Dean P. Hall

95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2001 REUNION         LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

CH:  The Interviewee is Tech. Sergeant Dean P. Hall.  That’s H-a-l-l.  Tech Sergeant.  The Interviewer is Charles J. Holley, 95th Legacy and we really appreciate your time today. Dean, your coming to tell us your story; it is very important.

DH:  Thank you.

CH:  Thank you so much.  First think I wanted to ask.  I want to ask this: Where were you on December 7th?

DH:  I was in Philadelphia and I lived in New Jersey, In Plainfield, New Jersey.  And on December 7th I was in Philadelphia and I was on the train going back home that morning.  I’d been there over the weekend.  I heard it on the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.  And also I was more worried that my brother, who was an Admiral’s aide, an Ensign in the Navy, on the battleship California.

CH:  Oh my goodness.

DH:  And he survived that fine.  He is a Pearl Harbor survivor.

CH:  That’s wonderful.  What was your first interest in aviation?

DH:  I wasn’t really interested in aviation.  I just was drafted in July of ’42 – 1942 - when I was 21 years old.  I was 21 on the first of July and I was drafted.  And I went to Fort Dix and I took some tests and they just put me in the Army Air Force. 

CH:  You went straight to the Army Air Force.  You weren’t Army Air Corps right from the beginning, heh?

DH:  Well, actually, the Army Air Corps was no longer – there wasn’t any Army Air Corps.  A lot of people think there was, but after about 1941, there wasn’t any Army Air Corps.  It was Army Air Force.  OK, and I was sent to Miami Beach for basic training and I was there one week.  They didn’t give me any basic training.  They sent me directly to Aircraft Mechanics school in Amarillo, Texas.

CH:  So there must have been something in your testing that said you were good with 15 things?  Dexterity?

DH:  My mechanical – no.  Everything was written tests.  And my mechanical aptitudes were high, and my other tests were high.  That is why they selected me for the Army Air Force.  And then, mechanic – you put me on the ground. You’d be a crew chief or something like that.  And I was getting near the end of that sixteen weeks training in Amarillo, when I realized that I was really a lousy mechanic.  And so I volunteered for aerial gunnery school, and it was all volunteers in that base in that period of time.  They didn’t send anybody there unless you volunteered, and you had to pass the same physical that you had to pass if you were a pilot.  They called it a “66” physical.  And we passed that, and I went from, as soon as I graduated from Amarillo, in December of ‘42, I went to Las Vegas gunnery school and I graduated in January of ’43.

CH:  What were the conditions like at the Las Vegas gunnery school?  There’s no casino’s there, was there?

DH:  We were all Privates going to school and we were restricted to the base.  We were allowed to go into Las Vegas one time.  And we went in at noon and had to be back by midnight, and there was nothing in the town.  It was absolutely – there were no casinos no anything, it was just Nothingville.

CH:  So, after Las Vegas?

DH:  After Las Vegas - When I graduated from Las Vegas gunnery school they made me a Staff Sergeant.  I went directly from the lowest Private to a Staff Sergeant in one jump.  And then they sent me to a redistribution center in Salt Lake City where we lived in the horse stables at the Fair Grounds.  And then they sent me to Boise, ID where I joined a crew, and I became a first engineer on a combat crew at Boise, Idaho.  And we trained at Boise and then Walla Walla, Washington and Redman, OR.

CH:  Were you assigned at that time to the 95th Bomb Wing?

 DH: No, oh no.  This is - these crews were all training ...

CH:  Training units.

