John Gallagher
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
95TH BG LEGACY COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
1999 REUNION PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
MW: This is Margaret Blagg Weaver interviewing John “Moose” Gallagher today in Pittsburgh at the 1999 Reunion. The date is September the 10th, 1999. And would you please state your name for the record?
JG: John “Moose” Gallagher
MW: And can you tell me what your dates of service were with the Army/Air Corps?
JG: From the December the 8th, 1941 until September the 14th, 1945.
MW: Okay, and what about with the 95th Bomb Group?
JG: With the 95th Bomb Group, from October 7th – there was eight weeks we were the 34th Bomb Group – and then on between Thanksgiving and Christmas of ’42 we became the 95th Bomb Group and I was original from that time until the day I went down.
MW: Okay, and what unit, what squadron were you in?
JG: 334th squadron.
MW: And what was your principle job?
JG: I was flight engineer/top turret gunner.
MW: Let’s go back to the very beginning. And you mentioned that you enlisted on December the 8th. That would have been after Pearl Harbor.
JG: Right.
MW: Could you tell us about that – how old you were and the circumstances.
JG: I was 18 years old and on December the 7th we were listening to the radio on a Sunday and we heard about this Pearl Harbor bombing. And we ran upstairs to my sister’s round globe, and when we saw how tiny Japan was, we said, “Wow, we better join tomorrow, thinking that it would be over maybe in a couple of months. That was a fallacy of course. And my Dad and my Mother said, had them agree to let us stay home until Christmas. And then on the morning of the 27th we went by train to Fort Dix, that was in New Jersey, and got inducted. The funny thing about that, we got there like 7:30 at night, and the mess hall was closed. And it was about six of us. So they took us to the mess hall, and the mess Sergeant said, “Well, we’re closed.” He says, “The best I could do is make you a couple of hot dogs.” So they made us some hot dogs. And I had, well I was eating one and I grabbed two more, put mustard on them. They were closing the mess hall so I walked out and I’d never seen an officer before. And here a guy come down and I thought, man, he looks like an officer. Well I had the two hotdogs and my mouth full with the other one, and I saluted and looked at him with the hot dog. And he stopped, turned around and he shook his head, you know. And I could just visualize him saying “We’ll never win the war with this guy.” (Laughing) So I went back to the barracks. I would have loved to have gotten his name. He was, I could tell – he had a beautiful uniform on and he had pieces on his shoulder. But I had never seen an officer before, and I did not know what he was. And then we stayed there for I guess about ten days. And we were all ready to ship out and they had a case of case of spinal meningitis, so they quarantined us before they sent us to – we went to from there to, oh what the heck’s the name of that – it’s funny I can’t remember that – in Mississippi someplace – Missouri – Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. And then while we were in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, they asked me if I wanted to go to AM school to learn mechanics, you know, and all. So I signed up for that and went to Chanute Field, Illinois. And then while we were in Chanute Field, Illinois, they put a big pledge out for fighter pilots, to go to fighter training. And about seven or eight guys in the barracks were all enthused about it. So we had to get three letters of recommendation. So I wrote to dentist that I shoveled snow, and I never went to him as a dentist, but I’d shoveled snow and he sent me a beautiful letter. And I sent one to my teacher from when I graduated ’41 and she sent me a nice letter. And I sent the principal of the school, and his name was Charles Hollenbeck and he was a German – very straight back, thick wavy gray hair. And boy he sent a letter, because I didn’t do well in school. Of course I didn’t put the effort in. And we had a very strong contingent of Jewish people from ____________________ sections, and they were the