Subject 1

Remembrances
Walter "Pete" Wright, 442nd Bomb Squadron

Pete Wright's WWII Photo Page

Tech. Sgt. Walter "Pete" Wright

442 Squadron, 320th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force.

U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS, Turret Gunner on a Martin B-26 Marauder (Medium Bomber)

This web page is a collection of photographs that my great Uncle Pete Wright sent to me after we began an e-mail dialog about his World War II experiences. He mailed his WWII photos to me, which I scanned and returned to him. We followed up with a series of e-mails wherein he provided commentary to go along with quite few of his photos. Sadly, he passed away before we finished our project. However, we worked on the site live, so he saw our effort in progressand was well pleased to share his photos and experiences.

Uncle Pete is my great Uncle, the brother of my maternal grandmother, Ruth Wright Livaditis, of Atlanta Georgia.

"The photo at left was taken in 1942 while we were stationed at an air base in Oran, Algeria."

Below is a photo of "one that got away"...

"Sometimes I would take the waist guns (Two large openings, one on each side of the plane from which we had a fifty caliber gun) it was frequently the job of the waist gunner to take bomb strike photos for use at the critique following the raid."

"This camera was a large one that held a roll of film of which the negatives were five inches square and fifty of them to a roll. I shot that one from that position. We were not always engaging enemy fighters and had time for taking pictures."

-Pete Wright

Two B-26 Mauraders in flight to target.

This is a photo of Pete Wright's aircraft. "We had two different B-26 aircraft. the first was not used in combat, it was named 'SAY UNCLE', the one used in combat was named 'Captain Blood'. The captain had the priviledge of naming his plane."

(This photo is produced "as scanned". The next page is the same photo with some enhancing.)

"This is a photo of a fellow crew member standing by our B-26."

-Pete Wright

MY CREW

"I am the one standing second from the right"

.

"We lived in tents in Tunisia - the little black dots in the background are B-26's."

"We lived six men in a tent. The small concrete structure that you see beyond the tent and closer than the planes was a water well. It had a small engine and the water came out of a three inch pipe at a very fast flow and it was here that we were able to have a shower.
There were times when the temperature was above 120 and the humidity about 2 percent. You could get under this force of water with your fatigues on and in less than five minutes you were dry."

"When the planes sat out in that hot sun, the mechanics couldn't work on them as they were too hot to touch so they did most of their work at night when it did cool
off."

"There was a time of the year when for a couple of weeks it seems, that the winds called Sirocco winds blew across the desert and then it was most uncomfortable. In the air however, at altitude itcould be very cold."

"That is me in front of the tent with the BMW mororcycle. I bought the Motorcycle from a british soldier but after a month or so it was taken by the British Government as they claimed it as "spoils of War" which I guess was theirs."

Several B-26's in formation.

Pete Wright had a brother who also served in World War II, Glen Wright, shown at left in uniform. Wow, do they look young.... can you imagine that a bunch of young boys saved our world from a purely evil enemy? It's truly amazing! Wait to you see some of the following photos of these "boys".

" We found an old damaged tank and just played around with it. "

- Pete Wright

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	Three photos of Pete Wright at their camp in Tunisia, North Africa.

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