World War II flier recalls bomber shot down, months as POW

Walter Kuchinos, 90, at his Wescosville home. Kuchinos was a flight engineer/gunner… (Harry Fisher, THE MORNING…)

May 26, 2013|Of The Morning Call

First of two parts

Walter Kuchinos was the second youngest of eight sons born to Ukrainian parents in Bath. His father worked at the Lehigh-Portland cement mill and died when Walter was 5.

Kuchinos graduated from Northampton High School in 1940, studied mechanical engineering at night and got a job as an auto body repairman at Lentz Motor Co. With World War II raging in 1942, he joined the Army Air Forces and became a flight engineer/gunner on a B-24 Liberator bomber.

Staff Sgt. Kuchinos was 21 when he went on his first mission — over Normandy on June 6, 1944,to bomb German targets as part of the D-Day assault. Eight days later, he went on his third and last mission — to bomb a German airfield at Laon, France.

The 90-year-old Wescosville resident remembers what happened that day and some of his other experiences through the end of the war.

They took the Joker away from us and made the lead plane out of it. The Joker was the best plane. The guys always admired me because of the way I took care of it. So now we were flying 472, which was a joke to begin with. I said right away to the pilot that I didn't think it was fit to fly.

When we were taking off, we were hardly getting enough manifold pressure to skim over the