[Annotator's Note: Newton Dana was born in 1924 in Trenton, New Jersey.] Newton Dana grew up with a large extended family including a brother who also served in the military. His family were meat packers with a farm operation of 500 acres on the side. He attended school and graduated from Trenton Central High School. Dana was 17 and attending Ohio State [Annotator’s Note: Ohio States University, Columbus, Ohio] when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator’s Note: Pearl Harbor, Ohio]. He heard the announcement over the radio. He realized that he would be fighting in war and it became an incitive to learn to fly. He enlisted when he was 17, but the Army did not take him until he was 19. He was sent to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: Fort Dix, New Jersey] for induction and then was sent to Atlantic City [Annotator's Note: Atlantic City, New Jersey] for basic training. His quarters were in a hotel. He recalls marching on the boardwalk. The Army asked for volunteers, which he did, but later learned to never volunteer. He was sent to West Virginia and was drilled for two weeks by a "ridiculous" instructor. He was finally sent to pre-flight training. On Sundays he would go trout fishing. One Sunday, they decided to go swimming and walked through a patch of poison oak. He ended up in the Army hospital for a week until he healed. Next, he was sent to Alabama and then to Nashville, Tennessee. He was then sent to Lakeland, Florida in July 1943 for flight training. Dana was having some difficulty, so the instructor gave him a check ride. His instructor told him that was the best check ride he had been on. After completion, he started basic flight school in Alabama and flew a BT-13 [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft, also known as the Vultee Vibrator]. After he completed basic flight school, he was sent to Blytheville, Arkansas for twin engine training. He enjoyed going into town at night after training. Dana remarks that many pilots died during training due to crashes. A total of 15 pilots were killed in his class before he received his wings. He was sent to Texas where he was trained on the B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. His instructor liked practical jokes and removed the locks on Dana's seat so he could not reach his controls while he was in flight.

After flight training [Annotator's Note: in the Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber], Newton Dana was sent to Westover Field, Massachusetts and was organized in a crew. His crew was sent to training in Charleston, South Carolina. On one training mission, the navigator was given the incorrect charts. They ended up flying over the Atlantic Ocean. They finally realized the error and turned around and headed toward Charleston. When they returned, the commanding officer was so happy to see them, he did not chew them out. Soon his crew was sent to Mitchel Field [Annotator's Note: Long Island, New York] and met a model who introduced him and his crew to other models. They dined with them for a week in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and had a great time. They picked up their bomber and named it in honor of the model the met [Annotator's Note: they named the plance the "Manhattan Maiden"]. They were ordered to fly to Bangor, Maine and then to Europe. During mid-flight, they received new orders to head to Bermuda. They found out that on their course, a plane had crashed ahead of them. Dana and his crew stayed in Bermuda for two weeks waiting for their next orders. To pass time they went fishing and drank. They were given orders to fly to the Canary Islands [Annotator's Note: Canary Islands, Spain] and then to Marrakesh [Annotator's Note: Marrakesh, Morocco]. They then flew to Tripoli [Annotator's Note: Tripoli, Libya] and Benghazi [Annotator's Note: Benghazi, Libya] and various other Middle East countries. They finally flew across the Himalayas, China and landed at their first base in Chengdu, China. That night, he played a game of craps with some fellow officers. Dana won the game, but the next day he realized that his commanding officer was one of the players in the game.

On Newton Dana's second mission, his plane was the last to leave the ground and as they reached the target area, he saw bursts of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] everywhere. He was surprised when they were able to drop all their bombs and return without getting any damage to their plane. For Dana, the worst part of the missions was flying through the Himalayas [Annotator's Note: Himalaya Mountains, China] which meant they were flying at 18,000 feet in the valley. His crew flew through storms for most of the year which made it difficult to stay on track and not lose direction. Several planes crashed while crossing the Himalayas. By the end of the war, they had exhausted all their targets in China, so they were given a mission to bomb a target in Korea. [Annotator's Note: The video breaks at 0:29:48.000.] Dana recalls that they lost many planes because they were running out of gas. Dana and his crew were transferred to India. On a return from one of their missions, the weather was so bad that they could not see but one marker. They had to time their landing blindly and were successful. Because he was so young, the death around him did not affect him. It was an "abstract experience." On one of his last flights over the Himalayas, he had returned from a 12 hour mission, and then was immediately put on another 12 hour mission. This was considered unprecedented. He never found out why they ordered his crew on back-to-back missions. On the way out, they received heavy flak and the weather conditions were bad. Dana could not read his instruments and could not control the altitude. Dana flew over 40 missions during his World War 2 service.

Newton Dana and his crew returned home by flying their bomber [Annotator's Note: a Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] across Africa, into Brazil, stopping in Puerto Rico, and landing in West Palm Beach [Annotator's Note: West Palm Beach, Florida]. Then Dana took a train to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: Fort Dix, New Jersey]. Dana suffers from post traumatic stress disorder due to one of his last missions over the Himalayas [Annotator's Note: Himalaya Mountains, China]. It took him about five years to adjust to civilian life due to effects of World War 2. Dana attended college for three years and graduated with a degree in Animal Husbandry in 1948. Dana soon met his wife and they had four kids. The war became a center point in Dana's life. Not a day goes by that he does not think about his war experience. One of his most memorable experiences of World War 2 was when he and his crew had to make a forced landing in China. They were at a point where they were about to bail out, but they found a small runway in the Himalayas [Annotator's Note: Himalaya Mountains]. They were stuck in the area for two weeks as they waited for a crew to come get them. They wandered through the mountain side exploring the land.