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WWII Veteran Interview: Following are five interviews of American Army Air Corps veterans of WWII. All interviews were conducted by Neal M., of the NWHA's British 3rd Parachute Brigade. Neal M. is also the founder of the club's Allied Air Forces living history group, which participates in many events throughout the year in American, British, and Canadian uniforms. |
Ben Hauck
8th Af, 487th BG, 837BS Co-Pilot, F/O
The day I baled out we were on a mission to Brandenburg, which is on the outskirts of Berlin. It was April 10, 1945. We were just about ready to go on the IP when we were attacked by ME 262 jet fighters. We had seen them a couple times before.
The first ones that came through got one plane; I don't think anyone got out of it. I didn't see any chutes. A couple minutes later we got hit in the number 1 main gas tank and it started a fire. So we tried to get back to the American lines because we knew they had stopped at the Elbe River. But when the aluminum slags started falling off the back of the wing, we said it's time to get out of this. The communication system was knocked out in the back, so it was hard to get their attention, but they got the message and they all bailed out.
We started to get out at the front hatch - we couldn't go through the bomb bay because it was on fire. I was the co-pilot and I looked down and I saw that the guys were having trouble getting the hatch door open. I told Ted, the pilot, I gotta go down and help those guys. So I jumped down there. I said "Robbie, you pull on the release and I'll jump on the door." Well, the adrenaline was running so fast, I didn't notice that my leg straps [of the parachute] weren't fastened; I always flew with them unfastened because it was more comfortable to fly that way. When I jumped on the door, out I went.
I counted to ten, then I counted to ten, then I counted to ten one last time. When I pulled the ripcord and the chute opened, one of the buckles flew up and cut my lip wide open. That's when I realized what I had done. The part of the harness that goes across your chest came up and popped me under my armpits. If I had had my arms up, hey I would have been gone.
They said to count to three or four, then pull, but we were at about 28,000 feet. We didn't have bailout bottles.
We all made out it out OK, but we were still over enemy territory. They gathered us all up and the next day we were in the Madenburg Luftwaffe airfield jail. Another plane from our squadron that got shot down that day had their crew there, too.
The only bad part about the whole ordeal was the food. The Germans were starving to death themselves, and they knew it. They didn't treat us badly otherwise. I had a piece of bread about the size of a bar of soap maybe twice a week. It was terrible, but you had to eat something.
When we left the airfield, they marched us across Germany over to Leipzig. That's quite a ways! It took us five days to get over there. It took us five days because the guards were crippled with canes and crutches - we had to go slow because of them. But in those five days, one day we got a sort of stew with a few potatoes and carrots in it and maybe a bit of meat.
Other than that the only food we got was when one night they put us in an empty potato cellar. It was a quonset style hut covered with earth. We started digging around in there and lo and behold we found some potatoes. The guards didn't come in the cellar because it was cold in there; they stayed outside where they had a big fire going. So I can speak German, and I went out and asked them if I could throw the potatoes in the fire. I had maybe a dozen or so - it wasn't enough for everybody - but they let me throw them in there for about half an hour. They were all burnt to a crisp, but when I brought them back in I just about got mobbed. At least it was something to put in your stomach.
In prison, the food that we got was potato peelings, carrot tops, rotten rutebagas, all kinds of crap they'd throw in a garbage can with some water. Once a day we got a tin cup about 4" in diameter and about 3" tall full of that stinking mess it smelled horrible.
I didn't eat anything for the first three days. The guys who'd been in for a long time were fighting over my stuff [laughs]. But after about the fourth day I held my nose and just ate it. Well, you eat or you die, period. It gave you just enough nourishment to survive. In the month I was a POW I lost 22 lbs without even trying [laughs].
The 3rd Armored Division liberated us. They took us up to Hildesteim Germany. They took all the clothes away from us and burned them and put us in a DDT # they fogged us up real good and gave us clean clothes. The first meal was just broth from a killed sheep - there was no meat. It wasn't much. Then there was a bunch of prisoners on litters who had malnutrition paralysis.
They had about a dozen C-47's there but no pilots - I don't know what happened to the pilots, but they didn't have enough. There was about 5 or 6 of us who volunteered. I had never flown a C-47. I'd never been in one. But I figured, hell, if I can fly a B-17, I can fly one of these. They loaded those planes up and we flew to Paris. They ran the sick guys to the hospital, but they didn't have quarters for us pilots, so they put us in the hospital. it was a good place - good food, a warm bed.
After we got to Paris they forgot about us. We were there for 24 days. We got sick and tired of nothing to do and we said we want to go home! We had to beat the table and they sent us up to Camp Lucky Strike, then they sent us home.Charles Gallagher
8th AF, 95th BG, 336th BS Top Turret Engineer, TSGT
First, when we were losing people in the channel, the British couldn't find us, so the British issued these to us, and if you went down you could blow the whistle and the Air Sea Rescue could pick you up. [Shows 35 missions on A2 jacket.]Looks like you flew a full tour?
