In Cary Salter’s flying days, pilots did not have the option of staying on the ground when the weather was bad. They took their planes up or faced court-martial.

During World War II, Salter flew a P-51D Mustang fighter on about 50 missions over France and Germany. On Saturday, he  would have been united with a replica of his plane had weather not intervened.

No official punishment was involved, and though some 200 bystanders were chilled by cold and snow flurries, they still got to cheer Salter at a ceremony in his honor in a hangar at Jackson’s Hawkins Field.

Nearly a dozen other WWII vets, many of them pilots, were present.

“I usually refer to myself as a ‘junior birdman’ in that outfit,” Salter, 88, told the crowd, referring to his Air Force experience from December 1944 until the European war ended in May 1945. “I was a real small part of it. But I feel confident we saved a whole lot of our guys.”

As a young pilot, Salter named his fighter “Charlotte’s Chariot” for the woman he married in 1944 just before being sent overseas. Charlotte Salter looked on as her husband of 65 years stood near a large photograph of himself at 22 standing next to the plane named for her.

Its replica was created by Vicksburg’s Dan Fordice, one of the owners of Fordice Construction of Vicksburg and who has a passion for history — especially the personal histories of “the greatest generation” and their war stories. In addition to buying and restoring vintage aircraft, Fordice, along with his friend John Paris, interviews and videotapes the old pilots.

“We were trying to figure out what we could do to honor the World War II guys,” Fordice said. When he heard Salter’s story, he knew he wanted to get one of the planes and paint it just like the original. “I’m excited that we were able to do it.”

It was in that aircraft on April 2, 1945, that Salter, along with just his squadron captain, encountered about 90 German planes believed to be on their way to bomb Gen. George Patton’s forces. He shot down two enemy planes and badly damaged another.

His actions earned him a Silver Star Award “for gallantry in action against the enemy.”

“The famous guys generally did one thing one day,” Fordice said. “The other 364 days of the year, Cary and all these other guys did the same thing. That’s why they’re heroes.”

Salter, who lives in Jackson, listened as proclamations from Gov. Haley Barbour, the Mississippi Senate and the City of Jackson were read in his honor and accepted a plane sketch from editorial cartoonist Marshall Ramsey.

Several vets made the trip from Vicksburg, including Charles Gastrell, 89, who flew 65 round trips “over the hump” — the Himalaya Mountains. It was jokingly called a “milk run,” but extreme weather, including hurricane-force winds every day, made it very dangerous flying, Gastrell said.

Leonard Katzenmeyer, 87, flew the Thunderbolt P47, he said, in missions over France, Belgium and Germany, supporting Patton’s forces and carrying out dive bombing, strafing and other maneuvers.

Younger visitors also made the trip from Vicksburg, including brothers George and Gordon Wilkerson, students at Bowmar Elementary and sons of Ruth and Richard Wilkerson. George, 10, said he wanted to see Salter’s plane because his grandfather, Gordon Surguine, 85, of Monroe, La., had also been a WWII pilot.

Fordice was hoping the weather would clear later so he could fly the new “Charlotte’s Chariot” to Jackson for Salter to see.

“They’re not comfy,” Fordice said of the P-51Ds. “There’s no heater, they’re loud — they weren’t built for comfort. They were built for killing Germans, and they were good at that.”

Six of Fordice’s restorations are on display at the Southern Heritage Air Museum at the Vicksburg-Tallulah Regional Airport in Mound. He’s also hoping to exhibit videos of his interviews, said his wife, Ann Claire Fordice.  “He loves connecting the old pilots with their planes. “That’s really his first love.”

Salter said he flew two aircraft during the war. The first was lost after a mission in France shortly after his arrival after a wing was hit. The second, dubbed “Charlotte’s Chariot II,” was left behind in a hanger in Germany with mechanical problems, he said.

“I get emotional telling their stories,” Fordice said of Salter and others like him. “Twenty million people were in uniform and every one of them saw a different war. That’s why we’re trying to get these stories.”

Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com