Come Fly With Me

About the Book

On the evening of June 5th, 1944 9th Air Force Troop Carrier got ready. Altogether 1000 C-47's loaded up with heavily armed paratroopers. Early in the dark morning hours of June 6 we headed out on our assigned air corridor over Portsmouth, then over our Navy signal boat, than on to the 100 miles to cross the English Channel to the Normandy, peninsula, along the eastern coast 30 miles from the landing beached of Sword, Omaha and Juno. We crossed into France and dropped 16,000 troops behind enemy lines. The same airplanes returned later that day towing gliders loaded with men, Jeeps, munitions, and small cannons on a resupply run. I know. I was in the lead ship. I was there. Troop Carrier was the air express--a combination much like today's auto club rescue-wagon heroes and the Anything, Anywhere, Anytime FedEx service. This book tells of the events of a plain guy leading up to the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. We flew in and out behind enemy lines. I carried captured German generals, Holocaust survivors, black powder charges as well as wounded soldiers and fresh troops.

About the Author

On Dec. 24, 1943 Barney Welton began a journey that took him from Fort Wayne Ind. to the D-Day Invasion of France as a lieutenant in the cockpit of a C-47. The twin-engine Army Air Corps cargo planes of his unit, 79th Squadron of the 9th Air Force, were the work-horses that towed gliders full of cannons and jeeps and dropped paratroopers over the battlefields of Europe during World War II. In all, he flew 130 missions, including delivering fuel and supplies to Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army.