Paul Peaceful
95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2002 REUNI0N ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
JM: My name is Janie McKnight, with the Legacy Committee of the 95th Bomb Group. Today we’re interviewing Paul Perceful. Paul, will you give us your name, today’s date, and where we are?
PP: Yes. My name is Paul E. Perceful. Today’s date is September 11, 2002. And we are in St. Louis, Missouri.
JM: And what were your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
PP: With the Army/Air Corps? My dates of service was from September 1940 to October 1945.
JM: And with the 95th Bomb Group?
PP: The 95th Bomb Group was just the sort of tail end of that from October of 1942 to October of 1943.
JM: And what was your principal job with the 95th?
PP: I was a co-pilot. I went from AT-6’s right into B-17’s.
JM: And can you tell us where and when you enlisted?
PP: Yes, I enlisted in Omaha, Nebraska, and got a train ticket to the Army/Air base that was taking people at the time, which was McCord Field, Washington. And that is where I arrived in October of 1940. And that was my first station. At that time, I was in the Quartermaster, but I did transfer shortly thereafter to the Air Corps.
JM: And do you have any memorable training experiences? Was there anything outstanding that you remember from that time?
PP: Well, the training experiences, as far as the early days, I was in the Quartermaster Corps, and I was a cook. And actually, I think it was the lack of training that I think most of the fellas complained about. Because my buddy went to cooks and bakers school at McCord Field, Washington, at Ft. Lewis, Washington. And then when we moved to Portland Air Base, he immediately got a job with the 37th Pursuit Squadron while I was still in the Quartermaster Corps. I was sitting around the barracks one day, and I said, “Boy, I wish I could get in the Air Force, Air Corps.” And he said, “Well, are you a cook?” I said, “Yes, I’m a cook.” I was transferred three days later to the 37th Pursuit Squadron as a cook.
JM: So how did you make the transition from cook to co-pilot?
PP: Well, I became a cook before the war started at Portland Air Base. And I was a cook for approximately ten months. I didn’t have any particular training, but nobody got deathly ill over it. And I applied through my sergeant, and he sent me to McCord Field, Washington for a physical. And I signed papers to go in as an aviation student in about February of 1942. And my papers came through to go to Santa Ana, California for the start of my training in May of 1942.
JM: So you had your training as a pilot in Santa Ana?
PP: No, that was preliminary training. We were there thirty days, marching around with unloaded infield rifles and doing KP duty. The station thereafter was Hemet, California, where I took primary training in PT-19’s. And I was there two months. Then I went to Bakers Field for basic training in BT-13’s. And I was there for two months. And then I went to Luke Field, Phoenix, Arizona, for advanced training in AT-6’s. And I was there for two months, and graduated on my birthday, November 27th, 1942 in the class of 42-K.
JM: And from there you, did you go right to England?
PP: No. From there I was assigned to go to Salt Lake City for reassignment. But I knew I was going into B-17’s. It was a chance of which group I went to. In Salt Lake City, I was assigned to the 95th Bomb Group, whose headquarters was, at that time, Geiger Field in Spokane, Washington. I reported to Geiger Field, and we were only there approximately thirty days before it was decided that the weather was not good enough for training. And the Colonel decided that we would move to Rapid City, South Dakota. And that’s what happened next. The whole group left by train – took us about two weeks to get there – we were ___________________________ most of the time. I mean, what was more important. But there was a lot of trains that were more important. The crews that were lucky got to fly back. But I got to go on the train. And when I got there, I was assigned to the crew of Captain Norman S. Rothschild, a boy from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I flew copilot all during training. And we did all sorts of things: formation flying in daytime, formation flying at nighttime, cross-country flying, and shooting landings. And we became quite associated and I think fairly skilled with the aircraft during that time.
JM: And then you were in South Dakota. And from there, did you get your orders to go to England?
