Harold Lippert
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2000 REUNION ORLANDO, FLORIDA
BILL BRAMLETT, HAROLD LIPPERT, and WILLIAM “DUB” VANDEGRIFF
(Interviewed by Karen Sayco)
KS: Could you state your name and the date, please.
BB: It’s Bill Bramlett. The date, what is the date? The 16th of September.
KS: And what were your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
BB: I entered the Army/Air Corps September 1st, 1942 and I was released from active duty in November 1945.
KS: And what years did you serve with the 95th Bomb Group?
BB: I was in the 95th Bomb Group from August 1944 until April 1945.
KS: What was your principal job with the 95th?
BB: I was a pilot. I was one of the B-17 pilots.
KS: Do you remember your most memorable mission?
BB: I’m sure our most memorable one was on New Year’s Eve in ’44 to Hamburg when we lost about half of our squadron. Actually the 334th Squadron, we didn’t lose that many because we had borrowed three planes from the 100thBomb Group and we lost those three, plus two of ours on the bomb run. And Mike [inaudible] was on the lead ship’s left wing, we were on the right wing, and Mac was on fire. And I kept hoping he would get out of that formation before he exploded and we all were knocked down. But we had quite a bit of damage to the plane. So much so that the left wing – it was a brand new nice shiny B-17 that we had just received in the Squadron – and we had a shell come through the wing, and they put an olive drab wing on there for the rest of the tour. And the plane belonged to my roommate, John Corbin, and he never let me forget that I ruined his airplane.
KS: And you mentioned that you flew a mission to Warsaw. Could you tell us about that?
BB: Yes. During the battle of Warsaw, we flew from, the 13th Combat Wing, which was three groups, dropped supplies, medical supplies and ammunition into the Polish army at Warsaw during the battle of Warsaw, then went on into Russia. And we went in at low altitude, so I was afraid we were going to get quite a bit of damage. But it wasn’t too bad. The flak was terrible, but we were so low, you could see everything on the ground. We did lose an engine and were stranded in Russia. But the Polish people invited us back; well, they invited everybody back to Poland in 1994 on a 50-year anniversary celebration. And we were treated royally. They met us at the airport. We had a young Major and a Captain in the Polish Air Force, plus some little girl named Katerina that worked for them. And they kept us going for two weeks nonstop. We enjoyed it very much. We were carried down to the Polish Air Force Academy at Deblin, I think, about 90 miles from Warsaw. Spent a weekend down there. They even offered to take us up in one of their trainer planes, and I think Harold’s wife did go up, did take them up on that flight. But we were treated very well. They do have a huge monument in a park to the Allies, and there’s a huge granite monument with a B-17 on top of it. And it has the names listed of the ones that died on that mission. They were from the 390th Bomb Group, which is also a part of the 13th Combat Wing.
KS: You mentioned being grounded in Russia for a time. How long were you there, and were there any memorable experiences you remember from that?
BB: Well, I remember they wouldn’t let us on the Russian side of the base. We were put up in tents way over on the other side of the base, and during the daytime those little [inaudible] fighters doing practice gunnery above us, and I wondered if they were going to shoot us up on the ground. [Chuckle] But they didn’t. We were so close to being allies at that time, but we certainly weren’t, weren’t treated as allies. We were fed real well, but they never let us on the other side of the base; it was all places we couldn’t go. And we had lost an engine, and when they finally, we got a new engine on the plane and were able to take off. We had to slow time that engine and take it up and fly it for four hours at not full power.
And we thought, boy, we’d go up to Moscow and see some of Russia. But the day we had to take it up, we just had a skeleton crew, and they had it mapped out where we’d fly. And I don’t think we ever got out of site of the base. We flew a rectangle, square around the base for four hours to put time on that engine. We also were given cigarettes and soap every morning down at supply, and only about half of the crew smoked, but we all got our two packs of cigarettes every day, because you could take them into town and sell them on the black market at the time. We probably shouldn’t say we were selling anything on the black market, but you could get approximately $85, but it was in Russian rubles for a bath-sized bar of soap. And we’d sell cigarettes. But it was, the money was really worthless. You couldn’t bring it out of the country. One day, we were in town, and some MPs picked up some fellas because kids were buying it from you – buying soap or cigarettes or anything. And they said we were dealing in the black market. And of course, they wanted us punished right then, but the Colonel back at the base kept telling them that we were not under his command, that we belonged to the 8thAir Force and we would be punished when we got back to the base.
KS: Were you?
BB: No, I never heard from them again. But no, we were fed real well. Sometimes I didn’t know what we were eating, but it was fairly good. But that was off in a tent, away from the Russian base. At night we could hear them over there with the music playing. One night my bombardier and I stayed in town until after dark, which we had been told not to, never stay in town after dark, and never go to town without a 45 in the city of Poltava. At the time it had had about 200,000 people, but the town was practically destroyed because it had been occupied for two years by the Germans.
KS: What time of the year was this?
BB: It was in the fall; it was in September, and October.
KS: Was it chilly?
