Unpublished C47 photos

[BGilbertSound]

Here are a few scans of my father's C47 "Stand Up and Cheer" during ww2, where he was a radio operator. I remember building a model of this plane with him when I was a kid, carefully piecing together bits of decal to get the M2 on the nose. These are starting to fade pretty badly, so I've photoshopped some of them to bring back the contrast a little. Hope these are useful to someone.



(taken from my Dad's plane)
(Jerry P Gilbert on the lower right)


(Bethyne was my dad's girlfriend at the time. She dumped him before he came home)

 

[the Baron]

Great pictures, thanks for posting these!
It's hard to tell, but in the first photo, is the nose art censored in the photo? It looks like there is discoloration in the image, in those areas; they look like a different color from the surrounding area. Or was the nose art added after the first picture was taken?

 

[BGilbertSound]

It wasn't censored or anything, and I haven't altered the photo (apart from the contrast that I mentioned.) It always looked to me like they did an outline with the intent to color it in at some point, but I don't know if that ever happened. My Dad passed away in 1977, so I can't ask him... so many questions that I wish I'd asked!

 

[Pantherman]

It wasn't censored or anything, and I haven't altered the photo (apart from the contrast that I mentioned.) It always looked to me like they did an outline with the intent to color it in at some point, but I don't know if that ever happened. My Dad passed away in 1977, so I can't ask him... so many questions that I wish I'd asked!

I think we all have some of those "if only I asked " moments that will never be answered now.

Great pictures though, and thanks for sharing them. Pantherman

 

[BGilbertSound]

I think we all have some of those "if only I asked " moments that will never be answered now.

Great pictures though, and thanks for sharing them. Pantherman

So many of our ww2 vets are gone now... one of my very favorite memories is once when my lovely wife got me a ride on a B17... a very old, thin man was part of our group, and I asked what made him want to take this flight. He surprised me and said, "I haven't been in one of these since 1945..." he was a B17 tail gunner. He sat and smiled the whole flight. The courage of those young men is a never ending source of amazement and inspiration to me, and I was very honored to have met him.