The story was that there was almost a week's delay after his last mission before he was scheduled to ship out. He volunteered to fly with the crew until he left and there was good enough weather that week for just two more missions. Dad never talked about the war and all the information I got was from a mission list he kept, some old notes, and from talking to his navigator about 10 years after dad passed away. His navigator was visiting his son in a town near Austin and he saw my name in the Austin area phone book. He called up and asked if I was any relation to an A.J. Tarvid who was a B-17 pilot during WWII and I told him that was my dad. He introduced himself as dad's navigator and drove over one afternoon and sat down with me over dad's mission list and described his recollection of every one of them.

Dad referred to the Mustangs as "peashooters" and told me once that late in the war they were often escorted by so many of them they nearly blacked out the sky. Still, he said enough German fighters got through them to keep the B-17 gunners from getting bored. My mom said he really wanted to be a pilot when he enlisted and hoped to fly P-38s but at the time he went in they were using up bomber pilots at a terrible rate and that's were he got sent. Between the time he started training and finally shipped overseas the P-51 Mustangs had joined the fight and were escorting bombers all the way to Berlin. The loss rate for bombers dropped significantly.

To the best of my knowledge dad never flew again. I heard a family story that he interviewed with an airline after he got home and he was asked if he'd ever flown in combat. He said that was the only kind of flying he'd done and was told they weren't hiring any pilots who flew in combat. He never understood that and thought they should be looking specifically for combat pilots. Maybe understanding PSD is nothing new???