Kenneth Rawling
95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2001 REUNION LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
CH: …for the Oral History project of the 95th Bomb Group Association. Today is October 4th, 2001. This tape is being recorded at the Las Vegas reunion of the 95th Bomb Group. Our interviewee today is Ken Rawling of Sun City West, Arizona and the 334th Squadron. The interviewer is Charles Holley, 95th Bomb Group Legacy Association. Thank you so much, Ken for your time. That’s the most important thing. We really appreciate your service.
KR: No problem.
CH: When, did you have much of a background in aviation before you got involved with the…
KR: Prior to entering service, no. I actually was attending Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was a member of the Naval ROTC there.
CH: Oh. So why didn’t you wind up in the navy?
KR: Well, there were about twelve of us that were offered the chance to become flyers instead of Navy people. And they took twelve of us from the engineering school there.
CH: Oh, you had quite a background.
KR: We didn’t go into the CTD training with the Pipers. My first flight was in a PT-19.
CH: And where was that? That was your primary training.
KR: Primary training was taken at Ryan Field, Tucson, Arizona.
CH: Now that was quite a difference between Marquette University. How old were you at this time?
KR: Think back - nineteen or twenty.
CH: Nineteen or twenty?
KR: I’d say nineteen.
CH: So what was your opinion of the PT-19?
KR: It was a fun airplane. I’ve had a chance to be in one since then, of course.
CH: It’s a Fairchild, right?
KR: No, it’s a Ryan. It was PT-19 or 22. The 23 was a Fairchild, if I recall correctly.
CH: ??? In the 95th Bomb Group, so we’ll know where we’re heading here, what position were you?
KR: Co-pilot.
CH: You were a co-pilot. So how many years of university did you have behind you before…?
KR: I was just in the second year there.
CH: Second year. Did, do you remember the day that you enlisted into the…
KR: Second semester, would be correct.
CH: Okay. Do you remember where you were on Pearl Harbor Day? Let’s talk about that – on December 7th.
KR: Where was I on December 7th? I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But I can’t tell you what I was doing or what happened.
CH: So you- did you become an aviation cadet? Did you enter the aviation cadet program, or how did you get…
KR: From Marquette, we received our naval temporary discharge. I still have the papers. And from there we went to – what base was that – somewhere in the south as I recall, but I can’t remember just where.
CH: But that’s where you…
KR: Tennessee.
CH: You had your basic in Tennessee?
KR: Just where we received our clothing and supplies and everything.
CH: Well since we’ve already talked about the PT-19, let’s jump forward again to the aviation part. With the PT-19, that was your basic trainer.
KR: Right.
CH: How long was the course for your basic training?
KR: I believe it took – class of ‘44B we went in April I think. Three months.
CH: Was that your class? 44B?
KR: 44B.
CH: After you completed your basic you went to primary after that, correct?
KR: Right.
CH: Now what aircraft were you flying at primary, and where was that?
KR: That was a school I didn’t care for much. That was Pecos, Texas.
CH: Pecos, Texas. Well, you don’t have to like anything about…
KR: Well, what happened here is kind of funny. We were to take twin engine advanced somewhere else. But they made Pecos an advanced training school right after primary school. So they brought in the UC-78, the AT Bamboo Bombers.
CH: Cessna.
KR: So we had to stay at Pecos another three months, and Pecos was not a very nice place at that time.
CH: Were you single at that time?
KR: Yes. There were no girls in Pecos at that time (laughing).
CH: I was going to say – boy, they were wearing spurs, if there were. So when you saw the bamboo bomber, of course you said, “Oh my God, I’m going to multi-engine.” Did you have any aspirations to be a hot fighter jock?
KR: We requested P-38’s. Here’s where the problem comes in. They were no longer using P-38’s for combat, or deciding not to. So they said we would not be going to P-38 advanced training. So they had to keep us all at Pecos again.
CH: Wow. So you were there at Pecos for nearly half the year?
KR: Too long. I became PLO officer – Production Line Maintenance officer.
CH: What does that do?
KR: You have to test out the airplanes – the AT-17’s – after there were repairs made on them, and certify that they were flyable.
CH: Okay. So you’re a test pilot, basically.
KR: (Laughing) Just after graduation – you can imagine. One of our graduates – a good friend of mine, Fred Rhode…
CH: How do you spell his last name?
KR: R-o-h-d-e, if I recall correctly.
CH: Is he still alive?
KR: _________________. But he became physical training officer in the heat down there (laughing), and had to do exercises.
CH: He must have been one of the most hated people on the base.
