Golden Gate Wing Guest Speaker Archive

Scott Powell, Captain, U.S. Army

Scott was commissioned as an officer upon graduation from Colorado College. He served as an Army Aviation
Officer and Helicopter Pilot from 1986-1995, flying 37 combat missions during Desert Storm and commanding an
Attack Helicopter company. He served in Germany, the Gulf War, Hawaii, and Haiti.

His military awards and decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, the Joint Services
Commendations Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, and the Liberation of Kuwait Medal.

After leaving the Army, he earned a Masters Degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University and a Masters from Harvard University.

Scott is currently an executive at Optimizely, a San Francisco-based software company.

Scott Powell, Captain, U.S. Army

Scott was commissioned as an officer upon graduation from Colorado College. He served as an Army Aviation
Officer and Helicopter Pilot from 1986-1995, flying 37 combat missions during Desert Storm and commanding an
Attack Helicopter company. He served in Germany, the Gulf War, Hawaii, and Haiti.

His military awards and decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, the Joint Services
Commendations Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, and the Liberation of Kuwait Medal.

After leaving the Army, he earned a Masters Degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard University.

Scott is currently an executive at Optimizely, a San Francisco-based software company.

Scott Powell, Captain, U.S. Army

Scott was commissioned as an officer upon graduation from Colorado College. He served as an Army Aviation
Officer and Helicopter Pilot from 1986-1995, flying 37 combat missions during Desert Storm and commanding an
Attack Helicopter company. He served in Germany, the Gulf War, Hawaii, and Haiti.

His military awards and decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, the Joint Services
Commendations Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, and the Liberation of Kuwait Medal.

After leaving the Army, he earned a Masters Degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard University.

Scott is currently an executive at Optimizely, a San Francisco-based software company.

Scott Powell, Captain, U.S. Army

Scott was commissioned as an officer upon graduation from Colorado College. He served as an Army Aviation
Officer and Helicopter Pilot from 1986-1995, flying 37 combat missions during Desert Storm and commanding an
Attack Helicopter company. He served in Germany, the Gulf War, Hawaii, and Haiti.

His military awards and decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, the Joint Services
Commendations Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, and the Liberation of Kuwait Medal.

After leaving the Army, he earned a Masters Degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard University.

Scott is currently an executive at Optimizely, a San Francisco-based software company.

Jack was born in 1924 and raised in the Bitteroot Valley of Montana.  His father was an alternate Forest Ranger stationed in the primitive area of Idaho and Montana.  The family lived on a hardscrabble farm in a small 3-room house with an 8’ lean-to on the back side. Jack was the oldest of seven children, five boys and two girls.  There wasn’t enough room in the house so Jack grew up in a 12’ wall tent on a tent platform.  On the tent’s mercury thermometer, he never saw it colder than 40° below zero.  Not until he was flying a B-24 did he realize that mercury freezes at - 40° Fahrenheit. His maternal grandmother lived with them and taught him to harness a horse and to plow a straight furrow.  

Jack graduated from the local high school and went to work as a Forest Service Headquarters guard, commissary clerk, and short string packer on the Moose Creek Ranger District, stationed at Bear Creek Ranger Station.  He supplied lookout stations with emergency runs and picked up the parachutes and fire equipment left by the smoke jumpers after they put out the fires.

In mid-September 1942, Bert Waldren, the alternate Forest Ranger at Moose Creek, came up the river to shut down some lookouts.  After supper, Bert asked Jack what he planned to do with his life.  Jack replied, “I thought I’d follow my dad and work for the Forest Service.”  Bert said, “Your dad and I are the last that will ever get this far without a college education.

Jack applied to and was accepted by the University of Montana at Missoula, Montana.

The Government Offices and President Roosevelt had decided the next war would be fought like the Spanish Civil War and that all draftees and enlistees would be IQ tested.  Anyone scoring over 150 would be assigned to the Air Arm of the Army or Navy.

On 6 Dec 1943, Jack and Laddie Winklebach (packer from the upper district) were told to register for the draft.  They both refused and went to the recruiting office to enlist.  They were told to catch a bus to the train station the next morning and get a train to the Butte Recruiting Office. There, they were tested and given a physical examination.  Jack was sent to the Army Air Corps; Laddie was assigned to the Artillery Corps.  Jack went to Fort Douglas, Utah, was issued his uniform, and received orders to Basic Training at Wichita Falls, Texas.

When the trainees completed Basic, they were told they would be trained as Glider Mechanics.  Jack was assigned to Alliance Army Airbase in Nebraska.  He assembled the first CG4A glider to fly and was told he would be co-pilot for the test flight. 

The glider was hooked to a C-53 by a 100-yard nylon rope; there was a crosswind on the runway.  The C-53 pilot started its engines, tightened the tow rope, and began the takeoff roll.  But the glider’s pilot let it drift off the runway.  The C-53’s co-pilot released the tow rope and the rope’s 10 lb. connector came back through the glider’s fiberglass windscreen between Jack and the pilot. 

Unhurt, Jack got a tow vehicle and pulled the glider to the hangar.  He wired a piece of Plexiglas to cover the hole and they were ready to complete the test lap.  The flight was noisy and bumpy until they were released at 5,000 feet. 

On approach for landing, Jack deployed full spoilers as directed by the pilot.  The glider came down like an elevator into a cornfield a mile short of the runway.  Jack cut the field fence, got the tow vehicle, and pulled the glider back to the hangar.

He immediately went to the orderly room and applied for aviation cadets.  He was accepted and ordered to the Southeast Command for primary training in Americus, GA, flying the PT-17.  From there, he was sent to Greenwood, MS for basic flight training in the BT-13. His next destination was Columbus, MS for twin engine advanced training in the AT-17. 

8 Sep 1944 Jack graduated as a commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Air Corps, US Army.  Rated a pilot, he was required to participate in regular and frequent aerial flights.

8 Sep 1944 Ordered to Fort Myers AAB, FL for B-24 Co-pilot School.

Nov 1944 at Lemoore AAB, CA for assignment to a B-24 crew training unit.

Nov 1944 at Tonopah AAB, Nevada for B-24 Crew Training (Crew 327)

12 Apr 1945 Jack graduated and was granted a 15-day furlough prior to overseas deployment to bomb Japan.

20 Apr 1945 Jack asked permission of his CO to marry and a five-day extension of his furlough.

24 Apr 1945 Jack married the prettiest girl he knew.  He had originally met her during his first week at the University of Montana.

27 Apr 1945 Jack returned to Tonopah AAB, NV with new bride to find Crew 327, its Flight Crew Chief, and Jack were ordered to Mountain Home AAB, MT to fly B-32s.

29 Apr 1945 Ordered to March Field, CA to fly F-7s, a B-24 variant with three large radars.

8 May 1945 Germany unconditionally surrendered.

1944-1945 Japan was secretly sending balloon-borne explosive and incendiary bombs across the Pacific at high altitude to randomly attack the US and Canada.

May 1945 Major General LeMay was transferred from Europe to the Pacific to bomb Japan with B-29s.

Jun 1945 General LeMay ordered a massive bombing mission: 150 B-29s from China and 150 from Tinian. En route, they encountered a 250 mph headwind (what we now call the jet stream); 90% of their bomb loads fell into Tokyo Bay. That night on the air, Tokyo Rose thanked the US Army Air Corps for the lovely fish dinners they had furnished to the people of Tokyo and Yohahama.

Jun 1945 The F-7 mission was cancelled because it was confirmed that the firebomb balloons were launched from the Japanese home islands to ride the jet stream into the US and Canada.

6 Aug 1945 The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

9 Aug 1945 The second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

15 Aug 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally.

2 Sep 1945 Peace Terms were signed on board the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Gordon was born in Beverly Hills, CA in 1947 and adopted at birth by a warm and loving childless older couple (dad aged 55, mom aged 42).  His father was a dry foods warehouse broker; his mother was a housewife.  Raised in a privileged environment, he was taught very strict discipline (which was to serve him well later in life) in a conservative atmosphere of total respect for God and Country.

In addition to the usual childhood diseases, at age eight he contracted polio and was partially paralyzed for more than a year.  This condition and its after effects would  probably have disqualified him from serving in the military (let alone flying) had the Vietnam War not been ramping up the need for people.

Gordon graduated from Beverly Hills High School, entered Cornell University at Ithaca, NY majoring in Agricultural Economics, and joined the Marine Corps Officer Training program.  After two summers in Platoon Leaders Class at Quantico, VA, upon graduation from Cornell in 1968 he was commissioned as a 2LT.  Although on an aviation contract, he failed the vision test on his pre-commissioning physical exam and resigned himself to becoming a ground officer because he still wanted to serve.

A chance meeting with a Navy Chief Hospital Corpsman at a pool table in a beer joint provided him with another shot at an eye test and he was on his way to flight school!  As the regular Navy pipeline was full at the time, a few Marines were selected to attend USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training.

During his introduction to jets while with the Air Force in 1969, he was discovered to be astigmatic.  If there had not been a war on, he would have been washed out.  Instead, they issued him glasses.  After receiving Air Force wings, he went back to the Naval Training Command for instruction in carrier landings, gunnery, and Air Combat maneuvering (aka dogfighting).  

In July 1970, as a newly-minted Naval Aviator and 1LT, he got to choose and was assigned to fly A-4 Skyhawks.  But it became clear that the air war (for Marines) was rapidly winding down.  In Vietnam, the only two aircraft that still needed Marine pilots were the C-130 Hercules and OV-10 Broncos.  The transition training for OV-10’s at Camp Pendleton, CA was much shorter (only several months), he gained a transfer into them because he wanted to get into combat while there was still a chance.  By that time, he had decided to make the Marine Corps a career and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a combat tour in his record book.

By January 1971 he was on his way to Da Nang, South Vietnam with a several-week interruption to attend Jungle Survival Training in the Philippines.  Although most Marine air assets were pulled out of Vietnam by March 1971, he was able to continue flying the OV-10 as a Forward Air Controller (FAC) with Marine Observation Squadron Two (VMO-2) and HQ & Maintenance Squadron Eleven (HAMS-11) until April.  

The squadron custom was to pick your own radio call sign; he chose “Bear”.  The grunts got to know him well in a very short time.  During 75 hours of intense combat flying dispensing great qualities of ordnance (7.62mm machine guns and six-barreled Gatling guns, 20 mm cannon, and 2.75” rockets) he had a few close calls, took some bullets in the airplane, and helped save a bunch of Marines on the ground.

His next assignment (by choice) as a Battalion Air Liaison Officer (grunt FAC) with the 1st Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison Company (ANGLICO), a joint USMC-USN outfit and the Republic of Korea (ROK) Marines at Hoi An, on the coast about 20 miles southeast of Da Nang.

In this setting, Gordon’s experience as an airborne FAC proved immensely valuable.  The Koreans recognized this, treating him and his radio team wonderfully.  Although the setting was beautiful, right on the South China Sea (the site is now dotted with luxury hotels), the living conditions were abysmal.  Unlike the air-conditioned Quonset huts, hot showers, flush toilets, good chow, and an O-Club at DaNang, they were in underground bunkers that flooded regularly, constant companions of scorpions, spiders, ants, snakes, and rot.  A cold shower from an overhead drum, electricity, and fresh food were occasional treats.

Back home for Christmas 1971, then a couple more years flying OV-10’s as an Instructor Pilot and Squadron Legal Officer with VMO-2 back at Camp Pendleton, CA, now as a Captain.  He became disenchanted with the way the Marine Corps was heading (they didn’t call it "political correctness” or “sensitivity” back then), and was made an “offer he couldn’t refuse” at approximately seven times his military pay.  Needless to say, he resigned.

He kept on flying, though -- bought a brand-new Piper Seneca twin in 1978 and flew it for the next 36 years, along with other folks’ airplanes.  Along the way, he also managed to sneak in successful careers in production agriculture and commercial real estate investment.  In 1991, when Desert Shield brewed into Desert Storm, he tried to get back in, even as a "desk jockey”, but was politely told that at 44, he was too old.  

That started his volunteer service with the US Coast Guard Auxiliary as an Aircraft Commander, flying Search and Rescue (SAR), coastal patrol, aids to navigation, and logistic/transport missions.  After Sept. 11, 2001, that was expanded to include homeland security patrols and acting as a target aircraft for interceptors.  He continues to fly to this day, albeit with a co-pilot, as health issues have caused him to surrender his FAA Medical Certificate.

In 1986, he married Jeanne.  They have two adult children and two grandchildren.  The couple resides in Napa, CA.

Cree Townsend, Petty Officer 2^nd Class, United States Coast Guard

Cree was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1993.  Her father served in the US Marine Corps and later worked as a parks and recreation manager.  Her mother was an elementary school teacher and later became a US Postal Service employee. Cree attended Forest City Regional High School in Forest City, PA.

She then entered Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton, Florida and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Sculpture in 2013.

Cree joined the Coast Guard in 2014 and completed Boot Camp at Cape May, New Jersey.  Her first operational assignment was seaman on Coast Guard Cutter Charles Sexton, a Fast Response ship stationed in Key West, Florida.

After additional training in 2016 at Yorktown, Virginia, Cree earned the rating of Marine Science Technician.  She was transferred to her current station at USCG Sector San Francisco on Yerba Buena Island where she conducts facility inspections, foreign vessel inspections, and pollution responses.

Her military awards and decorations include:

-- Commandant’s Letter of Commendation Ribbon

-- Coast Guard Meritorious Unit Commendation with 1 Star

-- Coast Guard Meritorious Team Commendation with 2 Stars

-- Coast Guard Pistol Marksman Ribbon

-- Coast Guard Sea Service Ribbon

-- Coast Guard Good Conduct Medal

-- Global War on Terror Service Medal

-- Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal

 In 2014, Cree married Patrick McGowan before both joined the Coast Guard.  The couple resides in Oakland.

Gordon was born in Beverly Hills, CA in 1947 and adopted at birth by a warm and loving childless older couple (dad aged 55, mom aged 42).  His father was a dry foods warehouse broker; his mother was a housewife.  Raised in a privileged environment, he was taught very strict discipline (which was to serve him well later in life) in a conservative atmosphere of total respect for God and Country.

In addition to the usual childhood diseases, he contracted polio at age 8 and was partially paralyzed for more than a year.  This condition and its after effects would most probably have disqualified him from serving in the military (let alone flying) had the Vietnam War not been ramping up the need for people.

Gordon graduated from Beverly Hills High School, entered Cornell University at Ithaca, NY majoring in Agricultural Economics, and joined the Marine Corps officer training program.  After two summers in Platoon Leaders Class at Quantico, VA, upon graduation from Cornell in 1968 he was commissioned as a 2LT.  Although on an aviation contract, he failed the vision test on his pre-commissioning physical exam and resigned himself to becoming a ground officer because he still wanted to serve.

A chance meeting with a Navy Chief Hospital Corpsman at a pool table in a beer joint provided him with another shot at an eye test and he was on his way to flight school!  As the regular Navy pipeline was full at the time, a few Marines were selected to attend USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training.

After receiving Air Force wings, he went back to the Naval Training Command for instruction in carrier landings, gunnery and Air Combat maneuvering (aka dogfighting).  During his introduction to jets while with the Air Force in 1969, he was discovered to be astigmatic.  Had there not been a war on, he would have been washed out.  They issued him glasses.

In July 1970, as a newly-minted Naval Aviator and 1LT, he got to choose and was assigned to fly A-4 Skyhawks.  But it became clear that the air war (for Marines) was rapidly winding down, and the only two aircraft that were still requiring Marine pilots in Vietnam were the C-130 Hercules and OV-10 Broncos.  Since the transition training for OV-10’s at Camp Pendleton, CA was much shorter (only several months), he gained a transfer into them as he wanted to get into combat while there was still a chance.  By that time, he had decided to make the Marine Corps a career and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a combat tour in his record book.

By January 1971 he was on his way to DaNang, South Vietnam with a several-week interruption to attend Jungle Survival Training in the Philippines.  Although most Marine air assets were pulled out of Vietnam by March 1971, he was able to continue flying the OV-10 as a FAC (Forward Air Controller) with Marine Observation Squadron Two (VMO-2) and HQ & Maintenance Squadron Eleven (HAMS-11) until April.  

The squadron custom was to pick your own radio call sign; he chose “Bear”.  The grunts got to know him pretty well in a very short time.  During 75 hours of intense combat flying dispensing great qualities of ordnance (7.62mm machine guns and six-barreled Gatling guns, 20 mm cannon and 2.75” rockets) he had a few close calls, took some bullets in the airplane, and helped save a bunch of Marines on the ground.

His next assignment (by choice) as a Battalion Air Liaison Officer (grunt FAC) with 1st ANGLICO (Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, a joint USMC-USN outfit) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) Marines at Hoi An, on the coast about 20 miles southeast of DaNang.

His training as an airborne FAC proved immensely valuable in this setting.  The Koreans recognized this, treating him and his radio team wonderfully.  Although the setting was beautiful, right on the South China Sea (the site is now dotted with luxury hotels), the living conditions were abysmal.  Unlike the air-conditioned quonset huts, hot showers, flush toilets, good chow, and an O-Club at DaNang, they were in underground bunkers that flooded regularly, constant companions of scorpions, spiders, ants, snakes and rot.  A cold shower from an overhead drum, electricity and fresh food were occasional treats.

Back home for Christmas 1971, then a couple more years flying OV-10’s as an Instructor Pilot and Squadron Legal Officer with VMO-2 back at Camp Pendleton, CA, now as a CAPT.   He became disenchanted with the way the Marine Corps was heading (they didn’t call it "political correctness” or “sensitivity” back then), and was made an “offer he couldn’t refuse” at approximately 7 times his military pay.  Needless to say, he resigned.

He kept on flying, though -- bought a brand-new Piper Seneca twin in 1978 and flew it for the next 36 years, along with other folks’ airplanes.  Along the way, he also managed to sneak in successful careers in production agriculture and commercial real estate investment.  In 1991, when Desert Shield brewed into Desert Storm, he tried to get back in, even as a "desk jockey,” but was politely told that at 44, he was too old.  

That started his volunteer service with the US Coast Guard Auxiliary as an Aircraft Commander, flying Search and Rescue (SAR), coastal patrol, aids to navigation and logistic/transport missions.  That was expanded to include homeland security patrols and acting as a target aircraft for interception after Sept. 11, 2001.  He continues to fly to this day, albeit with a co-pilot, as health issues have caused him to surrender his FAA Medical Certificate.

In 1986, he married Jeanne.  They have two adult children and two grandchildren.  The couple resides in Napa, CA.

Charles was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1923. 

Education:

M.A., University of Chicago (skipped B.A. to work directly for M.A. after World War II); M.A. and Teaching Credential awarded June, 1949.

Ph.D. awarded by University of California, Berkeley, with College Administrative Credential, June, 1966.

Military Service:

Basic Training and Stanine exams, 1943.

Flying Training Multi-Engine Aircraft, 1943.

Assigned to 8^th Air Force flying out of England for daylight bombing of Germany, Poland, France, Spain, during Spring and Summer 1944 before, during, and after D-Day. Completed 30 missions as Squadron Leader, September 1944.

Military Awards and Decorations:

Distinguished Flying Cross (highest award given in US Army Air Forces).

Four Battle Stars, Three Air Medals, Two Presidential Citations

Occupations:

Teaching 7^th grade through High School in Portland, Oregon, 1949, until recalled as ready Reserve pilot, 1951 through 1953.

Moved to California to help found Diablo Valley College as Instructor and Administrator, Dean of Instruction, 1958 through 1991.

Married Paula Lee in Dublin, Ireland in 1951. Three children:

Chuck -- a research lawyer

Colleen – an Elementary School principal

David – a US Air Force Academy graduate with 20 years military experience and now working as a Senior Engineer for Lockheed Space Systems.

Cleveland’s distinguished military career began at age sixteen in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1946. After three years, he enlisted in the Army for Airborne Training.  When the call came for volunteers to be trained as Army Rangers, he eagerly submitted his name and became one of the original members of the 2nd Airborne Ranger Infantry Company.

He participated in all company campaigns and raids from the time that the 2nd Airborne Ranger Company arrived in Korea until the company was deactivated in August 1951.

Serving as Assistant Squad Leader when his Squad Leader was killed in action, Cleveland assumed command of the squad and conducted numerous patrols, raids and deep penetration operations against North Korean and Chinese forces.

During the Battle of Major-ri, the 2nd Ranger Company suffered grievous casualties. On 14 January 1951, he saved the life of a wounded fellow Ranger by literally carrying him from the scene of battle to the aid station for medical treatment. This heroic rescue was done at night covering approximately three miles over mountainous terrain with deep snow and severely cold weather. He then returned to the battle area to assist in setting up a blocking action.

Following the 23 March 1951 Munsan-ni Combat Jump, Cleveland led his squad as the spearhead on a mission to link up with elements of the 3rd Infantry Division on 27 March.

He volunteered for a second combat tour in Korea and joined the 24th Infantry Division where he was promoted to Master Sergeant and served as a Platoon Sergeant.

After the Korean War, Cleveland signed up to be an Army aviator, flying helicopters as a warrant officer. He flew missions in the Ia Drang Valley, one of the most dangerous areas of Vietnam. He logged more than 10,500 career flight hours, 2,100 in combat. He later became an instructor pilot and personnel officer.

His military awards and decorations include:

  Three Bronze Star Medals; one with with "V" Device

  Purple Heart

  Army Commendation Medal

  Combat Infantryman badge

  Korean Service Medal with six battle stars and Arrowhead.

  Four Distinguished Flying Crosses.

Cleveland Valrey distinguished himself throughout his military career and was a role model during more than thirty years of exceptional and courageous service.  For his achievements, he was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame.

Though much has changed since he first signed up in the Army Air Corps in 1946, he is convinced military service is still a great opportunity. “The military is not for everyone,” he said. “But I’m convinced it’s a good option.”

Dale Cook grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and joined the United States Marine Corps in 1944 at age 17. After training as a mortar-man, he was shipped out to the Western Pacific with the 4th Marine Division.

Iwo Jima is a volcanic island in the Western Pacific south of the Japanese home islands.  During World War II, the objective of US Forces was to capture the Japanese-held island for use as an emergency landing strip for battle-damaged B-29 bombers returning from raids over Japan.  During February-March 1945, an epic five-week battle resulted in very heavy casualties on both sides.

At age 18, Dale landed on Iwo Jima and was handed a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR).  He thus became a BAR-man until he was wounded by an enemy grenade and evacuated to a hospital ship.

He left the Marine Corps as a corporal. But later, he joined the Army Reserve and retired with the rank of Major.

Dale graduated from Washington State University where he served in the ROTC program and on the university newspaper. Upon graduation, he worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer before becoming the Region Director for Public Relations for the Atomic Energy Commission in Idaho Falls and in San Francisco.

Dale joined the VFW in 1945. He:

¾  is also a member of the Marine Corps League

¾  was President of the Marine Corps 4th Division Association

¾   is currently President of the Joe Rosenthal Chapter, United States Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association.

Dale is a popular speaker about Iwo Jima and lives in Brentwood, California.

Evelyne was born in Sens, France (near Fontainebleau) in June 1939.  Her parents, both born in France but naturalized as US citizens, had lived in San Francisco and New York in the 1930s.  Her father was a mechanic; her mother was a housewife. They had returned to France on a vacation to look for long-lost siblings.

Upon arrival in France, her mother discovered that she was expecting a child after having three miscarriages. Her French doctor advised that she not fly home until after the baby was born. 

At that time, Germany was aggressively expanding the territory it controlled. Anticipating a repeat of World War 1, France was mobilizing to defend its homeland.  Evelyne’s father (with dual citizenship) was required to join the French Army for the second time and most passports were canceled. 

Within months, invading German forces had occupied neighboring countries and Northern France.  Evelyne’s father was captured with his entire unit and was scheduled to be shipped to a POW work camp in Germany. 

German soldiers moved into the Pothrons’ home in Sens. Evelyne’s mother was forced to care for the enemy troops; some of them abused her.  On three separate occasions, Evelyne and her mother tried to escape together.  Each time, they were caught and brought back to Sens.

Finally, they were advised to leave France and successfully fled over the Pyrenees mountains into Portugal, where a great surprise awaited them at the American Embassy in Lisbon.

They were eventually placed on a ship for diplomatic personnel and returned to the US in 1945.

Lew was born in San Diego to parents Wilson and Ruth Jennings in 1946. His father was active duty Coast Guard. He and his younger sister Gail grew up in Hawaii and Santa Cruz. After his father retired from the Coast Guard, they moved to Cupertino where Lew graduated from high school there in 1964. 

While attending Cabrillo Community College in Aptos, CA and working full time at Sylvania Corporation in Santa Cruz, Lew received his draft notice. Already a Private Pilot, he volunteered for the Army’s Warrant Officer Flight Training Program and entered active duty at Oakland on 21 August 1967. After basic combat training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, Lew attended helicopter flight training at Fort Wolters, Texas and Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. Graduating at the top of his class, he completed Cobra Attack Helicopter Qualification and received orders for Vietnam.

Lew arrived in Vietnam in February 1969 assigned to the 7/1^st Air Cavalry Squadron at Vinh Long. He qualified for Aircraft Commander in two months and was then assigned to the 2/17^th Air Cavalry, 101^st Airborne Division at Hue-Phu Bai where he flew a total of 726 helicopter gunship combat missions in the A Shau Valley, Hamburger Hill, LZ Airborne, and other infamous battles.  

His more than 50 military awards and decorations include three Distinguished Flying Crosses for Valor and 36 Air Medals. 

Lew went on to serve 20 years active duty, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautics from Embry-Riddle University, and retired as a Major in 1987. After his military retirement, he became an airline pilot, business executive, and award-winning author. He recently published his highly acclaimed memoir “19 Minutes to Live – Helicopter Combat in Vietnam”. 

In 2005 he volunteered to fly humanitarian relief missions full time for three months in the aftermath of the Katrina/Rita Hurricane disasters in Louisiana and Texas. In 2008 he came out of retirement again to serve in Iraq where he flew nearly 800 secret Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Logistics missions.

An active pilot, Lew holds an ATP rating for airplanes plus Commercial and Instrument ratings for helicopters. He has restored 29 civilian single-engine production airplanes and recently completed building a composite Glasair II FT. 

Lew’s affiliations include:

-- Life Member of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association

-- Distinguished Flying Cross Society

-- Disabled American Veterans

-- Experimental Aircraft Association

-- Active Member of the Old Bold Pilots and Quiet Birdmen

Lew and his wife Anneke reside in Aptos.

Phil grew up as an ‘Army Brat’ living in the US, Japan, and Italy before beginning high school.

On graduation from Virginia Military Institute in 1967, he was commissioned a Regular Army officer. Among other duties, his ten years of active service included two Infantry combat command assignments in Vietnam. He served as a combat Infantryman, Ranger, Pathfinder, and Master Parachutist.

He was wounded in action twice and was awarded several decorations for leadership in action. In 1972, he was personally awarded the Soldiers’ Medal by General William Westmoreland for rescuing a woman trapped in a burning car in Washington, DC.

Phil holds Masters’ degrees in:

-- Foreign Service from Georgetown University

-- Business Administration from Stanford University.

His career in investment banking, venture capital, and technology has spanned thirty years.

Phil:

-- is a writer and lecturer on topics of military history

-- has been published in various military history periodicals

-- appears in the Ken Burns-produced PBS documentary series ‘The Vietnam War’-- has appeared as a television commentator on military history and       technology on the History Channel and the Military Channel.

He is also:

-- a director of the National World War II Memorial in Washington DC

-- an advisor on military history to the Presidio Trust which manages the historic Presidio of San Francisco.

Phil has served as both Councilman and Mayor of his home town of Corte Madera in Marin County, California.

Dave was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1961.  His father was a salesman; his mother was an office worker.  He grew up in Livonia, Michigan and graduated from Stevenson High School in 1979.  With his parents’ permission, he joined the Navy when he was only 17 years old.  

He served as an Aviation Electronics Technician in P-3 Orion squadrons including:

-- Patrol Squadron One, NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii 1979-1981

-- Patrol Squadron Forty-Six, NAS Moffett Field, California 1982-1985

-- Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii 1986-1989

-- Helicopter Detachment at Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Hawaii

1990-1994

-- Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii 1994-1997

-- Patrol Squadron Forty-Seven, MCBH Kaneohe, Hawaii 1997-2000

After 21 years in the Navy, he retired from active duty in 2000.

Dave then became a government civilian employee (Tech Rep) at the Naval Air Technical Data and Engineering Service Command (NATEC) Detachment, MCAS Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii assisting the military with helicopter and aircraft communication, navigation, and electronic warfare equipment. 

He left the Hawaiian Islands in December 2007 and lived near Luke AFB, Arizona and Columbus AFB, Mississippi before settling down in Northern California near Travis AFB in 2012.

Dave’s education, training, awards, and certifications include:

-- FCC General Radio-Telephone License with Radar Endorsement.

-- Associate in Science degree, Applied Trade Degree in Electronics, from Honolulu, Hawaii Community College. 

-- Master Electronics Technician by Electronics Technicians Association International.

-- Bachelor of Science in Professional Aeronautics with a minor in Safety from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Soon after retiring from the military, he began working on his Master’s Degree in Professional Aeronautics.  During this time, he started a very ambitious graduate research project focusing on the environment, contents, and conditions of WWII aircraft crash sites on the Hawaiian island of Oahu to determine their usefulness as the subject for case studies in Aviation Archaeology.

During his investigations of World War II sites, he discovered that each was unique and had a story to tell.  His goal is to educate the public about aviation history and tell the stories that go with each case.  Visiting a crash site can have a tremendous impact on one’s awareness and understanding of the time period and can provide a unique education for future generations.

To date, his travels nationwide and across the Pacific have included:

-- more than 500+ aircraft crash sites in 15 states

-- Pacific sites including Midway Island, Japan, and Korea.

-- recovery of hundreds of aircraft-related artifacts for several museums.    

Dave has:

-- authored dozens of articles published in the Navy News, MCBH Kaneohe News, Luke AFB News, and several other base newspapers.

-- written for several periodicals including Naval Aviation Magazine and WWI Aero magazine.

-- presented the military’s policy on protection and preservation of historic sites

on the worldwide Armed Forces Radio and Television Network.

-- given lectures to the Civil Air Patrol, FAA, Pilots Associations, American Aviation Historical Society, and university students concerning Aviation Archaeology and aviation history. 

He likes to say "Every wreck has a story to tell." He likes to discover the facts, fill in the blanks, explain the reasons why the planes crashed, and finally lay the questions to rest by writing the stories. The tales honor those who have sacrificed so much to give us the peace we enjoy today. 

Dave is currently assisting the Travis AFB Heritage Center by researching and documenting base history, aircraft histories, and aircraft accidents associated with the base. 

After military retirement, Dave married Christine in Hawaii in 2005.  She is a former US Army Huey pilot and is currently a USAF Nurse at Travis AFB.  The couple resides In Vacaville.

Mike was born in Reno, Nevada in 1945.  His father was a civil engineer; his mother was a homemaker.  He had a half brother eleven years older and a sister three years older.  After the family moved to Davis, CA in 1955, Mike graduated from Davis Senior High School in 1963.

He attended California State University Sacramento majoring in engineering and psychology, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968, and was immediately accepted into the US Air Force commissioning and aviation programs.

The program included:

• three months of officer training at Lackland AFB, Texas
• ten months of undergraduate navigator training at Mather AFB, CA
• six months of navigator-bombardier training (also at Mather)
• four months of B-52 transitioning training at Castle AFB, CA
• two weeks of combat crew survival training at Fairchild AFB, Washington

Mike’s first operational assignment was to a B-52H crew at K.I. Sawyer AFB in the upper peninsula of Michigan as part of the cold war nuclear deterrent force.

After a little over five years of active duty, some as an Instructor Navigator, during which he flew 60 combat missions over Vietnam, Mike resigned his regular commission and left the Air Force to begin a career in law enforcement.  He also joined the US Air Force Reserve as a navigator in C-5 aircraft.

His military awards and decorations include the:

• Meritorious Service Medal with bronze oak leaf cluster 
• Air Medal with two bronze oak leaf clusters 
• Air Force Commendation Medal
• Air Force Outstanding Unit Award
• Combat Readiness Medal with silver oak leaf cluster and bronze oak leaf cluster
• National Defense Service Medal with bronze star device
• Vietnam Service Medal
• Air Force Longevity Service Award with four silver oak leaf clusters
• Armed Forces Reserve Medal, with silver hourglass device
• Small Arms Marksmanship award
• Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation
• Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal 

Mike’s law enforcement career included:

• One year with the California Department of Justice, Organized Crime & Criminal Intelligence Bureau
• 25 years as a federal agent with mandatory retirement in 2000, upon reaching the age of 55

Concurrent with his career as a federal criminal investigator, as an Air Force Reservist he:

• flew worldwide missions in C-5 strategic transport aircraft from Travis AFB
• was a Squadron Commander of two squadrons
• was a Deputy Group Commander with command responsibility over six squadrons and 1200 reservists located in California, Hawaii, and Guam
• retired as a lieutenant colonel in April, 1996

Subsequent to his careers as a federal agent and an Air Force officer, he had about 19 years as a licensed private investigator specializing in fraud, personal and area protection, and internal investigations.  He also has a private pilot’s license with an instrument rating.

Mike continues to keep busy as:

• an American Red Cross instructor
• a disaster emergency response instructor at local communities
• a docent at the Blackhawk Museums in Danville, CA 

Mike’s first marriage produced three sons who he is very proud of.  In 1997, he married Donna Wade who runs her own housekeeping business.  The couple resides in Pleasant Hill.

If you would like to share a memorable personal short story (suggested maximum 10 minutes) with the group; come prepared to tell it.  If you have something interesting to show and tell during your talk, bring that too!

If the above tales don't fill the speaker's allotted time, Steve will bring DVDs of memorable previous speaker presentations including the following:

OVERVIEW: 

-- Born during the early years of WWII and raised in a military family.

-- Served 20 years in the Air Force in Tactical Systems, Flight Test, Research & Development, Satellite Systems and National Intelligence (research, development, and operations). 

-- More than 2,000 flight hours in EC-135N aircraft in test support to NASA, the US Military, Intelligence Agencies and Civilian (Foreign and Domestic) Space systems.

-- Worked more than 20 years as a civilian in high tech, supporting National Intelligence and Space Programs.

Academic background:

-- Undergraduate: Applied Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

-- Graduate: Systems Engineering (Management)

Childhood:

Jim’s father:

-- was an Air Force pilot who served in WWII, the Berlin Airlift, and on early missile testing/operations.

 -- trained under Dr. Wernher von Braun and his group which became the first military team to launch the Jupiter C IRBM from Cape Canaveral, FL. 

-- at Vandenberg AFB, CA, helped develop a special missile systems “Go Code” designed to survive a surprise attack and order a counterattack.  

Jim: 

-- grew up in a world of aircraft, rockets, heroes and legends. 

-- had a ringside seat to observe US Air Force aircraft and missile evolution in its early stages. 

-- was privileged to witness many pioneering events that led to our modern Air Force weapon systems. 

-- took every opportunity to listen to and talk with the pioneers who were his heroes.  He was hooked and the Air Force was calling. 

Adulthood:  

Jim answered the Air Force’s call; his career began as an enlisted man on a Tactical Missile Combat Team. He was a Missile Guidance Systems Specialist, Flight Control Specialist, and Instructor for Tactical Missiles for more than six years. He also participated in live fire exercises at Cape Canaveral, FL.

Afterwards, he:

-- was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

-- flew on flight tests for the Apollo moon program and Skylab.

-- provided airborne telemetry support for NASA deep space probes, DoD missile tests, satellite operations and recovery, ECM countermeasures, antiballistic missile tests and development, and numerous other air and space R&D and operational programs.

Jim flew classified operations throughout the world staging out of Africa, South America, Central America, Australia, Asia, Europe and almost any place that had a long runway. He spent time on various islands in the Pacific / Atlantic / Indian Oceans and the Bering Sea. Jim wrapped up his USAF career working in Space Systems and in National Intelligence. He was selected for promotion to Major and nominated to fly on the Space Shuttle as a Payload Specialist.

Under contract to our National Intelligence organizations, Jim was the Director of Intelligence Operations, Europe, throughout the 1980’s with offices in USEUCOM, J2 Patch Barracks at Stuttgart, Germany and USASFE IN at Ramstein AB, Germany. 

Jim's area of responsibility included the European Theater of Operations, North Africa, and the Middle East. He worked closely with other NATO and non-NATO countries’ Intelligence activities in support of US National interests. Jim returned home in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, and continued to work on Research, Development, and Operations of DoD, National Intelligence and Space systems.

Jim and his wife Erika have three adult children, a daughter in law and two grandchildren.  The couple resides in Pleasanton.

Wallace was born in 1925 in Taft, CA (near Bakersfield). The eldest of three children, he had a brother and a sister born in Havana, Cuba where his father was an engineer with Standard Oil; his mother was a housewife.

From the age of six months until age eight, he was reared in Havana, Cuba. He attended a Spanish-speaking school to the third grade and became fluent in Spanish because his mother was of Spanish extraction; Spanish was the primary language spoken in the home. A local revolution on the island nation concerned his father for the family’s safety so they returned to their home in Houston, Texas where Wallace attended elementary through high school.

When Wallace was 11, his father died during the Depression leaving his wife with three children. To help the family finances, Wallace lied about his age and enlisted in the US Navy at age 16 on 30 September 1941, only 68 days before the US entered World War II.

After basic training, he was assigned to the PT Boat Tender USS Jamestown AGP-3 throughout the war. The ship’s commanding officer trained him in the art of celestial navigation and emergency ship handling techniques. He was advanced to the rank of Chief Quartermaster. Wallace also:

-- acted as assistant navigator and communication specialist

-- qualified as a harbor pilot for the port of Kodiak, Alaska where he was Assistant Harbormaster.

Promoted through the ranks, Wallace ultimately was selected to attend the Navy’s Electronics School at the Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois. Upon graduation, he was assigned to the Aircraft Carrier USS Hornet CVA 12 where he served as its Chief Electronics Technician for six months and was later transferred back to the Electronics School where he served as an Instructor in Electronics until his retirement from the Navy in the rank of Chief Electronics Technician on 1 August 1960.

His military awards and decorations include:

-- American Defense Service Medal

-- American Campaign Medal

-- Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal

-- World War II Victory Medal

-- Korean Service Medal

-- Presidential Unit Citation

While in the Navy, Wallace acquired two years of college credits through the United States Armed Forces Institute, University of Wisconsin.

He also attended the Friedkin School of Aeronautics where he acquired Federal Aviation Administration ratings as a: Commercial Pilot (Single and Multi-Engine Land) and (Single Engine Sea).

Certified Flight Instructor and Ground Instructor in Navigation, Meteorology, Civil Air Regulations, Aircraft Airframes and Power Plants.

As a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, as a commercial pilot for over 70 years, he has flight instructed in his private plane and subsequently acquired more than 10,000 hours of flying time as pilot in command. For three years, he served as President of the Alameda Aero Club flying out of the U.S. Naval Air Station, Alameda and the Oakland International Airport.

In 1960, Wallace joined North American Aviation where his specialty was Inertial Guidance Navigation Systems. Under contract to the Strategic Air Command, as an Air Crew Flight Instructor he flew in Boeing B-52 bombers out of Columbus Air Force Base near Columbus, Mississippi.

In 1962, he was recalled to North American Aviation, in Downey, Ca. as a Member of the Technical Staff to act as a Research Engineer Pilot. Working with the original seven Astronauts, he participated as a pilot subject in many hours of Apollo Capsule simulator missions. He wrote test plans and conducted studies using the Apollo Astronauts as pilot subjects. After the successful lunar landing, he left North American Rockwell Inc. in 1970.

From 1970 to 1973, Wallace was employed as a Broker Dealer and Registered Representative of the National Association of Security Dealers.

In 1973, he joined Litton Guidance & Control Systems Division as a Senior Field Engineer responsible for the establishment and operation of an Inertial Navigation Laboratory at an Army Air Intelligence Squadron, Fort Wainwright, Fairbanks, Alaska and the US Naval Air Station, Alameda. He retired from Litton in 1992.

In 1954, Wallace married Doris Wright in Kodiak, Alaska. The couple resides in Alameda. 

Dennis was born and raised in San Francisco.  His father was a career US Navy enlisted man who survived World War II including the devastating munitions ship explosion at Port Chicago, CA.  After his military retirement in 1954, he later became manager of a moving and storage company in San Francisco.  His mother was a housewife who had nine children.  Born in 1944, Dennis was the second oldest.

After graduation from St. Ignatius High School in 1962, Dennis earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, CA in 1966.  After graduation, he taught English and Math and coached football at St. Mary’s High School in Berkeley.

From 1986-1999 while Associate Vice President for Development at St. Mary’s College, Dennis earned a Master of Business Administration there and went on to work in senior level collegiate administration in the California college and university system including Menlo College, John F. Kennedy University, and California Maritime Academy.

During the many years spent around truly gifted teachers, he started to feel the itch to write novels.  In early 2013, he decided to scratch that itch and left the 9 to 5 world to become a full-time author.

Since his “retirement”, Dennis has published three mystery-thriller novels: The Oath, Kissed By The Snow, The Custer Conspiracy, and he is working on the fourth.

He is a member of the:

-- California Writers’ Club

-- Independent Book Publishers’ Association

-- Military Writers’ Society of America

-- Naval Order of the United States: Navy League

Dennis is on the Board of Directors of the non-profit Bethlehem Shipyard Museum of San Francisco.  From 2009 to 2013, he was Executive Director of the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, the WW II Liberty Ship and floating museum moored at San Francisco’s Pier 45.

His first marriage produced three boys; he now has seven grandchildren.

In 2012, Dennis married Sarah Liebenstein who is also his publisher, his Muse, and his best friend.  The couple resides in Pleasant Hill.

Larry was born in 1944 in Boston, Massachusetts, the seventh son of a seventh son; he had

nine brothers.  His father was a house painter; his mother was a housewife.  He attended

East Boston High School and graduated in 1963.

His early flying experience began at Tumac Airport near Tewksbury, Massachusetts; he

earned his private pilot’s license before he was licensed to drive.  After two years at Howard

University in Washington, DC, he entered the Air Force Bootstrap (Educational Leave of Absence)

program and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1966. 

Larry’s first assignment was to Air Traffic Controller training; 18 months at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

He completed Air Force pilot training at Kelly Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. 

After his nephew (a Navy SEAL) was killed in Vietnam, Larry transferred to the Army for initial

helicopter pilot training at Fort Rucker, Alabama, followed by training in gunships, Hughes

300A LOCHes, and Cobras plus a stint test piloting Apaches.

In Vietnam during 1970-71, Larry was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, a blocking force

in I Corps just south of the DMZ.  Flying gun platforms, his combat missions included:

--  reconnaissance to draw hostile fire from enemy troops near friendly forces

--  identifying and marking enemy positions for destruction by our troops

--  providing close and dangerously close fire support for friendly ground forces

--  evacuation of wounded and dead troops under fire in hot landing zones (LZ’s)

--  battle damage assessment.

His military awards and decorations include 202 Air Medals.

At Fort Lewis, Washington in 1984, he left active duty to join the Army Reserve. 

As an airline reserve pilot, he flew B-727s for Air America and Braniff.

Larry’s extensive civilian helicopter experience includes:

--  aerial photography

--  animal herding / tagging / tracking

--  building aqueducts, bridges, dams, power lines, and ski lifts

--  carrying external loads

--  fire suppression with water and retardant drops

--  glacier operations

--  Heli-Torch (jellied gasoline drops)

--  lifting logged trees out of national forests

--  over-water operations

--  ping-pong ball fire dispenser (PSD)

--  pouring concrete footings for power line towers

--  search and rescue

--  security

--  conducting seismic operations for oil exploration

--  setting steel towers

--  snow operations (deep snow)

--  surveillance.

His geographic areas of operation have included Alaska, Asia, Beaufort Sea, Europe,

Gulf of Mexico, and North Sea.

Aviation positions Larry has held include:

--  Air Traffic Controller

--  Check Pilot

--  Chief Pilot

--  Director of Operations

--  Ground Trainer

--  Rotorcraft test pilot for Bell and Sikorsky aircraft

--  Safety Pilot.

His education:

--  Bachelor of Arts at St Mark’s college in Olympia, Washington

--  Master of Military Science at Army Command and Staff school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Larry married his first wife in Boston in 1966; she died soon after he returned from Vietnam. 

His second wife is Patsy Riggs who was the first female President of Kroger. 

The couple has three children and three grandchildren.  The couple resides in San Francisco.

Christopher Starling, Colonel, US Marine Corps (Retired) edited by Ken Evans

Chris was born in 1966 in Braunschweig, Germany.  His father was a career Navy Chaplain and his family moved every few years.  He attended grade school in Annapolis MD, Virginia Beach, VA and Fettercairn, Scotland. 

After graduation from Middletown High School in Middletown, RI, in 1984, Chris attended college at Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, VA. He studied German and International Studies and spent a semester abroad in Vienna, Austria.  Upon graduation in 1988, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps.

After entry level training in Quantico, VA, he reported to his first operational assignment with First Battalion, First Marines at Camp Pendleton, California in 1989.  During Operation Desert Shield / Desert Storm, he commanded a Heavy Weapons Platoon and completed two deployments aboard ship to the Western Pacific.

In 1992, Chris reported to Joint Task Force Five in Alameda, CA.  He was one of two Marines assigned to a Counter-Drug Task Force supporting the US Coast Guard and Federal Law Enforcement to stem the flow of South American cocaine and Southeast Asian heroin to the United States.

From 1996-1998 as a Captain, Chris commanded H&S Company and subsequently Kilo Company in 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines at Kaneohe Bay, HI.  He next spent a year on the staff at Marine Forces Pacific where he was promoted to Major.

Between 1999 and 2002, Chris was an Instructor at the US Military Academy, West Point, NY.

Returning to the operating forces in 2002, he was the XO of 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines in the March up to Baghdad in 2003.  He then became the Operations Officer of 2nd Marines where he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and deployed again to Western Iraq for a year.

Returning from Iraq, Chris assumed command of 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines and deployed again to the Mediterranean Sea, East Africa, and the Arabian Gulf.  Following battalion command, Chris reported to Stanford University as a Hoover Fellow where he studied the expanding influence of China in Africa.

In 2008, Chris moved to Stuttgart, Germany to become the Partnership Division Chief at US Africa Command.  He was promoted to Colonel and was selected to command the 23rd Marines in San Bruno, CA from 2010-2013.  During that time, he was deployed for a year from 2011-2012 to be the senior US military advisor to the Emirati Presidential Guard. 

His final assignment was at the Pentagon working in the Plans, Policies, and Operations Directorate of Headquarters, Marine Corps.  Chris retired in December 2014 with over 26 years of active service. 

Chris holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the City University of New York.  Military schools completed during his time in service include the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course, Mountain Leader Course, Counter-Drug Intelligence Course, Army Airborne School, Amphibious Warfare School, and Joint Forces Staff College.

Chris’ military awards and decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, three awards of the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Stars (two with Valor device), three awards of the Meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal and two awards of the Combat Action Ribbon. 

Chris is a proud father of three children: Robert who attends Virginia Military Institute, Erik who is a Corporal in 3rd Battalion 4th Marines, and Christina who attends Longwood University.

Chris resides in San Francisco and works for VetsinTech, a nonprofit that educates and assists Veterans with job placement.  His hobbies include hiking, mountain biking and theatre.

Dan was born in 1929 Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  His father was a steelworker; his

mother was a housewife.  He had two sisters: one older, one younger.   Both are

now deceased. 

Dan attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947.  He was motivated

to join the Army by his high school boxing coach (a veteran of World War One)

who “loved the Army” plus the prospect of the GI Bill for college. 

On 12 January 1948 Dan enlisted in the Army at the Presidio of San Francisco. 

He entered Basic Training at Fort Ord, CA and was assigned to the 4^th Infantry Division. 

He took advantage of a series of sequential short-term assignments

(each one offered a promotion in grade) so he soon made Sergeant First Class. 

In June 1950, the Korean conflict began.  In February 1951, Dan applied for the

Officer Candidate School’s first class at Fort Benning, Georgia with 119 other

hopefuls.  Six months later, only 39 graduated; he was third in his class.  

Commissioned as a second lieutenant of Infantry, he volunteered for Korea. 

After a short leave en route visiting family in California, he departed via train to

Fort Lawton, Washington and onward by military air to Tokyo, Japan.  Assigned

to the 45^th Infantry Division, he arrived in country at Pusan, South Korea.  Dan

served in combat as a platoon leader and then commander of a rifle company. 

Later at Camp Sasebo, Japan, he met Mary Lou Hiott, an infantry colonel’s

daughter.  They married in Sasebo on 10 October 1953.       

Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in History from the University of California at

Berkeley and a master’s degree in Political Science at San Francisco State

University.  Both degrees were conferred magna cum laude.  He is also a:

-- graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College and the War College

-- Senior Fellow at the JFK Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

Major General Helix’s military awards and decorations include:

-- Army Distinguished Service Medal

-- Silver Star

-- Bronze Star with “V” device for valor

-- Legion of Merit

-- Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster

-- Meritorious Service Medal

-- Army Commendation Medal

-- The Combat Infantryman’s Badge and 19 other awards.

He is:

-- a member of the U.S. Army’s Infantry Hall of Fame located at Fort Benning, Georgia,

-- authorized to wear the Secretary of Defense Identification Badge and the Parachutist Badge which he earned at age 50.

Dan retired as a major general in the U. S. Army in 1989.  He completed a 41-year career serving both on active duty and with the Army

Reserve.  His final military assignment was as Deputy Commanding General, Sixth U.S. Army, at the Presidio of San Francisco.

He served as Mayor and Councilman of the City of Concord, California from

1968 to 1976 and as a Director of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. 

Appointed to fill a vacancy on the Concord City Council in 2010, he was elected

for a four-year term in 2012.  Elected as Mayor by his colleagues, he remained

on the City Council until December 2016.  He was Chair of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee for the former Concord Naval Weapons Station.  

Dan:

- is a published author of an award-winning novel set in the Korean War era

-- authored several published articles and short stories, primarily in military journals

-- has a lifetime teaching credential for secondary education.

He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Concord and the former Mt. Diablo Hospital Foundation (now John Muir Health), Concord Campus.  He served on

the Board of the All Wars Memorial Foundation, the Korean War Memorial Foundation, and is active in numerous philanthropic and military organizations.

Dan served:

-- on a U.S. Congressional Commission considering structural changes in the Department of the Army

-- on Governor Schwarzenegger’s Military Base Retention Commission

-- as Co-chair of the initial Concord Reuse Committee for the now-closed Naval Weapons Station.

Dan and Mary Lou live in Concord.  They have two children and five grandchildren.

                             Unedited bio text as provided by Gil Ferrey:

Born in 1922 in Milton, MA on the East Coast, Dr. Roberson completed his undergrad premed studies at Harvard before being drafted into the US Army.  When the Army recognized that he had already been admitted to Medical School at Harvard, he was pulled out of basic training and sent to Harvard to commence his studies.   When the Korean War commenced in 1950, Dr. Captain Rogerson was sent to Ft. Ord, CA where he was placed in charge of the Pediatric Clinic, which delivered one -third of all children in the Monterey Area.

Captain Rogerson spent a total of five and one-half years in the Army, and refused a promotion to Major after hearing that if he refused it, he would not be able to continue in the US Army Reserves.

He joined the Berkeley Pediatric Medical Group, where one of his partners was our children's' pediatrician.

He served on various Boards and Advisory Groups in hospitals and research organizations in the Bay Area, wrote a book about his thoughts on the current state of our healthcare industry, and only stopped teaching at age 85.

Lee Richardson, Ensign, US Navy by Ken Evans

Lee was born in San Francisco’s Lane Hospital (now known as Children’s Hospital) in 1929.  His father was Chief Engineer of the Matson Line; his mother owned a restaurant.  He had one younger brother.  He attended Tamalpais High School but left after one year to join the Merchant Marine.

After training at the Maritime College of New York, Lee signed on as a third assistant engineer aboard the Clarksdale Victory cargo ship which was contracted with The Army Transportation Corps.  While he was on shore leave, in 1947 the vessel ran aground in Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands, broke in two, and sank with only three survivors.

Lee had qualified for an Amateur Radio General License and a private pilot’s license.  He and a friend decided to join the US Navy and enlisted in the Bay Area in 1948.  His initial goal was to become a radio operator on a submarine.  But he saw a bulletin board notice re flight training; he applied and was accepted.  After training at Pensacola, Miramar, and San Diego Naval Air Stations, he was promoted to Warrant Officer.  Assigned to the carrier Valley Forge home ported at Alameda, he departed the US in June 1950 for the Western Pacific and was promoted to Ensign while en route.

Only six days after the Korean conflict began, Lee began flying close air support missions for the British, the US Army, and the US Marines.  His Corsair was often damaged by hostile ground fire.  On one mission, his hydraulic system was hit and he had to land at Inchon for repairs before flying back to his ship.  He flew a total of 68 combat missions.

Aircraft types flown: SNJ, F4U Corsair, RD-4, and two seaplanes.

His military awards and decorations include the:

-- China Service Medal

-- Korean Service Medal

-- National Defense Service Medal

-- Navy Good Conduct Medal

-- United Nations Service Medal

After return from his first and only cruise, he separated from the Navy in 1954 and hired on as a technician with a RCA Communications antenna farm at Point Arena.  Later, he went into business for himself with a gas station and a large machine shop in Inverness.

In 1962, Lee married Lucile Trayar; they had two boys and one girl.  The couple divorced in 1984.

Lee retired in 2006 and resides in Inverness.

Jim was born in Berkeley in 1929.  His father had served in the US Army during World War I and was a purchasing agent at Bechtel; his mother was a housewife.  He had one older brother who served in the Counter Intelligence Corps in Japan during the Occupation after World War II.  Jim attended Tamalpias High School in Marin County and graduated in 1946.  He also attained Eagle Scout.

At the University of California in Berkeley, Jim completed various engineering and business courses.  As a member of the school’s football teams coached by Pappy Waldorf, he made three trips to the Rose Bowl and also played rugby*.  While at Berkeley, he married Marilyn Maas from San Mateo in 1950 and graduated in 1951.

Immediately after graduation, Jim joined Bechtel as a feasibility and cost estimating engineer specializing in field construction.  During his 20 years with the company, the couple and their growing family (five children) moved every 18 months following construction projects.  These included pipelines, power plants, and refineries nationwide and overseas.

At the request of President Ronald Reagan, the Central Intelligence Agency was seeking a person with heavy construction experience to analyze the current status of the Soviet Union’s economy and infrastructure.  Soon after being contacted, Jim signed on for 18 months.

For the next 23 years and more than 40 lonely missions, he worked behind the Iron Curtain and along the ancient Silk Road of Central Asia.  Jim’s experiences included:

-- Reporting on the dangerous economic collapse of the Soviet Union

-- Being interrogated, shot at, and seeing mass shootings of demonstrators

-- Witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall

-- Assessing the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

-- Monitoring civil wars in Azerbaijan, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia

-- Conversations with Ronald Reagan, James Baker, Eduard Shevardnadze, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2008 at age 81, Jim finally retired from US Government service.  He and Marilyn reside at the Masonic Hall in Union City.

     * His rugby player experience included 412 games in 11 countries.

John was born 4 July 1940 in New Jersey. He attended Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA.  In 1961, he enlisted in the US Naval Reserve to participate in the Reserve Officer Candidate program through which college students were trained at Newport, RI for eight weeks during two consecutive summers.  If they graduated from college, these trainees became officers in the Naval Reserve.  John was commissioned as an Ensign on 3 September 1963.

His early military training included:

-- Combat Information Center (CIC) School, NAS Glencoe in fall of 1963.

-- Air Intercept Control School, Point Loma, CA in January 1964.

John reported on board the destroyer U.S.S. Fletcher (DD-445) in February 1964.  He was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade in February 1965. The Fletcher deployed to WESTPAC from April to September 1964 (Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines and Korea). John served on the Fletcher until April 1965.

His subsequent military training inclded:

--- Underwater Demolition Training (UDTRA) School (later renamed Basic Underwater Demolition School; BUD/s) completed 1 September 1965.

-- U.S. Air Force Survival School at Stead AFB, Nevada

-- U.S. Army Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia

-- U.S. Army Jungle Warfare School in Canal Zone, Panama

-- U.S. Army Pathfinder School, Fort Benning, Georgia

Assigned to Underwater Demolition Team 12 (UDT-12) as a Weapons Officer. Transferred to SEAL Team ONE at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado at San Diego, CA on 1 May 1, 1966.

Deployed to Vietnam in September 1966 as Assistant Platoon commander, John was assigned to the Rung Sat Special Zone near Saigon.  This area was a large tidal mangrove swamp dotted with canals, a few rice fields, fishermen trying to make a living, and Viet Cong.

During a firefight on 7 October 1966, John was wounded by mortar fragments.  Of the 19 men on the Landing Craft Medium (LCM), 16 were wounded.  Three were disabled and left Navy service.  The unit continued conducting night ambushes, daylight patrols, and junk searches until February 1967.

On 3 January 1967, John was promoted to Lieutenant and assigned as Training Officer within the Operations Department.

His military award and decorations include:

-- Bronze Star with Combat “V” device

-- Purple Heart

-- Presidential Unit Citation

-- Navy Commendation Medal

John left active duty on 28 August 1967.

Ray was born in Oakland in 1928.  His father was a deputy constable who died when Ray was two; his mother was a housewife.  He had one older brother who served in World War 2.  Ray attended Oakland’s Castlemont High School and graduated in January 1946.

He entered UC Berkeley in 1946, majoring in General Curriculum.  While there, he met his future wife, Helen Marie Fink.  Upon graduation in 1951, Ray hired on with Pacific Bell Telephone.  The Korean conflict was in progress and draft calls were high.  An Army officer family friend helped Ray join the Army Reserve so he could participate while keeping his civilian job.

Ray was soon called to active duty, commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Medical Service Corps, and ordered to report to Fort Sam Houston, Texas where he was trained as an ambulance team member.  While there, he married Helen in a military wedding in March 1952.

In September 1952, he traveled to Korea via troop ship.  On arrival, he was assigned to the 7^th Infantry Division as an Ambulance Platoon leader attached to a MASH unit and quickly was driven by Jeep to meet his corpsmen at the front.  After participation in various battles, he was assigned to the 1^st Marine Division for six months. 

Later, Ray participated in the preparations for the truce talks held at Panmunjom and was involved in Operation Little Switch, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners after cessation of hostilities.

Helen met Ray on Okinawa in April 1953; they returned to Fort Ord, California in 1955 and he resumed his employment with Pacific Bell.  At completion of his eight-year Reserve obligation, he was discharged in1960 in San Lorenzo.

Ray’s military awards and decorations include:

-- The Korean Service Medal with three Battle Stars

-- Two Meritorious Unit Citations

-- The Commendation Medal with Metal Pendant

-- The Combat Bayonet Badge (awarded by the US Army 7^th Division)

After 32 years with Pacific Bell, Ray retired in 1983.  Later, he worked for five years as Regional Marketing Director for Girard-Hopkins, a distributor of commercial washers and dryers in Northern California.

During Helen’s career as a schoolteacher, they had three children.  She died on 2 February 2017; Ray resides in Walnut Creek.

John entered the Army at age 16 and served as a medic. 

 Later, he joined the Air Force and served as a crew chief:

 -- in Vietnam on B-57s.

 -- at Wendover AFB Utah and Beale AFB California on U-2s and SR-71s.

 After more than 20 years of service, John retired in the rank of Staff Sergeant.

George Wilkerson was born in April 1925 in El Monte, California, where he lived until shortly after graduating from El Monte High School.  His father was an electrician at Dupont; his mother was a homemaker.  On 11 August 1943 at age 18, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in Los Angeles and was sent to Buckley Field, near Aurora, Colorado for basic training.   He was then transferred to Flexible Gunnery School at Las Vegas Army Air Field where he spent six weeks learning about and firing .50 caliber machine guns from a B-17.

Given a 10-day leave before having to report to Salt Lake City, George returned to El Monte to marry his sweetheart, Margaret Glandon.  From Salt Lake City, he was ordered to report to Great Bend, Kansas, where he joined the 874th Bomb Squadron, part of the 498th Bomb Group.  On 13 August 1944, his squadron left from the Port of San Pedro aboard the troop ship USS Exchange.  Assigned to Isley Field on Saipan, he loaded munitions on B-29s until the war ended in August 1945.  He was discharged near Sacramento on 4 January 1946.

After leaving the service, George returned to El Monte and worked for eight months as a lineman for Pacific Bell; about five years for DuPont testing detergent engine oils; some time working on automotive machines; and about eight years in building maintenance and management in San Marino.  After 13 years with the City of El Monte’s street maintenance and water treatment programs, he retired in 1980.

George and Margaret lived in Paso Robles for about 20 years before moving to the Union City Masonic Home in 2005.  They had one son who is now age 70.  Margaret passed away in 2013. 

George will talk about his time on the Island of Saipan and his duties as a “Bomb Jockey”.  Among other things, PFC Wilkerson and his fellow soldiers played an important part in the successful bombing of Japanese war industries on 24 November 1944.  He might even tell us what he knows about what happened to Amelia Earhart.

Steve and his twin brother were born in Washington, D.C. in 1938.  They also had an older brother and sister, both now deceased.  Between Army service stints in World Wars I and II, his father was a stockbroker and later became a member of the newly created Securities Exchange Commission.  His mother was a housewife.  He grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

He attended:

-- Bethesda Chevy Chase (BCC) High School and graduated in 1956

-- St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland for three years.

In 1959, Steve volunteered for the US Army draft.  After basic training, he was stationed at a Nike antiaircraft missile site near Swormville, New York next to the Canadian border.  Two years later with unsigned discharge paperwork in hand, his service was involuntarily extended for six months by the Berlin Crisis of 1961.  He was finally discharged at Fort Snelling, Minnesota in the grade of E-3.

Continuing his education, he earned a:

-- BA in History at the American University in Washington, D. C. where he met his future wife, Anna Belle.

-- MA in Archaeology at the Knubley School in Athens, Greece.

In 1964, Steve joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Washington, D. C.

In 1965, he married Anna Belle at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D. C.  Traveling together to five countries including the Middle East, they adequately learned the local languages as needed.  During the Vietnam War, one volunteer assignment included interrogating captured North Vietnamese soldiers in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

After 30 years with the CIA, Steve and Anna Belle retired in 1994.  The couple resides in Placerville.

Note: General Ward previously addressed our 23 October 2016 dinner meeting.  This month’s presentation will supplement where he left off about some of his military career experiences plus wherever some of the questions and/or comments may take us.  Because our group is aviation oriented, he plans to focus on a few of his aviation related memories / stories.  If the group wishes, he can / will focus even more on White House related reminisces.  It is impossible to put all of his recollections into an hour (or less).

Chet was born in Woodland, CA in 1932.  He had two sisters; one is still living.  His father was the agriculture teacher in College City before the new (1937) high school was built in Arbuckle. Chet attended high school in Van Nuys, CA where he participated in JR. ROTC.

At UC Santa Barbara, he participated in ROTC and graduated in January 1955 as a Pre-Med and Zoology major and a Distinguished Military Graduate.  He was commissioned as an Army Reserve 2nd Lt. in 1954.  After Officer Infantry Basic Training at Fort Benning, GA, he earned his Jump Wings, Jump Master training, and Ranger Tab.

Chet served in Puerto Rico and Panama as an Infantry Officer before opting to resign his Regular Army Commission after serving his three-year obligatory contract.  After the Korean War ended, there was a Reduction In Force (RIF).  US Military Academy (West Point) graduates had a date of rank making them senior to Chet and they were given preference in remaining on active duty.

Then-Lt. Ward was required to revert to his Army Reserve commission and served in the reserves with the 349th General Hospital in the Los Angeles Area after commencing Medical School at USC in 1958.  He paid for the first three years and finally learned about an Army scholarship in his last year before graduating in 1962.  In 1960, he married Sally McCloud and they became parents.

Rather than continue with his medical education (residency) Capt. Ward served with the 5th Special Forces from July 1963 thru December 1964.  This included a 6-month deployment in the area south of Saigon (IV CTZ) as the Special Forces Surgeon.

After Chet returned to the States, he attended the US Navy's six-month Flight Surgeon Course in Pensacola where he learned to fly T-34s.  Graduating with Class 109 in June 1965, he then took a two-month leave of absence to cover his uncle's medical practice in Paso Robles (the sole practitioner had not taken a vacation in five years).

He then attended UC Berkeley for a year and earned a Masters degree in Public Health, followed by an additional year with the US Air Force's Medical Advanced Course at Brooks AFB.

After one year at Fort Rucker (the home of Army Aviation), Chet volunteered for Vietnam where he initially served with the 17th Aviation Group in II Corps.  In 1968, he was chosen to be the 1st Aviation Brigade's Flight Surgeon as well as the Aviation Medical Consultant to United States Army in Vietnam (USARV).

When he returned to the States, he attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS.  Subsequently, he was assigned as the Army's Flight Surgeon in the Office of the Surgeon General in the Forrestal Building in Washington DC. (President Carter kicked the military out of that building).

After being vetted with three other Army physicians recommended for assignment to the White House, Colonel Ward served on the personal staff of Presidents Nixon and Ford as a White House Physician from 1971 through 1976.

His subsequent assignments included:

-- Director of Environmental Quality Research

-- Alcohol & Drug Abuse Consultant to the Army Surgeon General

-- Industrial College of The Armed Forces (ICAF)

-- Chief, Army Medical Corps Assignments

Later, Chet also commanded:

-- Medical Activities at Fort Bragg, NC.

-- Womack Army Community Hospital while concurrently serving as Surgeon, XVIII Airborne Corps.

-- Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, El Paso, TX from which he retired.

After becoming Executive Director of Continuing Medical Education at LA County Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at the USC School of Medicine, he escaped the commutes and congestion of Los Angeles to become Butte County’s Health Officer and Director of Public Health from July 1985 to August 1995.

Dr. / General Ward and his wife Sally live in the South Bay.  They have two daughters and two grandchildren.

Peter was born in 1932 in New York City.  His father was an industrial executive; his mother was a housewife.  He had three older sisters. He completed high school at St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, entered Princeton University, NJ in 1950, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1954.

Expecting an early draft notice, Peter enlisted in the Marines, completed Marine Infantry Officer Candidate training in Quantico, VA, and progressed through pilot training at Pensacola, FL, Corpus Christi, TX, and El Toro, CA.  He requested assignment to fighters and was sent to his first permanent duty station at Atsugi, Japan.  Upon return to the States, he became an instructor pilot helping “Weekend Warrior” reserve pilots to maintain their flying proficiency at Floyd Bennett Field in New York City.

Military aircraft types flown: SNJ, TV-2, F9F-2, -3, -5, -7; FJ4, and F3D-2M.

After separation from active duty in August 1958, he re-entered Princeton, majored in Architecture, and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 1960.

Peter lived and worked in San Francisco from 1960–1970.

In 1971, Peter married Natasha.  They lived in Washington, DC  1970-1972, Boston 1972-2000, New York 2000-2013, and returned to San Francisco in 2013.   They have two sons, one grandson, and three granddaughters.

Peter’s professional career included:

-- Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

-- Vice President, Principal Architect at AECOM in Boston and New York

-- Past President: Boston Society of Architects, 1983

-- Elected to College of Fellows, American Institute of Architects, 1987

Peter and Natasha reside in San Francisco.

A former B-29 tail gunner and "Flying Sergeant" pilot in World War 2, George was born in Norfolk. Virginia, in 1926. At age 17, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an Aviation Cadet.

After initial training as a B-29 tail gunner, he was assigned to the 20th Air Force, 58th Bomb Wing, 462nd Bomb Group, 768th Squadron.

George served in India, Buma, China, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima. He flew on the first fire raid over Tokyo.

For excellence in combat, George was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Clusters, and a Presidential Unit Citation.

After his military service, he attended American University in Washington, D.C.

Then he worked for Capital Airlines at Washington National Airport. In June 1961, Capital merged with United Airlines. At both airlines, for 25 years George held various jobs including airplane mechanic and production controller.

Chet was born in Woodland, CA.  He had two sisters; one is still living.  His father was the agriculture teacher in College City before the new (1937) high school was built in Arbuckle. Chet attended high school in Van Nuys, CA where he participated in JR. ROTC.

At UC Santa Barbara, he participated in ROTC and graduated as a Pre-Med and Zoology Major and a Distinguished Military Graduate.  He was commissioned as a Regular Army 2nd Lt. in 1954 and graduated in January 1955.  In Officer Infantry Basic Training at Ft. Benning, GA, he earned his Jump Wings, Jump Master training, and Ranger Tab.

Chet served in Puerto Rico and Panama as an Infantry Officer before opting to resign his Regular Army Commission after serving his three-year obligatory contract.  NOTE:  After the Korean War ended, there was a Reduction In Force (RIF).  US Military Academy (West Point) graduates had a date of rank making them senior to Chet and they were given preference in remaining on active duty.

Then-Lt. Ward was required to accept an Army Reserve commission and served in the reserves with the 349th General Hospital in the Los Angeles Area while commencing Medical School at USC in 1958.  He paid for the first three years and finally learned about an Army scholarship in his last year before graduating in 1962.  In 1960, he married Sally McCloud and they became parents.

Rather than continue with his education (internship and residency) because of the cost, his first Army Active Reserve assignment was for six months serving as a medical doctor with the 5th Special Forces in Vietnam from July 1963 to December 1964.

After Chet returned to the States and was training in the Naval School for Underwater Swimmers (Navy SCUBA Diver), he damaged a nerve in his shoulder.  He had to give up his intended specialty of orthopedic surgery and attended the US Navy's six-month Flight Surgeon Course in Pensacola where he learned to fly T-34s.  Graduating with Class 109 in June 1965, he then took a two-month leave of absence to cover his uncle's medical practice in Paso Robles (the sole practitioner had not taken a vacation in five years).

He then attended UC Berkeley for a year and earned a Masters degree in Public Health, followed by an additional year with the US Air Force's Medical Advanced Course at Brooks AFB.

After one year at Fort Rucker (the home of Army Aviation), Chet volunteered for Vietnam where he initially served with the 17th Aviation Group in II Corps.  In 1968, he was chosen to be the 1st Aviation Brigade's Flight Surgeon as well as the Aviation Medical Consultant to United States Army in Vietnam (USARV).

When he returned to the States, he attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS.  Subsequently, he was assigned as the Army's flight Surgeon in the Office of the Surgeon General in the Forrestal Building in Washington DC until President Carter kicked the military out of that building.

After being vetted with three other Army Surgeons recommended for assignment to the White House, Colonel Ward served on the personal staff of Presidents Nixon and Ford as White House Physician from 1971 through 1976.

Later, Chet also commanded:

--  Medical Activities at Fort Bragg, NC.

-- Womack Army Community Hospital while concurrently serving as Surgeon, XVIII Airborne Corps.

-- Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, El Paso, TX from which he retired.

After becoming Executive Director of Continuing Medical Education at LA County Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at the USC School of Medicine, he escaped the commutes and congestion of Los Angeles to become Butte County’s Health Officer and Director of Public Health from July 1985 to August 1995.

Dr. General Ward and his wife Sally live in the South Bay.  They have two daughters and two grandchildren.

Jerry was born in Chicago, IL in January 1922.  His father was a chemist; his mother was a housewife.  He had one brother four years older. After graduation from DePaul High School, he attended DePaul University.  He joined the US Navy and was sent to Officer Candidate School at the Boston Navy Yard.  Upon graduation from the three-month training, he was commissioned as a Deck / Engineer Ensign in January 1943.

Immediately after commissioning, he was ordered to join a new Landing Ship, Tank (LST) 991 which soon departed for the Pacific via the Panama Canal and thence to San Diego, CA.

Depending on location, an LST’s mission varied:

- In the European Theater of Operations, they routinely transported battle tanks, trucks, jeeps, and artillery pieces plus troops supporting landings.

- In the Western Pacific, they were essentially amphibious attack transports that very seldom carried tanks.

LST 991 was approximately 325 feet in length and 60 feet in width. It had bow doors that opened to provide access for trucks, jeeps, artillery pieces, etc. down its ramp from both the upper deck and the lower deck and onto the shore for beaching operations.  The ship’s personnel included 125 enlisted men plus ten officers.  In during attack landing operations, these LST's carried approximately 350 fighting personnel (both Marines and Army) and their equipment.

During 15 continuous months, LST 991 traveled in convoys protected by destroyers and destroyer escorts.  While en route, the main hazards were enemy submarines and aircraft.  Operations in the Western Pacific Included the Marianas, Marshalls, Carolinas, Solomons, Philippines, and Gilbert Islands.

The ship participated in five attack landings in a "leap frog" operation from island to island leading to their ultimate captures.  These operations were extremely dangerous and difficult while both landing and retracting because of Japanese strafing and bombing.  After retraction from the attack battle landings, wounded personnel were picked up and carried by reforming convoys to secured hospital and supply areas. 

LST 991 received five citations from the US Government for attack battle landings.  The ship and Jerry also received two citations from the Philippine Government for operations during the liberation of the Philippines. After the capture of Okinawa and and Japan’s unconditional surrender, Jerry received orders home to Berkeley where he returned to his studies at the University of California under the GI Bill and earned his PhD in physical and organic chemistry.  Although he was in the Chemistry Department, he ended up teaching practical chemistry to Civil Engineering students until he became Emeritus in 1986.

In January 1943 before leaving for the Pacific, Jerry married Rosemary Renner.  They have nine children, 23 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.  The couple resides in Berkeley.

Willie was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma in October 1940.  His father was a mechanic; his mother was a schoolteacher who later became a newspaper proofreader.  Willie had one older brother.

In the early 1940s, the family moved to Dinuba in California’s Central Valley.  Willie graduated from Dinuba High School in 1958 and entered California State University in Fresno majoring in English.

During March 1963, he graduated, married Nina Bishop, and entered the Navy's Aviation Officer Candidate program.  After training in T-34, T-2A, F-9, and F-11 aircraft in Pensacola, Florida; Meridian, Mississippi; and Kingsville, Texas, he was commissioned as an Ensign and awarded his wings in September 1964.

He asked for and was assigned to the F-8 Crusader at Miramar, California and completed F-8 training there in March 1965.  In April 1965, Willie departed the US via commercial air and joined his Squadron, VF-191, after it arrived at Subic Bay in the Philippines.

In April 1965, Willie went into combat in North Vietnam aboard the carrier USS Bon Homme Richard, CVA 31.  In August 1965, he became the Squadron Landing Signal Officer (LSO). On 18 November 1965, he was shot down, ejected over the Gulf of Tonkin, was captured, escaped, and was rescued.

In August 1966, the Squadron moved to the USS Ticonderoga, CVA-14.  Willie volunteered for a second tour in the Gulf of Tonkin 1966-1967 for a total of 317 combat missions.  He then served as a LSO for Advanced Training at Kingsville, Texas until March 1968 when he left the Navy in the rank of Lieutenant.

Willie’s military awards and decorations include the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with 11 Stars, the Purple Heart, and the Navy Commendation medal with V device for Valor.

In 1968, Willie joined United Airlines (UAL) as a Flight Engineer on DC-6s and then on Boeing 727s.  His seniority-controlled progression included First Officer on 737s and 727s.  In 1979, he made Captain in 737s, then 757s, 767s, 747-400s, and 777s.  He was also designated as a Flight Instructor and a Line Check Airman.  His flying career with UAL continued until mandatory retirement at age 60 in October 2000.

Willie and Nina had three daughters.  Sadly, Nina died on 17 June 2016; Willie resides in Pleasanton.

Jim Stein was born in Lehi, Utah in December 1946. By the time he entered high school, he had lived all over the United States. His father was an engineer and traveled for his work, so Jim and his family moved frequently.  His mother was a housewife who raised the kids; later at the age of 52, she fulfilled her dream of graduating in nursing.

Jim was not the only military man in the family; his father and seven uncles served in either the Army, Navy or Air Force during World War II and Korea.  His younger brother Tom served in Army Aviation as a helicopter crew chief in the mid 1970s.

Jim had completed two years of college and was living in St. George, Utah when he was drafted.  He had gained basic work experience doing heavy construction while working with his father on water dam projects in California. His mother felt that the Army would “give [him] some structure.”

After completing basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, Jim went to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri (known as “Little Korea”) where he became a heavy equipment operator due to his previous experience with his father.  He was designated platoon leader and then was then assigned to a 12-week course at Engineer Officer Candidate School (OCS).  He completed the program and graduated as an Engineer Second Lieutenant (2LT).  

Jim was then sent to helicopter flight school: Primary training at Fort Wolters, Texas and then Advanced and combat training at Fort Rucker, Alabama.  He remembers that his training there was fast-paced. The high demand for helicopter pilots during that period meant there was a lot to learn in a short amount of time.  He remembered one dogma that helped him through: “They could wear you out, but they couldn’t beat you.” After flight school, Jim was assigned to Vietnam.

His first assignment “in country” was with the 335th Assault Helicopter Company, known as the “Cowboys”, located in Bear Cat, 30 miles southeast of Saigon; a base shared with the Thai Army.  Most of his missions consisted of inserting troops into a landing zone (LZ) and later extracting them from a pick up zone.  The unit’s pilots also flew supply and medevac missions. 

Jim remembers, “As a newbie you were referred to as a ‘Peter Pilot’, not sure of anything but treated quite well.” He soon realized that his training was far from over. Once at the base, he received OJT assault training learning how to:

-- land directly on the ground instead in of a hover

-- land in a hot LZ

-- decide what kind of landing was appropriate in which situations

-- fly in formation

-- execute the necessary maneuvers he would be performing on missions.

The living conditions and amenities were sparse but adequate. Jim lived in a one-level barracks with the other officers in his flight platoon. At the base he could receive three hot meals a day; if flying maybe one. While in the area of operations, meals consisted mainly of C-rations. Aircraft and ammunition were always in full supply. While Jim was based at Pleiku in the Central Highlands, the base’s supply lines were cut off and supplies had to be flown in, forcing them to rely on C-Rations alone.

Jim and the other troops could communicate with their families back home; he wrote letters and made audiotapes but there was no telephone communication.  The entertainment provided for the troops made no lasting impression on him; he remembers that movies would be brought in and that once you were there long enough you were allowed off base, but otherwise “there was not a lot going on.”  

While the entertainment might not have impressed him, the camaraderie stayed with him for the rest of his life.  Jim says he had “a fantastic unit” and the more he got to know his fellow pilots and crew the more he appreciated them.  This feeling was extended towards his commanding officers as well; they were “fantastic”, with effective training programs.  As a member of a helicopter crew, he experienced one of the tightest bonds the military has to offer. “One thing you find is that in a helicopter unit you all learn to count on each other… What one does is in relation to what the others do. If a helicopter goes down, you count on a unit helicopter for the rescue. After the mission, you all try to help each other…”

During his service with the 335th, Jim was a slick (troop carrier) and gunship platoon commander, operations officer, and a command and control pilot. He ran combat assault missions for the 7th and 9th ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) Divisions. “We received a lot of enemy fire; many ships were shot down.”  

While Jim was in Vietnam, he never went on leave.  In between his first tour and his extension, he traveled on leave around the United States seeing friends that he had flown with.  A high percentage of crew members also extended for a second tour, highlighting the depth of camaraderie.

After 21 months with the 335th, Jim was assigned to the 43rd General Support Group as an operations officer at Fort Carson, Colorado.  After six months, he received a transition to go to a private flight school to learn how to fly fixed-wing aircraft and get a commercial flight certificate.

After finishing fixed-wing training, Jim volunteered to return to Vietnam.  Once there, he was assigned to the 7th of 17th Air Cav (known as the “Ruthless Riders”) at Pleiku for what would be his last combat assignment.  This time, he flew a light observation helicopter (nicknamed “Loach”) that performed mainly reconnaissance missions.  He remembers this time fondly: “Shortly after arriving I assumed command of a volunteer recon platoon know as the ‘Scalp Hunters’ and got to do what I always loved to do, which was fly every day.”

In the CAV, his missions were to find the NVA and where they were moving.  Jim could receive hostile fire three or four times a day; he was shot down ten times, but says, “I had no issues or problems at all."  On June 19, 1972 he was shot down for the tenth time and took a round in his right knee, resulting in amputation of the leg. Even after the loss of his leg, Jim didn’t immediately leave the service. He transferred to the Army Adjutant General Branch, and graduated from the Army Career Course in Indianapolis. After the course, Jim decided to take a medical retirement. 

Jim’s military awards and decorations include two Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Bronze Stars, the Cross of Gallantry with Gold & Silver Star, and 94 Air Medals.

After retiring from the military, Jim learned to ski at Lake Tahoe and participated in programs with the US Ski Team, giving him the opportunity to ski with some of the top skiers in the country. He traveled the country skiing and playing golf for ten years. While living winters in Park City, Utah, he helped the U.S. Ski Team organize the first two “Jill Saint John/Paul Mason” Celebrity Ski races, raising funds for the Ski team.  During the summers, he organized many regional amputee golf tournaments and two national events.  

Jim didn’t go back to school, simply because he didn’t feel the need to. Instead, he got his real estate license but soon decided this field wasn’t for him. He then went to work as an operations officer for a private company in the Bay Area.

Hello Colonels and Aviation Friends:

Sad news…. Our scheduled Guest Speaker this month lost his wife of 53 years on Friday June 17th.  Our prayers are with him and his family.
 
Gil may be able to schedule another speaker.  But if not, come anyway and enjoy dinner and each other's company.

When:
Agenda:
Where:
Donation:
Potluck:
Thursday, June 26, 2016
Social 6pm; Dinner 7pm; Speaker 8pm
Naval Air Museum, 2151 Ferry Point, B-77, Alameda CA map
Members: $10; First time guests: Free!
Please bring a prepared dish that will feed five. And remember to 'pre-cut' your meat dishes.

Ralph Welsh, First Lieutenant, US Army Air Forces

Ralph was born in 1920 in the small town of Outlook in northeast Montana; he had two older sisters.  Their father ran the town’s grain elevator; their mother was a housewife. He attended Lignite high school and graduated at age 15 in 1935.  At age 19, he landed an office job with a local mining company.

 At age 21, Ralph enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Santa Ana Army Air Base, California and entered the aviation cadet program.  After graduation as a Second Lieutenant, he began B-24 First Pilot training at Kirtland Air Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In December1943, Ralph and his B-24 crew departed Florida for England via Trinidad; Belem, Brazil; Dakar, Senegal; Marrakesh, Morocco; and Wales. At their new duty station (RAF Seething, South Norfolk) they joined the 712th Bomb Squadron, 448th Bomb Group, 20th Air Wing, 2nd Air Division, 8th Air Force from December 1943 until April 1945.

