Harry (Bill) Isbell
95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2007 REUNION SAVANNAH, GA
(Interviewed by Tom and Peggy Cozens with Max Rammell and John Gross)
HI: I’m (Bill) Harry Isbell, Montgomery, Alabama. I was a gunner in World War II – 35 missions (in all). I was a toggeleir for 15 in which I dropped the bombs. One of my duties as a waist gunner was to arm the bombs after we got started on the mission, which entails removing the pins from the bombs. One of my other duties was to check on the crew as far as the oxygen. The theory was, if you could read the guage, you were alright and you were getting your oxygen, so the tail gunner would say, “400 pounds,” and the waist so many pounds, and all the way up the plane. So this would tell if we were getting the oxygen, which we went on oxygen at 10,000 feet. Normally we flew around 20 to 30 thousand feet after we got up. What specifically – give me some help here. What specifically do you want to know?
TC: Let’s let Max jump in here.
MR: I’m Max Rammell. We’re setting today in the Savannah Hilton with two Cozens, in the presence of our former pilot, John Gross. As my friend here, Isbell, indicated, we were on the crew of John Gross. We served in England in the Eighth Air Force, as is obvious here. Isbell spoke about his being the toggelier. He said we all either hit or we all missed. He informed me one time we missed the target by 50 miles (HI chuckling). I had nothing to do with that. I went along and watched the bombs drop. But it’s a pleasure to be interviewed here. We’re trying to jumpstart our poor minds as to what happened some fifty or sixty years ago. I think everyone remembers the day of December the 7th when America actually got involved in the Second World War. I had just graduated from high school. We were in a small town, and we got the word that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was. My friend, who was more knowledgeable, he did, but decreed that it couldn’t happen. But it had. From that moment on, war became the – that was the big issue. In our little valley, we were approximately 300 miles from Gowen Field in Boise. There was a B-17 group there, and they’d fly over our little valley in training missions, and they’d fly in low. I don’t know why – I’d think maybe even 2000 – 2500 feet. I dreamed of flying from that moment on. But they immediately started the draft. Someone had determined that someone had to feed the troops. My father owned quite a large farm ground – acreage raising grain. So my future father-in-law, if you can believe it – I didn’t know him at the time, but he was on the draft board and he had me classified as 4-C, which much to my dismay, that was an agricultural deferment. And I knew that I was going to miss the whole war. I let them keep me out for a little while. But an incident happened - they actually made me feel that I was very patriotic to stay home and raise grain - and they actually gave me a broomstick and I marched with the older men. We were the home guard. And everyone told me I was very brave – my friends and I who were also under protest in the 4-C classification. One time we went to a dance, and a fellow in a uniform indicated that we weren’t very patriotic. It was almost ensued into a fight. And someone said “You better not fight with somebody in a uniform, because you could get killed.” At that very moment I determined that I wasn’t going to stay out of the service any longer. And I went home and told my dad that, in spite of what the draft board said, I was going into the service. My friend concurred. We went to Pocatello, which was the nearest air base in that end of it, and took the test for cadets. And we were told that we were going to be future pilots. We were going to win the war. And so we went into the Air Force. I went in at Fort Douglas in Utah. And I remember how disappointed I was when I saw the barracks. I thought, how terrible. But we went from there to Colorado Springs, and they were tarpaper shacks. Fort Douglas had hard wood floors – I mean it was luxury compared to Colorado Springs. And they no sooner got us there than they told us , “We don’t need pilots anymore.” I was so disappointed. And they said, “You’re going to be a gunner no matter what.” And in just a week or so, we were shipped out from Colorado Springs. We went to McClellan Field in Nevada. And that was a gunnery school – a career gunner. I was going to be a career gunner with nothing else. My pilot told me when they told him he couldn’t be a pilot, he said, “Well put me in the Infantry.” And when they found out he wanted to be a pilot so badly, why they let him go to pilot school. Well, I wasn’t smart enough. I let them do what they wanted to do with me. I didn’t receive any basic training at all, as far as drilling, or anything like that. The gunnery school lasted for – how long did gunnery school last?
HI: I don’t know. Six weeks, I think.
MR: Within just a few weeks, we were overseas fighting the war. We graduated from gunnery school in Las Vegas in six or seven weeks. And then we went to McDill Field in Florida. And that’s where we met, where the crew was made up. John Gross was our pilot. We were a crew of – we started out with nine or ten, didn’t we?
HI: Ten, ten.
MR: We were there. They didn’t have room for us really, when we first go there, at McDill Field, so we were based in what they call – it was an old race track,(Right Plant Park) right in the heart of the city. And we lived in the barracks. We stayed there for a week or so, I imagine. Finally we got out to McDill Field, and that’s when we made up our bomb crew. We got our overseas flight training there. John, can you remember the day we left McDill Field, headed north? What date was it? You don’t remember? Well, anyway, it didn’t take us too long. ____________________________ too long, so I stopped _________________ still here. But we left McDill and we flew up over the capital and landed at Bangor, Maine. And then we left – that was where we left the continental United States and went on over to Goose Bay, Labrador. And that was just an airstrip that was carved right out of the trees. I mean it was just very primitive. We stayed there overnight. I remember how cold it was. It was just a Canadian winter. And they furnished us with some of those beautiful Alaskan blankets – you know the red and white stripes with the wool. And I think everybody had a little larceny in them, because we thought we’ll take them with us on the plane. So we all, the next morning, we all took our blankets – at least the ones I knew – and we got on the plane. We were ready to take off. And there came an order – they held the whole group up. The MP’s came all over us and they took all the blankets away from us. (Chuckle) They turned us into honest men. We went from there to Iceland. Landed there – I think it was just an overnight. We were told that we shouldn’t go into town. The Icelandic people weren’t favorable towards us. So we didn’t. We left Iceland and I think – did we land at Ireland, someone told me we did.
