John Gross

95TH BOMB GROUP (H)

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

2004 REUNION         WASHINGTON, D.C.

 (Interviewed by Janie McKnight)

JC:  I’m Janie McKnight with the 95th Bomb Group Legacy Committee.  Today we’re interviewing John Gross.  John, for the record, will you state your name, today’s date, and where we are.

JG:  John Gross, 9/11/04 in McLean, Virginia.

JC:  What were your dates of service with the Army Air Corps?

JG:  I went in February 1st, 1943 and came out about April, 1945.

JC:  And what were your dates with the 95th Bomb Group?

JG:  From October of ’44 until late March of ’45.

JC:  And what squadron were you in?

JG:  336th squadron.

JC:  And what was your principle job with the 95th?

JG:  Pilot – First Pilot.

JC:  Where and when did you enlist in the service?

JG:  In Reading, PA back in 19 – late ’42.  And then I didn’t go in until February 1st of ’43. 

JC:  Do you have any memorable training experiences to relate?

JG:  Well, it’s interesting in that a little over two years that I was in the service – I think I was at about 23-26 different stations.  They moved you around a lot.  They first sent us to Miami on a day train, and we were there a month.  And then they sent us to Western Reserve University in Cleveland on a day train, and back to Montgomery, Alabama where they classified you.  And from there went to Seabring, Florida and had PT-17 training.  That was a great aircraft.  I enjoyed that.  At that time, Seabring was really out in the boondocks.  So that was a bi-plane.  Of course a number of fellas washed out.  And from there we went back to Montgomery, Alabama and flew the BT-13, which was called the ______________ Vibrator.  It was the first place we got into some night flying.  The instructor took me up very briefly.  He was angry because he had to instruct me that night and __________ fly, and did a quick fly about, and landed and said “It’s all yours.”  It was interesting to go up by yourself at night for the first time.  Of course that was another situation where there were some washouts.  It was good training there in that we had bad weather a lot of times, and all we did was take off and shoot landings.  As a result, I think you need a lot of coordination.  I think that’s the most critical part to flying – taking off and landing.  So we did that a lot there.  And then went to Albany, Georgia for AT-10’s, twin engine training.  Two of us graduated as instructors, and I was one of them.  We instructed for a short time.  And I think that was more dangerous than combat.  I came with a fella one night.  I said, “Are you ready to land this aircraft?”  And he said, “Oh yeah.  I have everything – the wheels down, the flaps, this and that and so forth.  So I remarked to him “Do you notice everybody’s landing the other direction?”  So, some experiences like that.  My papers had been cut then to go to Seabring and be instructed in B-17’s.  They were war weary planes, but that was another experience.

JC:  Tell me about how you got over to England, and eventually to the 95th.

JG:  Well, at Planter’s Park near Tampa, near McDill Field, that’s where we picked up our crew.  And we had 10 to start.  Then we went over to McDill Field and trained as a crew.  It was interesting…one evening, one night…the maintenance of the aircraft were  very poor.  It took us four planes til we had a plane that we could fly in that one night.  They had an award for crew of the week.  And our crew won crew of the week three times, which was more than anyone else.  So I was proud of the people we had.  So after we completed our training there, we went to Savannah, Georgia and there took a new aircraft and flew it to Bangor, Maine, and Goosebay, Labrador, Rechivik, Iceland, and on into Wales.  From there they assigned you the base.  We had nothing to do with that selection.  From there we got to the 95th.  

JM:  When did you arrive at the the 95th?

JG:  I think that was October of ’44.

JM:  How was your first mission?
JG:  Well, you know, you’re always apprehensive.  Our first mission I do remember was to Hahn, Germany.  Of course, we had done quite a bit of practice flying with the crew.  It was not difficult.  I sort of took it, if you want to call it, the opinion, the philosophy or whatever – I was not afraid to fly.  If we, God forbid, would be killed or whatever, that’s a price we’d have to pay for our country.  I really didn’t sweat the missions.  The one thing you did in combat was you flew the old aircraft when you first started.  And as you progressed, you flew better aircraft, which that made a difference.  Our third mission was to one of the oil fields – I think Leipzig.  It was a very, very difficult mission.  A fella who I was flying on his wing said “This is my last mission after we drop the bombs.  You follow me – I’ll get you out of there.  We’re going to come home safely.”  And he did that.  It was a very difficult mission.  

