Elmer "Lucky" McGinty

95 th BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

2001 Reunion, Las Vegas, NV

This is Sam Tarkington from the Legacy Committee of the 95th Bomb Group interviewing Elmer “Lucky” McGinty.  Welcome, Lucky..  Could you state your name, where we are and the date, please.

LM:  My name is Elmer “Lucky” McGinty, it’s October 4th , and we’re at the Monte Carlo Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas.

ST:  Can you tell me your dates of service with the 95 th Bomb Group?

LM:  Just with the 95th?  That was from end of October to end of May, oh  43 to 44.

ST:  You were in which Squadron?

LM:  336 th .

ST:  And your principal MOS?

LM:   Armorer/Gunner.

ST:  Now, let’s go back a little ways.  Tell me about when you joined.

LM:  I enlisted on 1/27/41, my brother and I.  He was a year older.  We enlisted together.

ST:  Where did you enlist?

LM:  Philadelphia, PA.  

ST:  Is that where you were from?

LM:  Yes.

ST:  Then for training you were up at….

LM:  The first base was Lowry  Field.  Was there in a couple of days by train. I was there until Spring of 42. I was on the ground crew of an AT-6 in Hangar #2 at Lowry Field and I worked in airdrome maintenance.  We had to clean the snow off in the wintertime and it was a job keeping that snow off at Lowry field.

ST:  When did you become a gunner and armorer?

LM:  Well, then my brother and I went up to  ??        Field.  They opened up that field.  Of course, it was all sand - a terrible place.  Did you ever read that poem about             ?  I’ve got a copy somewhere. It’s like going to hell, they say, you know.

ST:  Make a copy of it and send it to us - the 95 th Legacy Committee.

LM:  After we were there a little while, toward the end of 42 they wanted me to go to glider pilot training.  I didn’t want any part of that so I went to gunnery(?) school.  My brother did too.

We went to Las Vegas for gunnery school.  I never did come to town. This is where they said it was, so I took their word for it.  When I finished gunnery school, then I went back to Lowry Field.  Went to armament school.  Is this what you want to know?  After I finished armament school, they sent us - I always say us because we always went together, my brother and I - we went to Will Rogers Field, Oklahoma City, assigned to an A-20 Group.  We were training in A-20s    I know I was there for the summer - or spring - and then for some reason they sent us for reassignment.  I guess they were making a push on heavies; decided to transfer a bunch of us into heavies.  That’s when we went to Texas -  Pyote  That’s where we got together with our crew.  8 of us trained there. For advanced B-17 training we went to Delhard and picked up the other two members of our crew.  Delhard.  Finished up our training there and were shipped overseas by way of Scott Field along the way and Camp Kilmer, NJ.  They put us on - there were 50 (?) crews of us.  I still have a record of those crews. I did research on how many of them went to the 95 th out of that 50.  We went over on the Queen Elizabeth.  They picked me at random when we landed to ???? to unload the boat.    So they gave me 35/40 men that were from Puerto Rico -  they were US citizens but they were all from Puerto Rico.  Just the one could speak English.

I stayed there 2 weeks in Glasgow to get the boat unloaded.  My crew had gone ahead and I didn’t even know what Group they’d gone to until I got my orders to catch up to them.  Then I got my orders to catch up with them and I took the train from Glasgow.  Stopped overnight at

a RAF base and they treated me royally. They gave me a couple of pair of gloves.  I still have one pair of them.  Then I caught up with my crew at Horham.  Of course, they had already had some

practice missions, training and all the other…   I just joined them and we continued .. Do you have other questions?

ST:  Yeah, I would like to ask, how long was it before you guys actually flew a combat mission after you finally got to Horham.

LM:  Our first mission wasn’t until the 30 th of December.  Fredrickshaven.   That was our first mission.

ST:  It was my father’s last mission.

LM:  It was his last mission. Oh, wow, I was talking to somebody else who -- maybe it was -- re  Do you have a relative  here or something?

ST:  Just my wife.

LM:  I thought I talked to somebody else who said that it was their relative’s last mission.  So, what else?

