Bill Everett
95th BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2000 REUNION ORLANDO, FLORIDA
Interviewed by Russ McKnight
RM: This is Russ McKnight, and I’m interviewing Bill Everett today, and we’re in Orlando, Florida. Bill, could you give us your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
BE: Well, I went into the service March of 1943 – Basic Training in Miami Beach, I didn’t like Miami Beach at all. From there I went to Scott Field Illinois, where I got five months of radio training. And that was a nice place. From there, back to Florida – Panama City. I didn’t like that either. Wintertime, Christmas time. You wouldn’t even know Christmas happened. In order to buy a card to send to my mother, I had to take the bus into Panama City and back. I didn’t even stay there. I went in the store, bought the card, got back on the bus, and went home. It just didn’t happen that year. I guess that was true in a lot of places. So, it was cold. I had a great time, though, with gunnery training, because I enjoyed it. You know, it was about 32 degrees. It was ice on the puddles, and we were bare handed, right in the back of the truck, shooting crap targets coming out. Some of these other fellas suffered with it, didn’t like it a bit. I ran their routes for them and scored for them. That made me a better gunner, ‘til I got called too. So I went from there to Salt Lake City via New York. I lived in Connecticut, had nine days at home. And went out to Salt Lake City; walked around in the mud for a couple of months, waiting for an assignment. Finally, there wasn’t really much going on there at all. We were all covered in that one statement – slogging around in the mud, waiting for something to happen. Finally they put together our crew. I’d never met any of them before. I can’t even remember meeting them. I guess somehow or another we got together, got a train to Rapid City where we all flew together. That’s the first time we had ever flown together. And we flew there for a period of time, it may have been a month, called Operational Training where we get to know each other’s jobs and to choose who’s going to be where. Carry aboard that crew, and there were three radio operators that came out of Scott Field – me and two other guys that were gunners on our crew. Well, our pilot said he would try us each out and choose one. Well, my thought was, I wouldn’t have any part of this. I was a radio operator, and I knew I was better than most of the guys because I cared. If he had chosen somebody else, I think I would have said, “Look, please let me off the crew. I want to be a radio operator.” He chose me. I think it was easy enough to tell that. I hate to say it, but there’s a big difference between the top and the bottom of what comes out of the Radio School. Some guys couldn’t take – they faked their way through taking Morse code. I enjoyed it. I pushed my grade up as high as I could get. We did operational training there for a while. We did some air to ground target shooting – 50 caliber waist guns is all we could use. And that was my gun. By alternate drop, I was a ROMG, so called – Radio Operator Mechanic Gunner. Radio mechanics, there’s two classes of training you get at Scott’s Field – half a day of mechanics, half a day of Morse code, or whatever it was - three hours. We finished that. They were ready for us to go somewhere. So we took a dirty old train over to Carnie, Nebraska. And there we got, we were there briefly. (They) assigned a brand new airplane to us. We just about jumped into the airplane and took off for Manchester, New Hampshire. When we got to Manchester, New Hampshire, the clouds around…tell me if you don’t want to hear all this stuff.
RM: No, it’s very interesting. This is where you’re on your way – crew formation on to England?
