Hello and welcome to the latest installment of Family Stories, our weekly show in which

we share the extraordinary events that affected the lives of our listeners' parents and grandparents.

Today we are witnessed to fire fights in Italy, crashed bombers in Britain and a terrifying battle in the skies above Eastern Europe.

First up is this tale from Jared Wright. Jared says, I love the podcast and all the media you'll produce.

I had the pleasure of meeting my wife Stepgrandfather Robert Pearson. He was from Britain, South Dakota and joined the US Army Air Force in the mighty 8th after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This is Robert's story as he told it to a cousin of my wife, Mark Horvitt. Some missions were scary, others we called milk runs because they were so easy.

We made the first ten and never saw a meshesmith. We had to put up with flack over Berlin, but that was the worst place, and usually the only knockdown may be five, six planes out of 500.

And when you're young, well, those odds are good. But after those ten missions came the knock at the door at two in the morning.

One of our group looked at his watch, said some nasty words, and asked the orderly what the devil he was doing coming in at two in the morning.

He said, I tell you one thing, I'm going to be praying for all you guys. You've got 30 minutes, get dressed, get to breakfast, get to the briefing. Good luck.

Boy, did it get quiet? We had a wonderful breakfast, though, bacon and eggs, juice. We even got a bar of candy beside our plate to take with us.

That was a hint that this was going to be a no dinner deal. After breakfast, we went to the briefing room. Up in front, they had a stage and a curtain behind it.

The officer in charge told us, you're on one of the most important missions the eighth Air Force has ever done. And the longest.

We watched as a private opened the curtain. My God, he accamed the line across the English Channel, then across the coastal states, then across Germany. Finally, he got to the border of Czechoslovakia.

We had to go there, then make it back.

The officer told us this was Germany's biggest oil refinery. He said, if you guys can get there and knock that out, it was short in the war for the millions of guys who were in it.

Well, that was our eleventh mission, and it turned out to be our last.

We got in the air. I was sitting in my tailgunner position, behind us was squadron after squadron of 17s.

The cumulus cloud seemed to be prettier to me. Our plane wasn't one of the newer ones, but was touring along just as nice as could be. And I thought to myself, could those people in charge have been wrong? It's just such a nice day.

And all of a sudden the pilot breaks in, friendly planes appearing. Here came six P-47s, a pursuit plane, a fighter plane.

We waved, the pilots waved back, and as soon as they were out of sight, KC broke in, friendly planes going over the top. Here came four P-38s. They went over the top, and I thought, man, we've got help today.

They had hardly gone by, and here came the best news of all. Fighted planes appearing on my left, eight P-51s, our newest ones, the plane that was now better than the Mechismet.

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