Rendahl.html Pilots of the 40s

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376th Heavy Bomb Group Patch Home to the 376th HBG Home to the Heavy Bomb Group 9th 12th 15th Air Force History

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*FREQUENT FLYERS OF THE FORTIES*

(A True Tale by Lt. Glenn E. Rendahl- Pilot. 514^th Squadron, 376^thHeavy Bomb Group)

PROLOGUE

THE BEGINNINGS

HERE'S TO ADOLPH

BLIND FLYING IN FORMATION?

WE WERE BEING WATCHED

BOOMERANG

DETOUR TO GREENGATE

PARTING CAN BE SWEET SORROW

PROLOGUEThe Greek poet, Pindar, once wrote: "The written word will long outlive

the deed!" That must be a truism, because he wrote that twenty-fivehundred years ago and it has survived as viable quotation to this day.This story was written to record for history an insight into theexperiences that many volunteers faced while helping to achieve thevictory that ended the war in Europe in the nineteen forties. It hasbeen well over fifty years since World War II ended and the number ofsurviving participants is dwindling very fast. It is hoped that thisaccount will, at least in a small way, help younger and futuregenerations to understand the environment and the frame of mind fromwhich those participants were operating. It may help to answer some


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questions regarding the daily life led by many of those crewmen duringtheir tours of combat duty.

This is also the authors heartfelt tribute to a crew that loyally gavetheir all, and without ever having to be asked. That is what made ourcrew feel successful at achieving the goals we had in mind when we firstvolunteered to join this fight and to make certain that our forces wouldemerge victorious. I will be satisfied if my descendants acquire anawareness of the price paid for our freedoms by the generations thatpreceded them. Our mandate was to protect what our Allies, and wealready had and cherished. These words were written by one of themembers of a typical crew in that huge undertaking.Being neither gifted nor trained in literary talents, I will just relatemy recollections as I saw things from where I sat, in the pilots seat,plus all the record searching I could do. Surely many accounts ofsimilar experiences have been written, but you can be sure that thoughsome similarities may exist to other tales, no two tours have ever beenalike. The language used in this monograph will be kept clear enough forthe readers without firsthand experience or knowledge of military lifeto be able to follow clearly, with as little use of military acronymsand jargon as possible.

Flying the four engine propeller driven bomber known as the B-24Liberator with a crew of ten or eleven men on massive daylight bombing

raids over Germany in the forties was quite different from anythingstill possible in todays world. A new style of warfare has already beenproven and adopted, and has completely replaced all the equipment andmethods that were available in the early forties. As the new productsand electronic developments tend to strive for robotics and remotecontrols whenever possible, fewer humans will ever be in the warplanesor directing the weapons of the future. It is quite likely that futureair battles may even be fought mostly in, or from, space. But, lets goback in time a bit to get a feel for how things were when Hitler wastrying to get most of Europe under his control in the early forties. Hehad to be stopped at all costs.

THE BEGINNINGSHow was a bomber crew assembled back in the forties? My personal firststep began when I was still six years old, and an Army Air Serviceformation of Martin B-2 bombers, flying on a special occasion, flew verylow over our house in early 1930. They were blue and gold fabric coveredtwo-wing planes and the pilots in their soft helmets and goggles wavedfrom their open cockpits to the kids on the ground. Ten or eleven yearslater it was test pilot Tony LeVier that was passing over our house inthe new P38 out of Lockheeds field in Burbank, CA. That really lit afire under my desire to fly, even if he couldnt wave a personal greeting.

It finally loomed as a dream turning possible for me a little later whenmilitary mobilization expanded dramatically following the Pearl Harbor

attack. I enlisted as an Army Air Corps mechanic at first; at least itwas a step closer to my goal. It was some months later before I managedto get a transfer into the Aviation Cadet training program, which tookanother year to earn the wings. The P-38 proved not available for a six-foot-two newcomer, so bombers became my destiny and the B-24 was then bymy choice. That was mostly based upon having learned by then to favorPratt-Whitney engines over ones that always threw oil, like those in myalternate choice.

When I got through cadet pilot training and then another ten weeks in


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the B-24 transition phase, all in the Middle West, it was August of1944. Our crew was then assembled as a team at Westover Field nearChicopee Falls, Massachusetts, with the collection of ten trained men ofages nineteen to twenty-five, from specialized training schoolsscattered about the country. The crewmen were all volunteers at theirspecialty, except for copilot Lt. "Bud" Reed. He was happy as a fighterpilot, but then was assigned to a job that few fighter pilots would evervolunteer for, which is an understandable disappointment. One fighterpilot that was assigned against his wishes to the right seat of a bomberwas heard to say, "Anyone can land a B-24, all you have to do is fly itinto the ground and control the crash!" That tends to convey thereaction that some had. Not copilot Reed, however, as he always gaveevery bit as much as any of the rest of us. The crews names, ranks,their specialty positions and their hometowns at that time, are listedon the last page of this text.

We further trained as a team at Chatham Field in Savannah, GA, andBatista Field at San Antonio, Cuba. The latter is near Havana and thiswas when President/Dictator Fulgencio Batista ruled Cuba, precedingFidel Castro. We practiced navigation, bombing, air-to-air gunnery (attow targets) and air-to-sea marker gunnery, plus I often chose to repeatexercises that familiarized me with the limitations of the aircraft,such as short field take-off and landings.Our B-24 crew was like many others that were created to go to Europe by

boat to replace another crew that had completed their required number ofmissions, or possibly a crew who failed to survive their tour tocompletion. About half of the crews on bomber tours in Europe failed tomake it home at least once during a tour. When shot down, some bailedout, some crashed. Some were killed or injured in the air, but manywound up as prisoners of war in Germany or internees in neutralSwitzerland. Some managed to get back without their airplane, getanother one and resumed the routine of flying more bombing missions again.

At a last party before embarking, a couple of wives had come to say lastgood-byes for a while. We all agreed that we would aggressivelyvolunteer to do our missions as fast as we could so we could targetmaking it back home by the Fourth of July in 1945. We left from Newport

News, VA, aboard a converted ocean liner, the U.S.S. W.P. Richardson. Wemade the Atlantic crossing all alone, but in a zigzag route. One time wespotted a sight suspected of being a U-boat periscope, and the gunnerswere turned loose with their 40 mm "pom- pom" guns to try to sinkwhatever they saw. All we know is that it soon disappeared.

About two hundred miles out from Gibraltar we picked up a US NavyDestroyer Escort for our defense in the more dangerous waters. CopilotReed and I were on the bridge with the moon lighting up the Rock ofGibraltar and the coast of Africa as we squeezed through the Straits atmidnight. The next morning the ships speaker system was airing "AxisSallys" German propaganda radio program, and she announced that theyhad sunk the W.P. Richardson at midnight in the Straits.

We later docked at Naples, Italy, and after a few more days we weretrucked to the 514th Bomb Squadron, 376th Bomb Group (known as theLiberandos) at San Pancrazio, Italy. That is located in the heel of "theboot" of Italy near Taranto Bay. Our squadron fielded up to sixteenplanes and we shared the one runway on our base with three othersquadrons making up that Group. That made up the strength that the 376thBomb Group added as our part towards the 15th Air Force strength oftwenty-one such heavy bombardment groups. "Tours" here were fiftymissions, and then you were entitled to return home. Of course, you


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could remain and fly more missions if you cared to, but they wouldn't ask.

This southernmost air base location in Italy was the result of havingbeen the first group to move a base into Italy from North Africa as asite was made secure enough back in November of 1943.

How did a rookie crew make the transition to fit in with an experiencedsquadron? In the 514th, the pilot of each new crew always had to fly atleast three missions as a copilot with different well seasoned crewsbefore he was allowed to take his own crew on their first mission. Also,the six enlisted men on our initial crew, all privates or corporals,were boosted to the ranks of Staff Sergeants and Tech. Sergeants beforetheir first mission for reasons of how they would be treated if takenprisoners of war by the Nazis. My first three copilot missions were allto Vienna targets. The sights and sounds when first introduced to amajor target were real eye openers. Our formations were surprisingly tight.

Vienna was reputed to be the most heavily defended target in Hitlersdomain at that time, and the sight of the solid block (or elongatedcube) of continually boiling black 88mm anti-aircraft bursts exceededwhatever we expected. That block was at least five hundred feet thickand just as wide and about twenty miles long. We had to fly into oneend, and stay on a path right down the middle of it. All planes had toapproach a target from the same direction to avoid tremendous traffic

confusion. It didnt look like survival would be possible. You got abounce when the bursts were within fifty feet; within thirty-five feetthey were statistically lethal. But, we could not deviate our courseuntil completing the 8 or 10-minute level bomb run with no evasiveaction, which was necessary for the lead bombardier of each squadron toposition his plane to the exact spot that will put his bombs on histarget. At his moment of release, flares go off at the outside rear ofthe leaders plane signaling the rest in his squadron to also toggle orsalvo their bomb loads in unison. Toggle is one at a time in rapidorder, and salvo is all at the same time. Different procedures were usedfor different patterns of bombing.

