I met Joseph Enrietti while working on a different story, about an airplane made of rock. That story is also interesting but unrelated. In the course of our discussion of it, he let slip that he was a tail gunner during World War II. I say let slip, but he is proud of his service and I didn’t have to twist his arm much to get him to tell me more.

I wouldn’t call myself an aviation nerd, but I’ve always had an interest in WWII aviation, so I asked if he’d be willing to do an interview for an article.

When we sat down in November, despite the movies and documentaries I’ve watched, I found myself surprised at the experience Joe had, just between the ages of 18 and 20. He’s told me that looking back he can hardly believe it himself.

Our interviews totaled about 2.5 hours, and still hardly scratched the surface of his experience. What I’ve assembled below is an abridged version of those interviews, laid out in a way that I hope is both engaging and demonstrates the distance he traveled, mostly by train and bus, despite the straight lines on the map.

You can move through the different stops on his wartime travels by moving through the slides using the arrows on either side. Don’t forget to press play on the videos that are included on many of the slides.

The recordings of Joseph Enrietti’s story are being submitted to the Library of Congress’s Veteran’s History Project for preservation.

If you’d like to hear the unabridged interviews or read the transcriptions, they are available on Otter.ai at these links:

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Training

Part 3 - Europe and Post War

A playlist of the YouTube videos for one-click listening is available by clicking here.