B-24 pilot receives DFC, Air Medal

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LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (ACCNS) --    A B-24 bomber pilot received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal he earned in World War II from Air Combat Commands vice commander in a ceremony here Feb. 11 that re-lived the perils airmen faced during the 1940s.

Then a first lieutenant, Kenneth Kinsinger earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for an exceptionally dangerous mission over the oil fields of Ploesti, Romania, in July 1944, and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters for completing 50 missions during his tour of duty with the 449th Bomb Group at Grottaglie, Italy, from April to August 1944.

Its been nearly 60 years since that mission, far too long for heroism to go unrecognized, said Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, ACC vice commander.

Like most of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War II, Lieutenant Kinsinger left the service during the countrys post-war demobilization and before he received his medals.

Its an honor for me to preside over this ceremony. As I told Sandy Naber (Lieutenant Kinsingers daughter) when she contacted us about presenting the medals to him, his history and service is a gift to us it raises us up a notch, said General Wright.

General Wright continued with Lieutenant Kinsingers story. A 26-year old college agriculture teacher and a farm-boy involved in 4-H, Ken heard the call and enlisted as an aviation cadet in 1942, said General Wright.

At the time, the Army expected 50 percent of the aviation cadets to fail the initial screening. Of those that passed the initial screening, the Army expected another 40 percent to fail in one of the next phases of training, but Lieutenant Kinsinger made it through to become a B-24 pilot, which had challenges of its own.

The B-24 was covered with very thin aluminum that could be cut with a knife. Steering the four-engine airplane was difficult and exhausting as hydraulic flight controls had not been invented yet. There was no heater despite temperatures at 20,000 feet and above that dropped to more than 50 degrees below zero. In fact, oxygen masks often froze to the wearers faces, said General Wright.

After completing combat transitional training at Tonopah, Nev., Lieutenant Kinsinger and his crew were ready to be shipped overseas for duty. They headed to San Francisco, Calif., to pick-up a new airplane to take overseas, but on the initial test flight a door on the nose turret blew off and caused a large hole in the wing which had to be repaired before they could leave. The repairs lasted two weeks and allowed the crew a few more precious days with their wives, who were quickly flown out to join them.

Once the airplane was ready, the crew flew to Palm Beach, Fla., where they received their sealed military orders. They were instructed to take off at night, fly toward Trinidad, and open their orders over the ocean. The orders directed them to land in Brazil, then head to Italy.

After servicing their own plane in Brazil, they took off again, another 12 hours in the middle of the night over the Atlantic. Think about this for a minute please three lieutenants, seven teenagers and one B-24, at night, over water and with no margin for error. When they arrived at their base in Italy, they had to circle and wait to land, while several damaged B-24s returning from a mission landed. Other B-24s lost in the mission that day wouldnt return at all, said the general.

B-24 loss statistics are staggering. In little less than a year and a half of operating, 15th Air Force lost half of its B-24 fleet and crews 1,756 of 3,544 bombers were shot down in combat. In fact, during WWII, more than 52,000 airmen died in combat operations.

For their first night in Italy, Ken and his crew stayed in the quarters of a crew that had been shot down earlier that day. The hard realities of war were setting in for the young crew, said General Wright. The crew did settle in and began flying missions with other crews in order to become acclimated to the missions they would fly. After just a few days, the crew re-assembled and flew its first mission together, which turned out to be fairly easy, but as they became more seasoned the missions became more difficult.

We never knew what we were going into and if we would return. We were involved in bombing many critical targets, but the most critical I would say was the Ploesti oil fields, said Lieutenant Kinsinger.

Ploesti was a vital target. The refineries there produced 80 percent of Germanys crude oil, but it was also a hostile target. While 15th Air Force crews dropped more than 13,000 tons of bombs on the oil fields, it cost them 350 heavy bombers and more than 3,000 casualties, explained the general.

Ken Kinsinger earned his Distinguished Flying Cross for one of his six missions over Ploesti. He flew lead for a mission of more than 100 B-24s over Ploesti with the mission commander, a colonel, in the right seat and him in the left seat obviously selected for his flying skills to be out front, said General Wright.

As they approached the target area, enemy fire took out the turbo-chargers on the engine which caused Lieutenant Kinsinger to lose altitude. The flak, which was so thick it was later described by pilots as an elongated shoebox, was in front of the aircraft and it also took out the plexi-glass in front of the airplane around the bombsight. This required intensive crew coordination to stay on course, keep on target and continue to lead the raid over Ploesti. The group destroyed the refinery and was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for this mission, said General Wright.

After pinning the medals on Lieutenant Kinsinger, the general turned the floor over to the 88-year-old veteran.

This is very fantastic, just fantastic, said a smiling Lieutenant Kinsinger. We were just doing our jobs.