scholars. So he wrote this letter that well, he may be able to be a decent fighter pilot and all this stuff. I was so embarrassed that I had to write for another one. But on the, his words actually came true because I flunked the mental, because I had to leave out anything with calculus or trigonometry and so consequently I only got a 68. So I never became a fighter pilot. I had the credentials, physical credentials. I had 20/15 eyesight in both eyes, and that was an asset. But then they said, “Well, would you like to go to gunnery school and become a gunner. You graduated.” And I graduated; I really liked the AM school, so I did well. So then they said, “You’ll be a flight engineer on a bomber.” And I said, boy that sounds pretty good. They actually said “Would you like a B-17 or a B-24?” Well I’d heard that the B-24 was subject to burning a lot. So I didn’t like fire. So I said, “I’ll go to the 17.” So we went to become a flight engineer on a B-17. That’s where they assigned me, you know. So, do you want to skip back to fill in part of this story? Or do you want to stay ahead? I mean I could tell you a piece of this story that’s very important. When the war was over, we were released first, POW’s. I was back in Atlantic City the 12th of June ’45. And I went to this hospital for 92 days, but it was right in the city. So they issued us new uniforms and wings and all. And there was about six or seven days of school left. So I went back to school just for the feeling, you know. It was a beautiful school. So I went down the hallway and I got by the principal’s office, and there he’s sitting in there, Mr. Hollenbeck. So I went in and said hello to him. This was not a premeditated thing on my part. He says, “Who are you?” and I says, “John Gallagher.” I says, “I graduated ’41.” And I said, “Mr. Hollenbeck, you were the greatest inspiration to me during World War II.” And his chest went out and he says, “Yeah, how was that?” And I says, “Well, every time an ME-109 or a Focke Wulf came in on me, I used to always give them an extra burst and say ‘Take that, Mr. Hollenbeck, you crap.’” And with that I said, “Heil Hitler!” And his face got burnt red, you know. So I walked out and turned around you know and said, “See you later.” But that was me getting back at him for that lousy letter he sent me. And it came instantaneously like that to me, you know.
MW: That’s pretty funny. The reason - I’m not trying to laugh because I don’t want my laughter overriding your tapes. I’m not responding naturally, but that’s hilarious.
JG: So then I was 92 days in the Ambassador Hotel, which was a rehabilitation center for the prisoners of war. And they had not had prisoners of war before, so they fed us too much – gave us all the ice cream we wanted. And guys gained the weight too fast. I only lost 35 pounds. And other guys lost maybe 70 – the same conditions. Your metabolism proved to be a factor in how you, whether you lost weight. And your mental. Of course I’m here in Pittsburgh because my friend Brownie, Jack Brown, he was from Pittsburgh. And he worked for Dan Rooney, you know the owner of the Steelers. And I came to the Pittsburgh Steeler games. But anyway, he went down 100 days before me. He went down May 29th of ’43 over __________. And when I came into camp, 100 days later, I didn’t recognize him. He was a different person. It practically destroyed him. He died in 1983 as a young man, you know. I was a pallbearer; I came to Pittsburgh and was one of his pallbearers. But everybody reacted differently to the trauma and to, you know the things. But I was sort of trained to be a prisoner of war. And you’ll say, “How’s that?” My mother was extremely tough. In fact, when I joined the service, we got $21 a month. And she said to me, “You must sent $13 home of that 21.” So I did. I sent $13 every month home. In the barracks these guys were getting envelopes with a five-dollar bill and a ten-dollar bill in it. And so they would say, “Gallagher, how much did you get from your parents this month?” And I’d say, “Oh, they didn’t send me anything yet, but they’re going to send it to me.” Here I’m sending $13 out of 21! So now, June and July, I’m at Chanute Field, Illinois. My Dad and Mom came out in their ’39 Buick. All