BE: It’s the whole story. Coming into Manchester, New Hampshire pretty close to my home, we circled the field, storm clouds around, there were a lot of planes in the air. Our pilot couldn’t make contact with the tower because of so much activity. He asked me to try and get my 75 watts. So I got through to the tower and they said, well somehow or another, they gave us directions. They didn’t want to land us because they were too busy. So they diverted us to Rome, New York, a little grass runway. So we came in, parked the airplane, got orders to stay in the airplane. Then hopped the fence, couple of guys did. But I was a good kid. I didn’t do that. I wasn’t very far from my home, but I wasn’t in that much of a need to make a phone call. So we took off from Rome on a new day, did go to Manchester where we got, I think you call it a POE – point of embarkation – where they gave us a 45 automatic, a GI watch – a radio operator got a watch- and sammy helmet, airman sunglasses, all those good little things. Our airplane was loaded up with everything that they ever put in there. We were loaded to go for the Arctic or the tropics. We didn’t know. We didn’t have orders, nobody told us where we were going. They said we would get out and we would open our sealed orders and we’d see where we were going. I guess from there we did know. We were going to Gander, Newfoundland where we would jump off to go across the pond. We got to Gander, Newfoundland, now we’re talking about late June. I spent my birthday, the 30th of June, sleeping on a hanger floor under some kind of a blanket trying to work out of a barracks bag. There were a lot us collected there because the weather going overseas was unfavorable. We waited and waited, I think it was over a week. Finally things cleared up and we got ready to go. We took off at 10 o’clock at night. We got out, I guess they gave the pilot a heading to go out and go a half hour on this heading and open your orders is when you know which way to turn. So our destination was Prestwick, Scotland, which was one of my stations. There were two stations in England. One was in Prestwick and the other was down south, so that they could each draw a bead and give you a location called a fix. And I did that once on a trip over. The navigator asked me to get a fix for him, and I did. He said, well that’s pretty close. He had shot the stars, and he knew right were he was. We had a good navigator. This is how you begin to find out what your crew can do. This guy is here with me today, and he’s an engineer. He wasn’t at the time, but a smart guy from Louisiana. If you ever get him to interview, leave an extra hour
JM: What was his name?
BE: Jim Heard. Have you got him?
RM: No, I don’t think so.
BE: Well, he’ll give you a lot of good stuff, if you’ve got patience enough. He gets on the telephone, by the way, to call me, usually after I go to bed because he’s an hour different.
RM: Did you stay with Jim as a crewmember during the time at Horham?
BE: Yeah. Going across – back to the story – something happened to the weather at our planned destination. So we were diverted to a landfill in Ireland where we put down. We came down through the clouds at 8 o’clock in the morning and landed at a strange place. (We) took our barracks bags, handed over our 45’s and walked away from that beautiful airplane and left all that good stuff in there. And you know, what they do is take all these plush things, strip them all down to bare bones, and put it into combat. So it has to go into a depot to be modified to whatever today’s spec is in combat, which calls for taking everything that weighs anything or could get in your way and getting rid of it, leaving essentials and adding whatever latest equipment was right up to date. We flew a B-17G, which was the newest model. It was the last one they built. The F’s started the war, and the F’s did not have a chin turret underneath the bombardier’s seat. Twin 50 caliber guns operated remotely. And straight out the front of the airplane was a very effective way to shoot. If you could get a Carter on that direction, you don’t have to lead it on kind of mixed motions. So those twin 50’s, you wouldn’t want to go eyeball to eyeball with them, I’ll tell you. Twelve hundred rounds a minute, a thing as big as my thumb, not explosives, but they make a big hole. They were effective. We knocked down a lot of airplanes. However, I never saw from our airplane – I don’t think I did – ever see an enemy airplane because we went from Ireland across the Irish Sea, landed in Liverpool or somewhere and had a little lunch along the way, got on a train, always on a little train, in England. We went somewhere or another where they pick us up by a 95th six by six, I guess they called it. We used those like trolley cars. (They’d) take us right to our base, had our bunks ready for us, signed in and we’re there. Commit to set foot into these barracks where these guys that were flying their last 25th mission. They were flying 25 – your dad was probably assigned 25. At the time we got there, it had just switched to 35 because the chance of living through it was a little better when I got there. They had squashed the Luftwaffe. You may recall that all the big wheels running the war had faced up to the fact that they could not make a landing on the continent while the Luftwaffe was still flying. They were murderous enough on those beaches without enemy airplanes striking. That would have put us out of business. They said to get rid of the Luftwaffe, and the 8th Air Force has to do it. We had to sacrifice, and it was a big one. It has to be done at a certain time, and June the 6th was the time it happened. But leading up to that time, a very small window that they had to get into. So, that was all over with by the time I got there. I believe that they had really plastered the German air force. Well, I’ll give you one good reason. It was a P-51. Shall I digress here…? (Break in tape)
