D-DAY BOMBER'S LUCKY CREW RECALL AERIAL CRAPSHOOT.

Byline: Steve Gibson Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

Fifty-two years ago, a 22-year-old named Bill Smith joined Allied forces on what's been called the greatest military undertaking in history - the D-Day invasion of France.

It was on June 6, 1944, that a B-24 Liberator named Bonnie's Pride piloted by Smith winged its way over the English Channel - and through German anti-aircraft fire - on two successive bombing missions.

And on Thursday, five surviving members of that warplane's 10-man crew gathered in Smith's back yard in Sacramento to toast their fallen comrades and reminisce about World War II.

The fact that the five men have lived into their 70s is not as amazing as that nine members of the crew lived past the war. One of the most hazardous duties in the war was to be part of a bomber flight crew.

Because of high casualty rates for bomber crews flying over Europe - almost half were killed or wounded - Americans could go home after successfully completing 30 combat missions.

``Sure, we were apprehensive . . . scared,'' said Smith, now 74 and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. ``But we were also too damned young to know what we were doing.''

As friends and relatives looked on, the survivors passed an unopened bottle of Hennessy cognac from man to man. Eventually it will be passed to the last living member of the group.

``The last man gets to open it and drink a toast to his comrades,'' Smith said.

``I just hope that I don't have to pass it up,'' the bombardier, Charles R. Jackson, 73, a retired high school principal from Clarkson, Ga., said with a laugh. ``I'd like to keep it 20 years.''

But the crew's youngest member, Ken Seaton, the plane's 19-year-old engineer in 1944, jokingly referred to actuarial probabilities.

``I'm really confident that since I'm the youngest . . .,'' Seaton said with a grin.

While Jackson traveled half a continent to the reunion, Seaton, now a 72-year-old retired electrician, drove across town from his home in Citrus Heights.

Smith and Seaton conceded that they hadn't realized the historical significance of the back-to-back bombing missions they were assigned to fly on the fateful day.

But Seaton remembers clearly the spectacle of flying toward enemy targets - flanked by hundreds of other bombers - as an armada of 2,700 ships ferried allied troops and supplies toward the Normandy beachheads.

``I'll tell you,'' Seaton said, ``it was a spectacular sight. Looking down on all the boats is what impressed me the most. The English Channel was just filled with boats.''

Jackson said, ``I didn't have enough intellect to be scared. But looking at what was going on, I knew I had something to tell my children.''

The other two survivors who attended the crew's Sacramento reunion were the navigator, Ernest McMahon, 72, a retired CPA from St. Cloud, Minn., and the tail gunner, Peter Van Vliet, a retired oil company sales rep from Dana Point.

There were 10 in the crew of Bonnie's Pride, named after Smith's sister, when the plane arrived in England in the spring of 1944. The nose gunner, Sgt. Claude H. Hughes, was killed on a mission shortly before D-Day.

So on the day of the invasion there were nine men flying Bonnie's Pride. Four died after the war - Eugene Wilson, George Kostrowski, William McRight and Earl Humphries.

During a moment of silence at Thursday's reunion, Smith recited the names of the five dead crew members. Then the survivors hoisted a toast in their memory.

Smith enlisted in what was then called the Army Air Corps after finishing junior college in his hometown of Columbus, Miss., before the war started, and quickly completed flight training.

As a first lieutenant and pilot on D-Day, Smith was commander of Bonnie's Pride, which was part of the 578th Squadron, 392nd Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, which was based in England.

The two D-Day missions Bonnie's Pride was assigned to fly were the crew's sixth and seventh combat missions.

It was on the second mission on D-Day that things got dicey, Smith and his war buddies recalled. German anti-aircraft fire destroyed two of the bomber's engines.

``Luckily, they didn't catch fire,'' Smith said.

After flying their final combat mission Aug. 15, 1944, to bomb an air base at Wittmadhafen, Germany, the crew members of Bonnie's Pride, their luck intact, were sent back to the United States on a troopship.

``I remember our first night in New York. Everywhere we went, people were buying us drinks, paying for dinner,'' Smith said.

The Army Air Corps then sent the crew to Florida for three weeks of rest and recreation in a Miami Beach hotel that had been set aside for use by military personnel.

All the attention was gratifying to the crew of Bonnie's Pride, who believed that they had simply done their duty.

``Basically, we were just doing our job,'' Seaton said.