the neighbors pitched in with those coupons so that they could get the gas. I’d only kissed my mother once – good-bye – never kissed her before. And the first thing she says is “You didn’t send anything home this month.” And I said, “Mom, I’m not going to send anything home anymore.” I said, “All these other guys are getting $5 bills and $10 bills. And then, two weeks later, we went from $21 to $50. August 1st of ’42, as privates. I was floating in money. But many guys, and I never smoked a cigarette in my life. When I was 12, we lived nine blocks from civilization. And it was January or February and it was no weeds or nothing. I knew my mother was always at the window. You see, they didn’t go places in those days. They stayed home. If they went someplace, that was planned for ages. So I made believe I was smoking. I was blowing the smoke and I come in the back door, and man I got whacked in the back. I went sailing into the dining room. My mother said, “That will teach you to smoke.” So I never smoked. It could affect you the other way. You could end up smoking a pack and a half an hour, you know. But the, now where was I going to go from that? So when I came back, a lot of guys said, “Stalag 17 didn’t seem to bother you like it did a lot of the other guys.” And I’d say, “Well the only difference between Schultz and my mother is my mother wasn’t armed.” Because she was just tougher than Schultz. He wasn’t fat, short and dumb, like I know nothing. He was tall and thin and smart as heck. You’ll see. I’ve got a note in that little article. When I was captured, I was six days in solitary, and I vowed never to go in there again. So whatever I was told to do, I did without any – no problems. So I was in 7-A first, that was in Merseburg, near Frankfurt. And then in October of ’43, they moved all the 1300 airmen to Stalag 17 in Krems, Austria outside of Vienna – a distance from Vienna. And there we stayed until the Russians were bombing Vienna, you know shelling Vienna. And the Germans didn’t want to be captured by the Russians. They knew that was instant death. So we went on 289-day march from there to Branaugh by way of, not by airplane, but all kinds. We walked 289 miles. And every day they’d split us in two groups. Every night half would sleep out in a field, the other half would sleep in a barn, or several barns. And we had guys that could break a chicken’s neck without that chicken making a sound. And then we would get wood and boil it. And if the Germans caught you boiling it, then they’d knock the thing over, you know. And the guys would have to say they didn’t do it. They would pick the chicken up and take the egg from the chicken, and we’d cook it in a fire that we had out there. This was the greatest food that we ever had, when we were on that march as far as opportunities. But airmen were the only prisoners in World War II that weren’t forced to work. Goering made a pact with the RAF not to work the RAF airmen, and the RAF made a pact not to work the Luftwaffe. So, when we got in it, it was the same thing. In this picture, shortly after as I was being taken into the Bergermeister’s office by the SS and the Gestapo and some soldiers. They left, and I was there, sitting in a chair just like we are now for maybe 20 minutes. And another group came in of SS and Gestapo and military. They all clicked their heels and the Bergermeister was sitting there and “Heil Hitler!” you know. Now I just set there, not intentionally being obstinate or anything. But that was not anything I’d ever done. Well this SS guy comes over, he grabs me by my flight suit, picks me up and bang! He punches me. But I don’t know if he intentionally missed my chin, but he hit me in the Adam’s apple. And I couldn’t talk for eight or nine minutes. And the Bergermeister spread out my escape kit and all the women, when I first got captured; I hid my shoes under brush, which we were told to do. I didn’t run. That article said I was running. No, you don’t run. You walk. So the women found my parachute, and it was white silk. And they were tearing that to smithereens. It was 26 feet, so you know 26 feet, there it is – big around. They were tearing it. So when they marched me down to – oh, when I was – am I rambling?
MW: No.