BE: Let me finish my landing at the 95th. An interesting thing, we went into the barracks with these guys that were flying their 25th. We haven’t flown any missions yet; we’ve got 35 to fly. On guy in particular that was there was pretty well over the hill for his nervous system. He’d been a bad boy. What he did, he told me. We had an escape can in the knee pocket of our coveralls. In there we had a match, a little compass, money – several different kinds of money – certain little first aid things, and one other thing that got him in trouble, a Benzedrine tablet, or whatever. We were warned about that, if you used the Benzedrine on the ground and you were escaping and you’re all done in and you’re ready to sit down and put up your hands, if you need one more hour, take the Benzedrine. And it will give you one more hour, then you’ll go down and stay down. Well, this guy used to take a Benzedrine whenever the going got rough, which is usually when you’re hitting the (?) maybe the initial point when we made our turn. Okay, from the time we drove by the initial point, you take the hands off the steering wheel you know, and the bombardier’s flying the airplane. And he’s straight down the alley for the target. Nothing else counts; you can get shot to pieces, but you’re going to go to the target. This is why we did the (?). So it was a time for high stress. (?) maybe as long as ten minutes. Meanwhile, you’re right in the thick of everything anybody could throw at you. So, I’ll come back to this, telling you about that guy. He had taken a Benzedrine every time going out there, and he was nuts. They were initiating a new bunch coming in. And I looked at a little stove in the middle of the barracks. And I sat on my bunk one day and looked over there and there’s a 50 caliber – a live one – pointed up on top of the stove. Some guy had bought three bags, I remember seeing this, came in one end, put them down, out the other end. Passed by the stove, put the cartilage on there. When we saw that thing, we all ducked. I don’t recall that it ever went off, but that’s the kind of thing that was happening. They were so flak happy that they do crazy things. So I suppose that happened to a lot of people. Now I never saw that with my crew. It didn’t happen with me. I supposed we changed. But this was my introduction to the 95th 336th Squadron and I thought I was probably in as good a place as you could get and still fight a war.
RM: Bill, did you see your tour all the way through to the end of the conflict? Did you come back after the bombing had ceased?
BE: I’ll go into that. I had 35 missions assigned, and you know what happens at 35. You had a little party and you joined the Lucky Glasses Club and you go home. After that, somebody else takes over. Well, we had a lot of interesting things in our 35 missions. We flew the whole 35. Number 35 was on February the 3rd, 1945. The target was Berlin. That was a lousy things for anybody to do, to assign somebody for your last target. And this was one of those things that was done by presidential order. You’ve heard about that. The 95th, by the way, was the only group in the business that had three citations. This Berlin thing was an 8th Air Force assignment. We were told to put up everything you can, and go to Berlin, drop everything all over the city and just raise heck. We thought that was what we were going to do. The main point of impact was the Gestapo headquarters, but we thought we were making a mess wherever we go. But, when you’re strictly GI, and you’ve got an MPI, that’s where you’ll go where the bombardier takes you. I bounced through a whole, Berlin’s such a big place, you’re getting plastered with flak the whole time going in there. Lots of it. There were more guns collected on Berlin than any other target, I guess. I’ll tell you a story of the ending, go back to get a couple of other things along the way. We did that. Our last mission , coming down to the bomb room, and I can remember hearing our pilot on the intercom. He didn’t usually say things like this on the intercom. I hear him say, “He’s dragging us right through that stuff.” Well, some guy like your father was on that lead airplane up there, and we were sitting off that part of the formation where you’re stuck so tight that you can’t move, not even your elbows. So, if they’re aiming you right at a barrage of flak, you grit your teeth and go through it, which is what we did. As soon as we got over there, we started getting hit. This is 26,000 feet. Those were 155’s that were coming up at us, 155 millimeters. And being in the radio room, I could hear and feel those things. The bomb bay doors were open, right in front of me, just a door in between. And it would go “whump” and I’d hear this, sounded like somebody throwing a handful of stones at a greenhouse. My radio room was full of holes. I can remember sitting there and I said, “Jeez, how come I didn’t get hit with all that stuff?” This continued now for an eternity on the bomb run. And I believe they said we got four direct hits, or so-called direct hits, which is when a shell comes in the airplane and it’s close enough to be effective. And even our pilot did not really reach the point of what I was aware of; that our airplane was done. Nothing was going to be functional in another five minutes, even if we survived. I heard him talking about a fire in the #2 engine. I could see that; it was right beside my window. The #3 engine is on the other side over here. They got - #2 is feathered, and they feathered #3. The other two are hit and we’re on fire. And so I know that this is going to be the time, without even thinking about it. And had we ever got able to put the fire out, we couldn’t have flown that airplane anyway. The best we could have expected to do, well it was 17 miles I think to the Elder River where the Russians were on the other side, you know, February 3rd. But I’m not so sure we’d be any better off over there. The Russians were wild at the front lines anyway. So we got put out of business. The last thing that happened was, I’m sitting with my face down by the side of my radio room. I had a little soup going out there, and a box of chaff. Have you heard about the chaff? Little sticks of aluminum foil…?