Anywhere over the greater Vienna area, Intelligence told us, the enemy

could put a minimum of 189 of their 88mm guns on any airplane, as theyalways moved in many anti-aircraft guns on flat cars whenever we planneda raid on them. The Nazis always knew what our target would be, in spiteof our many secrecy precautions. There had to be spies in our midst, buthow they notified the Nazis so fast remains a mystery to me.

Vienna became extra important to the Germans from late 1944 only becauseit was their major remaining source of oil. In the Vienna area were theSchwechat, the Florisdorf and Moosbierbaum oil refineries. I believe myfirst six missions were to Vienna (we just called it "Big V"), as wereabout half of our eventual total missions. Incidentally, the Army AirForce (the Air Corps title no longer existed) told us: "There is noAustria anymore. It is all considered part of Germany now." We soon

learned that this group had to cope with mileage hardships, as targetsbecame more distant. As new bases had been established north of ours,before long some were up to two hundred miles north of us. Thosenorthern-based crews even claimed that fuel depletion was occasionally aproblem, and we were covering up to four hundred miles more per roundtrip when we were assigned the same targets. Many of our missions, whenwe joined them, took us eight to ten hours of flying, and it was fairlycommon that some planes had to land and refuel at a northern base inorder to make it back to our home base at the bottom of the boot. We hadto learn special economy power settings and practices, in addition to


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the very careful grooming of squadron leaders to lead the formationswith the most fuel-efficient practices possible.

When we first came into the squadron we were told that EddieRickenbacker originally headed it, before it became the 514th. He wassupposed to have lead a group of B-24s to reach Asia with the intent ofcoordinating a bombing assault on Japan from land at the same timeDoolittle was striking them from the carrier "Hornet" in the Pacific.The land group was stranded for need of spare parts while still in Egyptand never made the Doolittle schedule. Doolittle took off on his Tokyoraid on 18 April 1942 (thats how the military records dates). Ourstranded squadron flew a first mission on 12 June 1942, and that was thefirst Ploesti, Romania, raid. They lost five planes at the target onthat first mission, plus four more crash-landed in Syria (nine out ofthirteen). That was just the first of the eventual twenty-four raids onthat same target by the 15th Air Force. The squadron was constituted asthe 514th Heavy Bombardment Squadron on 31 Oct. 1942. That was one daybefore the 376th Heavy Bombardment Group was constituted, and the 514thbecame a part of that group.

They then flew missions against the Axis from bases in Egypt, Palestine,Tunisia and Libya before moving up to Italy on 24 Nov. 1943. Our 514thSquadron leather insignia that we all sewed on our A2 flight jackets hadthe Star of Bethlehem and an Egyptian pyramid. Later in life, when I

became a volunteer worker at the March Field Museum, Riverside, CA, Idid some research to authenticate data with Air Force records. I learnedthat no mention is made of Eddie Rickenbacker, but one named ColonelHalverson had the distinction of leading our Group at its inception.Also, the 514th Squadron patch I described was never an officiallyapproved design, so it is not in the official insignia record books. Ihave come to the personal conclusion that some men in our squadronconcocted tales motivated to embellish an image to create high moraleamong its members. It did just that, but the delusions, if I can call itthat, were neither by the Squadron leadership nor top brass. We all knewwe had the best squadron in Italy, and we would trade places with noother. The strategy, even if just by rumors, did work to our advantage.It eliminates griping, for one big advantage, and prevents or dispels

any underlying fears in newcomers that may be so inclined.

The 376th Bomb Groups war record of 451 sorties (or day's raids by thegroup) is accurate. General Ira Eaker once responded to a remark one daythat the implied his airborne soldiers had a softer life than the groundwar soldiers. He had a terse answer. He said, "The 15th Air Force, whilein his command, had a combat strength of 20,000 men, and in one year,under his command, it lost 22,500 men. That was a loss of 114 percent oftheir strength in a single year." That is not soft living. The 15th AirForce alone has reported a total of 6,872 bomber crews failed to make itback between our Groups first mission and the Armistice. Only 172 ofthose crews were from the 376th Bomb Group, the oldest one. Much later,and maybe it was because of this performance, as well as being the

farthest south of all groups in Italy, this Group was ordered to be thefirst to go home, leaving by ship twenty-one days before the 10 May 1945Armistice, which ended the War in Europe. The details on that will beexplained in more depth, later. How did our crew perform when turnedloose to operate with our own complete team? Following is a condensedaccount of just five of our memorable but non-heroic missions, notnecessarily in chronological order, plus a trip home, when the fight wasover, that was a "nail-biter."


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HERE'S TO ADOLPHOn one mission to Wiener-Neustadt, just south of Vienna, all squadronsin our group were ordered to bomb visually and not to drop bombs ifclouds obscured the target area at all. There was a hospital marked witha red cross very near the railroad marshaling yards that was our target,and we had to be positive that we did not hit the hospital. The wholeGroup was unable to drop, so they circled for another try until ittotaled three dry runs over the target with bomb doors open and at minussixty five degrees Fahrenheit. They then decided it was time to headback home with our bombs. The 514th leader had other ideas, though. Hepreferred selecting a target of opportunity on which to drop our load,rather than take live bombs out of Nazi territory. His alternate plantook only our twelve planes out of the group and we went (even droppinglower down) to hit Berchtesgarten where Adolph Hitler had his personalmountain retreat in the foothills of the Tyrollian Alps. This never hadvalue as a military target, but we were more than eager to blast "derFuhrers" little hideaway. Banking left when leaving our new target, andbeing down closer to the target than usual, I noticed the flashes offlame from the target area and started to remark to Reed that this wasthe first time I had actually seen our own bombs exploding. A second ortwo later I realized how wrong I was. It was not bombs; it was theiranti-aircraft fire flashing, as it suddenly got very loud and smokyaround there. There must have been a good size crew of anti-aircraftgunners defending that site for at least four years, and our visit was

the only action they ever saw. I think they were caught napping, atfirst. The records show no other bombing mission ever targeting that site.

When we were finally headed homeward, Holcomb came up to me and reportedthe news that our dry runs over the first intended target had frozen oneof our bomb shackles, leaving us one of our 500 pound bombs, a top oneof five in that bay. It had not released. He had been unable to force itto release, so he de-fused it of both the nose and tail fuses. I had thechoice: Leave the bomb doors open so it could fall free if and when itthawed, or close them for better mileage, but run the risk of itreleasing and tearing off our "roll-up" door. It would not explode inour plane. The doors worked like a roll-top desk, if you invert theconcept. Getting home on the gas supply was of more concern than a door,

so I closed them. I notified the leader of the situation, since we couldlose the bomb as we touched the runway. When we were within 30 miles ofour base, the leader told us to go straight in as an emergency landing,and the rest would do the usual 1,000 ft. overhead approach and a 360degree spiral down to land. We headed in, but we were still where theterrain was quite a bit higher than the elevation of our base until wewould pass the cliffs where they quarried the "tufi" blocks. That was afairly soft stone, which the poorer Italians used for building blocks.Therefore, we were nearer the ground than usual, less than 200 feet,when suddenly the once frozen bomb shackle did let go. Let me assureyou, a de-fused bomb can still explode. All it takes is the rightfrequency of sound waves caused by the impact. You can get at least whatis called a "low order detonation." That is like just a part of the bomb

explodes and that sets off another part, and keeps repeating. Theexplosion was not in the airplane, of course, but as it impacted theItalian terra firma. The explosion drew out a little longer than theusual 500- pound bomb, but it lifted our plane higher than just a fivehundred pounds loss of weight would, since that would hardly even bedistinguishable, by its self.Our flight engineer tried to wire up the damaged door that dangled threeor four feet below the belly of the plane in the few minutes we had, butwe only had coat hanger wires. Thats a dangerous feat, as Ron got agood part of his body outside of the plane to fish in the door edge. The


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moment we touched the runway, though, the repairs tore loose and metalscraped and sparks flew until we stopped dead. We understood that theItalian farmer, whose planted field suffered the bomb blast, receivedsome compensation from the AAF, but I was never even contacted about theincident at all. Some teasers posed the question: "Can a medal beawarded for a successful single bomber, low level raid when its only ona friendly Paisano?"

