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On Nov. 30 1941, as his Royal Air Force Spitfire lost altitude,
Roland "Bud'' Wolfe took off his leather helmet and wrapped it around
the gun sight before bailing out. The plane crashed into an Irish peat
bog. Wolfe lived to rejoin the war.
A footnote in an aerial combat career that spanned three wars resurfaces this week from an Irish peat bog.
The two daughters of a Nebraskan who flew combat missions for Britain's Royal Air Force before the United States entered World War II plan to visit the site Wednesday where their father's Spitfire aircraft crashed precisely 70 years earlier.
High above the churchgoers who witnessed or heard the fighter's final moments, 23-year-old Pilot Officer Roland "Bud'' Wolfe was floating safely under a parachute to the hilly moorland.
It was Nov. 30, 1941. Seven days later, Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and America was at war.
"We'll be connecting with our father in a very different way," said Barb Kucharczyk of Semora, N.C. "We really don't know what to expect, other than a deep emotional tug."
Kucharczyk and sister Betty Wolfe of Durham, N.C., are leading a group of 12 other family members and friends to see for the first time the place in Ireland where Bud Wolfe's plane crashed and to meet the people who have adopted the American's story as a symbol of courage and hope in a dangerous time.
Public interest in Wolfe's story spread across Britain when aviation archeologists recovered the crumpled wreckage — the best-preserved Spitfire excavated in Europe — last summer. Interest intensified earlier this month when the test-firing of one the aircraft's restored Browning .303-caliber machine guns — the sound of the Battle of Britain — was aired on a BBC webcast.
The clay muck of the bog preserved the aircraft pieces for seven decades. Searchers not only recovered the Rolls-Royce V-12 piston engine, propeller, six machine guns, large pieces of the fuselage and a fully inflated tail wheel, but also Wolfe's leather flight helmet and many other items.
The story of the excavation and of Wolfe's military career was first told in The World-Herald last summer.
Jonny McNee, an aviation historian in Northern Ireland who organized the search for and recovery of Wolfe's aircraft, said the project generated a reawakening in the British Isles of the need to hear the firsthand stories of the WWII generation.
"When they pulled the pieces out of the bog and discovered the leather helmet and oxygen mask still wrapped around the gun sight, it was a moment frozen in time," McNee said.
Wolfe volunteered for the RAF to defend Britain from Nazi Germany's air assaults. He learned to fly at Lincoln's Lindbergh Field in the late 1930s. His parents lived in Fremont, Lincoln and Ceresco during his youth. He was a graduate of College View High School in Lincoln and briefly attended the University of Nebraska.
Wolfe's Spitfire went down when he was returning from a routine Sunday patrol protecting maritime convoys off the coast of County Donegal at Ireland's northwestern tip. His engine overheated and the fighter lost altitude. He was about 13 miles from his RAF base at Eglinton, now the airport at Derry, in Northern Ireland.
Wolfe's final radio message: "I'm going over the side."
He slid back the cockpit canopy, wrapped his helmet, oxygen mask and throat microphone around the gun sight, unbuckled his seat straps and launched himself into the air over the cold and foggy Inishowen peninsula.
His aircraft buried itself in the soft bog at more than 300 mph.
A member of neutral Ireland's local defense force apprehended Wolfe near Moneydarragh, and Ireland added him to a growing population of detained Allied troops, German U-boat crewmen and Luftwaffe airmen who ended up on Irish soil.
Wolfe was held at a detention camp outside Dublin before escaping and rejoining the war in Europe with a U.S. Army 8th Air Force fighter squadron in 1943.
After returning from the war, Wolfe served at Kearney (Neb.) Air Force Base in 1947 and 1948. He flew F-86 Sabres in the Korean War and F-105 Thunderchiefs in the Vietnam War during a 28-year Air Force career. He retired as a lieutenant colonel and died in Florida in 1994 at age 76.
Kucharczyk said she expects powerful emotions to surface when she sees the Irish landscape her father knew, the wreckage of the plane he flew and the helmet, throat microphone and oxygen mask he abandoned.
The visiting Americans plan to arrive Tuesday in Derry. McNee has made special arrangements with the National Museum of Ireland to allow the group to see and touch Wolfe's flight helmet during a private showing. (The relic is undergoing intensive conservation treatment and still is too delicate to be on public display. Wolfe's faint initials, "RLW," are visible on an ear flap.)
The next day is the anniversary of the crash. The group plans to be at the crash site for a 12:30 p.m. ceremony. Later, the visitors travel to the Derry airport to unveil a plaque commemorating Wolfe's 133rd Eagle Squadron, view the recovered tail wheel, see the abandoned runway where Wolfe flew from and snack on biscuits and tea.
The remains of the aircraft eventually will be preserved for display at the Tower Museum in Derry.
An exhibition featuring the remains of the Spitfire opens Thursday at the Workhouse Museum in Derry. A film crew chronicled the Spitfire excavation for "Dig WW2," a coming British Broadcasting Corp. series on military archaeology from the war. McNee hopes to show a few snippets of footage of the documentary at the museum.
Kucharczyk said her father would not approve of the hoopla surrounding the anniversary of his crash. Wolfe talked little of his Air Force career and less about his wartime experiences.
"Though I'm sure he would have liked to see the wreckage and talk with McNee, the excavators and the explosives folk who got one of the airplane guns to fire," she said.
The family is humbled by the interest of the Irish and Britons in her father.