KR: No, he didn’t work them too hard. (laughter)
CH: I can imagine. The UC-78, I think a lot of people transitioned into those to get ready for the B-17. Any particular memories about the UC-78?
KR: Well, the gear – the chain gear was hard to crank down and so forth.
CH: Was it a manual gear? You had to crank it down with…
KR: No, it was an electrical ___________ gear. But if at the same time you had a gear failure, you had to crank it down. And that was noisy. You had a bench seat in the back of the UC-78.
CH: Now when you were flying, that was a four-seat airplane…
KR: Five seats, actually. The bench took three.
CH: Oh, okay. Training flight – did you guys trade positions or did you just, was it just a two-man operation when you were training in the ________________? You were an instructor, obviously, right? And you flew in the right hand seat – you were on the left when you were training on the bamboo bomber?
KR: We were always flying in the advanced training school in the left seat.
CH: The left seat. And so there were just two men on it that were – at a time, in the aircraft?
KR: Right. Occasionally we had somebody in the back on a cross-country or something like that ________________________ as I recall.
CH: Do you remember how many hours you trained?
KR: Oh, it was about seventy-five.
CH: Seventy-five.
KR: Seventy-five basic, advanced, and primary. Two hundred and twenty five hours approximately at graduation time.
CH: So you saw as much of Texas as you probably ever wanted to see from the air, didn’t you.
KR: More so. Later on I had a sister-in-law moved down there, and I spent more time. (Laughing)
CH: You probably spent most of your time trying to get her out of Texas so you wouldn’t have to go back there. Did, when you went to advanced training, what was the aircraft in advanced training that you were in?
KR: That was the AT-78 and the AT-17. They were both the same airplane, but one had a controllable prop, and the other one had a wooden prop.
CH: Oh, okay.
KR: Some of the experiences we had _____________, I also, in addition to being PLO officer, I was temporarily assigned to do some instruction at one time. During this instruction we used to take the tall poles and put a cord, a color cord above it to make short field landings. The object, of course, was to get over the cord, reduce your power, and land as short as possible.
CH: Right.
KR: So the incident that was humorous to me in everything was I had done much training or anything, and I was put in this with a student who I had not known very well and everything. It was a short field training exercise. So as we were coming over the wire here, you gradually release your throttle. But what he did was cut the throttle at a very low airspeed. We dropped in twenty or thirty feet – whatever it was – pushed the ___________ through the wooden struts. But, we both were safe at landing there.
CH: (Laughing) That was at least a short field landing, wasn’t it?
KR: It was very short (laughing). Humorous at the time.
CH: I can imagine. Well, you know, one thing about that aircraft – it was a tailwind aircraft.
KR: Right.
CH: And so you had to come in – if it would have been a ____________________ aircraft you could have come in at a certain way, but it’s completely different when you have a tail wheel. When was your first sight of the B-17? Being a co-pilot…
KR: Fred is coming in here – the pilot – right after me. He’s here today also.
CH: I’m glad you guys are still around. Oh, maybe I should just drop back then. After you saw, after you were able to get your wings – you get your wings at the end of…
KR: Pecos. __________________________.
CH: Okay. Who pinned your wings on you?
KR: I believe it was a colonel there at the time.
CH: Didn’t have a girlfriend come by and do it.
KR: No. Had a girlfriend, but…
CH: So after you received your wings, where did you go at that time?
KR: Back home.
CH: Back home. You had leave for a while?
KR: We had leave for a while.
CH: And did you receive orders while you were there while you were home, to make your next…
KR: Right. We had to return, of course, to Pecos.
CH: Back to Pecos?
KR: Right, because they had no place, due to the fact that we were not scheduled for P-38 training again. The whole graduating class was put kind of in limbo.
CH: You can’t remember what time of year this was now? Is this 1943 now?
KR: 44B would be March, February.
CH: Oh, okay. That’s when you graduated – 44B. That was 1944. And so with the graduation, went on leave, came back, recalled. So, how’d you ever get out of Pecos?
KR: I signed up for combat duty (laughing). Trent and I are both 44B.
CH: And you guys graduated…
KR: We were in different – he was in the East Coast, somewhere else, I think. We didn’t know each other until we met a couple of times. But we are both 44B graduates, ______________________________________ were two classes lower. I had a few more hours, I think, than Fred did, coming into the B-17.
CH: So how did you get assigned to a crew?
KR: As I recall, we went to Lincoln, Nebraska. Met some of my school friends there – Richard Reibald, who was a pilot. I forget what group he was in. Don Rikel, who I went through grade school with, another pilot from the 100thBomb Group that was shot down on his 31st mission. And we all were located in Lincoln, Nebraska at that time.
