RAF MILDENHALL NEWS
From model aircraft maker to B-17 pilot: WWII veteran shares life stories Then-U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. John A. Clark served as a co-pilot with the 418th Bomb Squadron, 100th Bomb Group, at Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk, England, from 1944 to 1945. Clark, World War II survivor, attended the 100th Bomb Group reunion in Dallas, Texas, Oct. 28 to 31, 2021, and shared stories of before and during his military service BY: Karen Abeyasekere, 100th Air Refueling Squadron Public Affairs // SOURCE: www.mildenhall.af.mil
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fly over his neighborhood in south east Michigan.
During an interview at the 100th Bomb Group reunion in Dallas, Texas, Oct. 28, 2021, Clark described how from a very young age he was fascinated by the airplanes that would occasionally
“They were mostly little planes from a U.S. Army Air Corps base, Selfridge Field, north of Detroit,” he said. “We were probably about five minutes from the base, and the planes would often go over our neighborhood in a formation of three or four and would have rondels on the wings and stripes on the tails, and I was fascinated by that. I became interested in aviation pretty early on, stimulated a lot by the Army Air Corps. They had an open house once a year, which of course I always wanted to go to.”
“ think of my generation, born in the 1920s and 1930s, as the air-minded one; we were naturally excited about airplanes much like young people now are excited about space,” said retired 1st Lt. John A. Clark, 98, former 418th Bomb Squadron and 100th Bomb Group co-pilot, who was stationed at Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk, England, during World War II.
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| JANUARY 2022
Born in 1923, Clark said he became interested in making models of airplanes during the mid-30s until he went into the service, during the early 1940s. “I think I made a model of every airplane that existed, using balsa wood and tissue paper. The last one was gasoline powered, one cycle engines with mixture of gasoline and oil in the fuel tank. It was quite powerful for a small plane,” he recalled proudly.He quickly took his airplane building to the next level, moving from static to flying models, and was soon designing his own planes. “I had to learn about centers of
