By Ethan Clark

February 19, 1944, 0600 hours.

Douglas C-47 Skytrain serial number 315211 is delivered to the United States Army Air Corps’ 439th Troop Carrier Group and placed into the 92nd Squadron for future missions. 

June 5, 1944, 1600 hours.

My grandfather’s C-47. Photo credit: John Lapetina.

The day before D-Day, a young, new recruit, Staff Sergeant John Bernard Lapetina, is pulled from the 91st to the 92nd Squadron and heads to the plane he’s been assigned to for the operation. He had trained on a similar aircraft for several years, and tonight would be his first real combat mission. “The more training I got with this C-47 plane, the more I loved it,” Lapetina recounted years later. The radio operator examined his vessel with rigor to ensure he knew every inch of the aircraft.

In his evaluation, Lapetina wrote the following: “It had two Pratt and Whitney engines of 1,500 horsepower each. The aircraft was 65 feet long, with a 95 foot wingspan. It has a top speed of 225 miles per hours and could carry 28 fully armed paratroopers or a 5,500 pound payload.” Despite the warnings of his commanding officer, Lapetina snapped several photos of the airfield and of his squadron preparing for the fight of their lives. Shortly after he took his photos, orders from the Supreme Allied Commander and General of the Army, Dwight D. Eisenhower, were received. Every plane in the combined task force was to be painted with black and white stripes along the wings and fuselage. These “D-Day stripes,” as they were called, were to mark all active aircraft in the operation. 

June 6, 1944, 0100 hours. D-Day.

Thousands of feet above the English Channel, Lapetina’s “tough Army bird” of a plane soars onwards towards an unknown fate. Onboard are a total of 23 men: the pilot, the co-pilot, the navigator, the crew chief, the radio operator [Lapetina], and 18 fully-armed paratroopers from the 101st Airborne, waiting for the green light to jump into France. Nine minutes pass. It’s dead quiet. Suddenly, the green-tinted incandescent bulb blinks on, and the 18 men, one by one, launch themselves out of the jump door, sailing behind the enemy lines below. Lapetina watches these gallant heroes descend into battle as he radios the other planes of their jump positions and rendez-vous coordinates back to base. Many of those men he would never see again, but he would always remember them. 

May 17, 1945, 1800 hours.

Lapetina in his C-47. Photo credit: John Lapetina.

A war-hardened Lapetina celebrates his 21st birthday as he prepares to return home after many long and grueling years of combat. He looks to the future, and the brand new C-46 parked on the runway. He then looks to his past, and his old friend, his trusty C-47. “It was the most beautiful plane I had ever seen.” He wished fair skies to his friend of hardened steel and boarded the flight home. Lapetina would never again see his friend, but he would cherish the memory for the next 66 years of his life.

September 9, 2017, 1600 hours.

I am finally entrusted by my parents with the unpublished memoir of my late grandfather, John Bernard Lapetina, recounting the tales of his exploits in the European Theatre of the Second World War. I vaguely knew of his adventures, but never in much detail, since my grandfather never talked about what happened back then. Page after page of detailed notes within the spiral notebook recounted the squadron’s movements through every mission. I then discovered a picture of my grandfather sitting in the cockpit of his trusty C-47, and a memory flashed into my head. I scrambled to my laptop and searched up “C-47s still in existence” and hit “enter.” I scrolled through the images and stumbled upon one that closely resembled the one from the photo, but I had no way to prove it. The only identification to prove which plane was which could be found on the tail, with the letter the plane had been assigned as a radio callsign. Due to the picture in the memoir only being of the front of the plane, I couldn’t confirm the one from the photo online was my grandfather’s. I had to prove it.

June 3, 2020, 0900 hours.

Lt. Col. Petty’s authorization. Photo credit: Ethan Clark.

Little did I know my four-year search for my grandfather’s plane was about to reach its climax with the discovery of a final clue. While sifting through some boxes of pictures, I discovered a withering slip of paper, a permit for a recovered firearm. Printed on the parchment was as follows: “I certify that I have personally examined the items of captured enemy equipment S/SGT John B. Lapetina, that the trophy value of such items exceeds any training service or salvage value; that they do not include any explosives, and that the mailing thereof is in conformity with the provisions of Sec 111, Cir 353, WD, 31 August 1944, and the existing regulations of the Theatre Commander.” Under this was the information I had been looking for: Lapetina’s commanding officer’s name. In all the time I knew my grandfather, he never told us the name of his commanding officer, instead replying that they simply called him “The Major.” However, because this was an authorization for a firearm, the commanding officer had to sign it. In the bottom right corner sat the name of Lieutenant Colonel and Commanding Officer of the 92nd Troop Carrier Squadron, Cecil E. Petty.

