Apologies for copying my post from over at LEMB but wanted your views ..
Hi All,
Maybe this has been brought up earlier - I believe (read on the internet
that close to 30% of US citizens have German ancestry ? Anyway, during the war, many were in key senior positions (Ike, Nimitz, Spaatz), but surely the most ironic would have been the USAF pilots flying and fighting over "the old country" ? Two examples to, so to speak, tweak the "irony-meter" :
Capt. Werner G. Goering, USAF, nephew of the Reichsmarschall, who flew 48 missions abroad a B-17 ;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_G._Goering
Lt. Boeing, Luftwaffe, KIA, relative of the founder William Boeing, who was of german descent (source : Bowman etc. "Jane's Battles with the Luftwaffe", unfortunately not to hand, has a picture of the funeral).
Plenty of germanic names among USAF pilots keep propping up - Robert Goebel, even Hub Zemke ?
So my question is :- were the USAF pilots of germanic heritage so "assimilated" that they thought nothing of flying over or bombing the "old country" or there were some heartaches there ? If they were shot down and captured, did any consequences follow based on their patronyms ?
TIA.....