OVER TROUBLED WATERS

ANDREW HOCKO JR., the son of Slovakian immigrants who settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, coal country, was a waist gunner aboard Double Trouble, a B-24J Liberator bomber that took off from Pandaveswar, India, on February 13, 1945. Joined by five other bombers from the Tenth Air Force’s 493rd Squadron, 7th Bomb Group, Double Trouble winged southeast over Calcutta and the Indian Ocean before turning east en route to the jungled borderlands between Burma and Thailand. The low-level, “in-and-out” mission would take 15 hours—assuming they returned safely.