BB: It was very cold at night. We were comfortable in our winter uniforms during the day, but at night it was freezing cold. And that’s one thing I remember, the first night we stayed there, they put us in these tents, and they brought these old sleeping bags and army blankets to us. And we put the sleeping bag on a canvas cot, that’s what we were sleeping on, and those blankets on top. And you still almost froze during the night because you were getting cold from underneath. So, the next day we doubled two of those blankets and made a mattress out of them. And then you slipped your sleeping bag in there, and the other two blankets on top of you, and we could stay warm during the night. But it was cold. I do remember how awfully cold it was. (Transfer microphone)
KS: Would you state your name, and the date and your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps.
HL: Harold Lippert. Today’s date is September 16th, and my service date with the Air Force was October of ’43 and I was discharged from the service in September ’45. My service was spent mostly of course in training before going overseas. I went to basic training at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. And went to gunnery school in Las Vegas, Nevada. Went to training as a crew in Dyersburg, Tennessee. And about the middle of August we picked up our plane in Kearney, Nebraska and flew on over to England.
KS: And what were the dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
HL: We were assigned to the 95th Bomb Group in August of ’44, and finished flying March of ‘45.
KS: Your major job was a…?
HL: I was a tail gunner on a B-17. Flew 35 missions over Europe. Had credit for one fighter, ME 109. Flew on the mission to the parsons in Warsaw with Bill Bramlett. And spent the same amount of time in Poltava, Russia and went from there, loaded up bombs, and we bombed Italy and landed in Foggia, Italy.
KS: This was on the return from Poltava.
HL: On the return from Poltava. And then we loaded up bombs there ultimately and went back to England, bombed Germany on our way back.
KS: Do you recall what that target was on the way back?
HL: Golly, I can’t specifically recall what that was.
KS: Was there anything, any vast difference between September in Russia and September in Foggia? Do you recall anything about Foggia?
HL: Well, Foggia, at least they furnished us with wine and gave us bottles of wine. And what we didn’t drink we used to start a fire within the tents we were assigned to, to keep warm. So, we drank it and we burned it. Foggia was a lot different than Russia, yes. Italy was – of course we landed in an American base I believe in Foggia. Sure, wasn’t that a P-38 field? A fighter group. Right. 99th Bomb Group. And yes, Italy was much more pleasant than Russia.
KS: Now I read one story of one of the crews that landed at Foggia and maybe they weren’t as [inaudible] but they talked about getting the fresh fruit.
HL: We had access to fresh fruit and we could also go into the city of Foggia, and I can recall specifically getting a haircut, a shave, and a manicure and a facial for ten cents. That’s not bad. [Laughter]
KS: Have you been back to Foggia?
HL: Not to Foggia. Been back to Germany and visited one of our heavily bombed targets – was Cologne, Germany. And that’s where the large cathedral is, and that’s the cathedral we were warned about to stay away from. And we did. Because it stood after the war – one of the only buildings in Cologne, Germany I believe, wasn’t it, Bill? And we bombed Italy – Dresden. Now I’ve been back to Dresden. And that’s an interesting city. That’s where all of that Dresden china comes from. And they are still rebuilding parts of some of those cities, in Dresden for instance.
There’s a cathedral there that they are still rebuilding and this cathedral, when they dismantled it before they had to put it back together, they took big, big parts of it and marked it all and put it on a computer so that they knew when they went to put it back together, where it went and so forth. So, all those parts were stored that hadn’t been put back together in this area there around the cathedral in Dresden.
As a matter of fact, my wife has a watch that has a chip from one of the stones of the cathedral in the face of the watch. And I, about eight years ago, I had the pleasure of coming across one of my relatives from – I’m of German descent – found one of my relatives in Germany who happened to have been born and raised in Germany. He was 16 years old at the time we bombed Dresden so bad. And he said his family was almost annihilated, and I can understand why after having gone through that city.
But we go back and forth. He and his wife come over to the States, and we go over there and visit him. He lives in Frankfurt. He’s a very interesting person. He took us all over into East Germany. Some of his kinfolks are there. You know they were locked in with the communists up until about 1988. They are now just coming out and rebuilding those parts of East Germany. So, it was interesting to travel through Germany. That’s all after the war, of course. But you can really tell easily by traveling through Germany that there are parts of it still not put back together, but it was damaged very heavily.
KS: Was there any animosity towards you?
HL: From my relatives?
KS: From your relatives, or any other Germans that you met.
HL: No. My relative, strangely enough, I never did tell them that I was flying over there. I never told them that I bombed their city. Because I really didn’t want him – I didn’t know what he would say. He’d probably say, you know, so what. But you don’t know. And he never knew I was a flyboy. (Transfer microphone)
KS: Would you state for the record your name and the date?
DV: My name is William “Dub” Vandegriff. The date is September 16. The year is 2000.
KS: What were your dates of service in the Army/Air Corps?
DV: My dates of service with the Army/Air Corps are approximately mid-July of ’43 through approximately mid-September of 1945. Now of course I wasn’t on the 95th Bomb Group’s base during all that time. But that includes all my training and combat experience time.