DH:  The 95th Bomb Group trained as a group themselves.   But the replacement crews – like I was on the first “replacement” crew into the 95th.  We trained separately.  And, when we finished our training, in May of ’43 we joined a bunch of other crews at Salina, KS and became a provisional group just to go overseas together.  And it was Colonel Lacey and 36 crews and we flew from Prestyle, Maine to Newfoundland, waited there, for tail winds.  Flew to Scotland.  And then we knew that some of us would be in the 95th.  And out of the 36 crews of the provisional group, they sent eight crews to the 95th.  Others went to other groups.  We were the first replacements in the 95th.  We went to school, in Bovingdon, when we went to Scotland.  We went by train, down near London to school.  And when we got to the 95th, the plane that we flew over, a brand new B-17, was already shot down with another crew on board.

CH:  Well, you were glad not to be on that aircraft.

DH:  I hated to see our nice - from then on we flew in any plane available, but we finally got one of our own.  We named it Herkey Jerkey the Second.  Because the first plane was Herkey Jerkey the First, which we never flew in combat.

CH:  That was the one that you had brought over.

DH:  The Herkey Jerkey II.  And my pilot was Captain Rodney E. Snow, Jr.  And he is one of the most beloved pilots of the 95th.  When Colonel McKnight heard that when Rodney died, and then when I saw him at another reunion (Colonel McKnight), he had tears in his eyes when he spoke of Rodney.  He was really a beloved pilot.

CH:  I wanted to make sure I’ve got this going right on Herkey Jerkey.  J-e-r-k-y?

DH:  K-e-y.

CH:  Okay.  That was Herkey Jerkey II.  What was it like to be a flight engineer on a B-17, four engines, a lot of instruments, a lot of controls and all like that.  On takeoff, did you help the pilot with the throttles or did he handle…?

DH:  No, no.  The job of the flight engineer was to observe instruments and sometimes if there was a tachometer or something that wasn’t acting right you would inform the pilot in case he did not see it or something like that.  But your job was mostly to be quiet and let him fly the plane, you know.  Your job in the air was sometimes transferring fuel from one tank to the other.  You’d have transfer fuel from one side to the other and make sure of that.  And you would keep track of your supply of fuel, how many miles you had to go…

CH:  Did you have your own Flight Engineer panels.

DH:  Oh no.  No, no.

CH:  You were looking over the pilot’s shoulder?

DH:  Yes.  You just stood between the pilot and the co-pilot.  And they had armor plate in back of them.  And we stood in back of that until we got up and got on oxygen and then we test fired our guns, things like that.  But we did it on our own, you know, when we got the word from the pilot that it is OK to test fire.   Then my job was strictly up in the turret.  I’d be connected with him – to the pilot -by interphone, but I had nothing to do with flying the plane.

CH:  Were you allowed to keep it in the air at least.  So, you became a member of the 335th?

DH:  Yes.

CH:  And was that the only squadron you were in the entire time you were there?

DH:  Right.  Four squadrons, and I was in the 335th.  And I think, that during the time I was there, and I flew my first mission to St. Nazare toward the end of June of ’43 and my last mission was November 23rd, ’43.  And I think we lost close to 20 planes during that period, out of my squadron, even though there was only 9 planes at a time.

CH:  Right.  The replacements would come in..

DH:  Replacements would come in and they would get shot down and, usually, if a crew got through their first 10 missions you had some hope for them.

CH:  At that time it was still 25 missions, right?

DH:  25 missions, based upon a percentage of losses.  They figured 5%, and  5 times 25 = 125% - you didn’t have a chance.

CH:  But also, 1943 was before you ever had complete fighter escort.  P-47’s could help a little bit, but they couldn’t escort you all the way to the target.  So you were probably vulnerable over the target.

DH:  We had Spitfires over the channel.  We had P-47’s, and even at the briefings they’d say you’ll have P-47s to this point and from here to the target and back you will have the Luftwaffe.  You will be escorted by the Luftwaffe.

CH:  Was there a relationship between you, being the flight engineer, and the Ground Chief of the aircraft?  Did you have a relationship?

DH:  Yes.

CH:  Say like, this engine’s running a little too rough and all?