ST:  Do you want to tell me about some of the missions you flew that were some of the most memorable

LM:  Well, I finally did some research and I got all my - I did have my list of missions that I finished.  Most everybody got one of those. That lists all that.  My son wanted to do this, so we, of course I can’t put all this on tape.  These are all the planes - I flew in 16 different planes for 29 missions. So Paris was a memorable one that was my 2 nd mission.  We were told to schedule to bomb right about 12:30 noon. I think the French people all wanted to be out of the factory away from it, you know.  We came in on the bomb run, dropped our bombs and two 500 pounders got caught in the bomb bay doors.  I was the armorer, I had armed the bombs when we got there so I was still in the bomb bay when the bombs were being released to make sure that they went all right.  So instantaneously I had to jump down in the bomb bay without a parachute on or anything on to get those bombs out of there.  We didn’t want them dropping just anywhere, you know.  So I managed to do it.   …….it up.?

ST:  Did the armorer - were you the top turret gunner?

LM:  No, I was a waist gunner.  I originally was a tail gunner but because I was the first armorer and assistant radioman, they moved me off to the waist so that I’d be closer to the positions.

My job was to arm the bombs when we got in the air.  We got rid of those bombs.  One of the pilots when we left the plane, going back towards debriefing, he was talking about wanting to recommend me for the Silver Star, but I talked him out of it.  I mean, I didn’t think it was any big deal.  Besides, we were only on our 2 nd mission and I didn’t want any ???? On my crew that I was trying to get medals or something.  So he didn’t do it.  I was glad of that.

ST:  Any other memorable missions?  This has got quite a few of them down here.

LM:  Yeah, the Kiel Mission was the 3 rd missions.  We got shot up bad there.  The 2 nd mission we flew in Heavenly Days which was a different plane than the 1 st mission.     ???? Was rough too.  There were very few missions that we came back without serious damage that we couldn’t fly the plane the next time.  Paris was Heavenly Days.  Kiel was Cuddle Cap - was the plane we flew - pretty severe damage then too.  You go out over the North Sea, go through Denmark and by the time you get there they’re waiting for you. They hit you all the time you’re there till you start back.  Just like the Poland missions.  We went up over there and they just waited for you.

Anyhow, we flew that mission.  Ironically, that plane went down the next day - with another crew, of course. It was lost the next day.  

ST:  I see you were on the 2 nd mission to Berlin.

LM:  Yes.  I was in the March 6 th , I was in that - there were 4 planes that I flew in previous to that mission that went down in that mission.  This one didn’t have a name but I have the number of it, you know.  These 2 they went down on March 6, that went down on March 6 th …………..

ST:  Did you have your same crew throughout this period?

LM:  Yes.  Well, our tail gunner quit after the first mission.  We had to get a different tail gunner all the time.  See this one went down March 6 th , this one March 16 th , this one went down March 6 th , there were 4 planes that I had flown in previous that went down on March 6 th .   Course that was ?         And Rostock missions.  The first mission to Rostock was on February 20 and, of course the target was Posnan.  We couldn’t bomb Posnan so our alternate target was Rostock.

They hit us real bad coming back.  It was a long mission.  I think they give us credit for what?

Actually we were in the air almost 12 hours.  I don’t whether they count this when you rendezvous - I don’t know how they count that time.

ST:  On that Berlin mission, I notice you have an ME-109.

LM:  Yeah, they gave me credit for one for the mission, yeah.  It was after the time we were coming back when we lost all those planes and one of the planes was straggling trying to catch up to us.  It was down low on our left. I was the left waist gunner and after a while there were three planes way in the distance.  Fighter planes that were just cruising along.  Most of my crew thought they were P-51s but I was pretty darn sure they were 109s.  So I kept my guns trained on them and finally they peeled off to get this other guy and I started firing and the first went through his belly and he had armor plate underneath. And peeled off and the second one came and he through his belly up.  I think he saw my tracers I guess.  He peeled off and the third one just kept coming and I knocked his tail off.  He went down. The other plane corroborated it so nobody else on my plane was firing.  That’s how I got - it was hard to get credit.  If you have a bunch of people firing in the plane ……

ST:  They all think the shot was theirs?

LM:  Sure.

ST: Any other missions?

