Wayne Hansen
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
95TH LEGACY COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
1998 REUNION TUCSON, AZ
Wayne Hansen , interviewed by Nancy McKnight Smith, Russell McKnight & Karen Sayko.
NMcKS: Your name and the date and where we are.
WH: My name is Wayne Hansen and it is the 12th of September 1998 and I’m in Tucson, Arizona at a hotel.
NMcKS: Wayne, what were your dates of service with the Army Air Corps?
WH: I joined the service in late July of 1942 and I was discharged in August of 1945.
NMcKS: What were your dates with the 95th Bomb Group?
WH: I joined the 95th Bomb Group in mid July of 1944 and left the 95th Bomb Group in mid November 1944 after 36 missions and 450 combat hours.
NMcKS: Which unit or squadron were you in?
WH: I was in the 336th Squadron.
NMcKS: Your principal career field in the 95th?
WH: I was a pilot.
NMcKS: Begin by telling us about your induction into the service. How old were you, where were you living?
WH: OK. When I joined the service I was 21 years old. The reason I joined the Air Corps is because of Jimmy Stewart. He had come on the movie screen saying join the Air Force and I went down the next day and joined up. More recently, before he passed away I told him this in a letter I wrote and he replied - a very sweet letter to me saying
“Way to go.”
NMcKS: What about your training. Where were you in training?
WH: All right, I received primary training in Dos Palos, near Fresno, California. My secondary or basic training was at Bakersfield, California, and my advanced training was up near San Francisco.
NMcKS: Did you have any memorable experiences during training or was it pretty routine?
WH: Well, I did all right, although I do remember doing spins in airplanes and things of that nature which I never did later and otherwise I found my training to be very good and I certainly am commended to the people who trained me.
NMcKS: How did you get over to England?
WH: I was issued a B-17 at Kearney, NB. I then flew this B-17 to Bangor, ME, with my crew and then from there we went to Prestwick, Scotland, and from there I flew the airplane to - actually from Nova Scotia - to Prestwick, Scotland, and I had a navigator who was making me one degree corrections on our course as we flew over and we hit the British Isle right where we wanted to.
NMcKS: How long was it before you started flying missions out of Horham?
WH: We arrived in late July of 1944 and I flew my first mission on the 28th of July 1944.
NMcKS: I think that you had some memorable missions that you will tell us about.
WH: Yes, we actually flew 36 missions and I had 450 combat hours with my wonderful crew of fellows. One of the memorable incidents was we were involved in two of the shuttle missions to Russia. And the first shuttle mission why we bombed the target in northern Germany after crossing the Baltic Ocean then we flew for hours as we looked down and saw the landscape all torn up for miles and miles and miles where I guess the war with the Russians and the Germans and we landed at a place, Poltava, Russia. We taxied the airplane over right alongside the hardstand or asphalt and there these fellows were out there waving at me frantically in the middle of a muddy field waving for me to come out. So we always taxi with two engines, so we fired up the two inboard and we had all four engines and I gave it takeoff power and we rolled out into this muddy field about a hundred yards and sank like the Titanic, right down to fuselage in the mud. Then we got out and we were in Russia and the Russians ran up to us and they hugged us and we slapped each other on the back and it was really funny that the short time a day or two later we flew a mission out of Russia and to my amazement, there is the airplane standing over there where we were to board on the ground - the hard ground - all cleaned up and ready to go. I don’t know how they did it and we went ahead and did a bombing of eastern Poland and came back and landed in Russia. Then after another brief day or so, why off we went to do some bombing in the Balkans going on to Foggia, Italy, and then from Foggia, Italy, we bombed the Germans in southern France and went back to land at Horham on our first - on a shuttle mission. It was the second shuttle mission and my first. Well, about three to four weeks later, we’re off on another shuttle mission. This time they put a great big supply package - it was filled up the whole bombay and it was all kinds of supplies for General Boer who was leading the uprising against the Germans in Warsaw. And we were to drop these supplies from an elevation of 14,000 feet which was less than half the usual altitude that we flew - and very frightening - in fact I never before heard the anti-aircraft actually go boom it was just a thick black it went up in the high altitudes but down lower we heard the bang. And we flew over Warsaw and we dropped the supplies and we went back into Poltava, Russia, where we landed; parked the airplane; got out and almost caught cold - brrr they were just so angry at us. Here we were trying to help the Warsaw Poles who were actually anti-Communist and we were out of there the next day. But one of the incidents that occurred on the route we were going to bomb a place called Zermon, Hungary, a very, very easy target with only four German guns defending it. The only thing they neglected to tell us was that the German gunners were the best gunners in the German army. And we had four boom booms up above us and four boom booms down below - now we were so confident we didn’t even have our flak suits on or helmets or anything but wildly grabbing all of them when blowey. Now I’m on the right wing of the lead ship of the whole 200 airplane task force. And right between naturally the bursts went off closer to me than it did to the lead ship. It set the number three engine on fire on the lead ship. And I called over “Fireball Able” was our code name, “you have a fire in your number three engine” and Truesdale, the Colonel in charge of the group was flying in the right seat and he looked over and sure enough a flame was going out twenty feet behind and he calls on the intercom and tells everybody to bail out. Now he’s not in command of the airplane. Captain Miller the pilot was in command of the airplane and it was only when he heard this that he realized he had a problem because there was a Colonel was handling the outside ones. Well, we get a the fellow who bailed out - including Bromberg, our key bombardier, and the last words we heard from them were, “801, take over.” Well, I’m 801 on the right wing and all of a sudden I’m leading 200 airplanes to Foggia, Italy, over enemy territory. I called down to my navigator and I asked “please give me a heading to where we’re going.” And all I got from my navigator was - duh! Fortunately, I had taken tenth grade geometry er geography and I looked off to the left and there was the Danube River and I knew it ran east and west. I wanted to go west, so I just turned the whole kit and kaboodle all 200 of us parallel to the river heading west. One hour later, Captain Miller came down and took over the formation. Ahhh - and we landed safely in Foggia, Italy.
