Shake the hand of a veteran and say thanks. Opportunities are running out to meet World War II vets.

I didn’t want to overlook a friend of the family, Ed Hunt, who has been a lawyer for 61 years in Niagara Falls and Lewiston.

World War II didn’t start for the Niagara Falls native on Dec. 7, 1941, with Pearl Harbor or end with the victory over Japan in 1945. Hunt joined the Royal Canadian Air Force before the United States entered World War II, and his tour in the U.S. Army Air Corps was extended until 1946.

His missions? Hunt lost count. He flew from Canada to Casablanca and the islands in between the continents. He flew over the hump from India to China. He flew over Nakasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped on that city. He saw 16-inch shells fired from a battleship and watched the impact. He saw Marines storm the South Pacific islands.

His planes? Everything. Bombers, fighters, cargo planes, pursuit planes. Big ones, medium ones, one-seaters. He delivered P-40s that were built in Niagara Falls to be used by Russia. He delivered presents for friends and hop-catching GIs.

He took wounded soldiers from Okinawa to a hospital in Guam.

“What the hell?” Hunt said. “Things weren’t cool. They were hot. It’s one of the things you don’t pay too much attention to. You’re doing a job that you’re supposed to do.”

As a child on Eighth Street, Hunt was inspired to fly by Charles Lindbergh in 1927.

“I was always interested in planes when Lindbergh flew the ocean,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to make little airplanes.”

Hunt, who learned to fly at the Niagara Falls airport, graduated from Niagara University.

“I was out to fraternity convention (on) Labor Day 1939 when war broke out,” Hunt said. “The secretary of the war was there and said we will not be involved in any foreign war. Period. Franklin Roosevelt said we will not be involved.

“I read history, I was a product World War I, born in 1918. I said, ‘Like hell! Any time there’s a squabble in Europe, we’ll be involved.’ ”

Hunt had his pilot’s license and went to sign up for service in Canada in April 1941

“I didn’t want to be in the walking army,” he said. “I figured I could do more flying than I could do walking.”

He did a lot of flying.

Hunt joined the RCAF in Hamilton and was sent to Toronto. In Quebec, he trained pilots.

“When Pearl Harbor came, I tried to get out,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me out.”

After 18 months, Hunt was in Montreal in January 1943 when learned he was drafted by the U.S. Army. He flew for the War Department and ferried planes out of Michigan while his bride worked in a defense plant.

“I flew everything and anything,” he said. “Anything they needed moving, anything, anywhere.”

He ferried B-24s all over the states. He flew a B-17 and B-25 bombers; C-46s and C-47s. He remembers the B-17 flight he took to Northbay, Labrador, Iceland and Scotland.

“I wanted to go down to London. They wouldn’t let me go because of the buzz bombs,” he said. “They stuck me on a boat. It took me 14 hours to fly over and 11 days on boat.”

Hunt spent Thanksgiving on a boat back to America.

In Detroit, he volunteered to fly a C-46 and took it to India. There were stops in Miami, South America, the Ascension Islands in the South Atlantic, Africa and across the Indian Ocean.

He saw the Taj Mahal from the air. He had to give up his C-46 and was assigned a B-24 that was stripped of its gun turrets. The plane was used to carry cargo to China.

“It was a beat up old thing, but it was better than walking,” Hunt said.

The plane, which had passengers, was detoured in a sandstorm and had an instrument landing. “We got them on the runway,” Hunt said. “How they got the passengers from there to Calcutta, I don’t know. All I was concerned with was getting them on the ground and me in one piece.”

He was temporarily grounded by knit-pickers in Miami who wanted to know the weight and balance. They said he couldn’t fly out without it. “I said, ‘Give me a receipt for the airplane, and I’m on my way.’ ” Hunt was given clearance and delivered it to Delaware, where he got rid of it.

He flew the Bell P-39 Airacobra from Niagara Falls to Great Falls, Mont. The planes were then delivered to the Russians.

There was barely room for one person. “My head was in the top of the canopy,” the 6-foot-1 pilot said. The P-39 was destined to become the most successful Russian fighter.

After the war, Hunt thought he was heading to Australia. “I said, ‘I’m supposed to be at the separation center at the States,’ and then they sent me back to China.”

He felt most at home in the Douglas C-54 Skymaster, a powerful four-engine transport aircraft. He was finally discharged in April 1946 as a captain. Hunt got his law degree in 1948 from the University at Buffalo.

Hunt had hundreds of experiences, maybe none more memorable than airlifting wounded soldiers from Okinawa.

“Some of them were in uniforms, some didn’t have anything. Some would have limbs missing. They patched them up as quick as they could. We flew them out as fast as we could to get them the hell out of there.

“I was just one man, one machine,” Hunt said. “We had a whole bunch of machines doing the same things I was doing.”

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott

at 439-9222, ext. 6246.