BLIND FLYING IN FORMATION?Another memorable mission to Vienna was one where we were flying #2position, which means slightly behind the leaders right wing and justabove his prop wash. It was a day of broken clouds, though many werevery large and black. Our normal procedure was to keep radio silenceuntil you were in the target area and already being shot at by itsdefenders, then our presence and goals are known by all. When oursquadron leader was well over 10,000 feet he was heading towards a largeblack cloud ahead. I could see that he was trying to climb fast enoughto clear the top of the cloud ahead of us so he would not have to spiralthe formation a full circle. Anticipating his dilemma, I gave him alittle more space and was ready to react to either a sudden left orright sharp turn, since there would be no radios used. When he saw thathe could not get over it, he banked steeply left. I stayed with him,rolling into a steep left turn. But as I looked up (relative to my

seated position) I saw that the plane on his left wing was making noattempt to roll left and we were just about to fly into the right sideof his airplane with the topside of our airplane. My only move was toroll right as fast as I could, and as we did, our left wing tip slippedinto and back out of Lt. Connors open waist window, but touched nothing.As we were just about back to level flight, everything went black. Wewere in the black cloud. I tried to stay a little right of our previousheading, because when I last saw it, the other plane was still besideand only slightly above us. But then I felt a shudder, indicating ahigh-speed stall. My violent maneuver had robbed us of some speed andlift, as we were still very heavily loaded. I started a slight descentto hasten the increase of our airspeed, and to further reduce chances ofcolliding with the Connors plane in the darkness. It would have been

handy to radio him, but that was not an option.

It took a long while to break out into clearer skies north of that cloudand when we did we knew there was no chance of ever locating ourSquadron. They surely kept climbing and we had descended some. All butthe two of us surely stayed with the leader as they had much more timeto react. We never did see the Connors plane again.

We had to tag on to the rear of a random B-24 formation that we snuggledup to later, even if their formation was sloppy and loose, and we becametheir "tail-end Charlie." This is the first time we ever had flowndeeper in a formation than #4. At first, it was some comfort to justhave company as added defense, but then we noticed something was wrong.

Every airplane in this formation had their window guns and turretstrained on us. It had been known to have Germans join a formation in acaptured or repaired US bomber, but not for friendly reasons. We werethen challenged by a hand held blinker light to give the code word fromthe "flimsy" of that mornings briefing. Back in ground school we hadbeen taught Morse code in both audio and visual, but this is my firsttime ever to use visual. It was slow procedure, but we finally satisfiedthem. It turned out that this Squadron was also hitting the same targetin the Vienna area, and aside from the heavy ground fire, losing oneengine to a severed oil line and picking up a few holes in our sheet


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metal; we had no further problems of any consequence.

Back at home base we only learned that the Connors crew had not returnednor had they been accounted for, anywhere. He was the only pilot in the514th that I had schooled with back in cadet training, though briefly.He was from Burbank, CA. We feared their plane dropped into the AdriaticSea, because thats what was beneath us when the near collision tookplace. He could have stalled as we did, but with worse consequences, Ican only speculate, I dont know. All I ever learned later about theoutcome is that his name was not recorded in Air Force records as a"missing in action" crew. The only logical outcome I can imagine wasthat he either managed to get down somewhere in friendly territory anddisabled his aircraft plus met unexplained delays, or that the recordswouldnt show Connors name if he was flying as a co-pilot that day. Lostcrews are reported by the pilots name. He had not reported to our baseup to the time we were last with the 514th. The end of this part of thestory is still not known by me, Im sorry to say.

We had a T/Sgt aerial photographer randomly assigned to fly that missionwith us, and at de-briefing that late afternoon he told the intelligenceofficer of his view of the "near collision" and of seeing our wing tipin the other airplane. He also said he wanted to quit this job. Theytold him the only way he could do that is if he was willing to take arifle and join a front line Army outfit in a foxhole. We thought his

words were just a rare case of "griping", but he not only said he woulddo it, he had made up his mind and stuck to it. Actually, we didntregard it as that rough of a mission. Not for "Big V."

WE WERE BEING WATCHEDOn a mission one February day, all went rather routinely until we got upto an altitude of about twelve or thirteen thousand feet on our way toclear the Alps. We were still over the northern Adriatic Sea when westarted to have "run-away turbo" problems. Three of our four turbo-amplifiers were not allowing us control of our turbo charge boost as wegot into the higher altitudes. When a turbo "ran away", the cure was tomove a good amplifier, after locking in its setting, from the slot forthat engine into a slot in need of boost, and then set and lock the

desired setting there. An amplifier was the size of a small VCR, butwith vacuum tubes. Solid state had not been invented yet. By the time wegot four slots set and locked with our one remaining good amplifier, wehad not only lost our formation by a few miles, but by probably 4,000 or5,000 feet of altitude (out of sight). We could never catch them, so wewould just have to look for and join with another loose formation again.Just as we were getting enough power back to resume our climb, I took alook back over my left shoulder just like you would before you pull acar out of a parking place. Oops! There were two German ME-262 jetfighters with the black swastikas on their sides sweeping in from ourleft to trail us, and I saw the tracer bullets already coming into ourplane. Thats like rubbing salt in a wound; when you solve one problemthen immediately replace it with a bigger one.

The Nazi fighter pilots favorite strategy was to catch stragglers(planes alone because of difficulties of any sort), and it was often aneasy "kill" for their cause. I called to the crew on intercom: "Jerrysat seven oclock level, when are you guys going to start shooting back?"The upper turret gunner, Sgt. Sample, said "Hold your fire, here comesthree of our P-47 escorts from high overhead." The crew reported thatnot only did the Germans turn and run, they dove for the ground ofNorthern Yugoslavia just east of us. Our three P-47 escorts stayed righton their tails, until they all went out of sight. We then chased down


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and joined another formation and added our bombing strength to theirmission in what we would regard a very useful contribution. If we hadnot had an escort trio watching us from above, and timely enough to bethere quite soon after the shooting started, we would have surely beensubdued by two of the Nazis latest twin jet fighters doing what theyspecialized in. Without the intervention of our escorts and theirwillingness to risk their lives for those of us whom they had never met,in my opinion we would have been most fortunate to end up in theAdriatic Sea below us. Or we might have stretched it to Trieste, whichwas then a German occupied part of Italy, close to Yugoslavia. Mostlikely, some of our crew would be lost either way. It was a fact that B-24?s could not usually be ditched safely, as their roll-type bomb baydoors usually ripped off easily when hitting water and they sunk veryquickly. Incidentally, the AAF warned that Northern Adriatic waters inwinter were so cold you had only a twenty minute life expectancyfloating in a "Mae West" life vest, even if you had on fleece linedleather high altitude outer clothing. They offered no additionalprotection for you in cold water. Our escorts were not always visiblewhen we were not in trouble, as they liked to watch over the formationsfrom about another five thousand feet above. When you needed them theycame, and with a "full head of steam." This was the 99th Fighter Squadron.

The combat performance of these "Tuskegee Airmen" in Italy was exemplaryand I, for one, feel that their vigilant watch over us saved ten of us

from a probable tragedy that day. We, plus all our families, willforever be grateful to them. The important thing that others could learnfrom this experience is that when our Nation goes to war, realpatriotism has only one race. You are either American or you are not.There are those who want to kill you, and then there are those who wantto save your life. It is that simple, and undeniable. Yet these TuskegeeAirmen, all of African-American heritage, had to meet tougherrequirements than I did to get the same rating. They all had to havecollege, I understand. I did complete my twelve years of public school,but I never even got a high school diploma, due to the lack of passing amusic requirement. I never had any further schooling except the AviationCadet training in the form of a ten-week Pre-flight (ground school) andthe Primary, Basic and Advanced flying schools. Later on, to enforce a

two years of college requirement for cadets, the Army created a CollegeTraining Detachment. A mandatory step, which was supposed to be theequivalent of two years of college, though condensed to three months byconcentrating on mathematics, physics and sciences that werespecifically applicable to aviation. We must have preceded that policy.

BOOMERANGAs I inferred earlier, high morale was the 514^th s greatest asset.When two red flares (mission canceled) were fired from the tower as wewere lined up for take-off at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, crews wouldgo back to the sack. This happened once in a while, as P-38 photo-reconnaissance planes flew into the target area to check the latestconditions just before each mission. They didnt tip off our intended

targets, as they would pass over a dozen potential sites just to throwthe enemy off. If weather conditions or other surprises required it, themission would be canceled by having the tower fire the flares. On thoseoccasions, the 514th still took off with our full bomb loads to practiceTIGHT formations, then flew over other bases at the tower operators eyelevel, and our leader radioed them: "You Hoi Polloi outfits, heres whata REAL tight formation is supposed to look like!" Each echelon centerman had a plane on each side with their wing tips much closer to hisfuselage than his own. The center man would have his nose just below andbehind the tail turret in front of him. Ever since those days, I am


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forever aware that every photo I have ever seen of bomber formationsappears to me to be so dangerously casual and loose, I cant believethey were not taught to close it up. I guess the 514th Squadron neverhad anyone take their pictures while flying their tight formations for acomparison of the drastic differences. I am not saying we were like the"Thunderbirds" acrobatic team, but we flew as close to that kind ofperformance as a cumbersome four-engine airplane could maintain. I amaware that we were always in one of the first four positions in ourformations, and that is where the positions can be held the tightest, asvariations magnify when you are deeper in a formation.

