GUNNERY: IT’S OLD STUFF TO STAFF SEARGENTS RIPPLE AND McKIBBEN

At least two men in Section Q will be back with a couple of old friends when they again line up a pair of fifties on a flying target.

S/Sgts Bill E. Ripple and Walt D. McKibben, both of Toledo, Ohio, joined the Air Forces together back in 1942. . . they stuck together through 50 missions with the 12th Air Force in the E.T.O. (European Theater of Operations) . . . and are now sweating it together here in Q.

During their service overseas both men were awarded the Air Medal with nine clusters, Presidential Citations and E.T.O. campaign ribbon.

In discussing their most exciting mission McKibben reca1led the time they were together in an attack on a German convoy running troops and supplies in the Mediterranean. It was a two element, high and low-level attack. McKibben and Ripple were among the crew of a plane coming in low for a skip-bomb run. They told a harrowing story of fierce Nazi anti-aircraft attack that threw a curtain of fire around their plane. At times they were flying so low that the prop shot spray out behind the plane. At one phase of the attack they thought they were hit but the sudden lurch of the aircraft was due to the pilot pulling up for a break-away over the German ship.

Though their plane was riddled there were no casualties and in the action the Germans lost one cruiser, two transports and several flak barges.

During the fight McKibben burnt-out a gun barrel, something a good gunner never does, and Ripple still says that's the only-damn reason they have to go through gunnery school --- AGAIN !

Transcribed from a clipping taken from “HIGH-FLIGHT”, the newspaper of Section Q, (Larger Unit Unspecified), September 8, 1944, likely at Buckingham Army Airfield, located near Fort Myers, Lee County, Florida. Section Q was probably a part of the AAF Flexible Gunnery School, 37th Flexible Gunnery Training Group, 75th Flying Training Wing.

Walter D McKibben Jr