Hiram Griffen, Kenneth Wright, Bob Fay
95th BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2000 REUNION ORLANDO, FLORIDA
RM: Hello, this is Russ McKnight and we’re in Orlando, Florida. And this is the 16th of September, the year 2000. We’re interviewing Bob Fay, Kenneth Wright, and Hiram Griffen and they’re all from the same crew. And we also have the pleasure of having their wives witness the interview today. First, Bob Fay, I’m going to ask you some questions.
BF: Alright, what is it that you want to know?
RM: First of all, your years of service in the Army/Air Corps?
BF: I only spent eight months in actual combat time.
RM: Okay, and was that with the 95th?
BF: 95th.
RM: And what squadron were you in?
BF: 334th
RM: And Ken, your years in the Army/Air Corps?
KW: Well, the Army/Air Corps was 1942 to ’45. ’46 was the Reserve after I left active duty I was Reserve status at O’Hare Air Base in Chicago, Illinois.
RM: Excellent. Hiram?
HG: I’m Hiram Griffen. I was a pilot on the crew of Victory Devils. I went in the service of April 1943, went over in ’44 to fly a combat mission when I was 19, and I was the next to the youngest on the crew. You just interviewed Boy Fay who was the youngest, and I was next. Everyone was older. We had one man who was 26, and all enlisted men called him “Pop” in those days. But anyway, we had a wonderful crew. After the war I stayed in the Army/Air Corps, and when it became independent, the Air Force for 32 years, 3 months and 12 days of continuous active duty. I retired in 1975 as a Colonel.
RM: Thank you very much. Maybe we could start with you, Hiram. Could you tell us when your crew went over and maybe a little bit about what the training was before you transitioned?
HG: Okay. After I graduated, I went through B-17 transition and from there I went to Lincoln, Nebraska to be assembled with my crew. From there we went to Dyersburg (TN) for combat crew training, and then back to Kearney Air Base in Nebraska to pick up a new airplane, which we ferried over to the European Theatre of Operation. They let us land at Nuts Corner, and we took a ship on over to England. And we were there, and we flew our first mission on the 13thof September, which was Friday, which was 56 years ago this last 13th, this week. Looking back, even though at the time we thought it was tough, and we did have some tough missions, we were happy to finish. We started on our first mission on the 13th of September. We flew our last mission on the first day of March, 1945. That was 35 missions each. A couple of funny instances happened. The day before Christmas Eve in 1944, we were on low level looking for a base to land on the continent because we were running low on fuel. As I looked in the fog, all of a sudden here was a smokestack. I didn’t have time to do anything but raise the right wing. The tail gunner called me and he says, “Pilot, did you see that smokestack?” And I said, “Yes, I did.” He said, “I’m sure glad you did, because we came so close that if you hadn’t, I’d have been scared to death.” (Laughter) So that’s one of our funny experiences. A serious experience was when we were over Cologne one day, and we got hit with flak. We were flying on the right wing of the 8th Air Force lead, and he got a direct hit, which was Colonel Harris at the time, he retired as a four star general, Hunter Harris. He was quite a guy, and we saw him get hit and went down. We had holes in our airplane all the way from the size of a bathtub up to the size of your finger. So we were glad to see that. The other tough mission we had was over Merseburg, Germany hitting the oil refinery. We had about eleven hundred guns shooting at us the whole bomb run. They lost 106 airplanes that day, one of which was our very close friend and crew, Chuck Wicker. And he slow rolled right in his position when he got hit, and was coming down on top of us. And I just stood the airplane right on its tail. And he came so close to us that we had smoke and fumes in the cockpit of our airplane. So that’s one of the bad experiences. But I’ll let Ken say some of his experiences. (Transfer microphone)
KW: I was a co-pilot in about six different crews before I arrived in England. I had my transition duty in Arizona, in Yuma, Arizona. I moved on to Sioux City, Iowa where I was in contact with four different crews because we had different opinions on this and that. One of the crews that I was assigned to ended up in the bloody 100th Bomb Group, which was a neighbor of ours in Horham. We flew from the United States across Greenland, landed in Iceland and from Iceland we ended up in Prestwick, Scotland. We took a train from Scotland to England. We ended up at the Horham Air Base at ten or twelve o’clock at night, and we were convoyed to the base. We didn’t know where we were. We got up the next morning, and the base is real quiet, and they were all there from the night before because they had just had their 200th mission party. And there was nobody stirring because there was a stand down. And Glen Miller’s orchestra was part of the action. Everybody was tired from dancing and having fun and games. So I few my first mission with another crew, by the name of Gilliam. And then we decided to switch co-pilots because of the situation at hand. And I flew 34 missions with the Victory Devils and our still was still 10 members, and today we have six members still available. We enjoyed each other. We had, our navigator was Bob Inman. I’ll go on to the rest of the crew, Bob being our ball turret man, (Lambert) Respondek being our tail gunner, Andy (Harold) Anderson being our radio operator, Bob Hamlin being our waist gunner. Going back to our bombardier was (Howard) Shaw and he was a good navigator. Finally, they liked our navigator so much, they made him lead navigator – Bob Inman – of the group (?) the bombsite, so they made our bombardier navigator and bombardier. So he was a duel purpose aviator. I remember one mission we were told to scatter, and we scattered. We pushed the throttles. We went up to about 33,000 feet with a full bomb load, and I looked out, and there was the Alps. And I said, “We’re not taking these