35 missions, yes. I started flying on July 8 of 1944 and flew my last mission Jan. 28 of 1945. We were very slow flying because we were on a shuttle mission off to Russia and Italy to support the southern France invasion. Our bombardier got malaria in Italy, so one month we flew only one mission. We bombed Adenia (?), landed in Poltava Russia, bombed Krakow, refueled, bombed Ploesti - the railroad yards, not the oil refinery - and landed in Foggia and waited for the southern France invasion. We bombed there and landed back in England.
Our plane was called "Jack's Guerillas" after the pilot. We flew the 17. A great airplane We took an awful lot of damage, but we were very fortunate. Only three of our fellows got hit, and none of them bad. We all finished out tours. We had two twins on our crew, and they moved one of them off after the 10th mission so we had only one waist gunner. He started flying later again and got shot down. When his parachute was coming down the Germans were coming one way and the Americans the other, and the US got him. After about August of 1944, all planes went to one waist gunner.
I went to AM school, and I studied B-25's and B-26's. I went to SLC and was assigned to a B-17 crew! When they told everyone to line up behind the engineer to ship out, nobody knew who it was, and it turned out to be me. So my first flight in a B-17 was the first flight with my crew. When we got overseas and started flying, the first time I put the guns in the top turret was my first mission. But we survived.
All the ground crew were just out of this world. Of course everybody knew you wouldn't be there without them, and they helped tremendously. They had a hangar for major work, but our crew chiefs had to do all their work on a slab outdoors. They did have a pyramid tent that was mostly filled with stuff for the airplane.
I was fortunate. I was in the Air Corps two years, four months and 24 days. We were very lucky to have a squadron commander who didn't like us. Every time Group would recommend us for a DFC, the colonel would turn it down. So the group would give us one or two air medals instead. I ended up with a whole gob of air medals; when the point system came out, I had about 35-40 points on air medals. It only took 75 to get out, so I got out.
Maybe the CO had a reason for not liking us. For example, we were at the head of a long line; if we were going to chow and saw him coming up that lane, the five of us would stop at the top and send one guy out and he'd walk 15 ft., the next guy would walk 15 ft., and the next guy would walk 15 ft., saluting him each time. Maybe he'd didn't feel that that was too respectful. Another time the pilot was sitting in the bar at the Officer's Club explaining to a friend of his what a no good son of a gun he was; the guy punched his arm and he turned around and looked and there he was and Jack said, "Isn't that right Colonel?" We had a great crew.
I remember our mission to Hamburg, which was a little rougher than usual. Our crew was a flak magnet, but this time for about 20 minutes it was just riding on a rough washboard road. We got back and I thought I'd count the holes in the airplane starting at the nose. By the time I got to the trailing edge we had 180 holes and I quit counting.
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One time after the bombardier was ill, our waist gunner became the togglier; his job was to understand the releasing and he dropped on the lead airplane. Another spare gunner sat in with us. It was a bad day. After we got out of the flak area we ran an oxygen check and the guy didn't respond. The radio man went back and the guy was out. So he checked him over and found that the mask - it had a little sponge and they'd freeze up - so he squeezed it and got it going and turned the emergency oxygen on. The guy came to and came out fighting. So Ray turned him off, checked him over some more, couldn't find anything so turned him on again but nothing. He turned him off again and he checked him real close found his eyes were frozen shut. Ray put his thumbs on his eyeballs and thawed him out and turned the oxygen and the guy came out OK. It was about 65 below.
One time we had about twenty minutes we were flying at 100 below. That was extremely rare at about 30,000 feet. We thought the navigator was transposing the OAT when we went to 80 below, but we found out later that all the airplanes.Climpson Clapp
2 LT., 93rd BG, 328th BS B-24
I was there roughly January to June of 45. I was in one of the planes that had the wing tip cut off by a FW 190. Well, we survived that. He clipped about 3 ft. of the left wingtip. Not only that, we lost the No. 3 engine on the way back, but we made it. I was just the navigator. I only did half a tour with the war ending. After the war, I did one food drop, but a lot of "trolley" missions where we brought the ground crews over Germany so they could see where everyone was flying all these years.Anonymous by request
Maj., 100th BG, 351st BS
I was there from March of 1944 and finished my last mission of July 12 of 1944. It didn't take very damn long. Flew my first mission in April. We were flying about every day. The last two missions were to Munich - LONG ONES. Of course when we got there, the limit was 25 missions, then they jumped it to 30 then 35. It was like dangling the weiner in front of you.
We really didn't know the 100th had a reputation until we got assigned there; our first night we bunked in the same bed with sheets from a crew that had been lost the day before. The next day we were issued a bicycle - for the officers. A fella in the barracks said, C'mon Ernie, let's go and see the planes come in. So we pedaled down to the line.
Here's one coming in with two red flares shooting. It got to the end of the runway and the meat wagons headed in. When we got there, the windshield was cracked and a couple of fellas came up and were crying. The ambulance fellows came out with a body, and I thought, "What in the hell am I doing here."