PP: We didn’t get them from there. We were then shipped to Kearney, Nebraska for processing. And in Kearney, Nebraska, we made out all the paperwork, insurance and wills and whatever. And we were then shipped to Gulfport, Mississippi. Of course I was with the flying group, so we flew there. And we were stationed there for a few days. And there they opened the orders and we found out we were going to England. From Gulfport, Mississippi, we went to Palm Beach, Florida. That was our take-off place for going overseas. We flew the South American route. The first stop was supposed to be Georgetown, except we ran into a storm off the mouth of the Amazon, and there was nothing predicted. And we fought the storm for almost an hour. And finally, from 10,000 feet, we finally arrived, cleared to the deck. And our navigator at that time stated that he saw on his maps that he had got, that there was an Army/Airbase up the river at Zandray in, I think, Dutch Guyana. So we headed for, just followed the river clear on up to the airbase. We saw people on the beaches, and a couple of tribes down there waving at us because we were flying very low. And we did land that night and spent the night at Zandray. I went to a movie in a tent – can’t remember what it was. And then we took off the next day for our next station at, stop at South America. Can you stop it? (Stop in tape) The next day we took off, and flew up in the eastern tip of South America to an Army/Airbase there. And we spent a couple of days there, buying watches and what have you. Shortly thereafter, we took off at 9:15 in the evening, and headed for Dakar in the state of Senegal in South Africa. It was just dark when we got into the air. And we were instructed, if we saw any submarines, leave them alone. Don't try to do anything with them. Just by-pass them, because they probably would be enemy submarines. Our navigator gave us one course – 64 degrees. Rocky and I took turns flying all night long. It came, about 6 o’clock in the morning, it became dawn. And we headed on the same heading. We kept asking the navigator, do you want to change headings? But he kept using his little instrument and looking at the stars, and he said no, it looks like it’s going to be okay. So the next day, we stayed on the same heading – 64 degrees – until about 12 o’clock, we picked up the radio signal from Dakar airbase. And we were right on course. We couldn’t believe it, that we had flown the whole course from Natal, Brazil to Dakar, South Africa, without changing course, and hit it right on the nose. However, his luck wasn’t so good on the next lap. We landed in Dakar, and it was the first metal ramp we had ever landed on. And it scared the heck out of us because it made a terrible noise when we landed. Nobody had told us it was a metal ramp. So, that caught our attention. As we pulled up on the B-17 to the hard stand, there were a lot of natives milling around. And they were all asking, we didn’t know what for, but I figured it was for food. I had a sandwich left. It was about two days old. And I offered the sack with the sandwich in it to one of the natives. I thought I was going to lose my arm. They all grabbed for it. One of them got it and started running away, and the others begged for more, but nobody had any food. So I found that quite interesting. Later on that day, I noticed that one of the natives had taken a mattress cover, which is a single size mattress cover used for the cots, and he cut out the corners in the bottom, put his legs through it, and brought the top of it on, put a string around it, and tightened it around his waist. That was his garment. We were amazed at the poverty in that area. We didn’t stay in Marrakech, in Dakar very long. Our next stop was Marrakech, South Africa, where some of the famous people had gone for the saunas and what have you. I think Churchill used to go to Marrakech on his vacations. And the most interesting thing in Marrakech was being taken to the market in the rickshaws pulled by an individual. And the market was very interesting, if you didn’t mind the smell. We had a great time there that night. And shortly thereafter, we took off for the final leg of our flight, which was directly from Marrakech to the West Coast of England. And that flight was uneventful, though there was some chance that we could have encountered enemy fighters flying out from one area. But we didn’t find any. So, that worked out very well, and we landed at some RAF airbase on the West Coast of England. And we spent the night there. The first thing that I ordered on the menu was English rarebit, and I thought it was rabbit. And all it was was cheese on toast. I was not very happy with the meal. But the English actually did not have the type of food that we were used to, so I just shut up and ate it. The next day or two, we were prepared for a cross-country, and we went to the 91st station at Alconbury, England in the western part, which was our first airbase, which we shared – well, we were guests of the 91st, who actually had the airbase before we came. I’m running out of breath. There’s an interesting note I should point out that on the trip from Natal, Brazil to Africa, we did lose one aircraft. It went into the drink about 200 miles off the coast of Africa. And the crew was rescued, but we did loose the aircraft. Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful trip for the group. And when we first got to Alconbury, most of our flight time again was training missions, just like we had in Rapid City, South Dakota. We would go up, and we would fly formation. We would go up and we would fly night gathering. We would go up and some of us would be cross-country. So it was basically, for the first two weeks, at least, more training missions just like we’d done in the states. I guess they thought we’d lost our touch for the two or three weeks it took us to get over there. But one day, they loaded the bombs. And we went up and they said, “We’re going to hit the coast of France – a small airport. And this will be your first mission.” I think everybody’s throats tightened up, and whatever other part did. And we started off on the mission. It was hairy, because the first time you go into combat, it’s probably scarier than as you get through later. It worked out – there was no fighter combat around, and very little flak. We bombed a small field, airbase, not too far in to France. And everybody came back successfully. There were no losses. The only thing is, when they edited the photographs, we missed the airport – all we could hope was that we hit some of the German officers’ quarters. So our first mission was not a great success. But you’ve got to learn by doing. The second mission, I believe, was to Antwerp, and there we found out what the air war was about. The briefing officer told us that we would be meeting the spitfire escort from the RAF shortly before hitting the target, and to be on the lookout for them, because they would be dipping their wings to show the outline of their aircraft so that we’d know it was them. So everybody was very excited – we were going to have fighter escort. And we got approximately five or ten minutes from the target. Somebody yelled, “There’s the fighter escort!” And of course, that was great. We felt this was going to do just fine. But it so happened it was not the fighter escort. It was Herman Goering’s squadron called the Abbeyville Kids. They had yellow noses, and they were Focke Wulf 190’s. And the first pass through the formation, the lead of the four-member wing threw a bomb in the middle of the formation, hoping it would explode and get one of the aircraft. They didn’t have it timed right, so the bomb missed. But that was our initiation into the air war. It was very scary, very hairy, and there was more fighters that came besides the Abbeyville Kids, as they called it. And we did complete the mission. We dropped our bombs, and we fought our way out. As I remember, we sustained our first loss on that mission. I can’t remember the name of the aircraft, but that was our first loss, so we knew that we were in a real war. From our first mission, we had several other missions that were either milk runs, as they call it, where we received heavy flak, or where we received heavy fighters. We sustained some losses, but we did not turn back once. There was an incident that was interesting to note during one of these missions. One of the combat crew had a friend who was a paratrooper, and he had participated in one of the landings that had happened in that part of the war. He came to visit the person who was with the 95th Group, and he said, “You guys have it easy.” He said, “You don’t have anything like we have. This is a snap.” And he said, “I’d like to go on one of your missions.” So, it might have been McKnight who said, “Well, we’ll see if we can schedule you one.” So they scheduled him to go on what was considered to be a milk run. And this was a paratrooper, and he’d been in training. He’d been in combat. And he knew what the story was. So they went on this mission – I don’t recall what it was, but it was not what they thought. It did not turn out to be a milk run. There was lots of flak and there was lots of fighters. When we got back, the debriefing started, and we said, “Hey, where’s your friend?” Oh, he said he was scared stiff. He said he wasn’t going to come in and admit the fact that he was scared. He said he took off . The moral of the story is, nobody understands the other guy’s job. If I had been up and jumped with the paratrooper, I’d have been as scared as he was. But I understood what I was doing, and he didn’t. Therefore, that’s how you take and get accustomed to these things, one step at a time. He stepped into a great big first step. He was quite impressed with it. As we go on down the line, I would like to deal with the first Kiel mission that was flown on June the 13th, 1943. We knew that the Kiel gunners were all graduates, cumma sum laude from anti-aircraft schools. And it was said that they would be real good at firing, even at 25,000 feet. We did know that there would be a fair amount of fighters in the area, and that we would have a pretty rough go of it this time. What we did not know, and the weather report did not show, was the fact that there was a 100 mile jet stream I think was going in, so that our route that day was increased by about 30%. So we had a disadvantage right there. And on the way to the coast, we had two or three abortions. We were flying in the low squadron, and our leader was, our leader was Lieutenant Bender, Robert Bender – they called him Chief Bender. And when you abort from a mission, if you are a leader, you’re supposed to waggle your wings. We were following him in tight formation – the whole group was in tight formation. He chose to abort, but the ½ needle width turn to the left, which did not give us an indication that he was leaving. The whole squadron followed him. By the time we figured out what had happened, we were at 90 degrees to the whole formation. This is what started the disaster. We immediately pushed our RPM’s up to about 2500, and we were all apart. And we started the best we could do to intercept the group. I don’t know how long it took us to get there. But most of us finally did get back to the group. By this time, the fighters was shooting at everybody they could. It was about as bad as you could get. We had a terrible time because of the headwind, getting to the target. I don’t know how many we lost before we got there. On the way in, two of the aircraft behind us, or to the side of me – I don’t know what – smashed together, and I saw a ball turret spin by my right window, so I knew what had happened. We got to the target and we bombed. And the leadership that day, I should mention, was Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was an armament officer who came to the group. And he asked us to use a different formation that day. And when we started out from England, we were in a formation of his choosing. And I think it was more or less a flat formation, rather than a stacked. I don’t really remember. But as soon as we hit the coast and everybody got knocked about, nobody paid any attention to the formation. Then we went back to our usual, which was a stacked down formation. I saw his ship pull up in smoke, and it flew over to the left, and I had to take care of business – I was fighter control officer so, I had my own job to do. The copilot was the one that called out the fighters, where they came from – 1:30 high, 9 o’clock low, or whatever – and kept in touch with all the people on the aircraft. The Pilot was always on intership, so he really didn’t know what was going on the intercom whatsoever. He had maintained radio silence, unless otherwise told to do so. So the formation did the bombing, turned around and went on the course out to England. And I don’t know how many we lost on the way back. But it seemed like we never were going to get home, due to the fact that we had the headwind one way or the other. When we finally got to the coast, we didn’t even stay in formation. Everybody was so bummed out. Upon returning to the airbase, we found out that of the sixteen ships that had actually got to the target, only six of them had returned. One of the briefing officers – a Captain Probst – I saw him walking down the street after I had done my debriefing. I said, “Well, did you interview somebody?” And he said, “There’s not enough crews for me to interview.” He said, “There’s just nobody was there.” After the mission was over, I went down to the enlisted men’s barracks, and talked to two or three guys that were there. And I said, “Can anybody give me any information on who might have been in the ball turret that went past our aircraft during the trip into the target?” And one of the NCO’s said, “I think that was Sergeant Hoover.” And I said, “Sergeant Hoover?” “Yes, did you know him?” I said, “Sergeant Hoover was my echelon commander in primary school, primary flight school.” He washed out, and later I met him at Rapid City when he joined the group as a gunner. I said I knew him better than average, and I was also introduced to his wife. So I knew his wife briefly, too, from the time there. So it was a very personal thing. One of the tough aftermaths of the first Kiel mission, was the fact that so many crews had gone down. There had to be somebody go in and put an orderly package together of the individual’s personal belongings, so it could be sent back to the states to that individual’s family. And I had to participate in that, and so did other members of the crews that survived. And it was a very rough situation, but we were able to do it. And it was the final act of the June 13th Kiel mission. And one wonders if that mission, with it being so screwed up, and so dramatic, and so hellish, what would the next one be like? Well, as it so happened, the next mission was to Huls – a rubber factory quite deep into Germany. In addition to what we thought would happen, it was a perfect mission. Everything went well. We didn’t get much fighters. We didn’t get much flak. We bombed the target. And we came home successfully, so our spirits were at least raised again so that we knew we could go on and participate in the Eighth Air Force air war. There are many other missions in between that, and the next one that I’m going to mention, which was the bombing in Marienburg, Poland. Marienburg was way on the north side of Germany. We got the information from the briefing officer that there wouldn’t be a lot of fighters, and very little flak when we got there. We were routed up through the coast of Denmark, and into Marienburg, Poland at 10,000 feet. And instead of bombing at 25,000 feet that day, we were able to bomb at 10,000 feet. That made the accuracy more effective. And I think, if history recalls, the Marienburg raid was probably the most successful Air Force raid in World War II. We literally lifted that factory out of the ground. But, our joy didn’t last very long. As we came back and flew over the coast of Denmark, we were approached by ME-210’s, which were twin