DH:  Yes.  You see, on each crew there was two engineers, two armors, and two radiomen -six enlisted.  And there were two Tech Sergeants.  The first engineer was a Tech Sergeant and the first radio operator was a Tech Sergeant.  But I was the Crew Chief of the Crew.  Outside of the pilot, he ran everybody – I mean he was in charge of everybody.  But I was the senior enlisted of the crew.  It was quite a job for me because I was drafted and entered the service actually on the 13thof August of 1942 and, a year later I had already made about 13 missions.  It was an awful lot of responsibility for somebody who was a city-boy and didn’t know how to drive a car and a lot of things that I had not been exposed to, but we made it all right.

CH:  I can imagine.  Were there any missions that stick in your mind?

DH:  There were three, at least.  When we bombed Norway, which was way up North and when we bombed Bregensburg, Germany and landed in North Africa – in Tunisia and, the other one I’ll never forget, was the raid on Munster.

CH:  Hmm.  You were involved with that one.

DH:   There is an Air Force week – it’s from I think the 8th of October to the 14th of October.  They celebrate every year.  There was 4 missions during that week and some were at different targets, but I flew on three missions that week. 

CH:  That was called Big Week, right?  Big Week.  So, of those three missions, can we start at – which one was first?  Trondheim was your first of those three?

DH:  No, I think Regensburg was first.  That was on August 17th, 1943.

CH:  Can you tell me a little bit about that mission?

DH:  Yes, we were tail end Charlie, if you know what that is – the last plane in the high squadron.

CH:  The high squadron.

DH:  See, there’s nine planes in the high squadron, six in the lead, six in the low.  So we were tail end Charlie and we got hit by fighters.  And the records show – there’s four and a half hours of continual fighter attack going that way.  We even picked up the Italian Air Force.  And when we landed in North Africa on these PSP – Pier Steel Planks - it was like landing in a cloud of dust.  And we were next to the lead plane, in the high squadron.  There were 7 planes lost in the high squadron and the leader wasn’t the original leader.

CH:  Yeah, he had to take over.

DH:  And we were flying wing on that.  I remember telling the pilot we ought to head for Switzerland or somewhere.  Not exactly, but – and it was the longest - it was something like 13 hours in the air and we barely had enough to make it and there were some planes that ditched in the Mediterranean.

CH:  What is it like to be in a ball turret – a Sperry ball turret. Right?

DH:  Top turret

CH:  Top turret.  Sperry – still Sperry?

DH:  Sperry top turret.

CH:  So, it goes around the top.  It has the electrical connections all around it so you can rotate 360 degrees, up and down.  What is it like to be in that bubble with all those fighters coming at you, with 2 fifty machine guns in front of you?

DH:  It is something that you might as well be alone.  You feel that you are alone.  You are up there and you can see everything.  And they have CAMS on your guns so you don’t shoot your wingtips off, and your props off, and all that and you track planes.  And when you see them coming at you from the front, which happened in the first B-17s we had; it didn’t have a chin turret.

CH:  Was that an F model?

DH:  Yeah.  They didn’t have the chin turret and open waist and all that.  We flew in those a while and what they called yellow noses…

CH:  109’s

DH:  Either that or Focke-Wulfs, I’m not sure.  I think they were Focke-Wulfs.  They would come around and come in at you on a frontal attack and, one time, one came in spinning and knocked down - I visually saw three B-17s go down on one pass from one fighter.  Other times they kept away from us because we had a lot of firepower.

CH:  So, what is in your mind when you see a Focke-Wulf and you see the gun flashes?  Are you just so busy you can’t …?

DH:  Yeah…You don’t have time, you’ve got to be on your toes and you know you are not alone.  You feel like you are, but you know you have these other guys with you and when you see someone coming, especially from the rear coming up and you see – they had these 20 mm, or around that – that would explode at a certain distance from the aircraft

CH:   – a timed fuse…

DH:   Yeah. Yeah, timed fuse.  And you would see them popping at you and you were waiting for the next one you know. And you hope you are fast enough to get out of the way.  But you didn’t think - I got credit for shooting down one fighter – ME 109.