CH: Now did they, at that point, you were a 2nd Lieutenant, correct?
KR: Some graduated as Warrant Officers from our class at the time, and some graduated at 2nd Lieutenants.
CH: And you were a 2nd Lieutenant?
KR: 2nd Lieutenant.
CH: So, with the Lincoln, Nebraska, were you assigned an aircraft, and did a ten man crew come together to fly that aircraft?
KR: Right.
CH: Who was your – Fred wasn’t your pilot at that time – who was your pilot?
KR: He was the pilot.
CH: Oh, he was the pilot. All right. So when, once you had your crew all together, you started flying together, right? You started doing training missions?
KR: We always flew. We did lose a couple of men – one of our waist gunners. And we flew with a nine-man crew later on. According to Fred, that’s right. And the picture we’ve got of the crew, there’s nine men on it.
CH: How did you get overseas?
KR: We flew over.
CH: What was that?
KR: We flew the airplane.
CH: You flew the airplane. So did you go the Normandy route, or did you go down through Africa? South America?
KR: Northerly route, and it was late in the year at the time, so the weather was a little variable.
CH: So you got to see Greenland in the wintertime?
KR: We were stuck in Greenland.
CH: You had to land in Greenland?
KR: We landed in Rekavik, Iceland. And we also landed in, I keep thinking Bangor, Maine, but we didn’t land in Bangor – those from the 100th did. I forget what our station was. Fred will have it right. We had an argument about it. From Bangor we went to Newfoundland; from Newfoundland to Iceland; and then from Iceland across.
CH: Did you go to Wales first? Or did you go right into England?
KR: This I’m not positive of. We landed on the continent over there, and I can’t tell you where – the cliffs, like you’ve got the White Cliffs of Dover and everything, but I don’t think that was _____________. You’ve got them in Denmark also I think, those same type of cliffs. That’s all I can remember.
CH: Did you remember when you arrived at Horham?
KR: You mean what date?
CH: What proximity – what month.
KR: September or October.
CH: September or October of 19-
KR: -45, yeah.
CH: ’44.
KR: ’44, pardon me.
CH: That’s okay. And so what was your impression of Horham airfield. Were there any memories you had?
KR: Well, the bicycle right away. Threw myself over the handles (laughing)
CH: You went head over heels over the handlebars.
KR: Well, I put the handbrake on too hard as I was riding it.
CH: I don’t think they would have given you a Purple Heart for that.
KR: No, I didn’t get anything for it there.
CH: So, did you live in a Nissan hut there?
KR: We had a Nissan hut.
CH: And how many crews…
KR: And our crew lived in a tent nearby. Our…
CH: …enlisted men?
KR: …enlisted men.
CH: So being the right-hand man in the B-17, your duties were completely different than the pilot. Fred let you take – you guys traded off the controls and relieve each other?
KR: As I recall, we would do about 15 minutes to 20 minutes of formation flying together, because that was manually controlled _________________________. And we held pretty tight formation in those days. I would have a sore right arm after a mission. Fred would have a sore left arm, __________________. 24’s are easier to fly because of the hydraulic controls there.
CH: They’re not as rugged as a B-17.
KR: They couldn’t stand as much damage, and everybody knew that.
CH: With being in the right-hand seat, you had a different perspective than other people. Did you feel that you wanted to be in that left-hand seat? Was your goal eventually to be a full pilot of a crew?
KR: Well, I was offered, as I believe, somewhere on the 14th or 15th mission – we were getting a little better than we were initially – to take another crew, okay. Something had happened to the pilot, or something. But we had been successful through 15 or 16 missions. We weren’t going to break it up. There was eight of us that went completely through.
CH: ___________________________. So you had 35 missions with the 95th Bomb Group?
KR: With the 95th.
CH: Now, is there any particular memory or memories you have of any of the missions…
KR: Well of course on December 31st when members of our barracks were shot and killed. That was O’Reilly and Cohen.
CH: How did that happen?
KR: I forget what the mission – where the place was. Again I have to look.
CH: Sure.
KR: It was the 31st.
CH: Of 1944.
KR: ’44. We were in the bar celebrating, having a drink. Our other members should have been returning from their mission. O’Reilly and Cohen(?) were shot down - _____________ was killed. It’s listed in the book there. _______________________
________________________ memorial for Cohen at the time, and I think Fred did for O’Reilly. And then the navigator and the bombardier – the whole crew was ________________.
CH: And what were they victims of? Were they victims of flak or fighters? Do you know?