JG: We went into Wales.
MR: Was it Wales? OK. And then we went from there. We stayed there overnight, and I remember when we got into Diss, which is about 90 miles north of London. And I remember it was getting kind of – it was dusk. And there was grotesque shapes on the ground. And I didn’t know what they were – they looked liked big, huge – I didn’t know what they were. But I found out later on they were anti-aircraft guns that were covered. They were along the runways and stuff. And so we were introduced into England at that time. We went into other tarpaper shacks, is where it turned out. That’s where we spent our last six months, wasn’t it. It was fun. It was kind of like a dream – kind of phantom-like. I think I talked some poor English person out of a bicycle. I don’t remember what I paid for it. But we had our – that’s where we got our practice training there. And I’d always wondered why they’d send us on practice missions because it cost so much to get fuel over there. It was costing lives as well as money to get that fuel there. The Merchant Marines were getting it over there. And yet we’d burn it up on a practice mission. Why’d they do that, John?
JG: I don’t really know. They heated the barracks with that oil too. I don’t know.
MR: It was amazing. A little country boy from Idaho. You cannot imagine the skies, how they were filled with aircraft. As far as your eye could see, there were planes going and planes coming back. It was just a continual roar. In my mind – I know it wasn’t so – but it just looked like there was literally thousands of them. The whole sky was just literally filled with aircraft. And it was exciting. I remember my first mission, and I was really running scared. John was pretty stable up front. I was really, really scared. I remember, he calmed me down pretty good on the intercom. I had lots of confidence in him. I had good confidence in the crew. I flew in the tail and Isbell here, he and Guy Greene protected my back (chuckling). I liked to have them there. I watched out the tail. John mentioned that I should speak about the tail wheel. In order to get to the section – to the tail – you had to crawl between the tail wheel and the side. You could get down on either side. I seemed to have quite a lot of room, because I was skinny. So I could get through. A year or so ago I climbed in one, and they’ve shrunk. Things are not as big as they were at that time. I was actually trained in the ball turret, flying ball turret. When we – did I fly ball turret in Tampa? I didn’t. I guess it was when we got to Tampa for overseas training that they switched and put me in the tail and a guy that was a bit smaller than I was – Ed Morrison, who’s not well now; they’re living in California – he flew the ball. They reduced the crew members, ten to nine, at that time. Isbell, he flew both sides of the waist, and they moved you up to the toggelier, as you mentioned.
HI: They were just using the gunners on the outside of the formation –waist guns. (multiple voices) They may have had friendly fire. I don’t know. You get up there and you’re on the inside – the had positions. But the planes, there was nothing to stop you from shooting – you could shoot your own plane. It would be real easy to do, before they stopped using them on the inside of the formation. When we got over there, they went from 10 men to nine men crew. That was about the time they started that.
MR: We were more vulnerable to flak than we were to fighters. That was the idea in back of it. We’d depend on John to dodge the flak. Flak is an experience to behold. They would track you, and there’d be a puff over here. And you could see them tracking, getting closer. And when they get close enough, they were close, as they’d explode you’d see a scarlet fire right in the center of it. And if they were close enough, you could hear sand. It would sound like sand to me, as it would hit on the fuselage on the plane. I don’t know, I guess, we never did get a direct hit. But we got lots of battle damage – the wings and stuff like that. Did you hear the sand, of the scrapnel hitting the plane?
HI: Flak would only sound like a bark, and it would say “woof, woof, woof,” like this if it was close. And if it was close, you could see the red flame in the middle. You look out over the battle field – the black smoke looked like you could walk on it. But it stays there several minutes. But if it’s red in the middle, it’s close to you.
MR: We used to, when we were heading for a target, you’d look way out one target and it was just black with smoke. Everybody was saying, “Oh, those poor devils. They’re sure going to get it.” And come to find out, we were going around and coming in the back door. That was the target we were going to hit too. (Chuckle) I guess your heading – what would they do with you, John, on a deal like that, when you come into the target?
JG: That was fixed. You had an initial point. And from there you had your bomb bay doors open. We were using the bomb sites. The bombardier locked you in and you had to fly straight and level, and that was it until you dropped your bombs.
MR: I recall seeing the flak, the area way over to our left. And I thought, “Man, I’m glad we’re not going there.” But we went – you came back, and that was the target that we hit at that particular time.
HI: We went to Merseberg quite a bit. That was one of the oil targets. They protected those real heavily, and I believe we lost about 50 ships out of 1000 planes. That was the worst one, as far as losing people. I saw one plane – of course I couldn’t see from my position exactly back of the plane because of the way it’s shaped, but kind of back into the side there I saw a plane get hit and went down just about like pulling your fist down out of the sky. It exploded. I don’t know what the – whether it was oxygen, or gasoline or what it them. But those bombs were not bad about exploding, I don’t think, when it was set to explode a certain way. I guess they would, but they were not bad about it.
