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9 Local WWII vets will take Honor Flight

By DAVID GOODWIN - News Editor
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James T. Hornsby hasn’t been on an airplane since he retired from the Alabama National Guard back in 1980.

But chances are, if his Honor Flight out of Dannelly Field has any engine problems on the way to Washington D.C., he’d have a good idea how to fix it.

A crew chief and flight engineer, Hornsby was stationed stateside during World War II. He trained new pilots, copilots and navigators in the operation of the B-24 Liberator, the Allies’ workhorse bomber in the European and Pacific campaigns.

The 88-year-old Hornsby will be among the 91 passengers-of-honor on board for his first visit to the World War II Memorial next Saturday as part of the Central Alabama Honor Flight, which will take veterans for a daylong visit to the nation’s capital.

The WWII memorial was dedicated in May 2004. But getting to D.C. to see it was a complicated undertaking for the remaining members of The Greatest Generation.

“It’s a logistics problem, because even the youngest WWII veteran is 80 years old or more, to get them there and back,” Roscoe Williams, who helped organize the Honor Flight along with the Prattville Chamber of Commerce, said.

But when the Boeing 737 goes “wheels up” from Dannely Field early Saturday morning, it’ll be filled with enough medical personnel and guides to make sure the veterans have a wonderful stroll down memory lane, and return to the River Region safe and sound.

Melvin Hyde, another former flight engineer who’ll be on the flight, said he started getting excited after the organizational meeting in Prattville last month.

“They just treated us like kings,” Hyde, who lives in Wetumpka, said. “I’ve never been treated better. It got me so excited about going, I can’t hardly stand it.”

The Central Alabama Honor Flight will carry 91 veterans from Montgomery, Autauga and Elmore counties on the 12-hour round-trip voyage to the nation’s capital. Nine of them are from Elmore County.

Unlike most air travellers these days, Hyde and Hornsby said they were even looking forward to the flight. Though the two gentlemen didn’t know each other previously, their shared experiences with bomber engines will give them plenty to talk about.

Hornsby remembers his time in the Army fondly. He enjoyed working with the airplane engines so much, he even returned to them around 10 years later, joining the Alabama Air National Guard.

“On the flight line, I always went by the name 'Old Man,' because I was white-headed even then,” Hornsby said, while leafing through a weathered envelope of pictures and documents from his 28 years with the Army Air Force and the Alabama Air National Guard. “They never called me by my real name.”

Hornsby was among those responsible for keeping the training fleet of Liberators flying. The Liberator still holds the record as the most-produced military aircraft in U.S. history, so there was a constant stream of trainees in need of a cockpit.

The Prattville Chamber’s call for interested veterans yielded far more than one Honor Flight could handle, so the group of 91 veterans will just be the first wave, Williams said. Another flight has already been planned for October.

“And we’ll keep flying until we get them all up there,” he said.

The veterans will have lunch at the World War II Memorial, and tour the other monuments situated around the National Mall. U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions plans to stop by for lunch with the area veterans.

Then the Iwo Jima, Korea, Vietnam, and Lincoln memorials will be on the itinerary. They’ll next go to Arlington National Cemetery to witness the ceremonial changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Williams said the veterans are scheduled to return to a hero’s welcome around 7 p.m. Saturday night.

Besides Hornsby and Hyde, the Elmore County residents who’ll travel to Washington Saturday include: Wilmer Scott of Wetumpka, Robert Kenney and Kermit Moore of Tallassee and Leonard Allen, Thomas F. Hedrick and Robert Hill of Millbrook.

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