bombs back and dumping them in the Channel. We’re going to put them some place. So I said, “Shaw,” I said, “Pick a target.” He says, “Well let me see what I have on the map.” So we picked a target. There’s a bridge between Germany and Switzerland and I says, “We have the bomb site here; line up on it.” And we lined up on it and we knocked it out. And we got back to the base and we told them of our situation, because the bombs did not end up in the English Channel. And so, we were very effective there. This is what happened, and we were sort of – that was a situation where the brass didn’t particularly cherish this kind of operation, but nevertheless, it was our decision to make. And of course, we went on further on other missions, and when we landed in Brussels without fuel Christmas Eve, and we went into the town of Brussels, and of course everything is dark, black out. We ended up in quarters. We come down from the quarters and we went into the barroom there and there was all these GI soldiers from the front, relaxing. And we were sitting there, and all of a sudden I heard a commotion. And two GI’s grabbed another GI, and here it was a German in an American uniform. They took him, pulled him off the stool, spread eagle against the wall, and the commotion was horrendous. And I said to the fellas, I said, “Let’s get out of here.” And we got out of there and we let the MP’s come in and take care of the Germans that were in American uniforms. And we walked further, and we heard this music, “Begin the Beguine.” And we said, “Let’s follow this ‘Begin the Beguine’”. And we went down, and we got closer and closer, the music became clearer and better, and we went through these swinging doors, and here was a nightclub in full array. And we walked in, we looked, and we saw these people, and there wasn’t a table available. And we said, we just about do 180-degree turn to go back into the black of night, and he says, “Come on in.” And we came in and they pushed a table so that we had a table and we had our 45’s on our hips. We were going to put the 45’s on the floor. They said, “You put them in the center of the table.” We put the 45’s in the center of the table and we started enjoying the revelry of the group. We danced and we sang and we had a good time. Everybody looked at us because we were foreigners, and we couldn’t speak the – it was all Flemish language. But we communicated. So we had a very good time. And we went back to England with good memories. (Transfer microphone)
HG: I’d like to add one thing to what Ken said about while we were in the hotel. I decided that I had to go to the restroom. So I went down the stairs and I looked for what I thought was the men’s room, and I went in there. And about the time I got started, this woman comes walking by. I almost ruined my pants getting out of there. And I got outside and I said, “Anybody speak English?” And this guy said, “Yeah Yank, I do.” So I said, “Where is the men’s room?” I said, “I go in there and there’s women in there.” And he said, “Oh, Yank, don’t bother. Over here we both use the same one.” (Laughter)
RM: And Bob, can we maybe hear a story or two from your experience?
BF: I haven’t got a lot to add to it. As Griff said on that one mission when Wicker went down, I happened to be riding ball turret. Well, it didn’t happen, that normally was my spot. But as he went up, and that passed through, why, that was enough to scare the life out of anybody. So then, on the Christmas Eve job, where he lifted the wing and passed that smokestack, Bob just saw it as it went by. But I was riding underneath, and scared the hell out of me, I’ll tell you. So, that’s just about it. One of the crew, twice I think, had a hand in saving my life – pulled me out for anoxia. But anyhow, we all finished up.
RM: You know Bob, we’re real interested in perspectives from different points of the plane. Ball gun turret has got to be one of the most interesting spots on the B-17, and a vital one for defense. During your tour of duty there, were there particular problems with the ball gun turret as far as the gun lubrication or any other type of problem?
BF: Not on mine. We had one of the best armorers. He had been a former member of our crew, and he really looked after us. We didn’t have to worry about a thing. He was a good man.
JM: What was his name?
BF: George Mace
RM: And Kenneth, your perspective?
KW: Griffen had anoxia because his oxygen mask came off and he was hanging over the pedestal, and his head was down, and I was trying not to lose formation. And I grabbed a hold of the leg of the flight engineer, which was behind me, Russ, and I pulled him down. And he came down and he put the oxygen mask on him to get him back to breathing full oxygen. Instead of being blue, he got normal. We were able to finish the mission and we never did that again.
BF: You didn’t tell them that it was all three of you going along without oxygen for a while.
KW: Well, yes, that happened, but we had to move fast. We couldn’t lose consciousness.
HG: A little wrap-up. We all came back to the states within just a few days of one another. Ken, Shaw, and I went down to Miami for R & R, and that’s when we had just gotten married. We just celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary. And Ken and Donna are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary today. Bob and Gloria have already had their 50th. So anyway, after 1945, our contacts were not daily or even weekly. Sometimes we’d go from one Christmas to the other. But we became very, very close friends. I never knew when I answered the telephone, it might be one of them on the other line. Right now we talk not less than every two weeks, we talk to one another on the telephone. So we stay in touch. That shows you that I had a very close-knit crew, we did. And we had respect for one another. And no judgement whatsoever. We had respect and love; it’s developed into, you might say, a love thing. But, after that, Bob got out of the service and went to work; Ken got out and went to college; and I stayed on in the Air Force at different assignments and retired the first day of August, 1975.