During his 33 combat missions In the European Theater of Operations (ETO), Ralph’s strategic bombing targets included railroad yards, aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturing plants, a synthetic oil production plant, Hamburg and Berlin, etc.

Ralph’s military awards and decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross and The Air Medal with four Oak Leaf clusters.

In April 1945, he returned to the US on the Queen Mary which had been converted to a 15,000-man troop ship but was very uncrowded during its westbound Atlantic crossings at that time.

Ralph was discharged in the rank of First Lieutenant and used the GI Bill to attend college at Gonzaga and then Stanford majoring in economics.  He graduated in 1949 and began work as an administrative assistant in a Portland, Oregon stock brokerage.

During the Korean conflict, Ralph was recalled to active duty at Geiger Field near Spokane, Washington.  Assigned to a filter center, he oversaw numerous civilian volunteers who reported sightings of potentially hostile aircraft overflying the Pacific Northwest.

After the end of hostilities, he became a stockbroker with Schwabacher and Company in San Francisco and later started his own import business.

In 1956, Ralph married; the couple had four children and lives in San Francisco.

He authored a book titled “WOW”, an anthology of B-24 crews and missions flown during World War II.  He is currently publishing a 400-page book called “Bombs Away”.

Ray Weigle was born in June 1920 at Syracuse, New York, the first of two brothers.  His father was a chief civil engineer specializing in dam construction; his mother operated a school of dance.  He grew up in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Harrisburg) and graduated from Camp Hill high school in 1938.

Ray’s first airplane ride was at age 6 in a barnstorming Waco 9 OX-5 near Hershey, PA.  In 1939, he entered the University of Southern California (USC) majoring in commercial aviation.  He took flying lessons at Van Nuys, CA Metropolitan Airport and soloed in a Piper J-3 Cub in March 1940.

In the summer of 1940, Ray earned his Private Pilot’s license at Penn Harris Airport near Harrisburg, PA in Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) for college students. During his sophomore year at USC, he completed the Secondary CPT course in aerobatics in a Waco UPF-7 at California Flyers, Los Angeles Municipal Airport (now LAX).

In the summer of 1941, he took courses in Cross Country, Commercial, and Instructor Ratings in Beechcraft D17S Staggerwings and Fairchild PT-19s at the Wilson Flying Service near New Kingston, PA.

In spring 1942, Ray was accepted for co-pilot training with TWA, but decided to accept a job with Embry Riddle in Arcadia, Florida instructing Army Primary cadets in Stearman PT-17s as a contribution to the war effort.

A year later at Opa-Locka, FL he applied and was accepted as an Ensign in the US Navy.  Based on his previous flying experience, in the summer of 1943 at Corpus Christi, Texas he skipped Navy Primary training and completed Basic and Advanced.

Upon graduation, Ray was assigned to Squadron VRF-1 at Floyd Bennett Field, New York to ferry planes from East Coast aircraft factories to carriers on the West Coast at San Diego, San Pedro, and Seattle.  While delivering Naval aircraft, he logged approximately 1200 hours of flight time.  His return trips were on commercial airlines (24-hour flights from San Diego to New York).

Discharged as a Lieutenant in August 1946, he returned to USC on the GI Bill. In May 1948 (a month before graduation), he left USC to accept a First Officer slot with TWA because at that time, their new-hire upper age limit was 28 and his 29^th birthday was in June.

After Ray completed his First Officer training in Kansas City, he was assigned to Newark, NJ flying Douglas DC-3s.  One month later, he was reassigned to La Guardia, NY flying Lockheed Constellations.

In June 1949, TWA furloughed 300 First Officers.  Ray was immediately hired by Colonial Airlines at La Guardia flying DC-3s to Montreal and points in between.

In December 1949, he was furloughed by Colonial, rehired the following spring, and furloughed again in November 1950.  He rented a DC-3 from Colonial at $40 per hour and passed his Air Transport Rating for DC-3s.  Hired immediately by American Airlines, he was never furloughed again, made Captain in September 1955, and retired in June 1980.

In 1950, Ray married an AA stewardess; they had one son and divorced in 1960.  In 1969, he married Rosalie Dunn who was a registered nurse and Pan American Purser originally from Boston, England.  After leaving Pan Am in 1975, she got her nursing credentials in California and went to work at Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco.  She later decided to go into real estate and is working as a successful broker. They are still happily married and reside in San Rafael.

Civilian Aircraft Flown:

Beechcraft A36 Bonanza, Beechcraft D17S Staggerwing, Citabria, Cub Cruiser, Davis, Decathlon, Douglas DC-3, Fairchild 21, Fairchild 24, Fairchild PT-19, Luscombe Silvair, Piper J-3 Cub, Schweizer 233 (sailplane), Starduster 1, Stearman PT-17, Stinson Reliant, Waco UPF-7.

Military Aircraft Flown:

F4F/FM-2, F4U, F6F, F7F, F8F, JD-1, N2S, N3N, PV-1, PV-2, R4D, R5C, R5D, SB2C, SBD, SNB, SNJ, SNV, TBF/TVM, TDC-2.

Airline Type Ratings:

B-707, B-720, B-747, CV-240, CV-990, DC-3, DC-6. DC-7, DC-10, L-188.

Jack was born in Ross, CA on New Year's Eve, 1926.  His father worked for the Bank of Italy which later became the Bank of America; his mother was a housewife.  They had three sons; Jack was the middle child.

He attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley in the Class of 1945 where he was a High School All-American in football.  Drafted before graduation, he was inducted at San Rafael and sent to Camp Roberts near San Luis Obispo for processing.  Jack went through Infantry Basic Training at Ft. Benning, GA and then volunteered for jump training at the adjacent parachute school.

Assigned to the 11th Airborne Division, he departed the US from Fort Lewis, WA via a troop ship to Okinawa.  The ship anchored offshore awaiting the start of Operation Olympic, the first stage of the planned invasion of Japan’s southernmost main island (Kyushu) in October 1945.

In 1945 on:
-- 6 August, the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
-- 8 August, the USSR declared war on Japan.
-- 9 August, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki and the USSR invaded the Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchuko.
-- 15 August, Japan announced its surrender to the Allies.
-- 2 September, Japan formally signed the surrender documents aboard the battleship USS Missouri moored in Tokyo Bay.

Soon thereafter, Jack landed in Japan at Yokohama.  He was based at Morioka on northern Honshu (Japan’s largest island) as part of US Occupation Troops.  Sent to language school in Tokyo, he learned Japanese and participated in small-unit court martials as an interpreter.

He participated in one regimental-sized demonstration jump in Japan.  The US sent a film of this jump to the USSR as a warning to forget any intentions it might have of invading Japan’s home islands.

Jack made a total of seven jumps, five in training and two in Japan.  After more than two years in Japan, he returned via troop ship to San Francisco.  In May 1947, he was discharged in the rank of Sergeant at Camp Beale which is now Beale Air Force Base near Yuba City.

Initially; he tried out for the San Francisco 49'ers; this lasted all of five days.

Because he had a younger brother to support, he went directly to work for CAL PAC CORP which later became Del Monte Corporation.  He started as a sales trainee and rose to become Executive VP of Sales and Marketing.  After 35 years with Del Monte, he conducted a study on the feasibility of acquiring the Granny Goose potato chips company.  When this was done, he was appointed as the acquisition’s President and CEO.  After eight years, Granny Goose was sold and Jack returned to Del Monte Corporation.

In 1948, Jack married Evelyn Merviani in Fairfax; they had two sons.  Jack resides with one of his sons in Moraga.

October 2008 & February 2009 Speaker

"My life has been a dream of aviation, ever since I was a little kid. I guess there’s not much I’d do differently."

Stu Eberhardt was born in 1936 in Chicago, and grew up with his family of German immigrants in a rural house. He says three generations of Eberhardts lived in that two-bedroom home.

"The one thing we had in the Eberhardt household was discipline. The kids didn’t talk at dinner…

"As early as I could remember, my brother Ronnie would buy little airplane "stick models", balsa wood stringers and bulkheads cut out with an X-acto knife or razor blade. I was probably too young to construct them myself, but with his help we had just about every WWII airplane that had been built and went to war, hanging in our room. I’d look at them and it was like a feast just to imagine flying them.

"Unfortunately my brother drowned in a river, and I was left on my own, and continued the interest."

Mr. Eberhardt was in the printing business in Chicago, and Stu says the family reached a point where they had enough money to move to the suburbs on the south of Chicago. At the edge of town was a grass airport.

"I had a bicycle and it wasn’t long before I was bicycling out there."

Stu says those were the days when airports, many of them Army Air Force bases in World War Two, were not fenced in. Taildragger aircraft abounded, as did opportunities for a little kid to become involved in aviation.

"I just got to hang around, and finally they let me wash airplanes, cut grass, wash windows. Eventually they let me fuel airplanes and things like that."

Eberhardt says his flight instructor was a former C-46 pilot who had become a drunk. But Stu was able to learn from him how to fly, and for free. Instrument and flight instructor ratings came quickly, and when Stu turned 18 years old, he saw in the Army Air Force the prospect of flying some of the real airplanes he’d built as scale models.

He took and passed a scholastic equivalency test, and was accepted as an Aviation Cadet in preflight school at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas. Eberhardt says the most important aspect of this cadet experience was a test of discipline.

"Most of these guys had been in college and partied and were not interested in discipline. For me, discipline was easy, because I was raised in the Eberhardt household.

"Guys got eliminated from that pre-flight program by quitting (self-initiated elimination) or, they got kicked out."

Primary pilot training was easy, Stu recalls, for he had already been flying by then for about seven years. The T-34 trainers the cadets flew were so new their rudder pedals were still fully painted. And he liked the Link trainers because all the instruments in them worked and there was a uniformed, professional instructor to explain everything — a stark difference from the 20 hours of Link time he’d bought as a civilian.

Eberhardt then got an instructor recommendation to move to single-engine Basic Training, instead of the multi-engine route, which would have had him flying B-25s. The transition from propeller-driven aircraft to jets was the big step for Stu:

"We flew 120 hours in the T-33A, which was a two-seat trainer version of the earlier P-80. And of course it had a centrifugal compressor jet engine, the primitive version from the Whittle and early jet engines. They moaned and groaned and didn’t like to do their job. But it was a jet.

"Before you could solo the airplane, you had to do what was called ‘recovery from vertical flight,’ because a jet was particularly critical in the vertical movements. And if you get it going up and you get too slow, it’s going to fall out and possibly fall into a spin or inverted spin.

"I’ve always thought that in piston airplanes it was easier to do lateral maneuvers such as rolls, and easier to do ‘over the top,’ whereas in a jet, it reverses. In a jet, a roll is extremely easy, the airplane does it practically by itself. Just a flick of the wrist and it will roll. But vertical maneuvers require some planning. You have to get enough speed to get the airplane vertical and get it back to the horizon before it stalls out. "

Eberhardt says requirements called for a demonstration recovery from vertical flight before soloing. On the day he was to meet this requirement, he was in the briefing room realizing it would still be dark when he and the instructor took off. Indeed the sun had not risen by the time they’d flown to the practice area and the instructor took back the controls.

"He pours the coal to it, point the nose down… pulls it straight up and then says, ‘Okay, you’ve got it.’

"Just then, we go into the base of the clouds. This was not the plan. This was a visual maneuver, not to be done on instruments. The idea was you were supposed to come back with a little back pressure and a little aileron so that you roll toward the nearest horizon. We came out of the side of this thunderstorm looking at the morning twilight in the east. It was orange and pink. And I could hear him start to breathe again. He said, ‘If you can do that on instruments, I guess you could do that VFR. Let’s go back.’ "

Eberhardt was 19 years old when he graduated first in his Class of 57-P, He was an officer and he’d earned his wings, but he wasn’t old enough to buy a beer in public, though he could do so at the Officer’s Club.

He was also now flying the Republic F-84F fighter from Luke AFB. The F-84’s liftoff speed was 174 knots, and on a hot day, getting off of the 10,000 foot runway could be a challenge

Stu says the standing joke about the Republic fighter was that "if somebody would build a runway that went all the way around the world, Republic would build an airplane that would use it."

Training now had him over gunnery ranges dropping practice bombs in runs that duplicated napalm delivery (called skip bombing), dive-bombing, firing rockets or practicing air-to air gunnery with .50 cal machine guns. The other weapons delivery maneuver was called "over-the-shoulder", or LABS for "low angle bombing system".

From there, Eberhardt began logging time in the supersonic North American F-86D, a swept-wing jet with hydraulic-boosted flying controls. The D, K, and L versions of the aircraft were all-weather fighters, flown under virtually all conditions, and were well suited to the roles of interceptor and attack fighter.

"Nobody knew from which direction the Russians would come. All over the country there were fighter-interceptor units. I was part of it. It was five minute alert. It was clear in mind that if the Russians were coming it was going to be a nuclear war.

"That being established we knew we were going to shoot them down. We had 24 rockets on each airplane and we could fire them in groups of 6, 12 or 24. And our instructions were that if you ran out of rockets—it wasn’t a kamikaze—but we were to ram. And we had ejection seats, so we would survive, hopefully."

Stu was stationed at Chicago Orchard Field, what had been that sleepy airport of his childhood. In 1942, the airstrip became the site of a new air base and cargo plane manufacturing facility, Orchard Place Airport/Douglas Field. After the war, the city of Chicago bought the facility from government and converted it into a commercial airport, eventually becoming O’Hare Airport.

During the Korean War, O'Hare was reassigned to the Central Air Defense Force, and the 62d Fighter-Interceptor Squadron was transferred there. Back on his home turf, Stu became a pilot in the frontlines of the nation’s Air Defense Command, and was headed for the days of 3-minute, 5-minute and 15-minute alerts.

Flying defensive peacetime alerts involved two pilots and four aircraft, housed in a pair of two-story hangars. Each hangar held an F-86 armed with 24 rockets and ground level living quarters for two mechanics per plane, a power man and crew chief. A pilot was housed upstairs.

The routine, when reporting for the 24-hour day, was to open the hangar doors, run the F-86 engines and test the Hughes E-4 fire control systems. The E-4 used vacuum tube technology, and according to Stu, was not terribly reliable.

"The engine also had a computer, an electronic fuel control that also had vacuum tubes. A failure of a vacuum tube would cause a failure of the engine. So we had a back-up fuel control system, which was used frequently.

"We had four of airplanes in these bays, and we would pre-flight all four. They would all be run and tested. If there were any discrepancies, they would be fixed, within minutes. If the airplane was not fixable within minutes, it would be towed out and a new one put in. (53:28)

Living conditions while on alert were spartan. Pilots slept in their flight suits, only taking off their zipper-fastened jump boots when they went to bed. They ate TV dinners from the aluminum trays and had to be ready for the sound of the klaxons.

"We were on what was called ‘Five minute alert’. We were expected to be out of the bunk and airborne in five minutes. It took a lot of practice.

"We had one minute to come from upstairs to the airplane. There was a firehouse brass pole instead of a stairway. And the reason for that was not speed. If you try to run down stairs at full speed, you realize it’s dangerous.

"The power man and crew chief would already be at the airplane. The power man would be cranking up the APU because the airplane had to have two minutes of electrical power for the automatic fuel control to warm up. The crew chief would be pulling the pins out of the armament and landing gear.

"The pilot would go up the ladder— internal steps to the airplane—so that nobody had to remove the ladder. The pilot had pre-positioned his parachute and helmet in the cockpit when he reported for work, and would leave them there, all hooked up.

"The crew chief would help the pilot strap in, which is another minute. So the airplane has had power on it for two minutes. If the pilot is still strapping in, when the crew chief sees the electronic lockup light go out, he will then reach and hit the starter for the pilot so the pilot won’t have to do two things at once."

Eberhardt says the crew chief then closes the step to the airplane, the power man pulls the power cords (which are designed to automatically break-away); the plot closes the canopy, moves the throttle forward and starts taxiing at high speed. On alert, Eberhardt says, the tower did not have to issue takeoff clearance, knowing the fighters would be heading out, at speed, to takeoff.

"Most of our flights were identification flights. This was before the days before jet airliners. Piston airliners only went to 23,000 feet. If they had an airplane flying around at 41,000 feet, it was either the Strategic Air Command or the Russians. They want to know who it is and it was our job to go find out."

The scramble system was streamlined, so that when the klaxon went off, the pilot knew the heading he had to take to fly the ‘climb corridor’. He also knew the radio frequency for a ground control intercept facility, which would vector the fighter to the unidentified aircraft.

The apex of a scrambled flight most frequently brought the identification of a B-36. Eberhardt says the SAC bombers were common at 35,000 feet with no control, no instrument clearance, and their wandering for hours and hours.

"Our radar went out to 30 miles, and it was marginal at that range. But when a B-36 got within 30 miles on our radarscope, it was about the size of a half dollar. The B-36 has to have the most prominent radar return of any airplane ever built with all those propellers and stuff like that.

According to Eberhardt, the biggest challenge of alert duty was getting enough opportunities to fly.

"There isn’t anything more boring that spending 24 hours in a steel box," says Stu, "So we’d call the controller at the GCI site and say, ‘can you come up with an unidentified airplane?’

"And he’d say, ‘Yeah. When do want to do it?’

"And we’d say, ‘Give us 15 minutes and we’ll finish a Coke.’ And then the klaxon goes off and we’d go flying."

And Stu says that’s why they had four aircraft for two pilots; so two aircraft would always be ready to go.

After his stint with the Air Defense Command, Stu was retrained to fly the F-100 in the Tactical Air Command, which meant a change of flying operations.

"Instead of being an instrument type, fly-at-night, fly inside the clouds, shoot down airplanes if you have to (type of work) it became a visual operation, where we couldn’t shoot anything we didn’t see."

His missions were air-to-air combat with 20mm cannons; dropping napalm; dive-bombing and nuclear weapon delivery. Stu says had the United States gone to war, he probably would have been tasked with dive-bombing and nuclear bombing. A major reason why was due to the Warsaw Pact’s overwhelming superiority of numbers in conventional ground forces compared with those of NATO.

But because France’s Charles DeGaulle banned the storage of nuclear weapons in his country, Eberhardt’s unit operated from two bases.

"One was Bitburg, Germany, where we kept four airplanes on alert armed with nuclear bombs. The other place was Tulle, France, which had planes with 750-pound conventional bombs.

On August 13, 1961, East Germany took action that once again prevented the flow of goods from the West into Berlin.

"They didn’t actually block the autobahn with tanks pointed at the convoys. They were parking military vehicles so that a convoy had to weave its way through, maybe take an hour to find somebody to get the keys to move the vehicles."

"We didn’t want to start a war over this, but we had to assert our right to access Berlin by surface routes. At Tulle, we had conventional bombs. The obstructions were vehicles and troops. The weapons to use against vehicles and troops are rockets and 20mm cannons. The 20mm cannons use standard ammunition, and the bombs were intended for personnel out in the field.

"The bombs were basically cylinders filled with high explosives inside a steel case that explodes. The shrapnel from the bomb will injure personnel, demolish a building or something like that. The weight of the bomb is the gross weight, so the pilot can computer the weight of the airplane.

"A bomb is quite safe, shipped on the surface on trucks, railroad cars, boats, and the like to wherever they’re going, and then they are fused, which makes them somewhat dangerous. "

Eberhardt recalls an incident during an Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI) that demonstrated how safe bombs were, as long as their fuses were not set.

"The dirty rats came from headquarters Wiesbaden at two o’clock in the morning. Well, the bar hadn’t been closed for two hours, so we’re all in our beds snoring, hoping we didn’t have to get up before eight in the morning. And we get an ORI.

"Cripes!

"We’ve got 24 airplanes in the squadron and that means 24 pilots in those airplanes, two bombs on each of them, and get ‘em taxiing out. It’s two o’clock in the morning and it’s snowing."

Stu says he got on the bus, went to flight operations to get his assigned airplane. Then he ran to the hard stand where the lights were on, the auxiliary power unit was running, and there were two bomb loaders.

"A bomb loader was kind of like a long hydraulic tractor that lifts the bomb. They put one under each wing and when they get them attached to the airplane, then simultaneously they lower the two bomb loaders.

"So, I get into the cockpit and I’m strapping in and all of a sudden the airplane tilts… and I look out to see that the bomb fell off the wing!"

Eberhardt says the ordnance crew picked up the bomb with a net and re-mounted it on the wing pylon, Not knowing how a bomb worked—that a fuse has to be set and a safety wire pulled before the bomb will detonate—he had a bit of a jolt while sitting in the cockpit.

Eberhardt says the bombs their F-86s carried were fused both fore and aft, and the pilot had a switch to choose between the nose or tail fuse.

"If you have, say on a battalion of troops in an open field, you want the nose fuse because it will set the bomb off on contact. If you have a hard target such as a building or bridge, you want the bomb to implant itself, so you set the tail fuse.

"The bomb then attaches to the airplane with two shackles, and there’s a wire that goes through a propeller on either end of the bomb. The wire stays on the airplane, preventing the propeller from turning aerodynamically until the wire is pulled.

"So when the bomb fell off, and tipped the airplane, it was still quite safe. If you’re still looking at the bomb, you’re okay!"

Hitting targets with conventional bombs dropped from the F-86 was accomplished with the help of an A4 gun sight. The A4 computed the required trajectory for bullets to hit a target at deflection or in a turn, but could also be used "caged", mechanically locked, and then depressed, for bombing.

"We depressed it 45 units, and that provided the angle for dive-bombing. Now, one of the problems with dive bombing is you have to have very good weather, about 10,000 feet of airspace, because our release altitude was about 7,000 feet.

Eberhardt says a typical mission during this period of East German autobahn blockade would involve a flight of four F-86s (Stu says he, as junior officer, always flew the #4 position, tasked with staying in formation) taking off toward Fulda, Germany. They would then patrol at 35,000 feet between that point and another near Hanover.

The flight would be under the control of a radar-equipped ground controller who was linked by radio to a forward air controller on the autobahn.

"We were not authorized to have the armament switches on at this point. We did not have the authority to make the decision to make the attack. That had to come over the radio. The flight leader had a decoder to receive messages from the ground controller, whether to go back to the base, stay in the pattern, or if worst came to worst, to attack."

During the winter, German skies at 35,000 feet offered little visibility of the ground. So if an attack had been called for, finding the target would have required radar vectoring from the GCI site.

"The plan then was to use our 20mms and our 750 pound bombs to blast the way through. We were prepared to do that, and were airborne, ready to do it."

Eberhardt says these flights were not unilateral. Occasionally, he says from the corner of an eye he’d catch sight of Warsaw Pact MiG-17 fighters in an opposing circuit on the East German side of the border.

"Because we were loaded with bombs and all that ammunition, we were vulnerable. We couldn’t have fought our way out of a paper bag even though our planes were superior. We would have had to jettison our bombs, get some speed up and get some altitude before we could have defended ourselves against the MiGs. We didn’t have that kind of time.

"We depended on the Canadians, who had Mark 6 Sabres and were at 52,000 feet, holding above us. They were our air cover. As long as they stayed above us, I knew everything was okay. If they headed for the MiGs, I knew which way I would go."

A further element in these border maneuvers was the fact that the USAF F-86s were not allowed to have their cannons armed, to avoid an errant index finger pulling the trigger on the control stick and accidentally discharge cannon rounds.

Eberhardt says that the East German autobahn blockade of Berlin ended without incident, and without notice. One day, the East German military vehicles just failed to appear on the concrete ribbon to the capital city.

Bitburg, Germany was in many ways similar to Tulle, France. One very big difference was that Bitburg was a nuclear base, which meant that Eberhardt had three-minutes alerts. Broken down, that was one minute to start the engine, one minute to taxi to the runway, and one minute from releasing the brakes to being airborne.

"We had to sit in the cockpit. And that could be for eight hours. Quite frankly, after sitting in the cockpit for four or five hours, it would have been very difficult.

Eberhardt says the Tactical Air Command F-100s never flew with nuclear bombs. Only Strategic Air Command carried nuclear ordnance, but TAC remained prepared to do so through its three-minute alerts.

"The three-minute alert was torture. They feed you sandwiches in the cockpit. It’s tough to talk about bladders and bowels and stuff like that, but you had to stay in the airplane.

"We would normally eat in the Officer Open Mess, or something like that. And lunch would cost you 35 cents and it was decent food. But when you’re on three-minute alert, strapped in the cockpit, they send you out some kind of garbage, because they can’t collect your 35 cents. For instance, they’d send out sandwiches made of fat, just bread and fat. It wasn’t very good."

Eberhardt also spoke of the ‘culture’ of the Cold War nuclear weapons warrior. The pilot, family and neighbors were questioned by security officials mostly concerned about whether a pilot could be blackmailed. Gambling debts and sexual orientation were at the top of the list for potential blackmail.

Top Secret clearance meant not telling your wife what you did for a living. Stu says that even today he feels funny talking about what happened 50 years ago, and he related a story about visiting Prague a year after he’d retired from the service.

"Marilyn and I went to Prague as tourists, which was near… what my target was. I have difficulty saying what my target was, but it was Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, where there was a bridge across a gorge the Russians had to use to get to West Germany with their divisions. It was my job to blow up that bridge with a nuclear weapon."

The mission profile for delivering a nuclear bomb from a fighter was a strictly solo routine by the fighter pilot.

"You made your own charts out of World Aeronautical Charts, then drew a line for a 35,000 feet approach to the Iron Curtain, descending to 50 feet at an indicated airspeed of 500 knots. You had to do this visually, as there was no radio guidance. "Then there was an Initial Point (IP), usually about a mile from where your target was. You’d hit that IP at 500 knots, have some switches turned on and then run a checklist to get all this equipment working.

"I would approach my target, in a gorge, by going up the river. The bridge would be more visible that trying to find follow the road. They could camouflage the road, but not the bridge. Then as you see the bridge, you would have the switches in LABS- automatic. The Low Angle Bombing System was designed specifically to deliver a nuclear weapon from low altitude, visually."

Eberhardt says the target portfolio was memorized, so you wouldn’t have to minimize referring to the map. The pilot, spotting the target, would then pull the stick straight back, through four Gs. As the plane pulls through vertical, the bomb would automatically release from a gyro, and continue to go straight up, while the pilot finishes his Immelman, rolls level and then dives to the ground in an escape maneuver in the opposite direction from the approach. The pilot should be about ten miles away by the time the bomb goes off.

"The pilot wore normal flyer’s clothing. There was no special suit for him to wear, just the helmet, flight suit, jacket and g-suit. There was a hood that came up from the back that he could pull over himself and still see the instruments. The hood was made of a metalized fabric.

"You would experience quite a bit of the flash. The heat flash travels at the speed of light. You can’t get away from it. The blast itself travels at the speed of sound. By the time you finish this maneuver and get headed downhill you’re going over 500 knots already, you’re almost supersonic yourself. The blast barely catches up with you, and by the time it does, you hardly feel it."

Fortunately, Eberhardt never was put in the position to have that experience.

After his Air Force time, Eberhardt flew a wide range of aircraft from DC-3s to Boeing 747s with Pan American Airlines. In1991 he took a position with Delta Airlines, retiring in 1996. He had also spent six years flying A-4 Skyhawks from Alameda NAS as a reservist with the Marine Corps, reaching the rank of Major.

Having logged more than 30,000 air hours as a pilot, Stu flies in the Reno Air races and he is still current in the F-86.

November 22nd 2008 marked the 50th wedding anniversary of Stu and Marilyn.

((Sidebar – suggest this be a separate column))

The Cold War developed from the end of World War Two, when Russia, the United States of America, Great Britain and France couldn’t agree on how to govern occupied Germany. It was a war of ideology, fought with threats, budgets for military weapons and actions of provocation rather than fought with the nuclear weapons.

Geographically, the Cold War was iconized by a militarized border called the Iron Curtain that divided Germany and communist satellite states from the West, and by the Berlin Wall, which divided the German capital city located in East Germany. The forces East of the Iron Curtain became known as those of the Warsaw Pact, while those of the West were known as the forces of NATO, for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The year 1947 saw key technological development and intrigues of the Cold War. In that year, test pilot Chuck Yeager flew a rocket-powered airplane past the sound barrier, North American Aviation developed the YP-86 supersonic jet fighter, the U.S Army Air Force became an independent service in the US Air Force, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried on spying charges for the sales of nuclear weapons information to the Soviet Union, convicted, and executed the following year.

Air Force pilot Stu Eberhardt says the Soviets, emboldened by their possession of nuclear weapons capability, encouraged Communist North Korea in 1950 to attack the southern half of Korean, sparking the Korean War.

June 24, 1948 was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. The Soviet Union completely blocked the West's railway, road, and waterway access to the western sectors of Berlin, an act aimed at forcing the western powers to allow Soviet supply of Berlin with food and fuel.

As a response, the U.S. Air Force formed the Berlin Airlift, to fly in as much as 4000 tons of supplies a day to the people of Berlin. By the next spring the airlift was working, and by April 1949 it was delivering more cargo than had previously reached the city by rail. The Soviets lifted the blockade on May 11, 1949.

Germany’s capital city of Berlin was also divided into Soviet and Western zones in 1948. Eberhardt notes, "East Germans were commuting into West Berlin on a daily basis for economic reasons, because there were jobs. But they preferred to live in East Germany. This was unsatisfactory to the East German government because a lot of people didn’t come back. They were losing 5000 people a day to defection.

"On day one it was like a rent-a-fence around a construction site. They put these fences up so people couldn’t cross, to keep the East Germans in. Most people commuted to work on foot or by bicycle and when they got to the fence, they just moved it out of the way and went through.

As time went on a 10-foot masonry fence replaced the chain link, and later the Russians used pre-cast concrete sections for construction. Under Soviet control, the wall included machine gun posts with guards who had orders to shoot anyone trying to leave East Berlin.

The Korean War of 1950-53, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 were two other key Cold War events.

The Cold War came to an end in 1989, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The United States had outspent the Soviets on military hardware and research, and the Warsaw Pact states virtually went broke. There was widespread unrest in Eastern Europe, and when some Warsaw pact countries cut their ties with Moscow, Gorbachev did not intervene. By 1990, East and West Germany had become one nation, and a few months later, the Warsaw Pact was no more.

Stu also spoke in February 2009 so we appended this talk into one article. Please see the February 2009 article.

Most of Jorg’s adventures in World War II didn’t involve shooting at other aircraft. Only during the final months of the European conflict, did he begin logging time as a combat pilot.

Jorg Czypionka was born in 1921 In Berlin, Germany and was raised in Czechoslovakia. As did so many of the other young boys of his generation, Jorg grew up wanting to be a pilot, and at age 14 he learned to fly gliders, soaring during the summer months in the hills of Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1939, his wish to become a pilot came true.

"I joined the Luftwaffe shortly after graduating from high school, and went through some basic training and some technical training before entering flying school."

Jorg says he was fortunate to have had good instructors before being mentored by a chief instructor who had only two other students instead of five or six. That meant extra flying time and some preferential treatment, as he tried to fly as many different types of aircraft as possible. Among the aircraft most flown were the He 72 Kadett biplane, the Junkers W 34, and Bucker aerobatic planes.

After six months, he became an assistant instructor himself while he continued advanced training in aerobatic, instrument, night, and high altitude flying, which led him to become a full-fledged instructor.

Czypionka was based at an airfield at the small-town of Wels (near Linz), Austria. He says he and his fellow instructors and students had lots of time for extra-curricular flying activities.

"I justified it when I took my students on daredevil missions and flights. I said that these guys should have more than the basic training. They will probably need it when they go into combat later.

"But, it was also that I, myself, wanted to have thrills! As many as possible, given the limited time we were aloft."

Czypionka says when thinking back to some of those experiences, he must have been crazy… but not irresponsible.

"I tried to always know my limits and learn how to judge your limits. You needed courage, responsibility and concentration. This was important to me every time I did these things. We flew with our trainers under telephone lines, between poplar trees in knife edge flight, or along village roads, knife edge, between the houses.

"In these little villages, people liked us. We were their fliers and they were proud to have us around. It was strictly forbidden to do these things, but there were some excuses, as I mentioned."

Czypionka recalled that (WWI fighter ace) Ernst Udet had been known for his airshow precision, plucking handkerchiefs from the ground with a hook on his airplane’s wingtip. He thought that if Udet could perform with such skill, he could too, although he didn’t have the wingtip hook.

Another highly skilled flier, and Czypionka’s idol, was Hans Joachim Marseille, who was the Luftwaffe’s leading Bf 109 ace in North Africa.

"To me, he was the best flyer that existed."

Czypionka had heard of missions, such as one in September, 1942 when Marseille attacked a ‘Lufbery Circle’ of RAF P-40 Tomahawks and systematically shot down 6 of them… on his way to downing a total of 17 Allied aircraft that day.

As a reward for the best student of the day, Czypionka said four or five instructors would meet between 5000-6000 thousand feet altitude for a dogfight that would wind down to ground level.

Czypionka’s training went on until August/September 1944 when he was transferred to a Special Commando unit - Nacht Jagd Geschwader (Night Fighter Squadron) 10 within NJG 11, a task force to battle almost nightly incursions to Berlin by about 60 deHavilland Mosquito bombers. The unit was based at Jueterbog, south of Berlin.

"Each bomber carried a 2000-pound bomb which exploded just above the ground. It created a vacuum and the houses just collapsed. So there was big devastation from these bombers.

"This task force was a modification of the earlier Wilde Sau system—single seat Messerschmitt 109s without radar, using ground-based navigation and communication.

"The Mosquitoes came in very loosely, never in formation, but flying singly. And they were spread all over the place.

Czypionka says the ground-based radar would vector the Me 109s toward the incoming bombers and then searchlights would try to illuminate the intruders, one at a time. The challenge was to catch the swift Mosquito bombers.

"It was very difficult because the 109 was not faster than the Mosquito, and they came in and flew out as fast as they could from the target area. So we had to be elevated about a thousand meters above the altitude of the Mosquitoes, mostly at about 10,000 meters (25,000 feet), waiting until we saw a Mosquito and could try to shoot it down. It was a very difficult task."

In one instance, Czypionka recalls being vectored to a Mosquito that was captured in the glare of as many as 30 searchlights. He approached the speeding bomber from behind, and as he was lining up his shot, the searchlights went out. Czypionka says he fired anyway, but had no way of knowing if he ever hit the aircraft.

Flying was most important to Czypionka, not combat. He says his mother had told him not to kill anybody. The young pilot says he found enough challenge and risk in simply flying at night—alone in the cockpit with the roar of a fighter’s single 2,000 horsepower engine, the sky at 30,000 feet: cold, huge and pitch-black.

"When you get home from this you are trembling a little bit and have to recover."

On the just mentioned Mosquito-chasing mission, Czypionka says he had an added problem. He’d pushed the throttle to full power too long, and asked too much of the Me 109’s engine.

"On the way back home the engine blew. The blower or something blew and started a fire. Oil came out and so there was no chance to do anything. I just kept my cool and talked to my control officer, who said he knew where I was, and I bailed out.

"I counted, because I knew how high I was. It was a wonderful feeling there, in the night with a little bit of the moon. It was like being in a down bed. And then pulled my parachute.

"Then, all of a sudden something comes up on my side and… I’m on the ground. I saw I was still about 100 feet above the ground. I wondered if I’d passed a monument or a church tower for I shot my illuminating pistol and then bounced on my backside. I’d passed a chimney of a brick factory, and I was on the roof of this brick factory, right between the forest and a lake.

"As I’d come down I saw these dark and lighter places and decided to go to the light area, which may be the water. If you fell into trees, they were fir trees and you could get badly hurt. If you fell in the water, (we had been taught) you could dive to get rid of the parachute, swim a little underwater and then come up somewhere.

"So, all of a sudden I was on this roof. The factory was right on the beach of this lake and over there was the forest. I’m sitting there and the parachute came down slowly. There was a little light coming from a hut and I called out.

"Two people came out from the hut: the night watchman, about 60 years old, and a young guy, a Polish worker. They came and lit me up with a light and the young guy said, ‘You’re a terror-bomber. You’re Amerikanski!’.

"I said I was German, but he again insisted I was ‘Amerikanski.’ So I sent down some identification and they took it into the hut to read it. Then the Polish guy came back out and said ‘Herr officer, Herr officer.’ And they came out with a ladder and I climbed down on the ladder.

"Then I had to tell my story, while I was relaxing on my parachute, because it was a little bit of a shock to me.

Czypionka says they sent him with his parachute through the forest to the nearest train station, a trek that brought its own special terror.

"I thought behind every tree there was some guy standing who was going to shoot at me. I was in shock. I had my pistol in hand, my parachute on my back… and I was so afraid. It was about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning and still dark when I came to a street and then a little village’s train stop.

"I laid down on this bench and fell asleep. When I woke up, there were people standing around in a circle—villagers waiting to take the train into Berlin to go to work—who were whispering to keep from waking me."

He says one woman stepped up and told Jorg to follow him to her home, where she gave him coffee and plum cake. She got a few neighbors to come over and asked him to tell them his story. And that’s how Czypionka passed the time until the next train arrived.

On the train, the downed pilot was surprised but relieved to find he was not required to have paid for a ticket for his ride into Berlin.

Night flying over the Berlin area continued into the winter of 1944-45, the weather increasing the hazards of flying. Above the clouds, fog and rain the sky would be clear. But getting up, and returning from that celestial position was another matter.

"There would be pouring rain at night, with barely a light on the ground. I flew on instruments only, and it was some adventure. I’d take off in the pouring rain and come back down at some other airfield, only to have to come back to my home airfield the next day. My airfield would have fog, low clouds, with an 80 meter (250 feet) ceiling.

"I had a wonderful control officer who understood me very well. I never met him but we were like brothers. What he said, I did and everything worked very well. I remember one day when I called him from another airfield. I had permission to decide myself whether to return to base in the weather. I called this guy on the telephone and asked him whether I could fly home under these weather conditions."

Czypionka says his control officer said he could, if he would exactly, meticulously follow his directions to ensure a safe flight home.

"I went up into the clouds with the 109 through rain. He took me up to a couple of thousand meters, and then he said to come down at exactly two meters per second in a spiral. I did this exactly as he said."

The controller then set the fighter pilot on a new course to bring him to the airfield.

"I set this course, and was very low. At one time I could feel the treetops banging into the airplane’s belly. So I pulled up a little and continued in the same direction. All of a sudden he said I was at the southwest corner of the airfield. His voice was so low I could barely hear him. But I went down and there I was.

"It was fantastic. This kind of thing made me proud. I liked these challenges and the positive results. On the whole I knew this aircraft, like an extension of my own limbs. I could do everything with this aircraft, it was wonderful.

Yet, the interception program against British bombers was not as successful as was hoped for. The Mosquitoes returned and continued nightly bombing runs on Berlin.

Czypionka says his commander eventually succeeded in securing a small unit of up to eight Me 262 (Schwalbe, or Swallow) jet fighters to counter the threat. At the time, both the Me 262 and the Arado 234 were operational. But the Arado was proved ill suited for night work because its glass nose reflected light entering the cockpit, hampering a pilot’s vision. The Me 262s were unmodified for this night fighting task— they were single seat fighters without radar, scrambled as the Mosquitoes approached Berlin, and capable of only about one hour and ten minutes flying time.

By January 1945, the Me 262s were regularly flying night sorties, continuing until May of ’45 and the end of the war in Europe. Czypionka says during this period of less than five months pilots flying Me 262 day fighters would shoot down as many Mosquitoes as the Me 109 task force had shot down in one full year of operation.

There were few Me 262s available, and even fewer trained pilots for the aircraft and these missions.

"In March, 1945, an old buddy and a fellow squadron leader (named Kurt Welter), called me to ask if I would like to fly the Me 262. And I said of, course, I did. That same day, I was on a train to go to Burg, near Magdeburg, about 120 kilometers southwest of Berlin. It was about March 20, and when I arrived in the afternoon it was already getting dark.

"I came to this airfield and here was this aircraft. I knew we had the Me 262, but had not seen it. Standing in front of it, I thought, "My God, this is unbelievable. This is the future! It is out of this word!

Czypionka stood in awe of the elegant triangular cross-section of the Me 262, its twin Jumo 004 engines hanging beneath the swept-back wings. He says he was told to have the chief mechanic explain everything about the aircraft and then report back.

"I sat in the aircraft for about 45 minutes while the chief mechanic explained about the temperatures, the engine revolutions and how to start the engine, where the instruments were. Because it was a Messerschmitt, the layout and instruments were arranged almost the same as a 109—electric on the right side and pneumatic things on the left side, and things like this."

Then Czypionka went to his commander’s bedroom, where he was shaving and preparing for his next night sortie, and was told to sit down and explain how to fly the jet around the airfield.

" I concentrated and told him every movement I would do. In between he had some questions like ‘Now we have to switch the tanks’, and I told him how it was done. Then it was ‘Undercarriage…emergency…’ and things like this. When I had answered all his questions he said, ‘Now go off and fly.’

Czypionka says he returned to the airfield, the mechanic started the Me 262’s engines and Jorg took off. He made two circuits of the airfield and made perfect landings, amazed at the aircraft’s speed and smoothness in flight, and its relative silence from inside the cockpit. He had made his transition to the jet.

Returning from Berlin one night after an interdiction mission, Czypionka noted a fuel warning light was on, a warning he had about 15 minutes worth of fuel in the Me 262’s tanks. He was flying at about 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) when a Mosquito at the same altitude suddenly crossed just in front of him.

"Had I been half a second earlier, I would have hit him or he would have hit me. We would have collided. Imagine, in this big sky, exactly the same altitude, the same time.

"I followed the flames from the exhaust pipes as he flew slow esses home. He didn’t suspect anything; he didn’t know I was there.

I followed these lights and I thought, ‘What should I do. Should I shoot at him or should I not. The war was almost over. Two people sitting in this aircraft. If I shoot at him, they’re gone. Maybe they have family…’

"But then, I said, ’Well, he comes from Berlin and he dropped a bomb there and maybe killed hundreds of people with just one bomb. Try it.’

"I shot a burst at the Mosquito when it came into my gun sight and down she went."

The armament of an Me 262 was phenomenal—four 30mm cannons in its nose—and a short burst on target at close range promised jolting explosions, no matter whether the targeted aircraft was made of aluminum or plywood, as was the Mosquito.

Czypionka says his radar controller confirmed the British bomber as having been shot down. For Jorg, though, there was a new challenge of returning to his home airfield while his Me 262 still had fuel.

"On approach to the airfield, at about 2,500 feet, one engines stopped. I got a flameout. The mixture or air and fuel did not correspond any more, because one tank was empty. If you have a flameout on a jet, it’s almost impossible to get the engine running again.

"I’m now about 600 meters above the ground with one engine flamed out, and I don’t know how I did it, but I switched to the other tank and it must have been very, very quick. With great luck, the engine restarted.

"I’ve later heard from experts about two curves, one for the engine revolutions and one for the airspeed. If they meet—these two curves—you can restart the engine, but only at this point. If airspeed is a little higher and doesn’t correspond to the revolution of the engine, there is nothing happening.

"I was, luckily, exactly at this point. Otherwise I cannot explain it. The engine came to life. So all of a sudden I had two engines again… was going down normally and everything was fine.

"I approached the airfield at about 50 meters. They had switched off the four lights from a previous aircraft that had landed before me. It was one of my colleagues and he radioed me, saying he had a flat tire, but he had cleared the main runway. So there was nothing I could do but make a 360-degree circle—landing gear out, flaps fully out and altitude of 150 feet—in the dark. And when I was half through the circle, I was at only 160 kilometers/hour (100 miles an hour) on the speedometer. I was talking to the aircraft, saying, ‘Do it, do it! Don’t let me down.’

"I made it almost through the 360 degree circle. In the meantime the tower had realized that the main landing strip was free and switched the lights on and off again. So I had to do another 30 degrees, at the lowest possible altitude and little fuel. I made it, and as I touched down, both engines stopped. There was not a drop of gas in the tanks.

"This is luck. My mother had sent my guardian angel and this guardian angel was with me that night!"

April 10th, 1945 was Easter Sunday, and the holiday coincided with a U.S. Army Air Force plan to carpet bomb all airfields suspected of hosting Me 262 jet fighters. Czypionka remembers he’d gone to bed at about 3:00 in the morning after being sent aloft after Mosquitoes that night. When the air raid alarm woke him, he methodically placed his belongings next to a column in the cellar of his flat, thinking if the building was hit, he’d be more likely to find them.

When he arrived at the airfield, he noticed all the aircraft had been evacuated—tractored to revetments away from the tarmac—and there were no other pilots to be seen. At the tower he found a young woman wearing a fur coat, sitting in a lounge chair. She was the commander’s friend and one of the telephone operators at the base.

"I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ She said she’d had a fight with my friend. I said there would be another attack and there would be danger. They were probably going to hit us."

Czypionka says he sought out two manholes—access to underground utilities—and removed the steel lids. A few minutes later, the precaution proved necessary with the rumbling approach of more than 2000 bombers.

"They started dropping markers, so I grabbed her and threw her into the manhole there and ran into the other manhole. This was the time I had the biggest fear of my life. I was so afraid when the bombs dropped all over.

"Both of us were unhurt, just completely covered in dust and my uniform a little torn at the knee. I came out and she came out and I grabbed her and we tried to escape somewhere into the forest.

"Now came the strafers, some Mustangs, and they were shooting at us. We were running from one crater to another. This was annoying and I didn’t like it. Really, I thought, the war is over. Why are you shooting at people who are already in this distress and misery?! I couldn’t understand that."

Remarkably, the only aircraft damaged in the air raid was Czypionka’s Me 262, and the damage was limited to the tire on the nose wheel, accidentally torn off by the ground crew trying to tow the jet to cover. Aerial photos Czypionka saw after the war showed the fighter on the runway, surrounded by bomb craters, yet apparently unscathed by the ordnance that had fallen around it.

Unfortunately, Jorg could not say the same thing about his living quarters. He could find none of his belongings in the remaining debris of the house, leaving him with only the clothing he was wearing. He spent that night at his undamaged commander’s house, before seeking out some personal provisions while the squadron’s aircraft were towed or flown to nearby Lubeck the next day. One widow offered him her husband’s underwear and socks.

The war in Europe had not completely ended, though. Czypionka says he flew one final sortie, taking off from the autobahn between Lubeck and Hamburg, flying wingman to another pilot. The duo of Me 262s came across six Typhoon or Tempest fighters headed west after a mission, attacked two of the British fighters, and then broke away as fast as possible, short on fuel.

When Czypionka arrived back at Lubeck, there were six Spitfires circling the airfield amid antiaircraft fire from below.

"I told my leader we had to come in from opposite sides. We would both keep to the right and land from different directions just to avert the Spitfires. They must have been confused and didn’t know which to follow and so there was time.

"They shot at me a little bit but not much happened. The aircraft was hit in three places. I was very lucky again. One shot went in front of me, one behind me, through the fuselage, and one in the rudder. But I was unhurt.

"I didn’t know if the aircraft was capable of landing on the wheels, so I retracted the wheels and made a belly landing. Not much damage, just the engines full of grass. And the British left.

Czypionka says his commander, Welter, was furious with him for having attacked the flight of British fighters, knowing his own jet was low on fuel. He wanted me to get another aircraft, just as I did, so we could continue our sorties.

In a hangar, Czypionka did find an Me 262, but it was missing both engines. The chief mechanic told the pilot that in a village about 50 kilometers east, there were two engines. Czypionka was given a brand new truck and trailer, and two mechanics, to fetch the twin powerplants.

"We drove east, very slowly, to some village, meeting all of these refugees— thousands of people, many old men and women—coming from the other direction. At this village there were two engines in an auto repair shop. These engines had short lives, only 10-15 hours, and had to be overhauled, and it was so organized that the auto shops were assigned to overhaul these engines.

They loaded the two engines on the truck and drove them back to Lubeck, where the mechanic said to come back in two hours and the engines would be installed. Then, without any test flight, Czypionka was back on the autobahn to make his last flight.

"We had decided not to destroy our aircraft but to keep them as a bargaining chip, as they were something very new and nobody had a jet aircraft. It was a good decision. We brought the aircraft… about seven of them… to one of the last remaining airfields, near the Danish border (Schleswig-Jagel), and waited until the British came to take those over."

As he was one of the few Luftwaffe personnel who could speak some English, Czypionka stayed with the aircraft to hand it over to the RAF. One of the British airmen was a young Fleet Air Arm pilot named Eric Brown. (Brown would become one of Britain’s most famous test pilots, amassing 60,000-plus hours in the cockpits of some 500 aircraft types.)

Jorg Czypionka assisted the British in getting to know the Me 262, and was rewarded for his cooperation. Rather than being sent to a relocation camp in August of 1945, Czypionka had been given a document allowing him to go home. Even with that little break, life in war-torn Hamburg was most difficult.

"I wore my uniform for another two years, the same boots through the winter. Nothing was available after the war. It was the most miserable time in my life—freezing, nothing to eat, no work…"

He says he knew nothing about the fate of his parents—imprisoned in Czechoslovakia after the war—nor his sister and brother. But he was eventually reunited with his parents in 1947, discovering they had spent 2-1/2 years in concentration camps.

"They were so sick, thin and worn that they died shortly thereafter."

His brother had been wounded and made his way on foot from northern Germany to Austria. And Jorg’s sister, though mistreated by Soviets, had returned relatively unscathed.

Because he had been a Luftwaffe officer, and not a native of Hamburg, Czypionka was unable to study at the university in Hamburg. Czypionka says he was a stranger in his own homeland for more than two years.

Long after he had come to the United States, Jorg Czypionka communicated with the navigator of that Mosquito he had shot down. It turned out the RAF airman was on his last sortie, a pathfinding mission for the night bombers, when the Mosquito was hit. He says he last saw his pilot on the wing of the Mosquito as they bailed out, and assumed he must have survived.

Asked by his Luftwaffe captors if he knew what had shot him down, the navigator replied he assumed it was flak. When told it had been a jet, he was surprised, adding that RAF crews felt relatively safe; unaware the jets were flying at night.

Czypionka says the two men also traded notes on their thoughts and feelings of those final days of the War in Europe: both men felt uncomfortable doing what they were told to do—taking lives in the dark skies over Germany.

(sidebar )

Many writings about the Me 262 paint a picture of a temperamental aircraft, prone to fuel flow problems and flameouts. Yet Jorg Czypionka says he never experienced these problems while flying the jet.

"If you fly another aircraft, you have to know the limits of the aircraft and find out what the aircraft wants. You do what the aircraft wants.

"I knew that the throttle had to be moved slowly forward and backward, because the air and fuel mixture pumps were not sophisticated. They had no computer or anything. These pumps just demanded that you moved the throttle slowly and not abruptly. I never had any problems with the engine or with the aircraft.

"I think that many accidents that happened, where engines failed and only had ten hours life before needing overhaul… I think that the fighter pilots, especially the younger ones who flew both the Me 109 and Focke Wulf 190, were used to making abrupt movements with the throttle in dogfights, and in their excitement they did no think first and so got a flameout.

Czypionka cites the testimony of experten with whom he’s spoken—Walter Schuck, Johannes Steinhoff and Gunther Rall—who say they never had mechanical problems with the Me 262

(Sidebar) - -

When Golden Gate Wing member Paul FitzGerald was about fifteen years old (in 1933) he was growing up in Hollywood, California. There was a big airshow held in Los Angeles at the airport then called Mines Field. Paul says he saved up his meager earnings from selling the Los Angeles Herald newspaper (for which he received one cent per copy), and made the long trip by bus and streetcar from Hollywood to Mines Field, to attend the show. In those days, it took him 90 minutes to get there.

WWI German ace Ernst Udet was one of the stunt pilots who appeared at this show, and one of his many stunts was to fly at top speed down the runway, dip his aircraft’s wingtip to hook a white banner and snatch it into the air. Paul remembers Udet did this at least three times and each time the crowd went wild.

Four years later Paul completed his aircraft flight training at this same Mines Field, soloed and later earned his first pilot’s license there, on the way to becoming a P-38 pilot.

Naval Aviator, 21 Years Active Duty, ~6,000 Flight Hours

Serving your country as a Naval Aviator, whether before, during or after World War II, can offer a pilot a broad, colorful portfolio of experiences. In August, Terry Howell at least got started telling the Golden Gate Wing stories of his days piloting flying boats for the U.S. Navy.

Terry Howell was born in Prairie City, Oregon in April of 1936. Terry graduated from high school and worked in a sawmill before entering Oregon State University. He graduated with a B.S. in Food Science & Technology, minor in Business Administration before he married college sweetheart, Barbara Sokolik, in June 1959.

Then Howell became a Navy Aviation Officer candidate and headed off to pre flight training at Pensacola, Florida.

Howell told of his solo flight in the T-34B which was the primary trainer.

"We had all these ‘Yellow Perils’, we used to call them, going around and around Saufley Field. They had a dual landing pattern there. You came in at 1200 feet and you could drop down to the next pattern, and that’s how they worked this mass of airplanes.

"There’s always safety pilots up there—some Lieutenant or some Lt. Junior Grade who’s an instructor. And, they’re always watching. You could hear that dreaded sound, ‘Two-Sierra so-and-so, report to Safety when you get down on the deck…’

"You didn’t want to hear your number called."

Howell says towards the end of his primary training he had a super instructor named Ken Ahlgren, who had been a Navy F-8U Crusader pilot.

"You could not shake this man up. That suited me fine because I didn’t like screamers, or guys who, when I set the trim and had everything set right, when I turned around to look out the window to clear things, they’d be turning all the knobs and screwing you up. That was a typical VP-pilot type instructor.

"Ken was a fighter pilot. He taught me well and then told me I was ready to solo. I got my solo check ride with Lt. Agnew. This man had great faith in me, more so than I think I had faith in myself.

Howell remembers the Pensacola area having a great number of airfields built among swamps and mangroves. Down towards Bruton, Alabama there were two little hexagonal fields, one of which was the destination for Howell’s solo flight in a T-34B.

"I’d been sitting in the ready room all morning long, drinking coffee and sweating program stuff. Then the schedule officer would come up and say, ‘You’re up, Howell. Number umpty-squat.’ So you’d grab your tag and away you’d go.

"I run out there, hop in my bird, take-off and so now I’m searching this jungle looking for this field. I see there’s one over here and one over there… eeny-meeny-miney-mo. Which one do you want to screw-up on, Howell?

"Finally, I see this dual go in there and land in a T-34B. The other field was being used by jets, so I figure this has got to be the one. I go in there and I’m doing my landing and I think, ‘This is great!’

"So then they had what they call a ‘double recall’. When they have a double recall, that meant that whatever you were doing, stop what you were doing and come back home, quick!"

Howell says the reason for the double recall was a large storm coming in. He joined a melee of airplanes trying to get into the landing pattern without hitting each other.

"Meanwhile, old Howell’s bladder, due to the excitement and about a gallon-and a-half of bad coffee is trying to get the (relief) tube. He needs the tube real bad. We’re going around this circle in the landing pattern and I am performing maneuvers… The flight suit zips both ways for such emergencies. I up-zip and try to clasp this ‘gosport’ (relief tube), which takes care of your fluids in flight.

"So what happens to me, but this dual slides in and this guy starts flying formation on me. So now I’m really hosed, man. I’m going around, gritting my back teeth, around and around, and finally get down where I land, taxi in, and shut down. And I can hardly get out of this airplane. It was probably very comical to watch. But I was going to die before I wet my pants on my first solo flight.

"I don’t know how long it took me to get from that airplane to the head in the hangar, but I made it!"

"One of my roommates was a guy by the name of Steve Willard. Steve was an ordained minister, who wanted to be a chaplain in the Navy. But the Navy said, ‘We don’t want any more chaplains.’

"So he joined the Aviation Officers Candidate program. And he figured if he could get in the door, then he could get around and teach them some good things.

"Steve was older than the rest of us and became our mentor, a father figure of sorts. At Saufley field. we’d all had our solos and gotten our ties clipped. That was the tradition, along with giving a fifth of whiskey to your instructor. They must have lived pretty well, those guys.

"It was time for everybody to get their ‘B-18 check’—some guy comes out and beats you up in the airplane, tries to trick you and you do all these things and if you pass, you’re off on your way.

"Steve is handing out these graduation pictures to us all, and says, ’Here Terry, I might not see you again. I’m going on my B-18 check.’

"I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Steve, see you later. I’ve got mine coming up, too.’

"In fact, he and this Marine 1st Lieutenant who was giving him the check ride, were at an outlying field. They had an engine failure, hit a stump, tore the airplane apart, killing Steve and making a vegetable out of the instructor… you think about the good dying young…

Howell says that wasn’t good preparation for his own B-18 check. He recalls having an instructor who challenged him in doing Immelmans.

"Of course, the T-34B doesn’t have a whole lot of poop, but if you keep it right on the numbers, you can do a nice job. So, we’re up there going head-to-head, first him then me, doing Immelmans. And I swear to God, my whole B-18 check ride was seeing who could do the best Immelman."

Howell progressed to transition, precision, aerobatics, formation, gunnery and carrier qualifications at Whiting Field, Milton, Florida, and was flying the higher-performance T-28 (1450 horsepower, with a supercharger). He carrier qualified on the USS Antietam CVS-36 September 20,1960. This was the end of basic flight school and each of the pilots got to meet the Admiral and go through the process of selecting where they would like to go and the type of aircraft they wanted to fly. Howell got orders to Corpus Christi where he thought he would be assigned to fly jets. But the Navy had lots of pilots in the pipeline, the carrier Constellation caught fire in the shipyard limiting the need for fighter pilots, so Howell was assigned to fly S2F’s for multi engine training.

Designated a Naval Aviator on April 10, 1961 at NAS-Corpus Christi, Howell was first sent to NAS-North Island on a "luck of the draw", and assigned to P5M "Marlin" flying boats.

Introduced to a P5M sitting on its beaching gear on the seaplane ramp, Howell thought it "unreal, because nothing this big and ugly can fly."

"They’re not all that slick on the beach. They’re not amphibians, they’re strictly seaplanes, and quite good, at that. You go up a ladder to get in the airplane. You’re in the hull and you go up another ladder to get to the flight deck. Then you go up a ladder to get into the cockpit.

Howell says that for a young hot-blooded aviator, the P5M wasn’t a lot of fun because of the minimal number of liberty ports: NAS Whidbey Island, NAS Alameda, NAS San Diego, NAS Jacksonville, NAS Norfolk, Elizabeth City in North Carolina. In other words, you couldn’t just land anywhere, hop out and go do things. Also, the rules of the sea apply, meaning that sailboats have right of way in harbors.

"I learned to fly the seaplane at North Island. Those of you who have been in San Diego know they have lots of sailboats running up and down between North Island and Pt. Loma. And guess where our sea lanes were.

"Sometimes you’re playing ‘dodge-‘em’, or you’re hoisting this thing off the water or someone’s mizzen is going by. And the same is true when you come back to land. So, as each one of these phases you go through, there all kinds of skull work you have to do. For the amount of flying you do, you do ten times the amount of work.

"When you get ready to go to the fleet, you have the pressurization chamber, the ejection seats, nuclear delivery pilot training, survival school, all the ASW (anti submarine warfare) training… the list goes on and on and on. Contrast that with guys flying the A-1s at Corpus, who were half-day students. If they got their flight in, it was off to drinking beer and having a good time, working out, or what have you.

"When we got done you were off doing your bookwork for classes, because it was constant."

Howell was next sent to Whidbey Island, where he met navigator Dick van Gimert. In those days, Howell remembers that non pilot navigators were rare birds in what was known as the V-P Navy (patrol, anti-submarine warfare).

"Each patrol plane had four aviators, and it was kind of starting out like a poop-cleaner before working up to the head hen house. I checked in and was handed a nav bag, with a big grin from Dick, who said, ‘I’m really glad to see you.’

"In those days you carried around so much stuff—so many charts and all the sight tables so you could do celestial work. We even had drift meters, and we used them, believe it or not. Because, flying out of Whidbey you’re in crappy weather and could fly all day long and not see the sun.

"You’d stick this thing through the side of the airplane; it’s got a grid and you learn to line that thing up on the waves and you could actually read the waves. I got pretty darn good at flying out over the water and I could tell the wind direction and speed just by looking at it.And which way the swells are running.

"Those are all things you’ve got to know if you’re flying boats because if you go down there and hit that stuff, you’ve gotta’ hit it right, because that water’s really hard.

Howell vividly remembers the challenges all crews had flying off the water, challenges which ultimately led to the end of seaplane operations in Alameda and the San Francisco Bay.

"You don’t have lighted runways and stuff, you’ve got water. You’ve got dark places and sometimes those dark places have big saw logs and stuff. You never know what you’re looking at. You can imagine when you get up to about 100 miles an hour what a stick or log can do to those boats. It can be unpleasant."

One stormy night, the aircraft commander of Howell’s flying boat, bound and determined to take off, was fighting wind and rugged surf. He finally overcame the elements by fire-walling the engines to get the flying boat up on the step and then firing all four JATO bottles to get airborne. The flash and racket brought calls from coastal residents of Whidbey Island who thought they’d witnessed an airplane crash.

Howell says that once the flying boat got as far west as Port Angeles, the frigid, wet weather created icing conditions. The engines began bogging down, requiring carb heat, The pilots went full hot on the carb heat and added power, and the airspeed began dropping. Suddenly, the ice departed and one of the engines began overspeeding and they were having trouble with the propeller governor.

Back in the fuselage tube with the rest of the crew, Howell heard the plane commander voice a warning to standby to bail out, and naming Howell as the jumpmaster.

"I go aft, snap on my harness, open the hatch and I’m looking out at this black hole. I can see the snow and ice going by and I say, ‘I really don’t want to go out there.’ Because jumping, we would have landed in the water in the (Puget) Sound there, and it’s very cold. Then I hear this rrrrowwwwrrr and I say, ‘Well it might be better than that. I think I’m going to die either way!’ "

Fortunately, the pilots of the P5M did manage to control the runaway engine and piloted the flying boat to its destination and a safe landing.

Howell also told of another crew with a runaway engine during a submarine exercise. Ditching in heavy seas broke the flying boat’s back, but the crew was able to step off into a life raft before the plane went down. The submarine they were going to conduct exercises with just happened to have his periscope up looking around and saw the aircraft crash. They immediately surfaced and rescued the crew.

Howell’s crew had just returned to Whidbey from flying the same exercise and immediately prepared to launch on a rescue which would have been a really long day when word came from the submarine that all hands had been picked up. Howell says they all knew that someone would not last long in the cold water.

Howell says the Martin flying boat was roomy, much more comfortable and flew more smoothly than the P2V Neptune, which was also a major platform for ASW operations.

"But the nice thing about the P2V was it had these two jets out on the wingtips. We used to call them J-52D ‘defuelers’, because those things would gobble up a lot of gas but could get you out of trouble.

Howell continued to learn more about one Navy aircraft after another, and one crew position after another.

"I went through all the stages of the squadron: I became a qualified navigator, a TACCO on an Alpha crew (the highest level of USN aviator proficiency), a co-pilot and a plane commander. And I hated every minute of it, but it was training that made me a well-qualified aircraft commander and kept us out of trouble more than once."

One of Howell’s best friends in college, Mike Bouchard, was now flying A-3 Skywarriors. Howell says the two got together at Ault Field and would fly advanced trainer versions of the F9F Panther and "terrorize the countryside."

"You’ve got to understand that in those days, it wasn’t like it is now. If you had a checklist in your pocket and you were halfway checked out and there was no such thing as a ‘hard flight plan,’ you were on the flight schedule. Your flying area was how far your gas tank would take you and get you back. Or if you were cleared and had the right DD fuel chit you could pop into any military base and take on a load of gas.

That provided quite a play space for pilots like Howell and Bouchard…

"I have been on bombing runs of every bridge in Puget Sound. I have flown by Hurricane Ridge, right down by the Strait of San Juan DeFuca. There also happens to be a nice lodge up there where people go up to relax and eat. So we’d make sure we’d go by there at about the speed of heat, stand it on a wingtip and look in at the funny people sitting there eating and stabbing themselves with their forks.

"We’d done such a good job there we’d bend her back the other way and head to the beach. There’s gotta’ be some clamdiggers down there on the beach. We’d be right down there on the deck and going as fast as this thing will go. Well, you can’t hear ‘em when you’re going that fast. There’s these guys down there, digging clams and stuff like that, and whooom! We go over and turn around and they’re all over the place!"

Howell says the day did come when he and Bouchard expected comeuppance for this kind of ‘public relations’ work. It came when the two of them were flying about 40,000 feet near Mt. Rainier.

"We looked around and said, ‘Oh man, fresh meat! There’s an A-3, headed back to Whidbey! We can bounce him in good shape!’

The Panthers closed quickly with the Skywarrior, and Howell says the plans involved keying the microphone and saying ‘bang-bang’, then making a hard break to bump the carrier-based twin-engine bomber with some turbulent air.

"There’s only one A-3 at Whidbey Island that had portholes down the fuselage. That belonged to that big J.G. … the Admiral.

"So, this was another time the pole came back between the legs at full force, and the G-load was dragging the mast down. We pulled off and we stayed out until the red lights came on, which means you’re down to bingo fuel. We landed and strolled in saying, ‘This is going to be a sad ending to a happy story of two J.G.s who got suck in the eye as their wings were ripped from their chests.’

"But, guess what. The place was deader than a doornail. There’s nobody there. We didn’t get caught."

During the early 1960s, while the Cuban Missile Crisis flared and President Kennedy was assassinated, Alaska rode out a large, devastating earthquake. Through it all, Howell served two Navy cruises in that arctic state.

"Trust me, you really don’t want to fly a big old seaplane in Alaska. They’re conducive to attracting ice and they’re not conducive to getting rid of that ice. It was one of the prettiest places I flew out of and one of the most treacherous.

"The runway at Kodiak, on the land, runs right into Old Woman Mountain, and Old Woman Mountain is your overrun. When you’re flying an airplane with wheels in there, you best make sure you have it made by the time you’re at Puffin Island, or wave it off.

"I lost some friends there in a P2V. I don’t know what they were thinking. They got in there and tried to wave it off and just broke the airplane over the mountain, scattering guys all over the place."

Howell says Cold Bay, Alaska provided him a fair share of excitement, after landing a seaplane there.

"When you anchor them out you always have one qualified pilot and two crewmen out there, so if something happens and you have to get underway, you can do it. It just so happened I drew the straw to sit the buoy when we first landed in Cold Bay. While we were sitting there this 50-mile-an-hour storm comes in. We’re sitting on that buoy, and we’re sitting on that buoy, and we sat on that buoy for over 24 hours. "They service the plane, both fuel and food, from boats on the tender. And, it’s not bad service, when you can get it. We sat out there a long time, without the auxiliary power units, because they were having trouble keeping the things up on the airplanes.

"We had on long-johns, flight suits, ‘poopy-suit’ covers and sleeping bags. You can’t believe how cold it is there. It’s that damp cold. The fog will come down and sit that far off the ground, and the wind will be blowing 25-50 miles an hour.

"One of the boats broke loose and managed to make it all the way through the anchorage without hitting any of the airplanes. I could take the gust-locks off the airplane and fly it up on what we made the buoy line with, called a lizard line, a cable on the front of the airplane. You could take the gust-lock off and pull back on the yoke and actually raise the airplane off the water.

"That ceased to be amusing after a little while. We were tired of eating crackers. We wanted some food and wanted to be warm. A cup of hot coffee would be nice.

"The in the midst of this storm I hear this noise - - rrrrrrrr. It’s Reeve Aleutian Airline. I don’t know how those guys flew in that weather. They must have had some kind of special radar in their brains, because they didn’t have any visibility and not much for nav aids there. They came in pretty quick, and then they were gone again.

"I was sitting there in the freezing aircraft, in one of my thoughtful moods, and thought to myself, ‘You know, if some guy came along and offered me a job pumping gas at a Shell station, I’d go for it."

Duty in Alaska also meant opportunities to see many different types of animals, in the days before wildlife refuges, as well as historic and interesting sights. There were seals in the Pribilof Islands, glass fishing floats lying along the beaches on the Bering Sea, and rusting World War II materiel of the Japanese Navy at Dutch Harbor.

Howell recalls chasing Kodiak bears with the airplane and a movie camera.

"I had this Yashica movie camera with a pistol grip that ran little rolls of film. We’d get down real low, because it was just tundra. So, I’m taking pictures of these bears. Those guys run very quickly, and we had this big Kodiak and he’s running along. He got tired of running and he stops and stands up and (shakes his paw) at us, ‘Just a little close, sucker and I’m going to have lunch!’ "

Howell thought he’d captured the natural drama on film, but unfortunately while the camera was sitting on the aircraft’s glare screen the plane’s vibrations tripped the camera speed setting for the film and ruined all the film taken of the bear.

Howell’s two tours with VP-47 became five years of keeping an eye on Russian and Japanese fishing fleets in addition to tracking Soviet submarines. Anti submarine operations in that region, frequently involved joint work with Canadian teams flying P2V Neptunes, as Howell discovered while making an intelligence-gathering run down the length of a Soviet ship.

"We’d try to do it fast and close. I’m coming down one side and look up and here comes this P2 the other way, with the Canadians saying, ‘Tally-ho, Yank’."

A few years later when Howell was at fleet Airborne Electronics Training Unit Pacific, and running the tactics school, he told this story to a group of Australian ASW crews. One of them piped up, saying "I remember that. That was me." The Aussie had been on exchange duty with the Canadians.

In 1964, Howell deployed to WESTPAC for 7-1/2 months. When that tour was completed he returned in 1965, recalling the delight of picking up a brand new Lockheed P-3 Orion right off the assembly line in Burbank.

"Man that’s really a pleasure. It’s like buying a new car. Everything’s shiny, it works, and smells good . It doesn’t last long, but it was nice."

Howell went to Vietnam to pilot flying boats in 1964, starting with one of the first squadrons to fly out of Danang. A seaplane tender’s help with logistics made a huge difference to operations, which also saw the Philippines as a base.

"Taking off out of Sangley Point, we usually carried a drop tank on one ‘beaver tail’ filled with fuel, and ordnance in the other one. You’d take off and be so heavy… Everybody had to develop their own system. Mine was to figure out the swells and get up to 65 knots on the upsweep hit the ADI for the engines and take them to over 60 inches manifold pressure, hold what you had and then fire all your JATO bottles. That would give you enough, after a few more bounces, you could stagger into the air."

With the heat and humidity at Sangley Point, Howell says the P5M was flying at a gross equivalent weight of 85,000 pounds, heavy for a boat. He says, over 70,000 pounds was marginal for a single engine.

Missions were typically 12 hours long. On one particular flight, a wind change challenged the fuel required to get home. Howell’s relief aircraft blew an engine and he was requested to remain on station as long as possible. He figured it very close.

Howell says we could usually bounce radar off a shipwreck on a shoal near Subic Bay. It was a landmark he could use to know how far out we were from landfall in the Philippine Islands.

"We’re looking at the gas gauges and doing figuring and more figuring. I’m right down on the deck with the flaps cracked just a little bit and the engines pulled all the way back to 1600 rpm–an old trick taught to me by World War II seaplane pilots. You could see the big blades go around ‘whoppity-whop’ out there.

"We made it in to Sangley Point and we had 500 gallons in each service tank. That’s not a whole lot of gas to feed two 3350s."

Howell flew his first tour August 1964 to February 1965 in the Vietnam War in P5Ms of VP-47, on armed reconnaissance patrols, Market time patrols, and ASW patrols, and "other missions" On many flights the flying boat carried ordnance. Then followed two tours there in the P-3 "Orion" (1966, 1973). In 1971, between those latter tours Howell did a combat cruise as CIC Air Warfare Officer on the carrier USS Midway.

On the P-3 alone, Howell totaled more than 3000 of his 6000-plus hours total flight time, many of them from Moffett Field NAS, but also including test flight time in every model of Lockheed’s Orion.

After his Navy career, Howell earned his Airline Pilot Rating and served in executive and consulting positions for several corporations. He was also one of the early leaders of the Western Aerospace Museum (Oakland Air Museum).

P-38 pilot, 459th FS, 10th AF, China/Burma/India Theater

"I was born and raised on a ranch in French Camp out of Stockton. I thought I was always going to follow in my family’s footsteps and continue with the ranch."

After attending the College of the Pacific for a couple of years, he transferred to U.C. Davis. Bill’s introduction to flying came when he was home from school early in May of 1940 to work on the farms. One Sunday, a friend invited Bill to an airshow in Modesto.

"I was sitting in the stands and they introduced two of the participants. One of them was a fellow named Roscoe Turner and the other one was a fellow by the name of Tex Rankin. I didn’t know them any more than I did what we called the"tramps walking up and down the railroad tracks behind the ranch."

Behrns says he was mesmerized watching the two pilots, aerobatic performer and racer, put their aircraft through their paces. He first recalled Rankin performing in his Waco:

"Taking off from the field, doing an abrupt turn and flying inverted, his head was possibly three feet off of the ground, the full length of the runway. They had a little stand there with an arm sticking out and a handkerchief on it. And at that low altitude— and it’s very difficult to maintain altitude in an inverted position like that— he was able to dip a wing and pick up that handkerchief with his wingtip.

"Roscoe Turner was very flamboyant in a white racing plane, white leather jacket, white helmet and a silk scarf flying out the back. They did things with airplanes that probably nobody should try doing even today."

Behrns said, right then and there, he was going to fly… join the Air Corps and become a pilot.

"True to my word, the next morning I went in and signed up for the Air Corps. You have to take a physical, and at that time I was just shy of 5 feet, 10 inches. And I was just shy of 110 pounds and they refused me. They said I was too skinny."

Behrns went to work for Standard Oil for a short while, then took a civil service exam which got him placed in charge of a huge munitions warehouse at the Benecia Arsenal. He says the pay of 240 dollars a month was pretty good for those days.

A notice to report for the draft, which came after December 7th, 1941 offered Behrns his next step towards becoming a pilot. He says the arsenal’s commanding officer told him not to worry about the draft because he was already working in an essential position. But Bill relented, and soon found himself drafted and in training camp in San Diego, then to Kern County Airport in Bakersfield, although he wasn’t yet an aviation cadet.

Behrns says when he saw four "flying sergeants" landing P-38s at the airfield, he set his sights on flying that aircraft. He soon had taken the Air Force exam, without telling his commanding officer, who soon found out and called Behrns to his office.

"He chewed me out. Apparently I had acted—which I knew—without orders or authority and embarrassed him. When he finished chewing me out he stood up and said, ‘Behrns, very few people ever take the Air Force exam cold turkey and pass it. But you did. You are now assigned to the Army Air Corps cadet program.’ And he handed me my orders."

Santa Ana and the Hancock School of Aeronautics was Behrns’ next stop, followed by Merced County Airport (Castle AFB). He kept insisting on flying P-38s and ultimately, was sent to Muroc, California as a member of the Class of 43F.

Before he could complete his training there, he was sent to Olympia, Washington as a member of a special squadron flying ‘red alerts’. It was formed after a Japanese submarine lobbed a shell onto the Oregon coast, the shell containing leaflets announcing an impending invasion, which never came.

Instead, after six months of patrol duty, Behrns and 31 other pilots were assembled into the 459th Fighter Squadron and sent to Chittagong, India.

By this time in the war, the Japanese had conquered most of China, French Indochina, Burma and Siam, and were poised on the Bay of Bengal to invade India. Military engineers had hastily built an airbase to handle U-S fighter planes. The mission was to reduce Japanese airpower to a point where it posed no threat to India.

"They put us on the shore, 90 miles from their closest base, so we had to watch over our shoulders for a few days there. We kept attacking them down there until… they didn’t really desert the field, but it was rare to catch anybody on there."

Behrns says his squadron had 25 P-38s holding that thin line, and frequently they were significantly outnumbered.

"Every place we attacked we got jumped by double and sometimes by triple that number. It’s kind of rough when eight of you take off and you fly 200-250 miles or so and get over some Japanese airfield and they put up 20 to 25 airplanes against you.

"It would be real nice to say, ‘there’s too many of them, let’s turn around and go back home.’ Our orders said we had to take them on. So that’s what we did and that’s why we lost the number of men we did lose."

Captain Flip Corkin was the hero of the fictional Terry and the Pirates cartoon strip. Yet many of his exploits were based on those of the actual Col. Philip Cochran, commanding officer of the 5318th Air Unit (later re-designated 1st Air Commando Group). The unit was equipped with a P-51C squadron, B-25s bombers, C-47 transports and gliders, in support of the British Chindits, an allied Special Force led by General Orde Wingate. The Chindits and the 1st Air Commandos combined on deep penetration raids to eventually rout the Japanese from Siam and Burma.

Bill Behrns recalls a week’s worth of operations from Cochran’s airstrip near a mountain range. The Japanese Air Force had been flying daily low-level strikes through a mountain pass and attacking Cochran’s P-51s. So, Behrns and three other pilots volunteered to fly "red-alert missions" to protect the P-51s.

"The Japanese had good warning systems, and they would get just a few miles in. They knew we were there, and they turned and flew back out of there. The day we left, the Japanese hit the field again."

Behrns and his fellow pilots flew their crew chiefs in with them.

"Unfortunately, my crew chief was six feet-two and about 150 pounds. You sit on your parachute, unless you have somebody with you and then you have to sit on half of it, with half your tail-end on the window. And you have to lace his legs through yours to get to the rudder pedals.

"Every half an hour at the field, our crew chiefs cranked our engines, kept them ready to go. Each of us got a jeep, and when we got our alert we all went to our planes and jumped in. My crew chief had my plane all set, and was holding my harness and I could just step in. He could have one engine fired up by the time I got up on it."

Within seconds, Behrns says, he would be ready to pour the coal to his Lightning, and be off the ground within 600 feet.

"The thing it does after it takes off up is you can stand it on its props and it just goes right on up."

Cochran’s P-51 pilots teased the P-38 pilots, asking them what they were going to do with their big twin-engined "sleds".

"But the first time we took off on a red alert we were sitting at 23,000 feet and they were at 16… because we could just go right up with it."

Back on the ground, the Lightning pilots got in their own good-natured digs.

When the 459th FS contingent left after its week of special duty, Behrns says they planned to form up in tight echelon for a buzz job. It was a fine plan, except for two huge pine trees on either side of the runway.

Behrns says each P-38 was carrying the pilot and crew chief as they dived down to the airstrip from 10,000 feet, with Behrns the "tail-end Charlie" in the formation. As they dived, the leader apparently thought the pine trees were narrower than the formation and he edged in, which caused a ripple effect among the other three P-38s. Behrns made his own adjustments to keep distance from the P-38 next to him.

"Your hands are on the throttle and your eyes right on his wing and your wing, and you sit there and just control it, and set it right there, within inches. Now I’m released and I look up and, wow, there’s that pine tree!

"All I could do was horse back on it. The spinner on my port engine hit it and popped the Dzus fasteners loose on the hood. They were flapping, broken. It smashed the prop back in and did a pretty good job on my plane. It sounded like a shotgun, it was such a crashing noise. And the whole top part of that tree just went back over the wing."

To this day, Behrns doesn’t know why the collision didn’t bring the P-38 down.

But, it was still flying. The two men in the fighter’s cockpit, both white as a sheet, shared a parachute for the two-hour flight over solid jungle back to Chittagong.

When the Lightning was repaired, Behrns told his crew chief to hop in for a test ride. The crew chief responded, "No sir. You don’t ever get me in another P-38!"

Meiktila was a major Japanese Army stronghold in central Burma, and home to an enemy airbase. The 459th FS targeted that base for a raid by 20 aircraft on June 6, 1944. Behrns says 18 P-38s were assembled for the raid, but a couple of them had to turn back.

"The Japanese knew we were coming. They took off and it was just like a beehive. If we had 18 airplanes they had 30. And it was just like a beehive, in a very small area. They were good pilots, and the Zero was a good aerobatic plane. They were doing loops and rolls and everything.

"We came in at 400 miles an hour out of that drop, went right under them and they couldn’t catch us. The orders were to strafe, knock out everything at the airport, so they couldn’t use that facility. Take it away from them so they would have to go somewhere else."

Behrns said after the first strafing pass, the Lightnings pulled up. Behrns was flying the wing of his friend Burdett Goodrich, and in the strafing pass the two were separated. Not only had the P-38s expended most of their ammunition, but they also had come out on the China side of the airfield, and would have to pass back near the beehive to return to Chittagong. Fortunately, Behrns and Goodrich reformed for the pass back through.

"Now I’m in the lead and Goodrich is following me along. And this one Japanese… (an Oscar) looked like a pretty good shot. I just peeled off and had to lead him a way, because he was in a tight turn. At that time I was flying a P-38J, and we didn’t have aileron boost in that.

"I had to lead him and fire, and he flew right into my fire. It just blew his cockpit out, and him."

Behrns says as they headed home Goodrich came on his radio to verify he’d seen the victory. Behrns was pleased with the day’s events, but says he didn’t pay much attention to his wingman, and lost track of Goodrich.

Nobody in the squadron saw Goodrich get shot down, nor did they know he had bailed out, been captured and taken to a prisoner camp where he died. A Burmese farmer had shot the downed pilot in the neck and then handed him over to the Japanese for a reward.

Behrns faced his greatest personal risk on another of the 459th’s dive-bombing and strafing missions.

When an F-5 photo reconnaissance plane spotted a Japanese installation southeast of Mandalay with an estimated 25,000 troops and equipment, the 459th was sent to work it over. Behrns led eight P-38s, each loaded with two 1,000-pound bombs on the mission.

"We went over at about 14,000 feet. All through that country, there were no anti-aircraft guns, no weaponry, except at anything that needed guarding. And then they concentrated everything there.

"I didn’t want to excite them, so what I tried to do was to fly like we were going to miss them. I knew they’d probably be tracking us but they wouldn’t cut loose because it looked like we were going to keep on going.

"Just as their area disappeared under my left wing… I rolled over and went straight down. I was looking right down the barrel of an antiaircraft gun and all of a sudden it hit me. Everything went. My engines, both of them… all the electrical, just went completely out. All I was, was dead weight, going straight down."

Behrns’ squadron mates who followed him, estimated he had to be flying at an airspeed of 550-575mph, as he passed through more flak bursts towards the ground. When he dared not dive any further, he reached down, jerked the manual jettison lever and released the bombs.

"And then you have to get away from the bombs because they’ll follow your plane down and you don’t want their fuses to go off while you’re still close. I had to get down close to the trees and go on out. They (the Japanese) followed me but they couldn’t get their antiaircraft gun down far enough to lead me."

While none of the other seven planes were hit in their dives, Behrns’ Lightning was dead, yet hurtling at high airspeed over the jungle. Preparing to bail out, Behrns jettisoned his canopy, but stayed in the cockpit.

