Bill O'Keefe
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2000 REUNION ORLANDO, FLORIDA
STAN ALLARD AND BILL O’KEEFE
Interviewed by Russ McKnight
RM: This is Russ McKnight, and we’re in Orlando, Florida at the reunion of the 95th and it’s September 16th. I’m interviewing Stan Allard and I’m interviewing Bill O’Keefe. First of all, I’d like to ask you gentlemen if you’d tell me your years of service in the Army/Air Corps. Stan?
SA: I was in approximately three years.
BO: I went in ’41 to 1945.
RM: Thank you Bill. And Stan, your time with the 95th Bomb Wing, and what your job was?
SA: Well I was probably with them for a year and a half, and I was a tail gunner.
RM: Bill?
BO: With the 95th, I guess it would be about the same time as Stan. I met him in Pyote, Texas, and flew 25 missions.
RM: And your role on the crew?
BO: Staff Sergeant gunner, waist gunner, right waist gunner.
RM: Okay, so we have a tail gunner and a waist gunner. Now we’re going to go one at a time. I’ll ask some questions about the tail gunning position, and also some special experiences that you might have had, Stan. Where did you receive your training for tail gunner?
SA: Well, first of all I went to armament school up in Denver. And then from there, got transferred. I’m sorry, I have that backward - another senior moment. I went to gunnery school. After basic training, I went to gunnery school down in Florida. I think it was Tyndall Field down in Florida, and became a crack shot (laughter), so to speak. And from there I was transferred over to Pyote, Texas where they formed up bomber crews. That’s where I remained, with that crew until we completed 25 missions, hopefully – hopefully completed 25 when we go there, which we did.
After I completed my 25, I was transferred back to the states and my war was over, theoretically. They assigned me to become an instructor, a gunnery instructor. I didn’t like where they assigned me. It was down in the swamps of Louisiana. So, one day they had a notice on the bulletin board about, it was at that time of the year when the northwest caught on fire, and they were looking for fire fighters. So, everyone in that camp just came from combat, they were all Staff and Master Sergeants, and we all signed up. They made a trainload of us and shipped us up to Fort Lewis, Washington to receive firefighter instructions. And then from there, they dispersed us to different parts of the northwest. I wound up in northern California fighting forest fires. That’s where I got discharged from, in Chico, California.
RM: Thank you, Stan. Were there one or two special experiences from your combat that you’d like to share with us?
SA: Oh, I don’t know. I had a different kind of outlook. I was artistically inclined, and I saw the war with a different view. I saw white, beautiful, fluffy clouds, and I saw the dark patterns on the ground, which were beautiful to me. I was never afraid. That was one thing in my favor, was never fearful of flying. We had a tremendous crew. I once heard a bombing raid explained in a very few words. If the mission lasted eight hours, there was seven hours of boredom to get there, and one hour of stark terror upon getting to the target. In that regard, going to and from the target we did have times when there wasn’t anything occurring. So, I sat back in the tail, and enjoyed the scenery. It was a joy ride for me. We came under heavy attack a lot of times, but the anti-aircraft fire was what bothered me the most. I often thought that my chances were 50/50 if a fighter attacked, and I was just as good as that fighter pilot, but I had no control over the anti-aircraft fire, so that’s what I feared the most, if I did fear it at all. I mean we had to do it, and we went and done it.
RM: Did any of the fighter pilots ever come so close that you could…?
SA: We had the Focke-Wulf 190 come sit right on top of our right wing. I could count every rivet in that plane; I could see him sitting in that cockpit. And he flew right along with us, on top of our wing, probably five feet above our wing, upside down. He was inverted, upside down. He come in upside down to us. The waist gunner was hitting him, and the shells were just ricocheting off of his belly because he was so heavily armor plated. I could see the sparks. Probably it was Billy here that was hitting him. And the sparks were just coming right off of his belly, and he gave it a burst of speed, and he went on ahead. And from my tail position I looked, I followed him, he shot ahead, he shot a B-17 down and he took a dive and headed to the lower ground level and headed back to Germany. That’s up close and personal, that’s up close and personal.
I’ll tell you just one experience, how close I came to my maker. We were going through heavy anti-aircraft fire and I heard an explosion. I was knocked unconscious. But in the tail position, I knelt on my knees from eight to ten hours, depending upon flight. That was my position. My knees aren’t affected; I often wondered why they weren’t from all that time in sub-zero weather. But my knees were never affected from that. But anyway, I sat there, and in the tail position I carried a back parachute, not a seat parachute, because of the position. I was on my knees and I couldn’t sit on a parachute, so I had this backpack. So, when I knelt down on my knees, the backpack rose up to the base of my skull. So anyway, this shell exploded off the left wing. I didn’t know it at the time, but all I heard was a BOOM, and I was unconscious. So, I came to, and I could smell smoke. And I said, “Oh my God,” the first thing that came to my mind was that we took a direct hit and we were on fire.
So, I called one of the crewmembers, and I said, “Is there a fire on board? Are we on fire?” And they said, “no.”
So, I says, “The tail’s on fire, then, because I can smell smoke.”