JC:  Were there any other memorable missions that stand out in your mind?  

JG:  I think when you went to marshalling yards, or when you went to oil factories.  I think the weather was difficult factor in England.  We had the worst winter that they’d had in 13 years.  So we did have snow.  We had – water would lie in the puddles there for, I think, for three months.  It didn’t dry.  The weather in England was difficult.  We aborted – didn’t get off the ground – maybe three or four times as a result of the weather.  As I said the other evening, one of our missions we had to climb to 20,000 feet before we broke out of the clouds.  Another mission we flew over to, I think is was Vienna, in the dark by ourselves, and then formed over there.  And going over the English Channel the other airplanes cleared their 50 calibre guns.  You would see these traces going across in front of you.  That was sort of a different experience.  One time we were bombing Cologne, but the lead navigator got us 20 miles away from the target.  It was a mistake.  And so we flew for like 20 minutes or less with the bomb bay doors open, in formation.  It was sort of a harrowing experience, because when you got on the bomb run, you never took evasive action.  And going on that mission and a plane was _________________ went over front of us.  On another mission, we were taking off, and would circle the field until we got the formation formed.  There was lad – I can’t remember his name, but he was a very good pilot.  Somehow he didn’t come in and join us properly and he flew right through our formation, and he almost took a number of us out.  There were things like that.  We were in a training mission one time and the field’s socked in.  We couldn’t find the runway.  The only thing we had was a little crosshair to guide us down.  And sometimes you’d hone on the hanger rather than this directional thing.  Our bombardier had to lie in the nose of the plane, and he said “When I find a runway, I’ll tell you where it is.”  So that’s how we got in that time.  One time we had an ice storm.  And the command there at Horham said that we had to go up slow time aircraft.  Get your engines ready.  And I said “I really don’t think we should fly today because the runway’s icy.”  And we didn’t have reverse props, or anything like that.  And he said “No, you have to take that plane up and fly.”  So anyway, we got up.  From my practicing landings I got pretty adept in that.  I set it down at the end of the runway and got it stopped.  But in the interim, three of the other planes went over the end of the runway and crashed.  And I thought that was quite a waste, really.  Another time we couldn’t get into our field, and they took us into another small fighter field, and we landed there.  I think the flak was very good from Germany.  I was supposed to go to Berlin three times, but with the weather or whatever, it was aborted three times.  We did go towards Berlin one time, but then we went to Dresden.  I think that’s the time – we weren’t explained why – but I think that’s the time that they had the fire bombing of Dresden, if you remember that.  And one mission we had, we went to the Sweinemunde.  We flew up the North Sea across the Danish peninsula and the Sweinemunde.  We went by this harbor and there were ships on their sides and so forth.  But the purpose of the mission was to help the Russians to get to Berlin.  Another time we flew over the ___________________, if you remember that.  That was socked in for three or four days.  In order to impress our ground troops, they had us fly right over the ____________________.  The Germans had captured some of our ‘88’s and we were flying toward the ______________________.  I could see these ‘17’s spinning down, and so forth.  It brought tears to my eyes.  We could have gone 60 miles south or so forth and averted that, and not lost any aircraft.  Of course you make a lot of decisions like that.  