"I thought, ‘Okay, you don’t want to bail out with very much altitude, because the Japanese had a habit of shooting you in the chute while you’re coming down.’

Behrns figured 300 feet might be the right altitude to get out of his P-38, after it slowed down. He could roll the plane over and drop out. He says he was already to pull up and drop out when he saw a grey streak ahead.

"I knew that was the Burma Road. This was just south of Mandalay, and the Burma Road was kind of a grey dirt. All during the monsoon season these ox-carts, 12-15 feet long and maybe five feet high are loaded with sacks of rice. All winter long, with the heavy weight on the carts, those wheels dig way down, making trenches over a foot deep in that stuff.

"When it gets around to the good weather, this dries up and they’re still rolling on the same roads, they chew that all up and it’s just powder. When I saw that I thought, ’That’s a soft landing for bellying in with the P-38’."

Behrns says he got the Lightning down to the road and bellied it in. When it hit, the P-38’s tail section ripped loose and one engine tore off, giving him the realization that under the dust there were still deep ruts. But he left the airplane without a scratch.

His squadron mates flew a low-level circle overhead, strafing the area around the pilot to dissuade anyone from bothering Behrns as got into the jungle.

"A P-38 has four .50 caliber machine guns and a 20mm cannon, all in the nose and firing at the same time. And then I understood why anybody on the ground, when we started firing, they started running. That was noise, and when you multiply it by seven, it was noisy going around that circle!"

"I never saw anybody. I think they probably figured my plane was destroyed and they figured I didn’t get out of it."

Behrns spent the night in the dense jungle, never lying down but instead standing by a tree. His biggest concern was snakes, from pythons to smaller, poisonous varieties. But there were also tigers and water buffaloes.

From his survival kit, the next morning, Behrns produced a mirror, and used it to signal to four P-38s and an AT-24 (USAAF version of the Navy SBD dive bomber) which arrived overhead. The P-38s circled and strafed the area again, while the AT-24 floated down with its big dive brakes to land on the road.

Thus, Behrns made it safely back to base at Chittagong.

He says that when he landed and stepped out of the attack bomber, the flight surgeon checked him over and then told him, "There’s a flight taking off right over there and that end P-38 is yours. You’re on it."

To which Behrns replied, "I’m just coming home from yesterday’s mission."

And the flight surgeon said, "Yeah, you’re going on today’s."

Behrns says that, psychologically, it was probably best that he immediately flew, and the mission was relatively easy.

Captain Bill Behrns was awarded 3 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 3 Air Medals for his service in the China/Burma/India Theater during World War II. He was also credited with more than four aerial victories. He does not have official confirmation for shooting down that Ki-43 "Oscar" on June 6, 1944, but has received information from a Japanese source that the pilot of that plane was a Japanese Army Air Force ace with 27 confirmed aerial victories.

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Lockheed’s P-38 Lightning was a big airplane. Cecil Kramer, Behrn’s friend and P-38 historian, notes: the Lightning had a 52 foot wingspan, weighed 15,000 pounds empty of fuel or ammunition, and could takeoff and climb to 15,000 feet in less five minutes, compared with the P-51’s rate of climb, about 6 ½ minutes.

The P-38’s range was 2600 miles in 1941, enabling it to fly with bombers across the Atlantic to England, then on to North Africa. In 1944, P-38s were flying missions of 2,700 miles. By the end of the war, with the help of drop tanks, -J and –L models could fly 3,300 miles or be in the air for 12 hours.

Kramer notes that the P-38J with its two 1,400 horsepower Allison engines could carry an extraordinary payload of ordnance - -

* A 5,000 lb bomb load

* Up to16 rockets of different types

* Two full-sized torpedoes

* Depth charges

Lightnings carried a variety of gun armament. Most often the plane was equipped with a single 20mm cannon and four .50 cal machine guns in the nose. Some modifications replaced the 20mm with a 37mm cannon. Others included the installation of as many as twelve .50 cal machine guns; or .60 cal guns, with barrels that extended five feet beyond the plane’s nose.

Kramer says that Lightnings equipped with Norton bombsights in noses covered in Plexiglas, could drop bombs from 40,000 feet. "They were bombing Berlin for several months before the Germans realized where the bombs were coming from---a P-38. The Germans didn’t have a plane that could fly high enough to shoot it down, because the P-38 had a 50,000 foot ceiling on it.’

Joe Peterburs was born November 25, 1924 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

He originally planned to become a priest, and was studying at the Salvatorian Seminary Saint Nazianz, Wisconsin when he heard of the attack at Pearl Harbor.

"I was coming back from one of the many prayer meetings we had. It was a Sunday morning and I was on the stairs coming at the gym when I heard the radio announce Pearl Harbor was attacked. At that moment I knew I’d be leaving the seminary and joining the service. There was no question."

Joe had two brothers already in the military, and his father had spent many years in the service. On His 18th birthday, 1942 he took the Air Force exam, was soon accepted and became an Aviation Cadet. Peterburs started in the Class 44B, but when one of his brothers was killed, Joe took emergency leave, which pushed him back into Class 44C.

Peterburs earned his wings as an Army Air Forces pilot in April 1944, and was assigned to the 55th Fighter Squadron of the 20th Fighter Group. He arrived in Scotland in November, after an Atlantic passage on the luxury liner Isle de France.

Kings Cliff was his final destination, the base of the 20th FG, which had just completed a conversion from flying P-38s to P-51s.

Even though the war in the European Theater would have but six months before Germany’s surrender, the potential for loss of life, being wounded or captured was high, as Joe and his fellow pilots were to discover.

"There were seven of us in our group who went to the 20th, and we had a 100 percent casualty rate. Four were KIA and three were POWs, including me."

As Peterburs was coming onto the airfield for the first time, the truck idled at the perimeter road at the end of the runway where Mustangs were returning from a mission.

"The number four man did a bad bounce. Now, the seven of us in the truck were all P-40 trained. We knew what torque was all about. The pilot bounced hard, he gave it full throttle, and it spun right over and into the runway, killing him. That was our welcome to the 20th Fighter Group."

After a total of about 15 hours flying –B and –C model P-51s, Joe was sent out to fly combat missions in the bubble-canopied P-51D. His personal markings on a P-51 coded "KI*B’ included the name of his fiancé, Josephine. Peterburs’ first encounter with the enemy came on his 11th mission, January 14th, 1945.

They were escorting about 1400 B-17s to targets in the Berlin area, when the armada was hit by about 150-200 Me-109s and Fw-190s. Peterburs says a common tactic was for the Luftwaffe to send Me-109s flying through the formation, expecting the escort fighters to chase them and leaving the bombers as prey for the Focke Wulfs. On this day, the activity turned into a melee.

"Engines were falling. Parachutes were in the air. Wings were flapping down and it seemed the debris in the air seemed to be more dangerous than the enemy fighters.

"I spotted a 190 coming right at me and I gave him the ‘chicken’ approach. We were head-on, and we both started firing. I could see the guns blinking on his bird and he could see them blinking on mine, I’m sure. I saw some hits and we came within 15-20 feet of each other - - I went underneath and he went over the top.

"Fortunately, my flight leader, Captain Fruechtenicht was in a position… he wasn’t able to fire because I was in the way. He was on the guy’s tail and as soon as I passed under him, he gave a blast and he got him. I got a ‘damaged’ on it and he got the kill.

The exhilarating experience also gave Peterburs’ extreme respect for the bomber pilots who bravely drove their four-engine planes, bombers to their left and right, through the aerial debris and hurtling fighters.

"I just was hoping I could be as brave as they were, because they were the bravest of the brave."

Peterburs says he flew a few other memorable missions, including escorting bombers on the Dresden firebomb raid, on which he lost a friend.

"After the bombers dropped their bombs, we went down for targets of opportunity. We saw a truck. My flight leader was Major Gotterdam. I was in the number three position and Lt. Leon was in the number 2 position. We were at about 10,000 feet and rolled over and Gotterdam started down in a very steep dive.

"Unfortunately Leon got tucked in too close behind him. I just made a wide sweeping turn and I had plenty of room behind. Gotterdam barely made it and Leon went straight in doing 450. They both missed the truck, and on my pass I got the truck.

It was an unfortunate experience and they could have the truck back as far as I was concerned."

On the 10th of April, 1945 the 20th Fighter Group was escorting about 1,300 B-17s and B-24s to targets in the Magdeburg and Berlin/Oranienburg area. The escorts were a mixed group of 800-plus P-51s and P-47s.

Peterburs says he and his flight leader, Captain Dick Tracy, were flying high cover as a pair, the number three and four fighters having aborted the mission. Just after the bombers dropped their payloads, a swarm of Me-262 jets appeared.

Peterburs today tells this story from the unique position of having first-hand information from Luftwaffe pilots who were in that day’s air battle:

"There were about 50 Me-262s that took off to meet us. At Parchem Airfield, four of them were destroyed; two on the ground and two, just after they took off, were shot down. They were from 10/JG 7, and the other group that I am aware of was 3/JG7, led by an Oberleutnant Walter Schuck.

Schuck had spent most the war with JG5 Eismeer, flying Bf 109s from Finland against Russians on the Allied supply route to Murmansk. He had 198 victories in that theater before he was sent to fly the Me-262. Peterburs says Shuck told him his transition to the 262 consisted of being told to watch the jets take-off and land from a vantage point at the end of the runway, followed by a cockpit checkout. Before long, he was commanding 3/JG7.

On April 10th, 1945, the Luftwaffe had known the USAAF was headed over to bomb, and the alert to take off came as no surprise.

"They wove up through the formation and Shuck kept his seven 262s together in close formation until they got through the first group of bombers and he destroyed two B-17s. Then he went sliding over to the second formation, the one that I was escorting."

Peterburs says he was flying about 5,000 feet over the bombers when he saw two Me-262s coming into the formation. He rolled over and started down.

"Shuck is behind one of the B-17s. A little short burst of 30mm and - - bang, the 17 is gone. I’m still not on his tail and he pulls onto the second one…

"His tactic was porpoising through the formation. He tells me that what he would do after hitting a B-17, he’d pull up to lose speed, then he’d come down and go on to the next one.

"By now, he’d blown up his fourth B-17, the second one that I’d seen personally blow up, and just at that time I’m pulling into his six o’clock position and I start firing. I get hits in his left engine and see some smoke and a little flame. Then he immediately goes into a slow right turn, diving down into the Berlin area."

Peterburs says even with the Me 262’s damaged engine he lost his speed advantage from the original dive, and he chased the jet down to about 3,000 feet, where Shuck turned and disappeared into a cloud layer, and then turned sharply to the left. The Luftwaffe ace figured the P-51 chasing him might try to pursue on the far side of the overcast. Shuck says shortly after the turn, the damaged engine began to disintegrate and Shuck was forced to bail out.

Peterburs decided against following the jet into the clouds, and with Capt. Dick Tracy still with him, he headed further down to an airfield near Berlin that he found out later was Finsterwalde.

"It’s just loaded with aircraft, just every type you could think of. Dick takes over the lead and we get down on the deck, throttles wide open and we’re just cutting grass. We come up to the airfield, pop up and strafe. It was really nice. We caught ‘em by surprise. Dick got two on his first pass and I got one.

The two P-51s pulled up and came around for a second pass, when Peterburs saw a flak position he attacked. Capt. Tracy hit two more parked planes and was pulling up when his aircraft was hit, and he had to do a quick bailout at about 300 feet. He landed in a river near the airfield and was later captured.

"I came around again, and I think I’m 20 years old, don’t have anything else to do, and here’s all these aircraft and I’m not going to leave them when I have them all to myself.

"So I crank myself down under the armor plating as far as I can get and continue to make passes. I end up making three more passes and get hit on the last two. The next to the last I got hit on the wing, but it didn’t cause any problems to Josephine. On the last pass I got an Fw-200 Condor. I was told recently that it happened to be one of Hitler’s fleet of Condors. That thing just blew. I got it, raked it right through the whole fuselage and it blew by the time I was pulling off.

"But then I felt a thud. I could see smoke and flame in my engine and I just pulled back as hard as I could to get as much altitude as I could."

Joe had destroyed at least 5 aircraft - - an Fw-190, Ju-88, two Me-109's and the Fw-200, damaged several others and exacted heavy damage on several hangars. Now, at about 10,000 feet, he made a decision to turn west. He was about 15 miles from Magdeburg, and losing altitude when he came under attack by an Fw-190.

"By this time I’m down to 1,000 feet. At three o’clock, I see the Fw-190 coming at me. And he’s firing his guns, and he has some rockets and he fires those and they all miss. And I’m cussing like heck.

"I look at my altimeter and I’m at 500 feet, too low to bail out. So I grab the stick and start looking for a place to belly it in. And then it comes to my stupid head that I’m all un-strapped. Because I was going to bail out and if I’d bellied the thing in, I’m just not going to make it."

Peterburs says these thoughts raced through his mind in probably a millisecond. While the altimeter wound down to 350 feet, he climbed out on the left wing of the P-51 (the right side was burning) and let go.

"I hit the tail with my right knee, pulled the ripcord, the chute opened, I swung once and hit the ground. Hard, very hard."

Peterburs found himself in the middle of a field, with a group of 15-20 farmers running toward him. He took his .45 pistol out, removed the clip and threw it one direction, threw the extra clip in another direction, and threw the .45 in a third direction.

He says the farmers were upon him and were ready to do him in when a Luftwaffe sergeant rode up on a motorcycle, fired a couple of warning shots from a Luger and told the farmers to let the downed airman go. Next, another group of citizens came and talked the sergeant into bringing Joe to what he thought was the town hall.

Peterburs says the local police chief, a man with a black leather glove over what had been his left hand, pulled out his Luger, placing the barrel at Joe’s temple and threatening to shoot.

But the Luftwaffe sergeant trained his pistol at the police chief and said he would be leaving with Peterburs. A twenty-minute motorcycle ride later, Joe was at a nearby airfield, where he was placed in solitary confinement and interrogated by the Gestapo for three days. While there, he spent the nights in a bomb shelter with the Germans during nightly bombings by the British.

Peterburs was next moved by rail boxcar to Stalag 11, which became a short stay because the Germans were evacuating the camp before advancing Allied forces. The Germans put him with a group of about 100 British soldiers for a ten-day march towards the east, a march under constant attack by Allied fighter planes.

"We get to Stalag 3 at Luckenwalde which was a Russian and Scandinavian prisoner camp. And guess who I bump into? Capt. Tracy has been sitting there for ten days, along with Sgt. Lewis who was in one of the B-17s shot down, as well as Sgt. Krup, who could speak fluent Russian."

The four men, acting on a plan hatched before Peterburs arrived, took advantage of lax security and went under the fence. About 4-5 miles from the camp, the freed POWs heard the rumble of Soviets tanks, and sent Sgt. Krup (who could speak Russian) to speak with the Russians. Handed weapons, the four airmen were inducted into a Red Army tank corps and fought with them from Juterberg to the Elbe.

"As we were going, German civilians, as soon as they found out Americans were with the Russians, sought us out. They wanted us to sleep with their daughters, sleep in their houses, so they’d be protected from the rape and pillage that was going on with the Russians. I accepted sleeping in their house, but not sleeping with their daughters.

"We eventually got to Wittenberg, preceded by the Stormaviks flying close air support. About that time I noticed they were keeping tighter control of me. I didn’t know why, but this was the time of the Potsdam Conference and tensions were starting to become high between the Allies and the Russians."

When the Soviets reached the Elbe he joined a US Army infantry unit that met with the Russians and did mop up operations around Halle, a major Luftwaffe base.

"I was able to pick up some beautiful souvenirs: flying suits, dress uniforms and the like. I stuffed them in my duffel bag. Then we finally ended up playing poker and the Army guys getting me so drunk I lost all my souvenirs. I got mad and just took off by myself and walked about five miles down the road."

There, Joe saw a C-47 parked in a field, with some political prisoners being loaded onboard for a flight to Paris. Peterburs asked for a ride and soon found himself in the French capital, stamped, deloused and sent to a POW collection point called "Camp Lucky Strike" to soon be returned to the United States. The war was over for him, he was anxious to be married and settle into a ‘regular’ life.

When the Korean War started, Peterburs flew 76 more combat missions, mostly close air support in the P-51.

On one mission, his P-51 had dropped napalm and made three rocket runs. Starting his fourth pass with rockets, Joe’s fighter was hit.

"I get small arms fire up through the wing root. It smashes the canopy, comes in through my helmet and into my head, then bouncing off the armor plate in the back.

"My wingman had lost his radio, so I waggled my wings and told him to come along side. At the base, he breaks first and goes in and lands. Of course, I’m telling base ops what’s happened - - I’m bleeding and I don’t know how badly I’m injured. The meat wagons are all out there waiting for me to land and when my wingman lands, they’re all following him.

"So I pull in, land and taxi to my parking place. I cut the engine and I’m down picking up all my maps and stuff, and my crew chief jumps up on the wing. I get up and… he keels over and slips off the wing, he was so shocked (over the sight of blood on Joe’s face). He almost broke his leg.

"All I really had was a little burr on the side of my head. Most of it was Plexiglas and the flight surgeon was picking out Plexiglas for a couple of hours and I was flying the next day."

Peterburs took part in the nuclear bomb tests in Nevada in 1957, was an exchange officer with RAF Fighter Command in 1965-1967. Assigned to Vietnam in 1967, he was responsible for Command & Control in the war zone. He held a number of key assignments in the USA and Europe before retiring from the USAF after 36 years of serving his country.

Fifty-four years later (1998), Peterburs was contacted by Werner Dietrich, an amateur historian in from Burg, Germany. In a letter, Dietrich stated that on April 10, 1945 he was a 13-year old boy hiding in a ditch watching an air battle above him. He saw a Fw-190 fire rockets at a P-51 and miss, and saw Peterburs bail out.

Dietrich also said he knew where the Mustang crashed. In 1996, after East and West Germany were reunified, Dietrich used the serial number from aircraft parts he found to begin an exhaustive 19-month search for the pilot.

In May of 1998, when a documentary producer invited Peterburs to Germany for a reunion with Dietrich, Joe had to refuse. He was caring for his wife after her stroke and was unwilling to leave her. The producer made arrangements for Dietrich and a video crew to visit him in Colorado Springs for a follow-up documentary.

Meanwhile, Dietrich kept working on the story, talking to people from Finsterwalde and finding the pilot of the Me-262 that Peterburs had hit. About three months later, Dietrich announced by letter he’d found the jet pilot, 206 aerial victory Luftwaffe ace Walter Schuck.

Peterburs says he gave it about a 50% chance of being the true story.

"That was the way I left it until about 2003. I get an email from a Christer Bergstrom, a prolific writer on German air operations in World War Two. He’s writing Walter’s biography. And I’d been in contact with Mario Schultz from Oranianberg, who had also been researching that particular mission."

Schultz requested Peterburs’ account of that April 10, 1945 mission. In less than a week he told Joe that it must be conclusive that Joe had shot down Walter Schuck. Shultz’s conclusion was based on confirmation that Shuck was the only Me-262 pilot who shot down two B-17s on that day, and that Peterburs’ description of Shuck’s last two B-17 shootdowns that day was, detail-by-detail, virtually identical.

May 18, 2005 Joe Peterburs met Walter Shuck in person.

"It was a tremendous experience, and we took to each other immediately. We are the best of friends."

Since then, the two men have received an invitation from a Russian production team for another documentary about the two pilots who met in the skies over Germany in 1945, in a war now so long ago.

John Roush was born in Portland, Oregon and moved to San Francisco when he was six years old. He attended San Francisco Community College and enrolled in the Enlisted Reserve Corps, which was a way to ensure you could graduate without being drafted into the armed services. When World War II started he volunteered for the Army anyway. The Army sent him to Santa Clara University (ASTP program).

Roush was an enlisted combat engineer when he landed at Normandy, France on D-Day Plus 4. The Army, needing platoon leaders, then gave Roush and others with similar college backgrounds two weeks of training that made them 2nd Lieutenants in command of platoons.

Following World War II, Roush attended and graduated from the US Army's Command and General Staff College, the Industrial War College of the Armed Forces and the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State.

On one occasion, some 64 years ago, between Normandy and Germany, John Roush and his platoon of combat engineers was strafed by Messerschmitt 109s.

"One flew right over my head, close enough that I got a good look at the pilot. I still remember the intense expression of hatred on that face. Sometimes you have an experience that lasts for sixty years or more, and that one is still with me."

Now, nearly sixty- five years later, Roush says that while reading a recent newspaper story, he was interested to find out that high school students quizzed about World War II had a miserable failure rate.

"They just didn’t know anything about it. They couldn’t even tell the names of the leaders of the countries involved. And I’m afraid there’s a lot of lack of interest or lack of knowledge about why or how we became involved in World War II. Most people will say that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but of course the causation goes back a lot farther than that."

Roush recognizes the roots of such conflicts break down into what he calls the "definitions of the vital national interests of a country. "

"I think those vital national interests were in great conflict in the perceptions of the leaders of the six major countries involved. I don’t think people really understand what those considerations were. We were rather unique in our country, insofar as public opinion greatly influences the decisions of our national leaders. That wasn’t true of the other countries involved.

"Even in Britain public opinion is not really considered very important. Morale is. But decisions are made by the group decision in the House of Commons and so forth. In the United States, we are still heavily influenced by public opinion as represented in our Congress. That was instrumental in deciding our involvement. In contrast, the other countries—our adversaries—they had totalitarian governments where in Germany and Italy, the decisions were made by one man. And we know how those decisions came about.

"In Japan, it was a little bit different. The titular head of Japan, the emperor, supposedly had the final authority. But he was a meek and mild person, and he acquiesced to the decisions of a group. In fact, in the Japanese culture, it is customary to try and reach a joint decision. The emperor had as his Prime Minister, Prince Kanoe, a relative, who was also not a very forceful person at all. He had a lot of background that people respected, but he was in conflict with leaders of the Army and Navy, who carried a great deal of weight.

"They identified their vital national interest as becoming a world power, in effect, fulfilling the word ‘empire’. They had a large colony in Manchukuo, setting up a puppet regime there, they had bases down in Korea, Formosa and Taiwan. And when our government put an embargo on Japan for oil and natural resources, and tied up their funds in the United States—after their aggression in China—they felt their existence was seriously threatened. They considered they had two alternatives: to go north or to go south.

Roush says Japan had only two years of oil supplies in reserve, and a move in either geographical direction was necessary to secure energy resources. When pressed by the embargo of resources imposed by the United States, Japanese had hoped for a settlement.

"Prince Kanoe made a substantial effort to negotiate a settlement with the United States but was limited by how far he could go. Both he and the Emperor clearly wanted to find a settlement, whereas the heads of the military were pretty much against it. "They did give Prince Kanoe a short time to work out a settlement. We (the United States) were adamant they should remove their forces from China. They were prepared to make some concessions, but were unwilling to give up their establishment in Manchukuo. And in response, they misunderstood that we were demanding they remove all forces in that area as well."

Roush says the diplomatic conflict between the United States and Japan was down to the wire and ultimately pushed the United States over the brink to its involvement in the war. We were already under significant pressure from Britain to try and help them in the war against Germany and Italy.

"You recall the drastic failure in France that resulted in the Dunkirk evacuation. Britain was fearful that it would be unsuccessful in extracting more than a small number of its soldiers. However it turned out quite successful insofar as they brought out almost 400 -thousand soldiers, including some of the French. But they had to leave without any of their equipment. So Britain was really in terrible straights. They also suffered greatly by virtue of German submarines impacting their supply lines.

"Roosevelt, when he stood for his third term in 1940, gave a strong assurance to the public that there would not be any expeditionary force of American soldiers. He was adamant that we would not get involved in a European war. But as time went by he finally realized that our national security was imperiled and if Britain failed we would be in terrible straights insofar as our sea lines and everything else would be threatened.

"As time went by, Roosevelt had to carefully consider a problem—eighty percent of the American public was adamant about not getting involved in war in Europe. And he knew, under the circumstances, Congress would never vote for a declaration of war.

He knew that in order for the United States to be involved it would take a good deal of provocation, not that he was encouraging that, of course."

Roosevelt also knew there were large segments of the American population who wanted to help Britain. In December of 1940, the president took a cruise on a navy warship to the Caribbean, and in doing so came up with a solution, which he delivered to the American public in the form of the Lend Lease Act. This was passed by Congress in March 1941 and started an almost immediate flow of food, supplies and war materiel to both Britain and the Soviet Union.

"He put it to the public with a simile that a neighbor, seeing his house was on fire, would ask the other neighbor for the use of his hose without the neighbor asking for any payment. He portrayed a similar situation that Britain was our neighbor and we couldn’t afford to see him lose.

Roush says that kind of help program went over pretty well with the public and eventually there was a change in attitude. But still a significant number of people didn’t want to get involved in war, and felt material aid was as far as the United States should go towards aiding the British Commonwealth.

By June 1941, nearly six full months before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt, Congress and the War Department were monitoring events in Eastern Europe nearly as closely as they watched Britain’s conflict with the Axis.

"We knew that Hitler was going to attack Russia. We actually sent information to Stalin. But Stalin was a dogmatic, ruthless type that believed only he knew what was right. He was convinced it was a plot to confuse him, that the information was not correct.

"He had seriously hampered Russia’s ability to deal with Hitler and he had massive purges of the Red Army, including most of the top generals within a few years prior. So when the Germans did attack, they had tremendous success initially and took over six- or eight- hundred prisoners in the first month.

"Many Americans were hopeful the Germans and Russians would fight it out and we wouldn’t have to get involved."

But, it would take Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor—after months of failed diplomacy and the botched last -ditch effort to sue for peace before the bombs dropped on the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet—to awaken the United States to the seriousness of Axis aims at conquering territories around the globe. Thereafter followed 3-1/2 years of 100% Allied involvement to halt German, Italian and Japanese forces and to force those countries’ surrender.

By the end of the war, Roush was heading a military government detachment with a mission of Provost Marshal of Lenz, Austria.

"We were very fortunate. The Austrian people, most of them didn’t like the Nazis any more than we did. Although they would tell you that Hitler did a lot of good things. Well, we were really surprised when we got to the occupation, to see such beautiful freeways, something we hadn’t seen here (in the U.S.) at that time.

"We were able to apprehend a lot of top Nazis by virtue of the fact that we were informed by local people. We had no trouble at all that I can recall, except for one incident when some young people set up a machine. But they were taken out rather quickly. Unfortunately, they were just boys, youngsters. But otherwise, we had no trouble."

Roush recalls that during the occupation of postwar Germany one of his sergeants was given a work detail, and went to the local burgermeister (town officials) for manpower. The sergeant found out that one of the workmen had been a part of a similar work detail under the Nazis, and had performed the work even though he hadn’t liked the Nazis any more than the Americans did.

The sergeant ended up finding important papers that had been buried to hide them from Allied hands… plans for the V -weapons.

Germany’s V- weapons included the V- 1 rocket-powered bomb, the V-2 rocket, and the V-3 long -range cannon (with a 150 -mile range), on up to a V -12 program. The papers also included plans for a space station.

"Their technology was pretty well advanced, much more than ours, I thought."

Roush says word sent back to Allied headquarters resulted in a plane being immediately dispatched with a group of scientists. They wanted to see the materials, assess their validity and value, and recover them for the War Department.

For the most part, he says, the Germans’ use of the V-1 and V -2 rockets was crude and relatively ineffective, in that they were unguided weapons. But, Roush says, they did have effect on morale.

Among the many experiences from the Allied occupation of Germany, were some interesting discoveries made in warehouses. Roush recalls one large building, filled from floor to ceiling in cardboard boxes.

"I opened up one and there were little whips, about this big—a wood handle of about six inches and leather thongs about this long. Boxes and boxes of these little whips. Can you imagine such a horrible society that would have to have that many whips? It was just beyond belief."

Col Roush has authored six books, including World War II Reminiscences and other subjects such as hunting and fishing.

Born June 9th, 1916 in Torrington, Connecticut, Primetta Fei lost her mother to the Spanish flu epidemic when Primetta was but two years old. She was cared for by foster parents, Italian immigrants by the name of Chini who her father allowed to raise her but not adopt her. In 1929, they wanted to retire back to their home town in northern Italy near the Swiss border. They asked for and received permission from Primetta’s biological father to take the 13-year old girl with them.

"I grew up there and I intended to spend the rest of my life there. In the meantime I got older and I fell in love with a fighter pilot named Vittorio Andriani. And I didn’t see too much of him because he was always fighting some place."

Primetta says Andriani flew for Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, in Ethiopia when Mussolini invaded that African country, and then in World War II. The photo of Andriani that Primetta still has shows him with a Fiat Cr. 32 biplane. Altogether, he was in aerial combat for eight years.

"With the rickety plane he had, I’m surprised he lasted that long," she says.

Another keepsake Primetta has retained is a reminder of how Fascist states tried to win the hearts and minds of their citizens. Needing funds for Italy’s conquests in the mid 1930’s, Mussolini had decreed Italians turn over their gold wedding bands to the government, to be melted down and used to pay for military campaigns. And though he collected some gold, most of the citizenry knew how to minimize their losses.

"What people did is they had nice, big, heavy wedding rings. They went and had a small wedding band made to give to the government, and kept the larger, heavier gold band."

In return, the dictator offered a simple band of steel inscribed with the words "Home, Motherland, Love, All One, November 1936" to signify marriage bonds. Primetta still carries her foster mother’s substitute marriage ring.

Italy entered World War II on June 10, 1940. By that date, Hitler’s German armies had already taken the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other countries, and embattled French forces were but two weeks away from surrendering.

June 11th, Primetta says, a knock came on the door of the home where she was still living in a strained manner with her foster father and his new wife -- her foster mother had died in 1937. Italian police told her she had to leave because she was an American citizen.

"Leave? From where? You can’t go in the Mediterranean because they’re sinking everything that shows up there. No American ship would come in there anyway, and none of the other ships could go out and sail across the Atlantic, because they’d get sunk."

Primetta was advised to go to the American Consulate in Milan. She arrived there, only to find that the American Consul didn’t speak Italian, and that her command of English, after more than 12 years in Italy, was inadequate to discuss such matters.

"The first thing he told me was that he couldn’t give me a passport because I’d lost my rights as an American citizen because I’d lived in Italy for 12 years without renewing my passport. And when you’re an American living in Italy you better have a passport that you can pick up and leave in a moment’s notice."

"So I went home. I didn’t want to leave, because I had this boyfriend. I went home and forgot about it."

After a few weeks passed, the Questura—fascist Italy’s state police and the equivalent of Germany’s Gestapo—was in touch with Primetta.

"So I go down there and these guys came walking out with the black boots and black fezzes, and they’re marching around. And they said, ‘You’re taking this thing quite lightly aren’t you?’

"I said, ‘Why? I’m not Jewish and I happened to have been born in America because my father left the country when things were tough here, before Mussolini came and made things better for everybody.’ "

Primetta recalls the officer commenting, "You’d make a good lawyer for yourself," and then adding, "I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. You better get out of here or you will wind up in a concentration camp."

Returning to the U.S. Consulate, Primetta spoke Italian and the consul spoke English and in that way they finally could communicate well enough to understand that if she could arrange passage to America he would issue her a provisional passport. Her inquiry at a travel agency was met with rejection - - no passport, no ticket. But the travel agency suggested that if the American Consulate put in writing that it would give her a provisional passport if she could arrange passage, they would work on passage. That worked and she got the provisional passport.

Her next step was to find a port of embarkation. Lisbon, Portugal was recommended, but reaching Lisbon involved a trip through pro-German southern France and then fascist Spain. Fortunately the French corridor through which she would pass was under Vichy control, with less strict security than areas under direct German control. The agency had to start by getting a Portuguese visa, followed by a Spanish visa and then a French visa. The visas all had to be obtained during one month because the Portuguese visa was only good for a month and if it expired the process had to start all over again. It took almost a year. "The war started for Italy on June 10 of 1940, and I didn’t leave until June 5th of 1941."

The land- based part of the trip took her five days.

"They told me they could give me passage from Lisbon, but I had to bring cash to Lisbon to pay $450 for the voyage. I couldn’t have traveler’s checks, cashier’s checks or lira. I had to have Swiss francs or American dollars."

"I had to get the money exchanged. I went to the Bank of Milan on the first of June and they couldn’t scrounge 498 dollars. In 1941, that was a value of about 3,000 or 4,000 dollars. I had my trunk shipped and went down to get the money and they didn’t have it. They said if you’re leaving the fifth, come down then and we’ll try to have it. I said, ‘What do you mean you’ll try to have it, I’m leaving in 5 days!’"

Those five days were very stressful for Primetta, not knowing if they’d have her money, but actually it worked to her benefit due to the exchange rate from lira to dollars. "The Italian lira rose by 99 cents. Instead of paying 19.99 for each dollar, I only had to pay 19.00 lira and that left me with 50 dollars extra.

Her friend told her to make a pocket in her bra and carry the money in there.

"Well when I got the money it was a stack that high. There were about 200 one-dollar bills, some 2-dollar bills, Swiss francs… so I had to carry it in a big suitcase."

Primetta had also already paid $250 to a travel agency in Torino to join a group of 15 other rail travelers escorted by a tour guide named Rena. Today, she’s amused when recalling that she was told she could buy luggage insurance from Italy to Lisbon, but there was no such insurance from Lisbon to New York. Primetta laughs, "It was almost a sure bet that if the boat went down you were going to go down with it."

Among the other five people in her compartment, Primetta says, was Rena, who knew the route – all the places to go and places to avoid on the road to Lisbon.

"We saw this horse- drawn carriage go by and I said, ’Let's take a ride on it.’

She said, ‘I don’t think we should. You know, it’s mostly prostitutes who get on and ride it.’ Primetta, figuring she’d never pass that way again, decided to ride it anyway.

Another passenger in the same railcar compartment seemed to be a priest. He wore an ankle- length cassock and a big round brimmed hat.

"He’s sitting next to me and we started talking and I realized this guy is flirting with me, and he’s a priest?! So, I had to go to the bathroom, and asked Rena to keep her eye on my bag leaning against the compartment wall. I returned and the bag was gone.

"I was blaming this one and that one and I’m looking at the priest and asked, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got it?!’ And sure enough, it was under his cassock."

While still in France, Primetta had her closest brush with trouble.

Rena asked her to take two of the six trunks through customs that she was carrying for wealthy people who flew to America on the Yankee Clipper, and Primetta agreed without thinking much of it. When customs agents opened the first trunk, it was full of ballerina shoes, and the agent asked if Primetta was a dancer. She told him no, that she was just helping the woman bring the trunks through. Primetta remembers that, fortunately, the other trunk was "only" full of original manuscripts by and books belonging to William Faulkner!

Arriving safely in Barcelona, Spain, Primetta and the others in the group had time to kill before journeying to Lisbon. They decided to go to a bullfight, and the priest, suddenly and suspiciously, showed up to join them wearing a suit instead of a cassock.

The day they reached their embarkation point for the trip to America was Primetta’s 25th birthday. She heard the steamer, the S.S. Exeter, was in port, so she went to see it. When she got there she said, "Where is it?" She was astounded at the diminutive 7,000 -ton vessel at the dock which was to take her across the Atlantic Ocean to America.

The passengers boarded the ship on Friday the 13th. Primetta had a ball gown with her for dancing in the ship’s ballroom. She was disappointed to learn that the ballroom was filled with hundreds of cots for people who were traveling in steerage. During the trip her boat rescued several people whose boats had been torpedoed.

"Before we got to America, we had a stop in Bermuda. The British came aboard and checked everybody. They came to me, got my provisional passport and my trunk, and were looking at everything. They said, "She’s an alien."

"I asked a guy I’d met on the ship, ‘What’s an alien?’

He told me, ‘A foreigner.’

And I said, ‘I’m not a foreigner!’"

Eventually, all was straightened out with Primetta’s papers. But intrigue in the Bermuda port continued.

"On the ship the ‘priest’ is bugging me left and right." Primetta watched authorities handcuff the ‘priest’ and take him away, later hearing that the man who appeared to be a priest was actually a spy.

The ten-day ocean voyage on the S.S. Exeter ended in Jersey City, New Jersey, where Primetta’s father, uncle and sister met her. Customs agents carefully counted the cash she still carried, as agents had done at each inspection, to make sure she wasn’t smuggling money into the country.

Then came a shocker. Agents confiscated Primetta’s provisional passport, telling her, "you’re not going anywhere for 5 years." Primetta was angry because the passport had all kinds of foreign stamps and she wanted to keep it as a souvenir.

Back to Connecticut

‘Home’ in Torrington, proved at first to be disappointing, to say the least.

"I arrive in my father’s house, and he’s remarried. She (father’s new wife) has four children of her own, older than I was. They put my trunk down in the middle of the living room, with my suitcase, and I figure they’re going to bring me to a room. I should have a bedroom to bring this stuff to. I figured it was going to be the first time I would live in a house where we would all have the same name."

"But we just sat there. There were a lot of people there, talking and talking and talking. Finally, my sister suggested that I stay at her house. She said, ‘You wouldn’t like it here anyway.’"

Alice (Fei) Ross, Primetta’s sister, lived with her husband about four houses down on the same street. The next year passed with Primetta living with her sister and brother- in-law, again with people whose last names were different from hers. She finally moved in with her father and his second wife after Alice needed her room for a new baby. (Her step-mother was embarrassed by the prospect of Primetta going elsewhere to board with strangers.)

Employment in Torrington, June 1941, had Primetta doing piecework in a plant that made surgical needles. She was tasked with placing the needles in between pieces of felt, so another employee could grab them by the head and polish them. She says the veteran female workers immediately tried to take advantage of her.

"These girls said, ‘She just came from Italy and doesn’t know which way is up.’ They were giving me all the little tiny needles, and doing two or three boxes to my one box.

"Well, I said, ‘Hey! You think I’m a greenhorn, huh? I was born here, and got just as much right as you do. I want some of that work, not just the small ones. You do part of that, too."

Primetta had made her point and her co -workers responded by dividing up the piecework. On top of that, Primetta’s piecework pay rose to $35 instead of the $16 a week she had been paid. But that rate wasn’t to last, as she was soon sent back to the regular plant.

"I was telling someone about it and I said, ‘I feel like putting a bomb in this damned place.’"

Undaunted, Primetta quit and sought another job. (Her sister told her she was nuts.) After a background check which included her birth certificate being sent to Washington D.C., she landed a job with General Motors. Soon after, though, an FBI agent by the name of Henry Miller showed up at Primetta’s sister’s home. Primetta and Alice let him in.

"I said, ‘I just left the Gestapo, and now the FBI?’ "

Miller told her that the FBI had heard of a threat Primetta allegedly made against her old company. But by the end of the interview, the young factory worker’s reputation and patriotism remained untarnished and the FBI said they didn’t expect to ever return.

At General Motors, Primetta’s job involved grinding steel cones which encapsulated ball bearings. It was man’s work, performed while standing, and Primetta was doing the work because men weren’t available. They were being drafted to serve in the Army. The work soon took its toll.

"I was having trouble standing. I got a special pair of shoes. But then I got a job sitting down, instead, and worked there for a while. It was a good thing I worked for General Motors, because it had the most generous retirement plan in America."

Primetta’s work ethic, combined with her thriftiness, put her in a position to buy a 1940 Chevrolet. She had recovered from an appendectomy, paid for her operation, and still had saved enough money to buy a car. She was the first woman in Torrington that she knew who got a drivers license. Most women didn’t get drivers licenses -- until their husbands went off to war and they had no choice.

A Polish neighbor had been drafted, and his family put his 1940 Chevrolet up on blocks, then, figuring the war would likely last at least five years, decided to sell it,.

"People who had been living here all their lives, working for three or four years, didn’t have a dime to their name. And I had enough money that I paid the doctor and the hospital and 500 dollars for that car, and it only had 500 miles on it. It was a 1940 Chevy four -door sedan."

Umbert "Bert" Giacopini

Bert was a machinist/ toolmaker during World War II, and his skills were so valued that he received eight deferments from military service. Honing those skills for industry took four years of apprenticeship under his father. The government recognized the worth of men and women who had developed their abilities for manufacturing. In fact, once Bert was getting razzed for not being in the service so he told his boss he was going to enlist. His boss told him, "Go ahead, I’ll have you back here Monday morning wearing a uniform and getting paid a lot less."

Primetta met her husband -to- be in the winter of 1942, when she was temporarily slotted into the third shift. That night Bert, normally on day shift, also had a shift change that was to last six weeks, and which meant Bert would ride in to work with Primetta.

"So, in comes Bert. I didn’t even give him a second look because all the guys left were married. Right away that night we had a terrific storm. It was 35 below zero. They said to call workers and tell them not to come in, because everything is frozen…. So I looked up his name and I called him.

"He said, ‘How did you find me?’’ And I said, "In the phone book, under G."

"He said, ‘Nobody knows that. Here, whenever I give my name and I say Giacopini with a G, they’ve already got J on. Anybody that looks for me is looking for the J and they can’t find me.’

"I said, ‘I’m Italian and there’s no J in the Italian alphabet.’ "

Primetta’s phone call led to Bert’s invitation… something along the lines of, "If we’re not going to work, we might as well go out." And they went out together.

She says Bert was known for never having "gone steady" with a girlfriend, not anyone, until he met Primetta. He had carried a little book of phone numbers for Saturday night dates, but the book quickly went into disuse.

Bert and Primetta both stayed with General Motors during the war, where she commanded nearly the same 55 -dollar a week paycheck as he did.

The leanness of the war years, combined with Primetta’s resourcefulness, resulted in her getting a letter one day from the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The writer said he wanted to speak with her about a report that she had gas- rationing stamps "coming out of her ears."

"So I said to Bert, do you know this guy?" He said, ‘Yeah, I play poker with him.’ I said, "Well, find out what he wants."

When Bert inquired on her behalf, the OPA officer asked, "That girl on Beechwood Avenue is your girlfriend? We’re waiting for her." They thought she had black market gas coupons.

"If you had a car— and it was 17 miles to go to General Motors, where I worked— they told us that if we took passengers, we’ll give you ‘C’ coupons."

‘A’ coupons were for nonessential trips and ‘C’ coupons were for gas to commute to and from jobs tied to the war effort. When she began carrying riders, she was given additional gas coupons, and with the 23 miles per gallon her ’40 Chevy gave her, those coupons added up. The coupons were based on vehicles getting only 15 miles per gallon.

Before too long, Primetta was regularly driving not only to General Motors, but occasionally making 90 -mile trips to Ocean Beach in New London. She even went to Fort Dix in New Jersey twice to visit an Italian prisoner of war. Neighbors complained about her trips and the OPA reduced her coupons based on 23 mpg. She would have had a problem if the war hadn’t ended relatively soon because she had a ring job done on her car and after that she got 15 mpg.

She didn’t particularly know or like this prisoner of war, a Fascist from a neighboring town in Northern Italy who was captured in North Africa, but she wanted to find out about her Italian fighter pilot boyfriend Vittorio.

"I asked about Vittorio, and he said he was shot down just a few months ago, in 1943, right around Malta. They never found him, but I think they found a few pieces of his plane."

The second time she went was so to bring a woman who wanted to ask him about her mother who still lived in that town.

Not only did she never buy black market coupons or sell the extras she had, she gave away some of her coupons so a mother could visit her son who was in a sanitarium with TB.

May 5, 1945 was the marriage date for Bert and Primetta. They started their honeymoon in Philadelphia (described by Primetta as a dead town because it had no movies or plays on Sunday). Their honeymoon continued in Washington, D.C., and they were delighted on the evening of May 7th to see lights at night.

Primetta remembers saying, "Hey, we come here and they turn on all the lights for us!"

VE Day was May 8th in Europe, but May 7th in the United States. In celebration of the end of the European Theater threat, the nearly 3-1/2 year blackout was lifted.

Primetta Giacopini has enjoyed a life of freedom to live and work in her native America. And she still has many reminders of her experiences in northern Italy, experiences which might have led to a dramatically different life had she not had the courage to escape that country during World War II.

"My daughter went to Italy on her honeymoon. She went to see my friends and they said the main piazza in his town was named Piazza Vittorio Andriani. They named it after him."

Bert passed away in 2002. Yet since then, Primetta Giacopini has retained her independence in living. She has a current driver’s license… and still drives most places she goes, in addition to maintaining her own household with a swimming pool. She hasn’t been back to Italy since then, after everything she went through there. However, this August she’s returning for her first visit since 1941. She’ll visit the town where she grew up and her biological cousins in Tuscany. She’ll let us know how it goes…

Getting Out of World War II - In Germany

Cpl Don Cooley, U.S. Army

Golden Gate Wing Speaker, February 28, 2008

"You’ve seen a lot of documentaries and read books about people who

have been prison camps, and the terrible way it was in Japan. That wasn’t

the way it was because the Germans had signed the Geneva Convention."

Don Cooley was a college freshman, enrolled in the ROTC field artillery program, until the fall of 1942, when he turned 18. Don thought being enrolled in those studies would get him past the draft.

But at that time the government decided the Officer’s Candidate schools were full while the Universities were empty. So, the department of Defense established programs to train young men in universities—the Navy’s V-12, the Army’s Specialized Training Program (ASTP)—to keep students in school and learning, and not be drafted.

In the spring of 1943, the War Department was building-up for the pending invasion of Europe. Students then in college were sent to the infantry and then back to college, before having them join units headed overseas.

Christmas 1944

Cooley was assigned to the 423rd Regiment of the 106th "Golden Lion" Infantry Division. This ‘green’ unit had just arrived December 10th on the Belgian/German border in the Ardennes Forest to help ‘finish up the war in Europe.’

Unknown to the soldiers of the 106th and their brethren on that front, the Germans had been amassing armor and troops for a planned drive through the Ardennes to the Belgian port of Antwerp, northern Europe’s staging and supply point for American and British forces. This last-ditch thrust would become known as the ‘Battle of the Bulge’.

"We were kids they’d pulled out of colleges, people who they’d pulled out of air training programs, people they’d pulled out of kitchens from various places in the Army, to throw together to take over there to ‘finish up the war.’

Where the Army would usually have a division responsible for a five mile-front, the 106th Infantry Division had been spread across more than 20 miles. When the armor-led German thrust began on the night of December 15th, the 106th was right in its path. U.S. Army records recount intense fighting from the 106th Infantry regiment, crediting the unit with severely slowing the attack and preventing the breakthrough from its key objectives. In that action, two regiments of Cooley’s division— right in the middle of the German salient near St. Vith, Belgium—were quickly bypassed and surrounded.

"It came down from the regimental commander that we were surrendering. He wisely felt that to fight out of that whole thing, we would lose more lives than anything else. We were told to destroy our arms.

"Where I was, no one fired a shot, because they had gone around us so fast, way to the north and way to the south. That was a blessing for us."

Cooley said he had been on the front lines for two days, away from most of his possessions. But buried in his overcoat pocket was a camera—to be exact, a 1939 Kodak Baby Brownie with three rolls of film.

"It was the dead of winter, the coldest winter in history and I had this big overcoat. When the Jerries arrived, it was four o’clock in the afternoon and getting dark on the 19th of December. They didn’t do anything but a pat-down. And so, that didn’t get patted-down.

"Then they marched us for three days behind their lines, hundreds and hundreds of us. After we were marched out of there to the rear of their columns, we were put into boxcars—40/8s—40 men or eight horses. Smelled a little like it, too.

"We were taken for ten days across to eastern Germany to their ‘reception center’, where we entered this very large multinational POW stalag."

A shower and de-lousing were the first activities for the prisoners of war. Then there were clean clothes. Cooley says the stalag was ‘pretty much run by the Brits’, mostly captured during Operation Market Garden, the aerial invasion of the Netherlands.

"A man came up to me and asked, ‘Do you have anything you don’t want Jerry to find?’ I was very dubious, but thought, ‘Why not trust him’, and I handed him the camera and a pair of pliers I had in my pocket."

Cooley says when he came out newly clothed and with some food in his stomach, here was the British soldier, the camera in hand, returning it to him.

‘I foolishly shot two pictures from the hip out of this overcoat while I was in this reception center. They didn’t come out very well because it was a dark January day."

Ten days later, Cooley was among a group of 25 POWs sent out as a work party. They traveled by train to Stalag 4B at Halle, near Leipzig, arriving December 30th, to work for a company that repaired railroad lines.

Cooley says he was in the camp for 3-1/2 months, during which he was kept optimistic by the routine of bombing raids, night and day, around them. One nighttime raid nearby greatly buoyed his spirits.

"The air raid siren sounded and we were to get out of the barracks. Searchlights were all over the sky and British planes were going by.

"It made a lasting impression on me because it was ‘the bombs bursting in air, the rockets red glare’ and every time I hear the Star Spangled Banner, I get choked up.

What a feeling it gave us. It told us that we were really on top and it wouldn’t be long now. It was such a boost and such a spectacular sight."

Daily entries - April 1945

Cooley had been keeping a diary during his time as a POW, though as he became hungrier and more tired, he didn’t always jot notes daily. Reading from his mid-April entries:

"There was no work on this Friday the 13, due to the proximity of hostilities. Hollis was supposed to be an open city last week. Strafing planes and artillery sound quite common now. ‘Mad Dog’ (the pet name for Cooley’s work supervisor) came over and got us at 4:00 a.m. Ordered to move out in half an hour. Threw stuff together.

"Ate remains of rabbit, etc., on the fly. Began march about 5:30 with the French, who are billeted below us. We were in kind of a dormitory over a warehouse the guy had."

Cooley described a new German sergeant and "Grandpa Alvin", a toothless guard, both of whom Cooley says were left in charge of the POWs because they were among those under age (15 years old) or men considered to be too old for combat.

The POWs, recalls Cooley, didn’t like the idea of moving away from the Yanks, except for safety. But he says the Germans wanted to keep the POWs as long as possible, so they were herded east.

"We started this hike with ample breaks until three in the afternoon, to a so-called ‘safety zone for arbeitz kommandos’ (work commandos). In an open field, about 25 kilometers east of Holland and 12 kilometers north of Leipzig, we camped."

There were now fifty POWs in the group camp, and they were nearly surrounded by German tanks, which ran down the Leipzig highway in hasty retreat. In the distance, the campers could hear the distant rumble of artillery fire.

Cooley says they were fed well—corned beef, ham, sardines and bread—but they still got dysentery, and couldn’t hold it. That night they bedded down in straw.

"The German guards, pretty sullen, more conscious of the situation nearby, issued us twelve Polish cigarettes.

"Next day, Saturday, we were rousted at four a-m to prepare to move out. Charlie Ace, my buddy who had been in my company, and I had decided last night to goof off today. The sergeant said he couldn’t make us go, but we couldn’t stay there. I felt so badly, we hid under straw and brush on the edge of the area until everybody had cleared out.

"Now, prisoners of war at large. Hallelujah!"

Local residents, remembers Cooley, had started coming through their bivouac, seeking discarded goods and promising the two Allied soldiers bread and baked potatoes. Cooley and Ace settled into a ditch about 100 yards away to sleep, eat and plan their next move.

The two men went through equipment left behind by the Germans, discovering rifles, ammo belts, trinkets and the notebook on which Cooley would further document his experiences in Germany. Shoes, clothing and cigarettes went to a couple of Poles and a Frenchman who had brought food. Cooley says that after awhile, the Frenchman brought more potatoes, as well as some hot coffee. One of the Poles, a man named Felix, had been a POW for five years, working as slave labor at a local factory until it was recently bombed.

Cooley said he decided to take one picture of their hiding place in the ditch. A flip of a coin decided Charlie would be the subject of the snapshot, "…prone, feet toward me, with a slice off of that loaf of bread."

That night, a Saturday, the two Poles returned and hurriedly led the two POWs to a one-room apartment in town where Felix lived with his wife and baby. There, the two GIs washed with hot water and some soap from a Red Cross parcel they’d given Felix.

Then Cooley said he met the other guests of Felix:

"Four Britishers—one Englishman and three South Africans from Durbin—were here also. They were captured three years ago at Tobruk in North Africa. Felix brought them in at about nine p.m., Fred, Ray, Dick and George. Older than we.

"How they were picked up only a Brit would believe. They had come out of hiding at 4pm to build a fire and brew a pot of tea. Felix was horrified by this risk and whisked them to security.

"They set the table for the six of us and fed us. Cows milk, coffee, carrot and onion and potato soup, bread… half a boiled rabbit and gravy, a bowl of potatoes. Absolutely couldn’t eat it all.

All the men bedded down for the night and slept in, then had breakfast in bed the next morning.

"Ah, what a full feeling of contentment. To hell with our getting out! This is primo! Felix brought in a French barber who cut our hair, washed up in hot water in an immaculate cow stable below, where there was a pen of rabbits.

"This was just like the movies—strictly on the hush-hush, lay low, French and Poles, the underground, dropping in with late news. They all know and they’re all helping us with the anticipation of utopian deliverance as soon as the American troops arrive."

Cooley says that Sunday evening, Felix came in with word that the SS and Volksturm were setting up defenses in the town, and that Allied forces should be getting there within a day. While appreciating the all-out efforts by Felix and others in the area to assist the POWs, precautions were made to be safe and ready to move at a moment’s notice.

On April 15th, news came via Walter Winchell’s radio broadcast that President Roosevelt had died. Cooley marvels that even then, so distant from his homeland, he heard the news the same day it happened.

By April 16th, 1945 the sounds of gunfire had dwindled, and Felix began to be worried about the potential danger of being discovered by the SS. News reports on the radio finally confirmed that Leipzig was in chaos and was surrounded by American troops, whose quick advance had outrun fuel supply. Tanks, armored cars, trucks and troops were stalled but 10-12 kilometers away.

Within two days, German troops were retreating through the town.

"Three Jerries came in early to water their horses, right below us, stayed all day and moved out at night, none the wiser.

"Walter Winchell returned with his daily report, a pamphlet to POWs printed in French, German, English and Polish, dated 17th April with news up to the 15th about the present front ten kilometers from here, the Japanese and Italian situation, Roosevelt and Truman. It was really a treat to see GI news. They dropped from airplanes with these ultimatums to the German people: ‘Give Up!’."

Thursday, the 19th of April brought a delicious veal dinner, and was followed the next day by work to help clean out the stable while Felix milked the cows. Later at one o’clock that afternoon, liberation came.

"Two Yank GIs arrived ahead of two tanks. We’re free! Damn, the GI stuff looks good! Chocolate, et cetera."

Cooley wrote in his diary they spent the day eating, taking pictures and riding in a jeep to battalion headquarters, where he ‘shot the bull’ with other repatriated POWs from the 106th Infantry. From there Cooley went into Halle and the barracks for repatriated POWs. He says the city was a mess, full of debris from bombings, and completely looted, and he and others spent time clearing the streets.

About a week later, Cooley rode on a truck to a nearby airfield, waiting three days for a C-47 ride that carried him and two dozen other US and British POWs to Reims, France. There he was able to clean up and get a new uniform.

On May 6, 1945, VE Day, Don Cooley was on a boat back to the United States, where he had rest and recuperation at a Miami Beach hotel.

Ace Fighter Pilot, 435th Fighter Squadron, 479th Fighter Group

Golden Gate Wing Speaker, January 24th, 2008

"When I became a fighter pilot in Europe, escorting heavy bombers, I learned what the meaning of ‘true guts’ is. Any time you meet a bomber pilot, go up and shake his hand.

"Those bombers were shot to pieces by antiaircraft fire, by enemy fighters… they would come home in shreds. They were flying aircraft that shouldn’t be flying but they were fighting their way home. Most of the time they didn’t make it, but many times they did. And all fighter pilots would look down on a bomber pilot fighting his way home and say, ‘we have nothing but respect for them.’ "

Richard Candelaria recalls very well the days in his flight training when he and his fellow fighter pilots made fun of bomber pilots, calling them ‘bus drivers’ among other unflattering names. He also remembers how bombardiers retaliated for jesting insults at their fellow bomber crewmen.

"The bombardiers would go up to the mezzanine with balloons filled with water. And guess what, ‘Bombs Away!’ And all the fighter pilots were drenched, and there was nothing we could do about it."

Candelaria was born July 14, 1922 in Pasadena, CA (coincidently, the late fighter ace Robin Olds was born the same day and flew in the same fighter group). As long as Richard Candelaria could remember, he wanted to be a fighter pilot.

"I used to read about the Lone Eagle, G8 and his Flying Aces, and even the Red Baron, and I thought, that’s the thing to be." And, as many World War II combat pilots will tell you, Candelaria says he never thought about dying. "It happens to everybody else, it doesn’t happen to you."

Fresh out of high school, Candelaria went to a recruiting station, where he discovered he needed a college degree and to pass exams before he could become a pilot. The bombing of Pearl Harbor changed those prerequisites.

Candelaria was in his third year of college when America found itself at war. In January 1942, he boarded a train with another 200 southern California boys, all headed for a classification center at Nashville, Tennessee.

These young men, Candelaria recalls, had developed a winter routine of skiing on Mt. Wilson or at Big Pines in the morning and surfing at the beach in the afternoon. Their arrival at Nashville was a shock, as they were met by chilling temperatures, snow on the ground, and tests to see if they could make it as a pilot. In addition, there were typical military camp duties, like ‘Mess Management" (a more officer-friendly title for "kitchen patrol") and guard duty from 8:00 p.m. to midnight.

"I used to take towels and wrap them round my neck. And I thought if only I could get on that Mess Management. You know, it’s warm in there and there’s food and drink. Instead I’m out there walking a beat."

Within ten days, Candelaria got the news he was hoping for. He was qualified to take pilot training, and was in the first group of 100 chosen.

A train brought the new cadet back to California. In Santa Ana and Oxnard, he had ground school, but at the latter base there were Stearmans – wood, fabric and wire PT-17 biplanes with open cockpits.

"Your flight instructor had gosport tubes. That meant you had these little things in your ears, and he was able to talk to you but you couldn’t talk back to him. He would call you all kinds of names and there was nothing you could do about it."

Candelaria revels at memories of flying solo. And when he was transferred to Chico, California, he was filled with the sensations of night flying: aircraft exhaust ports lit by flames and instruments critical to knowing how the aircraft was functioning.

The question of whether Candelaria wanted to fly bombers or cargo planes or fighters had already been answered in his mind, and with instructor recommendations, that question was answered February 8, 1944. The new pilot got orders to report to twin-engine fighter training at Williams Field in Chandler, Arizona.

The Curtiss AT-9 was Candelaria’s new mount.

"We called it the Curtiss "Rock", because it flew just like one. It took off at about 110, climbed at close to 115, cruised at 120, glided at 120 and stalled out at 119."

But the experience in the underpowered AT-9 led directly to flying the RP-322, a P-38 without turbochargers. In the nacelle-enclosed cockpit, the pilot trainee sat piggyback behind the instructor and was briefed on the controls, instruments and flight characteristics prior to the instructor stepping out and saying, "come back in an hour."

Before long, 2nd Lieutenant Richard Candelaria had graduated and was ready, he felt, for combat or anything. However, his new orders listed him as a flight instructor at Williams Field near Chandler, Arizona.

Luke Airfield followed Williams, and the P-40 followed the P-38. A ticket overseas, though, accompanied Candelaria’s next move, as the Army Air Forces issued a call for fighter pilots.

"Here’s the great thing. You don’t know you’re going to the Pacific, or to Europe or to the Mediterranean or where you’re going. But you get a clue.

"Once you become an officer you buy all your clothing. You have to buy long johns… long johns? We’re not going to the Southwest Pacific. Wool this and that… everything wool. No suntans. We’re going to Europe."

479th Fighter Group

RAF Wattisham near Ipswich in East Anglia was the new base for Candelaria. The 479th was flying P-38s, and that meant the realization of his first love.

"About that time they start bringing in P-51s. We’re going to transition from P-38s to P-51s, and all the P-38s pilots went "Awww… one engine? We’ve had two and lots of safety, only one engine now?"

The other transition was the return of torque.

"The P-38 had no torque. You’ve counter-rotating props and it’s as stable as it can be. You put it on the glide path and it just comes down easy. You level off and it has tricycle gear. You get the nose gear down and it just tracks right straight down the runway.

"Now you’ve got a P-51. Number one, you’ve got torque. Right rudder, what’s a right rudder? In a P-40, you broke your right leg climbing and you broke your left leg diving. Have you ever seen P-40s in a dive? When you’re really diving, here’s what happens. There isn’t enough left rudder to keep it going straight. So here’s a whole formation going sort of sideways. Have you ever seen cars going down the road when they’re out of alignment? That’s scary."

The 479th transitioned its P-51s by first flying two squadrons of P-38s and one of -51s, then substituting P-51s for a P-38 squadron, until all three squadrons were in the single-engine fighter.

Pilots had two hours of familiarity in the new aircraft. Candelaria got through his first hour just fine, but about 15 minutes into the second hour, at about 28-thousand feet, the Mustang’s Merlin engine stopped.

"Thank God, in England there an airfield about every twenty miles. So I figure… I’m going to glide back, and I won’t have any problem. I couldn’t make it to home plate, so I chose a field I knew I could make.

"I’m coming in to land, and here’s a Wimpy, a Wellington twin-engine bomber. I’m gliding, I can’t go anywhere else, and he cuts out in front of me and lands, so I’m essing back and forth and I found out that I took that P-51 down to a very low speed and it lands beautifully. From then on I didn’t come in hot any more. I came in slow and made good landings."

Candelaria’s first mission was a 479th FG bomber escort mission beyond Berlin to Leipzig, on which Candelaria says his P-51’s engine quit after he switched from his main tanks to his drop tanks. He had been flying wing to his squadron commander and was by then over the North Sea, before he could switch the fuel controls and re-start the engine. Another pilot named Malone stayed behind, but he left to rejoin the squadron before Candelaria’s P-51 repeated is fuel problem.

"I flew that whole mission, my first in the P-51, all alone. I’d start to edge on to one of the other squadrons along the bomber stream, and every time I did they’d turn into me. I’d have to get off to the side, rock the wings and give them the signal, and they’d leave me alone. But they wouldn’t let me get close."

Spotting the 479th on its return home, Candelaria rejoined his squadron and landed with them, saying today, "Thank goodness the Luftwaffe didn’t come up that day."

His first two victories

On December 5th, 1944, Candelaria’s squadron was with a bomber stream headed to the northwest of Berlin, flying as ‘Outlaws’. He says that at the time, the Army Air Forces had begun allowing some of the fighter escorts to leave the bombers and attack enemy aircraft. The escorts became known as the ‘Snow White’ units and the P-51s allowed to attack German interceptors were called ‘Outlaws’.

As the 435th neared the target, Candelaria says the group commander got a call that the Luftwaffe was amassing fighter units not only from Germany, but also from Denmark and Norway and points well south of the German capital.

"And here was this huge gaggle. I say gaggle because they didn’t fly exactly the way we did. They would sort of bunch together, until they spread out into a company front formation and the leader would say ‘fire.’

"You’d get this burst of fire, 20-milimeter cannon shells and from Focke Wulf 190s 30-milimeter cannon shells, and of course the machine guns going. They could do a lot of damage to the bombers."

Candelaria says his group commander, Kyle Riddle, called a ‘bounce’ to engage the enemy gaggle, now numbering somewhere around eighty aircraft. There were only ten aircraft in the ‘Outlaw’ 435th Squadron, but the 434th Squadron’s twelve Mustangs were also heading that way.

"I’m flying Gordon Doolittle’s wing and he takes us right into the middle of them. He’s shooting at one Fw-190, there’s another one sitting beside me and two coming from the left side. I called Gordon, but everybody else was talking and he didn’t hear me.

While Doolittle shot one 190 down and started on a second one, Candelaria engaged other 190s coming toward him and his wingman. He hit one Focke Wulf that was aiming for Doolittle, sending the 190 heading down in flames, its pilot bailing out.

"I climbed back up towards Doolittle and about that time we get attacked again. I couldn’t do anything else except break into the formation that was right beside me, and we went barrel rolling down.

"The Focke Wulf 190 had a faster rate of roll than we did, so they had a tendency to roll, and not in a straight line but in a barrel roll. We went on down and I hit the second one, and two others went right into the clouds and I lost them."

Where there’d been several hundred planes in the air a few minutes before, the sky had become empty. Candelaria joined up with another P-51 from the 434th Squadron for the flight back to England.

Luftwaffe jets

On April 7th, 1945, coming back from his tenth or twelfth mission over Germany, Candelaria saw something that really grabbed his interest - - Luftwaffe jets."We’re cruising along at about 350 miles an hour and were drawing up on some P-47s. Those dumb guys were in close formation. Sure, we were on our way out but we were still in enemy territory.

"All of a sudden I saw flashing above me and I mean, close. There were two Me-262 jets, pure white with the black crosses. And they were heading toward the P-47s. I called them out, and we still had our tanks on, but they didn’t shoot at us or at the P-47s. They just went right on by and were gone.

"That was my first encounter with a jet fighter. They were beautiful. Several times we found 262s, but they would always get away from us."

Then Candelaria got a special opportunity. His squadron was chasing four of the jets through broken undercast, and as the Me-262s slid away, Richard watched them fly away and then turn and enter clouds.

"I dove down and figured he would be coming out here… and, sure enough, there’s the 262… and I’ve got him. I’ve got speed and perfect condition. But I looked up and… solid ice. I’d forgotten to put the heat on the windshield, and all I could see was blank. By the time I looked over, he’d gotten into the clouds and I’d lost him. All because I’d forgotten to turn on the windshield heat."

A target-rich environment

April 7th, 1945 proved different. Candelaria had been promoted to lead Yellow Section. As he was taxiing out, he felt a bumping sensation and then heard the tower say his P-51 had a flat tail wheel. But a quick crew chief changed the wheel while Candelaria sat in the plane. He was able to take off just as the rest of the Squadron climbed out, and he got to the rendezvous point at the German/Belgian border before the rest of his fighters.

He soon found the box of B-24 bombers he was to be escorting, and shortly thereafter spotted two Me-262s. He announced the threat to the B-24s and flew head-on toward the Germans

"Instead of meeting me head-on they just lowered their noses and went below me. Since they were coming underneath me I dropped the external tanks, hoping that maybe I’ll hit one, who knows. I didn’t hit them, but it made them veer and they veered away from the bombers and made a big slow turn.

"I had been above them, picked up a lot of speed was close to 500 miles an hour. They made this wide turn and I was able to cut them off at the pass. As I got closer to them, they realized I was getting a little too close and they started to straighten out to go alongside the bomber stream.

"I was able to line up on one of them and fire. Being an old bird shooter, and a pretty good skeet shooter, I raised the sight slightly, so I’d be able to hit them as they were going away from me. Sure enough, I hit the lead plane in the cockpit and the right engine and the right engine started throwing out black smoke.

"They were still going away from me, and as I started to gain on him he rolled over slowly and then went straight down. He was still going straight down and I went after him."

Candelaria says his Mustang began porpoising as it dived, forcing him to pull back the throttle and break off his pursuit. The last he saw of the Me-262 it was still heading straight down, below the undercast at 6000 feet.

"I didn’t see the pilot get out. I didn’t see the airplane explode. For all I knew, I got him, or maybe I didn’t. Maybe he was able to pull out."

About that time, Candelaria saw glowing tennis balls racing past him from behind. He broke hard left, away from the bombers and looked in the mirror to see the other Me-262’s nose lit up like "a neon sign", blasting 30mm cannon shells at him.

After the break, the German also broke in the same direction as the first jet, leaving Candelaria no chance to pursue.

When the P-51 pilot pulled around he saw green flares, a sign that the bombers were under imminent attack. Climbing, he soon spotted the threat - - a gaggle of a dozen Bf -109s flying formation behind a leader in another 109 painted bright yellow from the spinner to the windscreen.

"I picked him. That was a mistake. I should have known that anyone who wants to be seen that much must be an old veteran. And boy, it was like having a tiger by the tail. This guy was good.

"Nobody had ever beaten me in a fight. Y’know sham fights between friendly airplanes or anything else. Nobody had been able to shake me. This guy shook me, kicked me, turned me every way but loose.

In a series of turns, Candelaria kept trying to get a lead on the 109, but it escaped, headed toward the bombers and knocked out an engine on one of the B-24s before the P-51 caught up with him.

"Do you think I could hit him? Uh-uh. He could play the fiddle, make it dance, do everything else with that 109. At some points when we were trying to get on each other’s tail, we were canopy to canopy, even vertically."

Candelaria says it seemed they had been fighting for a half an hour or so, when it was probably only a minute or two. He finally hit the 109 with bullets, and the Messerschmitt began streaming coolant. Another hit and it was weaving and then the engine caught fire. The 109 went down, the canopy came off and Candelaria watched as the pilot got out, his parachute blossoming as the pilot dropped into the woods.

There were still a dozen enemy aircraft nearby. One of them made a mistake by attacking too fast, sliding past the P-51 as Candelaria retarded his throttle.

"I lined up on him, hit him, and he exploded. At about that time I tried to line up another one. Now this time there were glowing golf balls, 20 millimeters, coming from the nose of the Me-109. So I do a barrel roll and another fellow slides past me and I was able to hit him.

"And just about the time I think I’m really going to give him a good burst, there’s two more over here… several here… everywhere I look there are 109s. I was in a target-rich environment for a change.

Candelaria skidded his P-51 as another enemy fighter passed him. He squeezed the trigger but didn’t know if he hit the plane. Right behind him more glowing golf balls streamed by, so he barrel-rolled and a 109 slid past him. That led to the P-51 and the 109 going into a Lufbury circle, with Candelaria sliding up and down to try to get the nose of his P-51 on-target and other Me 109s joining into the turning, descending circle of planes.

"I don’t think I hit the first one, but the second one I did hit, and he started to try to out-turn me. As he started to turn, I kept gaining on him and I could see him start to wobble. Just as I pressed the trigger, I know I didn’t hit him, but he cartwheeled right down on the ground.

The other members of Candelaria’s flight were on the radio and looking for him, helped when they saw the explosion of one 109 and the last 109 hitting the ground. As the P-51s hurtled down, the Luftwaffe fighters scattered into the clouds. Candelaria and his comrades searched the ground, found the shattered remains of four Me-109s in the area, and watched the bombers drop their payload on the target. Then, they started for home, with George Williams flying on the new ace’s wing.

"Of the victories that come about, many of them come because of luck. Because if you don’t have a chance to encounter the enemy over the target, you’re not going to get a kill."

As Candelaria said to a friend of his who became a millionaire in the oil industry, "you have to be at the right place at the right time. And one more small item, you have to do the right thing."

From good luck to bad

April 13th, 1945 was but six days later. The Army Air Force had sent Candelaria to London for some broadcasts, and Richard had returned to the 435th for his next mission.

April 13th happened to be a Friday, and proved to be a day of misfortune for the man who had just become an ace and was heading out on his 75th combat mission. The 435th was tabbed as the Outlaw squadron for targets of opportunity at the airfield at Rostock, in eastern Prussia.

When the P-51s got to the airfield, they crossed over, noticing only two antiaircraft batteries firing. Candelaria told his flight he would make a first pass to knock out the guns so the others could work over the field. It probably seemed like a good idea, but as his P-51 bored-in to strafe the emplacements he’d seen, everything changed.

"All of a sudden from every side, camouflage is coming off and man, it’s like a Christmas tree lighting up. You’ve got machine guns, you’ve got 20-millimeters, 40-millimeters… none of the big guns, the 88s, were firing at the moment."

As he started pulling up, Candelaria says he simultaneously felt something stinging his body and noticed the oil pressure going down. A 20mm shell had penetrated the firewall and instrument panel and exploded, sending fragments of metal and glass spraying toward the pilot.

Given the warmth of the day, Candelaria had chosen to sit on his flight jacket, offering no protection from the projectiles. He says he felt something warm coming down from his scalp and a sting in his left arm and wrist. He chose to fly as far as he could before bailing out.

For the next ten days he successfully evaded enemy soldiers before being captured and escaping. Freedom was short-lived though, as Candelaria was recaptured and ended up spending the final month of the conflict in Europe as a prisoner of war.

After WWII, Richard Candelaria joined the Air National Guard and he commanded the 8195th Fighter Squadron, flying F-86 Sabres. In private life, he was a successful entrepreneur, co-founding the El Torito restaurant chain and several electronics companies.

The speaker for the November 15th, 2007 Golden Gate Wing meeting had a number of memorable experiences in his 25 combat missions in the ETO, first in P-47s, then in P-51s. Among them was questioning as a POW by the renowned German interrogator Hanns Scharff.

Burt Newmark was born August 14, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. He entered the U.S. Army in September 1942, with the goal of being a fighter pilot. Within two years, he had earned his Silver Wings, graduating at Moore Field in Mission, Texas, a member of Class 44C.

"After my training was over- my last combat training in the United States- we had a session with Bob Johnson (high-scoring ace with the famed 56th FG "Zemke’s Wolf Pack), who told us a lot about fighter pilot tactics against the Luftwaffe. Unfortunately, for me, during my 25 combat missions, I never came close to a Luftwaffe fighter plane. We would see the jets up in the sky, head towards them and they were gone."

"Duxford was originally an RAF fighter base, dating back to World War I. It was a wonderfully comfortable field. The field itself had no runway. It was all…they called it grass…but it was all mud or hard earth.

Newmark says on his first day with the 78th, he was out on the tarmac, when the horizon filled with returning aircraft, which began an airshow.

"When we went on a mission and there were no injuries and no damage, we would get back into formation and come back across the field in an airshow for our ground crews who had worked so hard for us."

Newmark says the 78th’s commanding officer continually worked to improve the shows for the waiting maintenance and armoring personnel …

"After a while, he started to refine this. What we would do is come in a flight at a time. The four of us would dive down at the runway, probably at 200mph, and we would all peel off in this beautiful echelon. We would put our wheels and flaps down at the top of the chandelle, come down and land. We had to do it in 45 seconds form the time we passed the end of the runway.

"Our commander would do it in about 42 seconds."

Newmark says he has no question that the P-47 was the best fighter aircraft.

"We used to call the ’51 the ‘Spam Can’. It was a beautiful airplane to fly but it was not the equivalent of the P-47".

By mid-1944, the Germans were deep into developing a series of V-weapons: rockets, guided missiles and huge guns, all capable of carrying large explosive payloads. Launch facilities for these weapons were huge bunkers with roofs of steel-reinforced concrete thicker than ten feet.

Heavily defended, these sites were attacked by the British in night raids with 12,000 pound "Tallboy" bombs, which failed to penetrate the roofs of the sites. It was determined that huge steel doors provided the weakest link in protection for V-weapon facilities, and that stripped-down, explosive-laden bombers had a good chance of penetrating those doors.

Project Aphrodite was created to test-fly the concept.

"They tried to invent the first guided missile, says Newmark. "They took an old B-17, stripped the insides, and then loaded it with RDX explosives. They would create an arming mechanism so they didn’t explode on takeoff. The pilot and co-pilot would take that airplane off. The co-pilot would bail out. The pilot would make sure the mother ship had control of it, and then he’d bail out. Both went into the English Channel and were picked up by Air/Sea rescue boats."

Newmark says he was involved with one of 18 such tests.

"There were four of us playing cards in the squadron room, and were asked if we’d like to fly a combat mission credited, but there would probably be no combat. It would be an easy flight.

"What they wanted us to do was to go up and cover a single bomber with certain markings. That bomber was going to be controlling another airplane which we were not to go near, even if it was attacked, because it would be dangerous for us.

Newmark recalled the flight he escorted: "This thing just fluttered into the ocean."

Not to be outdone by the Army Air Force, the U.S. Navy conducted similar tests under the codename Operation Anvil, using its version of the Consolidated B-24 as the "guided missile". On one of the missions, a first pilot named Lt. Joseph Kennedy, the older brother of John Kennedy, took off with co-pilot Lt. Bud Willy in an explosives-laden bomber. Willy bailed out and just before Kennedy did so, he turned to arm the explosives, which detonated prematurely, killing both men.

Getting a fighter back on the ground after flying home from missions over the Continent proved a unique challenge for the 78th.

"We had no homing mechanisms at all, because they didn't want the Germans to home in on any radar or whatever. We would have to find our field in the fog by finding this tall tower at Cambridge University that was our guide to the field, maybe six or eight miles south of Cambridge. At the field, when they knew we were coming – we would call them – they would shoot up white flares at either end of the runway. From the height and direction of the flare, you could pretty well come home. That happened several times."

"On one of these missions, my friend, Herbie Hill who lived right across the hall from me, missed the field. He could not spot the two flares and crashed into a hill about eight miles past our field. He was a wonderful, wonderful man."

If a returning fighter pilot found his aircraft short on fuel, Newmark says he could seek out a field in France established for British bombers. The field’s FIDO system (Fog Intense Dispersal Operation) was a British answer to heavy fog, in which thousand of gallons of fuel per hour would be burned to burn off fog to the height of several hundred feet.

"They were huge runways lined with gasoline burners. From far away, through the fog you see this glow and you could safely land. I did that one night, slept on a cot and flew home the next day."

By Christmas of 1944, Burt had switched aircraft, from his beloved P-47 to a P-51. The aluminum skin of his Mustang sported the name ‘Lady Eve’, for his girlfriend of that time, and nose art depicting a German helmet being conked by a rolling pin.

Two month’s later, he was with four dozen other pilots sitting in Hangar Three in a briefing session for a mission to Nuremburg, Germany.

"The C-O, whoever was leading the group, would tell us our target, possible enemy activity and timing. This mission was to escort bombers and to bomb the marshalling yards in Nuremburg, which were very important to Germany, because that’s where all traffic seemed to go through.

"The distance was probably 350 miles. The mission took about six hours."

Burt recalled the work of his crew chief Tom Vraible, who had been up two hours earlier than Newmark, making sure the pilot’s aircraft was ready to perform its long distance task.

With the seatbelt and shoulder harness in his P-51 cinched tight around him, Newmark was mindful of three other Mustangs as the squadron took off four abreast, nearly wingtip to wingtip, across the hard earth of the Duxford’s airfield. The P-51s maintained close proximity as they penetrated winter cloud cover and shared airspace with some 900 other fighters and 1400 bombers, all headed to the same target.

The 78th climbed above the bomber stream, seeking out a group of B-17s with boxed letters painted on their tails, marking them as members of the 3rd Bomber Division. Being above the bombers would offer the P-51 escorts an advantage over enemy fighters seeking to attack from out of the sun.

"The bombers were at about 23,000 -28,000 feet. We would fly at about 30,000, and if we were called by our controller that there was any activity above us, we would go up to about 40,000 feet.

"We wore gloves. The cockpit was heated, because you have heat coming off of the engine. But your hands are on the side of the canopy and it’s about 40-degrees below zero out there. The first glove was silk, the second was wool, and the third glove was leather. Some guys still got some frostbite, but I worked out okay.

Newmark says as the bomber stream approached the marshalling yards at Nuremburg, black puffs of antiaircraft fire began appearing around the aircraft. Wings would come off bombers, engines would catch fire and crews would bail out of crippled aircraft.

"Because no German fighters were going to fly though the flak, we left the bombers. We picked them up on the other side of the target. We would then take them back to the rendezvous point. If there was still no German activity, we would go down on the deck and look for targets of opportunity, primarily trains. We wanted to stop traffic going across to the front lines.

"We would break up into flights of four or two airplanes and go hunting across Germany to see what we could find. We would shoot up trucks, tanks, and troop movements… If we found an airfield, which I never did, we would shoot up airplanes on the ground."

Newmark showed a photo of a strafing run he and his wingman made on a train. He says that after he fired the P-51’s six .50 caliber machine guns at the steaming locomotive, he pulled up to see what he had done.

"I heard my wingman yell, ’Flak car!’ The Germans, because their traffic was so badly beaten up and destroyed, had started putting antiaircraft guns on their trains. They were hidden until this thing would open up and there would be a gun."

Newmark said a single bullet had hit the cowling of his Mustang.

"I knew I was in trouble because I saw a little leak coming back alongside the fairing. Within about three minutes, my engine was running rough. It was smoking and then started on fire. I tried to climb as far as I could. I think I got up to about 1000 feet, before the fire started coming back through the firewall, so I knew I had to bail out. I wasn’t about to try to ride down in a burning airplane.

"I thought I disconnected everything-I can’t remember how many things I was connected to-and I went over the side. I had a little back pressure on the stick and let go. I got caught halfway out of the cockpit and I blacked out, with smoke and fire coming back at me. I actually had liquid aluminum pellets coming back at me from the fire."

Newmark says he was fortunate to be conscious enough to pull the ripcord on his parachute. He remembers the ‘chute opening, and then his feet immediately hit the top of a tree. He hung from the tree for a few moments until managing to pull himself to the trunk and slip down. But below, as he looked around the couple of rows of trees, he saw he had a ‘welcoming’ committee.

"There was a crowd of farmers, I think, with pitchforks and shotguns, and there was one man who seemed to be in the lead... I tried to crawl so they wouldn’t see me.

Then I heard somebody yell, ‘Halt!’ I think he was a hunter out in the field, and he was aiming right at me. So of course, I surrendered."

"The head guy, I think he was home guard, because he had some kind of a uniform, but he wasn’t really a soldier. He asked me for my .45, took it from me and asked me to show him how to shoot it. I showed him how to take the safety off, and he fired it into a hill."

Newmark says his captor was so pleased with the gun that he used his pocket knife to remove the .45’s clear plastic handle covering a picture of Bert’s girlfriend, Eve, and gave the picture back to the pilot. Then, Newmark was taken into the town of Kriegsfeld, escorted by two uniformed soldiers, who took him ‘visiting’.

For many Allied bomber crews and even some fighter pilots, being captured in or near a town that had been bombed meant abuse or possibly death at the hands of the locals. Newmark was fortunate that Kriegsfeld had been untouched by bombs.

"The people really were very nice. I was part of the party. We would sit down and they would serve tea. We’d all be sitting and I could tell these two guys would be telling this couple that they had shot me down, and they were making quite a story of it!"

The visits went until late night, about 11 o’clock. Newmark says by then he was beside himself, tired and scared, and sure that he was going to be taken out in the woods and shot. Instead, he was taken and put on a train to Frankfurt. There he was transported to the little town of Oberursel.

"I was put into a little solitary cell. Mine didn’t have a window or a table. It had a cot and a pot. I just laid down on this thing and went fast asleep. I don’t know how long I slept. I was really out of it. A guard knocked and brought me a bowl of soup, a little later on, and I went back to sleep. Then the guard came back and said, ‘come with me.’

"He walked me to an office down the hallway. And in this office was this gentleman. His name was Hanns Joachim Scharff. Hanns looked at me and he said, ’What are you doing in my country?’ "

The pilot says he replied, "Burt Newmark. Second Lieutenant. 716204."

Scharff responded, "Why are you telling me that?"

Newmark said, "My government told me that’s all I need to tell you to prove I’m a soldier."