JG: Oh, okay. So in my parachute, we had never flown 29,000 feet. They were experimenting to see how the ME 109 and the Focke Wulf would perform at a higher altitude. But it took fuel to get there. What I understood later, I found out at the end that they discontinued that because we lost planes in the Channel running out of gas. We carried like 2800 gallons of fuel with our wing tanks and then you had to bring that – that was one of my jobs to bring the fuel into the inside tank for stability. So, when I was there, this SS guy, they had the escape kit – the morphine, the compass, the maps, rubber maps so if you land in water. And he was banging my head down because I wouldn’t tell him anything. You weren’t allowed – name, rank and serial number. They wanted more than that. They wanted confirmation of everything. Then when they were going to leave, one Gestapo agent stayed and when they were going to leave, they clicked their heels. And before that sound died, I was up “Heil Hitler.” And the SS guys looked as much to say, “Yeah, you’ll get another punch if you don’t do that.” (Laughing). So this Gestapo guy was taking me to some place else. Where, I didn’t know at the time. And he had a little gray car, and the steering wheel was on the same side as ours, not where the British have it. His doors opened this way. And he opened the door, and I thought he wanted me in the back so I moved the seat to get in the back and he banged my head against the thing and he’s yelling, you know, to sit there. Then he goes around and he gets in and he takes a lugar and he puts it down between us. Well I didn’t realize instantaneously, but then I thought to myself, he wants me to get that gun, you know. Because, when I was about four or five thousand feet from the ground, I had a 45 with a lot of ammo. And I was fortunate enough to say, “I don’t think this is going to be good because I could see the motorcycles with the side car racing in the dirt. There were no paved roads; they were all, the dirt was flying and there was a body of water. So you could move your ‘chute real well, even it was a mildly windy day, not brisk wind. I got that motorcycle on one side and I got on the other when I barely missed going in the water. And then when I got out of my ‘chute, I thought I was safe, you know, to get in the woods and study my map and compass and all. But this little guy tackled me. He was about 45. And I thought, cripes, what an old man. He tackled me, you know. And he had these little brown shoes. And it’s funny, every single time to this day when I see little brown shoes with a rounded front I think of that guy (chuckling). But he had big dagger in my head, you know. And he had __________ around me. But fortunately there was other people there. A lot of airmen got killed. But I was 15 miles from the target.
MW: What were the circumstances of your plane going down?
JG: Well we got hit with flak. So naturally we lost speed and we had an engine get on fire. So we had to fall out of formation because other planes would fly onto you. So then the craps jumped us, you know the ME 109’s and the Focke Wulfs. You can handle, at the time, a good, experience gun crew could handle five or six fighters, but not ten or twelve. And they were coming in on us. So then there was sort of like a gentlemen’s agreement. When it was known that you were – we had a second engine on fire. And there was no question that we could never get back. So Tyler, my pilot, he gave the bail out. And now everybody’s on their own. Well the top turret guy, he couldn’t wear a ‘chute. I could only wear my harness, get out of my turret, and grab my ‘chute and put it on. But the guys that had seat packs, they were 28 foot in diameter. If they weighed 190 pounds, they better have a 28. I was about 155 pounds. So I had one foot on the platform and one foot on the deck. I had already put my guns to the rear – that’s the only way you could get out. And Tyler, my pilot, screamed, “Moose, Moose! One o’clock! One o’clock!” And here, a German, they would get ten points for a bomber, the Luftwaffe pilots. And when we first into combat, they had what they called Goering’s Yellownose Outfit. That was the elite fighter pilots. And they had to get so many points to get in it. And they had to get ten points a month to stay in it. That was the way they worked. And then if you weren’t quite that good, there was a Red Nose Outfit. And you didn’t need as many points to get in it, or as many points to stay in it. But they always wanted to graduate to the Yellow Nose. And that was the ones we met in May and June of ’43. And then all of a sudden, you saw one Yellow Nose leading a squadron – not all the whole squadron. So anyhow, Tyler screamed, “Moose, Moose! One o’clock!” The gentlemen’s agreement wasn’t there. So I quick turned my guns up and you would never hold your triggers down because your barrels would just wear out and your tracers would be going