CH:  And what was that attack like?  Where did you see him and…

DH:  OK.  He came in from the nose, and he was going toward our rear.  And I shot him down and I got credit.  But the thing was, I am sure I got more than that.  It was almost impossible to know whether you actually shot - were responsible.

CH:  Sure.

DH:  But, this one, I know I was the only guy shooting at him and I knew that I was the only one to report it.  Now there are some cases where one plane has been shot down and they get credit for five – five gunners say they got it.  And that’s the only airplane, but I know I got more than that or I wouldn’t be here today.

CH: There were just so many of them…

DH:  There were.  And the heaviest fighter attacks I ever saw was at the raid on Munster.

CH:  Yes.  Can you tell me about that?

DH:  OK. 

CH:  That was a disastrous raid for losses, I heard.

DH:  Well, we flew in the same group as the 100th and another group.  And the 100th, they lost all but one.

CH:  All but one, right – Rosie’s Rivetors.

DH:  Here’s what – they’ve written books about it and they mention my pilot “Snow” many times, about his feelings at that time which we didn’t feel because we did not know so much about it.  But the raid was conducted on a Sunday morning.  We released the bombs around church time, in the center of the town.  Our only mission was to kill workers although they said they had some army headquarters in there or something.  But, basically, it was to kill workers and our only reason was to bomb the town.  And I think the Germans really got mad about this, because they were flying, what they call, through their own flak.  They came in and they were fearless.  They come in and - we were a crew in one way that – my waist gunner probably saved our lives, because another B-17 was shot and was coming in on our left side and was going to crack up into us  - was going to run into us.  This Freddie Herdun, who was my waist gunner, he said, “Snow, pull up!” and Snow pulled up.  He didn’t question it one bit, and he pulled up and that other plane slid under us, or else we would have had it, so we were a crew!

CH:  Backtrack just a little bit.  They told you, in briefing, that Münster was going to be a city raid?

DH:  They didn’t tell us too much in briefing but they said, this is your target, Münster.  The pilots had a different briefing.  Sometimes – and the navigators had a different briefing.  Sometimes the bombardiers had a different briefing.  And the gunners were – we were with everybody at the final briefing and they told us where the mission was and they had another interesting thing.  They use to have “blue thread”, yarn, on the maps going out to the target and they would have red ones coming back.  And they said that is the symbol of blood.  Cheer you up, you know.

CH:  Well, you know, it is amazing that you had to fly all the way to the target and all the way back out of the target.

DH:  Yeah.  Most of the time we would get hit after the target – after the target.  The only thing that makes my story a little unusual is I was one of the first ones to finish 25 missions in the 95th bomb group.  There are some before me - I do not know who they are.  And I finished one mission before my crew.

CH:  Oh, tell me about that. 

DH:  One time there was a top turret gunner who was sick and couldn’t fly.  I volunteered and went with Broman, and his crew.  And I flew a mission so I finished one mission ahead of my crew.  I waved them off and they came back but I sweated them out.

CH:  They thought you were the jinx, yeah.

DH:  One time - we never, what they call, aborted.  Whenever we checked out a plane - we must have checked out three planes before we put one in the air - but whenever we went on a mission we always came back.  I had twenty-three missions in; I got tonsillitis; they put me in the hospital and I says “I’m going to have to fly with a new crew, and I’m going to get killed.”  I was in the hospital for something like three weeks.  I get out.  My crew had gone on five missions and aborted every one of them.  Then I joined them and we flew two, right away and finished.

CH:  That was it. Wow.  Well it was meant for you to be on that crew.

DH:  I don’t know.  I had a tail gunner named Barbella.  And he made a mistake and didn’t come back from London on time on a 72-hour pass or something.  And so he missed a few missions.  And so he was…

CH:  …he had to make them up.