According to Newmark, Scharff told him that was incorrect. The interrogator reached behind him to pull a book off a shelf and open it, stating, "The Geneva Convention says that that is not sufficient to prove you are a soldier."

"If you don’t believe me, look at my dogtags," said Newmark.

"Would you like to look at my dogtags. I’m Colonel Bullshit. You arrive at my country by parachute. You’re not wearing a uniform. You’re a spy, and I’m going to have you shot," said Scharff.

Newmark, seeing Scharff motion to a guard by the door, countered. "No, no, you can’t do that. Your people saw my parachute in the tree. They saw my airplane burning on the ground. Spies don’t fly airplanes like that."

"Oh," said Scharff, "you’re a flier. Look, for you the war is over. For me the war is going to be over in three months. My wife is living in New York, on Riverside Drive. She’s buying American war bonds…"

Newmark says he thought, "What kind of crap is this?"

Scharff continued, "If you will tell me the two letters on the side of your airplane we’ll see what we can do for you."

Knowing the Germans had seen the airplane and should have noted its coded fuselage, Newmark replied,"W-Z."

"Oh, the 84th Squadron," Scharff shot back. "How is Ray Smith?"

Ray Smith, Newmark recalled, had been in an accident at Duxford, had crash-landed and was recovering from some cuts. Newmark was surprised and in disbelief that Scharff would know this.

Newmark has a copy of a document Scharff created and signed. It is marked with a "J" for jager (fighter) and "H" for Hebrew. During the conversation Scharff also said, "Because you have an "H" on your tag, if I turn you over to the SS, it would be very, very bad for you."

On a motion from Scharff, the guard took Newmark from the office. Soon he was being transported to a Prisoner of War camp near Nuremburg, about eight miles from the railroad marshalling yards targeted by the B-17s Newmark had been escorting.

British, Dutch and American flying officers populated the camp, and conditions, Newmark says, were not too bad. The first thing he was told was to take a burlap bag outside and fill it with pine needles. The bag was then laid on four wooden slats on a bunk frame, his bed for his 2-1/2 months in the camp.

"We didn’t get much food. It was terrible and very rare. We did get Swiss prisoner of war packages. I think I got two in the entire time there. These things were fantastic because they contained American cigarettes. We had an escape committee that used the cigarettes to get from the German guards guns, radios and wire cutters.

"We were all concerned the Germans would kill us rather than doing something else. We had a plan that we would take the guns we had and shoot a couple of soldiers. Then we’d have four guns. And just keep trying to expand that and maybe that would save us."

Newmark said one night, a mixed group of POWs compared notes on precision bombing techniques. One of the British pilots offered his explanation:

"First thing we do is send a pathfinder over the target area. The pathfinder drops a white flare over the target. In the light of that white flare, a Mosquito drops a red and green cascading flare in the center of the target.

"For hours, our bombers will come in individually at different altitudes, from different directions and drop their bombs on the red and green cascading flare. And that flare will be renewed by Mosquitos when necessary."

Newmark recalled that about that time, an air raid siren went off. The POWs went running outside and saw a red and green cascading flare floating down over the marshalling yards. Right after that, two Mosquitos came down to drop white flares around the prison camp.

"That was the first time we knew that somebody knew who we were and where we were. And all night long, just as he had said, British bombers came in, one at a time, from different directions dropping bombs. And some of them were delayed action bombs, so that the Germans couldn’t get the repair crews in too quickly. So, that marshalling yard was pretty badly damaged."

As the spring of 1945 approached, the POWs in the Nuremburg camp found themselves being moved to Moosberg near the Bavarian Alps. It was a forced march of some 90 miles along German roads that had been bombed. The POWs were given parcels of basic provisions and then set off on foot with guards. Newmark says the trek took him twelve days, while some POWs were faster and some, slower. There was little in the way of sustenance on the march.

"We had to scrounge eggs from old farmyards where maybe there were a couple of chickens still alive. Aside from that we had very little to eat. I lost about 35 pounds during my 2-1/2 months in prison camp.

"One of the things that happened as we were marching along this roadway, we were crossing a railroad line. There was a big lumberyard right near the line, and a train parked right outside the lumberyard. Just as we crossed the tracks, someone looked up and said, "Oh look. Four Me 109s."

"Somebody else said, ‘109s, hell! Those are P-47s!’ "

Newmark says that just as those words were spoken the P-47s started to dive on the train. The POWs ran for the logs for protection.

"Those guys came down and wrecked the train, killed two of the prisoners of war. A couple of guys were wounded. And I’ve never heard from the ground side what strafing sounds like. If you picture 700 rounds a minute out of eight guns, with four airplanes, hitting the ground-each bullet sounded like a sledgehammer hitting the ground. It was just incredible. You just can’t imagine what it sounded like."

It was late April 1945 when Newmark and the rest of the POWs had made it to the Moosberg camp, and another sound made an indelible mark on his memory. A deep rumble on that day heralded the arrival of armored vehicles. The sound of U.S. 3rd Army tanks made the Moosberg guards take off, and drew the POWs to the front gate.

"A tank came up nearby and the tank commander motioned everybody away. He was instructed, apparently, not to lift the hasp that held the gate closed. They ran it over with the tank. And guess who the guy was who asked them to do that. It was General George Patton…"

The liberated Allied pilots were taken to Camp Lucky Strike, which Newmark describes as being almost worse than the prison camps. But after he was there for two weeks, Newmark and his buddy, Ewing Miller got up on the roadway and hitched a ride with two officers driving a jeep into Paris.

"You can imagine, as the war was ending, what Paris was like. And the worse thing that happened to me in the war was that I came down with infectious hepatitis that night and they put me into the hospital.

"Fortunately, I was able to talk to a reporter before I went into the hospital and he said he’d send my name home. And my mother did get this telegram that said I was okay. "

The hospital stay lasted a week, before Newmark was transported to a hospital ship for an eight-day cruise back to America.

After the end of World War II, Burt Newmark remained in the Air Force Reserves as a pilot. He also built a solid business career with Wang Labs. Today, in retirement, he shares history as a lecturer at San Mateo Main Library.

(Wikipedia & other sources)

Hanns-Joachim Gottlob Scharff (December 16, 1907 – September 10, 1992) has been called the "Master Interrogator" of the Luftwaffe and possibly all of Nazi Germany. He has also been praised for his contribution in shaping U.S. interrogation techniques after the war.

Scharff was of German birth, his family having moved to South Africa before World War II. Hanns had returned on a visit to Germany, when the war broke out and he was drafted as a panzer grenadier for the Wehrmacht. He was allowed to become an interpreter and trained in British military organization.

Merely an Obergefreiter (the equivalent of a senior lance corporal), he was charged with interrogating every German-captured American fighter pilot during the war after his becoming an interrogation officer in 1943. He is highly praised for the success of his techniques, especially considering he never used physical means to obtain information. No evidence exists he even raised his voice in the presence of a prisoner of war (POW).

Scharff’s interrogation techniques were so effective that he was often called upon to assist other German interrogators in their questioning of bomber pilots and aircrews, including those crews and fighter pilots from countries other than the United States. Additionally, Scharff was charged with questioning V.I.P.s (Very Important Prisoners) that funneled through the interrogation center, namely senior officers and world-famous fighter aces.

After the end of WWII, Scharff was invited by the United States Air Force to give lectures on his interrogation techniques and first-hand experiences. The U.S. military later incorporated Scharff’s methods into its curriculum at its interrogation schools. After the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was revealed in the early 2000s, Scharff’s name was again brought to the forefront as investigators questioned why his methods, which continue to be taught in military intelligence and interrogation schools, had been ignored in favor of more physically abusive tactics by U.S. military personnel and U.S. defense contractors alike to obtain desired information from Iraqi detainees.

After the war, Scharff immigrated to the United States from South Africa. From the 1950s until his death in 1992, Scharff redirected his efforts to artistry, namely mosaics. He eventually became a world-renowned mosaic artisan, with his handiwork on display in such locations as the California State Capitol building; Los Angeles City Hall; several schools, colleges, and universities, including the giant Outdoor Mosaic Mural facade of the Dixie State College Fine Arts Center; Epcot Center; and in the 15-foot arched mosaic walls featuring the story of Cinderella inside Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World, Florida.

"Hanns Scharff never sent a pilot to the SS," says Newmark. "They were all put into Luftwaffe prison camps. Hanns Scharff was the smartest, brightest, nicest interrogator that ever existed in the world. He’s famous unto this day, and there’s a book about him called The Interrogator (by Raymond Tolliver). At the end of the war, the Pentagon took Hanns Scharff around and had him talk to their interrogators, to teach them what he knew."

"In his book," Newmark adds, "he talks about the fact that he takes the measure of a man by threatening him. But he never did anything about those threats."

"General Kuribayashi had been the Japanese general on the island. His body was never found. His wife attended the ceremony on the island when I was there. She was a very frail little woman. It was a very interesting ceremony with both the Japanese and Americans."

"That B-24 was a tough old bird. It had two tails, and one time we had one of those tails shot off. As the pilot was about to tell us to bail out, he said, ‘let’s wait awhile.’ It shook and shimmied and felt awful, but it got us back."

As a navigator, Bob Bleier was in charge of making sure his B-24 was flying the right course from its airfield in Italy to targets in southern Germany and eastern Europe, and back home again. He performed that task nearly four dozen times as part of a military career that spanned two decades.

Bleier was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 31st, 1917. He grew up in that East Coast metropolis, graduating from high school in 1935. It was right in the middle of the Great Depression when Bleier began his military career:

"People didn’t realize at the time that FDR really was bringing the country up to participate in WWII. One of the places they had was CMTC the Citizens Military Training Camp. It was an organization that trained you for a month in the summer, at no cost to you."

Bleier later joined the National Guard at a recruiting office on Park Avenue in New York City. He and his cousin, Irving Wacker decided to join the Army Air Corps. But after enlisting they were broken up and Bleier was sent to Chanute Field in Illinois for a series of exams. Asked what he would like to do, he told the examiners he wanted to be an airplane mechanic. He got his wish and was soon in mechanic training.

After graduating, Bleier was assigned to St. Lucia in the British West Indies.

"It was very nice duty. I had a few Hawaiian friends and we managed to go swimming every day until we were the color of the natives.

"While we were down there, World War II broke out. It was a tremendous night of confusion. A Navy airplane flew overhead and we shot at it with .30 caliber machine guns because nobody knew what was going on.

"The Germans brought their U-boats down to the Caribbean and the Atlantic and they had a field day. We had very little in the way of protection for anything."

Bleier says U-boats came right into the harbor at Castries on St. Lucia and sank all the ships that were there. His Air Corps unit had a B-18 bomber with a single light machine gun in the nose, and some bombs but no bombsight.

"We went after them, and it was laughable, because the .30 caliber machine gun would bounce off the hull. And without a bomb sight, just dropping the bombs wouldn't have done much good."

Bob’s next direction in the Air Corps was set when a team of officers arrived to give a series of tests, seeking officer-training candidates. That process led to Kelly Field, Texas, and since there were plenty of pilot candidates by that time, Bob was shuttled into navigator training.

Completing that training, Bob was told his new unit, the 465th Bomb Group, (unlike the others at Kelley Field at the time) would not get leave before their overseas assignment.

"I called my mom. I said, ‘Mom, call the Red Cross and tell them you’re sick.’ She did and the CO called me in and said, ’I guess I’ve got to give you some kind of leave.’

"I said, ‘Sorry, sir.’ And I went back and married my childhood sweetheart."

Bleier was transferred to a new station in Lincoln, Nebraska, and his new wife, formerly Bette Zayas, came out for ten days together with him.

Then, Bob and his crew flew their B-24 to Dakar, Senegal via South America. It was February 1942, and the crew found that in winter, even Africa could be chilly enough to defeat government-issued flying gear.

"We had this very nice-looking leather jacket with sheep’s wool lining. But, leather gets so cold…"

From February until April, the 465th Bomb Group’s four squadrons—Bleier’s 780th and the 781st, 782nd, 783rd—flew training operations out of a base built in a wadi (a dry riverbed) in Tunisia. When Allied troops in Italy had pushed enemy troops far enough back to use Italian airfields, the group moved to Pantanella, within 25 miles of the front lines, but out of range of German artillery.

The 465th Bomb Group, as part of the 15th Air Force had primary objectives of destroying the Luftwaffe in the air and its aircraft production facilities on the ground—fighter aircraft plants, ball bearing and rubber manufacturing, oil refineries and munitions factories. It also supported ground operations in Italy, and cut supply routes through Austria.

"We flew a great deal of disruption missions. Marshaling yards were one of our primary targets… fuel dumps. We flew to Ploesti three times."

Navigating the bomber formations to their targets was the responsibility of two men in the squadron’s lead B-24, one doing ‘normal’ dead-reckoning navigation and the other doing pilotage from the nose turret position.

"Sitting in the nose turret you could tell the navigator behind you, ’you’re about to cross the Danube’, and he’s got his map there, jotting ‘half an hour’.

"The only significant improvement in navigation while I was in the Air Force was Loran, which came in later. We didn’t even have calculators. Navigators were picked for their ability in math, because flying over the oceans you just had a sextant, an air almanac and a drift meter, and from these you calculated your course. With experience we got pretty good at it."

While an important part of the war effort, these missions, in Bleier’s experience, were uncomfortable for bomber crews:

"We were awakened at two o’clock in the morning, given breakfast and we took off. B-24s are not pressurized, so you wore an oxygen mask and breathed in the oxygen mask and it froze to your face. That was for most of the mission.

"Also, if you had to use the facilities, we had a tube with a funnel at one end, which froze up pretty quickly. If you had something else to do, we had empty ammunition boxes. "

The ammo boxes were parked in the bomb bay for release over the target.

While at Pantanella, Bleier had the good fortune of being able to re-connect with his cousin Irv Wacker. When Bob and Irv went separate ways after joining the Air Corps, Irv had become a B-17 pilot, was sent to Italy and was flying missions from the airbase at nearby Foggia.

"He and I used to have a good time. We were only 40 miles apart and when the airplanes weren’t on missions we would fly over the other camp and drop notes. The notes were wrapped around wrenches and stuff like that.

Bleier and Wacker kept in touch when they could until Wacker’s bomber was shot down. The Air Force sent Bob’s aunt a telegram saying Irv was missing in action. Bleier drove up to Foggia one day to talk with other crews who flew on the same mission Wacker was shot down. He says they assured him Irv had been killed in action.

There were usually three days off between missions and Bleier, the assistant squadron navigator, volunteered for extra missions. He had flown 25 missions before the rest of his crew did, and having reached that goal, had a choice of where he would take his rest and relaxation: on the island of Capri or at Bellagio Mancuso, a high altitude forested area where Italian premier Mussolini had a hunting lodge.

"I chose Bellagio Mancuso because I thought the isle of Capri would be too overrun, for one thing. It was a good decision because there aren’t many trees in Italy and this forest was just delightful—cool and nice.

"Then I came back and that wasn’t too good, because my crew of ten was shot down and all of them were killed except for the bombardier, who had a cold that day and didn’t fly. So the two of us, through fate, fortune or the will of God were the only two that survived. "

According to Bleier, the bombardier, Frank Dodd, was shot down on a later mission, survived and evaded to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of war. Bleier says the man later attended the University of Zurich, where he sat in class between two men Dodd said were Nazis.

"But, he told me, ‘We did our studies and became very good friends, because as far as we were concerned the war was over.’"

"The first real close call I had… the navigator’s compartment in a B-24 has a bubble on the side and it’s most practical use is to stick your head in that plastic bubble and when the bombs are away you say, ‘bombs away’ and you pull your head back and log the time."

On one memorable moment during a mission, when Bleier went to perform this task, he discovered the bubble had been shot away by a flak burst.

Bleier’s B-24 nearly fell victim to another bomber’s payload on another strike.

"Sometimes the altitude gets out of whack a little bit. One of the planes above us dropped five 1000-pound bombs and my pilot was just barely able to pull it back as the bombs went down right in front of our nose."

After another operation, a fire broke out in the waist of the B-24, just as the bomber was preparing to land back at the base. Except for the pilot and co-pilot, the whole crew manned every available fire extinguisher to knock down the flames, and succeeded just before the airplane landed.

On his 22 missions as assistant squadron navigator, Bleier says he rode in the nose turret of the lead B-24, instead of sitting mid-fuselage in the navigator’s position.

"I liked that. Because there I was with a pair of .50 caliber machine guns beside me, which sure beat the hell out of sitting in the back with a pencil.

"But one time, when we were returning and I was in the nose turret, something hit the ship and the nose turret turned 45 degrees. The only way you could get out was through the back, and now it was impossible to get out. If the ship had gone down, I would have no choice but to go down with it. I couldn’t get a parachute and couldn’t get out the back. Fortunately, here again, that tough old bird made it back and the airplane mechanics got me out.

Among the damage reports, Bleier’s B-24 returned from one mission with more than 200 holes in it. Flak was a greater threat than Luftwaffe fighters, but Bleier says the Germans in the air were very capable, and without fighter escort, the air-to-air risk would have been greater.

"We weren’t exactly helpless. There were 36 B-24s in a group, flying in a big ‘V’ formation and we had ten .50 cal machine guns on each bomber, for a total of 360 machine guns.

The big problem came when you became a straggler and you were out there kind of by yourself, or with one or two other bombers. If the enemy fighters came in then the odds were more in their favor.

During his missions in Italy, Bleier says he saw the Tuskegee Airmen flying escort in their red-tailed fighters. Crews appreciated them, bombing groups requested them and Bleier says they were also fun to fly with…

"We were flying one time over some heavily-defended targets near Vienna when over the radio we heard, ‘Who dat.’ Then we heard, ‘Who dat who say who dat.’ And then, ‘Who dat who say who dat, who say who dat’. When, a very authoritative voice said, ‘Radio silence will be maintained,’ there was a final reply: ‘Who dat who say dat.’"

Bleier recalls many instances in his time in the Mediterranean Theater when danger followed the crews from their bombers to their bivouac.

"You do some silly things under those circumstances. We lived in tents… and we had a big argument one day, when my crew was still alive, over how accurate the .45 cal automatic was. A couple of them said you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with it, and I disagreed.

"I took out my .45, and right next to the pilot’s cot was a 37mm shell, maybe an inch and an eights wide, about six inches high. I hit it dead center and pieces flew all over. I thought later, ‘what a stupid thing to do! We were living in a tent. If I had missed, who would have stopped that bullet?!’ "

Bleier says he wasn’t very fond of his squadron’s commanding officer, especially when one day after Bleier he had 43 missions in, the CO called him and said, " I’m going to transfer you to another squadron.’

"I said, ‘Colonel, I have flown 22 missions together and I would like to finish my career with the 780th.’

"He said, ‘Well look at it from my point of view. You’ve got 43 missions in. You’re not any good to me any more.’ "

In September of 1944, after totaling 47 combat missions, Bob Bleier was sent by ship back to the States. He says it was a great experience to see all the new destroyers escorting the convoy. As Bleier leaned on the ship’s rail, taking in the sights of New York, he recalls a big, strapping airman next to him asking, "What’s that there?"

When Bob answered, "Brooklyn", the big guy said, "I never thought I’d see the day when I’d prefer Brooklyn to Oklahoma."

Bob reported next to the navigation school at Hondo, Texas, where the commanding officer told Bleier he had seven cadets on the verge of washing out of the training program. Bob was given the task of becoming their instructor, and when Bleier finished his work, all seven made it and one of them was the valedictorian of that class.

After the war, Bob Bleier remained in the Air Force until September 1960. He completed 20 years of service, including navigating cargo flights across the Pacific Ocean during the Korean War. He retired at Travis AFB as an active navigator, and then became a stockbroker with EF Hutton for 25 years.

"‘Be brave,’ my father had said to me.

"I don’t think bravery was on my mind when I volunteered. I volunteered a lot. Not only did I join the army, but also the Air Corps. That was a glamour job. Ask the guys in the infantry. We had sheets on our beds and ate three squares every day. We lost a helluva lot of guys every time we went out. If memory serves me right, our casualty rate was ten percent."

Leo Bach was born in the community of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York. He never finished high school, but joined the U.S. Army in September of 1940. Bach paints a portrait of his friends and their thoughts on their future at the start of World War II, by reading from his autobiography, as quoted above.

Bach had trained as a telephone linesman in the Army’s 53rd Signal Aviation Company and was sent by ship through the Panama Canal to Hawaii via San Francisco. On the Sunday morning the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he was at nearby Hickam Field.

"I lived in a pyramidal tent, right on a chain link fence which separated us from Pearl Harbor. The planes started coming in overhead, and we said ‘Goddamit, what’s the Navy doing out on maneuvers on a Sunday! Damn Navy!

"And the bombs started to fall. I saw some dumb ass sergeant line up his men on a parade ground and dressed them right. Down came a Japanese plane and mowed ‘em all down. Stupid things like that happened. We were completely unprepared."

Bach, assigned as a driver for his sergeant, ran to the motor pool for a car and then picked up First Sergeant Alvin Bradshaw. Their first stop was to secure .45 caliber ammunition for their automatic pistols, because, after field maneuvers on the prior Friday, they had relinquished their ammo.

"I jumped out of the car, skipped over a little patch of gardening protected with a twelve inch high string ‘fence’. I leaped over the string and caught my foot in the string and fell, and my ankle blew up like that."

Bradshaw drove the car for a while, but when he suggested Bach go to sickbay, they both decided it would be better to leave the medics to caring for the bleeding wounded.

Later that night, Bach was driving a truck for his duties, and while passing a checkpoint he failed to stop and give the entry password.

"He had a Browning Automatic Rifle aimed at my head, and I heard a click. Uh oh. I slammed the brakes and gave him the code signal, and went on my way. I was shivering, thinking my head was about to be blown off."

One activity for Bach was the laying of telephone wire. He says his unit had been practicing laying wire as a communications backup the thirty miles from Hickam Field to Wheeler Field, splicing the line as each reel wound out; inserting boosters improve signal strength, and burying the wire where it crossed a road. In practice that prior week, he says his crew had hooked up a field phone… only to find it would not work.

But on December 7th, when bombs were falling, Bach says they completed the task in half the time… and the phone worked.

Bach says his plan had been to do his time in the military and then get out. So, after Pearl Harbor he volunteered for the Army Air Corps, which meant coming back from Hawaii to the mainland for training.

The Air Corps needed bombardiers and sent Bach to New Mexico’s Kirtland Field where he earned his wings, graduating with the class of WC 43-12. He was linked to a B-17 crew in Rapid City, South Dakota before being sent by ship across the Atlantic to England as a member of the 534th Bomb Squadron, 381st Bomb Group, based at Ridgewell.

The first two missions for Bach’s crew were to Rheims and Braunschweig. On the latter mission, flak hit the bomber’s tail assembly and gutted it. That meant a replacement plane for the third mission-a plane that would never return to Ridgewell.

"On the day I was shot down, April 11, 1944, we were going to Cottbus, in eastern Germany near the Polish border. Eleven hours in and out. We blackened the sky with 700 B-17s and B-24s. We lost 70 planes on the mission… ten men to a plane, that’s 700 men killed in action, missing in action. Some of whom turned up as POWs. I was one of those."

Bach’s replacement B-17 (42-31497) was an aircraft without a bombsight. Instead, Bach was to toggle the bomb payload on the lead bomber’s drop. The bomber had a crew of only nine due to the regular chief engineer not flying this mission, and it carried extra fuel and the minimum number of oxygen tanks. In turn, that meant the trip to about 50 miles southeast of Berlin, would be at a maximum 17,000 feet instead of the normal 35,000 feet altitude. The lower altitude, and the B-17’s ‘tail-end Charlie’ position in the formation made it vulnerable to both aerial attacks and a wide variety of flak. The combination proved too much for the B-17.

"Messerschmitt 109’s got engine #1, a Focke Wulf 190 got engine #3 and antiaircraft got engine #2 and it was time to leave. All nine of us got out.

"Our plane was pretty badly shot up and our belly gunner’s communications were evidently cut, because he didn’t know we were bailing out. The pilot, just before he went through the escape hatch, noticed Bernie’s chest pack (parachute) was still on the topside and realized Bernie Blanche was still in the bubble.

"Bernie swivels up and comes out swearing, and (after putting on his chute) goes out the window yelling ‘You son of a bitch!!’ "

Bach had bailed out and had parachuted safely until a gust of wind caught his canopy just before he landed. His right leg struck the ground and buckled. He shed his chute, limping as he covered it with pine branches, before curling himself around the base of a small pine tree. The tree hid him for a few minutes. But then he heard the sound of barking dogs and moved off to a more mature cluster of trees in which to hide his bright blue electric-heated flight suit.

He walked north for about an hour, before fatigue set in. He hid in some trees to catch some sleep, then began walking again, avoiding traffic on the road. But at the end of three days, he suddenly discovered he had returned full-circle to the place where he had landed after bailing out!

Without water for those three days, Bach was parched. He hailed a passing woman on a bicycle and she offered him ersatz coffee from a thermos she was carrying. As he lowered the thermos from his mouth, he noticed her expression had changed. Behind the downed airman stood a German soldier, aiming a rifle at Bach’s head.

Bach says he was taken to Dulag Luft in Frankfort am Main, where he and eleven other airmen were "received" at a brick building inside a barbed-wire-surrounded compound. There was a long row of tables in a room, with one guard seated behind the table for each POW standing in front of the table.

Told to empty the pockets of his blue flight overalls, Bach produced an escape kit belonging to another airman. His guard/clerk accused Bach of being a spy. Then the German interrogator reached inside Bach’s flight suit and grabbed his dogtags, which included the airman’s name, rank, serial number, blood type and the notation "(H)", for Hebrew.

"The German’s lips twisted into a crooked sneer, ‘Jude!’ It dripped from his mouth like a snarl from a mad dog."

Bach’s heritage led the stalag guards to place him in a windowless cell with a steel door. A light in the high ceiling illuminated a plank of wood covered with a bag of straw that was Bach’s bed.

Another interrogator, who said he was from the Red Cross, came into Bach‘s cell and commanded the airman to give information so Bach’s parents could be notified. When the questioning shifted to Bach’s unit, commanding officer and codes, Leo returned to answering with name, rank and serial number.

"This infuriated my interrogator. His reaction to my response was chilling: ‘Come now, we know that you’re a Jew. We only want to make things easier for you. You know the military people have no use for Jews. If you cooperate with me, I can make things easier for you."

Bach remained silent. Then he was alone again with his fears.

Bach was expecting his "Red Cross" investigator to come back for a second round, but he never did. Instead, for some unknown reason about 50 Americans were herded into a small patch of dusty ground heavily surrounded by barbed wire fencing.

As the Americans shuffled restlessly in the stockade, one began singing in what Bach recalls was a gravelly whisper, barely audible…

"Oh, say can you see… by the dawn's early light… O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming… Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there….

"It was picked up by others, a little louder, and soon we were all singing. The whisper had changed to singing. Never before, nor since, have I heard the difficult piece of music sung so beautifully.

"It was one of those moments when men dropped all pretence and let their deepest emotions and love for one another show. It gave us the strength we didn’t know we had. We had won. We had been alone and now we are together and alive. We could make it, we could make it. Our voices dropped down to a whisper.

" ‘We did make it!’ our thoughts shouted."

Before long, Bach was moved to Stalag Luft I, where life was different. In this larger camp, the American and British contingents set up their own organization and operations. With concerns the Germans would try to infiltrate the POW population, internal security was a top priority, and the Americans always interrogated new prisoners as they came in.

Bach recalls eating a so-called ‘soup’, made with pieces of potato, rutabaga, grass and occasionally horsemeat. They were also given Kriegsbrot-black bread made of ground acorns, flour and woodchips.

"Our rations were seven men to a loaf. There were fourteen men in our room so we got two loaves of bread, and that had to last for two days. In order to make it last, we had to slice it very thin. We didn’t have knives, but Americans being pretty clever, we managed to hone things down to make knives."

According to Bach, the tools to make the knives were in plain sight, but the Germans never caught on.

Bach says his captors told the POWs that Allied bombings of the railroads were either destroying supplies the Red Cross was sending, or making their delivery impossible. When the Germans left Stalag Luft 1, the POWs discovered provisions simply never delivered.

"When we were liberated we found warehouses full of Red Cross parcels they were living off of.

Unlike most of the larger aircrewmen in Stalag Luft 1, Bach only lost about ten pounds during his 13 months as a prisoner of war. He had come into the Army Air Corps weighing 155 pounds.

Bach says there was a great ebb and flow to the POWs’ emotions as 1944 came to a close:

"There were highs and lows. We were betting we would be home by Christmas. Then came the Battle of the Bulge and we really tanked at that point. The news was bad and we were really, really low. And then we broke out after the Battle of the Bulge and the war was over shortly thereafter.

As news of the Soviet Red Army’s crossing of the Oder River reached the guards in Stalag Luft I, Bach says the Germans began burning confidential documents and copies of Hitler’s autobiographical Mein Kampf. Guarding the Allied POWs took a back seat to the Germans’ self-preservation. Before the Russians arrived, the stalag guards had fled, leaving operation of the camp to the Americans and English.

Bach says the first Russians the POWs saw were guerillas, who wore all manner of uniforms and lived off the land. When regular Red Army troops came to the gates of Stalag Luft I, they were veterans who had fought for three years from Stalingrad across the Ukraine and Poland to Germany.

"We were liberated by the Russians on May 1st. We were evacuated on May 13th. The Russians wanted to take us back through the Soviet Union to Vladivostok. The Americans were just 70 miles away across the Oder, and we managed to contact the Americans to make them aware where we were.

"The Russians had different things in their mind. There were stories later on about how people that were evacuated through the Soviet Union never made it back. They were used as slave laborers to rebuild cities."

Through what was apparently skillful diplomacy on the part of senior Allied officers, Bach and his fellow airmen were finally allowed to go home.

"After we persuaded the Russians not to take us out through the Soviet Union, we persuaded them to allow the Americans to fly in to pick us up. They flew in B-17s. My squadron was ‘triangle-L’ and the plane they loaded me on was (marked) triangle-L, so I got shot down and picked up by my own squadron.

"In the process of readying the runway for our planes, they went over and searched for mines, and found some. They also found dungeons underneath the airstrip, and the dungeons, human beings-Jews, Communists and Poles-people the Nazis didn’t like. We knew they were around someplace. They wore striped uniforms and the ones I saw in there were more dead than alive. Most of them died when the Russians came through and gave them pieces of food before the doctor could stop them. They couldn’t handle the food and they died."

Leo Bach’s trek home started with his B-17 flight to Le Havre, followed by an unauthorized flight to London, where he was rounded up and shipped to New York. Bach says he’d expected to hear "Glad you’re home!" from the whole world, but that kind of reception only came from family and friends.

He says he was on his honeymoon with his bride Sylvia in August 1945, when he heard the war was over, and still had the urge to yell, "I’m home! Look at me, damn it!"

From 381st BG, 354th BS transcripts of the mission, April 11th, 1944:

Today’s squadron was to go to the Cottbus, Germany. Lt. Dorrington was leading the squadron which was composed of Lts. Freese, Lt. Myers, Lt Henry, Lt. Ackerman, Lt. Rayburn, Lt. Henry (duplicate apparently), Lt. Williams, Lt. Kuhl and Lt Hesse. Bombing results were reported as good to fair. Crews reported that the bomb pattern was pretty well strung out but that the MPI was hit as well as a number of other buildings. Enemy air opposition was stiff. Flak was heavy. Today’s raid cost the squadron the loss of a crew. A/C N 1497 from this squadron as seen to feather #2 engine in the vicinity of Hannover. Subsequently #3 started smoking badly and this was also feathered. Forced to drop back of formation at this point but was still in sight at target area. At 51 52’N – 13 00 eight chutes were reported to come out of this ship. When last seen the ship was still under control. Listed crew, now MIA:

(only a partial crew listed for some reason)

Hesse, R.W. 2nd Lt.

Gatewood, R. 2nd Lt.

Noga, T.F. 2nd Lt.

Bach, L.S. 2nd Lt.

Hollenbeck, B.A. Sgt.

Blanche, B.T. S/Sgt

Puryear, R.A. Sgt.

"I don’t remember a time when I did not want to fly."

Today, more than 70 years since Leon "Woodie Spears moved to a home near an airport, he remembers his roots and a dream which led him to fly and fight for a Fighter Group with one of the most distinguished records in Army Air Force history. Spears was a Tuskegee Airman who flew 51 combat missions in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations until he was shot down by flak and became a prisoner of war.

Born January 15, 1924 in Trinidad, Colorado, Woodie Spears was the son of a dry farmer. His family’s crops depended every year on "natural" irrigation, or specifically, rainfall, which Woodie says worked fine until the drought of the 1930s that led to the dustbowl in America’s Midwest. The drought was the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country. Huge dust storms spawned in the dustbowl carried away millions of tons of topsoil and turned rich farmland into desert.

"My first memory of anything at all was of coming off that ranch, and coming to Pueblo, Colorado so my dad could work in the steel mills. He’d been a farmer all his life and couldn’t read or write or anything. He came to Pueblo and went to work in that steel mill. For the first time in his life he had to work for somebody for wages. He couldn’t understand that, because as a farmer, everything you got was yours. I guess that started to lead to his demise."

The fact his father lacked formal education offered Woodie an opportunity his four-year older sister and two-year younger brother didn’t get.

"He subscribed to a daily newspaper. So he’d take a newspaper, lay it out on the dining room table, and he’d say, ‘That picture, and the writing underneath it. Is that about that picture? Read it to me.’

"He’d just sit there in the chair, close his eyes and rock back and forth while I’m reading. If you came up with a polysyllabic word while reading he’d ask you, ‘What does that mean?’

Woodie says he got a pretty good education himself looking up the words in a thick, dictionary he got when the school sold or gave away some older dictionaries.

Spears says the family lived in a racially -integrated neighborhood near the Pueblo municipal airport, and he remembers being able, as early as when he was six years old, to identify an airplane by the drone of its engine.

"I remember sitting at the breakfast table and I heard this droning and it was something I had never heard before. I jumped up from the table and ran outside and looked up and what was flying up there was a Boeing P-26A, called a Peashooter. It was the most beautiful plane I’d ever seen—partly fabric -covered, with a blue fuselage and yellow wings.

The plane circled, as if was going to land at the municipal airport, and young Woodie sprinted to the chain -link fence that surrounded the airport. He hung onto the fence watching as the plane taxied in, the pilot giving it a final burst of throttle before cutting the ignition switch to silence the radial engine.

"It was the most beautiful aroma of my life: the smell of burned fuel, the doped fabric, the burnished leather. I said ‘this is so fantastic.’

"I looked at the airplane… and back in that day, nine times out of ten, an Army pilot flew the same plane all the time. And he had his name on the side of the airplane and underneath his name was the most beautiful word I had ever heard in my life. Underneath his name was the word: pilot.

"I thought, right then and there, ‘my God. I don’t care what happens, that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve got to fly’ "

Flying wasn’t easy to do in the 1930’s. While gasoline cost about 16 cents a gallon, a flying lesson might cost $2.50. That was a considerable sum in the days of the lingering Great Depression, more likely to go towards buying a family corn meal, flour and sugar.

As Woodie leaned against the chain -link fence, a voice broke his trance. From further down the fence his father said, "Son?"

Woodie said his father, carrying a long elm tree switch as he approached, admonished him. "How many times have your mother and I told you to stay away from this airport. There’s nothing here for you. They’re not going to allow you to participate in anything out here. So 'git for home."

His father "tagging" with the switch all the way back home, Woodie says he had sense enough not to run because that would have resulted in a "world class whipping."

Despite his father’s and mother’s litanies against their son ever having an opportunity to fly in an airplane, young Spears says he never lost the urge to be airborne.

In 1941, that urge was answered.

The December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor led to an accelerated pilot training program and Army Air Corps recruiting interviews for aviation cadets in Pueblo. Leon Spears was among a high -spirited group of young men from the same neighborhood who showed up at the recruiting office to serve their country as pilots.

When the recruiting officer began handing out applications, he stopped at Woodie, telling him there were no Army Air Corps facilities for black people.

"I felt that was kind of strange, because I had been past a newspaper kiosk a few days before and I found a copy of Life magazine. On the front of that magazine it had a picture of the first graduates of a flying program at Tuskegee University.

"I thought this was so great and carried this magazine with me everywhere I went. I had it then, and when he said ‘this couldn’t be’, I pulled out the magazine and said, ‘what about this? This is your white folks magazine…"

The recruiting officer hadn’t heard anything about the Tuskegee University program, didn’t take an application from Woodie, but did say he’d look into the matter and get back to Spears.

Spears was skeptical at first, but discovered the man was true to his word when he invited Woodie back down to fill out his application. A few weeks then passed before word came back for Spears to get a physical and a mental examination in Pueblo.

The final word on Spears’ acceptance to a flight -training program proved ironic:

"After all this, I was the only one who made it. And you’d think that kids being what they are, or what they were, that there would be a certain amount of enviousness.

But there wasn’t. One of our group had made it and that was good enough for us."

Spears says the motion picture Tuskegee Airmen showed actor Lawrence Fishburn leaving for training with a mostly white group of well-wishers seeing him off at the train station. That’s the way Spears says it was for his departure to Tuskegee University in Alabama.

He recalls one of hi friends even suggesting Woodie keep a running account of his experiences to share with his neighborhood friends. Spears did.

The trip down south proved to be a series of experiences revolving around what were known as "Jim Crow" laws. He rode the train from Pueblo to Colorado Springs, then got on the Rockland Rocket to St. Louis, where he transferred to the L&N line.

"Once you get on the L&N you just keep going south. I got to Evansville, Indiana, where on the platform I saw four doors. I took them to be doors leading to restrooms. It was my first taste of any kind of segregation. The first door said White Ladies, the second said Colored Women. The next one said White Gentlemen and the last one, Colored Men.

Spears says a Pullman porter grabbed Woodie’s bags, telling him he’d be leading him to a "better place" on the rain—a car up front behind the coal tender, divided into sections for white people and black people.

"He told me, ‘you’ll learn why’."

At Tuskegee University, Spears began his ground school and flight training in a Piper Cub. His instructors were black, and as tough as any flight instructors of the time.

He relates a bit of the history preceding his days at Tuskegee, a visit by the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who said she’d like to have an airplane ride.

"She’s the First Lady of course, and she’s surrounded by the Secret Service, who tell her, ‘Mrs. Roosevelt, you have nothing to worry about. We’ll get you into the air.’ The head of the Secret Service found a white Lt. Col., brought him up and said, ’Mrs. Roosevelt, this man’s going to fly you around.’

Spears says the First Lady responded that she had something else in mind, as she pointed at Alfred C. "Chief" Anderson, a black instructor pilot, and said, "I want him to fly me."

The Secret Service man relented and Mrs. Roosevelt got her aerial tour of the Tuskegee, Alabama with Anderson at the controls of the plane. This led to the University receiving a loan for the lion’s share of costs to build an airport for pilot training.

When the military sought new airbases in 1941, Tuskegee was finally chosen as a site that would provide the least delay in starting a military training program for blacks.

Spears says his training continued at the Institute, then he was shipped out to the newly built Tuskegee Army Airbase. The difference was in the white officers who were brought in for training cadets in planes with higher-horsepower engines.

"Not only were they white, but they were indigenous to that area. When you took off in the airplane with them you were flying over their outhouse, or their pig farm. Not to take anything away from them.

"I used to watch them fly and said, boy if I ever get that good. I sure hope I’ll be that good… I couldn’t stand how they talked to you. They used the ‘n’ word just like you use bread and butter. I got to thinking maybe that was my name, ‘nigger’.

A captain in his 50s named Gabe Hawkins, an instrument instructor, proved a special challenge to aviation cadet Spears. Woodie says he and Hawkins climbed into an AT- 6 advanced trainer one morning, and took off, Woodie under the hood.

"There was an intercom in there and Gabe was screaming and hollering in there from the minute we took off. He said, ‘Who ever told you that you had the capability of even flying? Niggers don’t have that capability! I don’t see why you people even thought about this.’ He took the stick and swung it around, banging my knees and that sort of thing."

Spears says he finally got flustered and came out from under the instrument hood. Hawkins looked in his rear view mirror and saw the cadet, then said, "You know what. You are going to fly, because I’m going to beat flying into you!"

Woodie says he remained silent, momentarily imagining his dream of flying vanishing at the hands of an abusive white Army officer in the Deep South, who began flying the training aircraft to a remote auxiliary airfield (Shorter Field) nearby. Spears says he reflexively pulled his joystick from its mount (the stick could be removed from an AT -6 rear cockpit to facilitate the seat being turned for aerial target practice).

Meanwhile, Hawkins had brought the AT -6 down on the landing strip, and before the plane had stopped rolling repeated his threat, "C’mon nigger, c’mon, c’mon. I told you I’m going to beat flying into you, and that’s what’s going happen, here and now.

Spears figured if he tried to fight Hawkins, he’d probably be lynched at one of the trees by the airfield and even slight resistance might lead to a ‘world class’ beating. Either way, the dream of being a pilot was dissolving before his eyes.

In a daze, Woodie says he took the stick with him as he climbed from the plane and stood on the wing nose -to- nose with Hawkins, the stick in his right hand raised above the officer’s head. Tears had begun streaming down his face as he realized his dream of flying was vanishing.

Hovering over Hawkins head, Spears says he imagined a cartoon-like conversation balloon, which read, "You know what? I think this crazy’s nigger’s gonna’ kill me." There was a series of double takes as the two men remained squared off, then Hawkins’ hand came up and settled softly on Spears’ shoulder, as the instructor said, "Let’s get back in here and fly this airplane."

"I had two months to go before graduation and, needless to say, Gabe and I got along pretty famously from that point on.

Spears says that as badly as he despised that sort of thing, he recognized this was part of their upbringing. He couldn’t get mad at Gabe or the other instructors for what they did or said, and he continued to admire them for what they could do in an airplane.

Plans were for the silver wings of an Army Air Corps Flight Officer to be pinned on Leon Spears by his girlfriend, but she had not arrived by the time of the graduation ceremony. Instead Woodie asked Gabe to pin the wings. And, to fulfill an Air Force tradition of paying a fellow officer five dollars for his first salute, Spears shelled out the money to Gabe, thinking to himself, "Let me give this cracker five bucks."

In return, remembers Spears, Hawkins said, "I wish I could go over there with you. I’m too old. I’m a good pilot but they won’t take me into a combat situation. But, you know, you’re a damn good pilot, and I’m sending you."

Spears says Hawkins put his arms around him, and shuddered with emotion as he hugged the new officer.

Graduation from Tuskegee, June 24, 1944 (Class 44F), meant as many as five months training in the P -40 Warhawk. Unfortunately, the fighters made available to Woodie Spears and his fellow flying officers could be characterized as "hunks of junk".

"A bunch of us were sitting underneath the wing of one in the hot sun, one day, and there was oil dripping out of it onto the ground. The olive drab paint was peeling. I kept flicking it and more paint came off, until, guess what came out? A tiger’s tooth! I said, "Do you mean to tell me this is a plane that even the Flying Tigers don’t want?"

One memorable feature of the P -40, says Spears, was the wobble pump, located next to the joystick. If hydraulic pressure was too low to raise the landing gear, a pilot would begin working the wobble pump—but it took 90 pumps to get the job done.

There was one unit available for graduates of the Tuskegee program, the 332nd Fighter Group and its four squadrons, the 99th, 100th, 301st and 302nd. Given that narrow opportunity, pilots only made it overseas if they were replacements for pilots killed or wounded, captured, or returning home.

The 332nd, in combat, had moved up from flying P -39s to P -47s from bases in Sicily and Naples, then to P-51s from a more northern base at Ramitelli, Italy. For the most part, the 332nd’s job was to provide escort to B-17s and B-24s hitting targets in southeastern Europe and Germany. And in that role, the Tuskegee Airmen, in planes adorned with red- painted tails, truly distinguished themselves. And the group became known as the Red Tails.

Spears mostly flew P -51Cs, with "Donna" and "Kitten" painted on their noses.

"When we found B- 17s or B-24s, their noses were at a high attitude as they climbed for altitude. Now, climbing, a B-17 or -24 is only going to do about 120 miles an hour, because it’s so heavily loaded. So, in a P -51 you can’t really fly stable alongside it, and to keep your speed up you’re flying an ‘S’ over the top of them all the time."

Flying close escort for bombers in those days meant little chance of any freedom to hunt or even chase enemy fighters rising to challenge the bomber formations. But Spears says when he, James Mitchell and four other fellow Red Tails escorted a British Mosquito photoreconnaissance plane, opportunity knocked. The Mosquito, having finished its work, scooted ahead of the Red Tails, heading for home.

Shortly thereafter, over Rumania, Spears says the six P-51s came upon a damaged B-24 limping back after a mission. Two engines were smoking, one prop was feathered, and the bomber faced having to cross the Alps to get back to Italy. To make the 18,000 feet minimum altitude to cross the mountains on two remaining engines, the crew was throwing guns, gear and even parachutes overboard.

Spears says he flew up the starboard side of the B -24 and communicated with a waist gunner, offering him invitation to land at Ramitelli rather than flying all the way to the bomber’s base. Suddenly, the waist gunner started jumping up and down and began pointing to the port side of the bomber.

"We had been down lower than the bomber, pulled up even and started to fly over it when we saw a Heinkel -111, coming down to take him out. He had a bead on it. We came up and flew across the B- 24. I almost hit the Heinkel… I had to snatch the stick back… and in doing so I pulled the trigger and raked him a little bit.

"Now Mitchell was right in behind him and Mitchell let him have a good one. By that time I’m back to flying good again, and this next time, between the two of us, we hit him and you could see pieces flying off him and he started going down. You knew he was through."

The B-24 followed the Red Tails to land at Ramitelli, and when the Tuskegee pilots landed, they joined up with the B- 24 crew in the mess hall.

"All of them were just as happy as a lark. The captain was from North Carolina, and in his Carolina accent said, ‘If I don’t do anything else in my life, I’m going to make damn sure that you guys get a Distinguished Flying Cross for this. Because if you guys hadn’t come along, we’re gone…’

Spears recalled his 51st mission, March 24, 1945, when Red Tail P-51s rendezvoused with B-17s at Regensburg, turning for Berlin. He’d expected to see flak filling the sky. Instead he got his first look at German jets, swept- wing Me-262 fighters.

"There were several of them and they’d come down in the formations, but I think they were just harassing the bombers, making the formation feel uncomfortable. He could go way faster than you and didn’t want to stay still very long because he knew if he did we’d be on top of him.

"And that was also the first look I got at the Me -163, that day. It was a true rocket. You could tell it was because it was flying along and you’d see a burst of flame and white smoke, then there’d be a space and another burst. It was much faster than the Me-262 and much more unstable."

Spears says the fighters disappeared, and the sky ahead began turning black with antiaircraft fire. At 32,000 feet with intense flak, the P-51s were no help at all to the bombers they were escorting.

"I was leading a flight of four, and I started easing them off, ruddering over to one side. At that time I rolled my plane over to one side and there was Berlin. The first thing you see at that altitude was the airport, Tempelhoff. They used that after the war, in the Berlin Airlift.

"I thought, ‘this is great. Why can’t we do stuff like that in our country. It takes you, in many instances, longer to get to the airport from town than it does to fly to another city!’ I thought about that, forgetting I was a warrior in my plane and over enemy territory.

"I rolled my plane back over and steady and I saw this little teeny black speck. That little teeny black speck immediately turned out to be the beginning of a flak burst. And I knew I was in it because the first piece of shard hit my prop, bent it, turned it around."

Spears says the plane instantly began vibrating, and a second flak shard hit his P-51’s left wing root, knocking off the external fuel tank on that side. He suddenly found himself upside down and spinning, and to this day doesn’t really recall how he got the plane righted. Recovering, he gazed out at a huge hole in the left wing that exposed fuel hoses and the wing structure. Spears quickly dropped the external fuel tank on the right wing to better balance the plane’s weight, and then glanced at the P- 51’s instruments.

"I looked at the engine temperature gauge and it had already pegged out at the top. That meant the coolant was now gone. I then looked at my oil pressure gauge and it had pegged out at the bottom, which meant I had lost my oil, too. Without coolant and oil, you’re not long for the air.

"I was hit at 32,000 feet and when I got the plane straightened out, more or less, I was now at roughly 20,000. I could hear the engine was binding up, so I let it down so I could ease the throttle back. The engine was still turning, but you could feel the heat from it, because it was so hot."

Knowing he wouldn’t make it to Italy, Spears decided to head east, towards Russia, recognizing he first would have to cross the expanse of Poland. Then, deciding it might be better to bail out, he released the canopy and watched it sail away. While thinking through the steps of unbuckling his shoulder straps and seatbelt, bringing the airplane’s down to a near -stall and then rolling it over and falling out, Woodie remembered the words of his primary instructor, Jim Wright."

"He’d said, ‘Woodie, if you have problems with your airplane, but it’s flying at all, stay there.’ I thought, I’d already blown my canopy and gotten myself loosened up, all ready to drop out… okay, I’ll stay.

The P-51, with Spears watching its airspeed, glided closer to the ground, until the pilot found a relatively smooth space to belly it in. Unfortunately, the plane hit hard, bounced into the air, spun around and then fell back down. Spears says the momentum was so great that the rudder whipped to the right and broke through its stops. In the cockpit, Woodie had his feet braced on the rudder pedals, which swung and almost took off his foot.

Spears climbed out of the plane and saw a car coming toward him. He knew the moment he saw the car it was a 1937 Mercedes Benz 4 -door convertible.

"He had to be a millionaire," the downed pilot thought.

But the car held two Luftwaffe officers and some enlisted men, one of whom carried an MP-40 machine pistol leveled at Spears. The Germans gestured for Spears to drop the .45 cal pistol in his shoulder holster on the ground, which he did.

"They took me to Posen, Poland, where they had their headquarters, to a building which looked like it had at one time been a hotel. They put me on the second floor, in a room with a bed and all, with a guard with a burp gun by the door. And every time I turned around, the gun was sitting in the door and he was gone. So, I got up, took the gun over to the bed and started taking it apart. I just wanted to see what made it go.

"Finally, I heard the guy coming back, and though he was going to be pissed-off. He had a look of consternation when he first saw me, then came over and got on the bed with me and showed me how to do it—take it apart, put it back together…"

Spears calls his treatment "royal", he says, because the war was almost over and his German captors knew it. He believes they also were aware of the atrocities at the concentration camps and elsewhere, and wanted to make sure they did right by their prisoners.

"All of them had little nametags and they’d shove their nametags in my face. And I knew what that was. If there was a war crimes tribunal or anything being held there, and I was going to be part of it, at least I could say, "Oh, Hans? Good guy, or he treated me famously. He was good to me."

The Germans did perform solid medical work on Spears’ injured right foot:

"They bandaged it up real well, put it in a soft cast. And it was the first time I’d seen or heard of sulfa drugs. When I left the Germans, the Russians didn’t do a darn thing for it. The only way I got any relief was to peel off the bandages at night and let the foot lay out there a little bit.

"It got to the point where after awhile I couldn’t feel anything in my foot any more."

Spears says he spent four or five days in that building, waking up one morning to a thunderous racket and the building shaking as if it was ready to fall. The glass in the building’s windows had been long gone, and when Spears ran down a hall empty of any Germans he pulled aside the loose boards over a window so he could peek outside to the street. What he saw was a Soviet tank Spears instantly recognized from his training as a "Stalin". But he says he didn’t realize the JS-2 was that big.

"That thing was huge, with a great big gun out front that was so heavy that, the tank was rolling along and whenever it stopped, it looked like it would almost tip the tank over. Around the tank were quite a few soldiers and, from their uniforms, some officers.

Realizing the tank was stopping to fire shells that were collapsing buildings in single deafening roars, Spears decided he’d better get of the building he was in. He ripped the boards off the window in front of him, started yelling and stuck his back in the window. On the back of his leather A-2 flight jacket was an American flag.

Finally, he says a Soviet officer called out, "Amerikanski!" and ran up the stairs to throw a big hug around Woodie.

"Russians, you’ll find, are real huggy, kissy people. But that was the only good treatment the Russians gave me. The Germans, in their zeal to do whatever they were going to do, had taken away all of my I -D, my wallet and even my dogtags.

"Well, if you’re in Russia and you have no I -D, you’re persona non gratis. They don’t particularly care for you at all. Plus, there was the fact that I was an officer, and they had a little disdain for authority. This stemmed form the Bolshevik Revolution, because of the popular takeover by the people. So they frowned on any kind of authority and didn’t take to me at all.

"I finally learned a few words of Russian and some of them spoke a little English. I used to tell them, ’Hey, I’m not your enemy. Let’s get along here. "

Spears says he spent three months with the Russians. One of the worst experiences with them was eating in their mess hall, which he says led to "losing so much weight it wasn’t funny".

"Everything was fish, with the heads still on them. Their potatoes were horrible. The bread was black bread and the milk had started to turn into buttermilk, already. I wouldn’t eat, and they got to a point where they didn’t like me too well."

According to Spears, the Russians were trying to get him to a place where they could ship him out. At Lodz, Poland there was a German death camp.

"When they had me on a train I went past this death camp and there would be a big pile of clothing. Some of them still had a paper Star of David on them. Then there’d be a big pile of shoes, and then a big pile of teeth, with gold fillings.

Spears says at Lodz, the Russians were making German prisoners unearth bodies from mass graves, where they had been dumped, covered with lye and buried, sometimes before the people were dead. The Germans were then tasked with moving the decomposing corpses for reburial in singular graves.

Every town Spears says he traveled through held downed Allied airmen the Soviets were harboring, until they reached Odessa, on the Black Sea. There, a British officer told the repatriated airmen, now totaling about 1000 in number, they would be shipped home on a French luxury liner.

"He said, ‘There’s one two -man compartment, two four -man compartments and there’s one 2000 -man compartment. You’ll be placed on the ship according to your rank.’

"I’m a 2nd Lt, in a sea of Captains and Colonels. I figured what they’d do with me. Now, on the way over, we ran across two other Tuskegee Airmen, and we‘d formed a little three -man cadre there. I figured what they’d do with me was swing a hammock just out of the bilge water and that’s where I’ll be.

Spears says they’d spent nearly all day calling out names to assign the repatriated airmen to quarters on the ship, but had not called his name. Spears then realized his other Tuskegee Airmen had not been assigned either.

The three black airmen found the British officer, and Spears says he told them, "I thought you chaps would care to be to yourselves, so I gave you one of the four-man compartments."

Woodie says he looked skywards and gave a little prayer, "God, I want you to find that guy that invented segregation and pin a little medal to him. And, I want to thank you, God, for making me a colored man."

Spears disembarked from the boat in Italy, where he reported to the 35th Field Hospital. He was told he would lose his leg as a result of his damaged foot. Yet after some time to heal, Spears left the medical unit intact.

During the Korean War, Spears flew 17 combat missions. In his civilian career, he has served as a teacher, and for 35 -years with the US Postal Service, including executive positions.

About 25 years after the war’s end, Woodie Spears says he received a package in the mail, postmarked in St. Louis, Missouri. Inside were papers describing the mission when the Red Tail saved the damaged B -24—and a Distinguished Flying Cross awarding that service.

Woodie remains very active, speaking often at schools and civic organizations to "pay forward" the history and legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen -"Red Tails". 2007 has been a banner year for Woodie and his fellow compatriots; two highlights have been receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in the US Capitol Rotunda with President Bush present, then, in late September, the recent Gathering of Mustangs and Legends at Rickenbacker Field, Columbus, Ohio where he was an honored guest as one of the "legends".

By the end of May 1940, the German blitzkrieg in the West had tattered Great Britain’s plans to aid France and the Low Countries. The British Expeditionary Force retreated to the French coastal town of Dunkirk, where a motley, yet heroic, flotilla of ships and boats evacuated the great majority of the BEF troops.

While the Army recovered from the debacle on the continent, Britain’s Fleet Air Arm was recruiting young men to fly and fight in its carrier-based aircraft. Errol Mauchlan responded to that call.

"I graduated from high school in June 1940," says Errol Mauchlan. This was just a few weeks after the events of May 1940, which knocked France out of the war, knocked the Netherlands out of the war and knocked Belgium out of the war.

"I had done pre-Calculus, and this persuaded them that I was qualified to become an Observer."

Called up in December 1940, Mauchlan went through four months of basic naval training before beginning to learn the skills of the Observer (Navigator) because the Royal Navy was also trying to convert "landlubbers" into naval officers.

"We spent a lot of time visiting ships, playing around in boats, learning sea navigation and so forth. We spent a whole month at the Naval Signals School, learning all the flags that were displayed and doing intensive work sending and receiving Morse code, because the Fleet Air Arm only had wireless in its aircraft."

The training also included naval gunnery training information, which Mauchlan said he supposed was useful, but it was hard to see how what it really served.

Flying school started in Arbroath, Scotland, about 20 miles north of Dundee. Mauchlan recalls simulated torpedo and bombing attacks, mine-laying and long range reconnaissance over the North Sea.

"We were being trained on Fairey Swordfish aircraft. The Swordfish was a single engine biplane, with a fabric-covered body and three open cockpits, that normally flew at about 110 miles an hour."

Despite its slow speed and wood, cloth and wire construction, the Swordfish was the instrument of a host of distinguished operations in World War II.

In 1940, Swordfish from the carrier HMS Illustrious attacked the Italian Navy at Taranto, sinking three battleships, a cruiser and three destroyers. This effectively took the Italian navy out of the Axis war effort.

The Swordfish’s second major success was the crippling of the Bismarck, which led to the mighty German battleship’s pummeling by Royal Navy gunfire, and her sinking by a cruiser’s torpedoes.

And, in a less heralded but more significant series of actions during 1941, Swordfish of 830 Squadron in Malta sank about two million tons of Italian shipping bound for Rommel’s Africa Corps. These Swordfish crews slept by day in underground quarters on the rocky island, their aircraft parked in underground bunkers. By the dark of night 830 Squadron flew its torpedo sorties against Italian cargo convoys.

Mauchlan says the aerodynamics of the Swordfish enabled it to do its job well and keep its crews alive.

"You could get down to 30 feet above the water and feel perfectly stable and drop your torpedo and go on. It was extremely maneuverable. It could turn on its wingtip, get down on the water and dodge about, so that even the 350 mile-per-hour Messerschmitts couldn’t get at it."

Mauchlan’s key duty for his Swordfish crews was dead-reckoning navigation.

"At top speed the Swordfish could perhaps reach about 140, but couldn’t hold it for long. It’s obvious that if you’re flying at about 110 miles an hour, say at 5,000 feet, there’s always a wind at that level. And depending on what that wind is, will determine what you’re tracking across the ocean."

He also trained to check the height of waves before launching a torpedo, and to take a compass bearing on a smoke bomb dropped over the side, both by hanging outside the biplane’s cockpit. He says he was fortunate to perform his duties in the balmy air of the South Pacific rather than the frigid wind of the North Atlantic.

In 1941, Mauchlan earned his wings and was commissioned as a sub-Lieutenant. To complete the course, he was to be sent to Royal Naval College in Greenwich, for studies on the history, protocol and ceremonies of the Navy. The training was to include two weeks of dress dinners in the college’s Painted Hall.

Instead, Mauchlan got two weeks leave and then received a posting to Squadron 830 in Malta, with instructions to buy 1000 Portuguese escudos and to wear civilian clothes. Plans were to fly him from Plymouth, England to Lisbon, Portugal.

Arriving in Plymouth, Mauchlan and two members of his training group found the plans had changed. They were put onboard the 40-knot minelayer HMS Manxman, and told they were off to Cape Town, South Africa to join the carrier HMS Illustrious. They arrived in less than two weeks, only to discover Illustrious had come and gone.

"We were taken by the South African Air Force and flown to Mombasa, Kenya, with stops in Johannesburg, and Bullawayo, in what was then Rhodesia… We got to Mombasa and sure enough, there was the HMS Illustrious. That started what we came to call our ‘club run.’ "

The war in the southwestern Pacific had heated up while Mauchlan was en route. The Japanese Navy had sunk the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse off the Maldives. The British Eastern Fleet, having once been the protector of Malaya, lost its homeport of Singapore and retreated to Mombasa. Nearly overnight, HMS Illustrious had become the Eastern Fleet’s only capital ship, and had gained a new "routine" mission.

"Our job was to sweep the Indian Ocean to intercept and destroy any intruders that had emerged, and to keep the ocean free for the Eastern Fleet to return. We spent the next eight months doing what was called our "club run", from Mombasa to Colombo in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), back and forth, doing continual dawn and dusk reconnaissance patrols.

"There would be twelve aircraft flying different sectors around the ship, in effect sweeping a diameter around the ship of 300 miles, twice a day. Colombo is 2,200 nautical miles from Mombasa— that’s as the crow flies, but of course Illustrious wasn’t going as the crow flies.

"So each of our trips would take us about 2-3 weeks. The Illustrious had to be refueled at sea. We generally ran out of fresh food in about twelve days, so we lived the rest of the time on corned beef and hardtack. We had completed four back-and-forth sweeps when we sailed into Columbo on the first leg of our fifth trip to find that the Eastern Fleet had returned."

That ended the HMS Illustrious’s Indian Ocean campaign, and the carrier sailed back to Mombasa, where the Swordfish were flown to an airbase in Kenya for maintenance and Mauchlan suffered a stroke of bad luck.

He took part in a pick-up game of rugby, and no sooner had he returned to the carrier, than Mauchlan came down with a severe fever and delirium. Placed on a hospital ship, the fevered lieutenant could only watch as the Illustrious steamed out for a return to the United Kingdom.

It took a couple of weeks for Mauchlan’s fever to break and the delirium to cease, and then he was put aboard a train to recuperate another month at a hospital in Nairobi, and then a month’s sick leave in the village of Naivasha, north of Nairobi.

"It was on Lake Naivasha, where there was a flock of flamingos and a pretty large tribe of hippopotami. I spent a very pleasant time walking, reading and recovering from the fever."

Returning to Mombasa, Mauchlan was assigned to a small airfield at Tanga, Tangyanika, where four Fairey Albacores were based. The Albacore was larger and about 40 miles an hour faster than the Swordfish, and was considered a bit more comfortable with its metal fuselage and a canopy over the cockpit.

Mauchlan says he spent a few weeks "playing around with these Albacores, getting accustomed to them" before flying them north to Alexandria, Egypt. From there, a merchant ship carried Mauchlan to the U.K., where he had two weeks of leave.

During those two weeks, Mauchlan got orders to report to the RAF Bomber Command’s 78 Squadron. It was August of 1943, and 78 Squadron was to perform mine-laying duties in German–held harbors, in preparation for the planned Allied invasion of Europe in the coming summer.

"Over the next year we made sixteen raids, dropping all the various harbors along the North Sea coast of Germany and down into the Atlantic. We went to places like Kiel, Stettin, Heligoland, Lorient, St. Nazaire and Brest. And I suppose we must have done it successfully. My job was to supervise the mine loads and make sure everybody knew what the targets were."

The aircraft for these missions was the Handley-Page Halifax, a four-engine heavy bomber with on-board "Gee" and "H2S" radar.

"Gee picked up beams from stations in Britain, which meant that by twiddling a few knobs you could determine your precise location at any point. H2S gave you a complete picture of the ground vertically under the aircraft, and it was H2S that was used to deliver the mines, because each bomber was given a target that was a certain bearing and distance from some landmark in the harbor. "

Mauchlan says the operation was in some ways "not very satisfactory" for him, because the mining raids only came up about once every three weeks. The raids also created a morale problem, in that 78 Squadron was still doing regular night bombing over Germany.

"The guys generally viewed the mining-laying operations as a ‘soft option’, because we came in from the sea, were maybe over the target for 2-3 minutes at most, then we were off again, back out to sea. Whereas, if you were doing a bombing raid on Germany—say Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Berlin or the Ruhr—you were trudging over Germany for three or four hours. Of course, every antiaircraft battery that you passed shot at you and there were also night fighters attacking. They all looked at the mine operations as ‘soft options’ and wanted to do it.

78 Squadron was truly representative of the British Commonwealth, with members from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and even four American crews. These were young men who joined the Royal Air Force before the United States had come into the conflict. After Pearl Harbor, the Americans in 78 Squadron were ‘repatriated’ and wore U.S. Eighth Army Air Force uniforms.

The first of two missions to Kiel proved to be the most exciting for Mauchlan and his crew, as their Halifax was hit by shrapnel from flak.

"The flak was pretty hot in Kiel. It’s a long flight you know, well up the German coast. They were ready for us, though I don’t know why. We weren’t in the target zone long enough for a fighter to do anything to us."

Mauchlan recalls that after D-Day took place, minelaying operations ended. He was appointed as a Senior Observer on the newly-formed 837 Squadron, destined to join a light Fleet carrier in construction in Belfast, Northern Ireland and would be headed for the Pacific.

"Then, with its typical eccentricity, the naval bureaucracy sent us to the Royal Naval Air Station Fern in the Doorknock Firth, 25 miles north of Inverness in Scotland. Of course we were snowed-in all winter, which was a remarkable preparation for the Pacific. We completed our work-up there and were supposed to join the HMS Glory in February 1945. In fact we didn’t join it until May 1945, after the European war was over.

The HMS Glory carried the newer Fairey Barracuda, a single engine monoplane with shoulder-type wings and a large airbrake. The aircraft was a disappointment to Mauchlan.

"The Barracuda, I believe was one of the worst aircraft produced in the war. Whoever designed it, and I suspect it was a committee, wanted it to be not only a torpedo bomber but also a dive-bomber. And it did neither of these things well. Moreover, it was underpowered, and this meant that carrying a torpedo, it was very unstable."

Mauchlan notes that Barracudas did succeed in dive-bombing the German battleship Tirpitz. But he says he personally never felt very comfortable in that type of aircraft.

Due to delays in construction, Mauchlan says it was June before the HMS Glory set out on its shakedown cruise to the Pacific. The first stop was Columbo, Sri Lanka, where the aircrews had a two-week jungle survival course. The crew learned which jungle plants were poisonous and which were edible, and how to find potable water.

Mauchlan says they also had the benefit of a uniform design that could aid in navigating through the jungle. The pants were without a zipper:

"We had button-up flys. Two of the buttons on our flies— one had a large spike on the back. The other was magnetized and had a tiny white spot on the edge, and if you put the magnetized button on top of the button with the spike on it, it showed you magnetic north."

HMS Glory arrived for duty in the Pacific two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. After the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945. Glory, being the newest, cleanest carrier in the Royal Fleet, was named, on behalf of Australia, to take the Japanese Southeast Army’s surrender at Rabaul, New Guinea.

After the ceremony, the carrier went to Sydney, Australia, where aircraft and aircrews were put ashore, and the carrier was converted to a hospital ship to repatriate British and Australian prisoners of war in Singapore and Hong Kong. That meant lots of shore leave for Mauchlan and his squadron mates.

"We spent the next four months just living the life of Riley in Sydney, until we were eventually repatriated to the U.K in February of 1946. I was demobilized in April of 1946."

Errol Mauchlan returned to academia by reapplying to Edinburgh University, graduating four years later with an honor’s degree in English language and literature. After six years of work for the British government, Mauchlan came to the United States and worked as a budget assistant for then Chancellor Glenn Seaborg to start a long, distinguished career at U-C Berkeley.

 Leonard Komor was born December 25, 1917 in Shanghai, China, the son of a Hungarian consul living in the Western sector of that river city. Leonard says his father had mastered six languages, and ran a business that exported pig bristles and hides to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Komor began his talk at the May Golden Gate Wing meeting with a brief history of the “opening up of China” to foreign trade, a process the Chinese resisted with three 18th-century wars, ending in the concession to foreigners of a sleepy little fishing village on the Huangpu River. A portion of the little village was set aside as a foreign sector, occupied by merchants, their consulates and the infrastructure for trade. The sleepy fishing village would become the huge city now known as Shanghai, the center of commerce for all of China.

Aiming to be an engineer, Leonard went to a high school in the German sector of Shanghai, which allowed him, on a student visa, to attend the University of California, Berkeley.  In 3-1/2 years, he graduated with his bachelor’s degree in electrical and mechanical engineering.

Returning to Shanghai in 1940, Komor became a machine gunner in the Shanghai Volunteers Corps. The Japanese had invaded Manchuria in 1931, and by 1937 had begun trying to conquer the rest of China. While the Japanese sector of Shanghai became a base for Japanese military units fighting in Central China, Komor took turns doing guard duty on the other side of barbed wire.

In 1940, Komor was contracted to do engineering work for an American company that had bought the Shanghai Power Company, located in the Japanese sector. Every day he rode a bus across Soochow Creek separating the Japanese from the rest of the foreign sector.

But by late November 1941, six months into his new job, Leonard decided he wanted to quit the company. Concerned that the Japanese would escalate their war aims and he would be stranded on the wrong side of the fence in Shanghai, Komor planned to go to the United States, obtain a regular visa and return to Shanghai to work at the power plant on a permanent basis.

Because American ships were banned from China’s coast due to a trade embargo against Japan, Komor boarded a Dutch ship for the Philippines. At Manila, Komor got aboard the President Coolidge, a luxury liner loaded with women and children fleeing from the impending Pacific War. Leaving Manila Harbor, the President Coolidge grounded on an uncharted sandbank, bending a blade on one of her propellers.

Komor says he heard first there would be a delay for repairs, but after a U.S. Navy captain met with the liner’s captain, it was announced the ship would sail “right away.”

“When we came to the exit from Manila Bay, the U.S. Navy opened the submarine nets between Correigidor and Bataan to let us out. And out there, waiting for us, was the USS Houston, which would be destroyed 11 days later by the Japanese at the Battle of Sunda Strait.”

Komor says the first morning out he thought it strange the ship convoy was heading south rather than east. On the top deck was a galvanized steel cage holding two Panda bears, on its way from Madame Chiang Kai-shek to the Washington Zoo, a gift from China to the American people.

He also noticed some crewmembers painting the ship superstructure white.

“After five or six days, coming up to the deck to see the bears being fed bamboo shoots, here was the crew painting the superstructure grey... I wonder what happened. The date was December the 8th. It was December the 7th in Pearl Harbor.

“The captain came on the horn and said the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. They didn’t know where the Japanese fleet was. We were on a course from Manila to Pearl Harbor. He changed course in order to avoid where the Japanese fleet may be. After two or three days it was clarified (where the Japanese Navy was) and we came into Pearl Harbor five days after the attack. You can imagine what we saw. It was incredible, absolutely incredible… the destruction.”

Recognizing the threat to his parents inherent in the expanding war, and hoping to personally help them by the war’s end, Komor decided to become a pilot. He enlisted first as an airplane mechanic, graduated top man in his class from mechanic school, and was made a U.S. citizen in Wichita Falls, Texas. With those two hurdles overcome, Komor applied for pilot training, was immediately granted his request and progressed through basic flight training in California.

Advanced training, flying the UC-78, was at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It was there that Komor survived a night-landing incident with stuck main landing gear in one of the twin-engine planes. Komor was told to find the toolbox on board, which he did, only to find it missing the tools he needed. While his co-pilot kept circling, burning off fuel, Komor found a metal plate on the wooden wing spar and pried it off with a fire axe. He disconnected the electric drive system from the landing gear, and then manually cranked down the landing gear.

“When the operation was over at about 2:00 a.m., we came in for a landing and the airplane was not hardly damaged at all. We just got the wingtip and one of the props because we ground-looped it.”

Komor had asked to fly the Hump, and upon graduation he was assigned to the 14th Service Group. Arriving at his new base in Florida, Komor noticed the two gate guards were Chinese-Americans. He quickly discovered the whole base was filled with men of Chinese heritage. As a graduate engineer who spoke Chinese and German, Komor had been placed in the middle of a training camp tasked with turning the men, within a five-month time span, into aircraft mechanics for the China/Burma/India (CBI) Theater of Operations. The program had been conceived by Chiang Kai-shek, presented to and approved by President Roosevelt.

“Some of them were Chinese-American and could speak English. Some of them were Chinese who had come from China, and didn’t speak hardly any English. And we were going to make airplane mechanics out of them?

“I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I started writing letters… and after the third letter I got my wish and was transferred to India.”

Even with his limited flying experience, Komor began flying “the Hump.”  The Hump was the name for the 500 miles of Himalayan mountain peaks, obstacles made all the more treacherous to passage by aircraft due blinding snow, thunderstorms, severe updrafts and downdrafts.

“I was in seventh heaven, was doing what I wanted to do, and loved everything about it except for the weather. It was atrocious, absolutely atrocious.  I was not an experienced pilot yet. I had a couple of hundred hours, but nothing had taught me how to fight a 50,000 foot thunderstorm.”

“We lost 12,000 pilots and airmen on the Hump in the four years of its operation. So you can imagine what kind of weather we had, because there was very little shooting going on.

“I had never flown in conditions as bad as this. The thunderstorms over the Himalayas were at 50-60 thousand feet. Gen. Harding had stated months before I got there, and there was a sign in our operations center that stated, ‘There’s a war on. Therefore there is no such thing as weather.’  So when the time came, you went.”

Komor recalled a mission one night in which his plane had barely broken ground when there was an explosion:

“Several airplanes had disappeared over the Hump and never been found. Intelligence had told us Japanese sappers had been climbing across the Naga Hills, across the hills where we were in Burma, and placing explosives and destroying airplanes. They set them off once they were up in the air. I didn’t know how they did that, but that way they’d assure the airplane was not going to be flying again.”

“I had barely pulled the wheels up when there was this tremendous explosion in the back end of the airplane. And I immediately remembered the warning to Mita ‘good inspection of the airplane’, which I thought we had made. I declared an emergency and the tower said to come on in. And while I was declaring the emergency, I felt the controls to see if they were still there, and they were still there.

“The minute we had landed and put the airplane on the ground I knew what the problem was.

 We had blown out the tail wheel tire when it was retracted into the tail end of the airplane. And in blowing it out, because the doors were shut, it reverberated through the airplane.  I thought then that it had taken some of my years of life out of me, but it’s not true because I’m still around and almost 90.

The Air Force of the 1940s had three distinct Commands: Fighter, Bomber and Air Transport. Komor says fighter pilots thought they were special, and jokingly attached an alternative meaning to the initials of Air Transport Command (ATC), calling its pilots “allergic to combat.”

Komor says he endured this indignity until one day, during the monsoon season, when he was flying 44 fighter pilots of the 14th Air Force from Kunming back to Chadwar, India. The pilots had put in their time and were coming home on rotation. About three-quarters of the way to the station where the pilots were to disembark, the cockpit door flew open. The captain in charge of the fighter pilots came storming into the cockpit and told Komor the #2 engine was on fire.

“That got my attention and I asked the co-pilot to look out the window. He did and said there was a big cloud of smoke out there. I looked at the oil gauge for that engine and the oil pressure was going down rapidly, and it was not a fire, but was oil from the engine.

Komor feathered the engine and trimmed the airplane for single-engine flight. The captain returned to the back end of the plane, where everyone was silent, sat down and said nothing more himself, while the pilot-in-charge wrestled the airplane down and made a GCA landing.

“It was the worst, positively the worst trip I ever made, and we made lots of lousy ones on the Hump, believe me.  The airplane rolled to a stop and I was wet with sweat from wrestling the airplane, being nervous and what have you. We sat on the runway because I could not taxi, because it was one engine. If I’d poured the coals to it, it would have probably gone off the runway, as it was not very wide.”

Komor says the door opened again and the captain said, ‘Lieutenant, you did one helluva job. I want to thank you very much. It was a great landing and you sure handled this airplane very well. I want you to have this.’

The captain handed Komor a Zippo lighter. Komor didn’t smoke, but he has always kept it as a reminder of why flying “is for the birds. It’s tough.”

On one mission to Chengtou, Komor was transporting forty 55-gallon drums of gasoline tied down to the cargo deck of a C-46. Suddenly his co-pilot noticed an airplane was following them. The Japanese were only 200 miles away at Michina, Burma.

“We had no fighter escort. That’s why I figured if I was allergic to combat, to hell with that. I wasn’t afraid of anybody. I had nothing to fight with. So why would I be allergic to combat?”

Komor moved the tail of the C-46, and he saw a twin-engine aircraft following his plane. As that plane drew closer he recognized the unmistakable silhouette of a B-25.  As the medium bomber pulled up alongside Komor’s plane, someone stuck a camera out of a window and took a picture of the C-46.

“At the time, I wondered, what’s going on here. Of course a B-25 is much faster than a C-46 filled with forty drums of gasoline onboard. Then, he disappeared and I thought I’d never find out what it was all about.”

Twenty-five years later, when Komor was an electrical engineer for GTE Sylvania, a sales manager for the company had a picture of a C-46 hanging on the wall of his Massachusetts home. Closer examination showed the plane carried the identification number “596”, the number of the C-46 Komor had been flying the day the B-25 came alongside. He found out the GTE sales manager had been in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China during World War II, and had a duty to reward the natives in Burma and China with bags of salt for aircrew. The salt would be distributed to villages passing the aircrew along to safety, with more bags awarded if the crewmen were alive.

“I asked him if I could have a copy of the photo…25 years after the photo was taken. And that’s quite a coincidence.”

In August 1945, while flying over Agra, India, Komor heard on the radio that “a device” had been dropped on Hiroshima and that the war would soon be over. When he landed after that mission, Komor requested a transfer to any operation flying to Shanghai, so that he could find his parents. His request was granted.

Flying to Tasgaon, India, Komor was amazed to see about 100 C-54 cargo planes. With the pending Japanese surrender, the Air Transport Command was to deliver the Nationalist Chinese 8th Division to Shanghai before Chinese Communist troops arrived there.  Komor says Colonel Andrew Cannon personally told him to load “training equipment” (in actuality, a pallet of food, “procured” from the commissary) aboard one of the C-54s, which Leonard could deliver to his family.

Assigned to fly as second pilot on the mission, Komor soon saw how the 14th Air Force had smashed Japanese planes, hangars and facilities at the airport in Shanghai. He also had a front row seat to witness the Japanese surrender at the airbase. Komor had been left on board the C-54 to do paperwork, and had a perfect vantage point:

“Here’s this long table with the Japanese on one side and our officers on the other side. The Japanese commander ceremoniously handed his sword to our colonel in the symbolic surrender. But I had no camera. I could have been a wealthy man had I taken that picture.”

Colonel Cannon then gave Komor the opportunity he’d been hoping for, to check on his parents. He was able to commandeer two Japanese Army cars—a 1940 Cadillac and a 1939 LaSalle, both converted to crude charcoal-burning vehicles—to carry himself and the pallet of food.

Leonard rode as passenger in the Cadillac. With the Imperial Chrysanthemum on the Cadillac’s hood and the Japanese officer he was riding with, the cars were able to navigate streets through still-armed Japanese soldiers.

Nearing the YMCA by his parents’ home, Komor recognized a white man sitting on the curb. It was Jim Walsh, a former employee of a company that made ice cream and milk for Shanghai’s foreign citizens.

“I got out in the street near his feet and said, ’Hi, Jim. This is Leonard.’ “

Komor says Walsh looked at him, yelled “Hi, Leonard” back, then sprang to the middle of the street where the two men embraced.

“We were surrounded by a thousand Chinamen, who had never seen an American soldier. We had to spend about 45 minutes disentangling ourselves so I could get on to my Father and Mother’s house.

“The house was just like when I’d left it in 1937, and then again in ‘41. My father was on the second floor of the house… and was looking out the window. He later told me he saw these two Japanese military cars drive up. He had been arrested at the beginning at the war by the Japanese and beaten mercilessly. For six months he was in very poor health and never did fully recover from this.

“I got out of the car and started walking the driveway from the road to the house. I got halfway up there, took my hat off and looked up there and said, ‘Hello, Dad.’  He disappeared from the window. My mother was sitting on the couch in the living room with this friend of hers, and she said my father came storming downstairs and said to her, ‘Our son is here!’

“She thought he’d lost it, excused herself and ran after him, right behind him down the three steps to the driveway. We embraced on the driveway… and a lot of tears were spent, believe me.”

Komor says the family’s long-time Chinese servants joined in the homecoming “cry-fest”.

“That’s how I got home, how it worked to get past all the hurdles to get there. I can never thank these senior officers enough for their understanding and goodness. And, don’t tell me you can never bend the rules in the Army and the Air Force.  You can do it if you have the right people who have the right reason and see the right cause.”

After a month in Shanghai, “working” for Colonel Cannon’s group, orders came to return home. They flew as far as Karachi, India, where they were told to empty the airplanes.  The C-54s were being turned over to the Chinese government. Men and gear were hauled to a desert camp about 30 miles away, a camp Komor describes as “a hell hole”.

After two months, the crews were transported to the coast and the Grace liner Santa Rosa for the ocean cruise to New York Harbor. Then came a ride in railroad cattle cars across the United States to home.

“My wife and her parents awaited me at the station, in Berkeley. And now, I was really home.”

 Today, Leonard Komor says he used to be a ‘rabid pilot’, but decided he wanted to get older. So he quit flying after having put in some 15,000 hours of time flying for the military, Pan Am Airways and privately.

“When they went on his last flight (to Alaska, in 1935 with journalist Will Rogers) I told my dad he’ll never come back. It really upset my father. And sure enough, they didn’t.”

With the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ralph joined the Army, and in the course of one year’s training, progressed from recruit to PFC to 1st Sergeant.

“I went to where you volunteer and went right into the paratroops. I didn’t want to go into anything else. It took us 3-4 days to get to Camp Blanding, Florida. The regiment was there with all its officers. They’re turning over all the time. I made corporal and then buck sergeant in the first month. The reason was, it was a new regiment. Just before I want to jump school I made 1st Sgt. I’m very proud of that because I loved that regiment.”

When they went to Normandy, Thomas remembers all the planes flying out over Land’s End and across the ocean. There was a submarine out there with a light on the top of a pole, which you couldn’t see from down low. And when his C-47 got to that submarine it turned left and flew between Jersey and Guernsey Islands.

“The flak came up and it didn’t overlap and we just flew right on and climbed up above the cliffs at Normandy. About five minutes in, the red light came on and my ’stick’ came out. It was a perfect landing.

“I landed in a pasture and was trying to get out of my chute when I heard something coming toward me. I rolled over, got out my knife and got all ready… and it was a cow. She walked right up and licked me in the face.”

All of his “stick” of 18 men jumped without incident, but Thomas says they did have a challenge in finding the rest of their unit.

“From there I took my stick and we started making our way - - we didn’t know it was St. Mere Eglise - - we just could see this fire. All along the way other men would join and I’d put them in at the back of the line. By happenstance, we walked right in to division headquarters.”

There, a Lt. Col met him and asked what regiment he was from and how many he brought with him. Thomas replied he had about twenty soldiers, due to the troops picked up along the way.

