Wish my father-in-law could see this Martin B-26 Marauder video
Posted By RichC on February 9, 2025
Several decades ago we took Brenda’s father, Fred Howard, to the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio and seeing the Martin B-26 Marauder on display triggered an emotional response. 
Having flown 50+ bombing missions as a navigator in Europe during World War II and seeing his “ship” (similar) after so many years brought back strong memories and a pivotal time in his life.
We took note and since my CPP business was in Cuyahoga Falls near Akron, Ohio where I occasionally flew a Cessna 172 in and out of AKR, I knew about the Maps Museum and the B-26 rescue project. So we planned the trip and a tour of the restoration project and it gave my father-in-law a chance to see (touch and climb though) one of the very few Martin B-26 Marauders surviving — this one was recovered from a crash site in Canada (much had already been stripped for parts). He really enjoyed seeing and 
remembering the innards of the plane, showing us his station and talking with a few of the volunteers who were helping to restore it. I learned just how “it protect him” and how he had been trained to destroy the Norden bombsight in the “likely” event they were shot down or hit by flak — thankfully the planes he navigated to and from targets were not downed (grime image of B-17 below).
A couple years later, we gave him a book that reviewed the history and missions of this “hot” medium sized bomber during WW II and asked him to make notes in the margin detailing his memory of the missions — shocking just how much he could recall.
For those of you like me who enjoy military history AND aviation, the video archived on YouTube by PBS Western Reserve is worth watching (as has become a habit, I’ve archived the mp4 file just in case the YouTube link disappears — sadly becoming the norm).
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