MR: Do you want to tell them about that bridge that we bombed a couple of times, and finally the Germans blew it up? (multiple voices)…convoluted, you don’t want to admit that. (Laughter) We bombed one several times, and finally the Germans blew it up on the deal when the troops were trying to cross over.
HI: You miss something 50 miles, that’s not so much in seconds probably.
MR: And think of it now. They can actually, in precision bombing, they can hit a smokestack. I think the blanket bombing was really a great idea. When they decided to do that, it took an awful lot of bombs, you know. But individual bombing run, you had your human error there that I think – I don’t know who it was, where the mandate came from. But I think blanket bombing – it was cruel and inhumane, that’s for sure. I always tried not to think about that in the tail. I could see what was happening. And you could see the bombs explode, and the flames. And I knew there were people down there, but I didn’t want to think about it. And also, some of my ancestors came from Germany, and it was really quite difficult for me to realize what I was doing. And yet, they were shooting at us. I wasn’t really mad at them. I mean, they’re the ones that instigated the deal. But it was very difficult for me to sit there and watch those bombs explode, and know that there’d be people down there. It was always a relief to, when the bombs would go away, when they’d salvo them out – how high up do you think the plane would go when you…
JG: I think 30 to 50 feet.
MR: The plane just seemed to jump out from under you when we’d lose the weight. How many tons?
JG: We’d carry 5 to 6,000 pounds, and once we had 8,000 pounds. We had them under the wings, 4,000.
MR: For that to leave the plane at one time. It left an impact. You could feel it. But it was a relief. We knew we were going to turn around and go home.
HI: They’d use regular bombs at times, and then they would use the incendiary. I don’t know which went out first, whether the incendiaries came first or the others. Because that spread the incendiaries out with the regular bombs too. And then we would throw out chaff at times, just to mess up the radar. Chaff was just about like tinfoil. And you’d throw out a bunch of that and it would show up on their radar just like a plane, which would hopefully keep them from hitting so many of us.
MR: I think shrapnel was the cruelest when you bombed through the lines, you know. They’d explode a little above the ground. I always hated that.
JG: We also dropped bombs that would go off in a period of time, but they had 2,3 – up to five days.
HI: I didn’t know that. Is that right?
JG: We also dropped personalized bombs that had rings of steel when you dropped it down. It was just like flak, the killing factor. We’d have 250 pound bombs, five hundred pound bombs, and 1,000 pounds bombs. You can tell them all about the last mission there.
MR: For the submarine pens it would be a steel nose bomb, wouldn’t it. It would penetrate concrete and beneath that it would explode after it would penetrate the concrete.
HI: We went to Hamburg on our last mission. Hamburg is a coastal town – it’s not very far in. And they were shooting at us, and they were hitting us apparently right around the bomb bay there. And it wasn’t sounding like flak – it usually says “woof, woof” when you’re close to it. It sounded like you were wrenching a motor off: “mmmm,mmmm” about a dozen times. And I guess they had us on the radar. And it was exploding right on the bomb bay. And I hit that switch to release the bomb, and the plane went up like they do when you get that weight off of it. And it must have made the plane unstable, because John told me they hadn’t all gone. And so he said, “Hit that manual switch.” And what had happened, they’d shot so much of those controls that they didn’t all drop. Half of them did and half of them didn’t. And when he said to use the manual switch, I looked down below and there were a bunch of our planes down there by that time. And I told him that and he said just forget it. So we went home with half the bombs on that last deal. But the main doors on that bomb bay were shot about half way in two. And it’s a wonder that plane didn’t come apart when it landed. The were really on us that day.
MR: I think I asked you, but you had to go back and put the pins back in.
HI: Pins, the pins back in the bomb – right. Something else.
MR: When they opened the bomb bays, it was like a hurricane inside the plane. You could tell when they opened. The air would just come through. I don’t know how you’d hardly dare to get in there to put those pins in the there.
HI: Well, you had something to stand on. You had that girth to stand on.
MR: And I think it was about that wide.
HI: Yeah. You’d just pull them out with the wire pliers. That arms them. They’re ready to go then. And keep the pins so if something happens you have to put them back in. You’ve got the pins there.
JG: Tell them about the propeller in the end of the bomb – the purpose of that.
HI: The what now? Oh, yeah, it’s a timing device. It goes off a few seconds after it hits the ground, or whatever.
JG: After about 250 feet, it spins off, then it’s armed.
HI: Yeah. Right.
MR: (At that time) You have to pull the pin ??
JG: Just like an old propeller.
TC: Harry, tell us about the pigeon.
HI: Oh, the pigeon. We were taking off, of course we were loaded to the gills with bombs and guns and flak suits and all that. Just barely will get off the ground. We hit some birds when we’d taken off, and they came through the plexiglass in the nose. Parts of birds all over the front there. Of course they’re not pressurized; those cabins are not pressurized. Just threw one of those life preservers, dinghies, in the hole and kept going. It didn’t amount to anything. It could have, I guess, had gotten into the engine. It could have been a bad deal, particularly at that point.
MR: You’re lucky it wasn’t pressurized, too.
JG: There was a pigeon number two engine and pigeon number three feathered.