The officer counted and came back to tell Thomas, ”You’ve got 43 men, and the last three men are Majors. I asked them what they were doing back there, are they told me, ’He’s doing a good enough job. So, we thought we’d just leave him alone and let him… everybody’s quite happy.”

Thomas was told his regimental commander was down by a river, and was “so mad because not a one of the men with him had a gun. They all had typewriters.”

In disbelief, Thomas took his stick of troops down to the commander, where he recalls that he “almost kissed me. He said, ’If we ever do this again, they’re going to take rifles.”

Thomas said a Colonel sent for him to take a house occupied by about eight German troops. Two lieutenants were there, but they had rifles. Thomas was carrying a Thompson .45 cal submachine gun.

“I went into the basement and fired through the floor. I went back two or three times to get more ammunition. The last time the Colonel said to wait a minute. They threw a dead German out the door.

“They came out the front door, and were all in shock. They all wanted to touch me, they wanted to pat my face. I almost cried.

“The Colonel said, ‘Are you going to shoot ‘em?’ and I replied, ’No.’

“So he asked, ‘what can we do with them?’

Thomas pointed out a calf barn they could be put into, with a paratrooper to watch over them. Many of the men were badly wounded, although they could still walk to the shelter. Before long, Thomas says, German artillery rounds started raining down.

“I never knew what happened to those men. I’m sure several of them died from their wounds.”

Soon German troops counterattacked across a nearby causeway, but Thomas says the assault was halted by Allied artillery back on the beachhead.

Thomas says the lull after the failed German counterattack gave time for units to better sort themselves out and he began leading a platoon from his headquarters company in more directed battles across Normandy.

One of those was the clearing of a village, and became the first of a few incidents giving Thomas a reputation for sensing things about to happen.

“We were all strung out under a lot of trees, like a hedgerow and something said to me ‘move’. They (my men) didn’t want to move and I had to kick them to move them back. Then the German artillery came in and… it would have killed everybody.”

After that, “men from other companies wanted to come and join me. They thought I had this special instinct.”

Thomas says his company had jumped into Normandy with 128 men. Many were killed the first day, and by the end the first month only about 20 men were left. Thomas says it was at that time when commanding Officer of the 82nd Airborne Division in Normandy, Maj. General James Gavin came up and spoke to him.

“He met me twice in the field and always put his head on my shoulder. And this day he said, ‘you know paratroopers don’t give up land. You’ve got to go back and take that hill.’

Thomas said he’d do that, but he asked Gavin for a tank destroyer to help defeat an enemy bunker.  Gavin told the aide to send in Thomas’ request and in a few minutes a tank destroyer rolled in.

“The Germans, or what we thought were Germans, had built dugouts of logs and dirt, with slits in them. I told this captain to aim right at those and he did. When we got up there he’d taken the top of all these guys’ heads off.

“They weren’t Germans, they were Mongolians and they had been in the Russian front and the Germans had captured them.”

  Thomas believed the Germans threatened to shoot the Mongolians if they refused to fight for the Third Reich on the Western Front.

One of the starkest experiences in Normandy involved discovering a German battalion of about 500 men that had been wiped out. Thomas recalled the unit had been motorized with light halftrack/motorcycles called Kettenkraftrads. He says a Captain named Barry Albright had called in an artillery barrage with airburst charges, which decimated the German troops.

“As we walked down this road, having already seen a lot of death, it really shook my men up. About halfway through it, a rifle went off. One of my men had shot one of these Germans because he was quivering. You never know how a person’s going to react, particularly a young man, when he’s seen that much death.

Shortly thereafter, Thomas’s unit got a weekend’s relief from the stress of constant fighting and the deprivations of living in the front lines.

He says he sent three men back to the beachhead to board one of the larger landing craft. When they returned, Thomas recalls they came to him in tears, saying, “Those Navy sons-of-bitches. They’ve got ice cream and sheets and they can take a bath every day. We haven’t had a bath for a month.”

When the remains of the 508th came back to Southampton after the Normandy Invasion, Thomas recalls the older British men and women turned out to welcome them, waving small American flags and Union Jacks. They asked where the rest of the men were, and Thomas replied that they were seeing all the men who had survived.

Rest and regrouping came at Nottingham, where some men who were ambulatory rejoined the unit.  Thomas remembered talking with trooper Trino Maldonado, who would stand on one leg and shift back and forth, giving his fellow paratroopers a challenge in getting him to stand at attention when before an officer.

Maldonado, says Thomas, told him that he’d been late returning from leave in England because he’d gotten married. Thomas explained that the paratrooper had a heartwarming excuse for his tardiness:

“He said, ‘I got married for my father. He’s an old man who has small children because my mother died. So I married this woman and you can send her my allotment, because she is happy, and so is he.‘

Market Garden

There was sunshine on September 17, 1944, as the 82nd Airborne prepared to parachute into the Netherlands. Its mission was to secure bridges across rivers so the Allied army could advance rapidly to the north and skirt German defenses known as the Siegfried Line. If the plan worked as designed, the war in Europe was to have ended by Christmas 1944.

By parachute and glider, 34,600 men of the 101st, 82nd, 1st Airborne Divisions and the Polish Brigade descended as far as 150 km behind enemy lines. An aerial convoy of more than 1,700 transport planes and converted RAF bombers towed gliders and dropped paratroopers, vehicles, guns, ammunition and supplies over several days.

On September 17th, Ralph Thomas says his plane was stopped just as it began rolling out to take off, and a major and a captain came up to him.

“The Captain looked like my granddad to me. And this Major said, ‘Thomas you’re still jumpmaster and in charge of this airplane. But when you get on the ground, this Captain is your new company commander. ‘ “

The Captain sat next to Thomas and they took off for a short flight in beautiful weather with unlimited visibility, perfect conditions for an airdrop. As their C-47 crossed the Dutch coast, Thomas says the captain commented to him, “I didn’t know it hailed in the sunshine.”

“That isn’t hail. That’s flak,” replied Thomas.

  The 82nd Airborne was dropped with high accuracy and its troops quickly took two bridges. The Division’s other tasks were to seize the Groesbeek Heights, block any German armor attack from the nearby Reichswald and deny the hills to enemy artillery observers.

The 508th Regiment, targeted northeast of the Dutch town of Groesbeek, was to take the 600-yard-long Nijmegen highway bridge if possible, but because of miscommunication did not start until late in the day on the17th. Had they attacked earlier, they would have faced a handful of Germans, instead of being stopped by arriving troops of an SS Recon Battalion.  Nijmegen Bridge remained in German hands.

Overnight, German forces counterattacked, threatening a designated landing zone for artillery and reinforcements. Though outnumbered, the 508th reclaimed the ground, and B-24s were able to make their drops, of which 80% was recovered.

After one of the nighttime German attacks, Thomas says his Captain lost his nerve and panicked:

“He ran through the company headquarters, shouting, ‘Everybody run!’ Nobody ran but him, and I chased him but I couldn’t catch him. You’ve seen pictures of a body with legs out in front of the body, and that’s what I could see. He outran me and he was a lot older than I was.”

Thomas and the captain ran right into the battalion commander, whose men ultimately stopped the captain and relieved him of his command. A similar fate befell the 508th’s executive officer as the unit was preparing for another battle near Nijmegen:

 “We were on a road going to a jump-off place for a battle and I had the point. This exec officer, a Lt. Col, was talking to me but wasn’t making sense.  We came to a ‘T’ and we turned left while he turned right off into a briar patch.  I halted the whole column and got two or three men and we got him out. And he’s still just mumbling. By then a jeep had driven up with staff officers.”

When Thomas told the newly arrived officers what had happened, they told Thomas to clear the soldiers away while the mumbling officer was set down on the ground, propped against the jeep’s tire. Thomas later learned the Lt. Col’s was demoted to a lieutenant, but that he’d joined up with a rifle regiment and returned to combat.

As Market Garden continued, the paratroopers were re-supplied by glider trains—C-47s towing gliders—escorted by P-51s, P-38s and Spitfires, to prevent Luftwaffe fighters from shooting down the transports. One of the glider trains provided the paratroopers a dramatic show, when a line of Me-109s abreast appeared.

“We got out of our foxholes and stood up and it took about five minutes for the Americans and British to knock every one these guys down. One of my men told me he was going to go over to where he saw this guy dive in. It was just like someone had sawed off his wing.

“My man came back with a glove, and he said, ‘I took the hand out.’ He wanted a souvenir.”

A few days later, British troops arrived to relieve the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen, and the sound of some hobnailed boots (the British Army in Europe wore hobnailed boots, as did the Germans) led to a strained meeting for Thomas:

  “I’m going down this gravel road, more like a cow path, and I hear this person. I don’t know if he’s a German or what. So I stepped over into the bushes and when he got right with me where I could see him I said, ‘Well, hi! Welcome.’

  Thomas says a British major, carrying a riding crop and walking like he was on parade, jumped sideways when he heard the voice from the roadside. As anger spread across the major’s face, he asked why Thomas was there in place of a higher-ranking officer. Thomas told him, “We didn’t know who you were.”

Odd Moments

Market Garden provided Ralph Thomas a few more moments of memorable entertainment. One was an odd revelation involving a German artillery barrage, where a good number of shells failed to explode when they hit the ground.

British sappers were called in to dig some of the large shells out of the ground and blow them up.

“Each one of the shells had rags in it and a note from Czechoslovakians, who were slave laborers. The notes said, ‘This is our part of the war.’ ”

There was also an incident involving fellow paratrooper Trino Maldonado.

Thomas said the soldier came to him at battalion headquarters one day, very nervous about a peculiar problem he was having.

  “He had dug a foxhole, four feet by eight, with steps into it, and covered the door with a tarp. He said, ‘I’m having problems. When I come in at night to go to sleep, and I smoke my last cigarette, all these eyes come out.’”

  Thomas and Maldonado entered the foxhole and pulled the tarp over the entryway to see what happened in the darkness.

  “He lit a cigarette, and I knew what was wrong. When you dig a hole in Holland, and every time your shovel hits, these little frogs come out. When you puff on a cigarette their eyes light up. And they were all over this place!”

  Thomas says one other oddity of his tour in Holland came when his unit went to a public bath. When the soldiers got undressed for the baths, “a little lady handed us a towel and while everybody tried to cover up, she said, ‘Oh don’t bother about me, just go on’ in pretty good English.” When entering the pool area, the soldiers looked up to see a plate glass window covering the whole end of an adjacent building.

  “There were secretaries just typing away and laughing at us… So when you’re in combat and suffering, you also have some fun times, too.”

   After it was relieved, the 508th marched westward into Belgium, and then was transported in British lorries to near the French border. Sitting on the tailgate of a lorry was where Thomas faced his biggest challenge of the war.

  British lorries were high and narrow, compared with their American counterparts, and they tip easily. Thomas says he thinks the driver of the lorry he was riding in had fallen asleep at the wheel and driven off the road.

“We hit a land mine, which blew the truck up. And the truck came down on top of me. The battalion surgeon crawled under and said, ‘Ralph, we don’t know how to get the truck off of you. There’s a tank retriever behind us, but the operator feels if he tried to move the truck, he’d just grind you into the ground.’

Thomas was still conscious and he says he felt okay, though he wasn’t aware his left foot had been broken and was up around his hip.  He told the driver to use the winch hook on the lorry bumper to ease it up a little bit and he could be pulled free.

“They did, and the moment I was free I went unconscious. The doctor tagged me ‘Dead or dying’ and they put me in an ambulance. I ran around a couple of days in it before they put me in the morgue, where it was cold.

“These two young men in a burial detail would pick me up and they said I would groan. They put me against a wall and it was that way for a week, until they said, ‘Let’s take this son-of-a-bitch to the hospital. There was an American hospital just two blocks down the road.”

Thomas said he was there for a week until he came to:

  “It was as if I just floated out of the ground, out of this deep, deep, dark hole.”

  A nurse, who Thomas recalls smelled of gardenia perfume, came right down near his face to ask what unit he was with and where his dog tags were. She also told him she wouldn’t let him see himself. Apparently, the blood had squished up through Thomas’ body and his face and hands had become one huge, dark bruise.

“I looked up and there was a chaplain standing at the end of my bed, and he was from my hometown. And I recognized him and said ‘Ed, what are you doing here?’”

“His knees buckled and he said, ‘We've been here thinking you were going to die!’ “

Thomas passed out again, awoke several days later, and then “got well”. He says he was taken to Paris where two-dozen doctors examined him. Amazed to find him alive given what he’d been through, they offered these reasons:

“You are young, you are in superb condition, it was terribly cold, and you must have one helluva strong desire to live.”

After he came back to the States, Thomas was sent to Palm Springs, California for surgical work on his leg and head. When he could get around again, he was transferred to occupational therapy. Walking into the therapy unit office, he noticed a

young woman sitting behind the desk.

As Thomas tells it, “Something said to me ‘That’s going to be your wife.”

Five days later, Ralph was engaged to her, and three months after that, in October of 1945, they were married. They’ve have now been married for 62 years.

The average American knows little about the colossal World War II struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union, and hears even less of the “German side” of the war. The Golden Gate Wing this past February, had a rare opportunity to hear one of its members speak on those very topics. Eberhard Woerz was a German soldier, a member of the Luftwaffe. He is now, by choice, a citizen of America, and his loyalties have been here for more than 50 years.

Born September 7, 1922 in Ulm, Germany, along the Danube River, Eberhard Woerz grew up in South Africa, where his father and mother lived and worked.  Eberhard developed a knowledge and sense for logistics watching his father round up cotton gins and coordinate trucks and fuel to take the annual cotton crop to market.

When World War II started in Europe, he remembers watching Germany’s tanks race outward in conquest, and wondering how they could be supplied by columns of horse-drawn wagons.

In September of 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, declaring war three days after Panzers and troops poured across the border. When Hitler refused to withdraw from Poland, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany.

“The German population had been on what I call a high-tension wire since 1937, due to things that were going on internationally. War had been expected in 1938 after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.”

 Woerz says the German population in general was very concerned, wondering why the war was necessary and how Germany could hope to come out ahead when it ended.

“After the First World War, the Allies blockaded Germany so no food or raw materials could come in, and Germany had a very limited base of resources. Germany stood against the British Empire, the French and their sympathetic partners: the United States and other countries. Germany essentially had Italy and if you want to draw it out, Japan, as its allies. It was not easily understood how this constellation would prevail against the huge superiority on the other side.”

“On the other hand, the feeling in Germany was that it was almost impossible to live with the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles.”

That final settlement of World War I placed Germany with the blame for starting the war, as well as a huge material and financial debt to pay.

“That’s essentially how Hitler got the people to support his policies. You have been told the other side of the story, so it sounds strange to you.

“The Germans also lost their overseas possessions, their colonies, their commercial enterprises, their commercial fleet – all was confiscated.  The German patents, what I call the treasury of the German nation, were taken and not allowed in any paying for what, later on, would be called reparations.”

Other parts of the settlement included a ban on building warplanes, and an initial ban (which later became negotiated limitations) on the number and size of warships. The overall settlement itself was not negotiated: Germany’s refusal to sign would lead to occupation by the Allied Powers.

In the years between the World Wars, Germany went bankrupt, its unemployment was over seven million people and there were bread lines.  In 1919 when the Allies upheld a blockade, about one half million people starved to death and about 800,000 women had miscarriages. 

“When the French Prime Minister said in the Versailles meeting with his compatriots, ‘There are 20-million too many Germans in the world,’ you become very sensitive that you are on the list to be starved, to be killed, to be somehow eliminated.”

“When a man like Hitler comes and promises you he will end that, when he promises that he will get you back to work, and he says ‘Give me four years and I will show you’. And in four years, we had German full employment.

“With France bankrupt, unemployed, and being taken over by communists, England with unemployment but holding onto its Empire, barely: what do you think the sympathy of the Germans should be? What do you think the average German thought, who didn’t know of all the things on the side that were going on?” 

 Woerz points to negotiations in1935 in which the British agreed to allow Hitler to build a naval fleet one-third the size of Britain’s, and the lack of any reaction when German troops marched into the Rhineland in 1935, as examples of the Allied unwillingness to enforce a failing Versailles Treaty.

On the issue of fleet size, Woerz says Germany’s Kreigsmarine was limited to building ships with a displacement of 10,000 tons, essentially the size of a light cruiser of the day.

“German inventiveness developed the concept of welding the plates of the ship instead riveting them...  By doing this they were able to build a ship that was 10,000 tons, but in reality was 17,000 tons.”

 The Army and Luftwaffe also subverted the system, Woerz says. The latter military force, in 1927, leased 60 square miles of Russian territory, using the space to train pilots and design airplanes.  By 1935, he says, the Luftwaffe had 160 pilots and 80 observers.

Numbers

By the mid-1930s, Germany’s remilitarizing reached Eberhard, literally.

“I was standing in the street in front of one of the garrisons in my hometown of Ulm, when mobilization took place. This is when all of the troops were called to the colors and all of their help was submitted.  The German commercial enterprise could report 250,000 privately owned passenger cars. Most of those that were in reasonable condition were ‘drafted’. They were painted in either Luftwaffe blue or Army grey or Navy dark blue.”  

 Woerz says the checkerboard of makes and models of passenger cars proved a logistical nightmare when it came to service and parts. Additionally, farmers came forward with horses to supply the cavalry and pull artillery and supply wagons.

“Some of them came in with tears in their eyes as they turned in their horses. Some of them brought in wagons they had to turn in. As a statistical observation, today’s reports show about 82 percent of the German army was horse drawn.”

“The British had no horses. The French had a few cavalry brigades. The Poles had cavalry brigades and the Russians had cavalry brigades in addition to their motorized units.”

Germany launched its Blitzkrieg attack on Poland with three panzer (tank) divisions and four motorized infantry divisions, all far from being ‘modern’ in terms of today’s motorized military units.

“When you say ‘motorized’,” notes Woerz, ”you probably think of what you see today - - modern armored personnel carriers. But these were trucks, where the soldiers rode on top. This was okay in the Western campaign, but in Russia where there were no roads, most of these soldiers were infantry (and marched). The trucks were used to bring in supplies.”

 Woerz cites numbers of aircraft and armored vehicles to argue the relative material preparedness of France and Great Britain to battle Germany’s early thrust:

“When you consider that statistically speaking, in 1939, the French claimed 84 Army divisions, 3,400 airplanes, and 5,400 tanks.  You can say of those 5,400 tanks, 3,000 were WWI survivors, but they all had either 4 centimeter or 4.5 centimeter guns.

“Of the 3,122 German tanks, 1,600 had 20mm cannons and a .30 cal machine gun. Another 800 had two .30 cal machine guns, 200 had a 7.5cm short-barreled cannon and another 320 had a 3.7cm gun.”

 Woerz says the bulk of the Wehrmacht’s tanks were no match for either French or British tanks, which carried larger guns and heavier armor. The “saviors” for the Panzer divisions, he says, were the German 8.8cm antiaircraft gun - - accurate, hard-hitting and mobile - - and the dive-bombing capabilities of the Ju-87 Stuka. The tactics of blitzkrieg called for close coordination of anti-tank weapons and air support to remove tough targets like tanks.

 Woerz reminded the audience that before the Polish were overwhelmed, they put up a fight that took a toll on armor, aircraft, and munitions.

“When the campaign in Poland was over, Germany had essentially used up all of its ammunition supplies. If the West had attacked, the Germans would have had to fight back with cement bombs.  Because, besides the 25 kilogram and 50 kilogram bombs, the 200 and 250 kilogram bombs, they were down to what was called 30% of the required quantities.”

The supply issue, according to Woerz, was a challenge not only of manufacturing war materiel at a brisk pace. There was also a German ‘war resistance’, particularly a group of high-ranking Army officers who believed the war was not winnable, and tried to ‘let Hitler lose’, by slowing the manufacture of weapons and delivery of weapons and manpower.

Western Campaign

In May 1940, French military strength was about twice that of Germany’s. As Panzer divisions prepared to roll into Holland, Belgium and France, French troops and armor and a British Expeditionary Force established a line north of France in Belgium. The Allies expected their right flank to be protected by fortifications of the Maginot Line.

The Germans attacked Holland, Belgium and France, but also drove through the Ardennes, through the Maginot and defenses at Sedan, and behind the bulk of French and British forces. In short, when that occurred, the British panicked and the French slid towards collapse. Rather than counter-attack south with its 300 tanks, the B.E.F. instead fought its way West, to pull out from the beaches at Dunkirk.

 Woerz says French Gen. Charles De Gaulle, a French tank warfare expert and a rival to German General Heinz Guderian could have had more than 500 tanks at his disposal and stopped the German Army, but never got an opportunity.

“If he had been given the necessary support by the French and British air forces, I think the whole thing would have been over in 1940. But the German air force was in charge of the sky. They had demolished the French air force and diminished the British and Belgian and Dutch air forces, and had bombed the hell out of (France’s) tanks.

After two weeks of the Battle of France, the British Expeditionary Force held open a corridor to the coast, to escape across the Channel. Between May 27th and June 4th, about 700 ships brought 338,000 troops, of whom 140,000 were members of the French Army, back to Britain.

Historians have pondered why Hitler ordered his army to stop advancing for two days instead of racing to Dunkirk and foiling Britain’s withdrawal.  Some suggest Goering requested the Luftwaffe be allowed to destroy the British Expeditionary Force from the air. Woerz believes the Fuhrer stopped his Panzers to prevent them from overstretching their supply lines.

The Battle of Britain

After France fell, the planned invasion of Great Britain in 1940 became an objective primarily for the Luftwaffe. Of the about 2,300 Luftwaffe aircraft available, Woerz says only about 1,700 could be put in the air for a “maximum effort”.

“The Messerchmitt 109 fighter was designed to fly 55 minutes. If you fly from France over England, it takes you from most bases between 25 and 35 minutes. How do you get home, if it takes 35 minutes to get there, if you have 55 minutes worth of fuel?

So all the airplanes were moved to the most forward fields where supply had to be arranged.”

 Woerz says that once the bombing campaign started, both combat and operational attrition diminished the numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft sent to bomb England or to protect the bombers.

“That meant half of the airplanes that went there were greeted by a very determined British air force. And at that time, the British had developed a radar system by which they could gauge where the Germans were coming form and going to and allow them to concentrate their fighters into the area where they were needed.”

The Royal Air Force was thus able to bring large numbers of Hurricanes and Spitfires to directly intercept the mostly-unprotected bombers. And Woerz says they consistently downed the unescorted, short-range bombers:

“The Germans had two-engine bombers that were designed to defend Germany.

They could go about 700 kilometers into enemy territory, and German fighters could go about 250 kilometers, function in their capacity and make it home with the fuel that was available.”

“You could make a concession like the air force did later on in Norway.  You could put in more fuel and less bombs, but it doesn’t make much sense if you only fly with 1000 kilograms of bombs. The German bombers were carrying two tons maximum, the Ju-88s, three tons.”

By contrast U.S. Army Air Force B-17s carried nine tons of bombs; B-24s, ten tons; and both aircraft could stay in the air more than six hours.

 Woerz explained Junkers and Dornier had been developing a strategic, four-engine bomber since the late 1930s. But Hermann Goering nearly curtailed that development, explaining that he could much more impress Hitler with the production of 700 twin-engine bombers instead of half as many four-engine bombers.

And Woerz notes that a strategic four-engine bomber fleet would have allowed Germany to disrupt the Soviet Union’s industry behind the Ural mountains, which was producing about five times as many tanks and artillery pieces as German industry.

Ostfront

In June1941, Hitler turned Germany’s military to an invasion of the Soviet Union. Before that happened, though, Hitler bailed out Mussolini’s flailing forces in Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania, and in North Africa.

“When I passed through the Suez Canal, I saw the British fleet in Alexandria and positions in Aden and said to myself ‘they are everywhere.’ My idea was that instead of giving Rommel two divisions, he should have been given six or seven, or ten divisions. And he should have cut through the Suez Canal and Palestine to Tehran, getting the British oil supply and the Russian oil supply.”

Instead of initiating the planned May 25 attack of Russia, the date was pushed forward to June 22nd, a delay Woerz says Germany’s military paid for.

“One month late was one month lost and we didn’t take Moscow and we didn’t take Leningrad. And from then on out it was a matter of exhaustion.”

In general, Americans have little concept of the scope of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Eastern Front.  Between June ’41 and June of the next year, the Soviet Union lost about three million soldiers, against German losses of 270,000. In the following year, losses for the Soviets and Germans were four million and 800,000, respectively.

“It was a matter of mathematics that even the Russians would eventually run out of people.”

The Air War

 Woerz has run numbers to analyze many factors affecting the Luftwaffe.

 By 1943, when the United States began fighting in Europe, Woerz argues the Luftwaffe was short of state-of-the-art aircraft. Focke-Wulf was starting mass manufacture of the Fw-190, but the fighter mainstay was the Bf 109, upgraded with a larger engine and guns. And neither aircraft held a technology edge over their Allied counterparts. The personnel side of the scale had also tipped against the Luftwaffe.

“We become painfully aware that this thing was becoming a rat-race. The pilots got less and less training because there was less fuel and less replacement airplanes.

Where in peacetime a German pilot had about 150 hours in basic training and then 300 hours in fighters or bombers, by 1944, this was down to 120 hours.” 

 Woerz says by contrast, many American pilots had 300-500 hours of training before flying their first combat missions.

In 1939 Eberhard joined the Luftwaffe. He was required to serve in communications and was trained in the highly secret Enigma encryption system.  Woerz served in communications at an airfield near Brest, France.

Transferred to flight training at AB School # 23 in Central Germany, he flew gliders and aircraft types including the Bucker 181, Me-108 and Arado-96 before flying the Me-109. In late 1943 Woerz received his pilot wings, was rated a fighter pilot, and was sent to fighter and observer training for highly specialized tactical reconnaissance work.

 Photo recon had become particularly important on the Eastern Front. Providing the basis for maps of the vast Russian terrain, photo missions required a discipline of flying exacting routes at specific altitudes. And, photos often were critical to convincing field commanders, whose ground patrols had not accurately assessed enemy positions or strength.

 Woerz says that by the time he began flying operationally, the Luftwaffe

had lost much of its elite status. The service had been “ground-up” over the many years it had been at war. Lack of fuel, ammunition and parts and unmet maintenance needs took a regular toll, but two major events had overtaxed the already-strained air force – the Battle of Britain and relief for the German Army at Stalingrad.

In spite of these challenges, the Luftwaffe in the West continued to try to inflict damage on Allied bombers appearing regularly by day and night. In the East, Woerz and his fellow reconnaissance pilots flew to deliver the latest whereabouts of the Soviet Army, as it pushed Germany’s troops back towards their homeland.

Eyes for the Wehrmacht

By 1945, the Americans had advanced to the Hartz Mountains - - Patton aimed for Berlin - - and the British were coming around the northern coast, with Montgomery aiming for Hamburg. Woerz was tasked with flying tactical reconnaissance to determine where Berlin’s defenses still stood.

“It happened to be my luck that the High Command needed to know where the Americans were. As I was doing this, an Army Colonel said, ‘When he comes back, maybe he can tell us where the Russians are. That’s how desperate the situation was.’

The Soviet Army had surrounded Berlin and was pressing west toward the Elbe, while the Americans were in Saxonia, headed east toward the Elbe.

“In order to be sure I would get that information, I was going to get 35 fighter escorts. It was morally supportive. I took off and my wingman said his engine was overheating. I said go home.”

 Woerz troubles were just starting though. He got a radio message that the fighter unit warming up to escort him had just been attacked and had no planes to send. He had already decided to fly low to avoid Allied radar, come in low behind the 3,500 foot Hartz mountains, to sneak around the other side and pull up to 10,000 meters to fly back and run the cameras.

“Up I went to 12,000 meters. And there were hundreds of moving vehicles. From that altitude I couldn’t see what they were, tanks or trucks or jeeps. They were moving just like ants on the floor. The cameras were running.

“I looked around and looked around and there was still open air. I was halfway back and was about over Halberstadt when I looked back and said, ‘Oh my God, the American Air Force is going to attack Berlin.’ I didn’t take it personal, but there were so many of them I said I better not get mixed up with those guys.”

 Woerz says he decided to drop to the deck, just above the grass, and hopping the hedges, to get back to base with his film.

“Then there were seven dots coming at me very appreciably. They were maybe 600 meters high, passed me and I thought they didn’t see me. But somebody looking backwards and down must have seen me, so they made a big turn, and I was pushing to get going.

“They were coming four on top and three under. It was a cat and mouse game. I didn’t think I was going to get away, but I was going to give it a try. I am a stubborn Swabian.”

The enemy fighters were P-51s.

What was going through  Woerz’s mind? Survival was key, as was completing the mission to bring the film back.  Woerz said he also had his fighter pilot’s ego to satisfy, and that meant he had to win the contest.

The nap-of-the-earth chase led to a high-tension power line.

“The lowest spot between the towers was about thirty meters from the ground, and maybe another 15 meters higher nearer the towers. So you go closer to the tower and then go over it.”

Whether the hazardous flight path, fuel gauges leaning toward empty or some other reason led to the decision,  Woerz said the Allied fighters chose not to follow him under the lines. After he flew past a few towers, the P-51s stopped giving chase.

“When I landed and got out of the airplane, the mechanic asked if I’d gotten out of the shower. The water was running out of my overalls. I was absolutely at the end of my energy level.”

Personally taking the camera into the staff room,  Woerz pointed out on maps the vanguard of the American forces, and was told he should personally deliver them to the Luftwaffe High Command in Berlin. Taking the next train,  Woerz appeared with developed photos at the debriefing.

“In comes one of those gold-braid guys, a general. And he says, ‘I hear you are the pilot who flew this morning. You know, we looked at the radar, and we said, that poor sucker. There were 316 of theirs and one of ours. How did you do it?”

“I said, ‘Sir, don’t ask me. I’m here.’ ”

Early Days with the Mighty Eighth

Bob Cozens remembers living the good life in October 1941. He was enrolled at San Diego State College and playing football there. He had a brand new, gorgeous girlfriend named Patricia Ann (Patsy Ann) Hamrick.
The only dark cloud he was carrying was a draft card, a ticket he knew would eventually be punched to propel him into the US Army as a foot soldier.
In recognition of that, Bob contacted the Army Air Corps cadet recruitment office, where his cousin was working.
“I was still playing football and enjoying it. The last game I played was against a team coached by a gentleman named Amos Alonzo Stagg. Some of you of that era may remember what a great individual he was and what he contributed to the game of football.”
As Cozens recalls, San Diego State beat College of Pacific that day, 6-0.
Only a little more than a month later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Cozens was immediately in touch with his cousin, asking where in the process his application was. With no definitive answer, Cozens applied again, and this time got swift word to report for duty January 2, 1942 at Fort Rosecrans, California.
From there he was off to Minter Field, Bakersfield, where he got a tardy draft notice to report for infantry duty. By the end of the month, Cozens had been transferred to King City for Primary flight school in Stearman biplanes. He recalls soloing without incident and, on another flight, getting a Stearman into spins, from which the plane repeatedly righted itself.
Two months later saw Cozens flying the BT-13 in Basic flight training at Moffett Field. One day, his instructor asked him one day to put the trainer into a spin to the right.
“I pulled it up into a stall, kicked the right rudder and she was really tight. He said to pull it out, and I did, into a stall, and that bugger whipped into the tightest spin to the left, and I was in a state of shock.
“And I don’t know, honestly, I don’t know… If I didn’t have an instructor with me that I day I might not be here speaking to you. Wow, that was a really tough one!”
The risks of training were made painfully clear on Cozens’ first night solo landing. A classmate made a fairly perfect landing, except he dropped onto the runway from 50 to 75 feet above it.
“There were three of us up there, waiting until they cleared the wreckage off of the runway, waiting to see if any of us were capable of doing any better.”
Cozens recalls yet another challenge of training at Moffett was the presence of lighter-than-air craft (Navy anti-submarine blimps). Pilots of fixed wing aircraft had to steer clear of the airfield until the blimps were tied up after landing, a process that could be quite time-consuming. Cozens also jokingly commented about the Navy taking over the housekeeping chores at Moffett.
“We got up for breakfast and there were Navy beans on the plate. I was glad I was in the Army Air Corps.”
Chico was Cozens’ next stop, simply to ferry BT-13s on the way to Advanced Flight Training at Stockton Army Air Base. That’s where Cozens met, by alphabetical assignment, Harry Conley, Dick Cordell and himself. The three men lived together, daily flying AT-6 trainers up and down the San Joaquin Valley.
On July 26, 1942, the three men became 2nd Lieutenants and received their pilot’s wings. The closeness of their relationship was measured by the fact that Conley and Cordell joined Bob and Patsy Ann on their honeymoon.
“The fact that Harry had the car dictated part of this.”
Soon, though, the group would become smaller by a couple.
“The four of us headed off to Salt Lake City, and in typical Army sequence, we went to Salt Lake City so they could assign us to Spokane, Washington. Why we couldn’t go directly from Stockton to Spokane, I don’t know. We did lose Dick Cordell along the way. He got assigned somewhere else.”
At Spokane’s Geiger Field, Cozens says the pilots were restricted to base 24 hours a day for six days a week. Meanwhile, the wives stayed together in local hotels. On the weekly day off, the pilot who was off duty and his wife had use of the hotel bedroom.

Training’s next phase put Cozens and Conley in B-24s. But after about a month, those bombers were replaced by B-17s. Remarkably, there had been no transition from the single-engine AT-6 to the four-engine B-24s, and then B-17s.
Next came the formation of the 95th Bomb Group, with Bob and Harry appointed flight leaders in the 334 Bomb Squadron. Before the pilots and their wives could really settle down in Spokane though, came a move to Ephrata, Washington. It was a move which had Cozens stumped.
“We were assigned to the desert of the state of Washington. What were there were an airstrip and some tarpaper shacks. I don't know why we moved there from Spokane, and then back.”
Cozens still has delight in telling the story of Harry Conley’s pratfall when leaving for the desert airfield from Geiger Field.
“We were going through the gate to the flight line with our B-4 bags with us. We were saluting the sentry as we went through and the walkway was a little icy. Just as Harry started to salute, his feet went out from under him.  He slipped on his butt, holding his bag, and on his back he went through, saluting the sentry.”

In September of 1942, Bob suffered the loss of his older brother, who was caught by a thunderstorm and went down on an advanced training flight out of Roswell, New Mexico.
“I tried my darnedest to get from Spokane to San Diego in time for the services for my brother. We drove to Seattle and I got on a United flight, heading hopefully to southern California. It made a stop in Portland and I got bumped because I didn’t have the highest priority or whatever it took at that time to do this.
“I walked across the field, found an Army flight that was heading to Sacramento.  From Sacramento I took a bus to San Francisco, and got on a United flight that took me to Burbank. Somehow I got from Burbank to the train station, and was getting off the train in Oceanside, north of San Diego when the services were being held in San Diego. So I missed the services of my older brother.”

By December the Bomb Group had moved by train to Rapid City, South Dakota. Patsy Ann took the car, over icy roads, back to the motel in Spokane. She sold the car before she and the dog took the train to San Diego, since the 95th’s commander had suggested it best not to bring wives along to the remote base at Rapid City.
Training that winter in Rapid City, at the edge of the Black Hills, proved a challenge.  The 334th Squadron was sent to Pueblo, Colorado where there were better weather conditions. Yet when on its first day there, a crew was lost to a snowstorm, the 334th returned to Rapid City.
A two-week furlough in February of 1943 brought a trip to California, but for Cozens and Conley, coming back to home base was a nightmare. When Conley said he’d secured two seats on an Airlift Transport Command flight, Cozens got a $200 refund on civilian flight tickets. A blizzard delayed the ATC flight by two days, and the two aviators were bumped from a flight that had gotten them to Sacramento. From that point on, Cozens’ and Conley’s way east was both a fight against weather delays, and a creativity lesson in finding ways to Rapid City.
“We used everything but ox-cart, I think. By the time we got to Rapid City, the air echelon had already moved to Kearney, Nebraska. The ground troops were still there.”
Cozens says the CO reluctantly sent an aircraft to bring the two fliers back to Kearney, and then severely reprimanded and fined the two men $200.
Even though the B-17s of the 95th Bomb Group had never flown all together in formation, they were sent off to the war zone. Cozens says the first stop was Gulfport, Mississippi, where the first B-17 nicknamed “Patsy Ann” had problems and was left behind for another B-17 which Cozens named “Patsy Ann II.” That B-17 flew the 14-day southern route to England, via West Palm Beach, Waller Field (Trinidad), Brazil, Senegal and Morocco.
Cozens remembers it was April 17, 1943 when he landed in England. That same day in San Diego, Patsy Ann gave birth to their first child.
The 95th’s first overseas airbase was shared with the 92nd BG at Alconbury. The 95th’s first combat mission was on May 13th. Cozens says that due to mechanical problems, he ended-up having to abort the next five missions.
While at Alconbury, an accident by another B-17’s ground crew showed all members of the 95th the unforgiving risks of handling a bomber’s payload.
“They were loading bombs for a mission, and the thing that couldn’t happen, did happen. The whole bomb load exploded in the process - ten 500-pound bombs exploded, killing nineteen of our men and wounding twenty. It destroyed the aircraft they were loading and aircraft parked nearby. I don’t know that they ever figured out how this happened, because the bombs had the pins in and weren’t armed. It was rather devastating.”
The 95th then flew a few missions from Framlingham, including the infamous June 13th trip to bomb submarine yards at Kiel, Germany.
Mission planners had combined targets at Kiel and Bremen, in hopes of dividing enemy fighter forces. The 95th led the groups, followed by the 94th BG and a composite group.
Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest III was the 95th’s new commanding officer. He decided the B-17s alter their formation from the traditional bomber box of three aircraft, with trailing boxes above the leader, instead flying a formation with trailing aircraft flying lower than the lead bomber. Forrest rode as an observer in the lead B-17. 
The 76 aircraft on the Kiel mission encountered as many as 200 enemy fighters, and the Luftwaffe downed 20 of that formation’s B-17s. Of the other 152 aircraft sent to bomb Bremen a half hour behind the first group, only four bombers were lost. It was clear the scheduling scheme had worked, but success came at heavy expense to the crews in the first group targeting Kiel.
“On the bomb run,” Cozens recalls, “the 95th was under heavy frontal attack from German fighters, generally coming in threes from above. In the box formation we used before, my three aircraft could clear their guns on the attacking aircraft.”
“In Forrest’s formation, my three aircraft were tucked under the lead aircraft so effectively, we cut our firepower by 50-percent. The lead aircraft got hit pretty bad, but was able to drop its bombs. Another frontal attack and that aircraft slowed down. I moved into the lead position, but I will have to say that the whole group was in disarray, so to speak, at that time.”
The B-17 carrying Forrest was seen going down with a flaming engine. Forrest was the first US general to become a combat casualty in Europe.
“By the time we got some semblance of togetherness, we missed the turn after crossing the target area, and the wing behind the 95th got ahead on the way home. Cozens says the group flew too close to the coast on its return home and was in a weak defensive formation, which the Luftwaffe exploited in a second attack.
The B-17s had hit the target at about 26,000 feet, where the air temperature was about 50-60 degrees below zero. Cozens says that after the bomb run he was in the nose of “Patsy Ann II”, trying to get warm, when the enemy fighters returned.
“What caused the Plexiglas above the pilot’s compartment to shatter, I don’t know, but that didn’t help the climate in the cockpit.”
Cozens climbed back onto the frigid flight deck to re-take control as the Luftwaffe struck again.
Eleven of the 95th’s 26 aircraft didn’t get back. Among the missing B-17s that evening was Harry Conley’s, which Conley nursed back on a single engine to crash land on the English coast. Remarkably, even though Conley’s bomber suffered a broken back and was riddled with bullet holes, neither Conley nor any of his crew was injured beyond a few scratches.
The 95th BG relocated to a new base at Horham after the Kiel mission. On August 17, 1943 the target was Regensburg, with Cozens leading the Group.
“We got to the target and bombs were placed on the target, extremely well. We turned and headed south over the Alps, across the Mediterranean and landed in North Africa, so we didn’t have to fight our way back home. 
That eleven-hour mission provided an extra challenge when Cozens, preparing to land at the North African airbase, realized his B-17 had no brakes.
“I went though my pre-landing check and let the other aircraft land first. The landing strip across the desert was pretty lengthy. We had a bit of a quartering wind from one or two o’clock.
“We got on the ground and kept jazzing the number three and number four engines to keep it straight until the tail got on the ground.  And when on the ground and the tail wheel was locked, we had a pretty straight run.”
Cozens says he decided to ground loop the bomber rather than let it run out across the desert. He unlocked the tail wheel and jazzed the number one and two engines to turn around. They did a 180-degree turn and when the dust cleared, they were looking back down the runway. Only after that did Cozens notice railroad tracks further off the end of the runway, which might have torn off the B-17’s landing gear, had it fully rolled-out to a stop.
The stay in Africa also proved memorable for the food the crew ate - - real eggs instead of powdered eggs, and watermelon.
Cozens' crew had to refuel their B-17 by hand pumping from 55-gallon drums. Yet after a few drums, they discovered the fuel was contaminated with water, which meant emptying the B-17 and starting all over.
On the return trip to England, the 95th bombed a small target in southern France, which counted as one of the 25 missions required to complete a tour.

Soon thereafter, Cozens become commander of the 335th Squadron, leaving behind “Patsy Ann III” and the crew he’d been with since training in the States. One of the most embarrassing times Cozens faced while with the 95th group, came base after he and Harry Conley flew a B-17 to London for business. All of England was under blackout regulations and was pitch black on their return night flight, and although they both knew there were many B-17 bases dotting the countryside, the two men didn’t know exactly where the 95th was.
Cozens says, “We had to give the distress call, ‘Two squadron commanders lost, who can’t find their base.’”

On October 10th, 1943 the 95th Bomb Group’s mission was Munster.  The B-17 “Patsy Ann III” was lost, although Cozens and his former crewmembers were not aboard, having been split up earlier. However, as many as four of those airmen were shot down in other bombers on that raid and were taken prisoner.
Four days later, the first Schweinfurt mission, offered the heaviest flak Cozens believes any of those in the 95th every saw. Sixty B-17s from all units fell to the German guns that day, and those losses were repeated on the second mission to that city.
On December 22, 1943 Bob Cozens flew his 25th mission to Munster and got a Christmas gift in his promotion to the rank of Major.
When Cozens got back to California, he reunited with Patsy Ann and his now 13-month old son. Cozens went to work in Washington, D.C., at a Pentagon position responsible for reducing the hours B-17s spent in modification centers after their manufacture. A couple more assignments carried him to four years of service in the Army Air Forces, at which time he was decommissioned.

The Price

 “I’m looking into the faces of people who know what freedom’s about. The good news is that we’re the hope of our country.  Sitting among you, rubbing shoulders, are people who went forth, spurred their horses forward into the breach and met our enemies and we defeated them. Victory, and there’s no substitute, said MacArthur…”

- - Howard Pierson

“We need each other don’t we?” asserted Howard Pierson. He continued by setting an interactive stage for his Golden Gate Wing talk on November 16, 2006. “Let’s give ourselves a call sign so I can keep you folks alert. Let’s be Freedom Flight tonight. So when I say ‘Freedom Flight, check in’, let’s hear a clear, crisp ‘Two’.  You’ve got to be clear, crisp and awake.”

Howard Pierson was born in New Jersey in 1927, and not only did he inherit his large frame and a predisposition towards a long and healthy life, he was also taught what is important in life and the proper attitude he should have towards those things.

“My father lived to be 103 and ¾ years old. So I claim that in my genes. He said to me, ‘Any time you talk to anybody, talk about God, family and country.’

“People say country should be second. But if you don’t have a family, you don’t have country. Amen?”

“Freedom Flight, check in”

“Two!” was the audience’s fledgling response.

“A little slow. The reason that’s important when you check in is that the flight leader has to know who’s around and who’s available. If I don’t hear ‘two, three or four’ and I look around - - maybe they’re in a loose formation - - I need to know, maybe three got stuffed. Maybe the radio’s out.”

“So my dad said, ‘I’ll be there.’ And he’s always with me in spirit. Phil (Schasker, in his intro) mentioned I married the widow of one of my classmates, and Papa was going to be my best man. Wouldn’t that have been cool?  He checked out six weeks short.”

Young Pierson had left high school early to join the U.S. Navy during World War II, serving aboard the battleship USS Iowa.

“You may know this, that mom had to sign for you if you weren’t eighteen. My mother did, tearfully. Okinawa was the campaign.”

Pierson says he was a “17 year old deck ape”, serving as an apprentice seaman on the Iowa.  Yet, when working at his battle station as a gun striker on a 40mm antiaircraft gun battery, Pierson was also a first-hand witness to Japanese kamikaze attacks on the Navy fleet during the invasion of Okinawa.

Nearly six decades later, Pierson was one spearhead of a campaign to establish the USS Iowa, now mothballed in Suisun Bay, as a floating museum in San Francisco. He says that even though San Francisco’s supervisors passed on the opportunity, a plan is underway to attempt a similar home for the battleship at Vallejo’s Mare Island.

Postwar, an honorable discharge from the Navy in hand, Pierson turned to completing high school. He then had an experience that turned him down his next path in life.

“I was now 18, 19 and back in high school with youngsters. I was a real salty veteran, and you can imagine what an arrogant ass I was. My drill was, I’d go to high school, go to Kitty’s Tavern, drink beer, and then work the night shift at Hercules Powder Company from midnight to eight. When you’re 19 you can do that for a little while. So that was my pace.”

“At Kitty’s Tavern one night, a guy looked down the bar and said, ‘Hey Pierson, get out of here. Why don’t you get out of here.’ “

“I thought he was talking to me about that moment. He called me down and gave me some counseling about life, meaning, ‘Get out of here.’ “

Pierson’s new direction became attending the University of Alabama on a football scholarship. He played tight end on the “Crimson Tide”, scoring a single touchdown against archrival Auburn.

The Korean War offered Pierson an opportunity to again serve his country, and in 1951 he started a new career with an Air Force ROTC Commission, followed by Pilot Wings from Class 52C (“52-Charlie”) at Reese AFB, Lubbock, TX.

“52-Charlie was training today, in combat tomorrow - - much like many of you in World War II. If you were National Guard or Reserve they said, ”Hey, c’mon. This is not Christmas help, this is the real thing.”

Pierson flew the B-29 Superfortress on missions to bomb North Korean forces.

“When the Korean War began, the military air thinking was, ’Let’s just keep bombing like we did- - in formation, daytime, good aiming - - and destroy the Koreans. The bad news is, they didn’t count on the jet MiG. No contest. If you get bounced by MiGs and you’re flying reciprocal-engine aircraft, you’re in deep trouble.  So, we were losing a lot of planes.”

“The good news for me was I got there when they said, ‘Let’s just fly at night in a stream. And they did individual aiming and bombed respectively, and the loss rate went way down. The Russians in Korea didn’t have any night fighters that were threatening to us.”

After the Korean War, Pierson helped fight the Cold War, flying B-47 and B-52 bombers for the Strategic Air Command.

“In the 50s and 60s we were standing alert and flying missions all over the world carrying nukes. I had a B-52 crew with ten megatons, ten megatons  going to Moscow.

“Fast forward thirty years later. I go to Moscow to a bible college, and a young man named Igor tells a story. He was telling the group he was a little boy in Moscow when the air raid sirens would sound, and everyone ran and hid in the bomb shelters because the American nuclear bombers were coming.”

“So when I got to the mike, I said, ’Igor, I was one of those men who was going to come and destroy you.’ “

“A ten megaton bomb on Moscow would have killed two million people. So we hugged and embraced. It was a sweet moment.”

War came next in Vietnam, and for Howard Pierson, it became four years of combat tours in that country and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as a Command Pilot with USAF units, the Vietnamese Air Force and Royal Thai Air Force.

“Flying fighters for the Vietnamese was exciting. They had their own rules of engagement. Remember that they were driven out of North Vietnam, many of them walked to freedom as children.  So when they became adults they knew what life was about. They knew the threat of Ho Chi Min’s Communism.”

“The wing commander I flew with had 3000 combat sorties. Three thousand… and I was his advisor. What was I going to tell him? But when he died, his son said, ‘Dad never talked about it.’ So whether it be traumatic or just good patriotism, do record what happened to you.”

Pierson’s last assignment in Southeast Asia was as Commander of the “Nail” Forward Air Controllers (FACs), flying OV-10s, and carrying the radio call sign of “Nails 01”. As such, on August 15, 1973, he was the last man to fly out of Cambodia.

“You must know that FAC-ing is a pretty sporty course. You get close to your work. The FAC is down low and slow in a Bird Dog or O-2 or OV-10, finding the enemy below the clouds or wherever he is, and then identifying him with white phosphorus, ‘Willy-Pete’.

“We roll in, shoot one rocket and if it’s right in the area we tell the fighters, ‘Hit my smoke.’ If it’s not, we tell them, ‘One hundred meters to the north,’ or, ‘Somewhere in Laos’ or whatever our smart remark is.  But we lost a lot of people because we’re down among small arms and automatic weapons.”

We just dedicated a monument a monument at the Wright-Patterson Museum in Dayton, Ohio.   We had 263 FACs killed in action.  It’s a fast track with lots of risk and danger. So if you ever meet a FAC, buy them a drink. Amen?”

Turkey Flight, check-in.”

“Two!” shot back a startled pair of Wing members.

“That was a trick, troopers…” smiled Pierson. “Freedom Flight, check in”

“Two!” alertly responded the audience.

“The fighter had a challenge to bomb the enemy. They had the most threatening triple-A (anti-aircraft artillery) in the history of aviation.  Even though you guys were over Schweinfurt in World War Two, the Pacific, perhaps Midway, or pick a place - - it was heavier in Vietnam.

As Pierson displayed a POW-MIA bracelet he recalled, “Tens of thousands of Americans wore these in memory of those who were shot down, in prison or were killed. The war ended in February of 1973 for them. Were you at your TV crying and looking and laughing when they were released?”

“I was joyful because I had seen dozens of guys I had known and seven and a half years later, they returned.   They had it tough.  We sacrifice and we do our duty. But the POW, in the presence of thine enemies, that person is really under fire, amen?  I wear this for a friend who was lost. It’s a sad story, but I’ll always keep him in my heart and in my thoughts.”

“Daniel here, he’ll never forget coming to meetings with his Dad and the people who are about military service. This precious young man can’t be in the ROTC in San Francisco. Did you know that? You know the issues of the day, and if we don’t recruit, guide, teach and pray for the next generation, we’ll be in trouble. Just like you went forth in World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Any Iraqi Freedom vets here…? You might want to try and recruit some of them.”

“Freedom Flight, check in”

“Two!” came the response.

Pierson held up a window banner for families with sons or daughters overseas - - a blue star for service, a gold star for a life given in that service. Pierson says the family of his wife, Gilberta, displayed six blue stars for her uncles who served during WWII.

“I was born in New Jersey, but I escaped. I went in the Navy and when I came back in ‘46 I bounded up the steps of a home in Montclair, New Jersey to see the family of one of my buddies.  I knew Tommy had been in the service, but I didn’t know where, what or when.”

“As a child - - 8, 9, 10 - - Tommy and I were pals there. His mom always made us tea sandwiches or we’d snitch them and raid the ice box,” Howard continued, saying he’d rung the doorbell and Tommy’s mother answered Howard by name.

“I picked her up and spun her around.  And in the living room, I turned and looked and one of these (a gold star banner) was in the window. Tommy was on the Indianapolis. Do you know her story?  She carried the guts of the atomic bomb to Tinian, the bomb that ended the war. And Tommy was on that ship, lost at sea.”

“It means that, as it says in John 15:13, ‘For greater love, has this no man lay down his life for a friend.’  That’s what you signed on for. That oath you took… somewhere in there, in small words, is that particular Bible verse. You have to be willing to do that.”

“But this (banner) is a symbol of the person who sacrifices. A token that reminds us that freedom is not free.”

“Freedom Flight, check in!”

“Two!” came the crisp response.

Howard Pierson’s flight log shows more than 10,000 hours. His combat decorations and awards include 3 DFCs, 3 Bronze Stars, 39 Air Medals, Meritorious Service Medal, Airman Medal for Valor and the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross. He was the founder of “Top Gun and Formation – Leadership Enhancement and Communications Teamwork” a training program for…

 His wife Gilberta Guth Pierson wrote the book The Fighter Pilot’s Wife – A Military Family’s Story, published in 2006.

Nisei Who Helped Win the War

About one month before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army secretly set up a Japanese language school at Crissy Field in San Francisco. This was the beginning of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), a group of 6,000 soldiers who were interpreters, linguists and interrogators in the war against Japan and reconstruction of post-war Japan to preserve democracy. More than half of those in the MIS were attached to combat units.
The impact this group of Japanese-Americans would have on the Pacific War was summed up by the following quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who stated, “Never in military history did an army know so much about the enemy prior to an engagement.”
The MIS and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team provided Japanese-Americans the opportunity to fight for their country in World War II. The Golden Gate Wing heard in October from two men who volunteered for these opportunities.

Military Intelligence Service

Walter Tanaka was born in Watsonville, California in 1918. In June of 1941, six months before the U.S. entered the war, Tanaka was drafted into the Army. He’d completed basic training in infantry heavy weapons at Camp Roberts and joined a combat unit at Fort Ord. Tanaka says he spent the night of December 7th, 1941 loading machine gun ammunition belts at the base. The next day, his unit was mobilized to guard the coast near Santa Rosa. A few days later the Army removed Tanaka from combat duty.
“My entire family, my brothers and sisters, and my parents—citizens of Japan, but living in San Luis Obispo—were incarcerated in what they called ‘relocation camps’ in Poston, Arizona.
“My father was taken first to a place called Sharp’s Park in New Mexico. He was 17 years of age when he came to the United States, lived all his life in California, was a farmer and he hadn’t done anything to be incarcerated.”

Only a few months earlier, a study had been conducted of the potential threat of Japanese-Americans to the United States should the U.S. and Japan go to war. Although the Munson Report concluded Japanese-Americans would be loyal to the U.S. in such circumstances, the report was not published and was kept secret until after the war, in 1946.
Instead, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, arrests were made of leaders in Japanese-American communities, and the U.S. Army discharged Japanese-American soldiers already in service, classifying them as “enemy alien”.
On February 19, 1942 Executive Order 9066 was signed, leading to the removal of 120,000 Japanese-Americans from the West Coast and sending them to internment camps. Nearly two-thirds of these displaced people were full citizens, who nevertheless lost their property and had their families sent off to camps.
Walter Tanaka was denied a visit to his family… but he did volunteer to become a military translator and was sent to Camp Savage, Minnesota for training before being shipped to the southwest Pacific to serve with the 5th Air Force, as it leapfrogged up the east coast of New Guinea and to the Philippines.
Tanaka interrogated Japanese prisoners of war, most downed pilots, in the Pacific, using no more coercion than offering cigarettes or candy.
“In no case at any time were we to torture. We interrogated. If they tried to falsify answers to the questions we asked, or refused to answer, we just put them back in the cell. A prisoner in a cell, they’d finally want to talk.  They wanted to talk to somebody anyway. Eventually they would talk.
“A lot of times as an interrogator you’d ask questions about the enemy strength, location and their commanding officer. Many times we’d already know the answer, but you’d ask it anyway. And then eventually they’d feel what’s the use in holding back. The prisoner would give us the proper answers. “
 Interrogations early in the war, he says, were of POWs who were arrogant. But as the war progressed prisoners of war lost their cockiness, becoming submissive before Allied interrogators and translators.
In early August, 1945, Tanaka was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant and picked as a member of a select team of interpreter/translators who were flown into Atsugi, Japan, preceding Gen. MacArthur’s arrival and military occupation of the island nation.
And as such, Tanaka was the first member of his family to see his parents’ homeland since they had left Japan at the turn of the century.
“I went to the occupation of Japan, and I took time to go down to Kyoto, where my mother had lived. She never went back. My dad had come to the United States from Kyushu in 1900.”
Among his official duties, Tanaka interrogated Japanese Premier Gen.Hideki Tojo, as well as the Japanese Army officer responsible for the infamous Bataan Death March, Lt. General Masaharu Homma.
“After Japan was defeated, Tojo was submissive. He was one of the Japanese leaders apprehended for war crimes… was tried, sentenced to death and was eventually executed.”
During World War II, MIS interpreters, translators and linguists were responsible for many Allied successes in the Pacific, among them—translation of the intercepted message that reveals the route and timetable for Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto for his inspection tour of Bougainville; translation of the Z-Plan, the Japanese Navy’s defensive strategy for the Marianas, Guam, Saipan and Tinian; and the translation of documents detailing the defenses, troop and artillery positions on Okinawa.

442nd  Regimental Combat Team

Lawson Sakai was stunned, when on December 8th 1941, “Three of my classmates and I went to Long Beach Naval Station to enlist. Ed Hardege, Jimmy Keyes, Roy Kentner—accepted. Lawson Sakai, rejected.”
”Why? I’m an American!”
“Sorry, you’re a 4C. Enemy alien,” was the Army’s reply, excluding him from serving in any branch of the military. 
June 12, 1942 marked a change in policy for Nisei (second generation Japanese-American) and the U.S. military, as the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) was officially activated. Then in February 1943, President Roosevelt approved formation of the volunteer 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
By the next month more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans in Hawaii volunteered and were sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi to begin training. Before Sakai was able to join them, another two months passed while his draft board processed paperwork.
The 100th Battalion of the 442nd entered combat in Italy in September 1944, distinguishing itself in battles at the Volturno River, Cassino and Anzio.  Heavy casualties led to the 100th being known as the “Purple Heart Battalion.”  Collectively, the 442nd was known as the “Go for Broke” Regiment. According to U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), it derived from the young soldiers’ pidgin-English, and meant to give everything they had, as though their lives depended upon it.
The Nisei were attached to the 36th Texas Infantry in August 1944, and were sent to France to help propel the drive northeast to Germany’s border. It was cold, rainy and foggy as the 36th Infantry pushed within 40 miles of the German border, to a little town named Bruyeres.
In a valley in the Vosges Mountains, Bruyeres was commanded by four large hills, which the U.S. Army named simply A, B, C and D. The key to taking Bruyeres was taking those four hills. The hills and town were controlled by determined German troops backed by artillery.
Each of the pine tree and brush-covered hills rose more than 1000 feet. Adding to the daunting conditions was the weather—frigid rain and bone-chilling fog.
In mid-October, Major General John Dahlquist, ordered the 442nd into combat. He sent the 100th Battalion to attacked Hill A and the 2nd Battalion to Hill B. Twenty-four hours later the Nisei had only been able to displace the Germans by 500 yards.
For three days the battle was a stalemate, attack and counterattack. The Wehrmacht unloaded its artillery and rockets, nicknamed “screaming meemies” for the sound they made launching and traveling to their detonation. The majority of shells exploded in trees, spraying splinters of steel and wood out through the American soldiers below.
Sakai recalls 88mm anti-aircraft guns being fired at individual soldiers:
“It’s the strongest sound you’ve ever heard when it’s coming toward you. So strong it just freezes your body.  And when it explodes… you don’t want to be near it.”
With help from American artillery, Hill A and Hill B were taken, and the Germans were pushed out of Bruyeres. Hills C and D also finally fell to the 442nd.
Enemy artillery again pinned down the 100th Battalion when it was ordered to continue east, and take the high ground at the town of Biffontaine. Doing so, the Nisei found themselves virtually out of water, ammunition and supplies, only to then be ordered to take the town of Biffontaine, a farm hamlet with no tactical significance. The 100th rousted the Germans and defended against counterattacks until relieved.

Losses for the Nisei in capturing Biffontaine had been 21 killed, 122 wounded and 18 captured.  The 100th’s survivors of Bruyeres and Biffontaine had earned some rest, and that came in the form of clean, dry uniforms and hot food. Their rest lasted less than two days.
Major General John Dahlquist had ordered the 141st Texas Regiment to continue to advance towards the German border, four miles beyond any Allied troops, to cut a rail line the enemy had been using for supplies, an area fiercely defended by SS troops. The Texans suspected they might be encircled, but followed orders anyway.
Sakai remembers, “They were completely surrounded by Germans and were slowly being annihilated. A compliment of 1000 men was down to only 211. Of 18 line officers only three lieutenants were remaining.”
The SS units not only surrounded the 141st, but brought in 6,000 more troops to hold the area “at all costs.” Facing such determined resistance, the other units of the 141st failed to rescue their fellow Texans. The 442nd was ordered to try and rescue the 211 remaining men of the 141st.
Sakai recalls the frontal assaults his men undertook to break through the German lines to the ridge the 141st held, describing the attacks as “banzai charges.”
“It was hand-to-hand in close quarters. It was so foggy. Normally we can use hand signals, but I couldn’t reach men in my squad. I had to keep them close by using verbal commands. We could hear Germans doing the same thing. They could hear us. But we couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see us. The last command was to look for the shape of the helmet—if it comes down, you can fire, if it’s straight across, it’s an American.”
Sakai says the only way to attack the enemy was straight ahead, and for five straight days that’s what the Nisei did. Unfortunately, he says he personally wasn’t able to see the attacks through to the objective: the 141st’s rescue.
“On the third day, October 28th, I took a tree burst. It’s hard to describe, but you people who have been shot down, you know what it’s like when that shrapnel comes through… hot, jagged.  Men were getting shot, killed, left and right.”

The 442nd had been decimated at Bruyeres and Biffontaine. Sakai says units were reduced to only handfuls of men. The 442nd was removed from the front lines for four months of rest and recuperation on the French-Italian border.
“General Dahlquist has gotten a lot of flak about using the 442nd as his fourth regiment,” says Sakai. ”He was accused of using the 442nd to go after the so-called ‘Lost Battalion’.
“If you’re commanding troops, you’re going to use whatever you have. You’re not going to use the second string, you’re going to use the first string if you can.”

By April, 1945, a call again came for the 442nd.  Gen. Mark Clark wanted the Nisei back in Italy where the 5th Army had been stalled nearly six months at the Gothic Line.
Sakai recalls, ”These mountains are 4,000-5,000 feet high. Six distinct mountains guard the pass into the Po Valley and lead directly into Switzerland and Germany. The Germans had control of the mountaintops and crossfire on every mountain. It’s much easier to shoot down than to shoot up.”
The 442nd’s mission was to breach the Gothic Line within two weeks. Trucked to the base of the mountains, they hiked the final five miles at night to a little village called Azano. After watching the enemy’s daytime activity in repulsing the 92nd Infantry, the Nisei planned a night assault with assistance from Italian partisans.
Sakai, in the 2nd Battalion, has heard members of the 3rd Battalion describe leading the attack:
“They said they were like a bunch of monkeys, hanging on to each other hand and tail. They had to go down across a creek, up this mountain. The first half was pretty well hidden in a canyon, but then you were fully exposed for about 1,000 feet.
“One guy was the third from the top (front), who said, ’I can’t believe it. Fifty to sixty pounds of equipment.  You taped your dog tags to your skin so they wouldn’t rattle. Everything light-colored was discarded.’ Very quietly, they crawled up that mountain.
“At daybreak, they could see the machine guns mounted right above them. And when the charge was made, all the Germans were asleep. And they started firing… every man came up. Historians say that in 32 minutes, the 442nd cleared the mountain.”
The remaining Germans were pushed back to Genoa and the Po Valley, as many as 5000 of them surrendering at an airport in Brescia. By May 2, 1945 the war was over in Italy.

Why did young men whose families were behind barbed wire in internment camps volunteer to fight with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team? Sakai says answers vary from man to man, but an overwhelming majority of these Japanese-Americans say they wanted to prove their loyalty to the United States.
“When our medics and the German medics waved the white flag and went out, rescued their wounded, brought them back and an hour later waved the flags and started shooting again. We were comrades in arms, whether we were fighting Germans, Japanese, whoever they were. “
Sakai says he never had regrets during the war about killing, because “when your family is in a prison camp, you have a different kind of life. We had to prove that we were Americans.”

“When World War Two ended I wanted to get the hell out of here,” Sakai says. “In December of 1945, I returned to the United States, and was discharged at Fort McArthur. All they said was, ‘Take off your uniform, you’re a civilian’.
“PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is still a hot topic. In fact, current warriors, when they come off, the line are interrogated and processed by psychologists. I’ve had a recent interview for the same thing—even 60 years later it still lingers.
Sakai says many of his friends took to liquor to wash away the trauma of having been warriors. Even though, he recalls, “we drank the distilleries dry,” the pain didn’t go away. There were still regrets.

In 1961, Walter Tanaka retired from the United States Army at the rank of Major. He had proven his loyalty in 20 years of distinguished service to his country.
Lawson Sakai has four  Purple Hearts among his awards for his role in World War Two.

The following information courtesty Go For Broke Education Center:

The Price Paid by the 442nd

By WWII’s end, some 20,000 Japanese-Americans had served with the 442nd  Regimental Combat Team, suffering a casualty rate around 314%. In just three weeks of fighting in October 1944, the 442nd had 1000 casualties, and 200 men killed.
Years later, Texas Governor John Connally made the men of the 442nd “honorary Texans.” A deeper measure of respect comes from the survivors of the 36th Infantry Division. Sakai says, “If there’s any problem we encounter such as racism or political problems, they’re the first to come up and say, ’Remember, we’re here only because of them.”
The 442nd is the most decorated  combat unit of its size in United States Army history, receiving more than 18,000 individual decorations, with many awarded posthumously for bravery and courage in battle. If one number speaks loudest for the sacrifices of the men of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team it is the 9,486 Purple Hearts awarded its soldiers.

Intelligence – The MIS Contribution

"Japanese American linguists were in such demand with Allied commanders, that they were assigned to every military unit from the Army, Navy and Marines. Their role ranged from document translation, personal interpretation and POW interrogation. In addition other duties included monitoring Japanese radio broadcasts, intercepting enemy messages and preparing surrender leaflets. Moreover it was necessary that each linguist be able to understand, comprehend and evaluate Japanese military tactics and doctrine. Their contribution became an important function in fighting and defeating the little-known Japanese military machine."
-from narrative of Major Kan Tagami, MIS Hall of Famer

Decorations received by the 100th Inf. Battalion & 442nd Reg. Combat Team
21 Medals of Honor (20 awarded on June 1, 2000)
33 Distinguished Service Crosses
559 Silver Stars with 28 Oak Leaf Clusters (in lieu of second Silver Star)
8 Presidential Unit Citations
1 Distinguished Service Medal
22 Legion of Merit Medals
15 Soldier's Medals
4,000 Bronze Stars with 1,200 Oak Leaf Clusters (in lieu of 2nd Bronze Star)
9,486 Purple Hearts
12 French Croix de Guerre with 2 Palms (in lieu of a second award)
2 Italian Crosses for Military Valor
2 Italian Medals for Military Valor

Decorations received by the Military Intelligence Service (MIS)
3 Distinguished Service Crosses
5 Silver Stars
1 Presidential Unit Citation (awarded June 30, 2000)
5 Legion of Merit Medals

Drafted into the U.S. Army in January 1942, “Dell” Kenyon thought the Air Corps made new enlistees a pretty good offer.
“You had to volunteer for gunnery school at that time. They said if you go to gunnery school, five weeks later you’re a buck sergeant.”
Kenyon’s training started in Monterey & Fresno, California, followed by more training in Laredo, Texas. When he graduated, he was told he was a Private First Class. That fostered some skepticism about the government’s honesty in recruiting, but didn’t prevent the young Californian from learning many “tools of the trade” required to keep bombers in the air, to and from targets.

Born December 27, 1922, in San Francisco, Adelbert “Dell” Kenyon played a variety of instruments in the band during high school: clarinet, saxophone, harmonica, piano and banjo. Musically, he was a young man of many-talents.
Kenyon’s ability to develop many skills would lead to training as a B-24 flight engineer and top turret gunner, but see him spend much of his combat days in World War II as a ball-turret gunner.
After his first rounds of training, Kenyon thought it would be a good idea to sign up for mechanic school in Biloxi, Mississippi.  He now speaks of that city as, “the worst place in the world. I think it’s gone now.”
Kenyon’s sweetheart, Viola (they were married February 8, 1943) followed him down to Mississippi, where Dell had completed his mechanic training and become a sergeant. More training followed in Salt Lake City, and then the newlyweds were back to California—this time to Clovis—before continuing the second phase of gunnery training in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
“That was beautiful down there,” recalls Kenyon of the friendly, rural flavor of the southwest town. “It was like stepping back in time. People would say ‘Good evening’ and ‘How are you doing?’ It was wonderful.”
The whirlwind of training bases led Kenyon next to Charleston, South Carolina, and soon after that he was sent by train with the rest of his new crew to help pick up a B-24 Liberator at Mitchell Field, New York. Among other things, he learned about equipping the bomber with a fuel tank in the bomb bay for the upcoming long-distance haul to Europe.
From Florida, his B-24 took off in March 1944 to fly to its combat theater assignment via the "southern route":  from West Palm Beach to Trinidad, then to Casablanca and Manduria, Italy, the operations base of the 450th Bomb Group.

Kenyon’s first combat mission involved a target at Toulon, France.
“The first mission’s always nerve-wracking anyway… but here came this B-24 shooting the hell out of everybody. We were thinking it was a runaway gun or something and we didn’t dare shoot at it.”
“It later turned out to be a B-24 that had been captured by the Germans. I think it shot down two bombers before it peeled off and left. We didn’t have any fighter escort to chase it.”

Life with the 450th Bomb Group, much as with any other Air Force bomber unit, involved multi-tasking. And “Dell” took that challenge to a higher level than most.  He says when his B-24 would take-off, he would first perform his flight engineer duties, monitoring the bomber’s four engines and other systems.
It turned out the ball-turret gunner on his crew was not fond of crawling down into the turret and hanging from the bottom of the bomber. So, rather than break up the crew to find another ball-turret gunner, Kenyon volunteered himself to man that pair of .50-caliber guns. He’d finish his flight engineer work, open the turret’s back hatch and squeeze into the metal and Plexiglas sphere.
Kenyon thought the ball turret was one of the safest places to be in a B-24. “It’s basically at least 3/8” thick aluminum. You could (by contrast) take a pencil and punch a whole in the side of the plane. We got hit lots of times by flak—it just came on through. The turret’s faceplate is four inches thick. It would take a direct hit to get through that.  And that’s how I became a ball-gunner.”
On the down side, the ball turret’s confining space meant Kenyon had to leave his parachute back up in the fuselage instead of having it strapped to his back or belly as the other gunners on the B-24 did.
Kenyon recalls having little use for the “creature comforts” of high altitude crew gear. He says the electrically heated flying suits were “Mickey Mouse”, subject to short-circuiting, and heated gloves tended to catch fire. The British fur-lined airmen’s boots were a highly prized item, frequent targets of “appropriation” by U.S. aircrews. Kenyon admits he never had an opportunity to try them because they ran only in smaller sizes.

On Kenyon’s thirty missions, P-38s and P-47s sometimes provided fighter escort, but they were limited by range. And, although enemy fighters occasionally attacked the 450th Bomb Group, flak was the greatest threat.
Dell says that on one high altitude raid over Ploesti, Romania, German antiaircraft units followed the bomb group to the target, firing large caliber flak guns mounted on railroad cars.
“The flak was solid for thirty-five minutes. We didn’t get a scratch on that one. But the plane right next to us was hit and caught on fire. We were hollering, ‘Get the hell out of it!’ The waist gunner was trying to get out… he was on fire and his chute was on fire. It was a hell of a mess. And finally the thing blew up.”

It was on his bomber crew’s 30th mission, April 25th, 1944—a mission expected to be a "milk run" bombing an aircraft factory in Varese, Italy— when their luck ran out.
His B-24 was to be one of two Liberators lost in a Luftwaffe fighter attack.
Kenyon remembers having pulled the safety pins on the bombs and then extending the ball turret underneath the bomber, when he heard his pilot scream “Fighters at 12 o’clock!”  Next, the B-24 was hit by cannon fire from a FW-190 fighter.
Kenyon saw the Liberator’s wheels drop down, a sign of surrender.
“I saw this parachute go by, and I thought, ‘Gee, I hope to hell that didn’t come out of this plane.’ But it was the co-pilot, whose leg had been shot off below his right knee. I turned the ball around, went back into the bomber, opened the hatch on top and got out of it.”
Kenyon says he went to the bomb bay, where he saw the bombardier sitting on the catwalk. Blood was spraying all over the bomb bay, a clear sign the bombardier was badly wounded. Kenyon says he walked back to tell the waist gunners to jump from the stricken bomber, and then put on his own chest parachute. No sooner had the waist gunners jumped than the B-24 pitched violently onto its right wing and began spinning, pinning Kenyon face down to the floor. Behind him, the tail gunner had also been pinned as he came forward from the turret, but the tail gunner was on his back and was immobilized.”
Kenyon was able to pull himself to a hatch, get out of the plane and open his parachute. The tail gunner remained inside as the bomber plummeted to the earth. Kenyon parachuted down to an Italian hillside, missing a big grove of trees. Shedding his parachute, he hid in some bushes, but was soon rousted by a civilian shakily pointing an automatic rifle at his head. Kenyon was soon turned over to German soldiers.
Before long, Kenyon says he was taken to Verona, placed in solitary confinement for three to four days and then interrogated.
“The guy interrogating me spoke better English than I did.”
Kenyon was also surprised by how much the Germans knew about the 450th and about Dell, himself. The interrogating officer read out loud the ball turret gunner‘s military dossier, including the number of missions Kenyon had flown.
Shipped to Stalag Luft III, Kenyon arrived at the camp two weeks after a major escape by Allied airmen. Despite a Luftwaffe crackdown after the escape, the camp remained one of the better places to be incarcerated in Germany.
“It was clean and well organized, had a library and showers,” Kenyon says, also recalling that the food was good, “while it lasted.”
While in camp, Kenyon made a crochet hook from an old toothbrush handle, and used it to make himself a hat from some surplus British wool sweaters.
In late December, 1944, the Soviet Army was swiftly driving West, and the Germans began moving prisoners of war to other POW camps. Kenyon says he was among tens of thousands of POWs under guard, walking on roads in freezing sub-zero temperatures away from the advancing Soviets.
At nightfall on the first day, a few of the POWs staggered into a barn, where Kenyon found temporary escape from the cold.
“I saw a pile of cow manure, made a hole underneath and went in feet first with just my head sticking out. It was a little smelly but I kept warm until morning.”
He picked out a large airman to buddy-up with, figuring the big man would be able to help if Kenyon got in any trouble. Unfortunately, the man proved to be more of a liability than an asset, as one day he threw away most of the items he was carrying, including his own rations.
“A couple of days later, he was just kind of staggering along. In one of my Red Cross parcels I’d gotten a D-bar, a chocolate bar about one inch, by one inch, by four inches, and some M&Ms.”
Kenyon shared his M&Ms, then offered the chocolate, only to watch the entire bar disappear into the other man’s mouth.
“I quit him, and went over to somebody else.”
The POWs marched about sixty miles to a site about five miles outside the city of Nuremburg. There, at Stalag VIIA, facilities were anything but comfortable due to bed bugs and lice. Pea soup was served with bugs in the peas. And Kenyon remembers a dehydrated cabbage soup the POWs called the “Green Death.”
Among Kenyon’s many strange experiences during these weeks was a night raid by a British Lancaster bomber. He says the plane must have dropped a 12,000-pound bomb far from its intended target in Nuremburg. The six tons of explosives detonated as close as 600 meters from the camp with a tremendous boom. The concussion moved the barracks wall about six inches, shattered the windows and startling prisoners and guards alike.
He also recalls the cacophony of nighttime anti-aircraft fire and the hair-raising whistles of falling debris from exploded flak shells. One of the most unnerving sounds in the darkness came from “window”—long strips of aluminum foil used to confuse radar operators—fluttering down in the inky stillness of the night, scaring Kenyon as much as the large bomb had.
Approaching Allied ground forces were the reason Kenyon and the POWs were rousted once again for a final trek to yet another camp at Moosburg, where living conditions were the worst. Built to house 14,000 prisoners, the camp ultimately confined 130,000 men of all nationalities and ranks.
Fortunately, on April 29th, 1945, Patton’s Third Army liberated the camp, sending the POWs to Camp Lucky Strike in France. There the men could regain some strength before being repatriated to their home countries.
Kenyon sailed on a ship back to the United States, finishing the final leg of his homeward trek to San Francisco on a bus. He called Viola and told her to meet him around the corner from where Kenyon’s mother lived.
“I told the guy sitting next to me on the bus that I’d just gotten out of a prisoner of war camp and was meeting my wife in a couple of blocks. Of course he had to tell everyone on the bus.”
 “And there on the corner was my beautiful wife. I jumped off the bus, gave her a big hug and a long kiss and everyone one on the bus clapped and shouted. They stayed there until we walked away.”

Kenyon’s decorations and awards include six Air Medals and the Purple Heart. For having parachuted from his B-24, he’s a member of the Caterpillar Club.
After the war, he was a skilled mechanic and problem-solver for automobile dealers, before working 11 years for PG&E.
Now retired, and married to Viola for 63 years, Dell Kenyon says he has been an avid collector of antique steel toys, until recently, adding, “You just can’t find ‘em any more.”
He says the same things about other items he’s been collecting—including his latest passion, brass powder horns for muskets—sure signs Adelbert Kenyon still keeps sharp his multi-tasking skills.

Dell’s 30th Mission
DATE: 25 April 1944
TARGET: VARESE, ITALY - AIRCRAFT FACTORY
29 B-24''s took of to bomb Varese. 17 dropped 43 tons of bombs on marshalling yards at Ferrara, Riomaggiorie, and Piacenza.
FIGHTERS: Ferrara hit, bombs fell short at other targets.
FLAK: Slight, inaccurate, heavy at all targets.
FIGHTERS: 26 enemy aircraft attacked. After 30 minutes, attackers broken off by P-38's.
CASUALTIES: 2 B-24's by fighters, 10 chutes seen to open. 4 B-24's missing. 6 received minor damage by flak. 2 crew members wounded by flak. 2 crew members bailed out of #205 as plane went into a spin. Our Claims: 2 ME-109's, 1 FW-190 destroyed.
Source:
http://www.450thbg.com/real/s2/1944/april.shtml

Early Eagle

Jim Gray
Spitfire Pilot With RAF 71 Squadron

Jim Gray was one of thousands of Americans who flew for Britain’s Royal Air Force, joining the RAF just after the pivotal Battle of Britain.
Germany’s aerial assault of England, from July to the end of October 1940, consisted of daily Luftwaffe bomber raids on RAF bases, docks and military installations, and the general populace. RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes ascended to attack the bomber formations above England, the Channel and North Sea, while escorting German fighters did their best to thwart them. The ensuing melees took a huge toll on both air forces.
Unprepared for such attrition, the RAF employed American businessman Charles Sweeny to find volunteers to fly and fight for Britain, and by late summer of 1940 about fifty pilots had been recruited for the RAF’s first all-American squadron. From that point forward, the Knight Committee, headed by Clayton Knight, an American who had flown for the Royal Flying Corps in World War I, helped interested Americans into the Royal Canadian and Royal Air Forces.
Jim Gray was one of the thousands of Americans who signed up.
“They set up four schools in the U.S. to train,” says Gray. “If you had 100 hours you could volunteer and they could train you. One of the schools was Spartan in Tulsa Oklahoma, and it’s still in existence. The one in Bakersfield is the one I attended.”

Gray was born January 4, 1919 in San Francisco, grew up in the Bay Area and had earned his private pilot license while studying math at UC Berkeley. 
He recalls continuing his training in Canada, flying the PT-17 and then the AT-6. During off hours, Gray and his fellow air cadets had considerable free time on their hands, some of which they filled by going to the movies. One of the films they watched was Yank in the RAF featuring actor Tyrone Power.  Gray says when the cadets filed out of the theater afterwards, one of them quipped, “Yeah he was a Yank in the RAF. But you’ll be a jerk in the RAF.”
Gray was the target of the moniker, and it stuck. Jim Gray became “Jerko” Gray to his comrades-in-arms.

When he graduated from his advanced training, Gray was sent to Canada and then on his trans-Atlantic trip to an Operational Training Unit in England. Three Eagle Squadrons were being created, Numbers 71, 121 and 133, and just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Gray reached the earliest of the three units, No. 71 Squadron.
“I think four or five of the pilots had flown in the Battle of Britain, but they were all gone by the time I joined my squadron at Martlesham Heath.”
There were 243 American pilots and 16 British pilots who flew with the Eagle Squadrons, led by 28 British officers. Another 500 or so Americans joined the RAF directly and were mixed into squadrons with pilots from throughout the Commonwealth.

Within a week of arriving at 71 Squadron, Gray says remembers having had his checkout in the aircraft which had earned a glowing reputation in tangling with the Luftwaffe’s vaunted Messerschmitt 109E. Jim came to intimately know the Supermarine Spitfire, starting with the Mk. II model.
“It was very sleek and very fast, and had a marvelous cockpit layout, that fit the pilot very well.”
Gray’s first missions in the Spitfire were mostly convoy patrols over the English Channel. He remembers only too well the hours of boredom flying over the friendly ships steaming through the grey waters, and scanning for enemy aircraft.

By September of 1941, the faster Spitfire Mk.V had replaced No. 71 Squadron’s Mk. IIs, and along with the aircraft change came Eagle missions of a little more range - - sweeps across the Channel into France. These missions were dubbed “Rhubarbs”, “Circuses” and “Rodeos”, depending on the number of aircraft used, their tactics and varied methods of enticing the Luftwaffe to fight.
Gray says he shot down his first enemy plane in the spring of 1942. The day before, some RAF bombers had been badly shot up on a major operation. Rescue boats went out looking for aircrew that might still be floating in dinghies, and Spitfires were sent to provide air cover for the operation.
“We were out on patrol across the North Sea. I guess the Luftwaffe picked us up on radar and sent out some of their Focke-Wulf 190s. I looked over and saw a Focke-Wulf getting on the wing leader’s tail and had to do something to get him off Sprague’s tail.”
Wing leader Bob Sprague had seen two Focke-Wulfs down low over the water, and dived to attack them. But those two 190s were shadowed by four others hiding in the sun, who stalked Sprague as he closed on his prey.
Fortunately for the wing leader, Gray had seen the four enemy fighters. Gray streaked up from beneath the Focke-Wulf leading the attack on Sprague’s Spitfire, opened fire with his cannon, and sent the 190 plunging into the water. This combat is a highlight of the book War Eagles, The Story of 71 Eagle Squadron, authored by James Saxon Childers.

By September of 1942, the U.S. Army Air Corps was building up its Eighth Fighter Command, folding American pilots of the Eagle Squadrons into Army Air Corps fighter squadrons. Many of the pilots entered the 4th Fighter Group, which would establish a highly distinguished combat record. 
The Spitfire was retained as the first fighter for the 4th Fighter Group. But before too long, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was chosen replace it. The P-47 was a comparatively huge machine, weighing in at 12,500 pounds (empty), more than twice the Spitfire V’s 6,170 pounds.
“I flew a P-47. I walked around in the cockpit and said, ‘this is a little too big for me.’”

