Andy Widness outside of his Wilmington home, holding a photograph taken of him during World War II. Linda Donaghue
WILMINGTON- It has been 64 years since Lieutenant Andy Widness flew a B‑24 Liberator through the perilous skies of Europe during World War II, but his memories are as sharp as the days they were formed.
Widness was born in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY, in 1915. His mother, Marie and his father, Edward, owned a hardware store. He had two brothers, Andy in the middle. He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School and then New York University where he received a degree in business in 1938. After college, he went to work for his father in the hardware store.
In 1930, Widness met his future wife, Mary, at the Bedford Presbyterian Church and he married her there in 1952. Because Mary was a Scottish immigrant, their son Malcolm is named for the first king of Scotland, their son Eric for his Norwegian heritage, and daughter Susan’s name is “plain old American.” The family settled on Long Island and lived there for 31 years.
The family’s connection to Vermont goes back to a time before Andy Widness was born, when his father bought a place on Lake Raponda in 1909. “I’ve been here all my life,” he says, spending summers at the house that was never winterized and had no heat; the quintessential summer house.
After his father died in 1961, Widness’ mother bought the house he now lives in on Main Street. His mother died in 1979 and both of his brothers have also died, the youngest at 90. Widness carries on, after his wife’s death in 2000, still living alone at home at age 93. His living room shows evidence of his military service with commemorative books and photos of himself as a young officer.
Three weeks before Pearl Harbor, Andy went for his military physical, but wasn’t called up until 1942.
After basic training at Kessler Field in Mississippi, Andy found himself pulling kitchen duty. Tiring of that fairly quickly, a buddy told him if he became a pilot he wouldn’t have to wash dishes. “I knew nothing about flying,” he recalls, but he was willing to learn, and he learned quickly.
Pilots trained for three months at Randolph Field in Texas, and left as commissioned officers. Flying, for Andy, was just a job, although he admits it was one of the best. After completing pilot training and graduating in December 1942, he was a flying instructor in Waco, TX, for six months.
Widness arrived in Italy on February 15, 1944. He remembers hearing someone in command ask for volunteers for combat. “Like a nut, I raised my hand,” he says. That was before he realized that casualties were not posted.
As part of the 15th Air Force 449th Bomb Group, 719th Squadron, Andy flew his first mission on February 22, 1944. On April 4, the 449th flew a dangerous mission over Bucharest, Romania. The target was a key rail freight yard. The bombers, which were flying without escort, were set upon by German fighters. Against the odds, the group not only succeeded in their mission, they destroyed many of the enemy aircraft. The 449th was awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation, one of the nation’s highest military unit awards, for their heroism. Widness says his group “lost a lot of planes” that day.
Widness was never shot down but there were close calls: a B‑24 behind him, shooting at a Messerschmitt, hit one of the engines on his plane. He describes flak as big shells that burst into hundreds of pieces but not necessarily dangerous unless it hit men in the plane. Some of the crews that were shot down were rescued but many were not. “Guys who were evacked didn’t have to fly again because they would probably be executed as spies.”
Andy started with an original crew of 10. Two of the men went to another crew when the damaged engine was being replaced. They were lost in the fighting on April 4.
B-24 Liberators were used more than any other plane in the war, almost 19,000 of them. The B‑17 might have been better known but the B‑24 was the workhorse. Andy and his crew called their plane “Our Baby.” The crew was made up of four Protestants, two Catholics, two Jews and one Mormon. “Let’s all pray,” he remembers saying, “One of us has to be right.” A month after his last mission, “Baby” was shot down, although thankfully the crew survived.
Widness says his roughest, and last flight, was a mission over Romania, or Rumania as it was called at the time, to bomb the vital oil refineries at Ploesti on June 6, 1944. The refineries supplied a third of the Axis countries’ fuel supply, and were fiercely defended by the Luftwaffe, anti-aircraft batteries, and smoke screens. The crew didn’t know that it was D‑Day until they heard it on the radio.
Widness left combat in June 1944 and came to Vermont for a month before returning to Langley Field in Virginia to train radar bombardiers for the reminder of his enlistment. Widness left the military in May 1945, after Germany surrendered. When the guys were asked who wanted to get out, he raised his hand again.
After the war, Widness worked for the New York City Bankers Trust Company, now part of Deutsche Bank, for 35 years. The young family lived in Brooklyn where the children were born. Susan is a nurse, Malcolm finds jobs for computer people and Eric works for the Police Athletic League. Andy has six grandchildren, five girls and a boy, two teachers, two in college, and one the mother of his three great‑grandchildren. Malcolm visits frequently from Manchester, NH, and Susan comes up during the summer.
Like many veterans, the events of the war and his brief tenure as a pilot were life-changing and indelible, and these days Widness relishes his quiet life within walking distance of most of his needs. When he needs a ride, friends Harold Rice and Dick Hamilton accommodate him. Vermont is a long way from the skies over Romania, although one wonders if any place is ever far enough from the trauma of war.
Author’s note: Lieutenant Andy Widness flew his last mission seven days before Staff Sergeant Jimmy Donaghue, my dad, flew his first as a tail gunner on a B‑24 based in Italy. It’s unlikely that they ever crossed paths but when I listened to Andy’s history, I heard a little bit of my own.
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