However, when we would visit the local town we often heard the reactionsof fliers from other groups: "You guys are in that Squadron that hasmore guts than brains!" That "gutsy" morale was always there, and Nazifighters could not make a diving pass at our formations and slip throughan open space between airplanes. We were especially proud of oneparticular airplane that held the record for the most sortiesaccomplished, and that was one named "Boomerang" (it always came back).Completing the mission without leaving the formation before completionwas the goal here, but it did have one turn back on its record when onits 35th mission an oxygen leak had caused the one and only turn back.I didnt learn of that one until recently, when searching the records.The word sortie is used because it is a single mission, whereas targetsnorth of the 47th parallel were deep enough into Germany to earn crews a

two mission credit towards their fifty.

Boomerangs sorties were one each, no matter how deep into Germany. Theywere not counted the same as our missions. One day our Operationsofficer, Capt. Ed Reno, told us at briefing: "You get Boomerang on thismission, and in #3 position. She holds the record, and this will be her131st sortie, so dont turn back as long as you can breathe."

Well, I appreciated the trust shown in me at first, but later I wished Ihad not been trusted this way. My navigator went to the nose wheelopening when we were boarding the plane and threw his chest packparachute into his work area, then climbed into the back for take- off.When we rolled down the runway and passed the tower at half the way down

our take-off run, a tower voice said "Number 67, it looks like somethingfell out of your nose wheel-well as you went by, better check later, youmay have lost a parachute." When the squadron was gathered intoformation, Reno called me from his B-25 "heckle ship" to ask me aboutthe lost object. He had heard the call. A heckle ship would ride herd onthe squadron until safely assembled into their formation and met allother rendezvous points, then he would return to base. Let me explainthat my duties on a day when not flying on the mission included workingwith Capt. Reno, first as his heckle ship co-pilot in the B-25 thatmorning. That started when we first met, because he recognized my nameand asked if I had a brother, Paul, whom he knew as an EngineeringOfficer back at Victorville Army Airfield in California. Being true, Ifound myself immediately appointed as his Squadron Engineering Officer.

After the "heckle ship" flights, I would fly the repaired planes to testfor proof of all flaws clear for flight status. Then I would "slow-time"all new engine installations by taking off on three engines and thengradually increasing power on the new, tight engine over a four-hourflight. This closeness with Reno allowed me to feel that a little whitelie, for good cause, would be forgivable. My reply to his call was: "Itwas a chute, all right, but Im pretty sure we have another in our sparebag." The truth was, I knew we were left one parachute short. I told thenavigator he could have mine, so he wouldnt worry. I didnt want to beknown as the guy that "turned Boomerang back" after so many sacrifices


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had been made by so many, and one parachute short would surely havecaused a direct order to return to base. You readily do things likethat, when only twenty-one and invincible.

That was not our only possible cause for a mandatory turn back. When wegot over 10,000 ft. we all started smelling gasoline. The flightengineer worked feverishly to find the source before we got exposed toanti-aircraft fire, as we all know how flak burst can ignite any gasvapor. I was fully aware of the fact that I would not enjoy being blownout of an airplane and not have a ripcord to pull, but we kept going.That is how J.F.K.s brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., died (in a B-24explosion), though his service was out of a base in England. We finallyconcluded it was possibly the "Southwind" (gasoline fired cabin heater).If they worked at all, they quit when over 20,000 feet, anyhow. Thatswhy we usually read cabin temperatures of 65 below zero when at 23,000ft. or over. We all just set our oxygen from "auto-mix" (half from themetal bottles) to "pure oxygen," and kept on going and breathing. Ourtarget was a minor one (less important than oil, that is) in Germany,and just our own Bomb Group was involved. The bomb run was only 2 to 3minutes of straight and level flight while the enemy tried to inundateour immediate area with their 88mm sound effects. As we dropped our loadand peeled off, Boomerang lost #3 engine. No apparent reason, as theengine had not suffered a flak hit as far as we knew. Okay, we justfeathered #3 prop and stayed right up with the formation with no

difficulty at all. When we got back down south and near the area of ourhome field, the leader told me to go straight on in first as anemergency landing, anyhow. When I nudged the throttles for more power,Boomerang just took off forward like she had all four engines and leftthe others behind. I think that airplane flew as good on three as it didon four engines. Later, a ground check revealed that we had a few flakhits, which was normal on most missions, but flak had never hit the #3engine. The last we heard about "Boomerang" was that she was retiredafter one more mission after ours that day, making the record go to onehundred and thirty-two successful missions. That stands as the record atthe wars end for the most sorties by any Heavy Bomber in the FifteenthAir Force, and only once was it unable to complete an intended mission.As I think about it, we never did fail to complete, or bomb some target,

on every mission we ever attempted. We did occasionally hear of, or see,planes turn back for various reasons, mostly unavoidable ones. The onlybomb we ever tried to bring home, we dropped on the Italian farmer, butthe major part of that load had been very well spent. We never landedwith a full bomb load except on the occasions after two red flares andthe ensuing practice sessions for tight formation flying.It turns out that several other Bomb Squadrons, in England as well asItaly, also named one of their airplanes "Boomerang," whether B-24?s orB-17?s, but none had ever equaled the record of #67 of the 514th BombSquadron. They have a great many patches in their aluminum skins by thetime they go on 132 sorties, especially when so many were over Ploesti,Romania, and Vienna. To me, this record also is proof of the dedicationof the 514th?s maintenance crews. They would work all night to get a

plane safe to fly again by morning, and often under rough conditions,even in snow. These men were sensitive to having an airplane fail toreturn. They wanted to be sure it was never due to the quality of theirwork, or to any failure to do all that was needed, and also to be surethey thoroughly double-checked every detail.

DETOUR TO GREENGATEOn 31 March, 1945, our crew was assigned a #2 position (leaders rightwing) in our full 16 plane Squadron which was picked to lead the whole


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15th Air Force in a raid on Linz, (on the Danube, near where Germany,pre-war Austria and Czechoslovakia touched borders). The mission was todemolish the Hermann Goering Tank Works and the railroad marshalingyards there. Our Commanding Officer, Lt. Col. R.K.Taylor, was the leadpilot that day, and Capt. Ed Reno, our Operations Officer, was hisco-pilot (he made Major following this mission). The defense was fierce,and that is definitely understated. We never before had seen roundsilver balls or balloons (3 or 4 ft. diameter) floating at near ouraltitudes and have never learned what they were, but they must have hadsomething to do with the uncanny accuracy of the anti-aircraft firepowerthat we experienced that day. We also had never before seen projectilesspiral up into us leaving a corkscrew trail of smoke (an early form ofmissile?) Early on the bomb run, we had an engine blown apart. Later,ensuing hits ripped open two gas tanks beyond self-sealing capability.We had feathered #3 prop right away, but now we radioed the leader thatif we did not run out of gas first, we would try to stay with them untilthey dropped their load, but then we would have to break out and "headfor Greengate." That was the 31 March briefing code word for the Russianlines to the east. We were really much closer to a safe haven inSwitzerland, but we had received clear orders not to seek haven thereunless we could prove that we had no other alternative. Too many hadbeen interned there. The Swiss would feed and lodge crews nicely for theduration, but Uncle Sam would get a huge bill when the war was over. TheSwiss protected their neutrality by not releasing any internees until

the war ended. I have since learned that Hitler had ordered that everyone of his pilots and crewmen who sought haven in Switzerland were to beshot dead upon their return. Fortunately, Hitler could not find a safehaven for himself. We surely wished that he had been in Berchtesgartenthe day we dropped in, but he wasnt home that day, or we just mighthave shortened the war by a significant amount. That viewpoint shows howmy personal sentiments of that time still affect my hindsight today.

