Dennis O’Sullivan
From the Buffalo News
Hamburg veteran who served as B-17 gunner recalls heavy losses in skies over Europe
By Staff
Nov 22, 2015 Updated Jun 22, 2021
Dennis J. O’Sullivan, 94
Hometown: Buffalo
Residence: Hamburg
Branch: Army Air Force
Rank: Staff sergeant
War zone: Europe
Years of service: 1942-45
Most prominent honors: two Distinguished Flying Crosses, Purple Heart, four Air Medals, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Presidential Unit Citation
Specialty: Waist gunner, B-17 bomber
By Lou Michel, News Staff Reporter
By day, Dennis J. O’Sullivan worked as a lab assistant at National Aniline & Chemical Co., a dye-making plant in South Buffalo. By night, he attended the University of Buffalo, studying for a business administration degree.
But at 20 years old in the early 1940s, he wasn’t exactly sure what he would do when he earned his degree. That quandary ended up settled, at least temporarily, when he received a draft notice.
The O’Sullivan family, in time, would send six of its seven sons to World War II, and just after the war’s conclusion, all were serving in the Army.
So Dennis O’Sullivan had found an opportunity – the chance to learn how to be a flier.
“That was my preference, but I didn’t pass the physical for pilot training,” the 94-year-old veteran recalls.
Still, he wanted to be up in the skies. “So I went to radio operator school and gunner school,” he says.
Soon afterward, he was part of a 10-member B-17 bomber crew, assigned to the Army Air Forces’ 95th Bomb Group, flying out of England.
As a member of the 8th Air Force, he realized that his odds of surviving service were slim on a B-17, also known as a Flying Fortress.
“At the time I was flying, the Air Force was losing more planes than it could replace. The losses were great. That’s why they had the rule that after 25 missions, if you survived, you could go home,” he says. “Every time you saw a bomber go down, that was 10 men.”
O’Sullivan cannot recall how many planes he watched shot out of the air, but it was too many.
On his first mission above the outskirts of Paris, he got off to a rough start. Shrapnel pierced the bomber and struck him in the leg. “I had to go into the hospital for surgery. I was there probably a week,” he says.
“My crew continued while I was in the hospital. When I got back to them, I was three missions behind them. When they finished their 25 missions, I had three more to go. I was a substitute with other crews, and that was tough. Naturally, I missed my old veteran crew.”
Bombing raids always targeted industrial complexes that produced armaments and other supplies for the enemy, he says.
“The average raid took about six or seven hours from takeoff to landing. We were softening the enemy in preparation for Gen. Eisenhower’s D-Day invasion.”
It came at a price.
“On one of the missions to Germany, our group [sic] flew 60 planes, and the Germans shot 30 of us down. That was 300 fliers,” O’Sullivan says.
When, at last, it was O’Sullivan’s turn to come home in the spring of 1944, he felt relief and thankfulness, he says, yet he was far from overjoyed. That’s because the war was still in progress and he knew his fellow fliers were still putting their lives on the line.
Source: https://buffalonews.com/.../article_6e9c4a76-1e78-514c....
Photo courtesy of The Buffalo News, buffalonews.com.
Medal display 2015
Photo courtesy of the Buffalo New