboard. They were gone in an instant -- that’s all, that was it. The flak was exploding all around you. And you never knew if you’d be next.”
As the top turret gunner, Lioy had an almost unobstructed view of the sky, as German Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts flew around the aircraft with one mission in mind - to shoot he and his crew from the sky.
Just a year earlier Lioy had been a high school student in the western Pennsylvania town of Altoona, more concerned about girls and teen life than being killed. He graduated from high school in June 1942 at the age of 18. Six months later he was drafted into the service of a nation at war.
The day he left home was emotional. His mother was in tears as her second son prepared to leave for war.
“I will never forget that,” Lioy said. “My mother and grandmother were sitting in the kitchen and there I was - I was going away to war,” he said. “I can still see them crying. It was hard for them to take that. It was hard for me.”
When Lioy entered the service, he was assigned to the air force. For about a year he trained as an airplane mechanic, attending engineering school in Oklahoma and working briefly at a Boeing Aircraft plant where he learned about engines and how they’re put together.
“The next thing I knew, no more mechanic,” said Lioy. “They needed air crew. So there I go - over to Las Vegas where I learned air gunnery. The next thing you know I’m in Oklahoma again where I trained with the crew.”
From Oklahoma, the crew flew to Georgia to pick up a new plane. After a one-day stop over in New Foundland, they were bound for England and the war.
“We were having a good time,” recalled Lioy of those training and pre-war days. “In our minds we never thought of what it could be like. Now when I think of what we did, I’m really scared. But back then you weren’t. You just did what they told you to do,” he said.
Lioy and his crew flew campaigns over Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe, dropping bombs on strategic targets -- submarine pens, oil fields, cities, and factories. Their longest mission was to the Balkans, near the Russian border, where they dropped a load of bombs on oil refineries.
Lioy credits the B-17, affectionately known as the Flying Fortress, with saving his life on more than one occasion.
“That was the best plane they ever built,” he said. “The fire power of it was great. It was protected all over, better than the B-24.”
Following Germany’s surrender, the B-17s were transformed into transport planes and Lioy, then stationed in France, helped fly troops home from Germany.
“We took all the guns and bombs out of our planes and it became a troop transport,” said Lioy. “We brought the boys out and dropped them in Marseilles. That was my job until I got out.”
During those transport missions, Lioy saw the damage wrought by the allied bombing campaigns.
“I can never forget Leipzig - just totaled. All you could see was rubble all over,” he said. “It’s a shame we had to go over there and do that. But if we hadn’t of stopped Hitler at that point, the world would be in a very different position today,” said Lioy.
For his participation in World War II, Lioy received the Air Force Medal with two clusters, Good Conduct Medal, America Theatre Service Medal, European, African and Middle Eastern Service Medal and five Bronze Stars.
Following the war, Lioy met and then married his wife of nearly 60 years, Henrietta, in 1951. They made their home in Clifton, N.J., for 32 years, raising two daughters, Janet Lioy, of Upper Makefield, a physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Linda, a Registered Nurse from Wayne, N.J. Ten years ago, the couple retired to Buckingham Springs.
“At first I never thought too much of it,” said Henrietta, of her husband’s service. “The older I got the more I realized what he went through. And it was hell. “Communism under Hitler’s regime? It would have been horrible,” she continued. “Our life would have been horrible. My husband and the men and women who went over there fought for our freedom and made the ultimate sacrifice. How can we ever thank them?”
posted by BucksLocalNews at
1:27 PM
1 Comments:
Andd I thank you Mr Lioy! Little did I know that I was living next door to a hero's daughter, Linda Bsales. Little did I know that I was barbequing with a hero! Thank you for all that you and the thousands of veterans did to keep this country free! God bless you! Love to Henrietta, too! With great respect and affection, Beth Nelson xxxooo
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