Again, we all had to switch to pure oxygen in order to stop breathinggasoline. Ron, our flight engineer, tried desperately to stop the gasflow from pouring into the bomb bays, but to no avail. Since our leakingtanks had not yet gone dry, we stayed in formation until "bombs away,"then we broke ranks and headed east. Miraculously, none of the

additional flak bursts ignited our leaking fuel, still flowing steadily.Ron had scrambled around in leaking gas at 65 below zero, fordangerously long times without oxygen connection or electric heated suitconnection while we were over 23,000 ft. Its a wonder he lasted throughit at all. He did suffer frostbite, plus I think that twenty year oldbecame thirty that day. No one could have tried harder to accomplish theimpossible. Did you know that at 65 below zero your bare fingers wouldfreeze in 12 seconds? If you leave on the rayon gloves we wore under ourwool mittens, you could increase it to 20 seconds. We covered both ofthose with fleece lined leather (a third layer) to stay warm, but oftenneeded to remove some of the fabrics for finger dexterity when makingfine adjustments, and the like. Also, the chill would freeze thedrippings of breath condensation from our oxygen masks into long

icicles. We just broke them off every once in a while and just tossedthem onto the floor. They would be gone before landing. We never walkedabout in our cockpit.

My reason for a snap decision to head east was that we could neverreturn over the Alps with a likelihood of running out of fuel, forobvious reasons. No place to land, and a "bail out" would be an icysuicide in the Alps. My reason for not ordering a "bail out" over Linzmay not be so obvious. While I was still approaching the target, withtwo or three minutes to go before release, I was aware that right behind


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us were probably twelve hundred bombers heading for the same target.There is no way that we wanted to be hanging under a parachute beneathall of the falling bombs yet to be dropped, to say nothing of all theshells coming up into the "block" of flak bursts through which we wereflying. I had to assume that every member of the crew felt the same way,and theres no time for taking a vote while "Hellza-poppin." A littlelater I learned that we also had an electrical fire on the half-deckabove the bomb bay since the time the fuel tanks were hit. It was causedby flak into our dynamotors that shorted electrical wiring circuits. Thesmoke was from the burning wire insulation. Later on, when the returningsquadron was de-briefed, they all reported to the intelligence officersabout seeing us leaking gasoline like a waterfall from the open bombdoors and black smoke billowing out the waist windows. That usuallymeans a huge explosion is imminent. When we peeled right as the otherswent left, we were, in the minds of those viewing us, doomed to die ifwe didnt bail out. We stopped considering "bailing" as we noticed theburning insulation started to lessen soon after we were heading east byourselves.

We are listed in the big 613 page book "The Liberandos" (which drew onall official Air Force records for authentication) as being not only oneof the two 514th Squadron planes lost that day, but that our plane thatday, "Double-Shot Sam," is listed as "Crashed near target." I guess thatstatistic was drawn from "presumptions" consistently reported to

intelligence at de-briefing, which included the statements of our CO andour Operations Officer. However, I am glad to say we stretched our glideabout a hundred miles and then landed on an abandoned German fighterstrip. It turned out to be only a 2600-ft. gravel strip, and it even hada slope to it. It was ironic; I landed heading east, which turned out tobe the downhill slope. You could not tell from the air. Usually, B-24;sneeded a 5,000-ft. strip. I recalled that instructor (Oliver Jeter, backin Kansas), who chewed me out for applying brakes aggressively one timebefore fully compressing the nose gear strut (with forward stick) beforebraking. I compressed the strut it's entire amount of compression first,but we still could not stop in this short distance, so I just got offthe right brake, let the plane do a ground loop to the left and ourright main gear almost dipped into the boundary ditch.

We all walked away from it. In fact, a couple crewmen jumped out beforeI looped left because our brakes were burning and smoke filled the rearhalf of the airplane again. That plane was full of flak holes and wasnever to fly again. Morris said he started to count holes when he gotout, but gave up after two hundred and some, and that was just the openbomb door on the right side of the plane. He said, "Its hard to tellwhats a hole, it all looks more like Shredded Wheat!" Besides, we werein a hurry to leave there. The Russians were in control of the firsttown east of this point, which is where we headed. The town was Pecs,Hungary, (pronounced like Paytch) south and slightly east of LakeBalaton. The Army Air Force later deemed we had technically "evadedcapture in enemy territory," because we were in "No mans land," betweenthe German and the Russian front lines, and they were fighting each

other from both sides of us. Later on, another B-24 tried to land onthat same fighter strip and it caused a near somersault when his nosegear collapsed (Jeter was right!). It made the fuselage break at theupper turret and the tail half folded forward like a scorpions tail.The upper turret then dropped and crushed their navigator as he wassitting at the radio operators usual station. We had a funeral Pecs thenext day, with more than a little help from the Russian military andsome Hungarian civilians who were in that business. The Russians broughtin Lena from the front lines, a lady sniper who spoke English, to be thetranslator needed to make reports regarding transporting our gathering


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of Americans. We had grown to three bomber crews and two fighter pilots,all from the Linz raid, but they had chosen various landing spots.After a one-week delay the Russians got word back from Moscow to sendthe thirty-two of us by rail to Kiev, Ukraine, then to Odessa on theBlack Sea, and put us on a boat for Cairo, Egypt. We refused an offeredluxury side trip (brainwashing) to Moscow. In Cairo we would be able tocontact an U.S. Embassy. We were told it would take 60 days to get backto Italy. I carried the orders. The train trip started out in an antiquechair car. The upholstery was oak, or some other hardwood, but after thefirst few hours, travel was never even that nice again. Our mode becameriding boxcars on stop- and-go freight trains. The Germans kept comingover and bombing the rail lines ahead of us, so we spent much timewaiting for lines to be repaired. We had to scrounge for food, but itwas not too difficult. We had sold a silk parachute to a tailor in Pecsfor thirty thousand Pengos, which was about $100 (U.S.) worth of localcurrency at that time. We split it equally between all in our own crew.It was to help sustain us while in Hungary. We could offer to buy eggsor potatoes from farmers, although they never would take money. Theywere all either sincerely friendly or scared of us, depending upon ifthey recognized the American flags on the left shoulder of our flightjackets or not. We quickly learned to tell them we were American, intheir own language. That pleased them much, and some went so far as totry to kiss our feet, hoping we might be there to occupy their country.Most of them said the German occupation was awful, but the Russians were

worse than the Germans.

Outside of villages, what we traveled through was mostly farmland thathad just recently been used for battlefields. There were scores ofabandoned Sherman tanks (US lend-lease to Russia) and occasionally adead horse or two. We got pretty good at cooking out over a quickcampfire, ever ready to grab and run fast if our train started moving.Only on about three occasions did the Russians provide a meal for uswhen we came into a town where they had a military Commandant, or somesort of facility. Once, in a small town in Romania, I think it was, whenthe Russians ordered some citizens to cook us a meal, I saw them butcherthe horse they were to serve us. I didnt tell others what they wereeating, in case it mattered. Actually, it was a treat compared to some

previous days. We never once could get any milk or coffee, though, andmissed it most. Yes, we even missed that G.I. coffee that we had alwayscalled "battery acid."

One day we noticed three senior lady refugees traveling on our samestalled train and one of them was obviously starving. We had to avoidopenly tempting the displaced people by displaying food we had gatheredfor our own needs, so we invited the three ladies into our boxcar andtried to share our food with them. The severely ailing one could notswallow food because her throat had swollen in her advanced stage ofstarvation. With no medical aid available within miles of our remotesite, she died that day. There was a nearby village, but too small forany aid. The death was not a rarity in these unstable times.

Our trip included a nighttime freight train wreck that was a horriblecatastrophe. A steam locomotive ran into our boxcar (the last car on ourtrain), as we were parked in the dark and asleep in it. It knocked us along way down the track. It blew the steam boiler and jack knifed andtoppled many cars that were behind the moving engine, and those cars hadrefugees, liberated prisoners and soldiers hanging on the tank cars andfreight cars. We got a very hard jolt, abrasions and bruises, but noserious injuries, and good thing, because we supplied the only first aidthat many injured had until daylight the next morning. There were alsofatalities. A couple of us tended one Russian soldier who lost his leg


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above the knee. He was happy to get a leather belt tourniquet on hisstump, an American smoke and a shot of morphine. He wasnt happy when aBulgarian ex-soldier brought him his boot with the leg still in it thathe had found about fifty feet away. The Russian tossed it aside.Luckily, we had kept the first aid kits containing the only emergencysupplies. They had been on our parachute harnesses and thats the onlyparts we all saved when we decided to shed unneeded gear.

