U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS Wayne Dennison   Wayne Dennison of Ellsworth served in the Army Air Corps during World War II as a ball turret gunner on a B-17. Dennison, an East Machias native, entered the service on Feb. 18, 1943, when he was 18 after graduating from Washington Academy. A little over a year later, he flew on his first bombing mission. The date was March 22, 1944. “The first mission, we bombed Berlin,” Dennison said. On landing back in England, the crew assessed the damage. “We had 125 holes in the plane and we stopped counting.” The holes were from flak. He flew aboard a B-17 dubbed Sheriff’s Posse, so named for the pilot who was called Sheriff. They made four raids on Berlin. None was pleasant. Dennison recalled his B-17 in a formation of 500 to 600 planes flying toward an equal number of enemy planes. “You had just a few seconds to shoot,” Dennison said. The planes toward the rear of the formation took the brunt of the fire, he said. Dennison turned the turret and looked back to see planes going down. He also saw three B-17s, which had been flying in close formation, collide and explode. “I could see an awful lot of parachutes going down that day right into the heart of Berlin,” Dennison said. One day in May, flying over Berlin, Dennison shot down an enemy fighter flying an ME 109. Dennison said shooting down planes had not bothered him. “It didn’t bother me, it was just planes,” Dennison said. “But there were men in those planes.” Dennison said his wife, Winona, says he had nightmares for years about planes going down. “You never forget it when you’ve been in combat,” the WWII veteran said. “You try to put it out of your mind. But it’s there.” The part Dennison “dreaded the most” was taking off in a plane with a full load of bombs and fuel, he said. But, “we had it better than the infantry had it.” Dennison’s most memorable experience was flying on D-Day because of the significance of the invasion. Dennison got up at 1 a.m. Leaflets were distributed to everyone stating that the soldiers were about to “embark on a great crusade.” His B-17 was one of 11,000 planes in the sky on that historic day. Dennison’s last mission was June 18, 1944. He and his crew of nine had gone out on 35 missions and no one was ever injured. Dennison said he wondered at the start of each mission if it would be his last. Flying over the coast of France, there would always be a line of anti-aircraft guns, he said. “They’d always pick off one or two B-17s or B-24s,” Dennison said. “You always wondered, is it going to be me?” Dennison was on the same air base as his younger brother, Frank, whose job it was to patch holes in the planes. Frank would be on the ground, waiting and wondering if his brother would return. Frank would meet him after every mission. Wayne Dennison left the service as a staff sergeant on Oct. 18, 1945. Many area residents know Dennison, 80, from his 23-year stint as principal of the Bryant E. Moore School. Dennison had taught school in Howland for five years prior. He studied education in college on the GI Bill after serving three years in the military. After the war, Dennison met and married Winona, also a teacher. They will have been married 59 years on June 29. They have two sons and a daughter: John, Jim and Jane Butler, and four grandchildren. John works for the FBI. Jim, a licensed commercial pilot, owns Bar Harbor Airways. Jane is a jewelry artist and works for a Montessori school. In recent years, several members of Sheriff’s Posse have died. But there was a reunion here in 1989. Dennison had gathered all the crew, except for one who had died after the war in a welding accident . — Jennifer Osborn