"We find ourselves drawn into the lives of these Irishmen and women, via a part of our father we are largely unfamiliar with," Kucharczyk said. "As Betty said, it's almost a homecoming."
The two daughters of a Nebraskan who flew combat missions for Britain's Royal Air Force before the United States entered World War II plan to visit the site Wednesday where their father's Spitfire aircraft crashed precisely 70 years earlier.
High above the churchgoers who witnessed or heard the fighter's final moments, 23-year-old Pilot Officer Roland "Bud'' Wolfe was floating safely under a parachute to the hilly moorland.
It was Nov. 30, 1941. Seven days later, Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and America was at war.
"We'll be connecting with our father in a very different way," said Barb Kucharczyk of Semora, N.C. "We really don't know what to expect, other than a deep emotional tug."
Kucharczyk and sister Betty Wolfe of Durham, N.C., are leading a group of 12 other family members and friends to see for the first time the place in Ireland where Bud Wolfe's plane crashed and to meet the people who have adopted the American's story as a symbol of courage and hope in a dangerous time.
Public interest in Wolfe's story spread across Britain when aviation archeologists recovered the crumpled wreckage — the best-preserved Spitfire excavated in Europe — last summer. Interest intensified earlier this month when the test-firing of one the aircraft's restored Browning .303-caliber machine guns — the sound of the Battle of Britain — was aired on a BBC webcast.
The clay muck of the bog preserved the aircraft pieces for seven decades. Searchers not only recovered the Rolls-Royce V-12 piston engine, propeller, six machine guns, large pieces of the fuselage and a fully inflated tail wheel, but also Wolfe's leather flight helmet and many other items.
The story of the excavation and of Wolfe's military career was first told in The World-Herald last summer.
Jonny McNee, an aviation historian in Northern Ireland who organized the search for and recovery of Wolfe's aircraft, said the project generated a reawakening in the British Isles of the need to hear the firsthand stories of the WWII generation.
"When they pulled the pieces out of the bog and discovered the leather helmet and oxygen mask still wrapped around the gun sight, it was a moment frozen in time," McNee said.
Wolfe volunteered for the RAF to defend Britain from Nazi Germany's air assaults. He learned to fly at Lincoln's Lindbergh Field in the late 1930s. His parents lived in Fremont, Lincoln and Ceresco during his youth. He was a graduate of College View High School in Lincoln and briefly attended the University of Nebraska.
Wolfe's Spitfire went down when he was returning from a routine Sunday patrol protecting maritime convoys off the coast of County Donegal at Ireland's northwestern tip. His engine overheated and the fighter lost altitude. He was about 13 miles from his RAF base at Eglinton, now the airport at Derry, in Northern Ireland.
Wolfe's final radio message: "I'm going over the side."
He slid back the cockpit canopy, wrapped his helmet, oxygen mask and throat microphone around the gun sight, unbuckled his seat straps and launched himself into the air over the cold and foggy Inishowen peninsula.
His aircraft buried itself in the soft bog at more than 300 mph.
A member of neutral Ireland's local defense force apprehended Wolfe near Moneydarragh, and Ireland added him to a growing population of detained Allied troops, German U-boat crewmen and Luftwaffe airmen who ended up on Irish soil.
Wolfe was held at a detention camp outside Dublin before escaping and rejoining the war in Europe with a U.S. Army 8th Air Force fighter squadron in 1943.
After returning from the war, Wolfe served at Kearney (Neb.) Air Force Base in 1947 and 1948. He flew F-86 Sabres in the Korean War and F-105 Thunderchiefs in the Vietnam War during a 28-year Air Force career. He retired as a lieutenant colonel and died in Florida in 1994 at age 76.
Kucharczyk said she expects powerful emotions to surface when she sees the Irish landscape her father knew, the wreckage of the plane he flew and the helmet, throat microphone and oxygen mask he abandoned.
The visiting Americans plan to arrive Tuesday in Derry. McNee has made special arrangements with the National Museum of Ireland to allow the group to see and touch Wolfe's flight helmet during a private showing. (The relic is undergoing intensive conservation treatment and still is too delicate to be on public display. Wolfe's faint initials, "RLW," are visible on an ear flap.)
The next day is the anniversary of the crash. The group plans to be at the crash site for a 12:30 p.m. ceremony. Later, the visitors travel to the Derry airport to unveil a plaque commemorating Wolfe's 133rd Eagle Squadron, view the recovered tail wheel, see the abandoned runway where Wolfe flew from and snack on biscuits and tea.
The remains of the aircraft eventually will be preserved for display at the Tower Museum in Derry.
An exhibition featuring the remains of the Spitfire opens Thursday at the Workhouse Museum in Derry. A film crew chronicled the Spitfire excavation for "Dig WW2," a coming British Broadcasting Corp. series on military archaeology from the war. McNee hopes to show a few snippets of footage of the documentary at the museum.
Kucharczyk said her father would not approve of the hoopla surrounding the anniversary of his crash. Wolfe talked little of his Air Force career and less about his wartime experiences.
"Though I'm sure he would have liked to see the wreckage and talk with McNee, the excavators and the explosives folk who got one of the airplane guns to fire," she said.
The family is humbled by the interest of the Irish and Britons in her father.
"We find ourselves drawn into the lives of these Irishmen and women, via a part of our father we are largely unfamiliar with," Kucharczyk said. "As Betty said, it's almost a homecoming."
