WWII Vet Shares Story of Being a Gunner

WWII Vet Shares Story of Being a Gunner

By Jimmy Smothers - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Dec 26, 2008 16:25:34 EST

GADSDEN, Ala. — It has been 64 years since Ralph Moore was a hatch gunner in a Douglas A-20 Havoc, doing his part to stop the German army and end World War II.

Through the years, he has tried to forget about the horrors of war, but the memories keep coming back. Now in his 80s, they seem more vivid than ever.

While working at the local Goodyear plant and raising a family after the war, he didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on the past. But since retirement, he spends a lot of time watching war films and reading about various campaigns of the big war in which he played a role. Primarily, he likes to talk more about the role of the A-20 Havoc, a high-performance attack-bomber that many people have never heard about.

“The newspaper guys refused to fly with us, and since they didn’t know what we were doing, they didn’t write anything about us,” Moore recalls. “In addition, we were classified during much of the time as a secret weapon, so people just didn’t know anything about what we did.”

Moore was a staff sergeant in the 410 Air Group of the 9th Army Air Force, flying 30 missions as a hatch gunner. Among his military honors and awards are four air medals with five oak leaf clusters, three battle stars and a presidential citation for what his outfit did during the Battle of the Ardennes, commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge.

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