Info EDUARD
Synced!
Request for consent to store optional information

We do not need to store any information (cookies, etc.) for the basic functioning of the website. However, we would like to ask for your consent to store optional information:

Anonymous Unique ID

Thanks to it, next time we will know that it is the same device and we will be able to more accurately evaluate the traffic. This identifier is completely anonymous.

We store your consents and refusals on your device so that we don't ask you again next time. You can edit them at any time later in the Cookie Management.

More information

Aa

Aa

Aa

Aa

Aa

 

 

 

 

aA

Bernie Lay and Piccadilly Lily

A Story of a man that wanted more than just wings


Text: Jan Zdiarský 

Part Two

 

We ended the first part of Bernie Lay's story with his return from the ill-fated Regensburg mission on August 17th, 1943. Despite the title of this article and its reference to Piccadilly Lily, Lily does not appear again in this continuation. Indeed, Bernie Lay finished his internship with the 100th BG and returned to VIII. Bomber Command HQ. Piccadilly Lily was then shot down less than two months later, killing Bernie's partner on the mission to Regensburg, Frank Murphy, and part of his crew. For journalist, pilot and writer Bernie Lay, his involvement in the battles over Europe was far from over. In fact, more dramatic moments were yet to come.

 Before leaving the 100th BG, Bernie Lay wrote a detailed report to the Group’s Commander, Col. Neil B. ‘Chick’ Harding and at the same time forwarded them to the VIII Bomber Command. He also used part of it for his article ‘I Saw Regensburg Destroyed’ which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on November 6th, 1943. We quoted from the original report and article in the previous volume. However, the report itself contains an appendix of recommendations and observations of a completely military and, one might say, authoritarian nature. The addendum to the report includes recommendations for formation patterns and spacing within the bomber stream, the role of escort fighters, equipment for possible future landings in North Africa, and a recommendation that airmen flying such demanding missions as the one to Regensburg be given a reduced quota of mandatory combat flights. In his report, he wrote:

 It takes a rugged constitution to stand up to missions like Regensburg and even the toughest crew members were badly shaken by nearly two hours under persistent attack. The less phlegmatic were already potential candidates for the rest home when we landed in Africa. My four previous missions, in one of with our bombardier was killed, were pieces of cake in comparison to the 11 hour Regensburg show, and I doubt if 20 such normal missions would take the same amount out of a man as one stint to Regensburg.

 However, the main part of his appendix is ​​devoted to recommendations for honors. In it, he expressed admiration for the aircrews of the 100th BG and their commanders. He recommended that all men participating in the mission be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), and the commanding pilot of the Group, Maj. John Kidd and the leading pilot of the top squadron, Major William Veal, the Distinguished Service Cross (DSO). He even suggested that Major Gale W. ‘Buck’ Cleven, the leader of the bottom squadron, be awarded the Congressional Medal Of Honor  for his extraordinary attitude during the mission. Among other things, he stated about Cleven:

… completion of the mission was solely due to the extraordinary heroism and inspired determination of Major Cleven. … under the circumstances which obtained, Major Cleven’s actions were far above and beyond the call of duty and the skill, courage and strength or will displayed by him as airplane and squadron commander in the face of hopeless odds have seldom, if ever, been surpassed in the annals of the Army Air Forces.

It won't come as much of a surprise that the honors-frugal Air Force High Command ended up being far more stingy with the honors than the recommendations had suggested. However, the entire unit received a Distinguished (Presidential) Unit Citation for this mission, an award that was not given to units just like that. It was the first of two for the Hundred during its history, and from that moment on, all its members who were part of the unit on August 17th, 1943, were allowed to wear the dark blue, gold-framed ribbon of this award on their uniforms.

After gaining combat experience, Lt.Col. Lay returned to the United States where he went through a training program with the 490th BG with B-24s and then took command of the forming of the 487th BG at Alamogordo, NM on February 28th 1944. It also flew B-24s. In April of that year, he moved to England with his unit. Their home base was Lavenham in Suffolk.