We were on some of the missions – you’d have 1200 aircraft up there.  From 25,000 feet, you can probably see 50 to 75 miles, so you can see out there pretty well.  As far fighters, we did not have a lot of fighter problems because we had the ‘51’s flying with us.  It did give us good support.  On about three occasions we had chaff missions.  I don’t know if you know what that is, but anyway.  What you would do, you would go ahead of the group.  Your radioman would throw out this aluminum foil.  The aluminum foil would go under the group, and the radar from the ground, instead of striking the aircraft, would reflect off of this chaff.  We did that, I think, two or three times.  You’re out there all by yourself.  You’re sort of available to anybody – any fighters or anything like that.  We did have an engine blow up one time.  Number three, the master cylinder blew off.  And we had a new co-pilot that day, and we practiced feathering engines many, many times.  He froze.  He just couldn’t do anything.  Of course we had a wonderful engineer on our plane, and he came.  “What’s going on?”  And so I told him and he immediately went down and got the runaway engine taken away – reduced.  In the interim, what happens there, is if you don’t feather that engine right away, it tends to windmill and the oil congeals and freezes, and it will rip the engine right out of the airplane.  So it’s critical to have things like that.  Another time something happened, and the engineer rode in the top turret, and he had to do something mechanically.  And the co-pilot got out of his seat.  And he didn’t hook up his oxygen, his portable oxygen properly.  When the engineer found him, he had passed out.  I think in about 21/2 to 5 minutes you can die when you’re up to 28,000 feet.  And fortunately, he got oxygen to him and revived him.  Another time we had a fire in the aircraft.  When we got back they told me about it.  They said, “We didn’t want to tell you about it.  We put it out.”  We had a wonderful crew.  They were the great at that.  We went on our last mission to Hamburg.  We went into 22,000 feet.  I don’t know why we went to Hamburg.  We had six 1,000 pound bombs aboard.  Our bombs, I didn’t feel, could penetrate the depth of the concrete at a submarine dock.  It got very, very difficult.  We were really being slammed.  Flying combat makes a religious person out of you.  And I know there were two other times that I prayed for assistance.  But this day I said, “Dear Lord, what should I do?”  And for what it’s worth, it came back this quick:  Kick left rudder.  And I kicked left rudder, and I went out here like this, and I’m here to tell you about it.  Later on in life one time, in business, I was praying.  I owed a lot of money. And it came to me just like that:  Have I let you down before?  But anyway, I think combat made religious people out of a lot of people.  When we went to the services, it was difficult to get a seat a lot of times.  I think our base did lose, I think, 1106 men, or something like that.  We were very fortunate.  My wife asked me one time, “Are there times when you could have died?”  I said, “Yes, a thousand times.”  But we were just fortunate.  They had offered us to fly in returning home – well they offered me to be a lead ship and advance me to captain.  I said, “You asked me to do 35 missions and I did it.  You have plenty of pilots.  I want to go home.  I have a job and have a girlfriend.”  Then they offered us to fly a war weary B-17 back to the states.  I said, “I don’t really want to do that because you’re going against the prevailing winds and there’s a lot of water out there, and so forth.”  And so we came home on a Liberty ship and hit three storms – took us 13 days to get to Boston.  It was terrible.  I didn’t tell the crew that I’d made that decision on my own.  They were a little upset with me. That’s about it, real quickly.

