Book Synopsis
Orphaned by the age of 10, Jim Turner was left without a permanent home, bouncing between living with family members in Upstate SC and Transylvania County, NC until he was drafted into the US Army in 1943. He originally volunteered to be a paratrooper but instead found himself on the way to Walker Air Field after graduating parachute rigging school - to join the “Battle of Kansas” in preparation for the new untested B-29 Superfortress. There he became a Hellbird. Then it was off to India, where Jim did triple duty as a parachute rigger, runway inspector and volunteer tail gunner. After surviving a crash in Burma during a mission and almost starving to death, Jim and the rest of the Hellbirds moved their home base to China, where they found themselves in hand-to-hand combat after a bomb raid that forced them to evacuate. By spring 1945, the B-29 program transferred to the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, where Jim survived a typhoon and found himself straddling the first atomic bomb.
About The Author
Harold Wayne Turner was raised in Pickens, SC where he grew up hanging out in his father Jim’s woodworking shop, listening to his stories about his childhood as an orphan and his service during World War II. Wayne took the skills he learned from his dad and used them to become an accomplished
luthier, building instruments with an unique artistic flair that earned him the state’s Jean Laney Folk Heritage Award in 2010. He is retired from the textile industry and still lives in Pickens with his wife Patricia.