Jim Gray chose to stay with the RAF, where he could continue to fly the later models of the Spitfire. He was sent in September 1942 to the RAF’s 93 Squadron in the Mediterranean, and flew from bases in Algiers and Tunisia in North Africa before spending six-months in Ismailia, Egypt as a flight instructor.
His experiences with the RAF in the Mediterranean included rubbing shoulders with a mix of fellow pilots from New Zealand, Australia and France. Gray had further aerial combat, which he says led to another 4+ probable victories, among them a Macchi 202 and a Ju 88, though they are not officially confirmed.
“I had probably more operational combat hours, at 400, than any other Eagle Squadron pilot.”

The campaign to drive German troops out of Italy also spelled the end of Jim Gray’s flying for the RAF. He was shot down on January 4, 1945, his 26th birthday. On that fateful day, his squadron’s Spitfire IXs were carrying 500-pound bombs in ground attacks against German troops in northern Italy.
“I went out and dropped my bomb and got hit by flak. My engine was overheating just north of the bomb line. So I had to bail out and was picked up right away by the Germans.  They took me back to Germany for interrogation and then I ended up in Stalag-Luft I, north of Berlin.”
As a prisoner of war, Gray was again in a mix of nationalities, among aircrews from the breadth of the British Commonwealth, including Canada, New Zealand and India. He says that being in the POW camp was “made fairly reasonable, because it was run by the Luftwaffe.”
“We were mostly supplied by the Red Cross. The food parcels came through. They were getting in short supply by May, when we were liberated by the Russians.”
Given this was in 1945, Gray says there was little initiative to try to get out of the camp.
“Everybody knew the handwriting was on the wall (end of the war in Europe), and I don’t remember any endeavor to escape from Luft I.”
Liberation for all of the POWs in Stalag-Luft I came when Red Army troops appeared.
“There was a Luftwaffe airstrip just north of Barth there and the Americans flew B-17s in to fly us back to England. So we got out of there in short order after the Russians came through.”
Gray says he was in the UK for a month or so before returning back to the States.
Among his awards and decorations, Gray received the prestigious British Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). Postwar, he became a pilot for United Airlines, started flying the DC-3, then flew the Convair 340 and, after a long successful career, retired as a Captain in DC-8 jets.
Historian for the Eagle Squadrons, Gray has been a frequent contributor to articles about Americans flying for the RAF. He is mentioned prominently in the book War Eagles, The Story of 71 Eagle Squadron.

THE HOLOCAUST THAT SOME STILL DENY

Benjamin Sieradzki was the youngest of five children in a Polish-Jewish family a suburb of Lodz, the second largest city in Poland.  His family had lived in this part of Poland for many generations.  Most of his ancestors were either weavers of woolen cloth or biblical scholars, rabbis, or teachers.  His parents owned a small textile factory manufacturing woolen cloth.  The family lived comfortably well and all of the children attended school.  They had many friends and relatives in the area including local Germans involved in the textile industry. 

In 1939 Benjamin was 12 years old.  There were a lot of rumors and threats about impending war between Poland and Germany.  His parents were very concerned about the future, especially in view of Hitler's hateful actions against the Jews in Germany.  On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland.  Ben’s town came under very severe bombing and strafing attacks, in part because it was heavily industrialized and had a munitions factory.  The house next door was firebombed.  The invading German army encountered very little resistance and arrived on September 7, 1939.
Within days the German occupation forces started harassing the civilian population, especially the Jewish people.  Almost daily, the invaders issued decrees closing schools, ordering curfews, etc.  The family’s factory was confiscated without compensation and was taken over by local Germans.  The main Synagogue and the major Jewish center of learning in the town were burned to the ground.  At first the Jews were forced to wear yellow armbands (later changed to yellow stars of David) on their outer garments, both front and back.  Even infants and small children had to wear them.  When German soldiers approached, Jews were required to step off the sidewalk and to show respect by tipping or removing our hats.

The situation deteriorated rapidly.  One evening Ben’s father was taken away by several German agents (both soldiers and civilians) who refused to say where he was being taken and for what reason.  He and number of prominent Jewish men of the community were savagely beaten in the basement of the main Catholic Church; some died.  Released 36 hours later, Ben’s father never recovered from his severe injuries.  The persecutions continued with evacuation “selections” of children, the sick or disabled, the old, anyone unable to work.  Ben’s family fled town on foot in the middle of a snowy night carrying backpacks with the essentials.  They found refuge in a relative’s small apartment in the city of Lodz.  The people who had been “evacuated” were never seen or heard from again.

In early March 1940 the German authorities ordered all 200,000 Jews of Lodz to leave their homes and resettle to an old rundown area of the city which would be called "Lodz Ghetto".  Anyone found outside the ghetto after April 30 would be shot.  Because Ben’s family had left home so hastily, they had very few possessions.  They slept on the floor of an abandoned warehouse with many rats as neighbors.  The very inadequate food rations consisted mainly of bread partly composed of sawdust, frozen or partly rotten potatoes, and cabbage-type vegetables like kohlrabi and rutabaga when they were available.  Even for these, people had to wait in long lines.  All were perpetually hungry and could hardly think of anything except food.

Many different factories were being set up in the ghetto to produce for the German war effort.  Every able person had to work.  Ben got a job as an apprentice in a carpentry factory making furniture for the military brass.  The carpenters were highly skilled craftsmen.  Later, he was transferred to another area in the same plant to work 12-hour shifts on a production line making wooden crates for mortar shells and bombs.

Ben’s sisters also got jobs, one as a communal kitchen helper and the other in a leather factory.  His parents did not work.  They had a very hard time coping with all this deterioration of life, the suffering, the hunger, feeling helpless and demoralized at not being able to do anything for their children, and no foreseeable end in sight.

The extremely cold winters of the early 1940s were an additional burden.  There was no fuel provided for either cooking or heating.  People burned anything they could find: trees, parts of the very building they lived in, floors, roofs, anything combustible.  They also dug in old garbage dumps for pieces of coal, wood scraps, etc.  Many older people, the sick in hospitals, and people who could not work were periodically evacuated from the ghetto never to be seen again.  Much later, they learned that they were killed in specially designed airtight vans with hoses to inject exhaust fumes from the running engines.  Their bodies were later dumped nearby and burned.

In September 1942 the German authorities ordered the Lodz Ghetto leadership to select about 25,000 people under age 10 and over 65 for "resettlement" out of the ghetto.  The Jewish ghetto police collected and delivered to assembly points many children, the elderly and the sick on foot or by wagon.  This action did not satisfy the Germans.  They decided to bring in special Gestapo forces to search, with the help of the ghetto police, every building and every dwelling for people they deemed unproductive, regardless of age.  About 6:00 am on 7 September, Gestapo men and ghetto police surrounded Ben’s building and ordered everyone to come down to the courtyard within three minutes.  Anyone who tried to hide would be shot.

Both of Bens’ parents were in their early fifties but they were in very poor health.  His father had severe edema and depression and stayed in bed most of the time, mainly to keep warm and stave off hunger.  Ben’s mother had a broken leg which did not heal.  She was very thin and her leg was in a cast for a long time.  She could hardly walk and used a cane for getting around in the room.  Both of Ben’s parents were promptly selected walk to a truck which was parked in front of the building.  Ben’s mother could not walk across the yard.  These Germans had no mercy.  They pushed her down on the cobblestone-paved yard and dragged her by her collar out to the truck like an old rag.  Other neighbors from the building were selected, infants, little kids, the old and the sick.  All were brutally loaded onto the trucks and wagons.  One man refused to let go of his little children; he held them against the wall with his outstretched arms.  He was shot on the spot.

The German forces were not satisfied.  They needed many more to be "resettled".  Two days later they came back and ordered all the people of the street block to come down to the street, stand single file on both sides of the sidewalk, and keep moving forward so that they could perform additional selection.  A friendly ghetto policeman told Ben that he was at risk of being selected because he had observed boys like him taken away in other street selections.  At the time, Ben was 15 years old but looked more like 12 or 13.  Ben’s siblings decided that he should run away and hide.  

Ben bolted out of the selection line, sprinted inside the nearest open gate and hid under garbage in a large rat-infested dumpster for hours.  After the selection ended, Ben was able to rejoin his sisters.

Later, Ben learned that many of his relatives in the ghetto -- aunts, cousins, and their small children -- were taken away during this period.   Some of his relatives had died of hunger and sickness before that time.  Much later, he also learned that around 18,000 people taken away for "resettlement" during this period were sent to the Chelmno concentration camp, approximately 37 miles from Lodz.  On arrival they were ordered to strip naked and were loaded into 5-ton enclosed vans with the assistance of other prisoners.  When the van was full of prisoners, they opened a pipe valve that diverted deadly truck engine exhaust gas into the van.  Within a few minutes while the van was moving, all the people inside were dead.  The van traveled only a few miles outside town into a serene forest area where the bodies were dumped into a mass pit and burned.  The ashes and bones were dumped into ditches or into a nearby river.

After many selections which lasted until the ghetto itself was liquidated, of Ben’s family only he and his sister Anna were left alive.  In late summer of 1944, the German authorities ordered that the whole ghetto be closed and all its inhabitants evacuated by August 28.  The police and the German forces started to close the ghetto section by section, forcing the people who lived in each section to vacate their premises and report to the train station with only what they could carry with them.  Ben and Anna resisted the order to report to the station.  Instead they wandered from one section to another, finding some people to let us remain for a day or two, including a cousin who let them stay in a basement for a while.  Every day long trains arrived and people were herded into box cars or cattle trains.  Hoping that the Soviet Army would arrive soon, they kept away from the trains.  This went on for several weeks until there was no longer anywhere to hide.  They reported to the station and slept on the platform overnight waiting for a new train to arrive next morning.

Along with hundreds of other people, families with children, the old, the young, Ben and his sister were herded into box cars packed like sardines with standing room only..  After an overnight trip, the train arrived at the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

The evacuees were ordered to line up, men and women separately, five across each line.  The lines kept slowly advancing toward the front of the railroad platform.  In front of their platform stood several of the German SS officers with large dogs.  Later, Ben learned that one of them was Dr. Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" who was in charge of selecting people either for work or to be gassed.  All he did was point his hand left or right.  All the elderly, children, and mothers with small children he directed to the left.  They were loaded into wagons which were standing there waiting for their "cargo".

While the lines were advancing to the verdict to live or to die, one of the prisoners helping to keep order spoke to Ben.  The man said in a low voice that Ben should straighten up, pinch his cheeks to make them look ruddy and fresh, and maybe he might pass the selection.  When Ben’s time came to be chosen by the "Angel of Death", he straightened up, pinched his cheeks hard, and said he was an 18 year old carpenter (he was actually only 17).  Dr. Mengele looked at him briefly and then was distracted by another officer with a dog.  They talked about something. When the doctor turned around and looked at the dog, Ben promptly ran to a group of men who had been selected to live and work.  Immediately he looked toward the women's area and saw that his sister was also selected for the good side.  This was the last time he ever saw her.

After showering and being shaved everywhere, each man in Ben’s group was issued striped prisoner's pants and jacket, cap, shoes (wooden clogs) and one set of underwear.  They were then marched for a good distance through the huge Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex.  The chimneys of the crematoriums were billowing smoke.  One of the guards said, "Those are your folks who just arrived here with you going up in smoke."  The guards told them the camp rules and that they would be selected for work in Germany.

Ben was assigned to a teenage barrack.  The barrack held about 1000 Jewish teenagers from several countries in Europe, but most of them were from the Lodz Ghetto.  There were no beds and no blankets; they slept on the bare concrete floor.  They had to lie on one side and could not turn; there was no room to turn.

After three days, Ben noticed a selection in process at one of the barracks.  As soon as a prisoner was selected, he was tattooed on his forearm.  Ben understood that these prisoners would be sent to Germany to work or to other concentration camps.  He tried to join the prisoners awaiting the selection process, but it didn't work.  He was kicked out and beaten.  Three weeks later, Ben was able to sneak into a crowd of prisoners that had been selected.  This group was transported by freight train for several days to a camp in Stoecken near the city of Hanover, Germany. 

The camp commandant told skilled craftsmen and professionals like carpenters, doctors, sheet metal workers, tailors, etc., to come forward (Ben did not feel skilled enough to dare to volunteer).  The rest of would work in the Continental Rubber factory located a short distance from the camp.  A few days after arrival, they were awakened around 4:00 a.m.  They were then marched to work like a parade with SS guards with rifles on both sides of the column.  At the factory they were assigned to the tire-making department.  The stronger prisoners were sent to the area where rubber and other resins were processed using heavy roller presses.  The rubber was hot and heavy.  The punishment for not working fast enough was severe.

Ben was assigned to a galvanizing department.  The task was to load steel parts into large steel baskets and lower them by overhead hoist into hot acid tanks, remove them later, and transfer them to other tanks with chemical solutions.  Ben worked with German civilians, all of whom wore protective clothing: special rubber aprons, rubber boots and gloves, facial protection against acid splatter and the harmful smelly vapors emanating from the acid tanks.  No such protection was given to the prisoners.  At this hazardous work, they wore the same striped prisoner pajama-type uniforms they had in Auschwitz.  This was their only clothing; they wore it day and night and had no facilities for laundry.

Nighttime brought Allied bombers.  One night, there was a direct hit on the factory.  The slave laborers couldn't enter it until the debris was cleaned up by other prisoners.  One morning Ben was assigned to a group of prisoners to clear bombed-out houses not far from our camp.  Ben worked on that detail several times out in the cold and rain.  In the ruins, he always looked for food.  Sometimes he found some raw potatoes, stale bread, or other old rotten food.

After several months of 12-hour days at hard labor and the ever-present hunger, cold and abuse, people started to die daily.  Ben saw several people die during a roll call and after severe beatings. 

On November 30, 1944 the prisoners were marched for several hours to another concentration camp outside Hanover in the town of Ahlem.  The barracks were old and in terrible condition: no windows, broken roof, boards missing from the wall.  It was freezing cold with wind and blowing snow; Ben got sick with fever.  For several days, there were no blankets or straw sacks to lie on.  After a few days of numerous roll calls per day in the snow, rain, and freezing winds, they were marched to work late one afternoon.  Half of the prisoners were to work the day shift and the other half the night shift.  Ben was assigned to the night shift.  The workplace was a dark, wet old rock quarry for producing cement.  The plan was to prepare this underground mine to house a large factory to produce war materiel like replacement parts for tanks.

The prisoners were assigned to clear and shovel rocks into lorries that ran on tracks.  After dynamiting one section of quarry and waiting for the dust to settle, they would clear all the blasted out rocks and debris, move the tracks to another blasted out section, and again begin loading by hand.  This was hard, cold, wet, and dirty work in the same minimal clothing they had been issued at Auschwitz. 

The winter of 1944-45 was very cold and harsh.  The prisoners were dying in very large numbers from diseases, severe beatings both in the camp and at work, industrial accidents, starvation, exposure, or suicide.  The men slept two in a bunk bed, heads opposite each other.  One morning, the young man who shared Ben’s bunk did not get up; he was dead.

One night when while shoveling rocks and debris after an area was dynamited, a huge rock came loose from above right in front Ben.  It broke his shovel in half; only the handle remained his hand.  After the dust settled, several prisoners had to break up the big rock and remove Ben’s partner.

One day during Ben’s night shift in the mine, he found an empty paper cement sack.  He cut it to fit his upper body both front and back to wear under his old striped camp uniform.  He wore it for several weeks to help keep warm until a guard noticed his strange shape.  The guard ordered Ben to take it off, took down his name, and struck Ben with his rifle butt, accusing him of trying to run away.  He said the paper cement sack was "civilian clothing", strictly "verboten", and against camp rules.  The camp vice-commandant said in a loud voice that Ben had stolen civilian clothing and was wearing it under my uniform, indicating that he was planning to escape.  He ordered the guards to punish Ben for the "escape” attempt.  They beat and kicked him severely.  For several days Ben couldn't work or eat.

In January 1945 a large group, perhaps 250, of the original 1000 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz who were still alive were selected to be evacuated from the camp in Ahlem.  These men were mostly sick and weak and not able to work any longer.  They were loaded on trucks taken to a large prison camp in Neuengamme near Hamburg where a large facility for sick prisoners was located.  Ben learned later that most of them who were sick were killed as soon as they arrived there.

Meanwhile in camp, corpses were piling up at the garbage dump located between the infirmary and the latrine barrack.  The sanitary conditions at the camp, never very good, continued to decline.  The water supply was practically non-functional.

Heavy Allied bombing of the area made the prisoners feel hopeful.  When they worked the night shift and slept during the daytime, they had to get up quickly each time the air raid alarm sounded and go back down into the mine.  This happened often during the day, so sleeping was out of the question.  Ben sometimes prayed and wished that a bomb would hit his barrack directly and finish him off.  He felt that life was not worth it any more.

The winter of 1944-45 was very harsh and Ben developed a continuing fever.  The infirmary was full so they let him stay in the barrack.  He slept and was unable to clean himself.  The lice were eating him up and he didn't even care any more.  A few weeks before the liberation, the remnants of the 1000 original prisoners stopped working in the rock quarry mine while another group of Jewish prisoners arrived to take their place.  Among this group was a much older cousin Ben’s.  He found out that Ben was in the camp and came to visit him.  He had lost his wife and little children in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

On April 6, 1945, the guards evacuated prisoners who were still able to work.  Then they locked the prison gates which along with the electrified barbed wire gates enclosed the remainder.  There was no one in charge and no guarding of any sort.  Those who could quickly ran over to the kitchen barrack and looted any remaining food like loaves of bread and clear water.  The rumor was that they would be shot later in the day and the barracks blown up so as to hide the horrible condition of the prisoners and of the camp from the American victors. The rumors were well founded; one of the prisoners who worked in the infirmary heard it from the camp commandant himself. 

On April 10, Ben and some other prisoners got up very early in the morning.  No shooting could be heard.  Ben walked outside and saw a column of military trucks and other mobile war equipment driving by slowly and then stopping.  The prisoners didn’t know which army this was, but they knew that it wasn't the German army.  Some thought they recognized American insignia on the trucks. Then some of the soldiers came out of the trucks, stretched, and began to toss a baseball around.  They even wore baseball catcher's mitts.  These were Americans! 

Some prisoners started to jump for joy but most, including Ben, were too weak and sick.  The prisoners screamed as loud as they could that this was a concentration camp and that they needed help.  In a little while a few of the soldiers walked up.  They asked questions, but most prisoners didn't speak English and couldn't respond.  One could speak a little English and asked for cigarettes.  Each of the soldiers emptied his pockets and tossed cigarettes on the ground, the prisoners jumped for them.

The inmates told the soldiers that they were Polish Jews and asked if any of them were Jewish and could speak Yiddish.  Soon after, more soldiers, including some higher ranking officers, came in jeeps.  They continued to keep their distance, afraid that the prisoners might be contagious (which they probably were).  Later all kinds of military personnel arrived including chaplains.  Most of these war-hardened men just shook their heads.  A few of them even cried when they saw the sick, the dirt, and the dead bodies.  They brought food into the kitchen.  That day and the next, the Americans with their Red Cross military vans and also some local German nurses brought bandages and other first aid items and began to treat the sick and wounded.  Among the soldiers was a young fellow with a pocket camera who took pictures.  Others who seemed to be official Army photographers also recorded the scene.  This was apparently the first concentration camp liberated by this unit.

The surviving prisoners were soon transferred to a German hospital called Heidehaus near Hanover.  Ben was stripped of clothing, thoroughly washed in a tub of warm water, and put in a hospital bed.  This was the first time he had slept in a real bed with sheets and pillows for a very long time.  He got very sick that first night, both physically and emotionally, and woke up completely drenched in perspiration.  The night nurse came in and gently wiped away the sweat and tears.  He was told he only weighed 80 pounds at that time and was suffering from a variety of ailments including tuberculosis, typhus, severe malnutrition, skin problems, severe lower back pain, etc. 

Of all the family members who were with Ben in the Lodz Ghetto, apparently he was the only survivor.  In June 1945, Swedish Red Cross agents came to Ben in the hospital and asked if he would like to be taken to Sweden for further recuperation.  He agreed immediately; he wanted to get out of Germany as soon as possible.  They took him and many other survivors to Sweden where he spent more than a year in various hospitals and convalescent homes in different Swedish towns.  The Swedish people were extremely nice and generous and he was very grateful.

Ben had an uncle, his father's only brother, in Denmark.  He had lived there since before World War I.  He and most of the other Jews of Denmark survived the Holocaust because of the generous help and moral leadership of the Danish and Swedish people.  They organized a rescue one night in 1943:  Through a cooperative effort of Danish and Swedish fishermen and other small boat operators, most of the Danish Jews were smuggled into neutral Sweden.  He and his family were very helpful to Ben.

In 1946 Ben learned that his two brothers, who had been taken to Siberia by the Russians, had survived the war and were in Poland.  They eventually came to Sweden with their new Russian Jewish brides.  Later, they had children in Sweden who still live there with spouses and children of their own.  Ben’s oldest brother Mendel, died in 1977, and his wife in 1995.  Ben’s other brother Isaac still lives in Sweden with his family.  Ben stayed in Sweden for eight years, both working and going to school; he was trained as a mechanical engineer.

In 1953 Ben was granted a Swedish visa to the United States for one year.  Because he was a stateless person at that time, he would not be permitted to return to Sweden if he remained for more than a year.  Ben did not return.  He worked and went to school in Los Angeles, where he married Gloria in 1955.  In 1957 Ben was naturalized as an American citizen.  Ben and Gloria moved to Berkeley, California, where they still live.  They have two sons and three granddaughters, named after Ben’s two lovely young sisters, murdered by the Germans, whom he will mourn forever. 

Almost all of the people in Ben’s extended family, friends, and schoolmates in the town where he lived before the war did not survive.  They all perished during the nightmare of the Holocaust – the Holocaust that some still deny ever happened.

LeRoy R. Engberg, USN (Ret.), Petty Officer 1st Class

Veteran Combat Aerial Gunner, Aviation Ordnance Expert

WWII, Korea, Vietnam

“It seems like a lot of funny things have happened to me in my life.”

Lee’s introduction to the U. S. Navy is definitely one of those funny things.  When he enlisted in San Francisco, he says he was sworn in with his fellow recruits, while a bus waited outside. It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

“I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. There was a little restaurant across the way from the recruiting station. I went over there to get something to eat, and the bus pulled out without me. So, I guess I’m AWOL the first time I ever joined the Navy.”

But for Lee, in the end, things usually turn out right. He says that when the bus left him behind, he got out on Highway 101 and hitchhiked to San Diego, beating the bus into town. Engberg waited while the other recruits were getting off the bus. They were finally followed by the old Chief Petty Officer who was in charge, and who ‘knew’ Engberg was not among the recruits who had ridden the bus. 

Lee says he walked around the bus and up to the Chief, and: “He turned around… and that’s the first time I’ve seen a Chief Petty Officer that didn’t know what to say.”

         Born May 18, 1921 in Atchisen, Kansas, Engberg did most of his growing up in Boone, Iowa.  When he came of age, Lee joined the National Guard, but in July of 1941, he chose to enlist in the Navy.

         Engberg says he had a good time in boot camp.  Next, he went through training in "AO", Aviation Ordnance.  This training would serve him well throughout his career, but in the meantime, he was needed as an aerial gunner on SBD dive-bombers and, later TBF torpedo planes. 

         In the former aircraft, the gunner faced toward the plane’s tail in an open cockpit, manning a pair of .30 caliber machine guns on a ring-mount.  In the latter plane, the gunner was in an electrically operated, plexi-glass turret mounting a single .50-caliber machine gun. The TBF carried a pair of 250-round cans of .50-caliber ammunition for its rear turret.  Both gun arrangements were sighted through a ring sight and, “whenever the wings filled a certain part of that ring,” says Lee, “then, you opened fire.”

         Fortunately, Engberg had developed marksmanship while growing up on the farm. ”With my old .22, I could hit anything that moved,” he says, and that included hunting quail, with their erratic flying patterns.

         Lee says it was common practice on his Avenger for radioman and gunner to switch positions on a mission, as it was dreadfully boring for a radioman to sit down below in the fuselage where he couldn’t see much of what was going on.

         “Mr. Brookshire used to call back every so often and ask ‘Which one’s where?’

In March, 1942, Engberg was aboard the carrier USS Lexington (CV-2), when it left Long Beach, California en route to the Pacific War, but soon transferred to its sister ship, USS Saratoga (CV-3), in VT-12. When the Saratoga docked in San Diego, VT-12’s crews were brought by bus back to the Bay area.

         “We got here and found out the pilots had flown the planes into San Diego, where we had just left.”

         Bussed back to San Diego, Lee says he was among the gunners standing along the runway while the squadron’s pilots practiced landings.  The gunners, yet to be paired with pilots, were sizing up the men who would be flying them into battle.

         “Some of them came in and made nice landings. But here came one in - - hit, bounced, bounced - - took off again and went around.  He did the same thing the second time.”

According to Lee, all 18 gunners watching said, in unison, “Engberg, that’s gotta be your pilot.” 

The pilot’s name, William Brookshire (Lt., USNR) would become a household name for the Engberg family in years to come.  Lt. Brookshire, not much older than Engberg, hailed from Meridian, Mississippi  He had a heavy Southern accent, of which Lee recalls, ”When I first flew with him I couldn’t understand a damn thing he said.”

Lt. Brookshire was always telling the younger gunner what to do, and what not to do.  Lee really liked him, and later on when he was going across the country during his Navy career, Lee would stop to see him.

Bomber and torpedo crewmen were kept separate from their pilots, and Engberg says that was to prevent them from getting to know each other too well.  Lee told a story of his unique communication with Mr. Brookshire on one anti-submarine patrol:

“We were going out to relieve the guy who was doing the figure-eight (over the carrier). I didn’t know whether Mr. Brookshire had had any booze or not, but he just didn’t seem normal that day.”

Engberg suspected something was amiss when Mr. Brookshire failed to properly relieve the other TBF that had been flying patrol.  Then his suspicion was confirmed.

“Can you believe that within about nine minutes from take-off, that man was sound asleep? The radioman tried to wake him up, I tried to get him…”

“So, my gun was on my left side, facing aft. I turned the turret all the way around, put it alongside him and fired about ten rounds.  He came to.”

            Lee says that during their time together, Mr. Brookshire took very good care of his crew, bringing them each a bottle of whiskey when they all went on R&R.  However, the Lieutenant was quoted once as saying, “If I had to choose a crew all over again… I’ve got my doubts (about you two).”

Engberg remembers well the day he was heading back to sea after a week’s liberty at Espiritu Santo.  He was bringing aboard a watermelon, though it was not exactly an ordinary, garden-variety melon.  Lee had lopped off one end and hollowed out the melon to hold a bottle of whiskey Mr. Brookshire had given him. Toothpicks held the melon end in place.

“By the time we got in the liberty boat and back to the ship to go up the gangway, it was too rough.  They were sending a guy down with a line to put around you to haul you up. An ensign, as Duty Officer, was ordering me to throw my watermelon away and I wouldn’t do it.  I had captain’s mast two days later, got 180 hours of extra duty at one hour a day. That means you don’t go ashore until the 180 hours is completed.”

“Four days later, we’re on the same carrier getting transferred to the Saratoga, which had come alongside.   We’re flying planes off the little jeep carrier.  I had my 180 hours assigned to that carrier.  Two days later it was sunk, so that cancelled my 180 hours of extra duty.”

Engberg’s first aerial combat came in the Battle of Santa Cruz.  He recalls that some of the early missions involved attacking Japanese targets in one location and returning to the carrier, which then would steam at twenty knots for a full day before launching planes to attack another target.  During a three-week period in 1942, the Navy’s South Pacific carrier fleet was reduced to only the Saratoga and the Enterprise.

“We didn’t want to do a lot of damage; we just wanted to scare the hell out of them, that’s all.  We hit Surabaya, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo.  And one time, we started from around Sumatra for a run to the lower part of the Philippines, but that never did happen.”

“I never, ever visualized I’d do the things that happened in aerial combat.  A lot of people think aerial combat is something that lasts a long time. It doesn’t. You fly into the target, you come around in a torpedo plane… and it feels like you’re actually in a car.  It’s because the pilot is getting the plane set, rpm’s and everything else.  When he starts his run, he doesn’t want to be doing anything except for adjusting the throttle and the stick.”

Engberg graphically emphasized the need for a torpedo plane to fly absolutely level, as close to the water as possible, for the last 3,000 yards to a target.  Deviating from a flat, low course would cause a torpedo, when it hit the water, to put it on too deep a path toward an enemy ship.

When VT-12 flew missions in the Bonin Islands and the Solomons, and the first mission against the Japanese naval stronghold at Rabaul, Engberg was sitting in the turret behind Mr. Brookshire, guarding against enemy aircraft bouncing them.

“We went in against one hundred Japanese Zeros. We had 24 F6F fighters, 36 dive-bombers and 18 torpedo planes.  That was the day fighter tactics changed.  The fighters used to go down with us, but that day they stayed above us. They engaged the Zeros, which gave us very clear runs except when you came out. Then they were there to greet you.”

Engberg says that for he and his shipmates, there was frequent amazement some Navy planes ever made it back to the carrier.  The VT-12 Squadron lost 8 crewmen in 2 days.

“I came back one day and was way away from my airplane, going down to my quarters, when someone came and got me and wanted to know if I was all right.

“I said, ‘yeah, I’m all right.’”

“He said, ‘Well, come back and look at your airplane.’ ”

“There was bullet-proof glass in the turret, and five 7.7s (7.7 caliber bullets) in it. I knew it.  I guess I was just too scared or something to know if I had been hit or not.”

Of the randomness of destruction and death in naval aviation, Engberg remembers one TBF that came back with a single bullet hole in between the pilot and gunner, the projectile that made it having fatally pierced a photographer between the eyes.  And there was another plane that had been riddled with more than 200 hits.  Remarkably, its crew was unscathed.

Another of Lee’s close brushes with an accident happened in a TBF taking-off, just as the carrier got a submarine alert.  Engberg says a carrier skipper gave any other activity low priority when the ship was under potential threat by an enemy submarine.

“We had just got the tail up and the ship started a hard starboard turn.  It takes a little while for that old rudder to get started, but when it does… well, all of a sudden we just started bouncing, as we headed toward a 5-inch gun mount on the port bow.  We blew one tire, I guess, when it twisted, we hit the gun mount.”

Engberg says his TBF did some severe crabbing as it clawed its way into the air.

Yet, according to Engberg, that event took a back seat to another weird incident on the Saratoga involving a Dauntless dive-bomber taking off.

“You could land planes on the carrier on the stern or on the bow. The carrier had arresting gear on both ends of the deck.  This SBD had gotten just to the end of the runway on takeoff and his tail hook dropped. He got up in the air and he had enough speed that it pulled the tail section right off.”

Fortunately, both the pilot and the gunner were rescued from the water after the plane dived into the drink. Yet the only record made of the incident was some tiny writing in a bottom corner of a page in the ship’s log. Engberg says the next time the Saratoga went into port, the arresting gear on the bow - - a holdover from the days when biplanes, with lower weights and speeds, could more easily land on the carrier - - was promptly removed.

When it came to liberty, Engberg can confirm that most stories of wild sailor activity generally held kernels of truth.  Occasionally, sailors even missed the boat heading back to the Saratoga when their leave had ended.

“Everybody did their job right.  But when you had the time off, you didn’t know whether you were coming back, what you were going to do or anything. There wasn’t anybody to tell you what to do or what not to do when on liberty. 

         In his fifty-four combat missions, Engberg had to bail out of an airplane on two occasions.

         “The first time was coming back to the ship. We were about 3,000 feet up and we weren’t sure what hit us.  It tore a hole in the SBD.  We already had our chutes on and weren’t far from the task force.”

         A Navy destroyer spotted the pilot AP (it wasn’t Lt. Brookshire on the SBD) and Engberg bailing out and left the fleet to scoop them from the ocean.

         The second time Lee had to bail out was on a special night mission.  Engberg was in the turret of his TBF and his pilot and radioman were at their respective positions. The TBF was at about 18,000 feet when its engine seized.  Sporadic antiaircraft fire might have been the culprit, but Lee believes the engine just stopped working.

         Engberg says he always practiced getting out of his turret - - his first drill of clipping on his parachute, exiting the turret and slipping out the starboard aft door of the Avenger took him more than one minute.  Through practice, he chopped down his exit time to twelve seconds.  He not only checked to make sure his survival kit in the life raft was fully equipped, be he also had painted his parachute hardware bright silver, so that in the moonlight he’d be able to see to quickly clip it on.

On the pitch-black night the TBF’s engine seized, Lee says he coolly went for his parachute:

         “I just snapped it on, didn’t bother about anybody, went for the door and went out. Both the pilot and radioman went out later than I did. I caught a wind current one way and they caught one the other way.”

         “They were picked up three days later, or maybe sooner, I don’t remember. I was in the water in my life raft from six to eight days.  And believe it or not I only lost four pounds.”

         Engberg lived by eating small fish he was able to grab while sitting in his life raft. No fishing hook was needed to bring those fish on board.

         “I’d cut ‘em up and get the guts out of them. Then I put them in my parachute and beat the hell out of them and wring them, and drink the juice.  I got sick the first four or five times.  But if you’re bound and determined you’re going to live, you’ve got to do it.”

         During the days alone in the life raft, Engberg saw many ships on the horizon and a few planes high in the sky.  None of them saw him.  He says he carried a prayer his mother had written for him, a prayer asking God to look out for Lee, from above, below and on each side.  It’s a prayer Engberg still carries with him today.

         His rescue came in rather a surprising manner, by the crew of a British submarine.

         “I didn’t know if it was British, Japanese or what. But I could smell the diesel fuel. It was getting dark, so I waited until it got darker and then paddled my little one-man life raft around to the opposite side they (the submariners) were sitting on.  Well, when you hear a Limey speak, you know what it is.”

Lee describes the British sailors as being very calm…guessing they must have expected him in the life raft to make the end-run on them.  He says that though the submarine’s galley was filthy and cockroach-ridden, he was treated like royalty while he was aboard.

            Engberg’s experience in aviation ordnance ended up extending far beyond maintaining and firing the machines guns of dive- and torpedo-bombers. He worked with bombs, rockets, torpedoes and underwater mines.

“To make things safe, you’ve got to really watch the people you’re working with. 

I had an experience where I was working on a mine one day, when an ‘officer-in-charge’ came over to tell me what I was doing wrong.  I responded by telling him the mine hadn’t gone off yet”.

            “He wanted me to go over and work on someone else’s mine that they were putting together, and I said no.”

            The officer insisted Engberg go, telling him it was a direct order.

            Engberg stood firm, responding, “Even if it was God Almighty giving me the order, I’m not working on that mine, until he tears it all down and I start all over.  Because, I don’t know whether he’s done it right, or not.”

         During his two combat tours in the Pacific, Engberg hit two Japanese Zero fighter planes.  The battle was so furious, who knows what happened!  The pilot of an F6F said he hit them also!  Presidential Unit and Individual Citations were given to Lee for his mission at Rabaul Harbor.  Lee spent the final year of the war in Florida, training aerial gunners, which brought its own fair share of interesting adventures.

            Among those was a “mass evacuation” of SBD gunners, an accident that seems hilarious in retrospect.  As he tells it, he was riding as an observer in a TBF on a training flight, while stationed with a squadron in Pearl Harbor.

            “They’d been practicing gunnery, when this one plane caught fire.  He told his crewman to bail out. What he didn’t realize was he was on the air when he told his gunner to bail out.  The other 11 crewmen also went out.”

         Engberg says that because the pilot had used the radio instead of the intercom to only his plane, all the gunners in the squadron heard the call to jump and reacted.

         Long antisubmarine patrols in PBY Catalinas and PBM Mariners conjure many later memories for Engberg.  Since his squadron (based at Norfolk) was responsible for patrolling the East coast from Newfoundland to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, these missions frequently lasted a full day.  He says some months he flew as many as 110 hours.

            Long hours of patrol combined with the weather to aggravate and threaten Engberg’s crew on more than on occasion.

            One experience came when an anchor buoy broke loose during a rainstorm.  On a nighttime flight, Engberg says, the Mariner had landed with a bad engine.

            “The PBM is not hard to maneuver with one engine. We broke loose from the buoy, and I sat in front of the cockpit and behind the forward turret with an Aldis lamp.  The chief was on the flight engineer’s panel.  I think it was the chief radioman operating one sea anchor and another crewman on the other sea anchor.”

            “To help turn the plane, you’d drop the port sea anchor out and it fills with water, turning the plane to the left, or you drop the starboard sea anchor and it turns it to the right. But if you’ve got a dead engine and you try to turn- - like, the port engine was live and the starboard was dead - - it’s hard to turn into a live engine. You’ve got to cut the live one back to make the turn.

            “If they had stopped and done what they should have done… they should have put the propeller into reverse pitch. That could have tuned it to starboard, or backwards, really fast. We later practiced doing that, and it really worked.”

            Another East coast patrol proved a little more harrowing.

Lee says his PBM was the second aircraft in the pattern to return to Norfolk, Virginia NAS, when they were suddenly caught in a snowstorm.  The tower waved off their landing, so Lee’s PBM pilot took the amphibian back up into the blue sky on a course for Cherry Point, North Carolina. Concern began to grow for how much fuel the plane still had, and Engberg checked the flight engineer’s panel to see what the tanks were reading.

“Only one tank was showing a white line. The rest of them were all showing red.”

            The gauges would turn a lighter shade of red when fully empty. Engberg said the flight engineer told him to watch for that to happen and relay the message so the tanks could be switched. He estimated the plane had another forty minutes of flying time.

            “We were 140 miles from Cherry Point, and a PBM flies at 140 miles an hour. So figure that one out. We came into Cherry Point, and at the other end of the runway you could see the snowstorm coming down. We hit the runway, rolled on, and just about 30 seconds after we hit the runway the starboard engine cut out.”

         Retiring in 1969 with 28 + years duty in WWII, Korea and Vietnam, mostly on aircraft carriers, Engberg received the Navy Certificate, in 1971, for 30 years of active service!  Following the Navy Lee worked 15 more years with the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation in Oakland with a pension from the Auto Mechanics Union.  The Retirement Plaque given him in appreciation for his service at Fruehauf says, “To an A-1 Mechanic ... who always said: “If a Man Made It – I can Fix It!”

         Asking Lee about the USS Saratoga, you’ll probably evoke the strongest show of pride a career navy man can ever show.  He’ll tell you that CV-3 was never sunk by the enemy- - that it only met its end in summer of 1946, when the U.S. government used it as part of the target fleet for the nuclear bomb test at Bikini atoll. And, he’ll add that the carrier today still sits upright under 140 feet of water in the atoll.

         This year, Lee Engberg is honored by his induction into the prestigious ‘American Combat Airman Hall of Fame’, at the C.A.F Headquarters in Midland Texas!

By Col. John Crump

"Go to Manila. Go around the Japs, bounce off the Japs, save your men, but get to Manila. Free the internees at Santo Tomas. Take Malacanan Palace and the legislative building…" - - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, January 30, 1945

With those words from the Supreme Allied Commander in the South Pacific, Bob Holland says he prepared for the recapture of Manila, capital of Luzon, the Philippine Islands.

"I was one of seven Marines that was actually attached to the 1^{st Cavalry Division (US Army) for the Philippine operation. The seven of us were on the ground in two jeeps and a Hallicrafter radio truck. It was so big, it carried its own generator and you could talk to Egypt if you liked."}

Master Sergeant Bob Holland was Communications Chief for Marine Air Group 24, First Marine Air Wing. Prior to the invasion to repatriate the Philippines, he had been on the first landing at Bougainville.

MacArthur’s objective at Bougainville was to end the Japanese use of airbases there, secure airfields for a mixed force of Allied bombers and fighters, and begin targeting Japanese air and naval power that flowed through the central enemy base at Rabaul. It took six months to secure the portion of Bougainville deemed necessary as a forward base, and Australian troops battled Japanese troops well into 1945.

Holland says there were reservations about MacArthur’s style among the men Bob knew and fought with, but few, if any of them, questioned the Army general’s substance.

"I’ll be honest with you, Marines weren’t too fond of General MacArthur, trouncing around in his pressed khakis… But I’ll tell you, he’d go right up on the first line.

"I called him a pompous ass, until I met him personally and saw that that man was probably the greatest military brain we have had in the United States in our time. He knew how to anticipate what the Japanese were going to do."

At the end of January, 1945, Macarthur ordered the Army to lead the rescue of 3700 civilian internees at the Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in Manila. The prisoners - - men, women and children - - had been held there for the three and one-half years of Japanese occupation of the Philippines.

After the initial Allied landing, January 21th at Lingayen, Holland was attached to the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division - - which had come ashore six days later.

"When they saw us coming, as we drove up, here’s the 1,000 1st Cavalry troops. And one smart guy jumped up and said, ‘Here comes our relief, seven Marines.’ We knew we were in for it, and we were."

The 1st Cavalry had finished securing Leyte, and its soldiers were told they had R&R coming. Instead they were diverted to Luzon for the San Tomas rescue mission. The immediate change in plans was necessitated by news that Japanese forces had been ordered to kill all internees if there was any chance they might be rescued.

The 1st Cavalry, totally mechanized, was composed of 800-900 troops, 43 tanks, and a force of 168 Marine SBD "Dauntless" dive bombers, based at Mingaladon. Together, they formed what became known as General MacArthur’s "Flying Column."

The Flying Column used its mechanized infantry and tanks to move through or around Japanese positions. When more help was needed, they called in the Marines for air strikes.

Using the radio in his jeep, Holland directed the dive-bombers, recalling, "We kept nine in the air at all times."

February 1st, the mission began, the column pulling out at one minute after midnight. Holland says they didn’t travel far before hitting their first resistance, Japanese troops, within 15 miles of the start point. The 5th Cavalry lost 14 soldiers when they were halted by Japanese troops trying to blow up the bridge over Pampanga River.

"General Macarthur came over and talked to me, because he was curious about what I was doing. And I wished he hadn’t been there. I didn’t want him there. There were nine planes up in the air waiting for me to tell them what to do. I wasn’t going to tell him to get out of here, but I felt like it.

"He said, ‘You’re doing a good job.’ And he turned and walked away."

Holland says the Japanese lost 278 men in that fight, and in another river crossing the same day, 478 of the enemy were killed, for no American losses. This was on the first day, before the group had moved 30 miles.

The Japanese troops were the first of some 255,000 that had been ordered by General Yamashita to go to the mountains that stretched 150 miles north and south through the island of Luzon. The troops, originally deployed along Luzon’s eastern coast, were not always cohesive fighting units, given their displacement from original defense positions. But many were dug into fortified caves or tunnels and had automatic weapons.

Bob says the radio coordination of the Marine SBDs with ground control proved devastating to the Japanese troops.

"I was told to call in a strike and have our SBDs destroy the town of San Ysidro. It was totally infested with Jap soldiers. In less than an hour I got a report back, ‘The target has been left in shambles.’

"They didn’t leave anything above the ground. That was the kind of work that our SBDs did."

"We reached Cabanatuan one day after the US Army Rangers rescued 513 Bataan Death marchers, all that was left in that camp. We had nothing to do with the rescue, but we were able to use our ambulances on our Flying Column to take some of those who could not walk, about half of the 513, back to hospitals in the north of Luzon."

On February 3rd, the Flying Column had advanced to what Holland called the ‘hot corner’ - - Novaliches and the Epo Dam - - which contained a lake that was the sole water supply for Manila.

The bridge at Novaliches crossed the Tuliahan River, and the 1st Cavalry reached it just as Japanese troops set the fuses on demolition charges. A Navy demolition expert bravely crossed the bridge, and extinguished the fuses, allowing the 1st Cavalry’s advance units to quickly roll across the river into the northern part of the Philippine capital.

At 6:35pm by U.S. Army records, the 1st Cavalry had reached the city limits of Manila. The unit had traveled 100 miles in three days (66 hours) through heavy enemy resistance.

Holland remembers well the stresses of keeping the Flying Column moving.

"We got no sleep. Well, I slept on the steering wheel. I couldn’t get out of the radio jeep."

Arriving in Manila’s outskirts, the 1st Cavalry headed straight to Santo Tomas University, while a platoon of tanks and cavalry were sent to Malacanan Palace.

Holland says that at 8:40pm, a 44th Tank Battalion M4 Sherman tank nicknamed "Battling Basic" broke down the main gate of the Santo Tomas campus. There was brisk fighting and most internees were freed from their Japanese captors, with the exception of internees on the third floor of the Education building.

Holland says there were Japanese machine gun crews on the first floor of the building:

"John Hinckey was in ‘Battling Basic’, and he told me personally he fired a round from the tank that blew all the way through the building, out the back. And they had to stop him."

Unable to use brute force, the liberators were faced with a hostage situation. Two hundred seventy internees were being held by 65 Japanese troops, commanded by Lt. Col. Toshio Hayashi. It took 35 hours to negotiate a deal - - the internees would be released when the Japanese were allowed to leave to rejoin their troops in south Manila. And, each Japanese soldier would be permitted to take a personal sidearm.

It was reported that 47 Japanese were escorted out of the university to the location requested, they and the Americans saluting each other as the enemies parted ways.  Apparently, the Japanese didn’t know they headed to an American-occupied area. Soon afterward being released, the Japanese were fired upon and several were killed, including Lt. Col. Hayashi. On the afternoon of February 5th, some of the Japanese returned to Santo Thomas, to become prisoners themselves.

Holland says, "There were a lot of rumors that it took 35 hours to get the (Filipino) guerillas lined up so they’d be there to ‘greet’ the Jap soldiers when they got to the city limits. This was not true, I believe. It’s never been proven, it’s never been disproven."

On the afternoon of February 7th, after MacArthur had come into Manila and continued on, Japanese forces began shelling the university. In the ensuing firefight, as American troops returned artillery fire, 23 of the rescued internees were killed.

The 1st Cavalry was relieved at Santo Tomas by the 37th Infantry on February 7th. In its three day "Flying Column" mission, the 1st cavalry had killed 1,587 Japanese troops and captured another 57 prisoners, for a loss of 36 men killed, 141 wounded and four missing.

After the war, Bob came back to the San Francisco Bay Area. His first job was with the War Assets Administration in Richmond, disposing of materials from the Kaiser shipyards. He married, settled in Napa and helped raise three children.

At this May’s CAF meeting Holland showed his Power Point presentation of fifty-seven Santo Tomas internees who had a reunion in the Philippines on February 3, 2005. The internees, their families and a few liberators returned to the Santo Tomas University campus to be there on the exact day and time of the rescue, sixty years before.

Holland - - a member of the Gideon organization, which places Bibles in hotel rooms, hospitals, and internationally - - says while he was in the island for the reunion, a fellow Gideon asked Bob to give a special presentation.

Holland says, "As we always do at these types of meetings, we read from the scripture. And we read that night from the book of Mark 10: 34, where Jesus was asked by James and John, the disciples, if they could have a special favor, if they could sit on his right and on his left when they all got to heaven.

"And Jesus answered them, saying ‘No, that is not My prerogative to give. It will be given by the person who owns it, who will be decided later.’

Bob continues, "The Gideon sitting next to me bent over and whispered in my ear, ‘He said that because he knows that seat is reserved for General Douglas MacArthur!’"

(sidebars)

When the Japanese occupied Manila, the main building at Santo Tomas University was used to hold civilian POWs, and classrooms were used for sleeping quarters.  The campus, surrounded by two feet thick walls, was a prison from January 4, 1942 - February 3, 1945. In total there were 3,787 prisoners: the vast majority Americans, but also there were British, Australians, Canadians, Dutch, French, Swiss, Egyptians, Spanish, one German, and one Slovak. 

The overflow of internees at Santo Tomas were taken down to Los Banos University, which was also repatriated in February, 1945. All who survived at Santo Tomas were in captivity for 37 months, with 466 dying before they could be rescued.

After the February 1945 rescue of internees at Santo Tomas University, Holland and his Marine "top cover" were recalled to the area. There were reports that Japanese troops had retaken the high ground of Epo Dam.

Holland says, "They had ten trucks of cyanide to poison the water. Our SBDs strafed and bombed the Japanese troops that were there. After it was over, I personally saw a team of 1st Cavalry go down to count them, and they said that there were over 600 of them dead, in less than two hours."

By Col. John Crump

(image - 40mm Gun Gallery.jpg)

1. Gun Captain, with headset & binoculars, decides on targets and electrically fires guns

2. Gunner, with left eye to computer sight. To his left is an ‘iron’ ring sight for backup.

3. Horizontal traverse mechanism

4. Vertical traverse is on right side (out of sight) of gun from horizontal position

5. Loader (1 per side) drops ‘clips’ of 40mm shells into the breech mechanism

6. Supplier (1 per side) lifts ‘clips’ of shells from gun galley on far right of picture

(image - SBD Douglas Dauntless Dive Bomber.jpg)

(image - Collision with Sangamon.jpg)

(image - Hangar Deck Burial at Sea.jpg)

(image - Roi Island Invasion.jpg)

(image - 4 seconds after Kamikaze 1)

(image – Kamikaze 2a.jpg), (image – Kamikaze 2b.jpg)

(image - Cooling beer.jpg)

On June 21, 1944, during the invasion of Saipan, the big carriers of the fleet had gone up to the Marianas Turkey Shoot and left the invasion beaches to us. Eustace says it was a pitch black night and the phosphorus of CVE-27’s wake pointed right to the ship. Bob was at his battle station, forward of the bridge, when he saw a Japanese plane heading toward the carrier, hurtling within 100 feet of his head.

On October 25th, 1944, the Suwannee was in Leyte Gulf, and Bob was on the bridge when bullets began rattling off the steel of the bridge as an enemy plane came down, pursued by an F6F Hellcat trying to blast it to pieces. The Japanese plane, with its 500-pound bomb and fuel load, struck the Suwannee just forward of the aft elevator and exploded on the hangar deck below.

After WWII, Bob Eustace left the U. S. Navy as Photographers Mate First Class, at the age of 20. He continued his passion for photography, working 44 years with Kodak.

Harold Carlson had become interested in attending Naval Academy while he was in grade school. When he came of age, he pursued his dream and ultimately found himself on missions, which are today part of the lore of United States Naval Aviation.

After a year and a half of studies at two different colleges, Harold joined the National Guard to compete for an appointment to West Point. He was accepted by both academies, and decided in favor of the U.S. Navy. Carlson and his best friend studied together for the Navy exams and both passed them, but Harold's friend decided to become a banker instead.

"I spent four years at the Naval Academy. We were the last class before the war to get four years. The subsequent classes had three-and-a-half, and then three.

"I checked in at the math department and discovered that the math text was written by a prof I had at Reed College, so I had a little help there."

An incident that failed to help Carlson came while playing soccer in his first year at Naval Academy. He broke his leg, and after being diagnosed with having "cat fever", he had to hobble around a few days before x-rays could be taken and the leg was set.

In 1938, Carlson and his classmates steamed on the WWI battleship USS Wyoming to Europe, touching ports in Madera, Portugal; Turkey; England and Kiel, Germany. After Kiel, Carlson took his first airplane ride, a Lufthansa flight from Hamburg to Copenhagen and then up to Sweden.

His next year was split between Naval Academy and that summer’s cruise up and down the eastern seaboard on a WWI-era four-pipe destroyer, USS Badger. On this trip, Harold also got to see his brother, who was in the Coast Guard Academy, and he sneaked him into a dinner at the Naval Academy in the uniform of one of Carlson’s classmates.

"It was a good thing I wasn’t caught," says Harold.

His broken leg mended, Carlson returned to the soccer squad and took part in defeating the Army team. Then, it was off to another cruise, this time on the battleship USS Texas, as a gun captain on a 5-inch battery.

Soon came graduation for 456 of the 775 men in the class who had all entered the Academy together.

"We ended up having the highest rates of losses in World War II, because we had to spend the first two years aboard a ship before we could have flight training, or go to a submarine school, or get married. So, many of my classmates were aboard ship at Pearl Harbor on December 7th."

In June of 1940, Carlson went aboard the Brooklyn class cruiser USS Nashville at Mare Island in San Francisco Bay. Swede says his first duty was as Captain of the Head, "in charge of toilet paper."

The Nashville was stationed at Pearl Harbor until 1941, when it was ordered, without warning, back to the East coast.

"While going through the Panama Canal, escorting battleships, we had our ship’s names covered, so they couldn’t tell who we were. But they still welcomed us ‘ Hello Nashville ’."

From Iceland, the Nashville took part in cruises from Bermuda to Africa, back to Iceland and then down again to Bermuda. By early 1942, the Nashville was joining the carrier Hornet on the Doolittle raid to Tokyo. About 150 miles short of the planned B-25 launch point, the convoy ran into Japanese picket boats.

"My ship, the Nashville shot up one of the picket boats ot there, and a survvor coming aboard on a rope ladder broke out his knife. A boatswain’s mate pointed a gun at him and he (the Japanese) changed his mind."

Returning to Pearl harbor after the Doolittle raid escort role, the Nashville headed to Midway on a plan to shoot up Japan’s fishing fleet. Carlson says the cruiser ran into a reef and returned to Pearl Harbor for repairs. Then, shortly after leaving there, the Nashville was diverted to the Aleutians, helping thwart a feeble Japanese invasion thrust coinciding with the Battle of Midway.

Flight training came next for Carlson, starting with his primary training in New Orleans and continuing at Pensacola, Florida. By early 1943, Harold had begin operational raining in TBM Avenger torpedo planes at Ft. Lauderdale. Carrier qualifications on the USS Sable and Wolverine in Lake Michigan came next.

After Carlson got his wings, he served a short time in VC-20 and then he was transferred to VC-11, a TBF/TBM squadron flying from the escort carrier CVE-74 Nehenta Bay . The carrier was used to transport damaged aircraft and wounded sailors form the Pacific theater back to the West coast, as well as providing antisubmarine patrols to protect supply convoys following the carrier fleets. In both squadrons, Carlson served as Executive Officer.

Harold finally saw combat in 22 combat missions over the Marianas Islands, and while covering the landings at Leyte, the Philippines, Harold says he saw, from afar, General Douglas MacArthur’s return to those islands.

As the War in the Pacific ended, Carlson recalls rough seas while steaming back in his carrier to the United States, and the sounds of crashing waves damaging the ship.

"Swede" continued his Navy career after the war, at the same time, "having the good fortune of marrying another Swede, Isabel Johanssen." The newlyweds lived at a number of Navy bases through Harold’s varied assignments.

One of those assignments was VA-195, originally nicknamed the "Tigers", and Carlson’s next command. In November of 1950 the squadron of AD-4 Skyraiders was aboard the USS Princeton , steaming off the coast of Korea. The first action the unit saw was providing coverage for Marines withdrawing from the Chosin Reservoir.

"One of the first things we did was to fly over the rescue efforts for the black pilot, Ens. Jesse Brown, who flew his aircraft into the ground. He survived, but couldn’t get out of the aircraft. His shipmate, Lt.jg Thomas Hudner, Jr. took his airplane in, landed alongside and tried, unsuccessfully, to get him out. For his effort, Hudner received the Medal of Honor." (Ens. Brown was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.)

Carlson himself had at least one close call while flying Skyraiders over Korea - -

"I had almost a dead-stick landing in a shot-up airplane. The engine wasn’t working very well so I climber as high as I could, and I couldn’t get back to my carrier, the Princeton . The carrier Boxer turned into the wind for me, and I went down and landed on it. My captain thought that was wonderful and ordered us both aviation brandy."

One of the unique shipboard operations Swede says he recalls was named "Operation Pinwheel." It was an attempt by the carrier’s skipper to use the 2000 hp engines of Skyraiders on the deck of the Princeton to help turn the ship. Harold has a photo of ADs on either side of the carrier’s deck, all facing the ship‘s centerline.

"We tied down the airplanes, turned up the engines and moved the ship. It was a terrible way of doing business. The CAG and the various skippers complained, but in vain."

The remainder of Carlson’s tour with VA-195 was flown on missions involving the guidance of Air Force controllers flying "mosquitos", T-6 trainers.

"We bombed and napalmed targets all over Korea, but we operated basically out of the east side, the Sea of Japan."

In March of 1951, a rail bridge was singled out as North Korea’s key link for supplies. VF-195 bombed the bridge by day, and the North Koreans would repair it by night. The squadron ended up making so many missions to take out the span that UN forces named the gorge below "Carlson Canyon." James Michener’s book, "The Bridges of Toko-Ri" and the movie by that title, are largely based on the saga of Carlson’s Canyon.

Swede also spoke of his Skyraider night missions. While some of these were flown against railroad bridges and tunnels, the most memorable was against the Hwachon Dam.

The North Koreans would open the dam’s floodgates and raise the waters of the Han and Pukhan rivers, preventing UN forces from moving north. Closing the gates allowed the North Koreans to lower the rivers so their troops could launch attacks across them.

When bomb attacks on the dams by the Skyraiders and even by B-29s failed to shut down the floodgate operations, Carlson’s squadron was given the opportunity to take them out with Mark 13 torpedoes left over from WWII.

"When the Princeton was decommissioned they took all the ordnance off of the ship. When she was recommissioned, they put it all back on and included the torpedoes, fortunately."

Unlike the Avenger, which carried a torpedo internally, the AD could only carry a torpedo externally. in this instance, in a makeshift arrangement.

"We had to modify the airplane slightly. There were three dive brakes on the plane, two on one wing and one in the middle of the fuselage. We had to be careful so that the center one would not hit the torpedo."

The next morning after making the modifications, CAG-19 Commander Dick Merrick led the first strike division and Carlson led the second division.

High mountain ridges channeled the river leading up to the dam, and the aviators’ planned for a specific speed and altitude to release the torpedoes so they would run effectively, just below the water’s surface, and strike the floodgates.

"The plan was to drop the torpedoes at about a thousand yards out, roughly a half a mile. It was a little tricky because there was a bend in the reservoir and we had to come down at fairly high speed, level out and get down to about 160-165 knots and fly about fifty feet high. We had to ensure the torpedo would not go in flat, which would break it up - - or too steep, which would make it porpoise up and down and never settle down. It had to go in at roughly a 20-degree angle."

Carlson says the ADs went in two-by-two, spaced to allow the torpedo warheads to detonate before the next flight of two planes came over the dam. Swede says that of the eight torpedoes dropped by his division, six ran true and took out several floodgates. Overhead, he says, eight or ten Corsairs dropped bombs and distracted North Korean antiaircraft gunners.

As a result of this mission, VA-195 later changed its name from "Tigers" to "Dambusters".

Today, there is an Avenger aboard the USS Yorktown in Charleston, South Carolina, that is painted and marked as Carlson’s TBM was in World War II. And there is an AD Skyraider at the Flight Factory in Suffolk, Virginia similarly commemorating the aircraft Swede flew in the Korean War.

Before the January, 2006 dinner meeting of the Golden Gate Wing, the last time CAPT Cole Black was at the Alameda NAS terminal was in September, 1965. In that month, now decades removed, VF-211's F-8 Crusaders had been flown in from NAS Miramar to be loaded aboard CVA-19 USS Hancock for a second combat cruise to Vietnam. The events of that cruise would severely test Cole Black in many ways.

Born November 28th, 1932, Cole grew up on a farm near Lake City, Minnesota.

He attended a rural two-room school house, with three other kids in his class. High school education came at Lincoln HS in Lake City, and Cole says that was a turning point in his life.

"I got my first chance in a gymnasium. I didn't know what they did there, I'd gotten all my exercise on the farm loading hay bales and stuff. I look back at the kids I met there, and they got me interested in things like football, wrestling and baseball, and sometimes I look back and thank those kids, because they got me into competitive sports. And that probably saved my life up the road. If I had not been physically fit at the time, I would probably never have gotten out of my airplane when it was full of bullets and headed for the ground."

Cole became an outstanding athlete. He was All-State in football and team captain for two years, he played baseball and wrestled. And in that last sport, he was a finalist in the 1950 state championships.

When Black graduated from Lincoln High, he had a scholarship for a Wisconsin college, but says recruiters from the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps came to campus to talk with him, and one of them stole his heart away.

"I think I liked the Navy uniform best at the time. A bunch of us joined up with the Navy."

Black says when he and his buddies were ready to board the bus for the Great Lakes, an old boatswain's mate told them, "You guys have joined up with a first-class outfit. You're going to see the Navy and the world in a first class way. And, you' ain't never going to have to use a mule's tail for a compass again."

Cole began spent the first five years of his Navy career as an aviation electronics technician, before being selected for Officer Candidate School, followed by flight training. He earned his Wings of Gold in February, 1957. Then followed four years as a reconnaissance pilot in Light Photographic Squadron 62, at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Florida and then overseas, flying an unarmed Cougar on missions during his first cruise in the Mediterranean.

Next came a stint at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in marine engineering. Good grades led to Cole's assignment to a fighter squadron, VF-211, the Checkmates.

After more training, came carrier qualifications and then a return to the Checkmate squadron as it prepared to cruise to station in the South China Sea off Vietnam.

"We flew a lot of missions in early '65, and the war was becoming more complex. We lost a few pilots and planes. Aircraft carriers are just like cars and trucks. They need maintenance, and we had to send the Hancock back to the United States for routine upkeep and maintenance."

At home for three and a half months, VF-211 was at Fallon, Nevada sharpening air-to-ground attack skills and practicing dogfighting. Then it was back to Alameda to load up again for a second cruise to Vietnam.

"We left Pearl Harbor, and I still remember that, because we know where we're going. We know the war has intensified. The war became much more real to me, then."

The Hancock, with VF-211 aboard, was back on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin. The squadron was flying missions much further north, on targets now defended by SAM missiles that were taking a toll on US air strikes.

By June of 1965, the squadron commander had downed a MiG. Black says when the skipper returned to the carrier he came alongside the carrier at about 500 knots, banked it around and made his landing approach with the hook retracted. After going around again, the skipper landed and was hustled off to debriefing.

VF-211's ops officer, nicknamed "Spence" also had a MiG story. After unloading ordinance on a mission, he noticed tracers streaming by his aircraft. Suddenly he noticed the tracers were parallel to his Crusader - - and were coming from a MiG right behind him!

"He lit the afterburner and headed for the water as fast as the airplane would go. He made it down to Danang, with 50 or 60 holes in his plane by that time. But he got down onto the ship and they dragged him into Intelligence.

"They're always interested in the tactics you use to get away. And Spence said, 'Yeah I just drove straight ahead, and was all out of bullets.' "

Cole says he expected to fly a couple more tough missions, and then he'd be back in San Diego as early as the Fourth of July.

On June 21, 1966 Black was flying as escort for a flight of bombers targeting a bridge near Haiphong, deep in North Vietnam near the China border. Cole says everything went well - - not a MiG showed up and the bombers hit the bridge without any trouble - - until a reconnaissance plane was shot down. The pilot of the plane was a good friend of Cole's, and 'Snuffy' Smith who was escorting the recce plane was low on fuel.

"I went up there, saw the airplane burning on the ground and made a turn, being very careful to duck this flak site that was shooting at us down there. Just as I was coming around, I saw the orange smoke flare from the downed pilot. I reported it to the Air Wing Commander, who said to make one more turn and see if he'll come up on his survival radio and tell us if he's okay.

"I came back around, and just as I was going to turn left, I heard my wingman say, 'There they are fellows.' I looked up and there's four MiGs coming at us, a little bit above us, but they hadn't even seen us yet.

"I knew I had to engage them because we didn't want them jumping on the bombers. So I bent that airplane around to the right as hard as I could pull it. I was going to pull inside of the flak site. About halfway through the turn my wingman said, 'You took a hit, Nickel, you've got smoke trailing.'"

Black says at that moment he didn't really care. He continued his turn and then tried to roll out, but the controls were really sluggish. He booted the rudder and got the plane level, but then had another problem.

"I looked in this rear view mirror and there's another MiG coming in at about 5 o'clock. He was already shooting at me, so I pulled back on the stick and got the nose up maybe ten degrees, and that took all the rest of the hydraulic fluid in that airplane.

"When the Crusader loses all its hydraulic fluid, it goes into a violent nose-over pitch, and of course that throws the pilot up against the canopy. I'm stuck up there, and I know I've lost it then. My last transmission on the radio was, 'This is Nickel One. I'm getting out. And then I went for that curtain."

"The canopy came off the airplane, but the damn seat didn't go. Now I'm sitting in the seat, still doing 500 knots and headed toward the ground. The face curtain blew out so I could see the ground, and I was very highly motivated. I got that face curtain and yanked on it once more with all of my strength, and the next thing I heard was the bang of the parachute. I came out of the airplane, the chute opened and made one swing before I was on the ground.

"That's why I say those classmates back in school who taught me that physical fitness was probably a good thing, helped save my life that day."

Black says he stripped off his parachute and harness, then escaped and evaded for probably all of five minutes. He immediately started up a tall hill, 'chute in hand, with the intention of burying it in some high weeds.

Suddenly from out of the weeds, rose two armed North Korean militiamen, one of whom said, "Hand up." Black says he suspected they'd captured other airmen before, because despite becoming excited about seeing the .38 caliber pistol Cole wore strapped across his chest, one of them came around behind to carefully disarm him. Then they took his boots, and tied the pilot's hands with his boot strings.

Cole was taken to a nearby village, until he was before what appeared to be a village elder. The man stood about a foot away, stared at Cole, then came closer.

"He looked me right in the eye and said, in perfect English, ' War is Hell.' "

The man turned and left, and Cole didn't see him again. The rest of the evening in the village, Black remembers the villagers were trying to speak to him in Chinese and French… but not English. He recalls these villagers as primitive people who kept him in a pig cage but otherwise didn't treat him harshly.

Black says his right foot hurt (he later learned he'd broken a bone in it), but otherwise seemed okay, with the exception of becoming dehydrated. Before long, Cole's captor brought him a goatskin bag and gestured for him to drink from it.

Cole says he took about three gulps of what he realized was beer.

"I stopped and tried to give it back to him, thinking 'If I drink all his beer, he'll probably kill me.'

But the man motioned for Cole to continue to drink the beer, which the pilot says he did. Soon, soldiers came to take Black away, and as the village prepared for a celebration, Cole found out what his life was the worth. The reward to the villagers for delivering Black was a one hundred pound sack of rice.

Black was then off to Hanoi. He says he was tightly tied up and put in the back of a jeep. Twice, the jeep stopped in villages where Cole was beaten and posed for propaganda pictures.

"They took a young soldier and a young lady in uniform, and they dragged me back in the bushes. I thought they were going to shoot me because they both had weapons.

"The next thing I know, we're turned around and they're dragging me back up, one under each arm and they're pulling me along. As soon as they pulled me out of the bushy area, they'd lined three or four jeeps up and they had a movie camera. They're taking pictures of the heroic Vietnamese children catching the American air pilot!"

By sun-up the next morning, Black had been delivered to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton". The first room Black was taken to had been dubbed the "Green Room", a torture chamber, possibly sixteen feet square, with all the tools of the trade to make people do what the captors wanted them to do.

As best as Cole remembers, because he lost track of time, he was in that room for five nights. He had had no food, and little to drink.

"I was tied up and punished until my arms and shoulders were rendered useless, partially dislocated. I was pretty badly hurt. I thought I got to the point where I told the interrogator, ' Why don't you just shoot me, and get it over with.'

"He just told me, 'Nah. It's easy to die. You're going to find out it's very hard to live. We're going to reduce you to a dog.'

Cole says a little later he found out what that last comment meant. The room into which he was brought held an interrogation table, straps, leg irons, manacles, and a hook in the ceiling from which to hang prisoners. Cole says he didn't have to hang from the hook.

"I tell a story about Charlie Plum, a young aviator who was tough, and tells a story about his visit to that room. When they got done with him, he was laying on the floor, legs in irons…probably bleeding from a few places and hurting everywhere. He's laying on the floor and looks up at the interrogation table. He looked up at the bottom of the table and there, scrawled in English, were the words, 'Smile. You're on Candid Camera.'

"Charlie said he looked at that and said, 'If someone went through what I went through and was still able to have any humor left in 'em… It was like a shot in the arm. I can still hack it, I'll still keep going. I'll still resist these buggers.' And that's what he did."

Black says after the five days and nights in the cell, his tormentors must have thought they were finished with him. He was dragged out to another section of the Hanoi Hilton they called 'Heartbreak Hotel', the first real prison cell he stayed in, and

Where he had his first 'meal' since being captured.

In front of his cell was a porcelain bowl with some 'evil looking' green stuff in it, and a loaf of bread sagging into the bowl. A rat was chewing on one end of the bread.

"The guard wanted me to carry that into the cell. But I couldn't use my hands because they'd hurt my arms and hands so badly I couldn't pick anything up. So he chased the rat away with his foot, slid the dish through and pushed me through the door, and slammed it. I found myself in my first prison cell with my first real meal.

Black says he knew from survival training he needed to eat and drink to survive, no matter what was offered. He says got down on his hands like a puppy, stuck his face in the dish and ate every bit of the food, except for the piece of bread the rat chewed on.

After a few days, in which Cole says he'd been left alone, he was blindfolded and driven by jeep at night to a prison camp they called "Zoo Camp". He says he would later know there were other camps, with names like "Plantation" and "Dogpatch".

A couple of days later, on July 6th, 1966, was the 'Hanoi March'. Black says 72 POWs were marched to a little park in downtown Hanoi where they were beaten by civilians with rocks, bottles and clubs. He recalls many of the prisoners were badly hurt by the beatings, and a lot of cameras were taking pictures, which offered the US military proof that many of the men were indeed still alive.

"We ended up getting pushed into the stadium that night, and it was really a good thing we got in there. We ended up on the cinder track and there were a couple of medics trying to help the people who were badly hurt.

"I got busted in the eye a couple of times and had blood running down my face and the front of my shirt. I had a cut lip and could stick my tongue out through my lip. That looked kind of gross.

The POWs were then blindfolded, loaded into trucks and taken to different places. Cole says when they removed his blindfold, he was back in the Green Room.

"I thought they were going to kill me. I didn't think I could handle that again. But it was my lucky night.

"They took a lot of people to the Zoo Camp and tied them to trees outside and beat them that night. They just wanted to show us that the Vietnamese people didn't like us. We were already convinced of that."

In the Green Room, Cole was told he was going to meet some very high-ranking officers of the Vietnamese People's Army. The interrogator told Cole he must 'show good attitude', and do everything he was told.

Three chairs were on one side of the interrogation table, with a stool on the other side of the table. A soldier with a tray brought three bottles of beer and a pack of cigarettes, which were placed on the table. Then three younger officers, in sharp uniforms, entered and told the interrogator to leave.

Cole quickly found out the three officers spoke English, which led him to suspect they were MiG pilots. He says they stared at him, in his bloody shirt, as if in disgust at the way he'd been treated. One asked him if he flew combat, at low altitude… to which Cole just nodded his head 'yes'.

Cole says as the three officers eyed him, he recalled from his last mission the sight of another Navy jet chasing a MiG - -

"He was right on his tail and the MiG split-essed too low and went right into the ground. And I said, 'You know, they don't like that low altitude combat.

"They all three stood up and pushed their beers over to me and told me to drink it, and then they left. The door came shut, and I did what any American fighter pilot would do, I drank all the damn beers. I called that my first liberty."

About four months after that night, Black got his first cellmate as a POW in Zoo Camp. James Halls Young, an Air Force F-101 Voodoo pilot, and Black were to share the same cage for three and a half years.

During that time, the prisoners named not only the camps, but also the guards and interrogators. There was "Knobby"; "the Rat", who looked like a rat; and "the Rabbit", who had ears Cole described as gigantic.

A key tool which kept the prisoners on their toes and able to withstand their hardships was their use of tap code.

"Best we can figure out it was devised in the Revolutionary War. You take the alphabet and divide it up into a five-by-five block, 25 letters, leaving the letter 'K' out. It made a matrix, and if you want to tap a 'C', it's the first line, third letter (one tap, pause, three taps)."

The POWs used many abbreviations to shorten the labor of tapping, and Cole says these messages, as well as the very act of communicating were vital to morale and became the lifeblood of the prison camp.

"When you first got there, it's pretty easy to become depressed. I found that maybe the guy that was trying to cheer me up might have a broken leg and arm, but he's trying to cheer me up. That was the kind of people we had in there."

Cole says the penalty for getting caught communicating was severe, punishment that made sleep and normally performing other body functions virtually impossible.

"They used to call it 'heavy iron discipline.' That meant they'd put you on a concrete slab, put your legs in irons and manacle your arms behind you and leave you that way. Some guys were left that way for 90 days. The only time they'd let you out of those was when they'd bring the food."

Black credits the survival of the POWs he knew in North Vietnam largely to humor among those professional soldiers.

"We had jokes passed, even the riskiest communication… if someone had a good joke, they'd manage a way to get it sent though the walls of the prison, so everyone could laugh a little bit. And we laughed there. We cried there, too, but there were times when the humor put us in better stead."

One summer season, Black says the POWs found little green peas in their swill, making them think , "This is a good sign. They're trying to get us fattened up now by feeding us peas in the soup. That's really above and beyond, instead of just swill.

"So every day we'd have a pea count. Each cell would forward how many peas they got, and if the pea count went up, it was just like the stock market… If the pea count went down, dammit, now we're going back downhill again.

"There was always a comedian in the group. When things were really going to hell, there was some guy who would step up. I really found it to be beneficial to morale."

Highest credit to the ranking POW, Admiral James Stockdale "Admiral Stockdale took many hits for us guys. He did what I call, 'standup and be counted'. It didn't make any difference what the penalty was going to be, Admiral Stockdale did what was right. They could be hauling people our, beating people, and he wouldn't give an inch until he had to.

"He was a philosopher in many respects, and that's what kept him going. He had private quarters nearly all of his stay over there. He was badly hurt when he got shot down, and was badly hurt from mistreatment. But he was a remarkable man."

"I have the utmost respect for Admiral Stockdale."

Black says the daily routine consisted of a meal at eight or nine o'clock in the morning - - a dish of rice and one of swill, or a loaf of bread. About four o'clock in the afternoon, the menu would be repeated. Hopefully, Black says, the meals would be interrupted by an air raid.

"Every time I'd hear an air raid go off, that would boost our morale to hear American airplanes over Hanoi. Sometimes we'd peek out through cracks and see a couple of fighters go by, and I'd say, 'Gosh, I wish I was in that Crusader over Hanoi right now, because if I knew if I was flying over in my F-8, in forty minutes I could be back aboard the Hancock getting a cold drink of water and something to eat.'

"I used to dream about cold water because my stateroom on the Hancock, right outside the door was a water fountain with the coldest water on the ship. And if you get thrown in a cage like that… you never see cold water. Thank the Lord they probably did boil water, so we didn't get sick from it."

Black says medical treatment was provided for the American POWs, though its intent was aimed at preventing them from dying.

"If you were going to die, they were going to try to keep you alive, because their bargaining chip was us prisoners. I received medical treatment up there, so I'll tell you what the kind of medical treatment I got was.

"I got bit by a Communist dog, which was kind unusual. I happened to be on the dishwashing crew, and I was trying to carry dishes to wash them in this dirty little area in which we washed dishes. This little black Chow came up and bit me in the back of the foot, really got his teeth right in the heel area.

Black says he looked at the dog and it was frothing at the mouth and looked sick. His cellmate said the dog had rabies. Black says he called, 'bakshi, bakshi' (doctor, doctor) to the guard, but was told there was no doctor. The guard did bring iodine to apply to the puncture wounds.

Early the next morning, Black says the cell door clanged open and the camp commander, interrogator and the camp doctor came in, and they decided Black should have rabies shots - - 21 injections in the belly. The doctor had to stick the flyer about 100 times to successfully inject the 21 doses of serum.

A series of camp moves came after an American raid at the Son Tay prison camp. The camp was vacant, but the raid apparently scared the North Vietnamese into closing the far flung camps and consolidating POWs at the Hanoi Hilton. Instead of locking prisoners in small cages, they were grouped together in large cellblocks.

"Morale soared and the resistance posture was really well organized. We made them let us have church services and things like that in the camp."

B-52 strikes on Hanoi, just before Christmas in 1972, announced the end of the war. Black says he was in a camp near China called "Dog Patch", when the saturation bombing raids began, each time leveling about 6 square miles of city, and forcing the Vietnamese to negotiate. Black praises then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for including seven POWs being held in Laos (nicknamed LULU's, for Lost Union of Laotian Unfortunates) to be among the POWs to be returned - - or US bombers would lay waste to Hanoi.

"Kissinger said they need to be included as part of the package, or there will be B-52 s over Hanoi tonight. And Li Duc To said, 'Okay'."

The 12th day of February, 1973, Cole Black was among the first 120 POWs to be released, based mainly on their length of imprisonment. In all, 566 POWs were repatriated.

"They marched us over to the C-141. It was the most beautiful plane I'd ever seen. I'd never seen one before, because it was on the drawing board when I got shot down.

They had the best looking Air Force nurses you've ever seen on the plane. They were going to take care of us until we got to Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

"It wasn't really until we were 'feet wet' over the water when the pilot said, 'Clark Air Base in three hours and fifteen minutes.' The cheer went up. We'd made it out of that damn place and were going home. Really, this time, because we'd had a lot of false leads before. Back to the real world… back to the United States and Operation Homecoming (organized and commanded by LT GEN John Gonge, USAF, our GGW speaker February 2005).

Black says when the repatriated POWs arrived at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, they got hospital rooms, white sheets and safety razors to clean up with.

"But they weren't feeding us anything, because they thought the rich foods would make us sick. We were getting toast and very wimpy type foods. The second day we were there, we got Col. Risner cornered and we decided we should call the President.

We had a telephone in every room and you could call anywhere in the world. Pac Bell paid for all of it. We got together in Robby Risner's hospital room and dialed the White House. We got a hold of president Nixon in the Oval Office. Robby's a honey-tongued person, a much better speaker than you find hardly anywhere. He was our spokesman and he talked to the President, and thanked him for our freedom."

Black says Risner and Nixon made some small talk, and then the President said, "We're glad you guys are coming home. Is there anything else in the world I can do for you."

Cole says the chow hounds in the group said to ask for beer, ice cream, steak and eggs. So Risner told the President, "These guys are complaining again, already. They must be in pretty good shape. They want to have some beer, ice cream, steak and eggs…"

To which President Nixon responded, "I'll see what I can do."

The next morning, Black says, " The whole breakfast area in the hospital was set up with a hot bar of scrambled eggs, poached eggs, omelets, any kind of egg you could have possibly wanted, and little breakfast steaks. At the next table they had ice cream of every flavor you've ever seen. And they had strawberries, chocolate, butterscotch, nuts, whipped cream. And at the far end they had Budweiser and Coors."

Black says 'breakfast' for one of the men was a plate loaded with ice cream, covered in chocolate, butterscotch, cherries and other toppings. He got two beers and headed for the table to down it all.

"I call that the Power of the President."

Black says the fighting personnel in Vietnam wanted to end the war quickly, and he believes that without the political constraints, the war could have been ended in about two months in 1965.

"We could have brought that war to an end and saved thousands of lives in 1964. Instead of that we screwed up, because of American press and American public opinion."

"The people that treated us badly, were doing their job. The people further up were the ones who told them to do that. The dumb little guard who's packing the rifle, even the guy who's tying you up - - they do a good job. They do what they're told and make you talk. But if you could get a couple of those uneducated Vietnamese guys, we called them a goon squad… give you about a half an hour with a Vietnamese goon squad, you'd probably talk. My old skipper used to say, 'Man if they catch me, they're going to have to muzzle me to shut me up. They want all kinds of information out of you, and a lot of it you don't even know. So you're really a dead pigeon, and finally you have to say something."

"I can't say I wouldn't like to spend a little time alone in a room with one of those guys, one at a time and see how it would work out, but… they were doing their job. War is hell, you know."

After rehabilitation at Balboa Hospital in San Diego, Cole returned to active duty, flying high performance jet fighters with VF-126 at NAS-Miramar. Then came a number of Navy assignments, including Executive Officer of the USS New Orleans, LPH-11; Exec. Officer of NAS-Miramar (Master Jet Center) for 3-1/2 years; Naval Attache' to Mexico 1982-85; and a key staff assignment in 1986 in Washington D.C.

Cole Black retired from the Navy in July, 1986 as a Captain, with 36 years of active duty service. Among his military awards are 2 Silver Stars, 3 Bronze Stars with Combat V, 2 DFCs, 9 Air Medals, 2 Purple Hearts, Legion of Merit with Combat V and Gold Star, Presidential Unit Citation, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with 4 Bronze Stars, and Combat Action Ribbon.

As a civilian, Black built a successful real estate career. He currently serves as President of the national group of Vietnam POWs, "NAMPOWS", and he was a key organizer of memorial services aboard the USS Ronald Reagan for VADM James B. Stockdale in July, 2005.

Code of Conduct is a novel written by wife Karen, paralleling Cole's experiences as a fighter pilot and POW, his coping with incarceration and life adjustments afterward.

Golden Gate Wing, CAF - - November 2005

Len Harris is a self-described "Cockney". He was born in London’s east side, just a few blocks from the Tower of London. Of his childhood he says, "I behaved myself very rarely..."

As France was falling in late 1939, all that separated the occupying German Army from Great Britain was the expanse of the English Channel - - as few as twenty miles from Calais to the cliffs of Dover .

"The first thing they wanted to do was to get the kids of out London, because they anticipated bombing raids. So, myself, among many thousand sof snotty-nosed kids fro the East End, were shipped out to the comparative safety of the countryside. Except that they put me on a farm where I was expected to help on farming duties, including milking cows.

"Well, as a Cockney kid, I always thought that milk came in bottles, not from cows. I had a hell of a job. I asked the bloke where I got the milk from. He showed me. I was disgusted."

Len also recalls a farm dog which he swears must have been to the movies, because it was convinced that he was ‘rustling’ the cows.

"I’d drive them out into the field, and he’d drive them back.

"Two weeks of that was enough for me, so I delivered an ultimatum - - ‘Either send me back or I’ll go back anyway’."

Back in East London, Len says his dad gave him a rough time for returning, then told the teenager he might as well go to work. Len went to Reuters News Agency, where he became a bicycle messenger.

The new job offered its own unique challenges during Germany’s bombing blitz.

"I happened to be cycling along near Fleet Street, and I heard this terrific ‘whoomp’. A building that had been there, was no longer... That was my first experience of the Blitz."

For the next two years, Harris kept cycling for Reuters, while being ‘hounded’ by the Germans. The Harris home was bombed and completely destroyed.