JC:  Tell me more about your crew.  Was there anyone that was particularly memorable?

JG:  The navigator was the valedictorian of 600 students in his class in Milwaukee – exceptional intelligence.

JC:  What was his name?

JG:  Dan Jaworski.  And he was the youngest man in the crew, but he was the first one of us to die when we got back to civilian life.  He had a heart attack and a year or so later, he died.  He was a marvelous fella.  When we took a new plane across the ocean, we were between Goose Bay, Labrador and Rechivik, Iceland and the co-pilot and I fell asleep.  And after a while he called and said, “What’s going on here?  We’re making a turn.”  So the gyro had toppled.  Of course that kept us awake from there on.  We were on a mission one time, and the weather was sort of bad.  We were in the inside of a turn, and the airspeed dropped down too low.  I called him and I said, “I have to drop out of here because we’re on the inside.  We’re going to stall out.  There’s nothing we can do. What do you recommend?”  He said, “You follow this heading and we’ll get to the Danish coast and meet our group and we’ll go on in and make the bomb run.”  We got to the Danish coast and there they were.  We joined them and went on in.  And I asked him, for every mission, that he would make me a map, and where we were at certain times.  Because if something should happen, if he should die or something, I really wouldn’t know where I am at a given time, or if we got separated.  One time we were going in over – I forget where, it was a small target.  The tail gunner called and said, “We’re going to be hit.”  Well, anyway, we had 12-12-12 and carry two extra planes – 38 planes in a squadron.  And the one squadron got above us a time to drop the bombs.  And so I took evasive action. And you can see these bombs - I think there were 250 pounders that day – going right outside of the wing there.  And I called to the bombardier – we didn’t carry bomb sights at that time because we bombed off the lead plane.  “What do you think we should do, George?”  He said “You just follow this heading and I’ll _________________ 250 yards.”  At this little town at crossroads at the railroad was a building with a great big red cross on it.  And these bombs went right across the town, hit that building, and it must have been full of munitions.  It really blew up.  So we did have some excellent crew – just very good.  And we had a wonderful ground crew.  And just like the man said the other night.  It’s too bad we didn’t have the names and could do something about that.  It was just great.  War is a big waste of everything – your natural resources and everything, really.  So, that’s about it in a nutshell.

JC:  Do you have any specific memories of the ground crew?

JG:  As I mentioned the other night at the meeting, the head of the ground crew came to me one day and he said, “Sir, there’s a new ruling put out that it’s more important to have clean airplanes than to have mechanical airplanes.  And I said, “You just keep ours mechanically, and if I called up about it, I’ll take the consequences.”  I said, “I’d rather have a mechanically good aircraft than one that’s not real good.”  The more missions you had, usually the better aircraft you got.  One time when we were in the ‘20’s they gave me an old aircraft.  I went in and rebelled about it.  The squadron commander said, “I could have you court-martialed.”  I said, “OK, court martial me, but that’s been the policy.”  He never court-martialed me.  We did fly good aircraft.  The aircraft that we shared with another crew, they were lost on their 35thmission to Berlin.  And we never heard what happened to them.  Then they wanted me to instruct new crews as they came over, and even go along with new crews on their first mission.   I said, “Hey, I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want to go with an inexperienced crew on their first mission.  We had crew that came into our barracks. They were different.  Anyway, I was to take them up one day to introduce them to combat flying and so forth.  And we were flying formation that day, and the windshields of a B-17 are not supposed to clog up.  We ran into a funny snow storm, and the windshields completely were full of snow.  You could hear this snow in the engines, the cells, and so forth.  Why we didn’t have a mid air collision that day, I don’t really know.  But this crew went out on their first mission and were hit by flack, and crash landed in Switzerland.  Because they landed in a neutral country, they couldn’t fly in that theatre anymore.  They went home.  So all that training – they never completed one mission.  One other time, we had a tremendous cross wind.  Our runway was only 6,000 feet long.  They had a couple ‘17’s __________ on the cross runway, which was shorter.  And they  trouble getting off, but they did get off.  And so the tower called us and said, “Just keep the stick back into your lap.”  So I always would open up the engines wide open before I let the brakes off, and we held the stick back, and we went down that runway.  And just right at the end it lifted off.  I thought that was our last day.  I did see two or three planes crash on takeoff with bombs and everything on several occasions.  That sort of makes you feel real bad.  It’s a critical time because when you’re taking off, you’re not quite up to the airspeed and you have to be very careful you don’t pull it up too tight and everything else.  We did have a lot of experiences.  One other quick thing.  The Germans had said big B – I don’t know if you ever heard this story – would be destroyed by a V-1 at a certain day at a certain time.  And I’m going to say like, 8:30.  And the V-1 came across the field – right across Horham.  But it never shut off.  It just kept going.  But we were all in the bunkers and everything else.  And I was in London when the V-2’s crashed.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with those.  They’re the ones that went way up rockets.  The Germans really – there was no defense with the V-2.  I think they had 1,000 pound warhead.  One time we were in London on leave.  We got three days off every three weeks, and we’d go to London.  They had good restaurants and plays and so forth.  But they would really rattle the cage when you were ____________ a couple of blocks away.   When you would fly into the target in the morning, you could see them at times because the sun would reflect off the nose cone of these B-2 rockets.  And of course the Germans had the jets before we did.  There was one time, I know, a twin engine German jet went by us.  ________________ the crew alerted me to that fact.  They said, “Why didn’t you fire at them?”  They said, “They passed us so fast, you couldn’t get the guns on them.”  We only cruised like 165 miles an hour.  I don’t know if you’re aware of this.  And when we got to the target area, we’d try to get a tail wind to pick us up another 100 miles an hour.  So it would take us to 265 across the target instead of the 165.  There was one time when they wanted us all to fly across Paris to impress the French with what we were doing.  And when we flew across, it was total cloud cover.  We never saw a thing in Paris.  Another thing – and maybe the military won’t like this – we had some bombs left sometimes.  They used to have us drop them on certain cities – just drop them.  Frankfurt was one of those communities.  After the war, I met a man.  He said, “Did you ever bomb Cologne?”  I said, “Yeah, we did.”  And he said, “This girl lived over here.  She was a waitress in this restaurant.”  She said, “Yeah, we used to have tunnels between the houses and if it hit a house, at least we could get to the next house.”  And really, there were so many people that were at Horham and in combat that have stories that are much better than I do, really.