KR: I believe they were victims of fire in the aircraft. There were reports of it coming down in flames. No _____________________ came up.
CH: When you had to encounter flak during your flight, what were your feelings about that?
KR: I’ve got one incident that was recalled vividly of course.
CH: Please.
KR: We were getting on the bomb run. I’d have to look at the date again to give you the exact date and the exact mission. There was a lot of flak damage on that mission. And I had a little trouble with my intercom at the time. I had the little tote mikes as you know…
CH: Right.
KR: So I called up our radioman, Bill Lewis. He had to come to the compartment and check out my mike and my headset and so forth. Somewhere or another I…
CH: Disconnected.
KR: It’s getting garbled or something. I don’t know what the reason was at the time. So Bill came up there – we were on the bomb run already, and were holding our position, of course.
CH: Does the bombardier have control of the airplane?
KR: And we were in flak at the time. No, _____________________________________
______________________________. He came up and he looked everything over, adjusted a few wires or something. I didn’t hear it. He went back to his seat later on and right where he sat had this desk and everything, and had a good three inch hole where a piece of flak came through. So he thanked me over and over for calling him up to repair a radio. That same mission, I believe, we got an awful jolt. We both started feeling our legs…
CH: Yeah.
KR: …to see if we had flak or anything there. It actually seemed to lift the airplane up. And when the bursts became red, we knew we were close. If they were black, we weren’t too worried.
CH: Well, I heard that the flak was shot up in boxes, right? So they had a whole bunch of guns in one location so you could time the…
KR: Well, you could see a whole wall of flak actually, on a number of these missions. It’s like a dark cloud. As I say, as you get closer, you can actually see the red bursts. And when you see a red flame, you’re mighty close. And this is what happened on this mission, at any rate. After we had landed, I forget how many holes we had in that ship – small. But there was one big one right next to Fred on that little curve that comes out next to your side window. That again was about a four-inch piece. There was a huge piece of flak wedged in there. It was close at the time.
CH: Wow. It didn’t have his name on it after all, did it?
KR: No. No, we were lucky. We were fortunate that we didn’t have any injuries.
CH: Did you have a name for your bomber? Did you guys name…
KR: We had a ___________________ printed on our jackets. Our bombers were the – we used the new ones. On the 14th or 15th they gave us a new ship.
CH: Was that a G model?
KR: A G model.
CH: G model. So it was nice to have
KR: That was not camaflouged painting.
CH: Okay, she was silver? It was nice to have those two 50’s. Did you start off in E or F models?
KR: We never flew an E model.
CH: Okay.
KR: And I’d have to look up if we flew the F. As you know, they got slower as they added more equipment and everything. I seem to recall flying an F at one time but not the E model.
CH: But it felt good at least, with the G model, to have that chin turret up there with two 50’s.
KR: Right - little extra protection.
CH: Now, when you encountered fighters…
KR: We only encountered fighters at that time during the later part of the war – twice, I think. Because we had ’51 support – they were very good.
CH: They were able to follow you all the way in and back, right?
KR: Right. Well, _____________________________________ and everything. They had the range at that time. And they would pick you up if you were coming back, or something like that. Flak – of course they started using the rail cars and everything to change positions where you were used to receiving a lot of the flak and everything. So you could encounter flak anywhere. And on some of the missions, which were not called milk runs, of course, you had a lot of flak. As I say, that one particular mission that I remember there vividly is the one that was a cloud of flak.
CH: Hmmm. And you don’t remember the target?
KR: I could look. Off-hand, no.
CH: That’s fine.
KR: It was a long time back.
CH: With the 35 missions that you flew, did you receive any commendations or…
KR: …disappointed in that. We were supposedly recommended for DFC. None of our crew had gotten it at the time. As you know, for 15 missions they got the DFC, earlier. If you’ll look at the records, I’m a little disappointed on is the fact that some of these people later on received DFC’s. I requested somebody at one time for all our crew to receive it when our navigator died. You had to fill out a form or something else. I never went through it, because I didn’t want it for myself.
CH: Right, yeah.
KR: I did want it for the crewmembers.
CH: And it’s one of those things you don’t really want to have to ask for.
KR: Should have been given it.
CH: Right, exactly.
KR: We were fortunate – we were allowed to buzz the field on the last mission – shoot off the flares, which was fun. And of course when we pulled up, we were going about 180 at the time, and everybody in the rear went down (laughing), which we still laugh about these days, those of us that are left.
CH: Is there any particular – I know you mentioned that specific mission. Is there anything in particular that you’d like for the 95th Memorials and Legacy Group in the future to remember about your service for the 95th? Anything in particular?