KS: And what were the dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
DV: I arrived at the 95th Bomb Group shortly after leaving Hunter Airfield in a brand-new airplane, right off the assembly line, in December, right after Christmas, of 1944. I flew over the northern route, and arrived at the 95th Bomb Group approximately two weeks later, in January of ’45.
KS: What was your principal job with the 95th?
DV: I was a radio operator on a B-17 and I was qualified as a gunner also.
KS: Your principal job was a radio operator. By that time [inaudible]?
DV: Well, what happened I think, is they determined that the operator could be doing something besides sitting at his desk when they were under fighter attack. I was at that desk the whole time unless we were under fighter attack. As soon as they announced that we were under fighter attack, or fighters were in the area, it was my duty to immediately proceed to the left waist position.
KS: What I was trying to get at is in 1944, the fighters, we were much less vulnerable to them than we had been in 1943.
DV: That’s the rumor, but don’t believe it.
KS: Well, let’s lay to rest the rumor.
DV: Well, let’s lay to rest the rumor for two or three reasons. I can never recall a mission that we flew on, even though we had been informed that we wouldn’t see any more fighters – and the fighters we were seeing were M262 jets. We were seeing what I understand they call a sled, but it was a rocket ship. They had one shot at you with the rocket. And usually, it went right through the middle of your formation. And we hadn’t – on at least two occasions that happened to us. And nobody knew it was coming. It was there and gone before you knew what it was. And we didn’t know what it was. I found that out after the war, what it was. It was a rocket ship. They fired it from a launch just like we would a V-2 rocket, only it had a pilot in it. And his instructions apparently were to try to ram or distort the formation the earliest time he could get up there because they had a very short time to fly. And it was kind of a kamikaze, Japanese style approach in trying to down bombers or disorient formations.
So, all this talk about no fighter interception and no fighters to be seen – I never experienced anything like that. I never went on a mission in which we didn’t get at least some fighter interception. I will say this, however, most of the problems that we had from enemy fire was from flak. And at that time, we had put such a heavy amount of pressure on the cities in Germany, and they were beginning to see the handwriting on the wall with the volume of planes that were coming over, that they had to pull back a lot of the 88 guns they were using against the Russians in order to do what they could with the formations of airplanes that we were sending over, which greatly reduced the fire power which the German armies on the front lines had. And that was very well brought out in a recent recording at the 1977 RAF reunion in Britain.
In that particular recording (which I have a copy of) – I didn’t attend the reunion because at that time I didn’t know anything about it – the air marshal for the RAF apparently was addressing that group of RAF and some American veterans. And he was explaining some of the heroics, well mostly of the RAF because, actually, they were doing most of the damage when we got there and for a good while after we got there. It was shortly thereafter that we started putting pressure on the whole German war machine than they did. But he went over some of the history between the 8th Air Force and the RAF, what they did, and how it culminated in putting such pressure on the homeland that they had to bring guns and personnel back to the home front to defend their homes.
One instance in that interview, the Air Marshall reported to, I forget the man’s name who Hitler had appointed who directed the operation of where supplies and ammunition should be sent to and things of that kind. Actually, he was an architect by trade, I understand. Spier. He was an architect by trade and had designed a wonderful building for Hitler. So that Hitler had a lot of confidence in him when he was at the point where he didn’t trust many people. He sent Mr. Spier to the commanding General of the armies who were trying to stop the onslaught of the Allied armies in the, what was that, the Aragon area? Ardennes. And Spier came over and talked to the General and told him that Hitler wanted him to put more pressure, more pressure on the Allies who were trying to advance in that area. And Spier told him, in no uncertain terms, what the Allied air effort had done to the whole theory, the whole plane that the Germans had for the defense of their nation.
And he says, “General, have you ever been on the receiving end of a bombardment mission?” He says, “You have to see what’s going on and witness it and be involved in it yourself.” He says, “It just completely destroys the psyche and determination and all of the training that these people have been subjected to when they’re involved in carpet type bombing which we have been experiencing in the campaign.” He says, “You go back and tell Adolph Hitler that our men are not in a normal situation over here, and we have very little chance of stopping the Allied advancement.” And he said, “The very fact that we’ve had to bring guns back from the eastern front so that German armies can stop the advancing Russians shows you how desperate we are because of the extremely heavy bombardment that our homeland is undergoing at present time.
And of course, at that time, in the early days, we had small missions, a small number of planes. When I was over there, I was on two 1200-plane raids to Berlin, which had to utterly destroy certain sections of that beautiful city. We went all the way across Germany. These fellas went on, they’d go across maybe Poland and land. We went all the way across Germany to the Ruhland oil refineries, dropped our bombs, and fought our way all the way back, off and on, under fighter attack all the way. For us, it was the longest mission that we flew. We didn’t fly over there and bomb, and continue on and land. We flew all the way across Germany, and all the way back – constant periodic fighter and aircraft attack. So, there was no joy ride. There was [sic] no easy missions, even then.
KS: Well, I apologize for having to cut this short. Thank you very much. We’ve been speaking with Bill Bramlett, Harold Lippert, and William “Dub” Vandegriff. This is Karen Sayco for the 95th Bomb Group Memorials Foundation Legacy committee. Also on hand is Sam Tarkenton. Thank you very much for your time.