JC:  Have you ever been back?

JG:  Yes, we were back twice.  And like I said the other night, the people in Horham were wonderful.  And there was a writer who made a wonderful speech.  Maybe I told you about this.  I found it in one of the magazines about six weeks ago.  It’s in one of the magazines I saw down in the Red Feather sales room the other night.  We went back.  You know, they had given money for the bells – that little church.  You probably heard that.  And they had a wonderful reunion for us.  Really, just wonderful people.  

JC:  1992?
JG:  Yeah.  And the one lady said, “I was just a little girl.  I was walking to school when I saw one of your planes crash.”  And she said, “You know, it’s still up here.”  One thing I think, we did have food, but they gave us terrible breakfasts to go fly at altitude, you know.  In those days you didn’t – you had something to eat, really.  But I think the choice of food – fried food before you go to altitude isn’t the greatest, really.  I think that’s about it, really.

JC:  Once you got home, after that terrible boat ride, how was your homecoming?
JG:  That was fine, except the services are the services.  We came into Boston, then we went to Fort Dix and I had a month’s leave.  And then they gave me a train ticket to Santa Ana, California to be reclassified.  And they asked me three questions:  Do I want to instruct B-29’a, do I want to fly air transport command, or do I want to go home?  Well, the B-29’s used to come in at McDill when they had engine problems.  I don’t want to fly B-29’s.  The air transport command planes – oil would run out of the engines and everything else.  So I said I want to go home.  So they gave me a ticket to come back to Pennsylvania.  I always thought, they could have asked me those three questions at Fort Dix.  But at least I didn’t go there in a day coach.  I did have decent accommodations.  Everything else in the service was on a day coach.  So you sleep between the seats, or on the seats or whatever.  But it was war time, and you were young.  I always feel that if you’re going to go into the service, you have to be young and dumb.  

JC:  How old were you when you were in the 95th?
JG:  I went in prior to my 21st birthday.  I was 21 on February 15, 1943.  I thought, jeez, couldn’t they wait until I was 21?  But anyway, I went in at 20 and came out at 23.  There was not really opportunities for flying.  And I thought I had so many close encounters.  If you fly long enough, it’s going to get you.  So that’s why I gave up flying.  I wanted to be in the automobile business.  I had a job in Reading in the automobile business, which didn’t work out.  That’s sort of the story.  

JC:  Thank you so much for taking the time during this reunion and also for your service during World War II.

JG:  Thank you for doing this.  I think it’s wonderful.  And there are so many men that have stories, really, far exceeding my experiences.

JC:  It all counts.  Thank you again.  

JG:  Thank you.