I distinctly remember having to catch myself, as I stumbled backwards into the recently uncovered wooden floorboards, hidden under a layer of old teal shag carpeting. I just sat there a moment and chuckled to myself, finding irony in how a firearm permit, of all things, would solve my mystery. I thought back to my grandfather’s medical and combat records that I had discovered during my search and smiled, remembering that he was listed an expert marksman and how, as he stated in his memoir, he was frequently tasked with hanging out the door of his plane while they flew low to fire upon enemies attempting to shoot them down. With this piece of documentation, I could now confirm that the plane I had previously assumed to be his was guaranteed to be his. After tracing Lt. Col. Petty’s name in a registry of World War II servicemembers, I was able to confirm that since he was the major of the squadron, he flew on the lead plane of the squadron, the C-47 J8 B. All I had to do now was find it, and I knew exactly where to look.

March 11, 2021, 0900 hours.

There it was. After years of research and tracking the plane’s every movement, from the RAF Air Station in Fairford, England, to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I had finally found its current location: The Fantasy of Flight Museum in Polk County, Florida. After two flights and one failed attempt to visit due to a miscommunication with the tickets, my family and I were given access to the full private collection of Kermit Weeks, the museum’s founder and caretaker.

We were buzzed in through the electronic gate and drove into the back parking lot by the back entrance. I distinctly remember walking into the entry hall of the building and looking up at the ceiling, a giant mirror, reflecting everything below. After a few minutes of anticipated waiting, we overheard voices in the adjoining room, and Weeks himself emerged to meet us. Actually, more accurately, he was headed to a meeting, and we just happened to be standing there. We thanked him for allowing us to visit the collection, and he did not at the time know why we had made the journey down to visit, since all the scheduling had been done with the museum’s staff.

The C-47 during World War II (top), and the airplane today (bottom). Image credit: Ethan Clark.

We briefly explained how we had come to see his C-47 and how my grandfather had flown on one, to which I then decided to quickly clarify that it was, “not just a C-47, your C-47 specifically.” I remember his reaction very vividly: stopping in his tracks and jerking his head slightly, dumbfounded at what some random teenager had just said to him. We informed him that we had records and photographic proof for our claims and showed him the photos I had saved on my phone prior to the trip. Still in a hurry, he wished us the best of luck on our tour and hoped he could hear more from us at a later time. Our tour guide arrived shortly thereafter to lead us on our adventure.

We walked through a hallway towards the airplane hangars. One hangar on the right was packed with everything from fighter planes to a passenger plane so large they had to cut a hole in the hangar door for it to fit through. I didn’t see it at first, but as our guide led us over to a P-51 C Red Tail Mustang, I saw the nose of the C-47 sticking out above the rest.

I dropped to my knees for a moment and simply stared out at the gentle giant parked dead center, the smaller planes huddled around it as if to listen to the stories it could tell. We were guided towards the metal behemoth of a plane as we stared up at the sheer size of it. One segment alone of the three-pronged propeller was taller than my mother and boasted the second-largest wingspan in the right hangar.

I pressed my hand to the fuselage for a moment. Never had something so cold felt so alive.

Lapetina’s Radio Operator station. Photo credit: Ethan Clark.

I turned back to the tour guide for a moment and pointed at the purposefully opened door to the heart of the beast and was given the okay to haul myself inside. She was a flying time capsule, still in jump configuration, unlike many of her sisters, who had been converted for passenger service in the decades following the war. I made my way towards the cockpit, sealed behind a door, and pressed through, and what I saw finally caused me to break down to tears.

There, on the right, just as it had been when my grandfather, Staff Sergeant John Bernard Lapetina, had served onboard, was the radio operator’s seat. The olive green paint of the wrap-around wooden desktop was cracked and peeling, as it hadn’t been painted since her years in service. I closed the door to the cockpit for a moment, giving just enough clearance to make my way to the scuffed iron chair, and sat down, finally at peace.

“We did it, Pop. We’re here.”

I looked out the small rectangular window and knew in my heart that he would always be with me, still flying.