MR: We had squab for dinner that night (Laughter).
PC: So how many missions were you?
HI: Thirty five.
PC: How many planes?
JG: Well, what they do, if I may inject this, when you first get to combat, you fly the old airplanes. And then after like maybe twenty missions, then they’ll assign you an airplane. Usually that’s a better airplane. So if you live that long, you get to fly a better airplane. A very interesting point…we would have 12/12/12 planes – three squadrons and two in reserve in case somebody didn’t make it and (had to abort or they would fill in). And what they would do – I met an engineer fella I knew. I said, how many airplanes did it require on the ground to keep 38 in the air. He said more than 100.
MR: We went out on one mission and searched for Glenn Miller, the famous band (leader) that went down. It was dark, I remember that. He didn’t get found. We were on that mission. And we flew that famous airplane – what was the name of movie that was… (multiple voices).
JG: We flew that in training. It was a big deal.
MR: Tell me the name of it again.
JG: Memphis Belle.
MR: Memphis Belle, yeah. I didn’t know that until after the movie and I was talking to John. So we flew that famous airplane.
JG: They change the engines and wings and things like that. Every plane would fly differently. You’d have to feel it a little bit.
MR: It was kind of a myth that you flew your own planes, personalized and everything. But when you think about it, they always had battle damage and needed their engines serviced.
JG: Max, share how you saved us one time.
MR: Hey, I saved your neck every time, John. (Laughter) I prayed you off the ground and got you back on. (Laughter) It was quite a situation. We were in formation. I guess they got out of formation, is what happened. And I looked, “What happened to Art? Why didn’t he see that?” I looked up and there was planes right above us and the bomb bays were open. And the bombs would have gone right through us. Our fearless leader here, quick thinking, I immediately told him and what was going to happen. What did you do, slip it?
JG: Yeah, I heard “They’re going to hit us! They’re going to bomb us! They’re going to bomb us!” Of course, you look up, there they were, ready to drop the bomb. We quickly got out of formation.
MR: (What you call) friendly fire (??)
JG: A very interesting part of this story is, so what are we going to do with the bombs? At that time they had toggeliers; they didn’t have the Norton Bomb Site so they would drop manually. And so our bombardier, he was quite a character and had a lot of ability. And he said, “You just take this heading, and I’ll drop the bombs out in 250 feet intervals.” They were 250 pound bombs.. In the center of this little community was a building with a big red cross on it that these bombs went across. They hit that building with a big red cross, and it went wham! (Chuckles)
MR: They had a little arsenal in their minds over there too.
JM: He saved us that day.
MR: You know, we had a Mexican boy for our engineer. A nice guy – he’s gone now. But I can remember the day, was it number two cylinder blew?
JM: The master cylinder on #3 engine. I was having trouble trimming the plane. The instruments didn’t show there was a problem. So after a while there was a big wham in that thing. Our engines were nine cylinders, so when the master cylinder blew off, the engine ran away. At that altitude, it’s like 50 degrees centigrade below zero So they have oil in propellers to change the pitches. It will freeze and it will continue to windmill and tear that engine out of the airplane. So we quickly feathered #3. And I’m sorry our co-pilot was new – he froze. So Art Mendeiz, the engineer, very talented, quickly went down and got the wires and got the engine feathered. We had a good team.
MR: You had us chucking all the flak suits and everything out of the plane. We aborted. Didn’t we abort? And we came over the White Cliffs of Dover – man, they’re a beautiful thing to see when you’re coming home. And we weren’t very high, and the English people were down below and waving at us. We landed off base and then I think they took us back up to the base with a truck.
JG: I think that day we landed with our bombs. You better make the landing the first time, you’ve got enough power there.
MR: You know the English people were very, very friendly to us. They were very appreciative. The GI’s and the soldiers were good to them too. I sometimes wonder if we showed them enough appreciation. Because I certainly have a soft spot in my heart for them. They’re a wonderful people, really. I often think, we had an old plane. I didn’t like it because the tail on it, it was before they had turrets, and they just chopped it off. I guess it was and old E, what they call an E?
JG: Yeah, probably.
MR: There was no tail – they just actually cut the tail off, and put a gun in there. It was drafty and colder than the others. And that was the plane – I wonder how many thousands of flying hours that plane had on it. That was one we couldn’t keep up, and they let us get out of formation. And we no sooner slipped out of formation than the plane that slipped into our spot got hit and went down. And the call numbers on that was 1847. We kinda used to gripe about flying that because it was so old. I think that was probably the last mission that that plane flew. It was an honorable airplane; it just couldn’t keep up. That was all, there was just so many hours on it. But because it could keep up it saved our lives. And I always likened that 1847 to my Mormon ancestry. It was 1847 when they went back west, you know, into the Salt Lake valley. And that was an old plane that plodded and got us through, and that’s what the pioneers did. So I have really a soft spot in my heart for that plane. I think even more so than these guys because the symbolism of the thing to me. There used to be a saying: Whenever the Eighth Air Force flew,, Johnny Gross flew. We flew New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve, both.
JG: They had the most difficult winter in 13 years. Tell them about Dormstedt. The interesting thing about the tail gunner – he saw the results of our bombing.
