Friday, May 20, 2005 | 3:51 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
May 21 - 22, 2005
George W. A. Brandt Jr.'s slender fingers flip through the yellowed pages of his first flight journal. It is scrawled with records of every flight he took while he was with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940.
"I wonder where all the time went," the sharp, blue-eyed 85-year-old reminisces.
He has five more journals in his Sun City Summerlin home. They tell the story of the 9,000 hours he flew during his 33 years as a military pilot.
And in one of those journals is a record of the flight he took Jan. 29, 1944. On that cold day in Foggia, Italy, Brandt landed a 25-ton B-17 bomber with a damanged engine on one wheel. Earlier this month the military finally awarded Brandt the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of the highest honors a pilot can receive, for that mission.
In 1939 Brandt was fresh out of flight school with a private pilot license. The United States had not entered World War II yet, and he was eager to get his wings. So he moved from Laguna Beach, Calif., to Canada and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940.
After months of training he was directed to be a teacher for a year before going into combat in Europe.
But before he did that, he had some loose ends to tie up.
His wife-to-be, Ladean, whom he affectionately calls Deanie, was still at home in Laguna. He left Canada, and the two were married by an Arizona justice of the peace in November 1941.
He said friends and family in Laguna Beach doubted Deanie, a native Southern Californian and two years Brandt's junior, would last more than three months in the freezing Canada winter.
"And we've been married for 63 and a half years," Brandt said triumphantly.
Brandt's life has been a series of beating the odds.
In 1942 he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Eventually he was stationed in North Africa, where he flew a B-17 flying fortress named "Queenie." Brandt didn't name the aircraft, but he said the name was more than appropriate.
"She was the queen of the sky," Brandt said.
It was January 1944 when he landed the four-engine aircraft with a wounded engine on a single wheel.
He was on a raid to bomb two railroad yards in German-held northern Italy. When he took off, one of his wheels exploded. During the mission "Queenie" sustained heavy enemy ground fire that damaged its No. 3 engine.
When Brandt returned to the base in Foggia, Italy, he had a choice. He could either evacuate the crew and ditch the aircraft over the Adriatic Sea or test his skills and "hope that I was capable of getting the airplane under control without losing control," Brandt said.
He had to carefully maneuver the wounded plane down, balancing its weight on the remaining wheel.
Had he lost control, the bomber would have done a ground loop and been engulfed in flames, he said.
Julius Horowitz, a fellow bomber pilot, stood by with the rest of the squadron as Brandt successfully put down the plane.
"It was quite a feat and it (the Distinguished Flying Cross) was very well deserved," Horowitz, an 83-year-old Florida resident, said.
After the landing, Brandt's superior officer told his staff Brandt deserved a promotion and a Distinguished Flying Cross. Somewhere the recommendation got lost.
About two years ago, his second-oldest daughter, Kathy Reed, and her husband, Christopher Donnelly, petitioned Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to rectify the almost 60-year-old mistake.
"It was a bureaucratic maze," said Reed, a San Francisco resident. "But there were good people in that maze who did help us."
The medal came more than 60 years late, but Brandt is glad to have it.
On May 6 he went to San Francisco where Boxer presented him with the elusive medal. He was dressed in a blue uniform he bought in Hong Kong almost 30 years ago. It still fits, even though he said he has to "suck in a little bit."
The Distinguished Flying Cross is one of the many awards Brandt earned during his 33-year military career including five rows of campaign ribbons and the Bronze Star.
Brandt retired from the Air Force in 1973 as a full colonel.
He's proud most of his children and grandchildren's accomplishments. He has two daughters, a son, and a grandson who live in California. His oldest daughter is a teacher in Germany, and her son is a student at the University of Texas.
They've all been to college, which is a source of pride for Brandt who only finished two years before enlisting in the Canadian Air Force.
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