around in a circle, but we were leaving anyhow. Prior to that mission, I had had credit for two German fighters. And the only way you got authentic credit was to have two other planes identify your position. And being the top turret, that was easy. He had a better chance of getting them, because all the attacks came from the front – relative speed. They wouldn’t come from the back because they’d reduce their airspeed from yours, you know. So I hauled it down, and he blew up in a million pieces, the plane did. Two planes going back must have, being debriefed, told about this fighter that the top turret got. So my mother got the Distinguished Flying Cross. I didn’t know it. So anyhow, then I had to get out of my suit and I didn’t meet any of the other guys until about six o’clock at night. And my co-pilot – this is unbelievable – but he had broken his leg when he landed. And he was already in a cast with crutches. The Germans had repaired his leg enough to get by. And they kept us all together. We were at a Luftwaffe; this Gestapo agent took me to this Luftwaffe air base. And it’s now like six o’clock at night – still broad daylight. And we had nice flight suits. The guys in the back with the windows, they had to wear this heavy leather with sheepskin and earmuffs, because you know, it’s 50 degrees below zero. The Luftwaffe guys – and these were all fighter planes sitting out there – probably one of them must have been responsible for knocking us out. They’re doing all the zippers, and talking a mile a minute, smiling at me. You know, there’s a rapport. One guy even shook my hand – one Luftwaffe pilot. From there, then I got to be debriefed. And I didn’t smoke a cigarette, and this German interrogating officer, he had Camels that they probably confiscated from other guys. He offered me a cigarette, and he even had a match. And I said, “No, no, no, no.” Well he took it as obstinance that I didn’t want to cooperate in any way, you know. So he gets up and he walks around the table and he grabs me by the back of the thing and he – cigarette. Well, I still didn’t take it. I didn’t know, but then he spoke a little English. And I says, “Don’t smoke.” So then he sort of soothed down. Being as I wouldn’t tell anything about the target, group, the squadron or anything like that, then I went into solitary for six days. That was a little concrete box and there was just a little latch thing there and you got a slice of bread and a glass of water twice a day for six days. I thought I was in there longer than six days, but I found out that Brownie, the guy that was here, wrote a postcard to his mother, and it was dated September 12th, 1943 and it was in late afternoon. And it said, “Gallagher just came in the camp and he looks pretty good.” So I thought, for all those years, until his wife gave me that card, that I was in solitary for nine days. But that would have made it the 15th, you see. It’s amazing, when guys say certain things, another guy might say something quite different, see. Because I was telling Cozens, Bob Cozens, he was a pilot in our squadron of the nine. We only had eight crews because we lost one before we came over, but they added another one. We were on this Kiel raid, June the 13th of ’43 and I was talking to him about it. This General, Nathan Forrest, briefed us before we took off. We had breakfast at 3:30, briefing at 4:15 or something like that, and here they always raised the thing. Well this was the first time that we went clean across France. Don’t forget France was Germany in May and June of ’43. So we used to always go up the North Sea and in the back way to Dusseldorf, Kiel, and Hamburg and places like that. But this was the furtherest penetration – Stuttgart – this day, you know. Well that’s when I went down, but I was talking to Cozens about the Kiel raid when we lost 10 of 23 planes that day. And my pilot, this guy, this General Nathan Forrest, he stood up there at the briefing and ridiculed us, how inept we were, how much ammo we were using, how many planes we’re losing and how few fighter planes we’re getting. And he said, “I’m here today, and I will see first hand how you guys are going to improve.” And a lot of guys said, “Who the hell is -” they used a little heavier language, said, “Is that guy?” Well, he had 13 men on that plane, including himself, instead of a crew of 10. He had another navigator, Willard Brown, from Headquarters squadron. You see Headquarters squadron didn’t go into combat – they weren’t supposed to be. But then so quickly we lost planes that they were taking the Headquarters crews and putting them in places here. So anyhow, he wanted an extra navigator, and he had another guy that was an observer or something. So, we’re in formation, and man, I’m the lookout. So I looked over toward 3:00 and said, “Man, look at all those birds over there.” But they were quite a distance away so the top turret had binoculars so you could do all the