LM:  Well the Augsberg.  That was actually worse than Berlin.  I mean, they were all bad, but  for us that’s the one we had our nose all shot up and that was on the 16 th and I was flying I DOOD IT BERLIN BESSIE. We were flying that plane.  The one that’s in that picture out there.  That’s what we were flying.  They hit us just as we were leaving the target and  a 20 millimeter exploded and it just about blew the whole nose off the plane.  The bombardier was all shot up and  they knocked the oxygen off.  You know Bob Carter, he was my navigator.  He was up in the nose with him.  He got wounded.  In the end we had to pull him back up behind the cockpit wrap him in heavy flying equipment and give him an oxygen ?? keep him alive, you know.  The rumor was that he had 300 pieces of shrapnel in him when we got him back.  Course, I have never seen him again after that.  When I finished my missions I went into charge of quarters or headquarters for something and inquired about him because I had to fly an extra mission or two after my crew finished.  They told me he was dead.  Of course, he had been moved up to London.  They told me he was dead and I didn’t know he wasn’t dead until 1985 when they had that reunion in Boeing.  That’s where I ran into my pilot Gene Cavallier and the radio operator and Bob Carter and they said they had just contacted him a year or two before and he was still alive

So Bob, I thought he’d contact his widow because he was there when he got married and they got married in Denver, I think.  Yeah,  right before he went overseas.  He was alive.  So we did get together a couple of times.  He’s since passed away - of course, a lot of them have.   Probably one of the worst missions was that one there.  

ST:  We know that none of you guys like to talk about being heroes …. I notice something here that on May 1 st of 44 mission you were recommended for a DFC.  Could you tell me about it?

EM:   It was fairly automatic actually because after you flew so many missions and they knew, you know, the problems you had and they gave you so many Air Medals with Oak Leaf Clusters and they figured why, they’d better give you the DFC.  So, actually, I got it on the day after I finished my missions.  May 9 th was when they actually gave it to me.  The day after I finished my mission.

ST:  Did you witness or participate in anything that you thought was particularly heroic in any of these missions?

EM:  Well, it was all repetition.  I mean my pilot was, you know, just to be able to keep us in the air was heroic, you know.  Just keeping us in formation and then when we had to leave formation and getting us back.  He was one great guy.  He was older - 10 years older than I was.  He was married and had a child.  Real dependable.  He had been in the Marines 4 or 6 years before he transferred to the Air Corps and went to flight school.  He was one tough guy.  He just died about a year and a half ago.  

ST:  The other crew members?

EM:  Well, my right waist gunner saved my life incidentally because I sometimes before we left England I would take a nap and I hooked my oxygen mask up so I wouldn’t have to do it when we over a certain altitude.  On this one mission I can’t tell you which one it was.  It was one of the early missions - I must have fell over a little bit and cracked my oxygen mask and wasn’t getting any oxygen when we hit the altitude.  Apparently I turned blue and he happened to see it. We have what we call an emergency nozzle and he turned that and it was just like having a hose hit you.  The oxygen came out with a force instead of just breathing it.  It was hooked up above you.  He brought me back that way.  Maybe that’s why I’ve been a little tense?????

? I have a question for you now. How could you sleep at the start of a mission?

LM:  I didn’t have any trouble. You’re always … If anyone ever said they weren’t afraid  and nervous, I mean, but that was a way of relaxing trying to get rid of it.  

?:  Did you do that on one mission?

LM:  Yes, I did.  It took a long time to form up and get ready before you ever started  over.  Of course, I spent a lot of time in town.  Always catch the last train back.

ST:  Tell me about your free time in Horham - the kinds of things you did. You said you didn’t drink.

LM:  I didn’t smoke, either.  I always went in to Norwich, that’s where I went.  Take a truck to Dis and then catch the train to Norwich. In fact, one of my nicknames over there was Lord Mayor of Norwich because I spent so much time there.  

ST:  What did you do in Norwich?

LM:  Played around with the girls.  Everybody else did.  I had a restaurant there that I used to go to.  Rations were very -in fact I have a page out of Life Magazine out in my car right now that has a girl sitting on a stage and it says “Buy a raffle ticket for a lemon.”  The raffle thing is full of raffle tickets - they’re raffling off one lemon.  That’s how scarce things were in England at that time.  Thousand of raffle ticket to raffle off one lemon.  Some of the girls had worked in this restaurant used to save their ration coupons so they could have food for me when I’d come in.  That helped.  I didn’t have to go back for my meals at the base.  That’s where I spent most of my time was in Norwich.

ST:  I’m going to ask you a question - you don’t have to answer????? Couple of things that you

May want to talk about.  Some scrapes you got into during your career.

LM:  Yes, going into Service so young - I hadn’t even graduated high school.  At that time it was all enlisted men - the draft hadn’t gotten into all citizens yet - hadn’t gotten into full swing yet -

January 41.  These guys thought they were pretty tough and they tried to push you around.  I had to defend myself.  I got into some scrapes.  