Our crew made it through the 35 mission OK. Our navigator was hit twice with flak, but it never did any harm. The first time shrapnel went through his flying suit and made a red welt on his leg. Then the second time it hit the parachute strap and sliced into it. He was pretty well "flaked out" and spent a week in the hospital. The day after D-day, one of the waist gunners got hit under his eye, but it wasn't enough to get the PH. There's only 4 of us left of the original crew.Did you wear the electric suit?
I tried it once and that was enough. The damn thing, when you're sitting on it, it parboils your butt. The fellows standing up, the waist gunners and that, it was OK, but that was enough for me. All I wore was the GI uniform and the A2 jacket. Formation flying was so strenuous that I'd be sweating even when the temperature was 20 below. We did take 15-minute turns, the co-pilot and me. It depended on our position in the formation as to which one was flying over the target. If we were right side I took it, and if we were left side he did.
You know, we'd be in formation from takeoff to landing, and they'd want you to fly as close as possible. It got a little hairy. We made one mission to S. France where we dropped supplies to the Maquis. We dropped down to 550 feet, and we dropped our stuff, and saw a shadow over us - it was the high element in the squadron directly above us, and if you look out the window there's a hill straight in front of us. What the hell do you do. I thought this is it. But fortunately they pulled away.
When my tour was over, they waved the weiner, and said they'd send us home for 30 days if we signed for another tour. But I stayed so my crew wouldn't fly with different people. After my tour, they had too many pilots; they sent three of us to Orly as liaison squadron flying little bugs where they couldn't get a big ship.We flew Gen'l Ross, head of transportation, down to the coast during the Battle of the Bulge. There was a ship in the harbor at Le Havre that had 105mm shells and had hit a mine. Then the day before Xmas during the bulge, the skies cleared for the first time and a Master Sgt. came up and said I have to get back to Gen'l Bradley - he was an aide. We flew a UC 64, called a Norseman which had a high wing. The goddamned thing took off at 120 MPH, flew at 120 and it landed at 120. We took him to Luxembourg.
Xmas day they asked if we'd mind taking a couple of passengers back to Paris. This Maj. shows up with this Lufwaffe pilot who had been shot down the day before and he wanted to take him to England for interrogation. Stayed there until March of 45. Got itchy feet and went back to the States to fly the B-29. I ended up with a B-29 weather recon squadron. It was going to be a year before I could get my wife over, and I thought life's too short and I got out. I had been thinking of making the service a career, but I was separated from my wife. I had 12 good years in the reserve.
Don Messenger
SSGT, 849th BS, 490th BG
Approaching the target, we noted flak explosions and there was an immediate urgency to cover our hides with flak suits. I was the tailgunner. I'm pretty sure that the guys in the middle, namely Westgate, Ball Gunner Clarence Tietmeyer and RO Bill Zeglen were able to cooperatively help one another into those heavy, clumsy suits. Likewise the front end folks, Pilot Tighe, Co-pilot Art Howard, Navigator Fred Schoreter, Flight Engineer Morlyn Peterson and Toggler Scott Pittulo had a mutual aid society working for them and were able to get into the suits with minimum problems. Back in the rear end of the plane, I was in the process of discovering the lonesomeness of a tail gunner.
I was able to secure one of the fasteners that joined the breast and back pieces of the flak suit, but the fastening on the opposite shoulder just couldn't be made. The tail gunner compartment wasn't exactly spacious; handicapped by the mike and earphone wires, the heated suit cord, and the oxygen mask tube, I huffed and grunted, working myself into a nervous wreck trying to cover as much of Messenger as the suit would reach. After a few minutes of hard effort, I gave up on the project but totally aware that one shoulder and connecting parts were exposed to whatever flak happened to come our way.
Somewhat to my surprise and immense relief, we dropped the bombs and soon left the flak danger behind us. With the wisdom of a 20-year old, I concluded that the hazard of flak was overrated and that putting on a flak suit simply did not reduce the threat of being wounded. In subsequent missions, I simply let the main portions of the flak suit lie near the sides of the compartment, contenting myself with wearing the flak helmet and sitting on the small tail piece section of the flak suit.
I operated this way for quite a few missions until a day that Westgate crawled back in the tail gunner compartment, probably to mooch a cigarette. Carl noticed the scattered pieces of flak suit and upon finding that I did not put the suit in active service, said that he would appreciate using any extra protection up in the waist of the plane. With some misgivings, I let him take the suit.
A few missions later (I think it was Cologne), we where hit by dense and most accurate anti-aircraft fire. Carl had placed both pieces of my flak suit on the floor of the plane and was standing on them while wearing his own suit. A sizable piece of flak ripped through the bottom of the plane, went completely through one layer of the floor-level suit and partially through the second layer, causing a startling shock to one of Carl's feet and a greater shock to his nervous system. In all seriousness, it can be said that had it not been for the extra underfoot protection, the then newly-wedded Gunner Westgate would have been gravely wounded, if not killed.
After that incident, I made an un-authorized requisition or two, equipping the tail section of the plane with other pieces of flak suits.
