A flight takes him back 64 years

By Megan McCloskey

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Parked at the North Las Vegas Airport, the plane seemed so much smaller to him than he remembered from World War II.

Maybe because Simon Epstein had seen one flying overhead only as he looked up from a foxhole. Fighting in the bloody Battle of the Bulge, when he was just a grunt with nothing more in his hand than a rifle, he saw the belly of a B-17 bomber as much bigger than its mere size. It carried not just bombs but also hopes of the Allied forces. As the planes soared, so did morale.

“When we saw them on bombing runs we jumped out of our foxholes and cheered,” Epstein said.

And now the 90-year-old vet has flown in one of the iconic aircraft — about 2,000 feet above Las Vegas.

He had eagerly accepted the Sun’s invitation to join a flight for reporters offered by the nonprofit Liberty Foundation, which owns the plane and tours the country with it.

Epstein showed up wearing a bomber jacket he had borrowed from one of his Sun City neighbors.

And there he sat as the bomber’s four engines rumbled alive, his back ramrod straight. He held on to the seat, configured sideways so passengers faced each other in the narrow cabin, knee to knee.

The cabin was hot and filled with a tinge of smoke, smelling something like burning tires, as the plane moved forward. “Here we go,” Epstein announced with the glee of a schoolboy.

It was too loud in the cabin to do any real talking, but Epstein smiled and nudged the passenger next to him to take a look at the view. Passengers were allowed at least one double take — at the incongruity of the scaled-down Eiffel Tower on the Strip.

Not many of the veterans who peered out those windows in WWII are still alive.

Even the youngest World War II vets are in their 80s. Nationwide, members of what has been called the Greatest Generation are dying at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, and some experts predict they’ll be gone by 2020. Their numbers have dwindled from 16 million to 2.5 million. Among them are about 40,000 in Nevada, most of them in the Las Vegas area.

“There’s not a lot of us left,” Epstein said.

Only three members of his chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart fought in World War II, and one of them died Thursday. The other is in a wheelchair.

Epstein knocks on the table when talking about his relative good health. He still carries the shrapnel he caught in his right calf during the Battle of the Bulge — an injury that, just recently, caused him to start using a cane.

Epstein was 22 when he volunteered in 1940 for a year of military service. The Army kept him for six. He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy three days after D-Day, and didn’t wait long for a combat promotion to 1st lieutenant.

Of the 32 men in his platoon, six survived.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” Epstein said. “I was only wounded twice.”

Today his gait is a little wobbly, but on the day of his flight, he was able to swing his leg up and pull himself into the B-17 cabin without much assistance.

The 25-minute flight was a simple circle over Las Vegas. Just before the bomber’s wheels touched the ground, Epstein stood up out of his seat — startling the other passengers — and pretended to fire one of the .50-caliber automatic machine guns that are still set up on each side of the cabin. As the plane landed and rumbled down the runway, another passenger supported Epstein as he clung to the gun, looking satisfied.

His story of flying in the B-17 will make him a star at his daily breakfast with his buddies — including a retired Navy commander, an Army captain and four Air Force guys.

He has certainly earned bragging rights.

“Oh yeah,” Epstein said. “They’ll love this.”