Monday, May 18, 2009

BY JIM BECKERMAN

NorthJersey.com

STAFF WRITER

 

 

 Airplanes, they said, would bring the world together. And two men from North Jersey, strangers to each other until three months ago, just proved it again.

 

One of them, airman George Prezioso, 89, of Belleville, lost a plane.

 

The other one, diver William "Skip" Huisking Jr., 59, of Glen Rock, found it – 66 years later.

 

"It's something I can't get over, this guy from out of nowhere who went down and saw the plane and got in contact with me," says Prezioso, a World War II veteran and part of the crew of a B-17 that went down in the waters off the coast of Papua New Guinea on July 11, 1943.

 

To be strictly accurate, Huisking did not "discover" the carcass of the downed bomber, whose location in 140 feet of water has been known since the mid-1980s.

 

But having read about it in a magazine, Huisking was determined to see it for himself. And once he did see it — on a diving expedition last Jan. 11 — he was determined to locate any survivors.

 

 

Little did he know that the last one lived 12 miles away.

 

"It's gotta be a million-to-one chance," Huisking says. "How many guys are still alive from that war? And how many would have been involved in [this particular] plane crash in Papua New Guinea half a globe away?

 

"It was only this past February that Prezioso, going through his e-mail in the two-story house he's called home since childhood, found a message from an unknown party.

 

"It said he was looking for me, if I was the right George Prezioso that was in the B-17 521 that was ditched off the coast of New Guinea," Prezioso says.

 

"I said I was. He must have gone through the floor when I said that."

 

 

Huisking was indeed stunned by his luck. But his good fortune was nothing compared with Prezioso's.

 

The plane that crash-landed in the water 66 years ago, with Prezioso (then a radio operator) and nine other crewmen aboard, was known — because of its lucky reputation — as Black Jack 21.

 

And not only did all 10 crew members survive that crash, but Prezioso survived four other plane crashes during his six-year stint in the war.

 

"It's true, all my life I've been lucky," Prezioso says. "I'm lucky I'm alive right now. I just get up in the morning and laugh."

 

The two men, separated by a generation, have something else in common besides the waterlogged piece of military hardware that brought them together.

 

Both have hobbies that became careers, and lifelong obsessions.

 

For Huisking, it was diving.

 

As a kid growing up on Long Island, he watched the popular 1960s TV show "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges, and took a diving course at the YMCA. As soon as he was old enough, he took the plunge. "I love it for the marine life, the history and the serenity," he says. "It's like museums under water."

 

For Prezioso, it was flying.

 

As a kid growing up in Belleville in the 1930s, he was fascinated with the planes coming in and out of Newark airport. He got his pilot's license around age 19 and volunteered for the Army Air Force in 1939.

 

That's how he ended up, in July 1943, in the company of nine other men, about to abandon a B-17 bomber that had been lost in a storm, run low on fuel and was unable to make it back to base. "The compasses were spinning around like a top," he remembers. "Which direction do you go?"

 

Mostly, he remembers a lot of frenzied activity as the crew, preparing to crash-land in the water, ditched every last piece of equipment that might fall into enemy hands in about 40 seconds.

 

"We threw out machine guns, transmitters," he says. "You had to throw out boxes of ammunition. You have to throw out the bombsight. If the enemy got that, they'd be using it like we do."

 

After that crash, he continued serving until the end of the war. At one point, he served as a radio operator to Gen. Douglas MacArthur. "He was pleasant, but at times he was very rough," Prezioso recalls. "When he gave orders, he wanted things done."

 

Once back in civvies, Prezioso became an aircraft inspector for the U.S. government, and remained an enthusiastic pilot despite his wartime experiences.

 

Huisking, for his part, parlayed his passion for diving into a business – Blue Water Divers, a company that does diving expeditions in exotic locales around the globe for groups of 10 to 20 experienced divers.

 

That's how he ended up, 140 feet underwater, off the coast of New Guinea four months ago — looking at Prezioso's plane.

 

"It was just an incredible sight," Huisking says. "It was all in great shape. We were seeing the tail, and the huge wingspan, with the engines and propellers still there. You could get partially into the cockpit, and you could see the gauges, and the steering mechanism."

 

Back on terra firma, Huisking, whose uncle, Frank R. Huisking, was a World War II hero (he was killed in a B-24 in 1944; Huisking has started a foundation in his honor), was moved to try to find any of the crew of Black Jack 21 who might still be alive. A few mouse clicks brought him to Prezioso.

 

"You could have knocked me over with a feather," Huisking says.

 

Since that first contact, the two men have become friends and also partners of a sort — they've given several joint presentations of their story to veterans' groups and sports clubs.

 

For his part, Prezioso would love to go down someday and pay his last respects to his dear, departed aircraft. Alas, while the spirit is willing, the diving credentials are weak.

 

"I don't think I would be qualified to go down in 150 feet of water," Prezioso says.