When he graduated from West Point in 1939, Fred King's hopes of flying fighter planes crumbled because he was too tall. He became a bomber pilot instead, attached to the 397th Bomb Group which flew B-26 Martin Marauders built in Baltimore. King was steady enough at the controls that the commanding general of the 397th flew as his co-pilot. "He trusted," says King, "that I would come back."

While he could fly zig-zag patterns to avoid flak, bombing runs forced King to fly a straight line over the target for 90 tense seconds. By the time D-Day rolled around, King and his general had survived 19 such missions. On June 6th his group took out long range guns set up by the Germans at Trouville to shell the allied invasion fleet. Another 41 missions would follow.

After the war, King flew in the Berlin airlift. As for the B-26, most were converted to scrap for German reconstruction, a classic example of beating swords-into-ploughshares. After 30 years, King retired as a colonel.