Billy says, “I’ll be right back.” So, Billy got a CO2 walk around bottle, and he made his way back there, and he says, “My God, your ‘chute’s smoldering. There’s smoke coming out of your parachute.” (Chuckle)
So we got back to the base, and we got out, and they all came back. There was a hole about the size of a soccer ball right around my right shoulder. And they took two pieces of steel about the size of my thumb, two pieces, out of the parachute. And the two pieces were lying right next to the last fold of silk in the canvas cover. It had gone right through, and I often told the boys that if I hadn’t had that back ‘chute up there, because it hit me right in the base of the neck, they’d have had a headless tail gunner on their hands. Really. So, I joked and laughed about it, you know what I mean, at the time.
About two days later it hit me. I started to shake, I started to sweat, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. So, I got drunk. (Laughter) About two days later or three days later I was back in the saddle and we were at ‘em again. I went back up on another raid, and that was soon forgotten, you know. That’s the closest I came to death. That was the closest.
RM: Stan, that’s a remarkable story and I really do appreciate your sharing it with us, even the part about the World War II medication. (Chuckle) Billy, we’ve got enough time. We’d like to ask you the same kinds of questions.
BO: He calls me Billy, but I’m Bill (transfer of microphone)
RM: So, Bill, you’ve played in some of these same adventures. We’d like to get your perspective as well on what you saw and if you had some special experiences that you’d like to share with us.
BO: Do you want to start with training?
RM: Yes, please.
BO: Okay. I was up in Presque Isle, Maine. I had been in California; I was born in North Dakota. I was skeptical of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, so I left and I went to California. And there was a boy hauling hay out of the desert, and he talked me into going to Maine. He said we could get a good job driving trucks up there. I was only seventeen years old. So, I had a little ’36 Ford Coupe, so we drove all the way from California to Presque Isle, Maine. And the guy wouldn’t give me job because I was too young; they had brand new trucks. Of course, he got right on. So, he told me to stay out there and bug the guy. And a guy come through with a truck; he didn’t stop. So, the foreman blew the whistle, and he said, “Alright kid, you’ve been wanting to drive. Get in.” So, I drove a big truck for, oh, I don’t know, three or four months.
Then my buddy started talking about – on my 18th birthday, we went up to Canada. And we came back about one o’clock, and he says, “Let’s go down and join the Air Force.” I said, “I don’t want to join the Air Force.” I said, “I don’t want to go in.” He said, “Well, go down with me.” I said “okay.”
So, I went down with him and got a couple of fast-talking Sergeants. One of them got me aside and he said, “You’re too young to join.” He said, “Eighteen, you have to have permission from your folks.”
I said, “Well, I didn’t come to join. He did.”
So, he said, “Well…” One thing led to another, and we signed up some papers. He said, “Now this don’t mean anything.” He said, “But if you ever want to join the Air Force,” – I passed the eye test and everything – he said, “If you ever want to join, you come on back.” I said okay.
So, I didn’t think anything about it, and we went home. We went to bed; we had to drive a truck that next night. And the next morning, his grandpa woke us up, and he said, “Boy you boys did it now.” And he said, “What’d we do, Grandpa?” and he said, “Bill, you got to catch a train out at 4 o’clock.” I said, “For where?” and he said, “You’re in the Army” I said, “What??” I said, “They said I was too young.”
He said, “No, they wired your mother and got permission in North Dakota.” I had to catch a (train).
I said, “What about Reed?” He said, “He didn’t pass the physical. He didn’t pass the eye exam.” (Laughter)
So, there I am by myself. I had given him the keys to my car, I said, “Here you are, Reed.” So that was it.
They sent me to Fort Devens, Massachusetts in the Infantry. And I said, “No, I joined the Air Force.” And I finally talked them into sending me to Sheppard Field, Texas. I was there 27 days when war was declared. We were going out the gate and they said, “Put your uniform on; war was declared.”
So, I went back to the barracks and somebody comes through and says, “Can anybody type?” I and a fella that rode [inaudible] train down there raised our hands. So, we went over, and we started typing telegrams for boys to come back to the base. So that went on and then they started us typing service records. That went on for about three months, and I said to Ralph, “Hey, I didn’t join the Air Force to be a typist.”
So, I went into Lieutenant Hildebrand and I said, “I’d like to go to school, mechanics school.” I knew I didn’t have enough education to be a flyer.
So, he said, “Yeah, you two boys have been good boys.” He said, “You go pick out the best school you want out there on the board, and I’ll send you to it.” Well, they had a school in Glendale, California. It was a civilian school, top civilian engineers who flew on airlines. And it was only sixteen of us, and we had one barracks and a cafeteria. We went to school with them; it was half army and half civilian.
And when we got through in the evening, it was on our own. It was a wonderful life. We’d go to the Hollywood canteen, go here, go anyplace we wanted to. So, to make a long story short, when I finished school, they sent me way up to Tent City [1]in Oregon.
I was a mechanic then, see. So, then they sent me to Salt Lake City. And they said, “You’re going to work on engines, well we’re going to send you to Ogden, Utah.” So they sent me to Ogden, Utah, but they didn’t have any planes to work on. So, I was sitting around there. I said well, they had a physical instructor course open. So, I said I’ll take that. So, I went through that, and that was rough. They were teaching judo and not karate.