Here, too, he continued to personally participate in his unit's missions. However, he was not allowed to complete many of them. On Thursday, May 11th, 1944, he led his unit over Troyes, France. It was supposed to be a Milk Run, but thanks to a navigational error, the Liberator formation found itself in the area of a German airfield near Châteaudun, where it was surprised by very heavy flak. Two aircraft from the front of the formation were shot down. One of these was B-24H s/n 41-29468 ‘Peg-O-My-Heart’, which was hit by flak shrapnel three times in succession. The pilot was 1st Lt. Frank Vratny, and the Commanding Pilot, Bernie Lay, sat in the co-pilot’s seat. The plane took many hits to the wing, and three engines were disabled, as were the hydraulic and electrical systems.

The entire crew managed to bail out of the fatally stricken aircraft and take to their chutes.

The pilot, Capt. Frank Vratny wrote of the last moments on board:

I gave Capt. Wilson specific instructions to go into the waist to notify the other members in that part of the plane to bail out as quickly as possible. All members except Lt.Col. Lay and myself did bail out. The only man injured on board our aircraft was the Bombardier, Capt. Francis Hodge. … Lt. Col. Bernie Lay and myself also bailed out. Lay taking over controls while I bailed out and then in turn followed me out of the plane.

An interesting statement about the last moments of Lay’s or  more precisely Vratny’s Liberator, was noted by an intelligence officer from a debriefing with 1st Lt. Riggs Mellen, flying near the stricken plane:

Lt. Vratny's plane, flying lead in the lead squadron, began to falter and stagger. It finally left the formation under control but soon began to stagger even more and give indications that the pilot was losing control. Finally the crew began to bail out. It is understood that a Lt. Fishel of the 486th BG, who was flying in a tail of one of the planes of that group, followed the parachutes to the ground with binoculars. He counted eleven ‘chutes, saw them land, remove the ‘chutes and run for nearby woods. Lt. Mellen states that he is almost certain that he recognized the last to jump as Lt Col. Lay.

The aircraft crashed near Bretoncelles and was completely destroyed by fire. The crew came down by parachute mainly in the area of ​​Le Mage, Verneuil, Longny-au-Perche in southern Normandy. Wounded bombardier, Capt. Hodge was captured the same day. After landing, he managed to stow his parachute and with a wounded leg, two wounds from flak shrapnel and a laceration above his right eye, managed to crawl to a French farm. The farmer, who was not connected to the underground movement, refused to help the American airman escape due to Hodge's injuries and out of concern for his wife and daughter. So he brought him bread and wine and rode his bicycle to a nearby village to fetch the German authorities….

 The rest of the crew managed to escape captivity for a long time, but some of them were later tracked down and taken during their stay in Paris. Four of the eleven men of the crew still managed to escape capture. Among them was the unit commander, Lt.Col. Bernie Lay.

In his Escape and Evasion report of August 15th, 1944, he stated:

I was leading 72 B-24s of 92 Combat Wing on a mission to bomb marshalling yards at Chaumont. I had a crew of 11 including Lt. Duer who was riding as observer in the tail turret. I ran into moderate to intense flak, and received considerable damage to my ship. I gave the order to bail out about 5 mi N of Chateaudun and everyone succeeded in jumping except Lt. Duer who had not received the alarm. I took over the controls and a few seconds later the ship went into a spiral dive from 12,000 ft. I bailed out at 10 000 ft, and as I left the cockpit I rang the bell again. I jumped and pulled the rip-cord as I went out the hatch and tore a complete panel out of the chute. In landing I got a crack on the back of my head and wrenched my right knee.

The aforementioned Lt. Duer parachuted near Lay. They decided to try to escape. Col. Lay continued:

Many Frenchmen appeared as soon as we landed and asked us what we wanted to do.

We hid out in a patch of trees. We later crawled through the field and hid in a hayloft where we stayed for two days. The French brought us food and civilian clothes. They advised us to go toward Spain and gave us detailed instructions on the location of German troops.