MR: I was the first one in the air, and the last one to land. (Chuckles) Yes, I would. I could see the field. They’d go by it so they couldn’t see it. And I could witness. Morrison, in the ball turret would have a good view too. He could look up in the bomb – did he alert you about those bombs that was hung up? Morrison, when they hung up?
HI: You know the radio operator’s supposed to tell you. But I don’t guess he could see both sides.
MR: The ball turret could look up in there.
HI: He might could. There was a radio operator was the one who’s supposed to tell you. I guess I don’t know. He may be too close to see. I don’t know exactly how visibility is down there. The radio operator can see them if they’re still there. I guess that’s the reason.
TC: Harry, so you were responsible for monitoring oxygen for the crew? Tell us a little more about that and if there were ever any problems.
HI: There were never any problems, but of course, you got to have it up there. If it gets hit by flak, we’re all on one system. But we have individual oxygen bottles if you want to move around the plane. Plug into them and they last about 30 minutes if you stayed on it all the time. It was an important thing. You don’t know that you need oxygen when you need it. You just feel good. You just pass out.
MR: They’d call the numbers. You’d start with the tail, and you’d reply and tell them how much oxygen you had. Your mask would freeze up. I don’t know, I guess it would get 50 and 60 below up there, so you’d have to watch your oxygen mask. And that’s the reason they would call for the oxygen report, so they knew everybody was breathing.
HI: You could massage that mask and get that ice out of there.
JG: Without oxygen, you can die within five minutes. And one time we did have, when the engine blew up, automatically the engineer leaves the upper turret. And the co-pilot goes to the upper turret. When he went up there, he didn’t have his oxygen hooked in properly. The engineer came back, Art Mendeiz, he was slumped over. So Art saved his life that day.
MR: What was the name of that movie again? That play? (Memphis Belle) Memphis Belle. The big bug you could pick out of that was those guys could move around in that plane without oxygen. You can tell. The producers just missed that. That was just an error there. But someone would know that at that altitude, they couldn’t walk around.
HI: And they did all that hollering and talking. People just don’t do much talking unless there was something they need to say. They don’t horse around like they do in the movies.
MR: Those movies, they all got bugs in them. And that’s one that was so noticeable to me. To think that those guys would walk around up there without any oxygen on.
TC: Harry, what was the funniest thing that happened to you?
HI: I don’t know. That’s a hard question right now, to think about.
TC: The funniest person you met?
HI: It wasn’t so funny funny, but most people had bicycles over there. And I was riding a bicycle, and a GI truck comes up in back of me and he hits the brakes, and hits the accelerator rather than the brakes, and hit me with that truck. And I went off, head over heels along that ditch. You know, it shook me up pretty bad. They took me to the hospital and x-rayed me, but it didn’t really hurt me. I didn’t miss any time or anything.
MR: Did you get a purple heart? (Laughter and chatter) Our bombardier was a great guy, he was a great Greek - good looking, real good looking, handsome guy. And when we’d land, they’d give you a drink of liquor if you wanted it. And somebody else said they gave us something else? Sugar cookie. I don’t remember the sugar cookies. But a lot us didn’t drink. He’d drink everything that everybody else wouldn’t drink (Laughter). He was just kind of a joy to have on that crew, wasn’t he? Just a big, good looking sharp guy. Liquor didn’t seem to bother him any. If anything, it made him happier.
JG: Tell them about the major’s jeep.
MR: I think you better tell it (laughing) Oh, he did steal the major’s jeep, didn’t he?
JG: (?? Snow on ground) Officers’ Club – stole the major’s jeep. And the MP’s were chasing him up and down the runway. He quickly came in the barracks and you know, “What’s going on?” He said, “Shhh, shhh, I stole the major’s jeep.” (Laughter)
MR: That tells you what kind of guy he was. I thought we were quite a happy crew, didn’t you?
JG: One thing I’d like to inject here. It seemed the American service people had a sense of humor, you know, rather than saying “This darn war” and being all grouchy and everything else. We were sort of light and loose. At the start of four missions, when they’d show it to you on the wall there, they would sort of laugh about it and so forth. I think that we were a little different, really.
HI: I was never scared before or after a mission, but during the mission I was plenty scared.
MR: You know I always loved that on our return trip after we got out the area that was danger, our radio operator would tune in on – what did they call it? BBC?
JM: Well the German station. They used to monitor that. They would play American music.
MR: This one, I could tell she was pretty by the sound of her voice (laughter). Our girlfriends were dating other guys, and the whole bit. They always played a song that was popular – an old, old song. My Alzheimer’s has kicked in. But it made me think of the woman that I was going to marry, that I didn’t know at that time. What was that old waltz that they used to play? It seemed like she’d play it all the time. Maybe it will come to me. But anyway, it was nice to sit there and listen to American music.
TC: This was coming from the Germans?
(Multiple voices)
MR: I always imagined what she looked like. I just thought she was a pretty little Fraulein. I just imagined. And somehow, it would make me think of someone I didn’t even know yet, that I was going to marry.
JG: The radio man was going to be here, but he developed pneumonia and couldn’t come. But one time he was monitoring the German fighters’ channel. And he heard them on the ground – they said, “The B-‘17’s are up there. Go up and attack them.” He said, “I can’t see them.” He said, “The heck you can’t. I see you and I see them.” And he replied, “If you’re so brave, you come up and attack them.” (:Laughter) There’s some humor.
