Harry Gael Michaels

Wings Over Normandy Harry Gael Michaels

This is a story about one young man of Irish immigrant parents growing up in San Francisco and entering the Army shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.



During his high school years, he works at the Fisherman's Wharf on weekends where he falls in love with the daughter of a fishing boat skipper. This relationship ends in tragedy as the war begins. After joining the military service he qualifies for flight school and then goes to Europe as the pilot of a B-26 medium attack bomber---the type that was used almost exclusively during the Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944.



Following a crash and while recuperating from physical and emotional exhaustion from a bombing mission in France his flight surgeon sends him off for a stay with friends in a small fishing village on the eastern coast of Ireland. There he finds renewed vigor for life especially in the mutual interest of the daughter of this loving family who is coming of age. They eventually marry and return to San Francisco to start a new life together.