engine aircraft, which stayed just out of our 50-calibre range, and started lobbing rockets at us. They hit two ships in the 95th formation. Both of them had to go down. And I saw chutes bail out. But we were over the North Sea. It’s a well-known fact that, in the North Sea, you last six to seven minutes before you become unconscious. So we know that those crews – none of them survived. And to top it all off, it was almost dark, so if there were any ________________ ships around, they would not have found them. So the mission did not end well, though it started well. But that’s the way things happened. My next mission that historically is very important was the mission to Munster, which was my 23rd mission. There has been a book or two written about that, and was very well covered in the book. The thing that I remember was the fact that we led the 8th Air Force. And a friend of mine, Dewey – D.W. Johnson – was the lead bombardier on the whole 8th Air Force. And we were expecting that we would run into some fighters. And we sure as heck did. I remember getting fairly close to the target when the first group hit. Everybody thought well, that’s not too bad. But boy, more kept coming, and more and more kept coming. Our guns were firing so fast that it felt like a vibrator bed, if you’ve ever been on one. The whole aircraft was shaking. I looked up to my right, and I saw a German fighter plow right through a B-17. And the 17 separated and went down like it was in slow motion. And the fighter disintegrated. That was only one of the things that happened. I took a bullet in my right windshield behind my head that ended up, I didn’t know where. But when we got back to the base, it was in the hydraulic tank. About this time, I looked down at the low group, which was the 100th Group. They were flying with the 390th as the high group, the 95th as the mid group, and the 100th Group as the low group. And when I looked down to the 100thGroup, I saw one aircraft. I couldn’t believe it. I think they must have got out of formation and they must be somewhere in the area. I kept looking around, and I said to the left waist gunner, “Tell me where the 100th Group is.” And he looked down and said, “I only see one aircraft.” So I think the fact was later proven that that was the only aircraft flying. But I understand that there was one aircraft – this one plus one other – that got back to the 100th base. I believe that day we lost five or six aircraft, and I don’t know what the 390th lost. They were flying the high group. But it was quite a mission. But we put the bombs where we wanted them and successfully did a mission. But we had very high losses. The next mission that I was “privileged” (parentheses) to go on was Schweinfurt. I had been destined twice to make the mission to Schweinfurt. Both times dreaded it, because we knew what was there. And bot times the mission had been canceled after we got out on the hardstand. Then, I thought to myself, well, I’ve done 23 missions. I’m going to be lucky. I don’t have to go to Schweinfurt. So we got in the briefing room this morning, and the curtain was pulled down, and there was – the long dark tape into Schweinfurt. And the briefing officer gave us all the information he had. We knew that it was going to be a big one. But we didn’t know exactly how it was going to hand out to us. We were very lucky inasmuch as we were in the middle of the flow. I think according to what I saw on television, we had about 298 aircraft participating in that mission. And we were right in the middle of the groups as they went down. So it seemed that the people in the front end got the hell shot out of them. I know the 305th did. And the people in the middle only had minimum, compared to their situation – anti-aircraft and fighter fire. And then the fighters were able to go down, gas up and come back - come back up, and they shot the hell out of the last of the groups. So in essence, we only lost one aircraft that day, as I recall. But the other, some of the groups were almost obliterated. And out of 298, I believe that I heard that went on that mission, we lost 60 bombers that day. This was enough to stir up Congress, and it was enough to stir up the people who knew that the P-51’s could be equipped with different engines and fuel tanks, and could do the job. But they sat on their tails too long before they did anything. But when Congress got up on their ear, immediately they started fitting the P-51’s with different engines and wing tanks. And thereafter, the group was able to have quite a bit of fighter escort clear into Germany. That was my 24th mission. My next mission, which was my 25th, was a milk run, and it was into Duren, Germany. We started out two times to go to the target, and each time the haze was 30,000 feet thick, and they decided we couldn’t do it. We could fly in the haze, but we couldn’t see the target. So on the third try, they sent in pathfinder ships. And they were to lead us in by radar. And we were to bomb on their drop bombs, which we did. So I flew that mission at 30,000 feet, which was the highest that we had gone. But somehow the anti-aircraft still managed to get up to us. We landed with a flat tail wheel. And that was my last mission. We came out of the haze, coming back to England, about 50 miles from the French coast. And I looked over, and I saw the White Cliffs of Dover, and