MR: It was the old song, “Together.” That was the song. “Together.”
TC: Did you have the same crew? Did you stay intact throughout the missions?
HI: We did, but they made up a lead crew and they would pull people off temporarily. Two or three missions I flew with another crew. I don’t see how they kept up with everything without computers, as to how many missions everybody had and all.
MR: Our bombardier made lead bombardier. That was Aspercolas that I was telling you about. He made lead bombardier for the entire group, didn’t he? Can you imagine the responsibility of the one man leading the entire group and dropping the bombs. And when he dropped, everybody did. And if he made the mistake…. But we were very proud of George. He was an excellent, excellent airman, and bombardier.
JG: He’s 90’s years old now. And he had an aneurism recently. There’s a lad that’s been interviewing us – I don’t know if you know that – making a film about our crew for some reason or another. But he went to visit George. He lives in Jackson, New Jersey. And when he got there, he was changing a truck tire. 90 years old (chuckles).
MR: John was really tough on his co-pilots. How many did you have?
JG: Probably about three or four (Laughter).
PC: Did you have a favorite plane? A named one, or no?
MR: “Easy Going” was the original. I don’t know whose idea it was to name it that.
PC: Sounds like it reflects you guys, though.
JG: We sort of gelled. It was very interesting. We’re friends to this day. Up in the plane, we said there’s no rank here. We’re all trying to survive.
MR: That’s our fearless leader talking like that. He’s wonderful. He’s a wonderful guy.
TC: What was your worst moment, would you say? Either training or on a mission. Whatever it was, your worst moment during your time in the Air Corps?
MR: I honestly think Hamburg was the worst.
HI: Yeah, it was for me.
MR: I was really thankful. I think that was the one mission, that was the worst. We really went out with a bang (end of tape)
HI: That last mission, I was sorry to leave to go get – we’d leave to go to the mess hall. We’d eat before. I wasn’t superstitious much, but black cat was going across the barracks. I was tempted to let him have it, but I didn’t.
MR: I always used to smile. Before a mission they’d take you into the mess hall, and they’d cook your eggs anyway you wanted them, you know. It was really like fattening the turkey up for Thanksgiving, you know. But it never tasted good, did it? You could tell them how you wanted your eggs cooked. You knew you were going to fly. And it was always cold. I always loved Artur Mendias, our engineer. If you wanted to know who got the bugler up, he was the one in our crew that would always come around and wake us up and tell us when we were going to go. Usually it would be really early, early in the morning. And he’d come and touch you, and tell you it was time to get up. And it was always cold, for me. I always, was always cold. It was always dark. And we’d go out and get in a cold truck – the back of the truck. I always figured if we didn’t get killed in the truck, up in the airplane, we were probably going to get it in the truck. And they’d drive you to the mess hall – a breakfast. And that’s when they’d tell you you could eat whatever you wanted. Nobody ate very much anyway. And then we’d go out to the airplane. It was exciting in kind of eerie – just kind of a – you’re aways kind of walking out in kind of a dream it seemed to me like. We would pull the propellers through, and the engines would be cold. I don’t know. Two or three of us would each get a hold of a propeller and we’d pull it through. That was to clear the cylinders, wasn’t it?
JG: Yeah. What happens is the oil drains down – it’s the ninth cylinder, bottom cylinder so oil circulates to upper cylinders. And if there’s oil in there, of course you can’t compress it. So it would bend the crank shaft and ruin the engine. So they manually would turn it.
MR: Guys would have them loaded – have your guns, your ammunition on. And then you’d climb in on board and you’d check your guns. That would be – I don’t know what John did. But I know what we did, we’d check our guns and make sure that they were loaded and that your ammunition boxes and stuff were full.
JG: They would limit the amount of ammunition you could have sometimes.
MR: Pardon.
JG: They would limit the amount of ammunition you could have sometimes. I remember that.
HI: That’s pretty handy.
MR: I had a box on either side that fed the chain through. It seemed like mine was always full.
JG: You came to me one time. You said, “I don’t have enough ammunition.”
MR: Is that right?
JG: That would make the tail heavy. Who worries about the tail? (chuckles)
PC: What was your longest mission? How long was it?
JG: About 10 hours. That’s a long day because you get up and get out and so forth. And being on oxygen would make you very tired.
MR: You know I had exciting times in gunnery training over at Death Valley. We had ground training you know, and over at Death Valley, the heat. The plane would bounce up and down and I never did get sick. It was like riding a roller coaster.
HI: I never got sick, but he’d give it a little punch to it back then in the waist and the tail. From the movement of the plane, you’re flying in formation and of course it’s stagnant. But still it was like water. You’d get messed in those planes – shake from one side to the other, and up and down.
JG: You get into prop wash. When you have that many planes you have a lot of prop wash. A propeller disturbs the air just like a boat disturbs the water. It could be rough sometimes.
MR: I remember coming home and bragging to the folks that I never did get air sick. And they took me fishing up on the lake. (Laughter) I got so sick.
PC: On the lake?