"Stupidly, I left a forwarding address. So, I went into an apartment, and they followed me there and bombed that place. This went on for about two or three places. I ran out of friends that had houses. Eventually, I thought I might just as well get a little of my own back, so I went and volunteered for the RAF."

The young man who said he’d always been a ‘cement kid’, who had never even been around airplanes, figured he’d become an ace pilot, one of ‘the Few’ who had won the Battle of Britain. His aspirations were not immediately realized, as Len was about six months short of his 18th birthday.

However, in 1943 the day arrived for Len’s opportunity to join the Royal Air Force.

"I didn’t realize, of course, how desperate Britain was in those days, because they accepted me. I went to train as a pilot, which was one of the many major mistakes Britain made in those early days.

"I was flying Tiger Moths. It was a plane which took of at 60 (mph) and in a high wind it would fly backwards. It had a very up-to-date intercom. You had a tube and you yelled into it, and hoped that somebody in the other cockpit would hear."

"I had a slight, unforeseen greeting of airplane and earth, and when I finally got myself out of that they took me before the CO, and he said, ‘You know, Harris, we’ve got something in mind for you. Here you are, thin, shorter...you’d fit very nicely into a turret. Why don’t you become an Air Gunner?’

Harris said he put aside his goal of being an ace, in favor of being a gunner, and as training continued in this new direction, he encountered his first real mishap while attached to a Wellington bomber crew.

The twin-engine Wellington had a mid-upper gunner’s position, which Harris described as, "just a seat halfway in the fuselage, with portholes - - one on the left and one on the right - - through which you were supposed to operate a free-firing gun. If the Jerry came up on your left, you aimed there, and as he crossed over, you took the gun out and shoved it though the other hole and fired. Except, that sometimes in your enthusiasm, you forgot to take your finger off the trigger. Consequently, life would become a little hectic."

Harris says in its wisdom, the RAF decided for safety reasons to discontinue putting the gun in that mid-fuselage position.

Harris says his Wellington was commanded by a Canadian pilot with a fondness for the bottle. And, whether or not his habit was a factor, his proficiency and flying ‘circuits and bumps’ left something to be desired.

"We took off, and first circuit we landed. Not beautifully well, but we landed. The second time he was more hazardous. The third time, as we came in, suddenly the alarm horn went off. I, being terribly bright, grabbed hold of my guns like mad.

"What had happened was the skipper, instead of attending to the flaps, had pulled up the undercarriage. So, consequently, we skidded along... and he didn’t stay with us very much longer, thank goodness. I think that probably due to that, I survived the war."

Before long, Harris transitioned to the Avro Lancaster. For training purposes, older, tired bombers were used to groom crews for actual missions.

The Lancaster, powered by four Merlin engines, had become the workhorse of the RAF’s night bombing campaign. Harris says he was very fond of the plane, and had no need to question its single skipper’s seat arrangement. Len says the Flight Engineer was also trained as a pilot, and could take over if the pilot was incapacitated.

Harris says 166 Squadron had a complement of about two dozen Lancasters, but due to maintenance needs, the number available for any given mission was less than that.

Len says the crew had great faith in the Lancaster:

"When my skipper, Jimmy, used to take our plane up on air test, he’d cut out three engines and fly on one. Not for long, but... Jimmy was an excellent pilot who’d transferred over from Coastal Command."

In its most common configuration, the Lancaster carried a crew of seven - - a pilot, flight engineer, bombardier (who could man the nose turret) , navigator, wireless operator and gunners for the dorsal and tail turrets.

Harris’ ‘office’ was in the fuselage, between the bomber’s twin vertical stabilizers. He remembers well that once you were in the rear turret compartment and closed the door behind you, you were isolated from the rest fo the crew.

Unlike the Lancasters of most squadrons, the bombers in Harris’ squadron had Rose Brothers tail turrets with twin .50 caliber machine guns instead of the four .303 guns in the Frazier-Nash FN.82 turrets. Harris says the guns were not sighted to converge at any specific range, and every time they were fired, the read end of the Lancaster would shimmy.

"When the plane first came from the factory, the rear turret had perspex near the guns to keep in whatever warmth you had. But we got rid of them because they got scratched and marked. And one thing you needed as an Air Gunner was to keep your eyes open."

While an Air Gunnner’s eyes needed to be unimpaired in the night air, his hands were confined by three pairs of gloves, which allowed him to grasp the grips operating the machine guns, but made it very difficult to use the Olsen, a porta-potty aboard the Lanc.

On eight-hour night missions above 24,000 feet, the temperature in the rear turret of a Lancaster was about 50 degrees below zero. To survive those extremes, Harris says he used to have to wear long-johns, a uniform, a sweater, an electrically-heated flying suit and socks, and three pairs of electrically-heated gloves.

On one particular night, Len says he set himself up for trouble, only after he’d been told he wasn’t scheduled for a mission.

"I’d been out the night before, and been somewhat over generous with libation. I was stinking drunk. I got back and went to sleep. Then they told us we were needed in the crew room... we were going to fly after all.

Harris says he went to board the plane, seated himself in the rear turret with his parachute behind him, and promptly went to sleep. A flak burst striking the Lancaster’s left wing woke him from his sleep.

"We got over Germany and were hit. I woke up with a start, peed myself and short-circuited my flying suit and flying gloves. It was the most uncomfortable trip I ever had. It made me swear off beer for that trip."

For the most part, Harris remember flak as the primary danger on night missions. He says if they did encounter a Luftwaffe fighter, usually making a rear approach on bombers, Lancaster plots evaded by entering into a corkscrew.

"We’d dive to port sharply, climb to starboard sharply and continue that ‘round."

"There was a great advantage between a fighter and a bomber. The fighter had a maneuverable gun platform - - any way you wanted to turn the plane, the forward-fixed guns would turn. If the fighter came in from the rear, started his curve of attack from the side, banking to hold you in his gunsight for the longest possible moment, and then he’d take off.

"But then they figured out Muzik, a canted cannon, facing forward and pointing up. They’d go under you, so you couldn’t see them, and rake the entire fuselage. That was a bugger.

The bellies of RAF bombers were not only generally undefended by guns, but were blind to these attacks. Shrage Muzik, or ‘jazz music’ as the Germans called the weapons system, is reported to have been so effective that for several months after it was introduced in Ju-88 and Me-110 nightfighters, the RAF didn’t even know of its existence. Victims of Musik were either destroyed in the air or failed to return because they became prisoners of war.

According to Harris, the average lifespan of a rear gunner was three trips:

"I lost a lot of good friends. One, in particular, was an Air Gunner who had started with me and trained with me. One of the tricks the Germans had was, they would hang around outside our airfield at night, waiting for the bombers to come back, when the lights would be switched on, and then they’d come in. And this night, they hit his plane, and I watched him burn to death on the ground. There was nothing I could do, nothing anybody could do to get through to him.

"The thought of fire was perhaps the thing that scared me most. I’d seen what the British used to call the Guinea Pigs, the airmen who had been badly burned. And in those days, there was no plastic surgery. They tried to cover the burn with as little effort as possible. In some case, they sent them back to their squadrons which was absolutely ridiculous.

In the waning days of the European war the Germans breached Holland’s dikes, the floodwaters isolating Rotterdam. To assist that Dutch city, the RAF made food drops, and Harris recalls taking part on one such drop on May 7th, 1945.

"We went over and one of the rooftops of Rotterdam, some had painted the word ‘tobacco’. In the rear turret I was tossing bars of chocolate out. Below, people were actually starving.

"We went back home, and as we landed, there seemed to be a lot of noise going on. We got to the crew room and there on the crew briefing board was, ‘The War’s Ended’. I’ll tell you it didn’t take us terribly long to get undressed and get into our non-battle stuff."

The celebration that night was hearty, and Harris says the next morning when he got back, he noticed the bomber squadron was wheeling up in the air. Apparently, he’d missed the mission, and his CO told him he‘d missed a battle order and was in for a court martial. The next day, though, the CO had been posted elsewhere... and Harris never heard any more from him.

Harris’ last mission, to Berchtesgaden, was the most amazing sight he’d ever seen.

"It was an actual carpet of aircraft. They filled the sky. As a matter of fact, when we got out of Berchtesgaden, we were so crowded we nearly got bombed by a plane above us. It just missed us."

With that good fortune, Len Harris had not only survived eleven missions over Germany, but had done so unscathed... except for the short-circuited flying suit.

The squadron itself was shortly disbanded and before long, Len Harris found himself posted to RAF public relations work in Cairo, Egypt. In 1948, Harris left the RAF and held various writing jobs.

He came to the USA in 1961, and has worked as an editor, magazine owner, a strategist for political campaigns, and in public relations.

Harris has authored two published books: Cockney, partially autobiographical, and Russian Roulette, a mystery.

(Bert and Case Hanou spoke of their combined ten years of experiences during the

occupation of the Netherlands, at the Golden Gate Wing's October meeting.)

Germany's invasion of the Netherlands was swift and decisive. On the morning of May 10, 1940, Bert Hanou recalls waking up about 6:30:

"I saw the German Stuka dive bombers, bombing the Schipol air field. It only took about 35 minutes to destroy the airplanes and all the facilities. They also, at the same time, bombed all the oil tanks near Amsterdam harbor."

The occupation of Amsterdam came quickly. Then the Germans bombed Rotterdam. Though the Dutch had made some military preparations, they were unable to withstand the onslaught of the German armed forces. The invasion of the Netherlands, a neutral country that had hoped not to be invaded, lasted but five days. With the military occupation, Dutch Nazis took over most of the roles of government.

The Invasion of Middelburg

Case Hanou was then Case Van Graafeiland, and lived in Middelburg on Walcheren Island in the south. Walcheren Island was a strategic point, guarding the north bank of the Schelde estuary, the entrance to the port of Antwerp. Her father had a thriving touring business with a small fleet of taxis and buses.

When the Germans attacked Walcheren Island, Middelburg was a direct target for Luftwaffe bombs. The town center, including her father's business, was completely destroyed by explosions and the ensuing fire. What wasn’t destroyed was taken by the Germans to hasten their advance into Belgium and then France.

"We lost seven taxis and six or seven buses, both by fire and by confiscation by the Germans," says Case.

One thing that particularly rankled Case was that her family had taken out "war insurance" prior to the bombing. The insurance company refused to pay on their claim because the policy only covered a direct hit by a bomb and Case's family couldn’t prove that it wasn’t the neighbor’s house that got bombed and caused the Van Graafeiland home to catch fire.

"We fled on two bicycles, mother and I did. We had made a plan beforehand."

Bombed out of their home, they were forced to move into an attic in the unburned fringes of the town. Case recalls the Swedish Government provided emergency shops, small five-meter by ten-meter boxes, set up on the canal banks to help re-establish businesses. The remnants of the family business, and the family itself, moved into one of these temporary shelters.

When Middelburg's elderly were moved to the mainland, one older woman who was befriended by Case's family was forced to move. She asked the family to care for her house, giving them a proper place to live. Later, the old woman returned to die in her home and then sold it to Case’s family, and they lived there for the war's duration.

Case became a secretary for the Philips Company, a famous firm mostly known for its light bulbs and electronics. Phillips had other interests, including a technique to extract vitamins from sea fish - - cockles, mussels, and the like. Case's job was to ensure this patented technology remained a secret from the Germans.

Her job also led to Case's introduction to the Resistance. Because she worked in the food industry, she had special travel privileges, and could take a train from her job in Amsterdam to her home in the southern Netherlands. This led to her becoming a courier for envelopes she would carry it the train.

"It was risky, because if you were caught, you'd had it," Case says, recalling that

she never knew what was in those envelopes. "Later, I thought they may have been ration coupons or false I-Ds… anything."

Never looking at the documents inside the envelopes, she would deliver them at some pre-selected spot, usually at the Haarlem station.

"I would drop them at the cashier's station, or at the newspaper stand or a waiting-room bench. "

In 1943, Dutch train workers went on strike, in one of three major labor actions by which the populace as a whole showed its resistance to the Germans.

Case was warned just before the rail strike to get out of Amsterdam. She did not go back to her room but caught the first southbound train, which turned out to be the last train out of the north before the bridges were closed. It later proved to be very fortunate as northern Holland was still occupied at the war’s end.

In Amsterdam, Bert lived under the terms of the occupation from 1940 to 1943. He described occupation as "routine" - - if one could call "routine" the presence of occupying soldiers and a host of restrictive regulations.

"We could not shine any lights out of the house," remembers Bert. "All windows had to be darkened at night, either by curtains or cardboard."

There was also a curfew, restrictions on movement and food rationing. Obtaining food became increasingly difficult, leading to a black market where a person could try to get goods that were in short supply.

By mid 1943, Germany was facing an increasingly severe manpower shortage as a result of all the men being called up as soldiers. To maintain factory production, the Germans began forcing workers from occupied countries to fill jobs in Germany and elsewhere.

In the office where Bert worked, two of the four workers were deemed surplus. Bert got notice one day he was to be interviewed for a job. He ignored this first notice, hoping the issue would go away. The Germans eventually sent him another notice.

"I finally decided that I didn't have any choice, because the alternative was to go totally into hiding, go underground. You wouldn't get any coupons and you would become a burden to your family… all at the risk of being caught. And if you were caught, you'd be sentenced to hard labor."

Such hard labor could be working on the Atlantic Wall defenses, and further resistance could result in prison or a concentration camp.

Bert says his job interview was quite "routine". The Germans were very pleased to find someone who could speak German, and a week later he boarded a train to Jena, Germany, home of the famous Zeiss Optics factory. Upon arrival, he was given indoctrination to the factory and his responsibilities - - to maintain inventory of all the screws in the factory, some 3,000 different types of screws!

The screws were used to assemble binoculars, range finders, trench periscopes and gun sights. There was much humor in Bert’s description of the various screws he had to care for, and assure there were no "loose screws" in the factory.

Life in Jena was also "routine". Bert was paid for his work and used the money to buy food, clothes, transportation and daily necessities, while his dormitory room was free. He made the acquaintance of five other Dutchmen and finding food became their main preoccupation.

Shortages were beginning to occur in Germany by this time in the war. Bert and his compatriots sometimes got food from the local university cafeteria. But more often they became regulars at a particular restaurant, coming to know the proprietor and his family. They felt welcome in this small town where there were no undue hardships other than shortages of food, clothes and many other items. Relatively free to move about the nearby area, they would visit local farms and help with chores in exchange for food.

Food was also a major pre-occupation for Case. In Middelburg, food was also becoming increasingly scarce and ration coupons were needed for everything - - a few ounces of meat or fat, cheese, bread or coal, even for 20 grams of spaghetti, about six dry strands. Case said they would just nibble uncooked spaghetti, like candy, as this relieved some of their hunger pains. Dandelions, sugar beets and even worms became fair game. Case said she'd brush the dirt off worms and fry them a bit before eating them.

"Then we had what we used to call 'sliding sausage'. We would put a slice of salami on a piece of bread and then slide off the salami while we ate the bread, and then reuse the salami n another piece of bread."

Case also told of an accidental food drop during the Market Garden airborne offensive. There were containers of Crisco in the drop, and civilians ate it, figuring it was just a foodstuff they hadn't seen before. They got terribly sick. Also dropped was peanut butter, in glass jars which broke when the packages hit the ground. Case recalled they were so hungry, they licked the peanut butter off of the broken glass.

Bert read an example from a Dutch newspaper of November 1943 about special rations for a pregnant woman - -

"Pregnant women are entitled to the following items, provided they are 1) having her first child or 2) have no children below the age of five. The thinking was that if you have a child from one to five years old, most likely you have enough left for the new baby."

The list included one pound of knitting yarn, 12 cloth diapers with only 12 safety pins, and three sweaters.

Other examples from the newspaper involved coal rations for a given time period, requisition criteria that were date-stamped. They reflected the hard fact that just because you had ration coupons didn’t mean sufficient coal was available for the old coupons to be used.

One of the roles Case held with the Resistance was providing information for an underground newspaper, which she helped distribute.

A farmer in Grjipskerke, on the island, who was in radio communication with the English Government, received information the resistance needed. Case would bicycle news back to Middelburg and give it to an English teacher who would print it.

"The paper was no bigger than one sheet, sometimes two sheets, and it was stenciled. Everybody in Middelburg got involved in distributing… of course, if you got caught with one or more papers you had had it. My father always burned it right away after he read it."

One can only imagine punishment the Germans would have given a courier. Case also took Resistance information back to Grijpskerke to be radioed to England.

The Germans knew there was a radio in the area, and would send a small white truck with a radio direction finder antenna on its roof.

When the Resistance saw the truck, all activity shut down and, as Case said, "You kept on pedaling, as far away as possible!"

Another method of signaling was done with windmills. The Dutch would set the windmill vanes so the amount of sail displayed would mean different things. The Germans never caught on to this means of communication.

Walcheren Island was a key navigation point for Allied bombers, both by day and by night, and Case saw them fly over regularly. Case says they bombed Flushing airfield once, on August 19, 1943, her father’s birthday.

Case kept track of where bombers crashed, where airmen parachuted and where some aircrew were buried. Airmen who survived became evaders - - Case explaining that the escape route out of the Netherlands was a zig-zag path east and west as airmen were moved south by the Resistance.

In one escape/evasion a tall pilot was dressed as part of a team travelling to a sporting event. Case says that even though the Dutch are generally tall, there was a challenge finding a sports uniform to fit him.

"He was well over six feet tall and we had to find clothes for him. It was almost impossible. We took him on the bike with the other team members riding around him, but the legs of his pants only came to his calves."

Added to that was a need to escort the pilot on the ferry across the Schelde River to Breskens, a strategic, heavily-guarded location. In spite of the dangers, this passage proved successful.

Because the Schelde Estuary was so critical to the Allied opening of the port of Antwerp, Walcheren Island was liberated before the rest of the Netherlands.

The campaign began with the bombing of the dikes at Westkapelle in October, 1944. At least 12,000 German defenders held pillboxes and bunkers on the island, and rather than initiate a Normandy-hedgerow type battle, the Allies flooded the land. (The long-term effect of this brought great hardship because farmland was saturated with salt and unusable for years).

On November 2, 1944, the 52nd Lowland Division - The Scottish Highlanders Brigade -- made an amphibious landing at Flushing, and Middelburg was liberated four days later.

Due to the artillery shelling, people in Middelburg had taken refuge in the cellars of their homes. Case recalls hearing someone walking by in boots. After more than four years of occupation, she recognized the sound of German boots, distinctive because of the steel nails in them.

These footsteps sounded different and the difference was confirmed when she heard a man whistling "It’s a Long Way to Tipperary". Case says her family streamed from the cellar in excitement - and were lucky they weren’t shot, as they scared the soldier badly!

Case says a German general refused to surrender the island to anyone lower in rank than a colonel, so a Highlander Lieutenant impersonated a colonel to effect a prompt surrender, apparently without the German ever discovering!

Walcheren's early liberation was fortunate. The rest of the Netherlands suffered terribly from food and heating shortages during Europe's harsh winter of 1944-45, and wasn’t liberated until the war ended.

Liberation in Germany

Bert’s liberation was quite different. He and his compatriot workers tried to fend off the frigid nights in their dorm by sleeping with their coats on. They were still cold. By day, increasing shortages were among the key indicators the war was going badly for the Germans.

One day Bert saw a thousand - plane bombing raid fly overhead.

"I saw 1080 bombers coming over. If you want to see a sight, you should see 108 bombers in one formation! There were ten groups of 108! Each had three groups of 36 planes, and each of those had three groups of twelve planes in four groups of three! What an emotional sight; they were as far as the eye could see. We all watched them go over for an hour."

Bert surmised that because the raid flew over Jena, Berlin was probably the target that day.

Liberation finally came April 11th, 1945. Bert says there had been distant rumbling of artillery in days prior, and on about the ninth of the month the German units withdrew through the town.

"The next morning we saw the first American soldiers coming in, walking in single file on either side of the street. They stopped and I got to talking one of the fellows. I didn't know they were called 'GIs'… He was very friendly and he said 'the one thing I would love to have is some hot water for a shave.’"

"Now, in German towns, the houses are right up to the street. There is no more than a 2-foot sidewalk. I banged loudly on a big green door, and when the lady came to the door, I said in a very authoritative tone, 'Hot water for this soldier!' "

The woman quickly filled Bert's request.

Bert then told the GIs the Hitler Jugend (Youth) had fortified a park near the bridge about a mile down the road. That information brought Bert face to face with the unit commander, and he was soon known well by the liberating Allies.

Liberation brought an answer to Bert's hunger pangs. He and five other Dutchmen who had worked in the factory, went to the American camp, where they were disturbed to see food being wasted by the GIs. The soldiers shoved food scraps into a bin, scraps which would have been welcomed to the undernourished Dutch. Bert and the others were soon able to sit in a mess hall and eat thick slices of liver and other food, which made them sick because their stomachs couldn’t handle the richness or quantity of food after years of minimal diet.

Liberation brought on an 'organized chaos,' as thousands of displaced workers were collected at the barracks of an old German army camp. The United Nations Relief Administration (UNRA) handled the processing - - sending the workers back to their home countries - - and employed Bert and five of his co-worker Dutchmen who spoke multiple languages (Dutch, German, English and French) to be interpreters. Loudspeakers blared constantly with announcements directing thousands of Norwegians, Dutch, French, Belgian, Danes and many others where they needed to be in the camp.

For transportation, UNRA used the same cattle cars that had carried people to concentration camps. But Bert says that since folks were going home, they didn’t mind as much.

Bert recalls, he was eating a meal one day when a two-star general stopped to thank him for his efforts. Only after a nice, informal talk did Bert realize he'd been speaking with someone of such a high rank.

Having helped UNRA with translating, Bert and his fellow Dutchmen were asked to join teams responsible for disarming the German Air Force. The 404th Fighter Group of the 9th Air Force, based outside Jena, assembled teams of four in jeeps - - a 1st Lieutenant, a driver, technician and civilian interpreter. These teams were assigned to areas with small villages where military equipment and light manufacturing were found.

Bert says the Lieutenant would interview a town's officials while Bert silently observed. The Germans might comment about keeping war materiel from the Americans, and if they did, Bert would tell the lieutenant what the Germans were saying. Then the Germans, realizing they’d been found out, would give up all the goods.

Bert says the teams found much industrial equipment - - beautiful lathes and drill presses - - which was all hauled away and destroyed to keep it from Russians who would eventually occupy the area. (Incidentally, fighter ace Hub Zemke of the 56th Fighter Group, was responsible for removing most of the world-class optical machinery from the Zeiss plant before the Russians got there, shipping it to US-occupied Germany.)

At one factory Bert's team found 100 brand-new motorcycles. When they informed headquarters, trucks were immediately dispatched to retrieve them. Anyone present back at camp, including Bert, got a brand new motorcycle to ride for awhile.

In May, the Americans were rushed out of the Russian zone and Bert went to Berneck, where he stayed in a hotel once used by Hitler. He continued in efforts to locate material with the 404th. In August of that year the work was taken over by the 485th Air Service Group, and when that unit went to Bremerhaven, Bert helped it 'commandeer' a neighborhood of nice homes to billet troops. Eventually, Bert was released from "duty" and he worked his way back to the Netherlands.

Back in the home country, Case worked for two years for a British military "Mayor" in charge of civil affairs, before encountering an officer of the "Missing Research and Inquiry" unit of the RAF. This unit was charged with locating the graves of RAF airmen in the Netherlands. She joined them and returned to Middelburg.

Notes she had kept during the war on aircraft crashes and airmen's graves proved very useful in locating them. They found all the graves to be very well maintained by the locals. In many cases, identification was done by dental records. Case would also interview locals for information on the crash site and physical evidence to help establish identity. Sometimes the smallest item could lead to the identification of an entire crew.

Case was later recognized by the 8th Air Force Escape and Evacuation Society and has a Certificate of Honor signed by President Reagan. She has also been recognized by Great Britain, Canada and the other Commonwealth countries, and by the Royal House for her efforts in assisting flyers and in locating graves after the war.

After the war, Bert applied for a US Immigration visa but, at the time, the quota for Dutchmen was 2200 per year. Given that he was 13,000th on the list, he worked instead on ships transporting immigrants to the USA and Canada. On one of these trips he met a person who eventually would sponsor him for immigration.

In 1950, Bert and Case ended up working on the same ship - -the "Oranje" - transporting people from the former Dutch colony of Indonesia back to the Netherlands.

Bert recalled, when they first reported on board, speaking to a lady sitting in front of him. Little did she know Bert was to be her boss as chief purser on the ship.

They were married on Valentine’s Day, 1952 and immigrated to Denver, Colorado, where they still reside today.

Bert and case expressed their deep appreciation to all the WWII veterans for liberating them.

The CAF thanks them for flying here to share their story.

Leading the Raid on Los Baños

In February, 1945 U.S. Marines invaded the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima, and in a much-publicized event, raised an American Flag on top of Mount Suribachi.  The same month, in a less known surprise attack on Luzon, the Philippines, U.S. Army troops wiped out a Japanese garrison to liberate an internment camp near the town of Los Baños.

Since January 1945, the U.S. Sixth Army had been pushing south from its beachhead at Lingayen Gulf, while the Eighth Army was moving north from Nasugbu. General MacArthur became concerned the Japanese might kill Allied POWs and civilians in a host of prison camps in the Philippine interior.

Among those held in the Los Baños camp were eleven Navy nurses serving in the Philippines, who became prisoners of war shortly after American and Filipino resistance ended in Manila. They spent the remainder of the war, along with another 2,136 civilians, in a former agricultural school fenced in with barbed wire, near Laguna De Bay, a large lake about 35 miles south of Manila. 

The raid was conducted by B Company of the 11th Airborne Division, and led by a Provisional Reconnaissance Platoon.  Terry Santos, a member of that honored unit, was the Golden Gate Wing's guest speaker for the month of September.

Born in Hawaii in 1921, Terry Santos lost both of his parents to a fire in a sugar cane field when he was one year old. His aunt and uncle in San Francisco took him in, and young Terry grew up in the City by the Bay, until he volunteered for the Army in 1942.

Terry applied for the ski troops, the 11th Mountain Division, but  was not accepted. From there he turned to the Office of Strategic Services, (OSS) which brought him to train in Quantico, Virginia, where Terry trained for the OSS.  From there he was sent to the South Pacific.  General Douglas MacArthur chose to give the OSS-trained Santos an opportunity to join his newly developing "Alamo Scouts", an elite U.S. Army infantry unit, trained in its own special center.

"Most of our work was clandestine," says Santos. "We worked behind the lines, although it depended on the mission. Sometimes we were used as assault troops, and those times we kind of enjoyed it, for the simple reason that you get tired of sneaking around behind enemy lines, and not getting engaged in a fire fight.

"Today they call them LRRPs, long range reconnaissance patrols."

Santos says for soldiers even to be considered for the special Alamo Scout training, they had to complete a grueling series of requirements.

"In order just to qualify, every applicant had to be a marksman or better, in all handheld infantry weapons. That would include a .45 caliber semiautomatic, M-1 carbine, M-1 Garand, .45 caliber M-3 submachine gun, on up to a light machine gun.

"The next prerequisite was you had to carry 150 pounds  through ten miles of jungle. And trust me, I weighted 140 pounds. Someone asked me how in the hell I put up with it. And I told them I just wanted to qualify.

"You also had to swim a mile with your clothes on, in open water."

Those were the qualifications, and didn't mean you were accepted. Santos recalls the psychological examination he took after meeting the physical criteria.

"They wanted to know why you wanted to volunteer for something like this. When they asked me this I said, 'Because I'm nuts.' " 

Santos says the representative from G-2, 6th Army, said "Okay, that's a good enough reason."

Even more intensive training then followed, three rigorous months which washed out as much as sixty percent of those who had qualified at that point, says Santos.

Santos became part of the Recon Platoon - - as he describes it, a small, well-trained group of men conditionally assigned to various units within the 11th Airborne Division.   The unit's liaison was Lt. Col. Muller, the Division G-2. According to Santos, there were to be 30 enlisted men in the platoon, three of them noncommissioned officers,  and one officer. For the Los Baños Raid, the recon Platoon was comprised of 22 men.

The Los Baños Raid

The February 23, 1945 raid to rescue the POWs at the Los Baños camp was planned at dawn, 7:00 a.m., to be exact.  The operation would begin with reconnaissance about 36 hours before a coordinated assault.

A small assault team would attack camp guards, timing their action to a nearby paratrooper drop.  Then, Amtracs from the 672nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion would come ashore to transport the camp internees back across Laguna De Bay.

"The reason 7 a.m. was picked was because prisoners of war who has escaped knew that, except for the guards on duty at that hour, the prison garrison stacked their rifles for calisthenics."

Santos' first mission to Los Baños was with Lt. George Skau to provide reconnaissance - - pick out a possible drop zone and a beach landing zone. They returned to the camp a second time to confirm the Japanese garrison's habits of early morning calisthenics.

"The narrator (in the History Channel documentary The Los Baños Raid ) said there were twenty-two to twenty-four of us each time, but on the first two missions there were only two of us, Lt. Skau and yours truly, because I was able to speak the language.

The full assault team for the mission included Santos, Botkin, Call, McFadden, and a squad of twelve Filipino guerrillas. The team carried one Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Santos says their assignment was to knock out two Japanese pillboxes, each of which contained a machine gun.

"On the night of the 21st, twenty-two of us from the recon platoon boarded three bancas to cross Laguna De Bay. That was my third crossing.

"The largest banca, that held the extra ammunition, the grenades and rations broke a rudder. This was the night of the 21st, two days before the attack, and they had to go back and get the rudder fixed.

"We knew that the Japanese had patrol boats stationed on the island of Calamba. We made a circuitous trip around the island, and sure enough, we were challenged. We were the only ones that were. But maybe it was a godsend, because I was able to tell the helmsman in Tagalog to say 'we were fishing, late getting back and now we're on our way back."

"They wanted to know where we were going and we said 'Barrio Nanhaya.'  We were prepared to sink that patrol boat if they decided to board us. But fortunately, they did not. They challenged us, then let us go. Thank god."

"The first shot that was fired could have alerted the garrison at Los Baños. And that was the last thing in the world we wanted.

"We landed at Nanhaya, which was on the opposite shore, about ten miles from Los Baños. Late the next afternoon, the third banca showed up. Had it not arrived, we had a plan B. That was, instead of  four man teams, each man would lead a group of guerillas to mark the drop zone, the beach landing zone, the rest of us breaking up into assault groups."

From Nanhaya, Santos says the assault team marched through ten miles of jungle and flooded rice paddies. If it weren't for rough terrain and the necessity of  stealth, Terry says they could have made the trek in as few as three hours. Instead, it took ten hours.

"Those of us in the recon platoon were assigned the task of knocking out all the strong points --  the machine gun nests - - killing all the posted guards, shooting the guards up in the towers. That's the reason I carried an M-1 instead of a .45 caliber submachine gun, because I wanted to make sure I could reach up into the tower.

There were three types of ammunition for a rifle, tracer, ball and armor piercing. Terry says he always carried armor piercing, because it allowed him to shoot through a tree if necessary to hit his target.

"In those days, I used to be able to see a leaf move at 100 yards. Today, I can't even see the leaf. But I was a very good shot.   When I aimed at something and fired, I seldom missed. That's one of the reasons I was accepted into the Alamo Scouts."

Santos says just as his group crested the bank of Boot Creek, enemy fire erupted at 3 minutes before 7:00 a.m.  This alerted the gunners in the pillboxes, and forced the recon troops to charge the two pillboxes.

Bursts from the machine guns wounded troopers Vince Call and Larry Botkin, and one Filipino guide, but the pillboxes were successfully knocked out.  Santos says then a third machine gun, on a knoll near a large tree overlooking their exposed position opened fire. They kept it under fire until B Company troopers arrived, and then it was eliminated.

"One of the groups from the recon platoon was to get to the arms rack before the Japanese could.  The group was going to the stacked arms, and the Japanese were racing there. The minute they were fired upon, they all turned and ran. The ones who were not killed, the guerillas tracked them down and killed many of them."

Santos says he believes anywhere from fifty to one hundred Japanese escaped.  Among those who fled was Warrant Officer Sadaaki Konishi, the camp's second-in-command. Largely because Konishi had ordered the withholding of food, the liberators found many starving internees. Some weighed as little as 100 pounds.

The killing was over by the time the paratroopers arrived at the camp. 

"Many people think, to this day, the paratroopers from B Company dropped into the confines of the camp. That's not true. The landing zone was a good 900 yards from the camp, a little over a half of a mile. So we knew it would take them 15 to 20 minutes to  gather their equipment, organize and get to the camp.  

"B Company suffered no casualties. Whereas my assault team suffered two. Botkin was hit in the nose by a ricochet and Call was hit in the shoulder.

"We were successful. We wiped all of the guards, approximately fifty were posted on duty. There was also a listening post, a shack with a guard sound asleep at a telephone.

"I said to myself, I could kill him very easily. But if I did, they could call him and if he did not respond, they were liable to send out a patrol, and that's the last thing we needed."

The only snag in the Los Baños operation apparently involved convincing internees the rescue was real.  Instead of going to the Amtrac loading area, most internees stayed in their shacks and barracks.

When some internees near the guards barracks and camp headquarters ran from fires that started during the firefight, Amtrac crews were told to torch barracks on the camp's south side.  That got the Amtracs filled quickly.

By 11:30 a.m.,  the camp was in flames, but the evacuation was complete. Santos says he and the recon platoon provided rear cover to the beach, and he got into the final Amtrac crossing the lake.

The fifty-four Amtracs crossed the lake to land near the camp to deliver the POWs safely to the American-held town of Mamatid on the other shore.

Santos says, "The Los Baños Raid was an unqualified success. There were no POWs who were killed. I think one was slightly wounded. There were eleven Navy nurses. Out of the total of 2,147 in the camp, 2,136 were civilians, plus these eleven Navy nurses, who were truly gallant ladies."

Among Terry Santos' awards for military service are two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars with "V" for valor, the Purple Heart, two Presidential Unit Citations, the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation, the Combat Infantry Badge, the Special Forces Tab, Parachute Wings with two stars, and Four Campaign Stars and Bronze Arrowhead.

In 1988, the US Army granted the Alamo Scouts the birthright as the first Special Forces unit.

(SIDEBAR)  Santos on "Heroes"

I appreciate this opportunity to explain in succinct terms, the birth and existence of the Recon Platoon.  We, the liberators, have in the past, sometimes been referred to as "Heroes." I disagree. The true heroes/heroines were the internees and the 12 POWs, the U.S. Navy nurses. These courageous people did not give up. They survived almost 1,200 days of incarceration, which emphasizes the invincibility of their spirit. Their faith in the United States and it's Armed Forces remained unshaken. This, to me, is true heroism.

Duke says he couldn't think about marriage because he didn't have enough money, and he was soon off to Pensacola for preliminary flight training in 1937. Campbell was at the top of his class when he was presented his Wings of Gold in 1938.

"He'd come out and the planes would be parked out on the ramp, the tractor would tow us down the ramp into the water, and before we got in the water, he was back in the bunk. We had that plane to ourselves, to do training and navigation.

Patrol Wing Ten was deployed ahead of permanent Navy flying boat facilities at Cavite, about a half mile from the commercial Pan American flying boat ramp. Part of the maintenance on the PBYs consisted of scraping barnacles off the hulls, one aircraft every couple of days. Meanwhile, the crews were boarded on the USS Langley, a collier (coal tender) which had been converted to the first USN aircraft carrier, which was now tied to Cavite's docks as a seaplane tender.

Campbell says there was a handful of flying boat tenders scattered among the thousands of Philippine islands, each tender offering a haven with fuel and a place to sleep for the patrol crews. In some of the spots, especially the more remote locations as Duke recalls, there was time to skin dive, go spear fishing and collect pearls.

Later in the war, Duke was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia to test fly Martin PBM flying boats. His favorite wartime duty, though, was his 1944 assignment as Squadron CO of VPB-10 in England. The unit flew 'navalised' B-24s, designated PB4Ys. Incidentally, his younger brother was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot also based in England. They each landed their four-engine bombers at the other’s base to "visit"!

Serving the Fatherland

Hubertus "Hubert" von Marschall's Wehrmacht experiences

Hubertus von Marschall was born in Bolivia in October, 1923, the son of  a German father and Bolivian mother.  His father had gone to South America to pursue a career in banking and mining.  When the family returned to its historical home in Thuringia, Prussia four years later,  young Hubertus was schooled there.
Hubertus then went to boarding school, the last school he attended  from 1939-41 was in Celle-Hannover, between Hamburg and Hannover.
Prussia is known for its military tradition, and the von Marschall lineage included Hubertus' grandfather, a cavalry general who had fought on the Somme in World War I.  Hubertus's family carried on its military lineage, as the last of three cousins joined the military in early 1941. Later that year, after being turned down by the Luftwaffe for failing to meet eyesight standards, Hubertus, at the age of 17, volunteered to join the Wehrmacht and was assigned to the Nachrichten Ersatz Abeilung No. 13 in Hannover.
This was a communications battalion, and, says Hubertus, "13 was my lucky number."
The young von Marschall, in August '41, completed his training, which he recalls included having to sing the popular song Lili Marlene  while wearing a gas mask. One of the least liked parts of his communications specialist training was having to climb poles.
"Up was good. Down was bad. You got splinters in your belly and in your legs."
After basic training he was sent by train to the front through northern Germany to a place called Chiolo, Poland.  There, they were stopped for two months while rail traffic of ambulance trains came back west and tanks and ammunition headed east. Communications had  low priority and Hubertus says they waited with "icicles hanging down from our engine, disconnected. We had a little stove. There was nothing else to do. We had to wait for the go-ahead signal."
When the train got moving again, the communications unit chugged through
Latvia and Riga and crossed the Russian border to a town called Pskov. There they left the train, were each rationed two little bottles of vodka, and slept in the auditorium of the Russian Military Academy. Next morning, with the temperature 35 degrees below zero centigrade, they were trucked to their final destination, Porchov.
"Our trucks were camouflaged with straw mats in the forest, and from now on our transportation was ... that, " he said, pointing to an image of a horse drawn sled, called a panje.
"We called them a Panje Division instead of a Panzer Division."
The task for the communications battalion was to restore  telegraph and telephone lines lost when the cold weather brought them down. Hubertus says the cold was so extreme that when taking off gloves to use tools, pliers would stick to their hands. The soldiers had to fend for themselves finding shelter overnight. Some Russian houses were marked with skulls and crossbones, a symbol for typhus. Von Marschall says a cemetery in Pskov had headstones for more than 3000 German soldiers who died of typhus.
In one house, Hubertus says the babushka (grandmother) took one look at his youthful face, went next door in the freezing weather and returned with milk, which she warmed for the young man to drink.
"My comrades were laughing, " recalls Hubertus. "But, it created a good feeling with the Russian people. There was kindness..."
Communications work kept Hubertus far from the front lines. He says he did see Russian aircraft, including the  Polikarpov Po-2,  a biplane the Russians used for night harassment bombings, and the Germans called the 'flying sewing machine'. He also saw Polikarpov I-16 Ratas
In the springtime, when the snow began melting, turning Russia into a vast field of mud, Hubertus says his unit was loaded back onto trains for Germany. Once there, the unit was re-equipped with new Ford trucks and Hubertus carried a Czech-made submachine gun. Then, it was back on board trains heading east via Prague and Bratislava to Kharkov in the south Ukraine.
What von Marschall was a part of was the Wehrmacht's Sixth Army southern thrust  to Stalingrad. Along the way, he would be transferred to the 4th and 11th Panzer Armies which rolled down the  foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.
Hubertus says he was surprised to find no evidence of machinery in the factories in Kharkov - - the Russians having stripped buildings of anything the invading Germans might have been able to use.  That policy apparently didn't apply to animals in the Kharkov zoo.
"We were issued anti-malarial pills. We didn't like them. We gave some to the apes in the zoo... and they spit them right back in our face."
Two Soviet armies were destroyed in the fighting around Kharkov, and Hubertus says he saw thousands and thousands of Russian prisoners in the area.
As his unit was crossing a bridge over the Don, Hubertus remembers seeing two Soviet bombers flying west, drawing heavy flak from the Germans below, then turning and heading back east.
"There came one, single Messerschmitt 109, and it went after them. After awhile we saw  two mushroom clouds on the horizon and the Messerschmitt came along, wiggling (his wings) that he'd shot down the two bombers."
The tank-led drive pushed southeast of Rostow, as far as Maikop. That's where, in August of 1942, von Marschall says he was was promoted to the rank of Corporal. With the promotion, he received orders to return to Leipzig, Germany for further communications training.
By Junkers W.34 and Ju 52 he flew back to Germany, to his home unit in Dresden-Uebigau.  There Hubertus volunteered to switch to the infantry due to enormous losses of officers in that branch.  As part of the training in officers' school, von Marschall learned of new small arms being sent out to the troops.
"A sergeant came with something wrapped in a blanket, and he said it was our new machine gun (MG-42)," said von Marschall, commenting that the weapon is still in service in the German Army and other armies, due mostly to the weapon's 1500 round-per-minute rate of fire. "The Russians respected that very, very much."
Part of the military training happened near Berlin, and the officer trainees were housed in the Olympic Village from 1936. Hubertus remembered fondly a contingent of 20 Hungarians they lived with - - the men were "loving people, who had wine and cakes sent from home, and we celebrated, twenty people in a place where two lived."
About a month later, von Marschall was ordered to Herresgruppe Mittel and sent to the 256th Grenadier Division, 456th Regiment. Traveling by train to Smolensk, the unit then rode trucks northeast of that city, to the front, where new experiences started immediately.
"We heard thunder, day and night we heard this rumbling that would absolutely mortify you. It gave you a strange feeling in your stomach... "
Hubertus arrived one morning at his division headquarters, was given a bowl of rice soup and some Egyptian cigarettes, and pointed in the direction of his battalion. On his way there, he saw an ambulance car racing the other way, later learning the car was carrying the battalion commander Hubertus was to report to.
Hubertus remembers his first day on the front this way:
"We had in front of us a thick, forested area. Everything was quiet. Once in awhile a mortar assault. And then, when the night came, the Russians came. We never said, 'the Russians' we said 'Ivan'. It was one of the longest nights of my life. I had three very close encounters... And in the morning, I was still with my messenger. I didn't see anybody. 
"There was one sergeant, standing there like a six foot tall tree and I told him to get down. He didn't and a minute later he fell down. My messenger got shot in the face. I sent him home, backwards."
Von Marschall says he suddenly was appointed to lead an infantry  company. Minutes later, as he was standing in a trench, looking for a way to reach another company,  when he was hit in the head by a bullet.
He was removed from the battlefield to a hospital in Smolensk, then to Vitebsk, where he was operated on. Hubertus recalls being given a tranquilizer and being held by a Russian student with a bear-like hug. Unfortunately, the Russian had eaten a lot of garlic and reeked of the odor.
After rest in a monastery, Hubertus was shipped by train to Heidelberg. He arrived in a dirty uniform, his head bandaged and bloody, and without boots. Someone on the train had taken them. In this condition, Hubertus was left at the train station, where he says he stood for two hours until he was offered a ride.
In November of 1943, von Marschall was transferred to a hospital where his mother served as a Red Cross nurse. He was there until March of 1944, when he was released back to his home unit in Leipzig. One morning, Hubertus witnessed an air raid - - several hundred USAAF bombers hitting a nearby oil refinery:
"I never forgot that. They released the bombs and it was like a thunderstorm coming down, and then this wall of fire. Unfortunately, two villages were destroyed, too. My company had to clean them up. We had a few hundred civilians killed."
Reassignment again came quickly, this time at Doberitz for a month of training in motorized warfare. By July he was back with his old unit, in the Sudetenland.
The Wehrmacht officer bomb plot on Hitler's life, July 20, 1944, brought changes in the Wehrmacht , among them, soldiers were ordered to give the full straight-armed salute, instead of the traditional  military salute. And,  says von Marschall, a good number of officers began voicing their objection to front-line positions. Hubertus, however wanted field leadership so badly that he demonstrated his head wound would not prevent him from wearing a metal helmet. By  August, 1944 Hubertus was deemed fit for combat, and was leading a company of 200 soldiers as reserve to the front in Poland.
He was back in the front lines, in a life largely bounded by rain, muddy trenches and artillery duels.  Hubertus said it was not uncommon to wear his boots two weeks at a time, without taking them off.
By December 1944, von Marschall had been assigned to command Sturmgeschuetz-Begleitschutz No. 214. That put him in charge of four self-propelled assault guns, providing close support firepower to the infantry. The standing joke about the men who rode these armored vehicles into battle was that they were  "Himmelfahrt Commanders" - - it was a ride that quickly got one 'closer to heaven' , as armor targets attracted the attention of Russians.
Training also included a new weapon, the Sturmgewehr 44, which gave the infantry a higher rate of fire over a longer distance, and required new tactics for engaging the enemy at greater distances.
Sent home on vacation, Hubertus witnessed the horrific sight of Dresden's fire-bombing:
"The last day of my vacation, there were Fleigeralarms, and hundreds and hundreds of airplanes flying over, probably Lancasters. We were sitting in the potato cellar, our bomb shelter. Once the bombing was over, I went up our water tower, 150 feet, and I saw the fire of Dresden... 225 kilometers away."
While he was gone, the Russians over-ran his unit, taking about 800 of his men as prisoners.  Instead of returning there, von Marschall was sent in January, 1945, to the Nacy headquarters of the 2nd Navy Infantry Division in Glueckstadt on the Elbe River.  By this point in the war, sailors manning coastal guns were deemed as unnecessary, and there were more crews for submarines than there were U-boats.
In April, 1945, the division was ordered to defend the so called Wesere/Aller Line. By Hubertus' admission, with the numbers and strength of Allied ground troops and ever-present daytime airpower superiority, it was a hopeless position.
On April 22nd Hubertus Marschall ahd moved his unit of young sailors into a position where they were taken prisoner by the British unit, the "Ox and Bucks",  near Bremen. They spent half a year in Belgium at Camp Jabecke, but they had survived the war.

Most combat veterans don't talk much about what they did... unless they're asked to speak publicly about it. At the May dinner meeting of the Golden Gate Wing, Charles "Chuck" Shallenberger shared his experiences during World War Two, as a P-38 pilot, flying with the 44th FS "Vampires", of the 18th Fighter Group, 13th Air Force.

Born In Rocky Ford, Colorado, about 50 miles southeast of Pueblo, Chuck Shallenberger grew up learning how to live in the outdoors.  And the lessons he learned on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout, undoubtedly served him well when it came to keeping himself alive and healthy in the Southwest Pacific.

After two years of studying engineering in college, Chuck joined the USAAF on September 1, 1942.  He reported to preflight training in Santa Ana, California.

"One of the reasons why I flew P-38s is because when I was down there, P-38s from a nearby base used to buzz that big Santa Ana area every day. When I'd see those four P-38s come by several times, I'd say, "My god, if I ever got a chance to fly one of those."

On one of only two weekend passes he ever had, Chuck was engaged to be married to Phyllis Hunter. It is a marriage that has thrived for 61 years.

"Phyllis came down and stayed with a girlfriend of a friend of mine, and I gave her a ring. And that was really wonderful."

Primary training for Shallenberger came in PT-17s at Thunderbird Field in Scottsdale, Arizona. Next, at Marana, Arizona, near Tucson, he flew the Vultee BT-13 'Vibrator" for 72 hours.  Chuck' remembers his instructor was a Lt. Stewart.

"He and I had a little trouble. He was from Texas, a little guy. I'm not very big and I couldn't fly instruments worth a damn and he told me so. I really got sort of dejected  because I thought, 'I may not make it out of this thing because he doesn't like the way I fly this airplane, especially on instruments.'

"One day we were flying, and I was on instruments under the hood, in the heat of the Arizona desert. I'm doing my turns and everything like he told me to do.  Suddenly he grabbed the stick and beat my knees with it and said, 'I've got the airplane.'

"I thought, 'Oh boy,  this is it.' So I popped the hood back over and he started flying it. A little bit later, I was really down in the dumps. I looked over and here was a AT-11 twin engine, coming in off our right wing, dead level with us, with a hood over that pilot.

"I thought, 'Well, he's flying it.' And pretty soon I realized he didn't see the other plane. So, at the last minute I grabbed the stick from him, pulled it back, hit right rudder turned it over on its back and the airplane went right beneath us. Then I leveled it out.

"Pretty soon he said, 'I've got it.' And then he never said a word until we landed and got out of the plane, He asked me," Cadet, is that the first time you saw that airplane... when you grabbed the stick?"

"I said,'Yes sir'.

"'Well, you probably saved both of our lives.'"

Shallenberger said from that time on, having gained the respect of his instructor, "I couldn't do anything wrong."

AT-6 and gunnery school in Arizona brought Chuck to the point of getting twin engine experience in AT-9s. Then came flight time in the British version of Lockheed's P-38, without superchargers, the P-322.

"It was a helluva airplane. The first time I took off in that, my knees were so shaky... I turned up the engines at the end of the runway, and I couldn't hold the brakes any more. I could only stop or take off, so I took off."

Eight hours of training in that type brought graduation and a commission, on January 7th, 1944. Shallenberger got his gold bars and silver wings, his leather jacket, and thought, "Now, I'm a hot P-38 fighter pilot."

The next step in Shallenberger's promotions, though, was his marriage to Phyllis Hunter, four days later in Vallejo.  After leave, it was off to Van Nuys airport, where there were too few planes to fly. This had him packing off to Oregon via Salinas, to fly war-weary P-39s that had been returned to the States from North Africa.

Chuck remembers well the car door access ("like an Essex") to the Airacobra, and, during his 36 hours of P-39 cockpit time, how that type handled at low altitude.

"If you wanted to fly it  five feet off the ground you could do it, and raise up to go over the fences up in Oregon. In fact, we got in a lot of trouble because we did fly pretty low, doing low level navigation.

"We kept  getting wheat chaff in our intakes, and so they told us, 'Please come back up a little bit higher.'

"One day one of our guys met a girl whose family had a big ranch in east Oregon. He said, 'How about us coming out and pumping water in your windmill for you?' She said okay, and all of us the next day flew by the windmill in the yard in our P-39s.

"By the time the fourth one went through, that windmill was humming. Then we got a message back. Her dad said, 'Thanks for pumping the water... but you scared the hell out of the livestock. Don't ever come back again.' "

Shallenberger says he was glad he didn't have to fly the P-39 in combat, because it lacked what he felt was needed to shoot down Zeros and to survive long range missions.

Santa Maria was the next stop, a two month stay Chuck remembers as being very happy. Phyllis found a place for them to live, and Chuck got to fly Lightnings for a total of 85 hours, practicing aerial and ground gunnery, formation flying and tactics.

Shallenberger was finally heading to the Pacific, and he flew 14 hours on a C-87 from Travis AFB to Hawaii. Then it was to Guadalcanal via the Easter Islands.

The 13th Air Force, at the time, was operating under the command of Admiral Halsey, its bombers flying long-range operations to hit Japanese targets in Balikpapan, Borneo, and islands in the Southwest Pacific.

13th Air Force staff put in place a major campaign to extend the range of the P-38 Lightning, then the hottest, most dependable fighter its inventory.

"We were operating our airplanes at too high an rpm, too rich a fuel mixture and too low a manifold pressure. When we corrected all of this, we were flying 2000 miles on eight to eleven hour missions. If we could have done that in P-38s in Europe we could have done without P-51s."

"We could escort B-24s to targets 1000 miles away, and probably helped shorten the war. But it gave us awful tired butts sitting in that little cockpit for so damn long.  Some of those missions, when we got back, we had to have a crew chief and some help on both arms, to lift us out of the cockpit and lay us on the wing, help us to the ground and let us stand up a little bit before we started moving around."

The first two weeks at Kukum Field (Fighter Two) at Guadalcanal was spent in combat training. Then came Shallenberger's first combat - - dive-bombing enemy gun positions.

On July 12, 1944 Chuck adopted his first airplane, christening it "Phillie Baby". A later P-38 would carry not only the name of his wife, but also an image of her on the nose of the Lightning.

"I gave the sergeant a picture of Phyllis in shorts and a halter top in the back yard and said, 'Can you put this on the airplane?'  And he said, 'Oh, sure.'

Chuck says the sergeant's finished nose art, with Phyllis reclining nude, was a bit of a shock. "My mother didn't ever want to see it again and her mother almost had a heart attack."

The 18th Fighter Group had, by this time, destroyed 155 enemy aircraft in the air. In the late summer and fall of 1944, the unit was off  to a new home at Sansapor in western New Guinea, to escort B-24s bombing huge oil installations in Borneo.

"When the pilots arrived the tents had been set up for us. We were given army cots, mosquito nets and insect repellant and told to set it up and have fun. There were four pilots to a tent and it was really primitive. The first night was uneventful, except for the killing of one 13-1/2  foot snake, which apparently had become lost looking for the officer's club."

Shallenberger recalls Japanese soldiers came through their camps at night seeking food, which prompted Chuck to go to sleep at night with his .45 pistol on his chest.

"Many times I was scared. I didn't know what the hell was going to happen next."

Over time, though, the young men piloting P-38s toughened. Of necessity, they also developed self-reliance when it came to navigation. The Army Air Force gave them silk maps of the Celebes and East Indies, maps of vast regions which had not been accurately charted, much less surveyed for detail.

"They're not very good, but that's all we had. We'd sort of look at those and say,'I wonder where in the hell we really are.' But that's the way it was. The Air Force had no better maps than those put together by the British and the Dutch."

Reading tropical weather and getting through it was another essential skill for survival on missions. Shallenberger says weather conditions in the Pacific were always changing, forcing pilots in their big twin-engined Lightnings to alter their routes, without the assistance of fancy navigational aids.

"All we had was our compass, our airspeed and a helluva lot of water. Cumulus clouds would form up in the afternoons from 200 feet all the way up to 30,000 feet or more, with heavy rains. We were probably low on fuel, and battling heavy winds, usually crosswinds. So you really didn't know how much you were off course, while you returned from maybe 400 miles away from base."

"Many times we sweated and prayed, and everything else, to get home."

Chuck says the 18th FG flew a variety of missions - - escorting bombers, dive-bombing and strafing - - and he recalled hitting a 'target of opportunity' after dive-bombing a Japanese airdrome in Ceram.

"My buddy John and I found a ship at dock in a nice little harbor. It was a 100 foot ship with a gun on the front deck. So we roared in and said, 'We'll take out that turkey!' "

Shallenberger says they shot up the freighter without any opposition.

"About the time we finished that we peeled off and pulled back, and the whole back of the mountain behind the bay just exploded with antiaircraft fire.

So we immediately hit the deck and headed out to the end of the bay. We were right on the water, churning up waves. Antiaircraft fire was depressing right on top of us. Fortunately they weren't hitting us, except when my buddy said, 'Hey, I've been hit!'

"I said, 'What happened?!'"

"'They shot off my mirror!'"

P-38s carried a rearview mirror on top of the canopy, just inches above the pilot's head. Chuck' wingmate had come that close to perishing from a longshot.

In early November, the 18th Fighter Group moved north to Morotai Island, to reach Japanese targets throughout the Philippines. As Shallenberger remembers the orders, the plan for the 44th FS was to fly ten P-38s to Morotai.

There, each P-38 would pick up a 310 gallon fuel tank, a 1000 pound bomb, and escort a dozen B-25s to Alicante airdrome on Negros Island in the central Philippines, then to continue on to Mindinao to dive-bomb Japanese troops.

A week earlier, Lt. Col. Robert Westbrook had been in the Alicante area seeking Japanese airplanes to shoot down. At that time, Westbrook was chasing Dick Bong for the title of top scoring fighter ace. Westbrook had returned from the sortie disappointed, finding not a single enemy airplane. He then went on rest leave.

"As we started coming into our target area, we looked down and there were airplanes taking off on the ground. You could see dust coming off the dirt strips. They were taking off four at a time on that field.

"Pretty soon they started coming up and our flight leader took his flight of four to go back and investigate, while we stayed with the B-25s. One of our pilots had aborted on takeoff, leaving three in our flight.

Shallenberger said the P-38 pilots slowed down to 175 mph to drop their big belly tanks, then followed the B-25s to the airstrip to drop the 1000 pound bombs, before turning around to see what the Japanese were doing.

"We ran into fifteen of them, the three of us. I only saw my element leader once, and he was heading off west towards another island and was out of the action.

"First thing I noticed - - I had an Oscar in front of me, and I'm boring in on him and made an overhead pass at it. I had major hits on his right wing and... my guns jammed.  So I pulled off of him, and was hitting all the circuit breakers, pushing buttons and kicking the side of the ship, wondering why the hell the guns wouldn't fire.

"Then, right away I'm on the tail of an Oscar. I flew right up his tail. I could see his red insignia very plainly. But I still couldn't get my guns to fire. Instead of overrunning him I had to leave, so as I turned and pulled around, I noticed my flight leader was getting boxed in by two Oscars.

"I picked the one that was on his tail and I shoved in between them and made a head-on pass on the other one, hoping he'd just run away. Well he didn't run, but just kept shooting at me. It kind of just puckers you up a little bit to see those guns blinking at you, and you can't fire back. If I could fire back, I would have blown him out of the sky.

"He hit me about six times and I thought,'That's enough.' So I pulled off and headed for another one. About that time I saw four Oscars on my tail and couldn't find any P-38s."

Shallenberger says he already had the P-38s Allison engines on War Emergency power settings. By the time he got to the deck he was flying about 450 miles an hour.

Chuck then returned to the B-25 flight, and pulled behind an Oscar making a pass on the medium bombers. The Oscar abandoned its run.

As the sky clear of enemy aircraft, Shallenberger rejoined with his flight leader to escort the B-25s out of the area before heading back to base.

There he discovered his flight leader had shot down two airplanes and the other 44th Squadron flight had knocked down two more. One P-38 had been hit in its engines and was forced to make an emergency landing at Leyte.

Another P-38, flown by element leader Lt. Gene "Pinkie" Anderson, was lost on the mission. Shallenberger had flown with Anderson, and knew him well.

"We found out later from Filipino intelligence that a red-headed pilot, the day after our mission, had been tortured and beheaded."

Shallenberger notes that the Japanese designated American fliers as special war criminals. Few survived capture, especially by Japanese Army units. Postwar, Japan never had to answer to atrocities by its troops in the Pacific, much less by troops in China and Korea.

By the next March, the 18th was based at Mindoro in the northern Philippines. From there, and from Lingayen, Luzon, P-38s helped clean out thousands of Japanese ground troops in the Philippines, attacked enemy facilities on Formosa, and shipping in the China Sea.

The Lightning proved to be devastating as a ground attack weapon. It carried a 20 mm cannon and four .50 caliber machine guns, all boresighted to converge at 1000 yards on a six foot diameter target.

Yet as punishing as the twin-engined fighter was, pilots had to remain aware of the plane's low altitude flight characteristics. On one mission, Shallenberger found out first hand the danger of losing that awareness by fixating on a target.

"We were all aware of the hazards of our large airplane, because it would mush

and you would have to pull out to make sure you didn't hit anything.

"I was strafing a truck in Formosa, at low altitude, because it was overcast. I strafed the truck and the troops that were on it, and the next thing I know the truck is right here in front of me. I got over it and  went through some brush by the rice paddy, out into the rice paddy and I was still going down. But I felt a thump, and actually dragged my tail booms in the rice paddy before I got it going up.

"I thought I was a pretty good fighter pilot. But it was a bad situation with the low overcast."

While returning from another mission on Luzon, Chuck was flying along a canal, looking for barges. He says he looked up and saw tall trees in front of him.

"I went through the trees - -  had green all through the right side of my airplane.

It knocked out my engine. I went onto a single engine, and finally got going to fly back home."

Ground support of US Army troops in January of 1945 brought the Vampires and the rest of the 18th FG an opportunity to earn the Group its third Presidential Citation.

The 1st Cavalry Division had requested support as they battled about 6,000 enemy  troops headed to Cabanatuan, where Allied POWs were being held and were soon to be liberated.  It was believed the Japanese might go into the camp to kill the POWs.

Loaded with 1000 pound bombs, the Vampires swept down on the enemy, bombing and strafing until they had obliterated 4900 Japanese, six trucks, two tanks, three staff cars, 400 drums of fuel and two ammunition dumps. This action allowed American troops to safely move into the camp and release the POWs.

In March, 1945, the 13th Air Force was suddenly reassigned to maintain the security of the Southern Philippines, Borneo, Celebes and the Dutch East Indies. The Fifth Air Force was given as its responsibility the Northern Philippines and the Pacific Ocean north to Japan. Political maneuvering among the Allied commanders in the Pacific War was behind the switch.

The Vampires were unceremoniously dumped back into the primitive jungle conditions of the airstrip at Mindoro, and they lost the huts with floors and thatched roofs they had built. Shallenberger says they also lost their support crews, until the Group was shipped to Zamboanga.

Fortunately for Shallenberger, he had a choice at that time - -  get promoted or go home.

"After 102 missions I decided the right choice was to go home. We took a troop ship to Manila and came back to Long Beach, and I to my wife."

 Chuck Shallenberger returned home after flying combat missions totaling 314 hours. He had been awarded the DFC, 4 Air Medals, and an Air Force Commendation Medal.

 By the end of World War Two, the 18th Fighter Group had built a record of shooting down 282 Japanese aircraft.  The Group did not track the number of Jap planes it destroyed on the ground. The 18th produced 12 pilots who achieved the title of 'ace'. 

Shallenberger joined the Air Force Reserves, returned to active duty in Korea and during the Cuban missile crisis. He retired after 33 years of civilian government service. 

Marine at Tarawa

CPL Robert "Bob" L. George, USMC, WWII

Bob George had become a U.S. Marine five and a half months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Born and raised in Talequah, Oklahoma, he grew up hunting with a .22 caliber rifle. But more often, due to the cost of ammunition, he used bow and arrow.

Bob’s decision to join the Marines came while he was still 16 years old, and he pursued his goal by hitchhiking from home with his parents permission to enlist.  A recruiter rejected him twice - - the first time because he was too young, the second time because he was considered physically too small.

Yet, persistence brought Bob to the Corps even though he was under age. The recruiter said he should be 17 by the time he had traveled to the Marine Corps base in San Diego. Bob was actually sworn in as a Marine one day before his 17th birthday.

Basic training at Camp Eliott, California turned a 5’4”, 118 pound teenager into a Private, a member of the Marine Second Division.

A young man growing up during the Great Depression, his biggest wage to date had been six dollars a month for twenty hours of work, paid by the National Youth Authority.  Marine pay wasn’t great, but was better.

“We didn’t make much money in those days; we were paid 21 dollars a month. We had 6 dollars taken out for laundry and this sort of thing. So on the first we got seven dollars and on the  fifteenth, eight dollars. And it didn’t go very far.”

By the time training he had ended, he had been molded into a machine gunner in A Battery, 1st Battalion, 10th Regiment, Second Division - - A-1-10.

When America was attacked on December 7th, 1941, Bob George didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was. And while Bob admitted to being worldly naive, even the U.S. Marine Corps had its weaknesses. Though the Marines were considered international police and could go ashore without a declaration of war, the Corps was ill prepared for America’s entry into World War II.

Bob recalls his unit being trucked down to the beach in San Diego, to prepare to defend it against a possible Japanese assault, “It took twelve machine guns to make four that would fire.”

Fortunately there was no Japanese landing, and his unit was re-posted to provide security for the Consolidated Aircraft Company in San Diego.

“We set our guns on each corner of the building, old water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns. For the next 72 hours or so, they’d bring coffee and sandwiches across the fence from the base to us.”

The only action the machine gunners got came on the third morning when they received an alert of unidentified planes between Los Angeles and San Diego. The gunners loaded and laid out extra ammunition, but only heard the unsynchronized engines of airplanes flying perhaps 30,000 feet above, well out of the range of their guns.

A few  days later, the Marines began loading on the SS Lurline, a converted luxury liner that had been painted sea blue. On January 6, 1942, only thirty days after Pearl Harbor, they steamed unescorted into the Pacific Ocean.

“We didn’t know how good we had it, because we loaded aboard that thing and had individual state rooms, waiters waiting on us in the kitchen... all kinds of good things we would wish we had later.

The liner steamed past a still smoldering Pearl Harbor and straight to U.S. Samoa, which was still being shelled by a Japanese submarine.

The next stop was the Solomons Islands, specifically Guadalcanal, the site of a pivotal Pacific War battle. It would become the first conflict in 500 years in which Japanese forces would be clearly and soundly defeated.

“The First Marine Division had gotten in and took the airbase (Henderson Field), but then the Japanese came in a big task force, because they had air and sea superiority. The Japanese were landing 20-to-30 thousand troops at a time, landing them anywhere they wanted to.”

Bob remembers spending more time in foxholes than on the ground for several weeks, seeking cover from Japanese air attacks and shellings from battleships and cruisers. For food, he and his fellow Marines mostly ate canned fish heads and rice the Japanese engineers had left behind when they vacated the airfield.

While near Henderson, word came that the Marines needed aerial gunners for their dive bombers, and George expressed interest in becoming one. What Bob would need to learn to be eligible for transfer was Morse code,  and he was told he could learn that.

But, Bob says his Captain saw the transfer paperwork, “blew his top” and tore up the papers. Later when George went down to Henderson Field he saw returning dive bombers full of huge holes in them, their machine gunners being pulled out with serious wounds. He was glad the Captain had ended his quest to become an aerial gunner.

George recalls conditions on Guadalcanal which made living there, much less fighting there, a big risk.  Water and mud filled shoes and oppressive humid air rotted uniforms off the Marines’ backs.

“There were all kinds of jungle diseases, malaria, dysentery, yellow fever... and I guess most of us got everything.”

After surviving Guadalcanal, the Second Division received well deserved R&R, and more training. They got both in a great locale and with the most hospitable people of New Zealand. 

The Second Marines had time to heal, take on replacements and appreciate life as they prepared for their next assault against the enemy. Two of the replacements would provide the unit with a bonus - - entertainment.

“We had a couple, three guys who were gambling every night, poker players, drinking beer. They went down to the carnival in Wellington, and had won these two little ducks. And they named them after each other. One was Swede Erickson, the other was Siwash Corneillius. “Siwash” was Swede’s duck, and “Swede” was Siwash’s duck.

“They grew up on beer. They just kept pouring them beer and they drank beer...”

Maneuvers in New Zealand included early morning practice landings, to teach replacement Marines how to hit a beach.  Simulating battle conditions, the troops would practice setting up guns, establishing a beachhead and moving inland. Then they’d pack everything back up on ship and wait for the next morning to do it all again. The ducks “Swede” and “Siwash” came along and took part in these practice landings.

Somewhere along the way, as he fattened up on beer, “Swede” disappeared. Bob believes he might have ended up in a cooking pot.

“Siwash” though, soldiered on, conducting early morning reveille by quacking into tents as he toured the Marine camp.  The duck was headed into Marine history, making a name for himself as a combatant at Tarawa.

Tarawa was an atoll, a coral reef surrounding the tiny island of Betio. It was defended by about 4,700 Imperial Japanese Marines, dug into fortified positions - - pillboxes, bunkers and connecting tunnels. U.S. Marines were told island defenses would be pulverized by a naval bombardment before they landed, mostly in shallow draft Higgins boats and LCVPs.

An error in calculating Tarawa’s tides left those boats trying to navigate treacherous coral reefs at ebb tide.

“The tides would have been all right if we’d had amtracs (amphibious tractors). But only the first couple of waves had amtracs, the rest had Higgins boats. The Higgins boats just wouldn’t go over the coral reef. They were getting hung up there, and the guys, some of them were falling out in deep water with all of their equipment on, neck deep, waist deep, whatever.

“Then they had to wade for probably 600 yards, most of them . And there was machine gun and rifle fire that was  crisscrossed to target them all the way up. We found out later that the island had been set up that way.

George offloaded at a pier as his boat was sinking, having been hit by enemy fire. He and his buddies were able to salvage two machine guns and ten boxes of .50 caliber ammunition. Due to withering enemy machine gun fire through that night, George was only able to inch up the pier to the relative safety of the seawall. The next morning he was ordered to recover much needed .30 caliber ammunition from the end of the pier, and George responded with two trips back through that gauntlet of fire.

Bob George’s condensed, 150 page book, "Too Young To Vote", is one of the few first person accounts of Tarawa. It details his experiences on Tarawa, including the heroism of Lt. William Dean Hawkins, who single-handedly took out several Japanese machine gun positions and snipers. Later "Hawk" was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

At the end of 76 hours, the U.S. Marines had taken Betio.

“The old (Japanese) general, they captured him the second day. And he swore it would take a million men a thousand years to take that island. It took about five thousand Marines three days to take it, but we lost a lot of men and most of them were teenagers.”

The official count of U.S. Marine losses was 1,026. Bob George says he knows losses must have been greater, as the chaplain gave him a hard count of 1262 dogtags removed from Marine dead on the island.

“There were a lot of dogtags we didn’t cut because of pilots... who said they could smell the island from 5000 feet altitude. One radioed he could see sharks eating Japanese bodies out in the water. Japanese bodies weren’t out in the water, they were on the land. The Marines  were out in the water. They’re the ones who had to wade in.

“So we don’t how many the sharks ate... but they ate a lot that never got credited as being killed in action.  I would judge probably 1600 to 1800 marines lost their lives there in three days. And even that would probably be an underestimate.”

The Battle for Tarawa has a grisly distinction as the worst loss of life per square foot. Six thousand men, U.S. Marines and Imperial Japanese Marines, were killed on a tiny atoll about one third the size of New York’s Central Park.

Four Congressional Medals of Honor were given to Marines for their heroic acts on Tarawa. The painful lessons learned in this first Allied landing against fortified beaches made possible the successes at Normandy, Saipan, Iwo Jima and other amphibious operations.

As for the duck “Siwash”, he secured his place in military history when the Marines clung to the seawall on Tarawa’s beachhead. George says the beer drinking duck appeared on top of the wall, fighting a rooster that had  been among some chickens the Japanese had had caged on the pier. 

Though bloodied by pecks to his head, “Siwash” threw the rooster and chased him off. The duck’s victory and parade down the seawall buoyed the Marines. After sweeping the duck off the wall, they began pouring fire back at Japanese bunkers and pillboxes.

The duck was commended by Battalion Commander Col. Presley Rixey for his courageous action and the wounds he sustained. George says he was awarded the Purple heart and promoted to Sergeant. “Siwash” not only made “picture of the week” in the January, 1944 edition of Life magazine, but went on a war bond tour.

“Siwash” would later make both the Saipan and Tinian landings, along with Bob George and fellow Marines.

After Tarawa, the Second Marines came to Hawaii to rest and re-equip.

Parker Ranch, on the big island of Hawaii, gave the US Marine Corps a strip of land for a camp. It became known as Camp Tarawa, in honor of the Marine sacrifices in storming that atoll. Bob remembers Camp Tarawa was cold and damp, a climate which would help troops break the malaria they’d brought with them.

“The malaria we’d got on Guadalcanal was not like most malaria you get other places. At the time the doctors were telling us that malaria would make you real sick and all that, but it wasn’t life threatening.

“The same day they put out that communiqué six guys died and several more were on the critical list. So they started shipping them back to the States or to a cold climate, because this was a mutated type of malaria.”

Training on Hawaii was conducted from LSTs (Landing Ship, Tanks), which could carry amtracs, LCTs (Landing Craft, Tanks), and smaller LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicles and Personnel). Part of that training included using amtracs to get from landing ships through the surf and across beaches.

George says in between landing exercises, a storm hit the island, the ocean’s fury breaking cables holding LCTs, which crushed troops sleeping in and under the boats.

“I think we lost about eighty men. We waited until the next morning and rendezvoused and everybody that was found was dead, floating. Some of them had their life preservers, but they were dead.

The risks of men and ships carrying fuel and ammunition were indelibly marked on the men in another event, later to become known as the “Second Pearl Harbor”.

George says that on  May 21, 1944, he was aboard one of several LSTs preparing for the invasion of Saipan. The ships, anchored in Pearl Harbor’s West Loch, were packed  with tanks, trucks, guns and ammunition. Fuel, in 55 gallon drums, was lashed to the fantail of the landing craft.

“They warned us not to smoke around there,” remembers George. “We were up in the front.”

“I’ve heard two or three different stories, but the one I think actually happened... because the first thing I knew, I saw this LST blow up... and everything just went in every direction.

“Then the next LST in line blew. We got three in a row blowing and we were ready to dive off, but were evidently far enough away that the chain reaction didn’t catch us. And our didn’t blow. But I found out later that three more blew the other way. So they lost six LSTs, with all the men and all the equipment. And almost everyone was killed. There were one or two survivors I heard about.”

The men and equipment were quietly replaced, and secrecy about the incident imposed to avoid tipping off the enemy about the invasion of Saipan.

On June 15th, 1944, the invasion fleet, carrying  Marines from the 2nd and 4th Divisions put to sea.

This landing at Saipan was different, as the LSTs came right to the beach, dropped the ramp and Bob and his unit ran out the ramp onto the beach. George was in the fifth wave, perhaps less hazardous than for Marines in the first wave, except that the Japanese had sighted in on the beachhead and could shoot right down into the landing ships.

“They warned us that we had to get off that beach as fast as we could. We lost more battalion commanders in that first day than in any other battle we were ever in. Battalion commanders were really open season for the Japanese because they had their guns on Mount Tapotchao. We’d landed at the base of it.”

Saipan’s importance to the Allied island hopping campaign towards Japan was its ability to provide an airbase for B-29s, bombers with the range to strike the Japanese homeland from there.

Tinian was the next major target. Securing the island required seven days, during which Bob George had his 20th birthday.

Meanwhile, Congress had established a Rotation Plan for combat troops. Anybody that had been over 24 months at war was entitled to rotate back to the states for six months. At that point, Bob had already been at war for thirty-three months!

Three more months passed before he was shipped back home. Bob describes two ships carrying home the Second Marines - -  one to the East coast with 621 men, the second ship to the West coast with 650 men on board. This was the total manpower left from a Division that had been about 18,000 men strong when it went to the Pacific in 1942. During the 33 months Bob George was in combat, the Second Marine Division suffered greater than 90% losses, whether evacuated or killed!

“I know we didn’t look good. We still had our old rag clothes on, were dirty and filthy. They put us on an old scow that had everything but water. After several days they brought us into Treasure Island, then bused us down to the train depot to do some paperwork before shipping us to San Diego.”

There, George looked around at the young boys he’d fought alongside for nearly three years, boys now battle hardened soldiers. That day, these young men dressed in clean new uniforms, and they went separate ways to live individual lives, forever unified by their Pacific War experiences.

As an amazing postscript to his time as a Marine in these pivotal battles of the Pacific War, Bob spoke of the camera and film he’d taken with him to Guadalcanal. He’d taken all but three shots on the roll, but the camera disappeared when George was leaving the island on a Navy ship, and went to a Thanksgiving style dinner on board.

Forty-seven years later, prints of his photographs were found in the locker of a deceased member of the Second Marines. The soldier’s son-in-law contacted Bob and returned the photos and muster roles from Guadalcanal.

Bob George exemplifies the thousand of young men who sacrificed everything to help defend their country, then formed the nucleus of the "Greatest Generation."

Anyone interested in Bob George's book can inquire through the Golden Gate Wing, CAF.

Lucky Lady, Victory Gal and 35 Missions
B-17 Commander Lt. Charles J. Cook

World War II started as a grand adventure for Charles J. Cook. The West Point, Nebraska native had always wanted to fly, and he was able to learn about flying for free in Piper Cubs, followed by PT22 Ryans, Vultees, Cessna Twins and AT6s.
And he admits he was really lucky, in many ways. Cook and the crew that served in the B-17s Lucky Lady and Victory Gal survived 35 missions together,  without any of them even awarded a Purple Heart for a serious injury.
The origins of Charles Cook and his crew’s good fortune began after they came together at Lincoln, Nebraska, with their first training as a unit at Ellsworth Air Force Base, just outside Rapid City in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
One summer night on a practice bomb run over Rapid City, the crew of Lady Luck was at 27,000 feet when the bomber flew into clouds.  C.J. said he called up the field to report the overcast, stating he wasn’t sure how to finish the mission if he was in cloud cover.
The base told Cook,” There are no clouds up there. You weren’t briefed for clouds.”  He was then told to continue the mission from 30,000 feet altitude.
“We went up to 30,000 feet,” says Cook, “and all of a sudden we ran into a thunderstorm. As you know, thunderstorms go to lightning until they start to rain. Well, this one didn’t have lightning so we didn’t see it. It was a moonless night and we were in the clouds anyhow.”
“After we hit this thunderstorm, there were times when I couldn’t put my feet on the floor because we were going down so fast, and there were times when you couldn’t get them off the floor because you were going up so fast.”
Cook says the instrument needles in the cockpit were swinging wildly back and forth, making impossible any interpretation of where the bomber was heading. The crew had started the mission asleep in the belly of the B-17, sprawled on the floor with their machines guns and ammunition. They were anything but asleep at this point.
“They were on the deck and then they were on the ceiling, and then they were on the deck... that lasted something like eight years (sarcasm), I think. They were back and blue and were really sore for a full week afterward.”
Cook says eventually they came out of the thunderstorm in a canyon in the Black Hills, the B-17 flying straight and level - - the only direction the plane could fly without running into the hills.  Ahead of the bomber were the lights of a town, and as Cook and crew came in to land, they were buffeted by driving rain and hail.
“I had to take out the knockout window in front in order to see what I was doing... and I couldn’t see anyhow. But I did make a good landing. That created a little bit of admiration from the rest of the crew, and so from then on I was the airplane commander.”
Nearly a full week after that night’s hail had piled in drifts around Ellsworth AFB, it finally melted. And the crew had healed from being bounced about in the sky.
Cook says soon after that was another night practice mission to Iowa, which was aborted due to engine trouble. The crew landed and put themselves up in a hotel in Sioux City. From a local bar napkin, they also found their nose art.  <<artwork>>
“We were all set. We had our airplane commander and our nose art. So what else could happen; we were in perfect shape.”
Cook says he took his crew in a new B-17 to England, landing en route on his 21st birthday in Reykjavik, Iceland, where they stayed for three days before flying to a base in Ipswich, England. Then, word came to gather up the crew and all their belongings for a truck ride to the 94th BG(H)’s new base at Bury St. Edmunds, where they were billeted in quonset huts fully stocked with clothes.
“It turned out two days in a row the 94th Bomb Group had sent out airplanes and two days in a row, nobody came home.”
Cook says that in addition to 94th veterans, crew members from other bomb groups well remember the story of that devastating mission. Roger Freeman’s history of the 8th Air Force, The Mighty Eighth, documents the June 13 raid on Kiel, noting that after this mission to bomb German submarine yards, the 94th’s gunners prematurely started dismantling and cleaning their weapons. Luftwaffe Ju 88 night fighters suddenly appeared off the Norfolk coast and in a matter of minutes had shot down nine of the bombers.
The mission’s shattering losses led to Brigadier General Ira Eaker  sending Col. Frederick Castle to lead the 94th. Castle had been at Sperry Corporation, working on the Norden bomb sight program, and had hankered to see action. At Eaker’s request he re-enlisted.
With the arrival of new B-17s, Cook says he flew his first mission to Merseburg as a co-pilot to a pilot named Peterson. Peterson was killed two days later, on Cook’s second mission, when C.J. co-piloted another B-17.
Cook says at that time in the war, “When the pilot had 35 missions, everybody in the crew had 35 missions, no matter what the numbers were. They were all granted that privilege. But they (his crew on Lucky Lady and Victory Gal ) didn’t fly the first two missions with Cook.

One way Cook says crews in the 94th improved their luck, on missions filled with either flak or aircraft cannon shells (or both), was to buy extra armor.
“Our crew saved up cigarettes, booze and whatever... and if you knew the right crew chief, you could buy armor, or extra heavy flak suits.  We all wore steel helmets and flak suits. I had about two inches of steel behind me. I sat on at least two inches of steel. We had this stuff packed all over the airplane.”
B-17s were rated at 66,500 pounds gross weight, and Cook swears his ships never flew at less than 70,000 pounds, due to extra armor. And if the plane could fly, that armor often paid off. Lucky Lady bombardier Stanley Dahl could testify...
“One day a piece of flak came in through the nose, hit the bombardier on the chest, knocked him over the head of the navigator and banged him into the bulkhead. He claimed he was really hurt.”
When Lucky Lady returned home, Dahl’s chest was examined.  It was black and blue, but he didn’t have even a broken rib, because he’d paid all his cigarette money for extra plates in his flak vest. Considered uninjured, Dahl did not receive a Purple Heart.
Nor did Lucky Lady‘ s flight engineer, Lester Nabors. He was hit by spraying plexiglass when a flak shell splinter ripped through his top turret - - the plastic shards puncturing his oxygen mask. When Nabors came down from the turret, Cook says the gunner’s face was covered with little spots of blood - - like he had a severe case of measles. But by definition, it wasn’t considered an injury.
“We didn’t really care about that sort of stuff very much, because we’d just as soon not be injured or have a Purple Heart than to have to argue the case.

A Mission Day with the 94th BG
Cook described the daily routine at Bury St. Edmunds this way - -
“If you were flying a mission, you got two fresh eggs for breakfast, which was served sometime after one o’clock in the morning. So a lot of people tried to go on missions so they could get two fresh eggs.
“You’d go through the mess hall and then you’d go out and hustle around with your gear. Eventually you’d go to the briefing, find out what you were going to do for the day. Then you’d get in your plane and go, and we’d bomb at noon.
“We’d fly usually at 27,000 feet, but I have bombed as high as 31,000. The ceiling for a B-17 is 35,600 feet, which was a pretty good altitude for the day.
“It was kinds of like watching a movie. You saw the flak come up, rockets come up, bursting around, the guy shot down next to you... you’d just watch it as sort of a detached thing.  It was like a movie because you couldn’t really think it was going to be your turn or anything else. It was a very funny kind of a behavior pattern, but I think it probably had a lot to do with self-defense.
“We’d come out after you’d land and put away your gear. You’d go through the Red Cross line and get a cup of hot chocolate and sometimes a biscuit. Then you’d go through the medic line and you got a third of a water glass full of whiskey, and if you didn’t drink it, you had to sign a waiver. Then you’d go for debriefing.
“The debriefing room was pretty comfortable. It was the first time you were really warm after a long day at work. You couldn’t eat anything on these flights, because the average temperature at cruising altitude was 56 degrees below zero. Oranges would not thaw for days, if you could find one to take along. A sandwich was pretty hard.”
Cook recalls a debriefing after a particularly bad day. The bombers had returned from their mission individually rather than in formation, with many B-17s running out of gas.
“I didn’t run out of gas. I did everything properly, got home and was sitting there in the debriefing room. This pilot came in and the guy debriefing him just started to chew him out unmercifully because he didn’t follow the traffic pattern.
“He said, ‘Guys were just landing all over the place because they were running out of gas and I thought I didn’t have enough gas to go around the pattern again. So I just landed.’
Cook says, “When the de-briefer showed he was really upset with that answer, the pilot drew his .45 (pistol), put the gun up next to the de-briefer’s head and said, ‘You know if I was you, I’d shut up.’  The pilot was dismissed and that was the end of the conversation.”