On the 13th May 1944, we left and started cross-country in a westerly direction. After walking all night our feet started going bad. I advise anyone to take shoes and socks off in crossing a stream. We contacted a Cure in a small town but he would not assist us. We were stopped by a German soldier but after brief questioning we were released. Shortly thereafter a French farmer approached us and took us to his house and fed us. A few minutes later Germans approached the house and while we hid under a bed, the farmer was questioned by the Germans. The Germans left and the next day we left this place. We again entered a church and kneeled down to pray. The Cure appeared and we told him we were Americans. He took us in, fed us and gave us a bed. We stayed here two days and the Cure brought a farmer to us who went to the village to contact the Resistance Groups, but with no results. The next day we left and travelled for ten days. We were aided and fed by various French farmers.

We then contacted another Cure in a village where we were helped by a French woman, formerly an employee of Lord Fitzireland in England. She took us to another house and put us in contact with the local Resistance Group, where we stayed 12 days. We were taken in a car to a farmhouse 15 mi NW of Vendome. For two months we were part of the farmer’s family. He advised us toward the lines. On 13 August, the Germans started leaving Vendome. On this day we were picked up in two cars by seven members of the Resistance Group. They were armed with weapons which had been hidden at the house of the farmer where we stayed. We were taken to a town near the American line, and then contacted the advance platoon of the 5th Inf.”

 Bernie Lay wrote about his escape experiences in the book ‘I've Had It’, which he published in 1945. A second edition in 1980 was titled ‘Presumed Dead: The Survival of A Bomb Group Commander’.

 After returning to England and the necessary recoup time, Lt.Col. Lay was no longer authorized to take part in combat missions. It was a security rule that excluded from flying over enemy territory those who had come into contact with the underground resistance movement after having been previously shot down over the continent.

He again held staff positions and retired from the Army with the rank of Colonel in 1946. He moved with his family to Hollywood, where he became involved in the film industry, but mainly devoted himself to writing.

Although Bernie Lay flew fewer than ten combat missions during the war, the horrors of those missions never left him. For writers, the way out was, among other things, writing. It provided the inspiration for the book ‘Twelve O'Clock High’, published in 1948. Shortly after that, the offer of a lifetime came - to create a screenplay from the book in cooperation with Sy Bartlett and Henry King for a film about the fate of the crews of American four-engine bombers during the Second World War. Bernie Lay thus not only applied his own experiences in the book and the subsequent film, but above all he immortalized the memory of the people he met and respected during his fighting career. Among them was Thomas Murphy and even his B-17F ‘Piccadilly Lily’. It became the central plane of the story. The film premiered in 1949 and starred Gregory Peck.

Other films followed, for which Bernie Lay wrote screenplays. The most famous of these are Strategic Air Command and Above and Beyond. Although his books and film scripts were mainly about the Air Force, Bernie Lay hated war from the bottom of his heart. He loved flying.

When his 487th BG held its first reunion in 1967, Lay refused to attend. When pressed for an explanation, he stated: ‘If I had a choice, would I want to relive my wartime experience? Definitely not. I couldn't stand the excitement.’

He said that as he went through his earlier materials and notes: ‘The trauma of resurrecting these events … released such a freshet of buried memories, an explosion of downright disbelief, that I had to stop writing. My eyes were blinded by tears.’

He retired permanently from the Air Force Reserves in 1963 and devoted himself primarily to creative work.

He passed away on May 26th, 1982 in Los Angeles, but his grave will not be found there. In line with his character, Bernie Lay donated his body to medical research at the School of Medicine of the University of California in Los Angeles.

His longtime friend Brinckerhoff W. Kendall wrote after Lay’s death: ‘Beirne Lay was my oldest and my lifelong friend. He did not find it easy to relate to many of the St. Paul's boys, but he lived his dreams and he made it to the stars….'