MR: On the lake, uh huh. But it was exciting for gunnery training. We trained with shotguns on the ground a lot. We got the skeet – for skeet shooting. And that was fun. You could get so you could get two or three clay pigeons just pulling them. But the sad part – and then we went from ground, from just guns on our shoulders, they put us in the back of a pickup. And they had that little round circle that you’d stand in. And as you’d go around the course, why, you’d hit a certain place and a guy in a little house would pull the string and flip the clay pigeon out, you know. And that was fun. We had a bunch of black drivers. And they’d got sleep and tip over, so they put two of them together. One was supposed to keep the other one awake. And our turn would come that we would have to be in the skeet house to watch. So we’d throw it out. I always had this helmet. I’d pull the rope so the pigeons were out, and then put that over my head. A lot of those guys would hit the house. It was a little building. You could hear the BB’s hitting you know. But it was exciting and it was fun. Have you been to Las Vegas? I’m sure you have. At that time the only one on the strip was that old, old one. Now it’s called El Rancho Grande. There was only one casino. The strip didn’t exist. But it was a pretty little town.
TC: How about trips into London? On your R & R, any stories?
HI: We’d do that about once a month?
JG: About every three weeks we could have three days. And they had good trains.
MR: You know, it was a strange war though. One day you’d be flying a plane and they’d be shooting at you. And the next day you could be in London. Isn’t that a strange way – I’ve always felt sorry for guys in the troops, on the ground, you know. They’re there just all the time. But it is a strange way to fight a war. At least in my estimation. I think the Air Force is the way to go. Have you been in the service?
TC: No.
MR: Well if you do go in the service, go in the air. It’s the best way to fight a war. We were so amazed. The first time I went to London, and those big buildings. They’d have signs and stuff. Don’t open this door. You might open the door and look down for storage. There’d be nothing there at all. You could get killed that way. I remember going into St. Paul’s Cathedral. I was just so enthralled with the beauty of it. And I thought of whom it was dedicated for, the apostle Paul. And I don’t remember ever seeing any damage to that building. Do you think it was damaged? I really don’t. I wonder why that didn’t receive any damage. I don’t the think the palace got hit, did it? Does anyone know?
JG: Yeah. Hitler was going to use the one building for his headquarters when he would conquer Italy, and that was forbidden to bomb – the Queen that was there, I’m sorry I can’t think of the name right now – but they were forbidden to bomb that building.
MR: He said Italy, but I think he was talking about London.
JG: Did I say Italy?
MR: It’s amazing that that beautiful cathedral didn’t get- I don’t recall seeing any damage at all there. It was a thrill to be in there.
JG: Have you heard this story? I’m sorry to inject this, but anyway… The tale has it that Hitler initially wanted to bomb oil storages on the other side of London. And mistakenly, they bombed London. And then of course the British reciprocated. That’s the story I heard.
MR: You know, there’s another thing about England at that time. On a blackout it would be so dark in town there. And you could just – people would pass just like ghosts. When I was there, I never heard of any burglars or any crimes – anything at all. Isn’t that totally amazing to think of the situation during that war time? I never heard of any – of any looting or anything at all. It was just – I still wonder at that. Now you’re not safe in the daytime in places around, you know. I can’t speak too highly of the English people. (During an air raid) it was an eerie, especially if it was foggy. You’d go, and they’d have the curtains. You’d go into a club or something and they’d pull – you’d have to go in through curtains. Everything was closed. Men and women themselves were out. They were watching for aircraft. And they would make sure there were no curtains cracked where they could see light. (Air Raid Wardens)
JG: Weather was one of our very – was an enemy also. We had a mission one day that we had to climb to 20,000 feet. You had to take a radio signal from 20,000 feet and break out. Then the mission came back and the cloud cover was still there. We circled down 500 feet a minute. And when we broke out of the clouds, we were in a valley, and I saw a church over there on the hill. (Laughter)
MR: He didn’t tell us this until after.
JG: But the weather, it was the worst weather they’d had in 13 years. We didn’t just have the mission. We also had to fight with the weather.
TC: These stories regarding the ground crews.
JG: You know what, that’s wonderful.
TC: The ground crews?
JG: I would like to quickly say this: I never got their names. They were wonderful. They worried about our planes. They saw it was in condition. And they would switch around. And if you came back and there was any problem with that plane: “Did we cause it?” you know, and so forth. One time the chief of the ground crew came to me and says, “Sir, there’s a mandate out that the airplanes are supposed to be clean rather than mechanically in great condition.” I said, “They can court martial me, but you let the airplane be in good mechanical condition – don’t worry about the cleanliness.” Excuse me, I’m sorry. Maybe you got their names.
MR: The only one I know is Morris. Wasn’t he on the air crew, and he was the only one that had children? And so they let him go – he was trained in mechanics. What was his name? He flew over with us. No, it wasn’t Ed. It was a guy that was on our ground crew.
HI: Morris.
MR: I think the ground crew were the unsung heroes of this. I mean, you should be interviewing those guys.
JG: Very much so, very much so.
HI: They worked all night getting those ships ready to go again. I believe they attacked every day the weather would permit.
MR: But it was a different world, the ones who were fixing the planes and they ones who were flying them. We didn’t really have time for socializing, so you didn’t know who they were. He’s really the only one that I know.
JG: Just one comment here, real quickly. They had to work out in the adverse weather. These planes were not hangared or anything, you know. That’s a shame that somehow we can’t recognize them. Maybe too many years now.
