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| Iris Dillon |
On July 20 1944, Flight Officer Iris Dillon
of the USA Air Force crash landed his war plane in rural Co. Offaly. The story
of this man takes us from San Diego to the skies of World War II, to Colorado,
with one significant stop at Clonsast bog near Edenderry, Co. Offaly, about five
miles from Portarlington.
The D-Day landings had just occurred a
month beforehand, and it would be just days before Anglo-American forces broke
free of the Normandy beach heads to advance towards Paris, when Iris Dillon
took off in his plane, named Shuu Shuu Baby, from Chalgrove airfield near
Oxford in the UK. He flew for more than two hours after becoming lost over the
Irish Sea, and when he sighted land he began to descend. The 20-year-old pilot,
who was on just his second mission, was unaware that he was about to fall onto
Clonsast bog. The incoming plane left the bog workers bemused, but Iris Dillon
thought he was landing on a perfect piece of tarmac, only to catch up in the
cleaned strip of bog and flip his aircraft into the soft surface.
The pilot survived and called out “anybody
there?” as the bog workers rushed to his aid. In a letter written by Iris
Dillon to an Irish historian in the 1990s, the veteran recalled that day: “I
flew over water for more than two hours and when I sighted land, I applied
power to the engines and climbed until I was above the overcast”, he recounted.
“I elected to extend the landing gear to make the landing when I spotted what I
thought was a suitable surface. The plane rolled about 200 yards, then the nose
gear collapsed, and the plane flipped ending upside down.” The grandfather of
noted Edenderry historian Ciaran Reilly, Paddy Farrell, was working on Clonsast
that day. He recalled his grandfather’s memories this week: “My grandfather,
Paddy Farrell, was working on the bog that day with several men and they saw
the plane flying in very low and thought that it was going to land until they
saw the propellers throwing up soil.” At this point the men realised the plane
had crash landed as it flipped over on its back. Iris Dillon recalled in the
90s that it would have been impossible for him to exit the plane without the
assistance of the peat workers: “I was unable to exit the plane until some of
the workers cleared some of the bog away”, he said. Paddy Farrell brought home
a fragment of Iris Dillon’s aircraft’s windscreen and the Reilly family have
retained this piece of World War II history now for more than 70 years. The
plane, of which there were 10,000 manufactured, was nicknamed the “fork-tailed
devil” by the German Luftwaffe, while the Japanese dubbed it “two planes, one
pilot.” Iris Dillon’s particular aircraft was furnished with 26 mission
markings, meaning it had seen considerable action before its demise in Co.
Offaly that day.
Iris Dillon was treated like any other American
pilot who found themselves stranded in Ireland during that time, and after
Local Defence Force members acted as an unarmed guard to Mr Dillon into Portarlington,
the San Diego man was transported to the Curragh camp. According to official
records recovered by historian Declan O’Connor, Iris Dillon was provided with
“some stimulant and food” before being interviewed and transferred to
Baldonnell, where he was returned to Northern Ireland. This was not the first
time Edenderry had been caught up in World War II. The town was reported to
have been woken from its sleep one night in 1941 as the Luftwaffe thundered
overhead on its way to bomb Belfast. Another incident involved a single dog
fight between RAF and Luftwaffe fighter jets in the sky directly above
Edenderry while the Garda Sergeant of the day, a Sergeant Byrne, attempted to
urge onlookers to go indoors.
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| Dillon as a young Air Force recruit |
Iris Dillon returned to active duty with
the USAAF and records suggest he was active again in the skies of France as
soon as August 1944, just weeks after “being dazed” in an Offaly bog. Iris
Dillon ascended through the ranks of the Air Force and eventually retired with
the rank of Major in 1965. Mr Dillon, who was of Irish extraction, lived most
of his life after his service in Aurora, Colorado, where he died in 2010. Dillon
had married his High School sweetheart at the age of 19 before he flew into the
war ridden skies over Europe, and they were married for 55 years until his
wife’s death in 1999. Dillon had three children, four grandchildren, and nine
great grandchildren in his lifetime, and he married for a second time to one
Billie Ruth Davis, and they remained married for nine years until Davis’s death
in 2009.
Iris Dillon’s official obituary bears the
story of Clonsast bog, where his daughter Len recalled her father telling them
about “the day some Irishmen” rescued him on a peat bog. In that same obituary
it is documented that Iris Dillon enjoyed the outdoors, “jogging ten miles a
day” for much of his life, as well as fishing and camping excursions he liked
to take with his family. His daughter laments her father’s life “One thing is
for sure, we will miss him; his wit, subtle love, demonstrated guidance through
actions and the momentum of family spirit.”
Iris Dillon never returned to Edenderry or
Ireland after his retirement, but with this obituary, and his fascinating life,
this county has been written into his history, while his story and the memory
of World War II will be forever etched in the ground of Clonsast bog.
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