We had a quartet of British soldiers join our group while riding therails. They had been in German prisons since the Battle of Dunkirk,1939. They told us that the Russians had just liberated the POW campoutside of Vienna where they had been held for six years. But then theReds decided to detain the British for some reason, and they put themback into the same prison in which the Germans had kept them. TheBritish were so irate with their "liberators," that they planned andexecuted an escape, and we were now aiding and abetting their flight.Our thirty-two head-count had now become thirty-six. The addition wasnot too noticeable. We felt sure we were doing what was right, althoughthe British, Americans and Russians were supposed to be allies, joiningefforts together, and not splitting two against one. Since those times,I have reasoned that the British might have misunderstood the Reds dueto the language barriers. Under Russian red tape, they could never doanything without orders coming out of Moscow, and that always took aweek to get a response. That prison may have been the only temporary

lodging available for them. These British had just shed the yoke of sixyears of prison life and it was not easy for them to adjust to freedomquickly, or to understand why we Yanks were quite nonchalant aboutevents as they happened. Of course, these men had been prisoners for sixlong years.

One evening when the sun was setting as we sat still in our boxcar, acouple of our guys standing at the open door started singing a songtogether. Pretty soon, a couple of others recognized their talent andfelt they had something to add. Soon four talented singers were joinedin a semi-circle and harmonizing the song "Down in the Valley." It wasvery professional like, and the quartet happily did it again. I noticedthat the British were totally entranced and quietly crying crocodile

tears. I realized that they had been with no laughter, music orentertainment pleasures since I was still a junior in high school, andtheir uncontrolled reaction was quite touching. When the harmony wasover one of the Britts came up beside me, his face still wet with tears,put his arm on my shoulder and said: "You know, we English speakingpeople of the world will have to stick together. We are the only onesthat really understand each other, and besides, Im sure we will have tofight these Bloody Russians before its over."They left us a few days later when the Russians assigned an "escort" totravel with us for the rest of the trip to Kiev. Our "escort" had a 72round (drum type) machine gun on each shoulder, worn so they"criss-crossed." We resented having an armed guard on us, and never lethim become our "boss." We kept arms, too. All our officers had

forty-five automatics, and the enlisted men had all picked up Hungarianrifles from the battlefields or Thompson sub- machine guns fromabandoned Sherman tanks. We got the distinct impression that a coolhostility was evident between the USSR and Western allies. The Redsoldier broke the news to us on 12 April 1945 that Roosevelt wasreportedly "kaput," or "muerte" (dead). When he asked who would be ournew president, he had never heard of Truman. He then said Roosevelt hadbeen "dobre" (good), but he already had the opinion that the man henever knew was "nyet dobre" (no good). Russians rarely knew any English,once we left Lena back in Pecs. We solved most language barriers using


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little bits of Spanish, French, German, even Italian on some occasions,or our own crude signs, much like you would play the game of Charades.When our little group finally came into Kiev, we decided unanimously toditch the Russian guard who had traveled with us on the last part of ourtrip, and hop a freight train back to the front. We wanted to reachBudapest because we learned it had been taken and that an Allied Missionwas scheduled to open with military representatives of America, Britainand France, to each handle their own citizens, whether refugees,escapees, liberated prisoners, evadees or whatever.

Luckily, we were camped on their doorstep when it was opened for thefirst time, so the rumor proved true. A Brigadier General greeted us,dispersed a partial payment of our back pay (in Gold Seal US dollars),and put us up in the Hotel Nader. That would have been a nice place ifshell shots had not blown a pretty good part of it away, as we still hadno incoming water nor outgoing drainage for plumbing, and we had to eatout all week at our own expense. But, that wasnt half bad consideringthe circumstances. We had beds instead of boxcars. The city had muchdamage; bridges out; ravaged buildings, etc. Their inflated Pengo madethe US dollar valuable, so prices were very low to us. We could get apretty decent meal for as little as ten cents, American, including beeror wine drinks. The pre-war exchange rate had been five Pengos and sixtyFillers (coppers) to the dollar, but we could get 280 Pengos for a buck.The Fillers were not used anymore, as they were valueless. Four months

later, back in the US, I read in the financial page that the rate wentto 600,000 Pengos to the dollar. (Now the Pengos were valueless). Thatsan example of the ruinous "runaway inflation" that can befall the losersin warfare! The Russian occupation was quite heartless. If a Russiancurfew sentry hollered "Stoy" (halt), and a person on the street afterdark did not freeze immediately, he was shot without a second chance,even if in the back. That is the way the local citizens told it, anyhow.

Our first view of the "Blue Danube" was made less than pleasant by thebody of a dead German soldier floating by. It was muddy water, but itmust have been "Blue" once upon a time. A week after arriving inBudapest, a C-47 was sent to pick us up and transport us to Bari, Italy.The first thing they did was de-louse us, and issue new G.I. clothes,

since we had worn the same clothes the whole detour (a month). All weremost anxious to let our families know we were okay instead of "MissingIn Action", as all of our next of kin had been notified by the War Dept.Since my brother had known Captain Ed Reno before I did, he had writtento Ed and asked about our chances after whatever circumstances causedthe MIA telegram. Reno wrote him back advising him not to really holdhope that we could have survived; in fact that it looked very serious.We learned later that the two bombers from our Squadron shot down onthat Linz raid were the last two planes the 376th Bomb Group ever lostto the Nazis in that war. The Air Force records state that four moreplanes in our little Squadron were badly damaged that day, but they werestill able to make it back to the home base. Our 376th Group had beensent back to the States while we were away, but they did first issue

orders bestowing the Air Medal on each of us while MIA. Those crews withnearly completed tours were transferred to other groups in Italy. Theywere going to retrain the crews with the fewest missions in B-24?s, tolearn B-29 Super-Fortresses. The 376th Heavy Bomb Group becamere-classified as a Very Heavy Bomb Group and went to a new statesidebase at Harvard Army Air Field in Nebraska. The intent was to retrainthem and send them to Saipan to help finish off Japan, but that neverhappened. The Japanese surrender occurred before the training wascompleted.


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After a short R & R on the Isle of Capri, we were assigned to a newbase, the 756th Bomb Squadron, 459th Bomb Group, at Cerignola, not farfrom Foggia, Italy. We didnt find the morale (nor tight formations)even close to resembling the standards of the 514th Bomb Squadron. Weresumed flying for several more missions before the May 8th cease- fire,and then the Armistice was signed on May 10th. I recommended to thisSquadron that Ronald Morris be awarded the Silver Star medal for hisvaliant efforts to save our plane and crew during our hectic troublesover Linz. Apparently they had little interest in their latest members,as they never processed the petition nor did they keep it alive forlater. A copy of the original Russian travel orders for the foregoingPecs to Kiev troop movement is inserted into this monograph. The turn ofevents caused those Russian orders to remain in my possession when weditched the Red Guard and hopped on a freight train out of Kiev and wentback to the front.

PARTING CAN BE SWEET SORROWWhat were the air crewmens reactions when Germany surrendered and thatpart of the war was over? Absolute elation! Most first thoughts were ofhome and family. This was the day we had all worked and waited for. Inoticed a common tendency to loosen up from the usual strict obedienceof rules. We had always toed the line because to do otherwise was helpto the enemy. Now we felt a release of tension like it was yearsoverdue. We had to fly some armament and food supplies (a couple of five

ton loads a day, each) to Aviano, Italy for the British. They werepreparing to fight over the city of Trieste if Yugoslavia tried to keepit from Italy in postwar border settlements. The British had IndianGhurkas unload our bomb bays while we kept the engines running, then wewould run back for another load. I think all of our planes were buzzingVenice and other places on their return flights down the Adriatic coast.We flew through Venice so low we had to look up to see it. GeneralUpthegrove (then 15th AF commander) put out a terse bulletin condemningsuch actions and threatening penalties, but no one was disciplined forit. He was saying it for the record, I believe.

Not long after the Armistice, though, (it was mid-June) our 11-man crewwas fortunate enough to be selected in the very first flight of 37 crews

to start the hordes of flights of homeward bound crews from Italy thatwould follow. We were assigned a nice new silver B-24M bomber to flyhome. It had never even been flown on a single combat mission. In fact,we had never seen one just like it before. It was a specially outfittedradar plane that had a small bi-wing, really only an airfoil housing theradar antenna, low on the body beneath our primary wing. We referred toit as our bi-plane.

As we moved to new locations in the departure procedure, our navigatortwice faked ailments in order to be admitted into hospitals. We couldtell that he wasnt really physically sick and he knew it. The effect ofthis was that we could not keep our airplane and this scheduled flighthome unless we remained a complete crew, so we would get him kicked out

of the hospital. When Holcomb and I proposed to the mentally botherednavigator that we, with Reed, would do radio navigation and keep the logbetween us and that he could ride as a sand bag in the back, he was thenperfectly happy to go with us. This man suffered emotional shock on theday that we had been shot down and just never recovered some things. Hehad lost his ability to function (including voice) on that day soHolcomb substituted as navigator for our map reading. We learned thatnavigating the Atlantic was too heavy of a responsibility for thenavigator to cope with at this time. He had been the best of the classin ground schools, but had always proved fragile under the stress of


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working in flight. I tried to have him replaced back in Georgia, but thepowers said it could only be done if he was to be discharged on asection 8 (mental inadequacies). I had declined steps to become a leadcrew because we knew this flaw amounted to a weakness not tolerable in alead crew. Before we left, I was assigned the task to give each firstpilot in this group of crews check rides to certify his proficiency atinstrument flying and night landings if he had not logged both in thepast 6 months, as required by regulations. I had always heard thatinstructors and check pilots had dangerous work, and this experienceproved it to me. Also, each crew had to do their own mechanicalservicing and certify in writing that their aircraft was known to bemechanically air-worthy for transoceanic flight.