I figured I finally had made it. When I landed, one of the Red Cross girls was kind enough to give me a cigar – the first cigar I’d ever smoked. That’s how I celebrated my 25th mission. It seemed that it was the custom of the group, as soon as you’d finished your missions, to ship you out quite quickly to embarkation point. And I was only there two or three days. I said good-bye to the friends who were still left, which weren’t many. And they sent me Chorley, which is on the East Coast – West Coast of England, and was close to a big shipping port there. We – several of us, and I even met somebody from the 100th Group who had finished his missions. I didn’t think anybody ever finished their missions with the 100th Group. And we stayed around Chorley for 25 days or so. And we finally got orders that we’d be going back to the states. But just shortly before that happened, they said there would be a meeting in the mess hall – a Major Lavier is going to talk to you about a situation that he thinks you should know about. So we all went into the mess hall, and Major Lavier was a guy who had just come over from the states. And he said we are starting a combat training school in Ireland – a little place called _____________. And he said, “We badly need pilots, navigators, and bombardiers to help us with the combat crews that are coming over, to give them some additional specialized training. And we certainly wish that any of you who see fit to do so would sign up for a 90 day tour and go to Ireland." Well, I and six or seven of the other people sitting there thought, well, it sounded pretty good. So we did. We signed up, and we went by boat across the whatever body of water it was. And got to Ireland, got to the airbase. The big difference between England and the Irish people was the fact that the Irish butcher shops were full, where the English butcher shops had nothing. And the nice part of it was, we were allowed to go into town and buy steaks, which we never had in England (chuckling), and have the cooks cook it for us. But the colonel in charge was not too happy about that, so he knocked that off after two or three weeks. We had to eat the regular food. But that was something, really a lot of fun while it lasted. We sat around and wrote up thesises on combat, and what to do when you’re in combat, and tips that might help combat crews when they got there. But nothing happened, and in 90 days, no combat crews had ever shown up. So I said the heck with it, I wanted to go back to the states. And it was then that they decided that those who volunteered could go on back. So I was shipped back to Chorley, and very shortly thereafter came back via ocean liner into New York City on about six days trip. And it was very enjoyable, except that I sat around and played poker so much, I got constipated. And if you saw me walking the decks, you’d say, “What’s he doing out there by himself, walking the decks?” I knew why I was there (laughing). But it was a fun trip, and I was then allowed 30 days leave. And I came into the Army/Air force from Hastings, Nebraska. And I had a 30-day leave in Hastings. And then went on to Santa Monica, California for another 30 days leave, put up at a fancy hotel, and then reassigned to our next station in the states. I don’t know. That’s probably about as much as you want to know about that, wasn’t it? After going on leave in my hometown of Hastings, Nebraska, I was assigned to the west coast – Santa Monica, California, which was called redistribution station, where they put us up in a fancy hotel, and let us go out and spend all of our money on dance halls and whatever girls were available. And from there on, all the guys were assigned all over the United States. I was assigned to go back to Sebring, Florida where I went through B-17 training again. I guess they thought that in the 60 days, or whatever it was, we had lost all of our talents. So I went through the exact training that the first pilots went through before they took the ships and went overseas with us. And then after that, I was assigned to Galveston, Texas for instructor’s training, which was more flying B-17’s, night bombing, night formation, day formation, cross-country, what have you. And finally ended up at Alexandria Army/Air Force Base, Alexandria, Louisiana. And I decided that I probably wanted to end my military career for World War II. And was discharged in October of 1945. I ended my military career until 1951, in which case I was recalled for 24 months to fly C-26’s in the Korean situation. I did not go overseas, because I had enough points to keep me from going overseas, until I didn’t have enough time left that it was useful. So I lucked out on that one. My last job was dropping paratroopers who were in training at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Sometimes we hit the target, sometimes we didn’t. But it was very interesting and that was the end of my military career.
JM: Thank you so much for taking the time today to tell us…
PP: Glad to do it. Sorry I caused you some trauma there.
JM: Oh, that’s quite all right. And thank you also for your contributions during World War II.
PP: Glad to do it. And I’ll send you the tape. A lot of it will be what I told you today, but it will be other things that I forgot to mention that would possibly be interesting from a historical point.
JM: That would be wonderful.