 When you look at the box of the B-17F ‘The Bloody Hundredth 1943’ kit from Eduard, look inside the cockpit of Piccadilly Lily for the figure behind the controls on the right. There sits the dreamer and romantic Bernie Lay, in whose eyes the horrors of the battle of Regensburg are reflected. The horrors of the story, which was not forgotten in large part thanks to him.

previous article

Unordnung – Late Versions of the Bf 109 G

The article comes from the issue 09/2024

Info EDUARD 09/2024, Bernie Lay and Piccadilly Lily
Info EDUARD 09/2024, Page 25
Browse PDF
09/2024
Info EDUARD 09/2024

INFO Eduard is a monthly scale model-historical magazine published in Czech and English by Eduard Model Accessories since 2010. The magazine is available for free on the Triobo platform and can be downloaded in PDF format. Eduard is a manufacturer of plastic models and accessories with over 30 years of tradition. Throughout its history in the plastic modeling industry, Eduard has become one of the world's leaders. Further details about the company and its product range can be found at www.eduard.com. You can subscribe to the INFO magazine and receive product information for free at: https://www.eduard.com/cs/info-eduard/

9/1/2024

Read

Don't miss out

Editorial

Editorial

03/2025

Flying Knights in Australia

Flying Knights in Australia

03/2025

Aerial War in Ukraine

Aerial War in Ukraine

03/2025

TEC - Don't whimper and print!

TEC - Don't whimper and print!

03/2025

Editorial

Editorial

Dear Friends, I just returned from Nuremberg. I left there in a rather gloomy mood, knowing that it was most likely my last time. I have always defended the Nuremberg Fair as a useful and beneficial event. But alas, its significance to our industry has steadily declined over the years, while the costs associated with participation in it have continuously done the opposite. Still, it has always brought us some benefit, despite of the expense involved.

02/2025

P-40E Warhawk

P-40E Warhawk

The Curtiss P-40 line of fighter aircraft stood out among American fighter types for having remained in front-line operations from the summer of 1941, before the U.S. entered World War II, through the end of the conflict four years later. Only Grumman’s versatile F4F Wildcat naval fighter could match that record.

02/2025

The MW 50 System as an Alternative to the GM-1

The MW 50 System as an Alternative to the GM-1

This technical discussion supplements the article describing the GM-1 system in the Messerschmitt Bf 109 in the November, 2024 newsletter. Even before World War II, Dr. Otto Lutz (1906-1974) came up with the idea of injecting nitrous oxide into an engine to increase performance. He later published (as late as 1942) a scientific paper on the subject "Über Leistungssteigerung von Flugmotoren durch Zugabe von Sauerstoffträgern", or roughly translated, ‘On increasing the performance of aircraft engines through the addition of oxygen compounds’.

02/2025

Aerial War in Ukraine - A Russian missile shot down a civilian aircraft. Again...

Aerial War in Ukraine - A Russian missile shot down a civilian aircraft. Again...

The battles over Ukraine often involve friendly fire incidents. Russian air defense has already destroyed numerous Russian aircraft and helicopters. Similar incidents have occurred on the Ukrainian side. Several civilian aircraft have also been hit in Russia, though without fatal consequences—until now.

02/2025

Check out other issues

© 2025 Eduard – Model Accessories, s.r.o.

Mírová 170

435 21 Obrnice

Czech Republic

https://www.eduard.com

support@eduard.com

+420 777 055 500

Sending statistics … done (965 ms)

No sync content to local

Viewport set: width=device-width, user-scalable=0; scale = 1

No sync content to local

Screen: easyReading

--==[ RUN ]==--

Info EDUARD: theme set to 8895

Device info: input=mouse, webkitPrefix=no, screen=1264x0(1)

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)

 r85/appLogo-123.png

 r85/pubLogoa-156-cz.png

 p156/vth469750-1.jpg

 r85/appLogoa-123.png

 r85/vth508074-0.jpg

 r85/vth508075-0.jpg

 r85/vth508083-0.jpg

 r85/vth508104-0.jpg

 r85/vth500159-0.jpg

 r85/vth500096-0.jpg[p1]

 r85/vth500149-0.jpg[p1]

 r85/vth500152-0.jpg[p1]

 r85/vth499986-0.jpg[p1]

 p156/vth507965-1.jpg[p1]

 i9409/vth469984-1.jpg

 i9409/vth469985-1.jpg