I never knew that so many flight engineers did not know how to changeplugs and filters on their airplanes, but I was thankful that Sgt.Morris did and that I had at least been a mechanic and crew chief onAT-11s before I started pilot training. Together, we also helped anumber of other crews accomplish their servicing chores. We were askedto take home a full load of extra-crated cargo in our bomb bays that washigh priority radar equipment now urgently needed in the Pacific, plustwo passengers with gear, the radar specialists who had just come toItaly with that airplane. The cases contained the latest "state-of-the-art" radar equipment to update many airplanes in any combat zone. Wenow had thirteen passengers. We didnt know until later that we also

ended up more than 2,000 pounds over the maximum allowable gross weightwhen full of fuel. This never happened before, even when we had a fullload of blockbusters (2,000 pound bombs). We could have refused, sinceit was clearly unsafe, but refusing a chance to go home early after awar ends just seemed unthinkable. The message was clear, as well asobvious, that this load definitely goes with this airplane. We got ourfirst inkling of what a detriment this extra weight could be when weleft Italy from Gioia Airdrome. We had a difficult time at take- offbecause the terrain raised slightly from where we took off headingnorthwest and we could not climb fast enough to increase our groundclearance. I had to leave gear and flaps down until I could get highenough to quit clipping the tops of the olive trees, so I maintainedtake-off power settings far longer than time limits allowed. I knew the

safety margins built into limits, but I had surpassed that. Finally, Idid a slow, flat turn until I made a complete 180-degree turn withoutbanking and headed back toward the field we had just taken off from.Then the ground clearance slowly improved so we could raise the gear,milk up the flaps and finally reduce the full throttle settings. A fullgasoline load accounts for about 21,000 pounds, and we sure felt it. Wewere starting this trip dangerously over weight, but there wasabsolutely nothing that we could do without or throw out the windowexcept maybe the olive tree twigs that got caught up in our landing gear.

Because of bad weather in the North Atlantic, they told us theIceland-Greenland-Newfoundland route home was a no-no. We were scheduledto land first at Marrakech, French Morocco, and then go to Dakar, South

Africa, then to Natal, Brazil, to make our Atlantic crossing. But, bythe time we arrived at Marrakech, weather reports said a huge stormwould hit Natal before we would. We were suddenly diverted to the"no-no" Northern route, but now from West Africa. Then, the powers incontrol of this thirty-seven plane caravan decided that we couldshort-cut the usual northern route by refueling at the Azore Islands,eight hundred miles off Portugal, then stretch the next hop all the wayto Gander, Newfoundland (1626 miles). Maybe the powers arranging thisdidnt know one of us was grossly overloaded, but neither did I tellthem. I wouldnt care to stay in Marrakech waiting for our load to get


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lighter, or allow red tape to eradicate our trip home. We decided wewould "make do" with the cards that were dealt us, even if it did soundlike accepting a sentence!

The manuals on early B-24s said that normal fuel consumption should be166 gallons per hour when economy cruising (low, slow and light). Theearly models had fewer turrets, too. In our latest, newest model, withmuch added equipment and the overload, with strictest economy measureswe could only expect 240-250 GPH, and then only if we were trouble free.We also had to be 100% sure to navigate the shortest possible route,without a navigator. We left the Azores among the first few to take off;early on a very dark and stormy morning, loaded with 2706 gallons offuel, and was assigned to fly at 10,500 ft. The Azores had a two mileslong runway and it faced the sea, so taking off was a snap. Once weclimbed into the low cloud ceiling, we never saw water below us again,or any glow of daylight for the whole dark trip.

All departures (37 planes) were separated by a few minutes, so wewerent likely be close to one another. My first problem was that Icould not climb much higher than 1,500 ft. without icing up my wingsuntil I could no longer climb. Bomb groups in Italy always stripped offthe de-icing boots from any new B-24 they received. They may be sorelyneeded in ocean crossings, but in combat, formations never intend to flyinto clouds, and mileage is better without them. I decided to settle for

1,500 feet altitude with no intent to climb higher. Legally, I shouldhave stuck with even thousands plus 500 ft., like the 10,500 ft.assigned, but I couldnt get to 2,500 ft., and just 500 ft. was too lowfor comfort in the zero visibility. On a long flight, barometricpressure can change a lot, causing altimeter error, until you can get anupdated barometer setting from your destination.

We flew through thunderstorms, lightning and had St. Elmos Fire dancingon the wing leading edges and around the prop tips. Having experiencedthat an automatic radio compass (follow the needle) will lead you into athunderhead if its electrical energy is a stronger signal than thestation you are tuned to, I would use nothing but the aural null (manualcranking system) for the same loop antenna. Thus, by continually

monitoring the Gander range station signal, I did hear a call muchearlier than most others from the Gander radio to all airplanes headedthere. I was surely aware of the instructor I had back in Liberal,Kansas, (that guy, Jeter, who was also a 'Green Card' instrumentexpert), because all the things he drilled his students for werehappening to us again.

When we were still about four or five hundred miles out, they warnedthat their field was now closed due to impossible weather, and allplanes headed for there are diverted to Harmon Field at Stephenville, onthe far West end of their Island. I immediately altered our course forthe shortest route, but this news added 195 more miles to this leg ofour flight. That increased the days flight to 1821 miles. You can see

that if we felt stretched to get to Gander, we now are adding at leastan additional hour of flight onto the task. Normally, we should alwayssave in reserve enough fuel to reach our destination, plus a secondfield plus 45 minutes. We now have to skimp so the reserve lasts longenough to reach what will hopefully be our final destination. As ourfuel load continued losing weight, I kept cutting back a hair more onthe power settings to increase our mileage. I ran limited RPM withincreased turbo boost, based on experience. I began listeningattentively to the Harmon Field range stations beeping Morse codesignals early on, because as we pass over the transmitting station, our


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only clue would be a "cone of silence" to indicate to us the source isimmediately below us. That is easily missed if you fail to concentrateon reception. The instrument let down by radio range beam could takeanother ten or twelve minutes.

Before our expected time of arrival was due to run out, my flightengineer was trying hard, but unsuccessfully, to choke back tears whenhe reported he had equally leveled the four gas tanks, and theyre allunder fifty gallons of fuel. Ron knew we needed most of that just to doour instrument letdown in this blind weather, but we were not there yet,nor was our ETA close at hand. We didnt get to drop a 10,000-lb. loadat the halfway point, like on a bombing mission.

Seeing Rons tears reminded me of the time when I met his mother onemorning in late 1944, shortly before we shipped out, as Ron was puttingher on a train in Pennsylvania Station, New York City, sending her backhome to Elizabeth, PA. She begged me to take care that her son gets backsafely. I assured her I would, but only later learned this lady hadalready lost one son in a B-24 that crashed into a snow capped mountainin Norway while on a mission to supply the underground Freedom Fightersthere. Also, another son lost his leg in a B-24 crash in Turkey. Turkeywas on a common route when flying from Egypt to the Ploesti oil fieldsin Romania, and was frequently used by the 15th Air Force Groups beforewe had bases in Italy. Other routes had greater danger from the Nazi

occupied lands that had become armed with anti- aircraft guns andfighter defenses. We had maintained fifteen hundred feet altitude allday and now it was definitely into night hours, as we were reachingeleven hours in the air. If we had been equipped with the de-icing bootsand had flown at the altitude assigned, we would have been out of fuellong before now. This is when an event in my life happened that I shouldnever be able to forget. We were still waiting to hear if and when wewould reach our range station, and I was honestly expecting our enginesto start sputtering when we suddenly entered a hole in the dark cloudsjust beneath my left window only. Nothing cleared up above us, but a"round hole" in the clouds had just parted the darkness from my leftside down. At the bottom of this round hole I could see only a whitecross on the ground, fifteen hundred feet down. This sight was of two

concrete runways crossing, and everything else was still lost in darkclouds.

