The bombs that fell from Martin Sara's B-24 didn't hit their targets. It was D-Day at Omaha Beach, and the 466th Bombardment Group of the Army Air Forces had been charged with the responsibility of taking out the German bunkers facing the water.

"We flew a mission in the morning," he said Thursday afternoon in a quiet meeting room of the public library. "We missed the target horribly. I don't think they should've sent heavy bombers for that. We were up too high."

He was a flight engineer, a title that made him responsible for the mechanical performance of the plane. Just a few months before D-Day in Flint, Michigan, the 18-year-old been taught how to take apart an engine and put it back together. At Omaha, Sara tracked the pilots' instruments as they flew. Mortal danger was all around at 30,000 feet in the air, he said, whether it was from artillery, fighter planes or stormy weather...