searching. I threw the binoculars on and I said, “Holy cripes!” We’re on intercom; we can’t go on command yet. You don’t go on command until the enemy actually comes at you. That’s called breaking radio sounds. So, we weren’t allowed to go on command. So I put the binoculars on, and I’m the call guy. And I says, “Holy Christ! Look at 3:00. We’ve got all these ME-109’s.” So they left, and they go on up and they circle around and they come through and I mean I never saw that many at one time. Well, they must have known that this big shot was in that plane. And unfortunately, our squadron commander, Dave Wilder – he was a West Point graduate, and I mean he was, not because he got killed, but he was a nifty guy. He treated you like men, you know. So we had one Major. Your squadron leader was a Captain, that was Harry Stirwall. At that time, the squadron commander was to go on every fourth mission. And this was our seventh, so Wilder wouldn’t have been going on this mission. But this nitwit General – tell other Generals I said that – but this nitwit insisted on Wilder going. So Stirwall was the pilot and Wilder was the co-pilot. He had an extra navigator, and this other supposed friend of his – observer. So he had 13 men on the plane. Well, first thing you know, they got hit and I mean, you couldn’t believe how fast – they turned over and everything like that. And I could see the tires in the well and everything. Of course it was Stirwall got the General, and another guy here, and then we were leading this other wing – Tyler – this other threesome. So now, they fall out and they're turning like this, so Cozens, Bob Cozens, he really was the man that was supposed to slide in and take over that unit. But we had a guy named John Miller who was on his first mission, but he was a Captain, and Cozens was only a 1stLieuy. He got the bright idea, which I could see, of taking over. And they almost collided. I was telling Cozens, you know, I said, “I’ll never forget how close you came to being a casualty that day.”
MW: Well I understand that this General Forrest, was that his name?
JG: Yes.
MW: Had an idea for a new formation also – that was part of the trouble?
JG: Yes. It wasn’t as drastic as some guys say where they put them all across. But he moved them around somewhere. We didn’t have as good a firepower as we would have in our existing formations, because we were used to it. We had seven missions. That was a lot of missions. We lost a couple planes, but nothing to write home about. We didn’t lose an extraordinary amount of planes. So he put us at a disadvantage. But I always believed that there was 12 men on the plane – not the 13th that I found out later – and I never believed a man got out. But about 10 years ago, I came to a 95th thing and I’m sitting there, and I’m talking to this guy. And I looked at his plate and it said Willard Brown. And I said, “Wait a minute. Willard Brown. We had a Willard Brown in the Headquarters squadron.” He said, “That was me.” I said, “Wait a minute. Willard Brown flew on the Kiel mission with Forrest.” He said, “That was me.” I said, “You mean you got out of that plane.” He says, “Yep.” And he says, “Forrest came out in back of me.” And he said, “I free fell quite a distance. He pulled his ripcord right away and got caught in the #2 props, his ‘chute did. And he dangled.” Well anyhow, when we got back to the base, we didn’t have a squadron commander. We didn’t have a squadron leader. So, the guys all said, “Let’s go into town.” So we went into the local town, and then somebody got the bright idea, let’s jump a train and go into Piccadilly. Well we went into Piccadilly and that Colonel Kessler was the group commander of the five squadrons. And he told all the pilots to go in there and get these gunners and get them back in here. My pilot was coming around a corner and there was myself and two of our other crewmen and he said, “Goddamn it, Moose! Get these guys and get the hell back into camp!” So we’re talking and I said, “Well what are you doing here?” He said, “You’re AWOL.” I said, “What are you doing here?” And he said, “Well that’s none of you business. I was sent here to get you.” So I said, “Okay.” We called him Tim Tyler. His name is George Tyler, but we called him Tim. So then we got a couple of more drinks and decided not to go back. So we stayed in Piccadilly for two more days – this was the third day that he caught us. And so, we almost got caught again. We spotted him before he spotted us, and man, we got on that train and got back into camp. So Kessler, Colonel Kessler, had this meeting because our group was in turmoil. So he said, “Well, it will never happen again.” And he said, “I’m not going to do anything,” because see, they couldn’t replace trained crews. And he says, “I’m going to forgive and forget.” He says, “But it will never happen again.” We admired him so much for that. So we weren’t even penalized, and we were five days AWOL.