I dove into the hole, so I wouldnt miss the opportunity, and so Reedwould be able to see this it, too. I spiraled tightly down it, droppingfull flaps and lowering the landing gear as we went. I asked Reed tocall the tower and tell them we are landing on whichever runway we canposition for first, I wouldnt have time to give the numerical ID toinform them of my choice. When we broke out under the cloud ceiling ofabout 150 feet it was still very dark, but there were area lights on thegrounds. The nearest runway end I could see had an ocean approach, so wecircled out over the water to come in and land on the first yard ofconcrete, which was also sea wall. When at the end of the landing roll

and when the weight was down on the nose gear, the engines did not allrespond to the throttles to help us taxi. We were running out of fuel.Needless to say, this landing was a huge feeling of relief for everyoneon the plane. The heaviest part of this experience for all aboard wasthat everyone had to trust me to get them through this, and there wasnothing anyone could possibly do to help, and I had nothing more I coulddo. Looking back, I am surprised no one spoke out regarding doubts aboutour safety. The truth of it is that I didnt get them through it at all.Someone on that plane had the angel on his shoulder that caused a holeto part the sky between us and the ground below before we had even


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reached the radio range transmitter, and we couldnt have gone anotherthree minutes. I got the impression that this played out like theparting of the Red Sea, and it took place before the eyes of thirteenweary, grateful soldiers.

No one else I could find at Harmon had found this field through a holein the clouds. They did the instrument let down, just as I had intendedto try, but I truly believe we could not have completed it. I cant helpbut think of a particular mother who surely deserved to be spared themisery of having a third one of her four sons all meet tragedies in aB-24 accident, at three different sites on the map and all during thesame war. I regarded this flight home after the war a much closer brushwith the grim reaper than was getting shot down, fire, gas leaks, trainwreck, being jumped by German jet fighters, crash landing, near mid-aircollisions, clipping treetops, etc. Maybe this impression was becausethis strain lasted a long, dark, eleven hours.

Of the 37 airplanes on this flight, we learned that nine went on into"closed" Gander against orders, four showed up at a small dirt practicefield half way to Harmon Field from Gander, but before dark of night,and twenty one made it to Harmon. Almost all, except us, had gone toGander first, or to a fairly close proximity to it. The other threeplanes and crews were never heard from, and were presumed to have gonedown in the North Atlantic. I suspect they ran out of fuel, which could

happen by only doing things just as taught. They could have followed theradio compass into a thunderhead, and be pulled far off course. Theynever taught desperate economy measures in our flight schools. I guessthat had to just come from the "school of hard knocks."We were the last plane to land at Harmon, though we were among the firstfive or six to take off that morning. It was for sure that we flewslower than the others did, (we averaged 166 mph), but I know we kept onthe shortest possible route. Luckily, we had little, if any cross windsto harass our navigation with additional problems. From talking to otherpilots at Harmon with lighter loads, I learned that all had beenconcerned about fuel, but none of them ran low enough to think theyneeded to worry about running out, as long as Harmon did not close. Withour load, we only managed 246 gallons per hour mileage. If we had

followed the needle (radio compass) to Gander to learn of the diversionto Harmon, we could never have made it. I cant say about the dirtfield, since I never learned of the facilities after dark. I was onlyable to talk to those who made it to Harmon. Dirt practice fieldsusually are never equipped with lights to make it possible to use afterdark at all, except on a bright moonlit night, which it was certainlynot. We shall never know the problems of those three crews (probably 30men) who, after surviving a shooting war, were denied the reward ofgoing home afterwards. You may have to experience the intensity of the"going home" feeling after a war to a fighting man (or woman), to feelthe sadness felt for ones deprived of it like this.The families of those lost that day have no idea of the circumstancesinvolved, but it could not make them feel any better knowing the

assigned task and still not know what went wrong. I'm not sure but whatall the crews who made it to Newfoundland that day have their own talesto tell, but likely all would agree that we never "paid a price" nor arewe due anything special in return for our efforts in the war. Wevolunteered to fly into the war in the skies over Germany to defend ourcountry and our allies, and thats exactly what we did. Those who failedto make it home are the ones who paid the price for all of us. We knowvery well that we were just lucky or we would not continue surviving theexisting odds. We still respect, even revere, the B-24 aircraft, createdby Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft. Over 18,000 (counting all variations)


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were built, many by "Rosie the Riveter," (women in defense work) atplants in San Diego, CA, Fort Worth, TX and Fords huge Willow Run plantin Michigan. At the latter, they built over 8,000, at a rate of oneevery 52 minutes. They still often enabled us to return in spite ofdifficulties so that we could be here among the survivors. Who couldcriticize that?

We resumed our trip home the next day, landing at Camp Miles Standish,Massachusetts, and then went by trains to Army bases near our homes. Ihad to part with my crewmates and then, strangely routed through Canada,steamed by chair car to Camp Beale, Marysville, CA, in a seven-dayjaunt. Yes, steam engines had not been taken over by diesel power, yet.Though it was uncomfortable with no bed for a week, it was much betterthan the freight train, and I was glad that I was not missing this trip.

From Marysville, I bused home via Greyhound, arriving in North Hollywoodat exactly 12:00 noon, July 4th, 1945. Thats the target date we setback in 1944, isnt it? Pure coincidence! Some of our crew joined upagain, briefly, at a California base after our short furloughs, and mostof us were then discharged before the Japanese armistice, due to thepoint system. That often did not work so well for many others whodeserved it every bit as much as we did, if not more.

How does one feel now about those experiences we had back then, when we

are looking back fifty some years later? Proud to have been Patriotic!Some how, those words meant a lot more to about everyone through W.W.IIthan it does today. Did you know that after Pearl Harbor, patriotismblossomed like weeds? The entire starting line-up of the New YorkYankees became uniformed members of some branch of the armed forces, tojoin the fight. In contrast, by the mid-sixties a large percentage ofthe college age generation was finding it unfashionable to have truefeelings of patriotism any more. There were some unpopular wars. A bigdifference between then and now was the discipline in our lives then,plus the times pushed most of us right into work when leaving highschool to help the family meet expenses. College was quite a luxury.

After the war, and back home, I later donated my artifacts, documents

and photos to the March Field Museum and also became a life member ofthe non-profit foundation that took the reins to perpetuate the museumafter the active Air Force vacated the field in 1996. For a number ofrecent years, the historical March Field had been the headquarters ofthe 15th Air Force, as well as a key base of the Strategic Air Command.Now it is a training base for Air Force Reserves and the California AirNational Guard, plus our museum with its own forty acres across therunway from the military area. March Field history dates back to WW I, aperiod that was still the infancy of aviation.

I have flown my flag every July 4th since 1945 as the symbol of thefreedom we fought to protect, and to show my pride in having lent ahand. Thats satisfies me, but always reminds me of those that didnt

have the lucky breaks that we did, so that they might be here, too.Maybe, in combat, some just had to be victims of an enemys moment ofgood luck?Thomas Jefferson once said, "I find that the harder I work, the moreluck I seem to have." We didnt work hard enough to claim that for ourlucky breaks that brought us home. We all put forth a 100% effort, butonly when it was absolutely necessary. If it all happened again, I wouldsurely volunteer for the same again, but hopefully while undertwenty-five or so, and not aware of the odds. We never felt that we were"flirting with death" as we were in combat at that young age, but our


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exposure surely was with risk at times. However, in my years sinceleaving the service, we still face "close calls" of a serious nature,and we do it over and over. My wife and I were victims of a head-on autocrash in 1961 that totaled both cars and injured everyone. We were onthe epicenter of the Newhall, CA, earthquake in 1971 (6.4 Richter scale)that took four lives in our apartment complex.

In our travels we have been in small towns on at least three separateoccasions as tornadoes were touching down in them. In 1960, on a cartrip from Mexico City to Acapulco, we drove past a high, steep cliffthat let drop a boulder as big as the engine of our car that just missedour back bumper and indented the pavement. It could have crushed five ofus if we were one second slower clearing that spot. But, as long as youand yours are not hurt, you shouldnt let those things bother you afterthe initial reaction subsides and a reasonable tranquility has returned.Its a fact that life has its gambles no matter how safe you think youmay be, even with extra safety precautions, or no matter what careersyou choose to undertake in life. In a war you just dont have the luxuryof making choices of your own, you just do what has to be done, even ifit looks like a mission of no return. My philosophy is: You may pursue acareer with risks as long as you give serious thought to and draw yourown line where acting "without fear" stops short of being foolish. Butthen, dont let yourself worry about the remote "What if-?" elements ofdanger. To harbor fears of very unlikely possibilities is to let a seed

start that may become an obstacle to achieving your goals. Fate controlsthe long shots, and avoiding them is with the long odds in our favor.The majority of us will survive with little or no scratches untilsomething we never anticipated happens. That, very likely, will just bethe ever more popular ending called "dying of old age." G. R.THE END

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