Mission #3  11/4/44 Hamburg, Germany
The third combat mission Cook flew was his first with his crew in Lucky Lady, a bombing run on a synthetic oil factory. The bomber was hit by flak, shearing off the rudder and dorsal fin - - connecting the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage.  Remarkably, there were no injuries and C.J. still flew the ship back to Bury St. Edmunds to land safely.
He says the tail gunner, Harold Bevin, got out of the tail, took one look at the missing tail section that had been just a few inches above his head, and fainted.
Cook says, “When he woke up, he was paralyzed and was taken to the hospital for several days. He couldn’t move. Finally they fed him a fifth of scotch, which knocked him out. And when he woke up from that he moved fine, and so he went back to flying.”
Cook calls this another example of luck, as just before the flak hit, the bombardier (Dahl) had proclaimed they were out of the flak area and the crew could take off the heavy flak suits. C.J. says, “He never called for early removal of the flak suit again.”
After another mission that was scrubbed, Lucky Lady landed and the crew went to the officers club, where there was only soda water and wine to drink. The crew assumed, wrongly, those libations would be too weak to make them drunk.
Lucky Lady ‘s  navigator, Collins, was the only 94th BG member Cook knew besides the group’s commander, by now Gen. Castle, who wore a grommet in his officer’s hat. As Cook vividly remembers the occasion, when the general walked into the mess hall Collins walked up to him, took Castle’s hat, ripped out the grommet, threw it on the ground, stomped on it and proceeded to slur out a uncomplimentary statement to the CO.
Then, Cook continues, “You could hear a pin drop, for... I don’t know how long it lasted. It seemed like forever. Castle finally smiled and everybody went back to what they were doing originally.”
In the long run, that experience proved beneficial to Collins, because he became very good friends with Gen. Castle, and became the lead navigator for the 94th.

Mission #6 11/25/44  Merseberg, Germany
Hitting an oil refinery while flying through heavy flak, the 94th lost several planes over the target. Though not lost, Lucky Lady was damaged. She had an engine out, all of her gas tanks leaking but not on fire, and a number of big holes in her airframe. Cook says they’d fallen from formation and were losing altitude flying over northern France, when a P-47 came alongside her right wing, lowering flaps and gear - - a sign to follow.
Since the Luftwaffe was known to have repaired captured planes and flown them, Cook didn’t know whether it was an American or German pilot flying the Thunderbolt. But, as he was questioning the bomber’s ability to limp back home, there was no time to ponder.
“We had already made a decision as a crew that nobody would bail out. If the airplane was flying at all, we’d take the airplane down. We’d all had the jump-out practice and decided that wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun. We’d take our chances of survival with the airplane.”
Lucky Lady’s  descent had brought her to a bombed out airport near Denain, and because of the presence of the P-47, Cook decided to land on the runway, despite hand filled craters there which made for a rough landing. Cook brought Lucky Lady down without incident. 
Before long, a B-24 tried to land as well.
“He looked at the runway and must have said, ‘Oh my gosh!’, because he suddenly went over to the side, landed kind of skewed to the runway, and he ran into an unfilled hole. The airplane just went ‘plop,’ and injured his guys.
“A third airplane, a B-17, came in. He didn’t like the looks of the field either, and so he turned to the right, ran into a farmhouse and killed everybody aboard and all those in the farmhouse.”
Cook says the base all three bomber pilots had chosen for a landing field was an abandoned German base. There were no soldiers from any country at the field. The crew of Lucky Lady  stayed there two nights, went into the nearby town to “scrounge some food”,  and then were approached by French Underground who drove them to where a C-47 had landed to fly them home. Cook still has a copy of orders that were printed to pick up the crews of the three bombers and fly them back to England, with the names of the ill-fated B-17 crew lined-out.

Mission #1612/31/44Hamburg, Germany
The B-17 Lucky Lady had been lost, but her crew went on fighting in another Flying Fortress nicknamed Victory Gal . Their 16th mission again showed how fortunate they could be when it came to weather and fluke occurrences. The day of a repeat raid scheduled on Hamburg oil refineries, a cold front gripped northern Europe, freezing the air to nearly sixty degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and brewing up heavy ground fog at airbases through east England.
Cook says from his seat in Victory Gal ’s cockpit as she sat on the runway, the fog was so thick he couldn’t see the ground below.
“What they did was they hooked us up with a truck and dragged us out to the end of the runway. They had three spots for alignment, and when everything was all lined up, they’d say ‘go’ and away we went.”
Cook says some planes didn’t make it, and they exploded on or right after take-off. Then, heading to the target at 27,000 feet, over the North Sea, the bomber formation was fired upon by a German U-boat. A single exploding shell, without shattering the glass, completely knocked out the windscreen in front of Cook. He continued to fly the B-17 in a torrent of icy air.
“We flew with our long-johns, our uniform, our electric suits, and now our heavy leather fleece-lined suit, and still, even after all that, it was a cold mission.”

Other Missions, More Luck
On another foggy mission, Cook remembers having to land with the primitive instruments of the B-17.
“Miracles happen, and they happened that day. We actually landed on the airfield.  A lot of the guys landed all over the place.”
Cook says that knowing other bombers were trying to land after Victory Gal had, they taxied the bomber blindly for a while and then got out and ran, hoping they were at Bury St. Edmunds and that no one would land on top of them.
“It was a pretty stupid thing to do, but under the conditions I guess stupid things happen and they’re pretty well accepted.”

Coming back home on the deck after another mission, all four engines quit. Cook says he doesn’t know of anything more effective at waking up a pilot than to have all four Wright Cyclone engines quit while flying at low altitude.
“We had the superchargers on to prevent the engines from quitting, from icing. But they didn’t hold out, and the engines quit anyhow. Fortunately, I hit the throttles and the co-pilot hit the throttles - - about broke my hand - - and the engines restarted before we hit the water and got home without any trouble whatsoever.”

Mission #211/14/45 Magdeberg, Germany
Mission #21 to hit oil refineries at Magdeburg, was anything but a cakewalk. Cook says accounts of the aerial battle that day claimed 256 aircraft from both sides combined were shot down. Bevins reported ten bombers from the group behind the 94th went down.
In the midst of the aerial melee, one of Victory Gal ‘s crew had a memorable moment. Cook says, “My ball turret gunner got a little excited, peed in his pants and shorted out his flying suit. He came back and he was pretty sore for awhile.”
The notes of Cook’s bombardier, Dahl, describe “Planes falling like leaves, lots of fighters - numerous fires on the ground due to aircraft crashes.”
Cook remembers the crew firing at several Me 109s, but getting no credit for a kill even though they claimed one.  Fisher, the radio operator, reported ten flak holes in the bomber, and tail gunner Blevins counted ten bombers lost from the bombing group behind the 94th.

Charles Cook did have the misfortune during the Battle of the Bulge, to witness the loss of the 94th BG’s lead B-17 flown by Brig. Gen. Castle, on the December 24, 1944 mission to bomb the German fighter base at Babenhausen. The day had dawned with heavy fog, requiring the runway spotting procedure for blind takeoffs. Three bombers had exploded on takeoff, including the B-17 right in front of Victory Gal.
Cook was flying box position on Castle, below and right behind his B-17, in what could be described as a ‘diamond formation.’  He recalls flak while flying over the front lines, but none over the target.  Then Luftwaffe fighters came up in a huge swarm, an estimated 250 aircraft hurtling against a formation of bombers unescorted by Eighth Air Force P-51s.
After the fighters had made a pass on the 94th, Cook watched as Castle’s B-17 banked to the left, away from the box, and down towards cloud cover which hid it from view. Cook says he still recalls Castle’s radio call to “give ‘em hell!” as the bomber fell away.
As for the men who served on Lucky Lady and Victory Gal, their war ended with a remarkable record of survival. Mission #35 was a milk run over Marburg, Germany. The crew had survived together virtually unscathed on nearly three dozen bombing raids, and with no Purple Hearts being awarded. 1st Lieutenant Charles J. Cook mustered out with a total combat time of 286 hours and 30 minutes for his role in 35 missions. As he admits, they were indeed lucky.
Following WWII, C.J. Cook capitalized on his GI Bill privileges, accomplishing a two PhDs, in Physics and Math. Plus, he founded several corporations and served as an international consultant.

Born in 1921, and raised in his early years on a farm near Ansley, Nebraska, John Gonge says his family moved into a ‘great big’ town of 890 residents when he was a freshman in high school. His father bought a building there with a restaurant, beer joint and pool hall.

John says his grandfather was a great pool player, and "after four or five years of internship under his wing I became a pretty good pool player myself. I pretty much financed my career with that."

Playing pool also provided a direct link to John meeting his first and only wife. While working as a civilian at Wright-Patterson AFB, Gonge says he became an Air Force cadet. Six months before he was to be called for duty, John went home on leave to Grand, Iowa, where his father had been working in an ordnance plant.

While staying with his family, John went to the town grocery store and was smitten by the looks of a girl he saw there. "I got to know her by going over and being obnoxious, I guess."

Gonge asked her to the Sunday dance, and after the dance asked her for a date. She responded that he could come out to the house and pick her up the next Sunday night.

One day during the following week, Gonge was down at the local pool hall challenging anyone in the hall to beat him at snooker for a $25 bet.

John’s challenge was accepted by one man, while another unknown man bet $25 on John to win and others joined in the wagering. After five games of snooker, Gonge walked away with his prize money, as did the man who’d bet on John to win, who thanked Gonge profusely.

"Sunday I went to go pick up my date. I drove up, got out of the car and knocked on the door and guess who came to the door. A great way to start out... ‘and my daughter’s boyfriend is a pool shark.’"

In the long run though, it worked out just fine, as John and his wife were married more than fifty years.

John received his pilot wings and commission as a second lieutenant in December 1943, at Lubbock, Texas. Three months later, in March of 1944, he completed his multiengine training.

Gonge says he was a First Lieutenant assigned to Kelly Field, Texas, one of eight pilots who ferried aircraft around the United States. One day, the base commanding officer, a two star general, needed a pilot to fly his B-17 to Phoenix, and asked an officer which of the pilots should fly the bomber.

The response was, "We’ve got three guys who are very well qualified. One of them‘s name is Lucowski, one’s name is John Ong and the third one’s name is John Gonge.

Gonge says the general replied, "For Christ’s sake, don’t you have any Americans down there?"

Fortuitously, Gonge was the general’s choice. John ultimately turned that opportunity into becoming an aide to four different generals over eight years, helping pave Gonge’s way to success and an upward career path.

During World War II, Gonge flew the "Hump" in the China-Burma-India Theater with the Army Air Corps Air Transport Command. He says he flew out of the base at Jorhat, in the northern end of the Assam Valley near the Himalaya Mountains.

If the height of the Himalayas wasn’t enough, with more than thirty peaks rising higher than 24,000 feet, the weather over the mountains made Hump trips notoriously dangerous.

"You usually had either very, very bad heavy rains and a low ceiling in India, or you had terribly high winds and snow on the other end. You never really had any really good flying weather most of the time you were there. Weather was so bad that when you got blown around, you hoped you had enough gas to get back to your home station."

In all of his Hump flights, Gonge says he only saw the mountains about three times. Navigation was by radio beam, because a compass would swing wildly due to iron ore in the mountains. And, Gonge says pilots really, "Didn't need the radio. You could just fly the aluminum trail… because you could see where the airplanes went down."

Gonge flew two versions of the B-24 - - a cargo version with the designation C-87, and the C-109, a tanker with extra fuel tanks instead of a bomb bay. Most frequently, the cargo was fuel for B-29s mounting the strategic bombing campaign against mainland Japan. The C-87 version carried gasoline in 50-gallon barrels, hauling about 35 or 40 barrels depending on how badly the gas was needed in China.

To combat the weather, the B-24 had rubber de-icing boots on the wings, but Gonge says they didn’t always do the job because of the B-24 wing’s high angle of attack.

"The ice formed underneath the wing and you couldn’t get it off. What you did if you got into a bad thunderstorm or got iced up to where you couldn’t hold your altitude, you ‘d have to start coming down. You’d put the plane into a turn and keep it in that turn, down, down, until the ice melted off.

"Then, you’d give it all the power you can, including the turbo and climb as fast as you can to get up on top and thrown out of the thunderstorm. I’ve been thrown out on top at 32,000 feet and the airplane isn’t supposed to fly out there. But it did, with max power and max turbo all the way back home."

The rear fuselage doors of these high altitude fuel carriers had been removed, and to bear the low temperatures, crews wore electric-heated suits.

"India - - when we took off - - was about 140 degrees in the shade. You had to put that suit on, and you’d perspire, you would be wringing wet. At about 20,000 feet you started to cook, because the electric suit would get hot and you’d see steam coming out of the sides of the thing. You had to wear a mask and that would freeze to your face, to your nose. Everyone of us had no skin around the nose."

Radios in these cargo carriers had long wire aerials which had to be reeled out to trail behind the airplane, and made Gonge cringe.

"We were a short fused bomb, believe me. Every time you pressed the mic button, the radio would arc. The first thing I did every time I got in the airplane was unplug that damn radio. I didn’t want to get blown up with somebody playing with that thing with gasoline fumes in the airplane.

Gonge says they also hauled mules over the Hump, a job requiring unique rigging for the cargo planes.

"We had a special pan built for mules. We’d tie them in and snuggle them down and tie their legs together so they couldn’t kick a hole in the airplane. We’d take them up to 22-23,000 feet and they didn’t kick. They were having a hard time breathing but they didn’t kick. And when we got to the other side of the mountains, we’d just drive her straight down before they could get well again and start kicking holes in the airplane!"

One of Gonge’s most memorable experiences was a major cargo push dubbed "Tons for Tunner". Its goal was to haul as many tons of material over the Himalayas as possible in a day, to set a record for the Army Air Forces.

On the day this special push was scheduled, the weather was terrible on both sides of the mountains. Gonge says the word came to go anyway, to make that record for General William Tunner.

"Twelve of us took off from Jorhat, and I’m the only one who made it back out of the twelve airplanes. We were almost upside down when we got thrown out of the top of the thunderstorm, but we were able to stay there.

"We got some tons over there all right, but we paid an awful price. From then on, my boss said, ’Whenever you come back, if you tell me the weather’s bad, I’ll just shut the Hump down, you’re not going to fly.’ So that’s what we did."

On one of his last trips over the Hump, Gonge says his transport started losing engines. Number one engine died first, losing fuel pressure for no apparent reason. Number four died next, and John radioed to say he was heading for a landing at a base in Burma. When a third engine sputtered to a stop, the command pilot thought he’d be dead-sticking it down.

"Before I could get down, all three of those engines came back on. I flew around a bit to figure out what was causing it, but we couldn’t figure it out."

As the transport was coming back into the traffic pattern, all three engines quit again, and Gonge brought it in on a single engine.

Ground crew tested the plane but could not find the source of the problem. When the base commanding officer told Gonge to fly the transport out, he replied he wouldn’t until he knew why the engines failed.

Gonge says the commander told him, "It was pilot error."

To which John responded, "This is one pilot who isn’t going to make another error until you tell me what’s wrong with that airplane."

After the base commander called Gonge’s CO, who upheld his pilot’s decision not to fly, a local crew boarded the plane to fly it back. Gonge says they took off and were never seen again.

Gonge survived 1000 hours flying the Hump, and returned to the United States to an assignment with the 47th Bombardment Group at Lake Charles Army Air Field, Louisiana. He remained with airlift forces through Air Training Command, Military Air Transport Service, and Military Airlift Command, serving in many locations throughout the world with increasing command responsibilities. The National War College saw him from August 1965 to June 1966, and assignments then came to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to Military Airlift Wing postings.

It was in his position as Commander of the 22nd Air Force, Military Airlift Command at the end of the Vietnam War, that he had the biggest highlight of his career.

Gonge’s headquarters were at Travis AFB when negotiations with communist Vietnam succeeded in the release of nearly 600 U.S. servicemen being held as prisoners of war in Hanoi.

Gen. Chappie James called Gonge to meet in the Pentagon to develop a plan to pick up the POWs with his fleet of airlift planes, a plan that had to be absolutely letter-perfect with no mistakes.

"We sat down and wrote the whole plan, the way we were going to pick them up in Hanoi. Lo and behold, I guess about a year later, we got the word they were going to release some prisoners and we were going to go get them.

At that time, Gonge’s command ranged over all Air Force transports form the west side of the Mississippi River to Karachi, India, and from the North Pole to the South Pole.

"We had to set up communications and a system of how we were going to get these guys. We used C-141s and I got to pick all the crews. Fortunately, I knew all the crews because I flew with them all the time. And, everybody wanted that mission."

The mission’s parameters were set by Hanoi - - the transports could land at Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport, but must land only on the hour and half-hour, and had to be loaded and off the ground so that the first airplane was away before the second plane touched down. And the planes could not be landed until someone the Vietnamese called the Airport Officer gave clearance to land.

Twelve aircraft chosen for the mission were flown out to Clark AFB in the Philippines, and Gonge says he put one of his very best friends, a colonel, in charge of that part of the operation. Crews were carefully selected, right down to the medical techs and nurses.

"We could be accused of probably picking some awfully good-looking nurses. But we thought that the guys that hadn’t seen anybody for six years ought to have a little thrill. We made sure we had some pretty classy looking ladies as the nurses on board."

The whole operation was commanded from the air. A couple of "talking bird" C-130s made up a communications relay, from off the coast of Vietnam to Gonge’s command aircraft.

"I could talk to my crews just as well as I’m talking to you right now. The plan stated I would have command and control, and nobody else would be on those frequencies, period. "

On the trip for the first load of POWs, Gonge says, all the Air Force command posts logged on to listen to the operation, as did the President in the White House.

The first two aircraft at Clark fired up, taxied out and flew off. The second ship of the pair got halfway to Hanoi and turned around. It had been an alternate transport, in the event anything happened to prevent the first aircraft from making the trip on time. Gonge says he didn’t care what happened, but a transport was going to be there, promptly on the hour.

The radio crackled with the voice of the first transport’s pilot, "We’re about 25 miles out. Do I have clearance to land?"

Gonge says he called the Airport Officer on the ground, asking for clearance for the first C-141, and got no answer. He tried again, and again no word. So, Gonge says he told the transport pilot to prepare to land and to keep in touch with Gonge.

Word came back from the C-141 pilot that he was on final approach, and then the Vietnamese Airport Officer responded with direction to land on the hour and put the transport on the blocks.

Gonge says he called the pilot, saying, "Pull the gear up, go around and make a fighter approach, and put the damn airplane on the ground. Make sure you’re on the blocks on the hour. I don’t care how you get there. You get there and be on the blocks on the hour."

The pilot responded with a sharp "Yes sir," and landed.

Listening in the White House, the President of the United States is reported to have commented, "If I’ve ever seen command and control, by God, that’s command and control."

The pilot pulled the C-141 into its ramp location, relaying a visual description of the airport to Gonge in his command jet. There was the rickety terminal building, but no POWs nor even any visible guards.

Among the rules for the POW return, there were to be no weapons or ammunition on board the transports. Gonge, though, was concerned that once the C-141s were on the ground, the Vietnamese might change their mind and try to take the airplane.

In a mission briefing Gonge says he told his crew, "If anybody tries to take that airplane, there better be blood all over the sand, because I don’t want anybody to touch that airplane. None of you guys better be alive. You better fight it right down to the last minute, because they’re not going to get that airplane."

Fortunately, that scenario never materialized.

The C-141 sat for about five minutes before the rear cargo door opened. An old bus finally came into view of the plane‘s crew, and it stopped by the terminal. One by one the POWs were released, starting with those who had been prisoners the longest time. They had been cleaned up and were wearing identical jackets over sports clothes.

A table was unfolded, and a representative from each government held a list of names to ensure POWs were accounted for as they came to the transport.

Gonge says he ordered the ‘prettiest nurse’ to go bring the first repatriated prisoner to the C-141. By the time the first 45 or 46 prisoners in the bus were loaded, there were only six minutes left to take off the first transport and bring the second plane in to land. There was no time to run up the engines. Just go.

The POWs were seated in the transport, four abreast in rows of seats facing aft. Gonge recalls asking the crew what the prisoners were doing, what kind of reaction they had to being released. He remembers the crew telling him everything was very quiet on the plane. The crew had a hard time getting the POWs to sit down and put their belts on.

John Gonge faced an extra, personal dimension in this mission. Five of the POWs were colleagues of Gonge’s, classmates from the National War College. The pilot said that as soon as they cleared Vietnamese air space, he’d gather and relay information as to who was aboard.

"When they told them they’d cleared the coast of Vietnam, all hell broke loose in that airplane. You’ve never heard so much yelling, clapping and cheering in your life. They’d left the radio open so we could all hear that.

"Pretty soon, the pilot said, ’ I think there’s a man here that you’re looking for.’ The guy’s name was Norm Gaddis (USAF BRIG GEN, RET). And he got on the phone and said, ‘John, I knew you’d come. But for Christ sakes, what took you so long?’

MilitaryAirlift Command has rules against dogs in airplanes, and MAC’s national command post called Gonge while the cargo plane was en route to Clark to say there was a prisoner with a dog on the first transport. MAC brass wanted verification.

Gonge says he called the pilot, who confirmed the C-141’s canine passenger. One prisoner had somehow been able to have a pet dog, and it was being carried in the man’s arms. Gonge told his superior officers he didn’t believe there was a dog, but if that proved wrong, he’d let them know about it.

"I switched frequencies and got ahold of my commander in the Philippines and I said, ‘You get in a jeep and get out along the end of that runway. When that guy slows down to make the turn, thrown that dog out and carry it in your jeep. Don’t unload that airplane with that dog in there!’ "

The plan went into effect, and the transport was unloaded without incident. The next day the serviceman was seen reunited with the dog. Gonge commented, "How he got there, I never did know."

The repatriated prisoners first landed at Clark AFB and then flew directly back to Travis AFB before being sent home or to hospitals for treatment. Gonge was asked by the President to personally meet the airplanes and welcome the prisoners back to U.S. soil.

"If ever there was a proud moment in your life, that was a proud moment. Believe me, it was just absolutely out of this world!

"To a man they came off the airplane, stopped and saluted the flag, then came over and shook hands with us."

The families of the POWs were supposed to stay back. But in most cases, with separation for more than five years, families broke ranks to be reunited with their missing men.

"Probably the most touching thing I guess... was when one of the guys’ sons was in junior high school when he was shot down. That boy was now a third year classman in the Air Force Academy. You’ve never seen a reunion like that."

Operation Homecoming saw the safe return home of about 600 servicemen. For the transport crews under the command of John Gonge, the mission was perfect - - the transports never missed a landing or takeoff time.

Lt. Gen John Gonge started his Army Air Corps career as a ‘one-striper’ with no college education and retired a command pilot with more than 13,000 flying hours in 34 years of service. His military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster, Army Commendation Medal, and the Distinguished Unit Citation Emblem.

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from the website "Operation Homecoming" - -

No one on the ground or in the aircraft had noticed the dog, but Wayne (Everingham) did so he asked about it. The man had zipped the dog into his ditty bag and somehow kept it quiet. It was just a stray that some of the Americans had befriended and made kind of a camp mascot.

The man told Wayne that on the morning of this departure, the men were awakened early and given very short notice to load onto the bus, their first "official" notice of release. He saw the prison cook trying to catch the dog, so there wasn't much doubt about its fate! He broke ranks and got into an argument with the cook about the dog. The guards rushed in and because the American refused to board the bus and leave the dog, they gave in - they knew about the publicity that was focused on this release. The American took the dog with him and got on the bus.

< nurse.jpg caption> We were met at the door by pretty young ladies, the first American women we had seen in years. We sat down in the seats and looked around. Everything seemed like heaven. Just like heaven. When the doors of that C-141 closed, there were tears in the eyes of every man aboard. 

Captain Phil De Groot, WWII & Korea 

On December 7th, 1941, Phil De Groot was a junior at Cal. As many other young men thought at that moment of national crisis, Phil thought, "I’d better do something pretty desperate or I’ll find myself slogging in the mud someplace."

The Deer Trail, Utah native had been in the Sea Scouts while growing up in Oakland, California, and he thought the Navy would be the place to be. Phil had already heard of what was called the ‘V-7’ or ‘90 day wonder’ program.

"If you had enough college, you went into 90 days of specialized training and the Navy would commission you as an ensign."

Phil says he took his transcripts and went over to San Francisco’s Federal Building, where the reviewers discovered De Groot lacked one semester of college mathematics.

"I was kind of devastated... and I asked, is there something else."

The response he got was to consider the V-5 program. De Groot was told he could look into it down at the Ferry Building, only a streetcar ride away and a shuffle upstairs.

"I went up and there was Tony Martin. He was a Chief and he was sitting behind this desk and he said, ‘Go in and take your clothes off and take a physical. ‘

"Which I did, and when I learned I passed the physical, I asked what the V-5 Program was, and was told it was for Naval Flight Training."

"He said, ‘You have a choice. You can either go out to St. Mary’s for six months, with a lot of athletics and so on, or... you’re from Cal? We have about three slots left in something called the Flying Golden Bears.’ "

That sounded good to De Groot, and the choice put him into an organization targeted to aid in the recruitment of naval aviators.

In July 1942, the Flying Golden Bears were called up to Oakland NAS. The recruits were told to bring only a toothbrush. Phil says three weeks later, he was still wearing the same pair of corduroy pants as when he reported, and he had worn holes in his shoes from marching drills.

"I used to wash out my underwear and shorts and everything, and put it on the radiator to dry at night. There were no uniforms."

Finally, though, uniforms arrived. But not before the Flying Indians (from Stanford) came into the base.

"That was neat, because we were senior to them," recalls De Groot, stopping short of revealing details why it was good to have ‘underclassmen’. "You couldn’t beat that!"

Livermore, near the site of today’s Lawrence Livermore Radiation Lab, became the next stop for the trainees.

"It was a big round field down there, so you could land in any direction."

The training base was so new, it had no shower facilities, forcing the recruits to find other ways to handle hygiene issues. This was especially important before the young men were turned loose for weekend liberty.

"We had to do a five mile run through the Livermore hills before we could go on liberty. After running those five miles, we were sweating, basically and a farmer up there had one of those wooden tanks with the windmill on top of it and we’d all go jump in that."

Part of the trainees’ work, their physical education, became swinging picks and shovels, landscaping the base and building an obstacle course, of which De Groot fondly recalls, "After we finished it we had to run it."

Flying started in the N3N biplane, and after a couple of hours shifted to the Stearman. One of the flying drills was called the ‘slip to circles’. Starting at one thousand feet altitude, trainees would be signaled to cut their engine, then slip the biplane to make a landing in a particular circle marked below.

"You’d land and let your instructor out. Then he’d go sit by the circle and grade you. This one fellow came around and he was so fast... he kept on hauling back on the stick and hauling back on the stick and brought the nose up and... boom. It was dead center on the circle.

"The instructor said, ‘Anybody who wants to do that, putting that much effort into it, deserves a nod.’ "

Three months late, in February of 1943, De Groot rode the railroad with the rest of his class to Corpus Christi Texas. There, they flew the SNV, with its variable prop. And they flew the OS2U Kingfisher, sporting landing gear instead of floats, as most often seen on shipboard observation aircraft. Then came advanced flight training in the SNJ.

Soon, a transfer to Kingsville, Texas brought night flying to the training regimen.

"This one fellow took off at dusk to meet up with his flight leader. About an hour later, as the two aircraft separated to land, all of a sudden you could hear him say, ‘My God! My plane’s on fire! May Day! May Day! I’m bailing out!!"

De Groot says the pilot had suddenly noticed all the exhaust from his SNJ and panicked. The pilot still got his wings.

Flying SNJs continued at Opalocka, where De Groot says he and his fellow pilots were put into a pattern simply to mark time until the Navy figured out what to do with them next. During this so-called Pre-Operational Training, they flew the Brewster Buffalo, a stubby pre-war fighter which suffered from a number of design problems. Some of those problems were complicated by the lack of 100 octane fuel for fighter training, as high-grade fuel was hoarded for the North African invasion.

"We were flying on 80 octane gasoline, and our Engineering Officer had a real hot deal. He said, ’We’ll just retard the spark, and you don’t carry too much manifold pressure.’

"I think the manifold pressure was down to about 40 inches. Opalocka didn’t have too long a runway and the pine trees at the end looked pretty big, because you didn’t have any wind. So what happened, people would be going down the runway, those pine trees were getting closer, and they’d inch up over what they were supposed to do with the throttle, get up one hundred feet in the air and (premature) detonation would set in. And down through the trees they’d go.

"Four of them went down like that. One pilot was killed and another was badly injured."

De Groot also recalled the Buffalo’s hydraulic landing gear, which didn’t always work.

"The emergency system was a valve, down below the feet. You’d open the valve to bleed all the hydraulics out of the system. Then you had a pair of cutters and you’d reach way down below the instrument panel where there were three wires, one thin one and two thick ones. You’d cut the thin one which went to the tail wheel, the other two went either to the rudder or the elevator, I don’t remember which."

Phil also recalls two fire pulls up underneath the cowling, handles which would release carbon dioxide into a piston to drop the wheels, just short of locking into position. Hauling on the other fire pull then activated a knuckle to push the piston down the last inch, so a spring loaded locking pin could fire across and lock the landing gear into position. It was a Rube Goldberg design that failed to inspire much confidence in pilots.

Neither did the generator that was part of the Curtiss electric propeller system. De Groot says the first warning of impending problems a pilot got came when the radio began failing, meaning the battery was running down. Without the battery, the pilot didn’t have enough current to switch the prop to high pitch to land.

"Up underneath the instrument panel was a string, and you’d pull on this string to make a contact with a solenoid, now your generator was charging and then you could change the pitch of your prop.

De Groot says gunnery training brought out the Buffalo’s tendency to do a high speed snap roll when pulling out of a dive. Pilots experiencing difficulty making the elevators respond by pulling back on the stick, would roll the trim tab fully back, and then the plane would respond, but would pull out so fast the fighter would snap roll into the ground.

"It wasn’t habit forming."

The other hazards of training at Opalocka were provided by the region itself - - swamplands crawling with alligators and inhabited by Seminole indians. The pilots were reminded that the Seminoles had never signed a peace treaty with the United States.

Carrier qualifications came next and for that De Groot found himself at Glenview, Michigan, to work with the converted sidewheel tour boat USS Wolverine.

The SNJs used for carrier landings were crudely modified for that purpose. A tail hook was rigged to the plane with a cord that ran through a pulley and alongside the fuselage to the pilot’s armrest. There, the cord was looped around the armrest to hold the hook out of the way while flying.

"As you came in to make your landing you’d throw that rope out and the tailwheel would come down. You also didn’t have shoulder straps, so as you came aboard , your technique was you chopped the throttle off, put your hand up on the cowling and laid your head against it right at the last moment.

"Well , I came in fat, dumb and happy... and scared. I chopped the throttle off, hit the deck and my head went against the cowling. It broke my goggles, glass was falling out, and my arm had gone back forward with the throttle, to full throttle.

"Next thing I knew, a man jumped up on the wing, pulled the throttle back,

hooked the rope back, cinching back up the tailhook, and the Flying Officer was signaling me to go. And I was airborne again, glass still falling from my goggles."

After qualifying, there was a thirty day leave, during which Phil came back to the Bay Area to marry Suzy. Then he reported to Miramar Naval Air Base in San Diego for assignment. Since the squadron was just forming up, personnel hadn’t all arrived and there were no planes, yet.

De Groot says that after three weeks, the pilots became desperate to fly something and to earn flight pay, which they hadn’t been earning. Approval came for the squadron to fly some F4F Wildcats at North Island.

"We’d never flown these before, but we read the manuals and got a little cockpit checkout . We took off and were flying at about 2000 feet towards El Toro, when my engine quit. I tried and tried to get it re-started, and decided I better bail out of this thing. The F3F you didn’t belly-in, unless it was soft, plowed ground, because there was a gas sump underneath and if that sheared off, you were in trouble and caught fire.

I decided to head out to the ocean so I wouldn’t hit anyone along the highway, and was just ready to jump when I’d forgotten to disconnect the earphones. I got back in and the last time I’d looked at the altimeter I was at about 800 feet.

"I jumped toward the leading edge of the wing to clear the tail, which went by. I pulled the cord and looked down and thought, ‘My God, I’d never seen that fire before. ‘

"I was coming down into this fire, the heat from it actually lifting the chute a little bit, and due to the offshore breeze, I missed the fire. When I had jumped, I had stalled the Wildcat, and the moment I got out, it went straight down. That was my own plane. It had gone down and hit right on the cliff above the beach. That was the fire I was looking at.

De Groot says his landing in the parachute was less than perfect, and he tumbled ‘head over tea kettle’. Some people nearby helped him out, and a doctor gave him a ride to El Toro.

The squadron’s planes finally arrived by train - - F4U Corsairs. Also arriving was a legend of aviation, Charles Lindbergh, who was there to teach the Marines how to fly the bent wing bird.

"The moment you got a Corsair below a three point attitude, the left wing just kicked out, like a snap roll. We were told to bring them in tail low, and when you hit your wheels, you rocked forward on it so you could see where you were going.

"These first Corsairs had a birdcage canopy instead of a bubble. Visibility ahead was pretty poor. You held the tail up as long as you could, and at that instant you lost the rudder control, blocked out by the fuselage. The control, he (Lindbergh) said, was to hit the right brake briefly , as the tail dropped down, you kicked that right brake real hard. The tail dropped down, of course the tail wheel was locked, and then you rolled on out. It became second nature to us. It was just the way you flew them."

Gunnery practice in the F4U offered a chance to mix it up with P-38 Lightnings from the training school in Santa Ana. The Army Air Force pilots would roll themselves into a Lufbery circle. De Groot says the Marines would get a loop going in the center of their Lufbery.

One time, says Phil, he encountered a P-39 pilot at about 10,000 feet over the Mojave desert. "This fellow rolled over and just dove. He could dive away from the Corsair, so I followed him down while he leveled off across the desert at about 50 feet. I was flying behind him, but not right behind him because the slipstream would force you into the desert. Phil slipped to one side and the P-38 slid across in front of him. The two airplanes ‘scissored' several times before they broke off to head for home.

"I later found out he’d been in North Africa and had more hours flying than I ever did."

From El Toro, De Groot had a brief posting in Mojave for an ‘intensive flying ‘ regimen, then he was set to fly by Pan Am clipper to Ewa Field on Oahu. But he was diverted by a request for pilots to immediately be sent to the Pacific, and that meant riding for 14 hours on a C-46 to Hawaii via Samoa. The C-46 carried rubber fuel bladders in the cargo cabin. Twice during the trip the cargo plane’s engines stopped running, only to catch again with a couple thousand feet to spare. De Groot says the pilot was changing tanks based on flight time, and was burning fuel faster than expected, much to the discomfort of the fighter pilots flying as passengers.

In Hawaii, the hazards of operational flying were pressed home on a number of occasions. The squadron lost a pilot when a pilot tragically took off the wrong way and struck a fire truck and an ambulance at the foot of the flight tower. Four men in the vehicles were also killed.

And on one of his inter island flights, Phil had to dead stick his F4U into a landing strip on Molokai. It turned out a broken diaphragm in the carburetor was the culprit.

De Groot recalls that part of the flying the Marines were doing with their Corsairs involved stretching the legs of the new fighter.

"We did some fuel consumption tests, looking for the most economical cruising on the Corsair. We got down to about 1300 turns and pretty high manifold pressure. It was like a two-to-one ratio, so your prop was only doing about 650 RPMs. You could almost read the ‘Hamilton-Standard propeller’...Hamilton-Standard propeller’ as it came past the windscreen."

Among the Corsair modifications during this time were a spoiler on the right wing that forced it to stall at the same rate as the left wing, and an extension on the tail wheel gear, providing better visibility for the long nosed fighter.

Funafuti, in the Gilbert Island chain was the next stop for De Groot. There he flew frequent Combat Air Patrols (CAP) and scrambled into foxholes when Japanese ‘Betty’ bombers made low level surprise bombing raids.

On one of De Groot’s CAPs, he was vectored towards an unidentified incoming aircraft. He circled for awhile, but could see no ‘bogey’.

"All of a sudden I looked down and underneath the scud, down about three-or- four thousand feet here’s what looked like a Betty coming. It had a big glass nose on it. So I tally ho’ed, rolled over on my back, charged my guns and turned on my gun switches. I got him in my sights and thought, ‘Boy, I ‘m going to be the first guy in the squadron to get a plane.’ I was just figuring out the number of mils to lead, when all of a sudden, here comes the big Stars and Bars out of the wings. It turned out it was a DC-2. They only built a very few of those and they put a glass nose on them and used them for instructing bombardiers.

"This was General Merrill, and he was using the plane just as a transport, and didn’t have his IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) on. I came down and as I passed underneath

him I squirted off a few rounds, and boy was the air blue, ‘Plane making the attack break off, break off!!’

"I almost got me a plane... I was always hoping to be an ace. I had three planes to my credit. Unfortunately, all three belonged to the Federal government."

Also on Funafuti, Phil was entertained at movies. He remembers well the brief ‘floor show’ as squadron personnel gathered, sitting on palm logs and facing the film screen, and a rat would wallow down a wire stretched between two palm trees.

"Once he made it across, the lights went off and the movie started."

From Funafuti, De Groot’s squadron moved up to Kwajalein. But before all the unit’s gear, ammunition and bombs could be put on transports for the trip, a single bomb during a Japanese air raid hit the depot, digging a hole reportedly 50 feet across and 20 feet deep.

"All this ammunition went up. It burned up all of our gear. And what was really sad was the officer’s liquor mess burned in a beautiful blue flame."

At Kwajalein, the missions became strafing attacks against Japanese held islands that had been bypassed by Marine and Navy invasion forces. But on one hot afternoon, De Groot recalls he was lying on his bunk when a air raid warning rang out.

"I threw on my gear, ran out and jumped on the back of a jeep. The skipper was driving eight of us on this jeep and we went screaming off to the base. About that time a stake truck pilled out in front of us. We hit that, I bounced off the stake truck, banged myself up a bit, but was fortunate , because the blockhouse we were right in front of was the hospital. The Corpsmen just came out, picked us up and took us in to work on us. After awhile they decided they couldn’t fix me up enough."

Sent back to Oak Knoll for some medical work and to rehabilitate Phil was next assigned to Gillespie Field near San Diego. De Groot quickly became Executive Officer, and three months later was promoted to Commanding Officer there.

After WWII, De Groot joined the Naval Reserve and VMF-141, which was flying Flying F6F Hellcats at Oakland NAS.

In 1952, the Korean War saw De Groot called up to serve with VMF-323. That involved re-training to fly the F4U at El Toro, and some ‘extra-curricular activity’ at a little airstrip on the north end of Camp Pendleton. The Marines were assisting in the production of the motion picture Flying Leathernecks, starring John Wayne, and De Groot helped with most of the aerial scenes.

"They put some sand all over the strip and some palm trees, and built a little pagoda there, simulating Guadalcanal. My job was, if they needed a single plane, I’d fly it... for a flight of planes I’d call up to El Toro and they’d bring down enough planes and we’d fly formation on John Wayne.

"They had a DC-3 and they’d taken the cargo door off and put a simulated cockpit there. And John Wayne would be sitting there, and the cameras would be over here and would see the airplanes in formation on the other side of John Wayne."

Following the re-training at El Toro, VMF-323 was sent to K-1 at Pusan, South Korea where it provided close air support missions and interdiction involving road reconnaissance and targets of opportunity.

Severely wounded on a low-level attack, De Groot made a risky, but life-saving forced landing at a short emergency field, primarily used for liaison planes. Just then, the field was being overrun by the enemy, and he barely escaped!

He was returned to Oak Knoll Hospital in Oakland for six months of recovery.

Phil De Groot had logged some 2000 flight hours as a fighter pilot in two wars. Although promoted to Major, the recovery time from his injuries forced him to be retired as a Marine Captain.

A Two-Ocean War

Bill Ambrosio got the flying bug at a time when the United States military was seeking trained pilots for what would prove to be the Second World War.  In college in 1940, Bill signed up for the flying program at Long Beach Municipal Airport. There, a half dozen J-3 Piper Cubs were available for training in a government subsidized program.
Ambrosio puts it, “Ten hours of basic and they figured I could solo.”
One part of his 35 hours worth of training Ambrosio remembers well was his cross country trip.
“About 35-40 miles away was the town of Corona... I figured that a little bit above takeoff you could almost see it. And it was very distinct in that the city was a big wheel, and within, a little wheel and the streets came out from that.  Pretty easy to find, so I didn’t get lost. I came back to Long Beach.’
Bill liked to fly and started looking right away to get into the military. He went to an administrative office in Long Beach to find out the requirements - - 19 years of age, two years of college - - and he signed up.  Two weeks later he was called, took his physical and passed it. Another couple of weeks and Ambrosia was in among about 85 potential pilots.
Ambrosio called this “E” school, for elimination, as about 1/3 of the candidates would be washed out of flying at this stage of the program.
“Ironically, just because I had the flight in the morning, I was the first person to solo. The next thing, we all lined up on the ramp.”
The Navy’s flying schools were then at Pensacola and Jacksonville, Florida, and Corpus Christi, Texas, and one by one the graduating class was assigned to one of these locations. Except for Ambrosio, who was told to report to the administration building.
“While I was going through this training, they’d raised the age limit to 20. And they said, ‘We can’t send you till you become 20. So, you can go home and we’ll call when you become 20 and send you on to your training.’
The alternative, which Bill decided was better than working in a gas station, was to don the uniform blues and white hat of a seaman and stay in the Navy, working for a Ground Training Officer, until reaching the new age requirement. Ambrosio says he corrected papers for the officer, learned to field strip a .45 caliber pistol, and when he had nothing else to do, he sat at the ramp watching airplanes landing.
Soon, Ambrosio found himself in Corpus Christi, Texas, one of about 275 cadets in Class 8-A. Amidst all the military drill there were six hours of flying in the Stearman N2S before he soloed again and moved on to SNCs, SNDs and the OS2U. Instrument training and cross-country practice ensued.
Then came news of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“I had just come home from church, nothing to do, sitting there hanging around. From that day on, we never got  a day off. We just worked seven days a week, right on through.”
Ambrosio’s desire to be a fighter pilot was quickly awarded by experience in Grumman F3F biplanes, an introduction to retractable landing gear and machine guns. “They gave us a cockpit check out, and kind of a little book to read to tell us what we’re supposed to do to make things start to happen. One of the real fun things was the landing gear was on a crank. You had to crank the landing gear up...”
He continued three plane formation flying, aerobatics and dogfighting, and in short order, he began flying the F4F - - the frontline Navy and Marine fighter then battling the Japanese Zero in the Pacific.
Soon he was assigned to a squadron, VF-27 at Norfolk, Virginia for training including gunnery, four plane formations and field carrier landings, to prepare for upcoming carrier qualifications.
Six of the squadron’s new pilots joined at the same time, and Ambrosio recalls squadron mates C.E. Harris ( ultimately a Captain, with 24 aerial victories in the Pacific ) and Tom Furlow (who became one of Joe Foss’ wingmen on Guadalcanal). Bill says they competed in practice dogfights, and regarding Harris he remembers, “After about five minutes you knew where he was. He was right on your tail.”
The carrier that VF-27 found itself aboard was the USS Ranger, part of the Atlantic Fleet, preparing for the invasion of North Africa.
“I got six or seven landings and theoretically was carrier qualified. You tried to catch one of the first three of thirteen cables in the landing area. Each cable had a sailor who operated a lever which popped this little thing up, and the cable would be raised above the deck. Then you came in, put your tailhook down and just snagged that tailhook. It was like landing with four wheel brakes on a car, it put you forward a little bit. But it wasn’t too violent.
“Of course at the end of the thirteen cables we had three barriers on three different stanchions. If you caught the last couple (cables) or didn’t catch any at all, you ended up in the barrier, with the cables wrapped around you and the prop and everything. It was kind of violent. You  didn’t want to do that very often.”
Ambrosio says carrier landings are made just with the rudder, because once you come around and got a ‘cut’ sign from the Landing Signal Officer,”It is a cardinal sin to do anything but cut the engine and land.”
Bill says on typical touch and go drills, the pilot never touched his brakes. The wind down the flight deck would be about thirty knots, and after the cable was lowered, you’d give the fighter the throttle and take off again. There would be four or five F4Fs  in the pattern around the carrier, each taking turns making a landing and taking off.
With the squadron’s pilots all qualified, VF-27 was bound for North Africa, on board the USS Charger, an oiler converted into an escort carrier. On a stop in Bermuda, VF-27 was transferred to the USS Suwanee to complete the trip, and provide a Combat Air Patrol over the fleet.
“There were four carriers, the Suwanee, Shenango, Santee, and Sangamon. One of them was loaded with P-40s, and our mission was to fly the CAP over the carrier and occasionally take the bombers in.
“We only stayed there five or six days, because they took the beach, took an air field and that was the primary target for us. Because once they had the airfield, they launched the P-40s off.”
Ambrosio says during Operation Torch, there wasn’t much but Arabs on camels to shoot at, so he didn’t have much to do.
“Everybody thinks these wars are straightforward. You know what you’re going to do, everybody knows what they’re going to do, but it’s kind of like  organized chaos.
“One of the guys in our squadron was up on the CAP and any airplane that  didn’t come in and out from a certain corridor, they were ‘bad guys.’ This airplane came in through a  wrong corridor and they sent the planes out off after them.
“They saw this airplane out there and just said ‘he’s a bad guy’ and they went down and shot him down. A destroyer went over and picked him up and found out they were British pilots, which wasn’t too good, but they shouldn’t have been out there.”
With Operation Torch completed, the fleet sailed to the Panama Canal. The planes of VF-27 landed in Panama before the carrier started through the canal, and then rejoined the carrier after she passed through the final lock into the Pacific Ocean. Suwanee was headed to the southwest Pacific, part of a carrier fleet that had been whittled down in battles with the Japanese.
Ambrosio says the next major stop - - lasting from January, 1943 to April of that year - - was Guadalcanal, to relieve one of the air Groups that had been flying missions from the Fighter One air base.
“We got to make runs on all of the islands up and down the string there, Munda, Bougainville... we had coast-watchers that would tell us what was coming down the Slot.”The coast-watchers were also instrumental in returning downed Navy and Marine pilots to safety. And after the squadron’s first mission against about forty Zeros, when nine F4Fs were lost, six USN pilots were recovered to return to flying.
The day after, Ambrosio says, a total of eight F4Fs rose against another estimated forty Zeros coming down the Slot. As the Wildcats dived on the Zeros, Bill found himself in a pickle.
“Every time I could get on a Zero, I’d see little pieces start flying off behind me. And when I looked behind me, there was someone shooting at me. I never got comfortable where I could really get in on him.
“After about three or four times like that, I didn’t get any chance to shoot at any planes for sure because they were always chasing me. And this one bad guy got on my tail and wouldn’t turn me loose. There was  nobody around to shoot him off, so I found this great big cumulus cloud and dove into it, and he couldn’t find me. I made it safely home.”
VF-27 left Guadalcanal and Bill was reassigned to fly a newer fighter, the F6F Hellcat, with another fighter squadron - - VF-18, aboard the fleet carrier USS Bunker Hill. 
Tarawa was the first scheduled target for the carrier, in support of the Marines’ amphibious assault of the Japanese held atoll.
Ambrosio was on the first flight, just before the sun came up, to hit ground targets on Tarawa. Behind him were dive bombers and torpedo planes.
“Nothing. “ Bill says that was the enemy response to his fighter arriving over the island to deliver its payload. “Everybody was asleep, and we woke ‘em up.”
“We pulled back up and came back down, and I thought the island was on fire, there were so many guns around. The battleships went up to one end, turned around and came back, firing their guns all the time, and the smoke got so high that it would be up where we were doing our CAP at 10,000 feet.”
After Tarawa, Bunker Hill  and VF-18 joined a couple of other carriers for an attack on Rabaul, the forward headquarters and key staging area for the Japanese Navy. The target was Simpson Harbor with its usually high number of anchored warships. Bill and his fellow pilots were escorting bombers and torpedo planes.
Bill says his squadron never had a single plane shot down by  a Zero, but lost a lot of planes to antiaircraft. On this mission, Ambrosio says a number of torpedo planes were rendezvousing to return to the carrier, one of them streaming heavy smoke from an antiaircraft hit.
“It evidently had hit the hydraulic fluid, it was smoking pretty bad and brought a lot of Zeros out. I had my four planes and we positioned ourselves over the torpedo planes, two on each side and we must have had ten Zeros. They’d be up here way above us and start down. Our tactic was to head towards him and scare him away.”
“They never made any real attacks and we never got anywhere close to them, because as soon as they pulled back, we got back into position for the next guy.  We got all the planes home safely.”
Bill says when the mission photos were analyzed, a second strike that day was called. Only eight of VF-18’s Hellcats were sent back to escort the bombers and torpedo planes for the follow-up.
While en route to the target, the carrier group was told fleet radar had spotted incoming Japanese planes. Rather than divert the fighter escort, the message came that the fleet would deal with the intruders.
“We kept fudging over a little toward the direction they were coming and finally we could see them, a bunch of dive bombers. I had four planes, and we started shooting them down. We shot down five airplanes. I got two of them, was on another one with my wingman and the other two guys got one.”
The Hellcats had plenty of gas because the pilots had held onto their 150 gallon belly tanks. Finally, Ambrosio started noticing black bursts around him as he was chasing more Japanese planes. He rallied his flight up and away, and got clearance to land when the air had cleared and the carrier was ready to take them.
VF-18 next took its strafing attack to Kwajalein. There they found sitting ducks in the form of seaplanes tied up in the lagoon. Ambrosio says the F6Fs also hit ships anchored in the lagoon, and on the last run he saw a Japanese plane flying across in front of him.
“I was coming down fast, down from a dive, and shot about one burst before the guns jammed. So I pulled up and my wingman’s attempt wasn’t much better. So all of us made a pass at  him and nothing happened. He took off down the runway, five feet  off the ground, guns on both sides were shooting at us, so we pulled out and went out to sea.
“I said, I know what I’ll do - - I’ll chew his tail off. He’s not going to get away. I had a .38 (caliber pistol) ...“
But, figuring the runway had so many bomb holes on it that the Japanese plane probably wouldn’t be able to land anyway, Ambrosio thought better of any further chase, and let the plane get away after all. When he landed, Bill discovered from his ordnance man that the guns wouldn't shoot because the ammunition trays were all empty.
Other strafing missions came at Eniwetok, Guam, Tinian and Saipan. When shooting at a Japanese destroyer escort off Saipan, Bill says he had a unique experience:
“We had armor piercing, incendiary and tracers. I think that’s the way our .50 calibers were loaded. When we ran across this ship, I must have hit an ammunition depot, gas tanks or something, because --  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a magician throw a towel over something and... it disappeared. I was shooting, and all of a sudden it was gone. I got credit for sinking a ship, which is kind of unusual for a fighter.”
Ambrosio was also credited for downing a Betty bomber, after radar spotted the night intruder heading toward the fleet and sent up Bill with three other Hellcat pilots.
“They used to harass us all the time, as soon as the sun would go down. They would carry torpedoes and tried to sink our ship. They were bad. 
“We finally spotted this one and we swooped down on him. I was leading and got the first shot at him. He started smoking a little bit and dove down on the water. We were only bout 10-15 miles an hour faster than he was. They were pretty fast. But, since I was diving, I caught him finally and shot him down.”
Ambrosio was aboard USS Bunker Hill  from October 1943 to June1944, a tour in which he was credited with three aerial victories. In all of his WWII service he flew more than 160 combat missions. After the war, Bill continued to fly for the Navy, moving to multi-engine aircraft. After 27 years of active duty, Bill Ambrosio hung up his Gold Wings, retiring in 1967 as a Commander and starting a long successful career in real estate.

Longburst & Chennault

The air war against Japanese forces in China and the far East was started by the American Volunteer Group and continued by the China Air Task Force and the 10th  and 14th Air Forces. Jim Dumas holds the rare distinction of being a replacement pilot who bridged the transition from AVG to the 14th Air Force under General Claire Chennault.
Jim Dumas learned to fly in the Civilian Pilot Training Program CPTP program in Arkansas, before coming to California and becoming an aviation cadet at Cal-Aero in Ontario in the spring of 1941. From there, Dumas trained in Tulare and Stockton. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dumas was assigned to Paine Field in Everett, Washington, and the 54th Fighter Group, which was tasked with protecting the Boeing Aircraft factory. But, the 54th was soon ordered to Harding Field at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to train in the P-40 Warhawk.
The stay at Harding Field didn’t last very long. In fact, Jim says he was transferred, ‘in a rush’, to Miami, Florida. He explains how he was chosen for this assignment   - -
“All commanders always have a list. I don’t want to name it, because it’s not very nice. I was at the top of my commander’s list. The moment he got a chance to get rid of me, he got rid of me... I’ve always been a person that if you ask me to do something, I want to know why you want it done and how to do what you want done. And I questioned several things that he wanted us to do.  So I was on his list and he got rid of me.”
And, with scarcely the time to pack, Dumas was on his way. He says his squadron commander told Jim that if he had any family, they could join him later.
“They took me in a staff car to a building with a sign on the front saying ‘Port of Debarkation’. I asked the duty officer there where my job would be. And he said to me, ’Have you had your  overseas shots?’ I said no, I didn’t know I was going overseas.
“He said, ‘You mean your squadron commander didn’t tell you that you were going to Karachi?’  I had never heard of Karachi at that time. I had no idea where it was.”
Jim said he started receiving a battery of shots that night - - every single one of the inoculations he needed to combat disease and infection in the rugged environs of Asia.
“They gave me shots all over... and that night, I slept very little, given the location of some of the shots.”
The next morning, Dumas was aboard a Martin 301 flying boat with three other air force officers, headed for Haiti and ultimately across the South Atlantic to Africa. There they transferred to a British Wellington bomber for the journey to Karachi. As the bomber crossed the fence at the end of the runway to land in Basra, the canvas on the back half of the left wing stripped completely off. Fortunately, the pilot was able to safely land.
At Basra, the travelers enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in an air-conditioned room for five days while repairs were made. The challenge was passing the time. Dumas says one afternoon, he and one of the other officers walked out to watch the work being done on the bomber.
Jim says he noticed the rubber of the main gear carried the molded lettering ‘tyre’, “And I said to the other officer with me, ‘Look how they spelled the word tire.’ And that British pilot was really indignant. He said, ‘To spell it any other way means you’re exhausted.’ ”
The wing repaired, the Wellington took off again with the four USAAF officers. Over the Persian Gulf though, at 10,000 feet, the canvas again departed the wing.
Dumas says he the other pilot-passengers had been carrying their parachutes since Miami. When the  British pilot asked them to put the chutes on, he told them they should try to remain aloft until they got to the shore, because the waters below were shark-infested. Yet through skillful flying with lowered flaps, the Wellington pilot coaxed the bomber on to another safe landing, at a British base in the Saudi desert.
“We stayed there three days to get that fixed. That was the most  miserable three days I’ve ever spent in my life. The wind never stopped blowing, I believe, at anything less than 50 miles an hour. The sand was in everything that you touched, in your bed, everywhere. We didn’t have anything to do while they were repairing the wing.”
Finally getting to Karachi, Dumas discovered he and two other pilots were going on to Kunming, China. As the first passenger to step off the Wellington, Jim laid claim to being the first replacement pilot for Chennault’s Flying Tigers.
As a member of the 76th Fighter Squadron, Dumas was assigned to fly one of the original P-40 Tomahawks built for the British but diverted to China, a somewhat war-weary ship equipped with a radio receiver but lacking a transmitter. In this fighter, he was able to hear what other pilots were doing on a mission, but not talk with them.
He admits to being impressed with two parts of the systems the AVG under Chennault had in place in China - -  the early warning system, which gave alerts to AVG crews of incoming Japanese attacks, and the pilot return network, featuring blood chits sewn on flying jackets to identify AVG pilots, that the Chinese would safely return them through Japanese lines.
The area around Kweilin is covered with some of the most unusual mountains in the world. Dumas described each tall peak in the series as being shaped like “an ice cream cone, turned upside down”, covered with shale, and treeless.
Action came quickly for Dumas. The very next day he was scrambled on an alert that proved to be false. The following day, though, another alert had Jim flying wingman to AVG veteran Tex Hill. Taking off and climbing to 21,000 feet, they were vectored toward a Japanese airplane formation over Kweilin. The formation proved to be a formation of 15 bombers and a similar number of fighters.
“We made contact with them. I was flying Tex’s wing and he was leading the flight. So he was first to peel off and I peeled off behind him and I went through the flight, and shot at one of the bombers. I went through the formation and on down below them, and lost the whole flight. You might think, ‘how could you lose a whole flight of airplanes?’  But, it’s pretty easy to do.
And while the rest of his Flying Tiger flight was busy downing seven Japanese airplanes, all Jim could do in his battle-weary P-40 Tomahawk was listen to the action.
“I was circling the air base, afraid to get away from it.  I heard ground control say ‘P-40 over the air base, there is a Zero coming up underneath you.’  I turned up on one wing... and sure enough, there was that Zero coming up right underneath me. So I turned on over, l came down, let the nose drop, and when I thought I was in proper position to shoot it down, I pulled the trigger. And I pulled the trigger. And I pulled the trigger again. I finally had to pull on through the maneuver, to keep from running into the Zero.”
Dumas was the last of the Flying Tigers to land, and after parking his P-40, he attended Chennault’s mission critique.  Jim says Chennault asked which pilot had made that ‘long burst’ of machine gun fire. When Dumas broke the silence he’d kept during the twenty minute de-briefing by responding that he was the pilot with the ‘long burst’, he gained a nickname. That name has stuck with him over decades. In a letter Jim received in 2003 from from Flying Tiger Robert Scott (author of God is My Co-Pilot ), Scott still referred to Jim as Longburst.
Sixty years later, Dumas retains his high admiration for General Claire Chennault.
“General Chennault was one man that I think I respected more than most all of the other people I met during World War II. He was from Louisiana and I have always referred to him as a southern gentleman.  And he was absolutely unbeatable when it came to teaching us the proper way to fight the Japanese.”
Chenault’s tactics included flying in pairs - - a flight leader and wingman looking out at all times for each other - -  ane the use of speed and altitude to advantage, avoiding traditional dogfighting with the more maneuverable Japanese fighter planes.
General Chennault was so confident about what his little air force could accomplish that he sent a letter to the War Department, stating that if he was given a mixed force of about 150 bombers and fighters (a force maintained at that level), he would be able to cause the collapse of Japan.
Dumas says Chennault called upon him many times to perform special tasks and missions. These ranged from recon flights, to delivering letters, handling personnel issues and aircraft maintenance oversight.
“I really think General Chennault was quite fond of me, and I have never understood why. When I was on active duty, I tried to be a good officer, and always have my uniform clean and pressed, and I tried to do everything he wanted me to do. Being a lieutenant and him a general, I was always wondering what I had done that he would be calling me for. And usually, I hadn’t done anything (wrong)... that they could court-martial me for, anyway.”
On one such mission, Chennault flew with Dumas on a C-47. Jim says the general spoke of his own aerial combat with the Japanese.
“We passed over a little village out there in the hinterland of China, and he punched me on my left shoulder and said ‘Dumas, right here is where I had my last combat with the Japanese.’ To this day, there is no record of him ever having any combat with the  Japanese, except this one expression he made to me that day.”
After Chennault returned from China at the war’s end, the city of New Orleans gave Chennault  a homecoming celebration. Although he says he doesn’t know who made the selection, Jim Dumas was chosen to be a member of Chennault’s honor guard. 
In China, Dumas flew not only the older, export version of the P-40 Warhawk, but also the P-40E and a rare P-43 Lancer. The P-43 was a pre-war fighter design valuable to Chennault’s AVG because of its high altitude capability. The P-43 had a turbocharger, giving it a ceiling up to 30,000 feet, allowing for reconnaissance flights above heights Japanese fighters could easily reach. Most of the autobiographical accounts of the AVG, tell of the P-43 that Chennault assigned for special missions.
Chennault sent Jim to Lashio one time, to circle the air field at high altitude, watching for a large number of Japanese fighters reported to be landing there.
“I went over there, and I was looking at the left wing, out at the end of it, and I could see fuel running out of the tank over there. The P-43 had a turbocharger under the elevator. And the dihedral of the wing was such that if the wing (tank) leaked, the gasoline would follow the wing down to the fuselage and then run back in the fuselage back to the turbocharger. And when they met, there was a big boom, every time, and the airplane was destroyed and the pilot was killed.
“Well, as soon as I saw that, I shut off the turbocharger off and I started back to Kunming. And when I got back there I reported in to General Chennault. Well, he was a little perturbed about it and disappointed, because I hadn’t seen any airplanes there.
Chennault told Dumas to return to Lashio in a P-40 at a lower altitude and keep vigil for the expected enemy air fleet. Dumas followed orders, but still saw no Japanese airplanes.
On another special request to deliver a letter to Gen. Stilwell at Chungking, Dumas says he was feeling very sick as he got his orders. He flew the P-43 to Chunking, but became so delirious while flying he questioned whether he could safely land the Lancer.
“Because the landing gear is close together, they were easy to ground loop. And if they ground loop, usually the struts broke off  and they’d go up through the wings and into the fuel tanks and that’s all she wrote.”
Dumas managed to land the P-43 and survive a rough jeep ride into Chungking. He recalls he had such a headache, he thought several times while bouncing down the road in the jeep that his head would explode. Dumas did deliver the letter to Stillwell, who recognized Jim was not well. He had the aviator hospitalized until Jim recovered from what proved to be a severe attack of strep throat. A nurse told Dumas he had been in a coma for three days, and she wasn’t sure he’d make it.
On another Chennault special assignment, Dumas was put in charge of ensuring three damaged P-40s were repaired and returned to Kunming, and that the planes’ pilots were on good behavior. There had been reports the pilots were causing problems in town.
When the first of the P-40s was ready to fly, Dumas took it on a test hop, landed, and refueled for a second flight to test the guns. After landing following the gun check, the crew chief told Jim Japanese bombers were inbound. With only a partial refueling, Jim climbed up to the airspace between the airfield and the bombers’ expected route, a position where he could attack the bombers from out of the sun. He searched for nearly an hour before spotting a tight ”V” formation of five bombers, and then dived at the rear bomber on the right leg of the “V”.
“I had hardly started shooting, when the bomber’s wing started smoking, and then folded up. Then it rolled over and went straight down. I didn’t follow it down, but I climbed back up to see if I could get another shot at ‘em. Again,  I got to where I thought I could come out of the sun, but this time they were watching for me. But, I started firing too soon. At least I thought I did. I saw pieces of the empennage flying off  and it also rolled, the other direction.
Dumas didn’t hang around to watch the bombers crash. instead scanning the skies for possible fighters, even though he hadn’t seen any.
“That night, I thought General Chennault would be real proud of me. But you should have seen the telegram I received from him the next morning. He let me know that under no certain terms was I to ever to  attack a flight of Japanese bombers alone.
“Those two bombers, if you search the record, you won’t find them. But they’re there. I didn’t report them to General Chennault. He knew that I’d gotten them, because he chewed my pants off, because I had. But anyway, he thought that the plane was more important than I was.”
Dumas almost became a victim himself when he was returning from a mission over Burma. He says he was within sight of his airbase at Kunming when an enemy fighter slipped behind his P-40 and riddled it wit h bullets. Jim says he has relived that moment many times over  the years since it happened.
Among the offensive missions Dumas flew were strafing attacks on boats moving up and down China’s rivers. The boats frequently carried supplies for the Japanese army.
“I hated to strafe boats on the river, because I never knew if the Chinese who were piloting the boats on the river were being forced to do it or whether they were doing it on their own. So I was always hesitant to shoot a boat.”
Moving back to Kunming in early February, 1943, the Flying Tigers turned their attention to a reported Japanese Air Force concentration at Bahmo, Burma. Dumas recalls the distance from Kunming to the Japanese air base was just about a maximum four-hour flight for a P-40 with a belly tank of fuel.
Five planes from the 76th Fighter Squadron were to attack the base at Bahmo. Two pilots were assigned to knock out a pair of anti-aircraft batteries guarding the field,  and Jim was to be the first of the Tigers to strafe the field. Jim says the anti-aircraft guns were cleanly taken out and he lined up his run on the Japanese planes.
“One of them blew up and all of the flames came up and I flew right through the top of the flames. I was a little bit concerned because... this (Jim pointed to the nose cooling scoop on a P-40 model) was our oil cooler and Prestone cooler. And if a piece of metal would go through either of them,  I was going to walk home or stay with the Japanese, one or the other.”
Of the dozen enemy fighters parked on the ramp, all were lit up by the strafers and left burning. The Tigers also hit some trucks under trees at the end of the runway before turning for home.
Jim says after his last pass he was out of ammunition, and then the P-40’s engine  began vibrating, “shaking all over, and I had no idea what what was wrong with it.”
Dumas says he was fortunate to make the flight back to Kunming, as there probably was no place to land in the mountains between Bahmo and the Tiger’s base. After landing, Jim was sitting in the cockpit, doing his post mission paperwork, while his crew chief inspected the P-40.
“Finally he came around and jumped up on the wing and said, ‘Lieutenant, did you know you have bullet holes in your propeller?’
“I said, ’Bullet holes? How could that be? I didn’t make any head-on passes with any Japanese fighters.’
“He said, ‘Well, these bullets are from inside out. The holes show the bullets went from the inside out.
“I said, ’That couldn’t be. I ran out of ammunition on the second pass with the trucks.’
And Jim says the crew chief responded, “It’s a damned good thing you did. You might have shot yourself down.”
Dumas then remembered that on his first pass strafing the trucks under the trees, his right wing clipped a tree. He soon realized he had bent the outboard machine gun blast tube inward, sending its bullets into his own plane’s propeller blades.
“Each of them had a hole about 18 inches form the end. So, I’m really grateful they stayed on there, because if one of those had come off, that engine would have vibrated off of the airplane.”
For their successful strafing attack, all five pilots on this mission received a letter of commendation signed by General Chennault.
When Jim Dumas returned to the United States in early December, 1943, he had flown 62 combat missions in China. In his Army Air Corps/Air Force career, Jim Dumas logged more than  2,000 flight hours, mostly in fighter aircraft - - P-39s, P-40s, P-47s, P-51s, F-80s and even a few hours in the B-17 .   
“I never got to fly the P-38, but always wanted to. We had one in China - it was the reconnaissance version - but I wasn’t a photo man and never got to fly one over there and never got to fly one when I got back from China.”
After twelve years as a military pilot, Jim resigned from the Air Force to become a rancher. Later, he became the owner of a furniture store and the mayor of Chowchilla . Today, at the age of 87, he still flies a private airplane.
The many colorful experiences of Jim’s life, before, during and after his days in China are recorded in his autobiography, Longburst and the Flying Tigers.

From Fabric to Afterburner

"The aircraft carrier I was assigned to was the Lexington... and later the Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise... three were sunk, and the Big E was pretty badly damaged. I wondered about myself and the future, in this kind of business."

Few are the young men who were naval aviators before Pearl Harbor, who rose through the ranks, from an Apprentice Seaman to the rank of Commander.  Fewer (less than two percent) were the young graduates of the Naval Aviator Program who earned their wings and flew fighter aircraft for the Navy. Robert Kanze was one of those young men.
Growing up near Lakehurst, New Jersey, Rob saw the dirigible airship Akron  fly overhead, disgorging and recovering biplane fighters. On a trip to the base, he also discovered it was possible for enlisted men to become naval aviators, setting his sights on accomplishing that feat.
After enlisting in 1935, and fresh out of boot camp in Rhode Island as an apprentice seaman, Kanze had an historical assignment. He was placed on a crew to tar the rigging of the War of 1812 frigate USS Constellation , 'Old Ironsides.' Next, he spent a week testing torpedoes on a four-stack destroyer, followed by a trip through the Panama Canal.
"In that era, whenever you went from the East coast to the West coast, you went via the Canal. The Navy didn't have money to do otherwise, I guess. There I joined a four pipe cruiser, the USS Omaha. And in that era the Omaha  didn't have a PA system.  It was quite interesting because when the officer of the deck decided an activity to be done, like sweep a deck with brooms, the bosun's mate of each division would pick up that call and transfer the information around the ship, verbally by bosuns and bosun's pipes."
Kanze's next ship was the USS Tennessee, which he prized due to the three seaplanes on board the battleship. Unfortunately, though, aviation was not a priority in the 'black shoe navy.'
"I found that since I was mechanically inclined I would go to Machinist Mate's school. I didn't want that, obviously, because I wanted to stay in aviation. I was able to snivel out of that one. The next assignment was as a bean jockey, a mess cook."
When Robert went ashore, one of his fellow galley crew members 'overdid' his drinking until he was sick. He was discovered the next morning stuck to the third deck by the fire rooms, the dried fluids from his stomach baked with his hair to the deck. Fortunately, Kanze says he was soon able to migrate into the aviation unit as a crewman.
"At that time we had three O3U biplane seaplanes, with a catapult on the number three turret and another one on the main deck. These catapults were driven by black powder. They would accelerate the aircraft to 55 knots in 55 feet and the g-forces were rather significant, as you might imagine. The recovery was something else.
"In the open sea, the ship would put wind on one bow, turn to the eye of the wind ... and would stream a  sea sled with a cargo net. On the main float we had a hook, and we would taxi up to that sea sled and cut the engine and the crane would pick us up. On a battleship,  with a 100 foot beam and a boom coming over another 100 feet, the movement of that boom was probably 15 or 20 feet if the ship was rolling maybe two to three degrees, which was often the case."
The crewman then grabbed the hook and married it to the big ring attached to the plane, so the plane could be lifted aboard ship.
"What would often happen is  - - you'd better marry the two together or else your arms got stretched quite a bit. Fortunately, I had pretty long arms."
One of the first service changes on any new O3U was to drill a hole in the aircraft's catapult fitting on the lower side of the main float. This created a shackling point for recovering the aircraft in the event it flipped over in the water. Kanze says a whaleboat would tow the plane to the ship's crane so it could be hoisted aboard.
"We then had to take the engine out, hose it down with fresh water and put it in a can with oil. And it went down to be rebuilt that way. Likewise we cut holes in all the fabric, drained all the water out of the bird and shipped it down to North Island for overhaul."
Kanze became an Assistant Plane Captain, performing maintenance on the airplanes and engines, and was also responsible for the monthly re-rigging of parachutes. That meant hanging chutes out overnight to dry and re-packing them.
Flight school in Pensacola was Rob's long-awaited, next stop, and was where he became personally acquainted with the "Yellow Peril", the Navy's N3N trainer.
Moving to the next squadron developed proficiency in formation flying, and brought time in O3U-1, OSU, and SBU types. That was followed by instrument time in the NJ, a predecessor to the low wing monoplane SNJ.
In Miami, Kanze again flew a variety of aircraft - - F2Fs, F3F,s BTs, SBC-3s and-4s.
Being the only enlisted student in the wing actually brought a special privilege.  While aviation cadets spent a half day doing special drills, Kanze could fly engine run-ins on the biplane fighters.
"I wrung them out. I think I did everything that was considered possible. It's a wonder I didn't kill myself. But nevertheless, I think I learned everything about aircraft  that was to know in that era."
By the summer of 1941, Kanze had earned his wings and was ready for the fleet. Yet with a shortage of carriers and an influx of pilots, training and qualifying for carrier operations was a challenge. It would soon be a deeper challenge after a torpedo damaging  the USS Saratoga  in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.
By early 1942, though, Kanze was able to have 950 field carrier landing flights over a three to four month period, training he says was to prove invaluable.
"The first year of experiences I had in carriers, I never had a wave-off. Because of this background that was so thorough and so complete, I had an 'up' on everybody else, I thought."
Assignment to Fighting Two (VF-2) on board the USS Lexington, brought Kanze to the South Pacific, east of New Guinea. The first day of the Battle of the Coral Sea found Robert as fourth man in a flight of F4F Wildcats led by squadron skipper Paul Ramsey. They were escorting TBD torpedo planes to attack the Japanese fleet northeast of New Guinea.
"Right around 13-000 to-14,000 feet we saw this ship in the distance launching aircraft . A few Zeros came up to tangle with us. Fortunately, we had them outnumbered, so I got away with that.  I was very, I suppose, pleased to see this Jap carrier being sunk. Two squadrons of TBDs and two squadrons of SBDs made a beautifully coordinated attack. The carrier never changed course. This was the Shoho. It just sailed under the water, but it was completely aflame. It was a very interesting experience."
Kanze admits that in watching the carrier sink, he momentarily forgot where he was - - alone in the sky off New Guinea - -  until he found a returning TBD from Torpedo Five. Then Kanze spotted a seaplane with big round, red 'meatballs' on its wings.
"I was in beautiful position to make a high side run, which I did. We exchanged fire and I saw him splash. I didn't get a good look. It was kind of out of the side of my eye, but I did see him splash."
Kanze trapped his F4F aboard the Lexington,  and while taxiing to his spot, the fighter's engine quit. His plane captain told him the Wildcat was out of fuel, and that he found a slug in its engine, a bullet from the float plane with Kanze had traded shots with.
A few days later, the crew of the TBD Kanze had formed up with to return to the fleet got ahold of the fighter pilot to confirm his victory.
"I read their report, and... so what."
Running out of fuel, though, did make an impact, as Kanze recalls he was "rather fuel conscious after that."
On May 8th, 1942, squadrons from the Lexington  and Yorktown  dueled with their counterparts from two IJN  carriers, Shokaku and Zuikaku.
As the last scheduled fighter pilot to take off, Kanze says he was ordered to report back to the Lexington's  ready room before departing. From there he experienced the Japanese attack.
"I felt three distinct shocks, indicating the ship was being hit by torpedoes, which was true. We took three torpedoes and one bomb hit. The bomb hit just outside the number one elevator, and ultimately sunk the ship.
"The ship did not have up-to-date firefighting equipment. What we did later was put inert gas over the tanks, but we did not (then) have that capability."
Despite a lack of adequate fire suppression for aviation fuel storage, Lexington  got up to full speed of 24 knots after the attack, and launched the remaining aircraft. Rob says he was one of the last pilots to take off, yet did so without enough time to fully inspect his F4F.
"I found out later there was a little shrapnel hole in the lower part of the fuselage, penetrating the vacuum tank which actuated the flaps. Going off the bow, the flaps collapsed and my plane sunk significantly... it was a good situation to wash the tires with salt water! Fortunately, I got away with it."
By day's end, other explosions and unchecked fires doomed Lexington. She was evacuated and went down. Kanze ended up making his first night landing on CV-5, the USS Yorktown. For the next three or four days he flew with Yorktown's  fighter squadrons, before being sent back to the United States on a tramp steamer.
There, Fighting Ten (VF-10, The Grim Reapers), the first replacement Navy Air Group was being formed. Jimmy Flatley had been designated to lead the Group on the USS Enterprise, and wanted Kanze on board. Kanze also says Flatley told him he was going to commission Kanze, whether he wanted it or not, as Flatley believed non-commissioned pilots, by not being in the officer's wardroom, were missing out on pilot talks about tactics.
Kanze says his commission did take another year and a half, during which time Rob flew from the Enterprise  on a good number of missions, including helping Marine aviators defend Guadalcanal.
"This meant flying out of Henderson Field, living in tents, and diving in foxholes because the Japs were shooting at us at night. The poor Marines were living on Spam, for the most part, so I learned to enjoy Spam."
Rotated back to the States as a Chief Aviation Pilot, Kanze says he wondered what his future might hold. Most Petty Officer pilots were being assigned to multiengine aircraft.
But Rob found out Flatley wanted him to come along on his next assignment, as Fighting Ten was being re-formed in Seattle, equipping with the F6F Hellcat.
That combination delighted Kanze.
"This was a bucket of fun. Because in Seattle during the summer time, the weather was great from about noon until evening, which allows us to enjoy ourselves in the morning, after a busy evening ashore, often.'
Flying the Hellcat continued on Maui, as Fighting Ten prepared to be redeployed. While training in the skies above the Hawaiian islands, Kanze recalls fighters mingling with bombers and torpedo planes, in what were known as "group gropes".
In the next few months, Kanze flew some unique missions. The Navy was creating a teamwork system for night fighting. In the system, two fighters would fly off the wing of a radar-equipped torpedo plane. When a bogey was sighted on radar, the torpedo plane would guide the fighters to make visual contact so they could then shoot down the enemy aircraft. The loss of ace Butch O'Hare on such a night fighting mission ended that tactic.
Kanze says while flying a Hellcat he also experienced the aeronautical phenomenon of compressibility. It happened after Rob read an article about a P-47 reaching an airspeed of 700 mph. Kanze says he took an F6F to 40,000 feet and split-essed down until he felt a distinct jolt about 36,000 feet.
"I managed to squeeze the nose up and get out of that environment. The bird didn't feel right. I dropped down to about 3,000 feet and put the wheels and flaps down. The bird was abnormally controlled, but controllable. "  
When Kanze landed, he and his crew found the Hellcat was twisted, the fuselage torqued, like a mop that had been wrung out. This was to become a problem symptom for many aircraft as newer propeller driven planes approached the speed of sound.
By January, 1944, Fighting Ten was headed back to combat in the Marshall Islands, Kwajalein and the first raid on Truk Island, then the Japanese Navy's main fleet base. Kanze was in one of the first flights, a fighter sweep.
"We cleared the air of any Japs at that time, no problems whatsoever. That afternoon my wingman and I were in the same area near Truk, and we found a Jap destroyer underway. We strafed him twice.
"Now when you strafe with a fighter you get six .50 caliber guns in each aircraft. You make two runs and you do a hell of a lot of damage.  When we left the second run, that guy was dead in the water, the steam lines were all spewing steam, the bridge was shattered. We did a pretty good job there."
In the second raid on Truk, Rob was lucky to make it back aboard the Enterprise. The first F6F he was to fly wouldn't get off the deck. The second plane he took got airborne, butKanze says it was also a 'dud', and he was barely able to coax back it aboard the carrier after emptying its guns of all their ammunition.
Despite those edgy flights, Rob made a third trip that day, he and his wingman covering a torpedo bomber strike. This trip, he says, almost proved his undoing.
"My wingman found a Jap dive bomber approaching for a landing, at maybe 2000-3000 feet. He fired at this guy but he wouldn't torch, wouldn't burn. I said, 'Hell, I can do that.' "So I sneaked right up this guy's fanny and let go with my six .50s. About that time  the Jap shore batteries let me have it. I really got bonked. My bird was afire, I had big holes in the wing. I knew I wasn't going very far. "
Kanze was inside Truk lagoon, maybe 40 miles from the reefs around the huge lagoon. Flying into the wind, Rob immediately did a chandelle and managed to turn around and land into the wind about 400 yards from a beach.
In the water, he inflated his raft and climbed into it, only to again become a target for Japanese gunners.  He let some air out of the raft and drifted the rest of the day and night until the following morning, paddling out of the lagoon into open sea.
After firing tracers from his service pistol, Rob was spotted by a TBM pilot, who radioed float planes from the battleship North Carolina  to come to his aid. When a pair of OS2U Kingfishers arrived, the first one landed in the water, and its over-eager pilot taxied right at Kanze.
"I wasn't about to come in through that propeller, so I was going to swim around the wing float, which I did. At the same time the pilot, in his eagerness to pick me up, sent his crewman out there and the plane did a slow roll. Well, it couldn't fly after a slow roll. So that put three of us in the water."
The second Kingfisher landed and towed the first seaplane, its two man crew and Kanze, to a submarine that had surfaced. That sub was the USS Tang, under the command of LCDR Richard H. O'Kane, and one of the most successful subs in US naval history. Before Kanze would be dropped off at Pearl Harbor three weeks later, the Tang  had rescued a total of eighteen naval aviators on that war patrol.
Kanze returned to combat in time for the "Marianas Turkey Shoot", in which he shot down two Zero fighters and a dive bomber, victories for which he was never credited. "Later, off the coast of northern New Guinea, I saw this beautiful bird under me and thought it was a B-26.  I looked again and said, 'it's got too many meatballs to be a B-26. It's a Betty.'  Fortunately, I was able to I made a high side run on him. I caught both of his engines on fire, and he disappeared into the clouds. I'm sure he went further than the clouds. In any case,  I'm sure I nailed him."
When Fighting Ten's tour ended, Kanze came home as a veteran of more than 100 combat missions in the Pacific. He remembers a beer bash held at NAS Alameda hosted by the Enterprise's  dive bomber squadron, because it had never lost a plane while under the escort of the Grim Reapers (Fighting Ten).
Kanze's next assignment came as a test pilot at Patuxent River NAS. While there, Rob met Charles A. Lindbergh, who told him a few choice stories about his aviation career.
"On his first  cross-Atlantic flight, in 1929, he got tired.... You may know he got very little sleep on the day before, but he did manage to stay awake, but not completely.  What had happened was that the aircraft was so beautifully trimmed to level flight, that as it lost weight with fuel consumption, the nose came up. And when the nose came up it started to shudder getting ready for a stall. It had a very distinct shudder, and that woke him up. So he was actually able to sleep, not by design, but by circumstances."
Kanze worked on the F8F Bearcat project, taking delivery on Grumman's first aircraft. On one of the first takeoffs Rob made with a drop tank, the tank released on the plane's rollout, raising the Bearcat's tail and putting the huge propeller on the runway.
"I trimmed maybe 3/4 of an inch off each tip of the prop and was fortunate enough to get away with it. We grounded the Bearcat right then and there."
Kanze found the problem to be a microswitch which failed and dropped the tank. He suggested a more substantial lever that had to be pulled to release the drop tank, and though the change added extra weight to the Bearcat, his suggestion ultimately prevailed.
Kanze says the hot Navy fighter held the record for climbing to altitude - - 10,000 feet in 92 seconds - - due to its light weight of 8200 pounds and a radial engine delivering  2400 horsepower. Rob says the F8F drew the interest of the Blue Angels, who were then flying the Hellcat, and they came to be checked out in the latest Grumman ship.
"Butch Voris, the founder and CO of the Blues at that time, was very much impressed with the Bearcat and so they took the Bearcat as their bird. And they did a neat job, of course, over several years with it."