A World War II veteran's plan to jump out of an airplane exactly 70 years after he bailed out of a B-24 over Yugoslavia went off nearly without a hitch on Saturday.
Lingering, low-hanging clouds at noon — the precise time of the parachute jump on Dec. 20, 1944 — delayed Saturday's scheduled skydive by two hours.
Around 2 p.m., 89-year-old Thomas Boyd made the tandem leap over Byron, California, tumbling 7,500 feet to the ground below.
"It brought back memories from 70 years ago for me," Boyd said in a telephone interview from his home in Sunnyvale Sunday.
Boyd was a B-24 tail-gunner on his second mission of the war when an engine and bomb bay took on fire. It also happened to be his 19th birthday.
The bomber's pilot ordered the crew to bail out over Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia at noon.
"I didn't know where we were or who I was going to meet on the ground — the Germans or the friendly people," said Boyd, who was shot in the knee on the way down. "But it all turned out OK."
Related: Vet marks 70th anniversary of parachute jump with another
Though the pilot was taken prisoner, Boyd and the rest of the crew reunited and spent the next four days hiking through the country with the aid of the underground. The journey took them through the German lines; once, they were fired upon. They reached a secret British mission on Christmas Eve.
Boyd went on to fly two dozen missions and remained in the Air Force for 22 years.
Over the years, he thought about making another parachute jump, he said. Finally, this spring, Boyd told his daughter, Cynthia Kepple, that he wanted to commemorate the 70th anniversary of that first jump — and his 89th birthday — with another.
Kepple told her father she'd make the jump with him.
"I wasn't scared to do it," Boyd said of Saturday's leap. "I really wasn't. The circumstances were much different."
"The first wasn't voluntary. The second was," Kepple said.
He made Saturday's jump with an instructor, who took the brunt of the impact. The first he did alone, landing so hard on his right ankle he sprained it.
Boyd can still remember the bell that signaled it was time to jump that December day in 1944, the sound of the wind rushing through the silk canopy at 20,000 feet.
Watching the nose gunner go first gave Boyd the confidence to follow.
"I thought to myself: if he can do it, I can do it. I dove out head-first," he said.
Boyd readied for Saturday's jump with Bay Area Skydiving without a hint of trepidation.
"I didn't ever get nervous," he said.
Half a dozen of Boyd's friends whom he regularly shares breakfast with — they call themselves Retired Old Men Eating Out, or ROMEOs for short — made the drive to Byron show their support.
"I thought that was great," Boyd said.
Kepple battled a bout of nervousness on the drive to the airport and again right before she jumped. "But once I go there, being with my dad, I knew everything would be OK. I really wanted to jump with him. I knew if I didn't, I'd regret it," she said.
Boyd went first. Another passenger went second, followed by Kepple.
When father and daughter reunited on the ground, she said, "you should have seen the smile on his face."
"We're talking about making this an annual tradition," Kepple said.
"She is," Boyd responded with a laugh. "I'm not."