?:  With oxygen…

LM:  Yeah, that one.  

ST:  Do you want to put that on your record.

EM:  I don’t know whether I should or not.  It’s really nothing to be proud of. It’s just that it happened and I got busted even before that.  Cavallier, he’s the one went in.  I was the only private in the crew.  He went in to tell me that they had to give me my rank back.  When you go overseas without getting my rank back.  So he got it back for me. Before I went overseas.  

ST:  Once you got to England - no more fighting?

EM:  NO.  I did miss a mission.  I was in Norwich - what I used to do - like I said, I spent so much time in Norwich that I had signals with the charge of quarters.  They always put a flag out: a white, blue and red flag  A white meant that there was no mission.

ST:  At the base?

EM: Yeah.  At the Squadron HQ.  If the white flag was out there was no mission - no chance.  If the blue flag was out there was a chance of a mission but the weather might prevent it or whatever.  If there was a red flag out there was definitely a mission.  I called up and what we said

“I’ve got a cookie for my Grandmother” or whatever we had prearranged.  I knew there was a mission;  there was a red flag out.  I caught the last train back to Dis and when the trains came in there was always a 6X6 or some vehicle there to take you to the base.  I don’t know how many miles but it was too far to walk.  Probably about 10 miles or so to Horham.  There wasn’t a vehicle in sight.  I waited and I waited and I waited.  There were a few other guys there, too.

Finally about 5 o’clock a truck started pulling in.  I said what the heck was the matter?  Well, we were using all the vehicles to take the men to briefing and to the hard stand for the missions and all this other stuff.  I said well, how the heck could they do that.  I’ve been here since whatever it was -12 o’clock - got back there. Well you’ll have to find out when you get back there.  Well, when I got back they told me that what happened was that they rousted the guys up about 1 o’clock and, of course, the other people knew all about it.  They used all the vehicles.  What they did was they loaded the bombs and they put the men in the ships, sent them up and they flew a practice mission towards France.  Then came back and reformed over the field and flew to Brunswick without landing.  They did land but took right off again.  I missed the mission.

ST:  What did they do to you?

EM:  They didn’t do anything.  I told them what happened.  Just an unfortunate circumstance. They could have said, Well you shouldn’t have left the base.  You were allowed to leave the base.  

ST:  Tell me what it was like to finish your missions and go home.

EM:  Well, that’s why I had  to extra missions.  My pilot only had to fly 28.  I had to fly 29. What happened was that when they changed the amount of missions from 25 to 30, it depended upon how many missions you had in - how many you had to do.  Like if you had 24 missions and you’d do your next one and that was it.  If you had 23 missions in you might have to fly 26 or 27.  I don’t know exactly, but  I think I had 19 or 20 missions in whatever, so they assigned me 29 missions.  That’s the way that worked.  If you already had so many missions in, you didn’t have to jump to the 30.  My pilot he had actually one more mission than I had in because I missed that mission.  He flew 28.  Anyhow, you were talking about the last mission - on the last mission they sent me to Berlin again.  I guess you see that on there.  It was a green crew and it was their first mission.  That’s the way - it was in KNOCKOUT BABY that I went.  I think that’s the other plane in that picture.  

ST:  In the large photo?

EM: The one on the left.  BERLIN BESSIE, the picture that’s out there in the PX  I don’t have a copy of it here but anyhow I really sweat it out.  They were arguing amongst themselves.  It was just a bad mission.  I’m glad I came back.  

ST:  Did you know any of them?

EM:  No, not beforehand. Not a soul on the ground.  Not one person.  So I didn’t even say thank you or anything when I got off that plane.  I just kissed the ground and that was that.

ST:  How did you get back home?

EM:  Well, then you see that stuff on the bottom - recommended for gunnery instructor?  Well that’s what they did.  Beings I finished up - the rest of my crew had already left - most of them. Carter had some to go because he was wounded and didn’t fly a lot of our missions at the end.  Buchholz, he was in here the other day.  He was our 2 nd radio man.  He had some to do.  But then I never got time to see him afterward.  He was in a different barracks or something.  They sent me to the Wash that was at   ???.  If you look on that map of the bases in the area, you’ve seen it - that map that shows all the different bases - you’ll see it up on there.  It has letters and number of the base - as a gunnery instructor.  I was up there about 3 or 4 months before they relieved me to come back to the States.  Even though I finished my missions on May 8 th ,  I didn’t get back to the States until September 44.