MW: I guess under the circumstances…
JG: Yeah. Five days AWOL. And as soon as we got back from that five-day AWOL, the Stars and Stripes had this big article on General Nathan Forrest. And his wife’s picture was there and his picture was there. And in big quotes she said, “Nathan said that he will be back, and I know he will.” And in our hut, we all yelled, “Don’t hold your hand on your ass until he gets there.” (Laughing) We didn’t like this guy. You can tell that. And he never did show up. Of course, Brown said that he was dangling from the props in his parachute. Can you imagine? Of course he didn’t dangle long, because the props going around, just threw him. He must have died a horrendous death.
MW: Mr. Gallagher, I’m so sorry. I’ve just glanced at my watch and realized that we’re almost at the end of our time.
JG: Oh, wow.
MW: It’s gone by so quickly, but I want to ask you to comment on the Alconbury incident. You said you wanted to say a bit about that.
JG: We had gone on a mission. I’m not sure whether we accomplished the mission or not. But we did test for our guns, so you had to clean them. And I had two 50-caliber guns to take care of. And I never allowed anybody from ordinance – they always offered – to touch my guns, because they were so critical, you know. So I had a blanket, and I’m on the ground on my knees, and I’m cleaning my guns, and first thing you know I hear this explosion. I look up and I see a fuel truck about 50 feet in the air – big fuel truck. Cripes, I thought the Germans were bombing us. So I ran and I got to this fence, and I couldn’t get over it. It was high and the wires up there. And I ran down, and over here, and back over here. Then there was silence. Then I saw this big crater, you know. And I started going to that crater. I looked down and I saw these pieces of hair and scalp, and I’m picking it up, and then I realize they’re men – you know, this big crater. And guys are screaming and running and men were wounded. Of course we were sharing this RAF air base. So the spacing was terrible. They had the hard stands and we had the grass plots. Lancasters, Wellingtons, and Halifaxes were on the hard stands, and B-17’s were on the grass. I don’t know why it was ever handled this way, but they were putting the oxygen on. They were putting the fuel in the planes, trying to get them ready, and they were putting the bombs in. And the bombs were already hot. They were pinned. That was the last day they were ever pinned, you can count on that. But one of these 500 pound bombs – how anybody could confirm it, I don’t know, because if they were close enough to see it, they weren’t alive. Many of them were killed without a scratch on them, from the explosions. I was lucky to be flat down on the ground, and everything went over top. But men were killed instantly without a single scratch, just from the concussions. When I saw that fuel truck five stories in the air, as high as the fifth floor in this hotel, you know. And so they stopped pinning them, and then we had to do it in the air, either the bombardier or the flight engineer, when we were already airborne and away from things. That’s when we pinned the bombs, and we carried ten 500 pounders. But we lost a lot of men and 16 airplanes as I recall, British and us.
MW: You all had a hard introduction on the ground and in the air.
JG: Right. You see, this limey runway didn’t have runways long enough for B-17’s. It had 2800 gallons of fuel, ten 500-pound bombs, all the ammo stuff. The Halifaxes, Lancasters, and Wellingtons could take off. But we couldn’t because we’d have to sit in the back of the runway, full flaps, full brakes. And the pilot would release the brakes and then you’d take off – full super chargers and clear. And fortunately, we never lost anybody that way. Then we moved to Framlingham, and that was another limey air base, and they didn’t have long enough runways. And then they built Horham, with runways suitable to ‘17’s. And we didn’t have to use the brakes and rev up the engines and everything, you know – the flaps. We could clear. So that’s why everybody loved Horham.
MW: I can imagine. Well I am so sorry our tape is at the end. I wish we had another hour. It’s been such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much for doing this for us and sharing your time with us.
JG: Yeah, see as you say things, other things pop into your head that you recognize.
MW: We’ll get you a copy of this, and we really appreciate it and look forward to talking to you more another time.