Colonel James A. Gianatsis was born on 9 October 1916. Son of a hard-working Greek hat cleaner and shoemaker, my grandfather, named Athanasios Demetrios Gianatsis immigrated with his wife Garifalia, to New York City on 1 November 1907. Athanasios heritage was from Rizospilia village, in Arcadia, Peloponnese, near the famous Dimitsana however my grandmother's place of birth isn't known. The couple married in Greece and came to the United States with the Reine D’ Italia ship, boarding on Piraeus. The couple raised 3 notable children who also went on to become great Americans. My Dad worked his way through college at the University of New York and George Washington University with a degree in Engineering as part of the Greatest Generation he joined the US Army Air Corps in 1941 and trained as a pilot to fight in World War Two. Upon graduation from flight school in Texas, he was commissioned as a First Lieutenant on June 23, 1942, trained with his bomber group at MacDill AFB, Florida, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, and was sent to Great Britain as part of the 386th Bomb Group - The Crusaders. He was promoted to 1st Lt on November 20, 1942. He served as the pilot of a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber with a crew of 5-7 and sent on dangerous precision low-level daylight bombing runs across Europe. However, he began facing the dangers of combat flying even before reaching England when he made a forced landing in Greenland. This incident was documented by The Pittsburg Press and The Chicago Daily News Inc. reporter in London, Nat A. Barrows.
  
"For a few minutes, out there in the North Atlantic. "Blazing Heat" seemed certain to wind up in an unmarked grave instead of the English base from which she flew against Nazi targets. One of her two engines had failed, and the B-26 Marauder was falling rapidly from her cruising altitude of 10,500 feet. Desperately. Lt. James A. Gianatsis of the Bronx N.Y. ordered the plane lightened and tried to keep her from stalling. The bomber dropped to 5000 feet and then to 4000. Lt. Raymond E. Merritt, of Detroit, the co-pilot, and Lt. Nathan E. Offenhiser, of Clarksdale, Miss., the navigator, began tossing every conceivable object toward the bomb bay. The B-26 faltered down to 2000 feet and its airspeed dropped almost to stalling. The radioman Sgt. William F. King, of 556 Price Ave., North Braddock, Pa., poured more equipment into the ocean through the bomb bay. 1. Extra gasoline was dumped. The tail gunner, Sgt. Fred B. Ellis. of Sanger. Cal. and Sgt. Meyer Levin, of Philadelphia, a ground crew member flying as a passenger, attacked the fittings in the plane. At 1800 feet Lt. Gianatsis was able to hold the plane steady. They were then about halfway between Newfoundland and Greenland. Lt. Gianatsis was determined to attempt a landing on an unfamiliar airfield in Greenland rather than turn back. He knew his SOS had alerted Atlantic Patrol aircraft, and there was a better safety factor in going on, providing he could get enough altitude to overtop the coastal mountains. Two other Marauders hovered about “Blazing Heat" to drop life preservers in the event she did not make it. Lt. Gianatsis got speed up to 150 miles an hour and managed to climb back to 4000-foot altitude. Lt. Gianatsis squeezed over the mountains and made a safe landing despite the dead engine.”

On August 21, 1943, he was promoted to Captain and began flying combat sorties over Europe. His bomber group played a major part in D-Day - the invasion of Europe, by flying many bombing missions taking out German Costal Guns, Supply Depots, Bridges, Headquarters, Troop Concentrations, and V2 Flying Bomb sites in the weeks before the Invasion. And then close support of the Allied troops on the Normandy beaches on D-day morning, taking out German positions overlooking the beaches just minutes before the Allied troops came ashore. Probably the best account of these hours before the invasion comes from the book "The Story of the Crusaders, The 386th Bomb Group.

"The D-Day Invasion on June 6th was led by the 386th BG. Its Commander Colonel Kelly learned that the 386th by its high record of accurate bombing, had been selected by General Omar Bradley himself to be the last Group to bomb the beaches at Normandy before the troops went ashore. This was a signal of honor to be paid by so high a personage to the accomplishments of the Group. The formal briefing was little different from the ordinary briefings except the messages from Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Brenton, and Anderson were read to the Group. The mission itself, except for the fact it took off before dawn, was little different from any of the 180 missions the Group had previously run. Their mission was to bomb gun positions on the beaches just 5 minutes before the actual landings began. Before they left Colonel Kelly addressed the crews, "Man" he began simply, "Today is D-day. We land in France at 6:30 am." For a moment there was dead silence, then if someone had pressed a switch, the whole assembly broke into prolonged cheering, for a while it was pandemonium. Col. Kelly called for silence. Then he continued, "At this moment the parachute troops have landed in northern France. We will be flying in support of American troops who will be landing on the beaches here." He indicated a strip of beach on the huge map in the briefing room. "Our targets will be positions on the beach on which our troops will land a zero hour, and we have been paid the signal honor because of our record, of being the last group to bomb before the invasion commences. We must bomb between 6:23 and 6:25, that is before the 6:30 am landing is to take place. If we arrive over the target after 6:25 we will be unable to bomb. Our job will be to keep the Germans from manning their guns until the assault troops come ashore. You must not and you can't make any mistake. The lives of thousands of soldiers depend on your accuracy. The crews, arriving at the airplanes on the field were greeted by Black and White stripes on both the wings and fuselages of their B26 Marauders. Under great secrecy and the cover of darkness, the ground crews had painted the "D-Day Stripes" on the airplanes. The planners had hoped that by marking all allied aircraft scheduled to be in the beachhead area with the high visibility stripes, enemy aircraft would find it more difficult to penetrate the area. In many ways, the mission was a milk run for the Group. No heavy flak was seen although considerable light flak was encountered, only two aircraft received light damage, and all returned safely to base. The mission execution was something else. The briefing had called for bombings at 12.000 feet, the normal altitude for the Marauder. They had also been briefed that if the weather was bad, they could bomb as low as 1500 feet. The formations bombed between 2,000 and 6,000 feet depending on the height of the base clouds. The assigned targets were all well hit which was a tribute to the excellence of the combat crews and of the target material which had been provided for them." 

My dad's plane(s) were hit three times, but each time they made it back over the English Channel to crash land in England and return to the war with a repaired or new plane. There was a life expectancy for American B-17 and B-24 bomber crews of just 25 runs, at which point those surviving crews were sent back home to America. At the same time, B-26 bombers had a much higher survival rate and stayed in Europe until the end of the war. You can see in the one picture of his plane "Blazing Heat" with his name painted beneath the window, his plane and crew had 105 bombing runs completed when this picture was taken. He and his crew survived the war and helped liberate Europe my father logged 76 combat missions and on June 23, 1945, he was promoted to Major. His awards included the Distinguished Flying Cross which I still hold for him as well as the Air Medal with 12 Oak Leaf Clusters and the French Croix de Guerre (1939-1945). The latter was awarded in a ceremony in Washington by the assistant chief of the French Air Force, General Andre Hartemann.  As a kid, I often asked my dad what it was like in the war, but he wouldn't say much about it. It must have been hard losing so many other planes and friends from his squadron and having to bomb so many targets with civilians. He stayed in the Air Corps after the war, which became the US Air Force, and married my mother Gloria Moss from Detroit in 1947, they had two sons, my brother Kim and I.