ST:  Was that kind of a relief to get back?

EM:  Oh, sure, well, no, actually it wasn’t. I talk too fast which gives an indication that I’m nervous.  We were at Warrington over by Preston and Blackpool on the west coast of England waiting for debarkation.  Me and two other guys decided to go AWOL.  We went into Preston and we were gone about 3 days.  So, it’s a long story how we more or less got away with it.

We thought maybe - there were rumors that they were going to ship us to the States.  We thought we’d miss the flight - miss the boat - they’d send us back to a combat unit.  Course, we knew we couldn’t get back -- they weren’t from the 95th - and we knew we wouldn’t go back to our original unit but we thought they were going to send us back. I always loved England.  We went back after 3 days.  We snuck back in and they court-martialed us.  They couldn’t figure out how we got off the base and back on. All we got charged with was missing roll calls and missing the shipment back to the States.  The fine was $35.00.  Then they gave us orders to go and we got the same boat anyhow.  The Aquatania and had to come back anyhow.  The fellows that went ahead a week or so before they ended up having to clean the whole boat out before it departed.  That’s how I got back to the States.

ST:  Is there anything else you’d like to put on here for the record?

EM:  Well, I ended up back at Lowry field again.  They asked me where I wanted to go and I said Lowry Field.  Of course, my brother, he had come back before me.  He went over on the boat with me, I told you. I don’t know whether it was on this or not, but he was on one of the crews, went through training and 50 crews went over on the    ??    And he went to the 379 th .  He did 29 missions too.  ????                  He had come back earlier than I did and they sent him to a rest camp for 3 months near Louisville or somewhere.  They asked him where he wanted to go.  He wanted to go back to Lowry Field too.  We both ended up back at Lowry Field.  The last job we had, we had it together.  We were rubber conservation inspectors.  We inspected all the tires.  That was when synthetic rubber was coming in.  We would check pressure, make sure all the pressure in the tires the planes, even the vehicles from the motor pool and keep a record of tire changes and how many landings that each tire made - compare them between the rubber and synthetic.  That was our job before we left the service.  

ST:  You’ve been coming to these reunions for a while, haven’t you?

EM:  I didn’t know anything about it.  Hadn’t heard from any of my crew because I didn’t know where they were.  I tried to find my pilot - he was from Baltimore but there was no record of him down there.  It turns out he stayed in the service for a while and he ended up retiring from the service.  I never did - we ran out of time - I never did contact.  What happened was my brother went back in the service.  He was out about a year, year and a half, and he went back in the Air Force.  By that time it was the Air Force.  He retired from the Air Force.  We live next to one another in Boulder?   This day, he got the Air Force news, being retired,  and he saw this article about Boeing having that 50 th Anniversary in 1985.  He said, gee, how about we go up there and see if any of our crews survived?????? So we did.  We called up and the hotel was full.  We had to stay in another hotel.  When we got up there, we found out that his - the 379 th was having a mini-reunion downtown Seattle and the 95 th was kinda having a mini-reunion at the hotel.  I looked on the list and there I saw Cavallier’s name.  Course, they wouldn’t give me his room number so I thought, well, I could call up and they’d probably give me his room.  That would be too easy.  I found out about the Red Feather Club.  We went down to my brother’s reunion for a while.  We came back and went up to the Red Feather Club and just hung around until I recognized him.  He was talking to a couple of other fellows and I walked up and I tapped him.

He turned around and I said Pappy, that’s what I called him.  He took a look at me and boy, the tears were running down his eyes.  He’s a great big guy.  He grabbed me and gave me a bear hug.  I found out that Bob Carter was there.  Larry Buchholz was there.  That’s when they told me about Charlie Wyse??? Still alive.  They had gotten in touch with a few of the other guys. That’s when I started on reunions.  I haven’t made them all.  I went to Valley Forge, King of Prussia.  There were 7 of us there.  We were the largest crew there.  I think that was 86.  Was that the next year - I think 86.  Cause Charlie lived in ????   He drove down   

ST:  Not bad for a crew that never really had your own plane?

EM:  ???????????????

ST:  We’d like to thank you very much.

EM:  You’re welcome, I’m sure.

ST:  This concludes the interview with Lucky McGinty.  This is Sam Tarkington with the Legacy Committee.