RM: Yes
BE: Okay. My job was to shoot that down the chute; keep the air full of chaff. Right over here was a little heat duct coming out from around the engine, which you’d never know was any heat, but it was a heat duct. I throw the chaff out, and I see fire coming out of that chute. So then I got up and I looked out the window right into an absolute inferno. The aluminum ring was melting into a pot with thousands of degrees heat. And this is one of the things that I knew at that instant from what I was told, that anybody that sees such a thing, never lives to talk about it. Well, I broke that rule, because I did. I saw it, and believe me, it’s a hair-raising experience. So I ripped off all my gear, the oxygen mask and my wires, headed to escape down the rear waist. On the way I had to go past the ball turret, which was slowly going around just like usual. The waist gunner’s standing at the window, looking out there just like usual. I said, hmmm, nobody knows it. So I went back – everything’s disconnected – I went back and grabbed the one line to my throat mike. I didn’t have the headset on; just the throat mike. I yelled into the intercom that the whole plane’s on fire. Let’s get out of here. I threw the thing down, turned around and went out. By the time I got back to the ball turret, the operator was coming out of the ball turret, which was pretty fast to do, and the waist gunner was whipping out his parachute. Well, I went between them through an escape hatch door, reached out, pulled the rip cord on that, which pulls the pins out of the hinges, whacked it with my fist – I was still moving, I never slowed down – and out I went. If you want an answer to the question, “were you scared to jump,” believe me, I was scared not to jump. So nothing like that occurred to me. I didn’t even have a thought for hesitation there. As fast as I could get out. And I figured, well I’m the first guy out. I rolled over here a couple of times, but there was a big fireball. I saw two wings with the fuselage, just briefly, like a tenth of a second, which was what you could see things at. And so I knew that it was only a few seconds after I’d jumped that that happened. I didn’t see how the rest of the guys could all have gotten out. They didn’t know what I knew. I found out that they all got out. That’s all training. What’s your name again?
RM: Russ, Russ McKnight
BE: That’s what paid off, Russ. The training we got. They hammered this stuff into your head so many times that you don’t think about what you’re doing in an emergency. You just do it. And that’s what I did. And I did everything that you were supposed to do under the circumstances. I jumped out into the sky that was full of exploding anti-aircraft, full of airplanes burning, falling down, people parachuting. It was a real May Day. And if you’re aware of that, the last thing you want to do is open the parachute and hang in that mess. So I did what we were supposed to do. I free fell. I free fell all the way down, all the way down to the ground. This (??)
RM: Bill, briefly, were you captured at that point, and how long were you held?
BE: Right there at that point. I landed in a muddy field, which was right outside of an airfield, which was criss-crossed by little roads. I finally got rid of my parachute, which was dragging me in the mud, and I got out of my chute, I climbed out of the parachute, and there was a guy running across the field at me, waving a pistol. So I just put my hands up briefly. I was in no position to fight.
RM: How long were you held?
BE: Three months.
RM: Three months.
BE: The interesting thing about that is, there is a booklet a neighbor of mine, The Last Hundred Days. After I got out of the service, I realized there was 90 days of history, very critical history that I didn’t know anything about. I began to learn things that had happened in that time.
RM: I’d like to thank you for this interview, and I wish we could go on. We appreciate very much your stories.
BE: You’re entirely welcome, and it was a pleasure to do it. I hope you put together something that – I don’t know what you’re going to do, but good luck.