MR: You know right at the end of the runway there was a little thatched cottage. People were living right there. I mean there were cattle between the runways and stuff. We’d take off. It would seem to me like we’d just skim over the top of that little house. I can’t imagine they continued to live there, to tell you the truth. But, you’d always clear them. (Chuckles) They stayed there.
JG: There were three bases - the 100th and I forget what the other was – three bases. But on occasion you’d someone belly down on take off – a big fire.
MR: It was always exciting to me, when we were making our formation, they wouldn’t let you use radio. Radio silence. So they would do it with flairs. Would you be told what color flairs?
JG: I don’t remember
MR: For our squadron, or what? You’d see the different flairs. That’s the way that we’d rendezvous, was with flairs. And I thought they’d have to give you the colors of the day.
JG: Probably did, and I totally don’t recall.
MR: But it was exciting to see the flairs. And we’d watch – there’s one over there. And then as the planes would slip in the formation…
HI: It’d take about an hour to get…
MR: It was beautiful they way they’d come into formation. And you’d be close enough where you could see the other guys, and you’d give them the high sign. And everybody would play like they weren’t afraid. And they were.
JG: Referring to flairs – if you came back isolated from a mission, there was a flair of the day and you would fire there – maybe multi – and do a 360, so that they knew that you…
The Germans had some ‘17’s. But anyway, that’s how they would recognize you as you came in.
MR: Wounded on board would get first priority, wouldn’t they. And then, I would guess, probably the ones low on fuel. I don’t know what your priority would be in line.
JG: I would think injured, yeah. I read somewhere that Lindbergh made this statement: that you can climb on automatic lean as long as your engines don’t overheat. If that’s good enough for Lindbergh, that’s good enough for me. We never ran short of fuel. One of the planes came in and landed one day, and a bomb fell out and rolled down the runway and never went off.
MR: Have we worn you out?
JG: I’m sorry. I apologize for injecting.
TC: John, if you would, just state your name real clearly once again. You’re a part of this too.
JG: Okay, I’m John Gross. I live in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. And real quickly, as Max said, I got to one field. They said, they don’t need pilots, you know. I said, OK. I’ll go to the infantry. (several voices) So then I graduated from twin engine school, and they made two of us instructors. And I was one of the two. After a couple of weeks, my papers were cut to go to B-17’s, but I wasn’t too upset about that because instructing was dangerous. I was up one time and we were out on a beautiful day. The student said, “I’m lost.” By golly there’s a city, there’s the river. You could just identify it. Another student, we were coming in at night and he said, I said, “Are you ready to land?” “Oh yeah” he said. He had the wheels down and the flaps. I said, “You notice everybody’s landing the other direction.” (Laughter) And another student, he lost control and we were going across the field and he threw his hands up. So I just had to grab the wheel. You know, this is dangerous! (Chuckles)
MR: How long did you instruct?
JG: Probably about a month. But you know, I personally felt, this is what I was training for. I was training for multiengine and go to combat. And it’s funny. You know, you can say heroic, but that’s what I was trained for. But anyway, we were very fortunate to have a marvelous crew, and we gelled, and we still gel after all these years, so. I think it’s very unusual.
TC: That’s great.
MR: I guess I wasn’t as dedicated. I wanted to fly, and if I had to fly as a gunner I figured all right, that’s what I’ll do. I wanted to be a pilot, but I accepted being a gunner. I wanted to fly. That was what I wanted to do. And I came home and went into flight training. And I talked to John. And he said, “If you keep flying, you’re going to die flying.” (Laughter) And sure enough, my instructor did die flying. And he took all my hours and records with him. And my wife and my dad didn’t want me to continue, so I stopped. But it’s still my…
JG: I thought in those days, if you fly long enough, you’re going to be at one end of the runway or the other. ??
Tell them what we did since we’re here. Share that. We went in a simulated…
MR: Oh yeah. How could we forget that? You’re talking to VIP’s right here. I want you to know that. Out at – what’s the name of the company – Gulfstream, we flew in a $45 million simulator. And he flew it, and we helped him.
JG: Mark Workman arranged that we would go over to where they had the jet construction and so forth. They have a flight training – I guess it’s called the jet flight school.
MR: You can’t imagine.
JG: And they have training in there for every part anything to do with aircraft. The stewardesses, maintenance people, anything. They took us into this room, and they have two beautiful Link – I call them Link trainers. That’s what we had in World War II. And you go in there and there’s the cockpit of one of these 40 million planes - $40 million planes. The instruments (several voices) So they sat us in the cockpit, and there’s number nine runway out here to that airport, with all the trees, the buildings, tire marks on the runway, and all these instruments. They have 43 of these around the world. And the man who’s in charge of this was there – very nice. And they had a pilot who’s the instructor come in the cockpit with us. And they said, “Now we’re going to fly this.” Well, jeez. (several voices) There were four screens. And they brought everything up. They have two computer keyboards here. And of course they can program everything – where you want to fly, what speed, how you want to climb, if there’s wind drift. It could correct the wind drift, and so forth. They said, “Now we’re going to fly.” You were the co-pilot (Laughter). But anyway…
HI: You were in trouble.
JG: We went and circled and here’s where you are now. And there’s – we’re going to land now. It was a once in a lifetime experience. I mean it was real – it was worth the trip. They have a jet now that’s $60 million. And I think it has a range of at least 5,000, about 6,000 miles now. It’s right across the airport.
TC: Wow, that’s great.