RMcK: Where did he come down from?
WH: You mean when we were flying out ....
RMcK: Where did the Captain come down from?
WH: Captain Miller was leading one of the high squadrons and the fellow on the left wing never did come over. We were flying like this with a blank space there. But I was leading - everyone was following me and he was one of the top ones and he spotted - I guess he finally figured there was something wrong and - God bless him - he came down. I’ve seen him at reunions in the past. I think he passed away now but he and I would hug each other and talk about it.
RMcK: And he had a good navigator.
WH: Oh, boy, I’m afraid I was a little angry at my navigator. But fortunately it helped having the geography course in the tenth grade.
NMcKS: Are there any other memorable experiences from your missions?
WH: Well, we flew 36 missions. The most deadly and scariest target at the time was Merseburg, Germany, and we also had one situation in which we were bombing the Ruhr which was Germany’s industrial area, and I was on the left wing of the lead ship in this particular case when a burst went off right between the lead ship and me. In fact, terrible as it is, it killed four of the fellows in the lead ship. And that took care of our formation. We had incendiary bombs - I remember telling my bombardier, “Dump ‘em” as we started to dive for the ground. A couple of other fellows joined me and we just kept diving until we were only maybe a couple of hundred feet off the ground when we were roaring away. Cause we figured that was the safest thing to do. There was no more formation. And so we were flying so low that at times we went up and over trees and I can see the beach whip by as we went out across the English Channel and then we put it on and made it home. But it was fun. Tragic. They brought the lead ship in with the four dead men on board. Really tragic.
NMcKS: Were there any other acts of courage or.....
WH: Oh, my boys, I had a wonderful crew they gave me warnings. I have a story - not an act of courage - in which it was routine for the gunners to test fire their guns - bop-bop -bop. Well, we happened to be going towards again towards - we crossed the Denmark peninsula so many times going to bomb Germany - and we were only a couple of hundred feet off the ocean. Of course, the fellows had fun bop-bop-bop and then they watched their bullets splash in the water - oh, wow. Well, my top turret gunner seemed to want this too, so zzzzzz he brings it over, he brings it all the way down into the thrust position. His gun barrels end right where our head was about that far from my head with a piece of plastic between me and the gun barrel. And bump-bump-bump he fires to see his bullets splash. Well, it just about - yahhhh - took my head off. In fact it cracked the plastic glass over my head. (Laughs) I survived it, but needless to say I bawled my top turret gunner out and told him to never do that again. Well, I hope that’s enough to help you out.
NMcKS: Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like to come back home?
WH: Oh---We came home on the George Washington - the ship - troopship. It was about a month after we completed our missions. And, oh, a lot of fellows complained about where they were sleeping, you know on three high bunks. Me - I just loved it every second. I was going home. After 14 days we finally arrived in New York City where they actually had people on the pier yelling and cheering for us. In fact, we were throwing quarters. We had some US money with us and we were throwing quarters on the pier for them. Got into a train; went all the way across the United States and then trained down to Los Angeles and got out. Went down and met my family. Oh, I was in seventh heaven. I was alive. Completed my tour. Didn’t get out. I got home just a day or two before Christmas 1944 and then from then on I took training to become an instructor pilot and other things here in the United States. But I did not take B29 training because I’d had all the combat I wanted. Actually, the 8th Air Force suffered the highest casualty rate of any single unit in WWII.
RMcK: That’s a great story, Wayne. Thank you very much.
NMcKS: I need to close this off officially, but before I do, I want you to say for the record what you said about the reunions and what made them so good.
WH: Oh, these reunions are simply out of this world. All these lovely people and of course the wives are the ones who really make it a success. And of course, whether we like it or not, the fellows are getting older.
NMcKS: We just want to say for the record that this has been Nancy McKnight Smith, Russell McKnight and Karen Sayko and we’ve been interviewing Wayne Hansen and we thank you so much for sharing your time and your stories here.
WH: You’re sure welcome.