And anyway, I graduated from that. So, all I had to do was take the men in the morning and give them their exercises, and I’d go back to bed. (Laughing) Then I’d meet them in the afternoon, take them up and give them exercises again, and then that was it.
Oh, I got bored with that, so somebody put on the bulletin board they wanted aerial gunners. So, I went in and volunteered for that. So, they sent me to Kingman, Arizona, and I graduated from gunnery school, made me a Sergeant. I got home on furlough, then went to Pyote, Texas and I was an engineer gunner. Well, they had the board set up, and they had another fella set up as the engineer gunner and they had me waist gunner. Well, I didn’t complain. So, they had pilot Powers on the top, and on down the line. I went along, and Felix was our radio operator, but he was listed as ball turret gunner. The big guy that was listed as the radio operator, somehow, they switched it around. Felix wound up as a radio operator, because that guy didn’t know nothing about radios. To make a long story short, Felix became a radio operator, and so on and so forth. I was the tail gunner. Then we start training in Pyote, and we got over the, what’s that ocean that’s south of Galveston, Texas?
RM: The Gulf?
BO: Yeah, and the life raft came loose – seven-man life raft – and wrapped around the tail. The plane went out of control, and we started diving into the ocean. The pilot and the co-pilot pulled her up, and she’d go up, and then she’d go down. She’d go up, and then she’d go down. And she was shaking and rattling, and there was a little naval base there where they were training naval pilots, you know these little planes. And the pilot called in and he said, “This is Lt. Powers in an Army B-17 coming in for an emergency landing.”
They said, “We don’t have room for a B-17.” He said, “This is a B-17. Clear that damn runway.” (Chuckle) And in we went. And, of course, we just bounced and bounced and bounced and we [inaudible] getting stopped at the end of the grass. Well of course they had no way to fix the tail. It ruined the tail. The CO2 bottle that opened the raft went through the tail. So, Powers flew one of the little planes [inaudible] and we stayed at the naval base for four days while they got our plane fixed up.
RM: Bill that’s a remarkable story about your training.
BO: Now you want to go to combat, okay.
RM: In the few minutes left, could you tell us a little bit about the perspective of once you were overseas.
BO: Okay. Well, my first experience, my first worst experience was when we left Newfoundland, I looked out, and the gas was pouring out over the super charger. And I called the pilot and said, “You’ve got gas coming out over the super charger.” And my God, he made a 180, and we bounced down there and they had to fix it. Well that delayed us. We was with a group.
Well, they got it fixed, and we were crossing the ocean. The subs got four planes; they got our leader. By us being late, we didn’t encounter any problem and we ended up in Prestwick, Scotland. We had set the wings back 18 inches, and the navigator was having a hard time, you know, getting it in. Then we went to combat, and we were assigned to the 95th.
My first real bad experience was outside of fighters and flak, a plane got caught in the prop course [inaudible] a B-17. And he come right through the formation and as heading right to us, sideways. And I said, “Dive.” And the pilot just dived and that thing just went right over the top of our heads. And I was on [inaudible] an open waist gunner. Of course, with that open window, it was about 60-below zero. That was the position I flew. And then at one time, a fighter was coming in, and I got him, and I killed him – I guess I killed him- but he just kept coming. I finally froze on my machine gun, and he blew up. But I could see the blood in the cockpit. That’s how close you come to parts of the airplane. And then later on, I got another ME110, and I shot him down. He went down in flames, but he went into the clouds. You had to see them blow up, or bail out. So, they gave me credit for one destroyed and one probable.
Other things happened, like of everybody else’s crew. And then we came to the first daylight raid over Berlin. Well, we left with 800 bombers, and they got a recall. We were in the lead and they got a recall, and we didn’t get it. We went in with 29 airplanes. The clouds were too bad, is the reason they recalled. Brown was the leader, and we was the second behind him. Finally, someone said, “There ain’t no planes back there.” And he said, “Well, we ought to go in now.” Well, we went on in to Berlin and when we got over Berlin, the clouds opened up. We laid our eggs on her, but they wiped out four of us the first pass. And they were lining up to wipe us out again. The Lieutenant that broke the speed of sound, I forget his name now, he’s a big General now, do you know who I mean?
RM: Yeah, Chuck Yeager.
BO: Chuck Yeager. He didn’t get the recall with a bunch of P-51s, and he hit us right at the time they were lining up to wipe us out. And Chuck tangled with them, and we got back. When we landed, we had Life Magazine, and Paramount Newsreel, and the whole ball of wax.
RM: Those are remarkable stories, Bill.
BO: And then they called me in the office, Colonel Cozens called me in the office, and he said, “How’d you like to be a Lieutenant?” And so, I got a battlefield commission and they sent me to the 486th as a gunnery instructor –[inaudible] gunnery instructor. And I got First Lieutenant before I came back. And then I came back to rest camp and finally got discharged. So that’s it.
RM: That’s it, and I wish we could get several hours more of your stories.
[1] This could be a reference to Pendleton Army Air Base in Oregon