KR: No, in those days we just did our job. We made quite a few instrument take-offs.
CH: Yeah. With the advent of time, of course, did you stay in the Army/Air Force after the war?
KR: No. I did not.
CH: And so you mentioned earlier to me that you had 30 years of service with some corporation?
KR: I was with Proctor and Gamble later on.
CH: And what did you do?
KR: I was a sales representative while I was there.
CH: Oh, okay. So how long did you…
KR: 35 years.
CH: 35 years. Thirty five’s a good number for you: 35 missions and 35 years with Proctor and Gamble.
KR: Not quite 35. They wanted people to take early retirement. This was in the 80’s. And I accepted at the time.
CH: And been enjoying your retirement since then, it looks like.
KR: Well, I flew with GranAir, Wisconsin for many years.
CH: Is that G-r-a-n-a-i-r?
KR: I’ve got a little slip here.
CH: That’s okay. We need your voice. So what were you doing with them? You weren’t a bombardier with them? (Laughing)
KR: Oh no. I did instructional work and everything around the airport. This is where I spent a lot of my weekends, even when I was working at P & G. I owned shares of a number of smaller aircraft there. We had a Bonanza at one time. There were 10 of us in it, so you can imagine how much we had invested. It was fun flying from there.
CH: And you’re still flying with friends also that have the opportunity…
KR: I am still flying a Comanche with Norm, who was actually a waist gunner in World War II in another plane. And we met at a Flight Instructor’s renewal class _________________ in Sun City West. He’s normally from Rochester, and I’m from Milwaukee. This is what, where I…
CH: Oh, I see. Oh sure. It was an FBO. That was the GranAir Cessna. We’re about at the end of the interview. I really would like to just ask – anything else you want to add at all. I know I’ve already asked, but I sure want to make sure that I ask one more time.
KR: Well, I can recall some incidents from going from Newfoundland to Rekovik. We weren’t supposed to receive any weather, but we did encounter a lot of weather (chuckle). We went up to altitude and then we went down to about 50 feet over the water with a brand new airplane that we were supposed to have heat exchangers in. And they forgot to ________________ the flak suits, so we had no heat. We did open the thermos jug at the time for coffee at altitude, and the cockpit became clouded with steam (laughing). We couldn’t see the instruments, which was frightening. We dented the side of the airplane going over there by throwing ice off. It was quite a flight for a novice pilot.
CH: I can imagine.
KR: And when we broke out of the overcast to find Rekovik of course, Ray had us right on the point. We broke out and we saw the airport. He was our favorite navigator.
CH: Who was your navigator?
KR: Roland Rhea. Roland C. Rhea was his name.
CH: R- ?
KR: R-h-e-a.
CH: R-h-e-a. And he flew with the 95th also? He was one of the nine that stayed with you all the way through?
KR: Right. The pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, and six crewmembers are all the original.
CH: How many of the original crew are still with us today?
KR: We couldn’t find our engineer, although he lived in Chicago. We were never able to find Weeks, Earl Weeks. And what’s left today, alive that is, is Bill Lewis, who was our radio operator – lives in Rochester, New York. And Joe ____________________ is still here, and has been here. He was our waist gunner at one time. But he was taken off a crew. He’s not one of the original. Joe was assigned a different crew earlier. So there’s just three of us actually, that we know of: Fred, myself, and Bill Lewis.
CH: You never know. Someone may pop out from history somewhere, you know. But anyway, if you’ve got nothing else to add, the biggest thing is I want to thank you so much for your service. And I think you should, you know, gotten that DFC and the Air Medals. Did you get any of the Air Medals, at least?
KR: We got the clusters and the Air Medals for so many missions. It’s just the fact that, as I recall it was recommended at the time - we never did get them. And then of course, when the crew members passed away – it was just a couple of years back that Ray and our ball turret man passed away here. I would have liked to have seen it.
CH: I’m sorry for that. So I’m glad you’re here to represent them. It’s one of those things where I really think that the memories of these men is only going to – they won’t pass away as long as people remember them. And I appreciate that.
KR: Right. And I was younger in those days too. (Laughter)
CH: Almost the same – a little more hair. But anyway, once again, on behalf of the 95th Oral History project, I really appreciate your time, Ken, so much.
KR: Nice meeting you.
CH: Our pleasure. So this will conclude the oral history of Ken Rawling, a co-pilot for the 95th Bomb Group stationed in Horham, England. And today is October 4th, 2001. Thank you so much Ken, once again.
KR: You’re welcome, Chuck.