DH:  He had to make them up, and he was killed on another mission later.  And he’s one of the guys that we all – we were all in a group.

CH:  Yes.

DH:  Our point of embarkation when we went overseas, believe it or not, was Salina, KS.  Okay.  They gave us a six-day leave, pre-embarkation leave.  So, we’re off in New York or somewhere, so I spent three days on a train going to New York, one day in New York, and three days back.  And we stood up all the way, practically, to sit somewhere, the trains were so crowded.  But my - we all went down to Grand Central Station, Barbella and a few others in other crews that were…

CH:  …doing the same thing.

DH:  …and my Dad was alive at the time said, good luck to you fellas, and all that.  And we had a tearful farewell.

CH:  So your family was in New York.

DH:  My family lived in a hotel, in New York.

CH:  Oh wow, oh great. 

DH:  My home address, when I was in the military, was a hotel in New York

CH:  Well that’s wonderful because you never knew…

DH:  And my mother – there were just two - my brother and I.  And he was out in the Pacific somewhere you know, and I was over there and I know they worried about it but they thought we would get out all right.

CH:  Where was that last mission that you had, that 25th mission, the date of that?

DH:  That was the 23rd of November 1943 and I haven’t got my list of missions with me.  I’m sorry.  I can’t tell you what it was.  I sent the list of missions to that Grace…

CH:  Sure.  One of the people here.

DH:  She’s in the Legacy, and she has a list of my missions.

CH:  You’re running out of time here.  You mentioned the mission to Trondheim, Norway.  Can I have a little bit of that, because that’s a unique mission?  If I could.

DH:  OK.  Trondheim, Norway was a…

CH:  Now this is 1943?

DH:  Fall ’43.  I started my first mission the end of June in ’43 and finished the end of November ’43.  And Trondheim was a mission that we bombed an airfield up there and the whole mission was over the North Sea.  And it was 60 degrees below zero outside, you know – that altitude, that 20,000 or whatever we flew at.  But it was beautiful.  I think we only lost one crew, if we lost any.  It wasn’t too bad because it was the most unexpected place I think that they figured we’d bomb.

CH:  Well, you know Trondheim was famous for where the terpitz were and I think that was the airfield that covered the terpitz.  And that’s where the British were trying to sink that battleship there in that yard.

DH:  But later on they bombed what they called heavy water plants.

CH:  Yes.

DH:  In Norway, which was the development of the H-bomb, not the A-bomb, but the H one.

CH:  And so lucky because if anybody would have been forced down, they wouldn’t have survived.

DH:  Another mission, that was interesting, was during the week of this…

CH:  The Big Week?

DH:  The Big Week was Marienburg.  Now, I mentioned it before but it was…

CH:  M-a-r-i-e-n-b-u-r-g?

DH:  Yes, I believe so.  And it was the lowest level that we ever flew.

CH:  And what altitude was that?

DH:   It was around 10-12 thousand feet.  And the reason for that was it was such a long distance that you burn so much fuel getting up to altitude.  And also we didn’t fly much over land because it is all the way over the Baltic.  And Marienburg is near Danzig.  And Danzig was bombed the same day – there was about three or four targets in that area.  Somebody claimed Marienburg was a diversionary mission, but it wasn’t.

CH:  It was a marshalling yard, wasn’t it something like that?
DH:  Something like that, but it was also where they were developing rockets up in that area.  General Arnold called that the best precision, the best carried out mission of the 8th Air Force up to that time.

CH:  Couldn’t get through this without your experiences of flak.  You must have had some experiences of flak on missions, right?

DH:  Yeah, the flak you hear go tinkle tinkle like on the plane and you see bursts of it.  You hear the expression, “it was so thick you could walk on it”?  Well, you felt that way.  There weren’t too many planes that I saw that went down on account of flak.  Most of them, in my day, were due to fighters.  And flak was plenty worrisome and they were very accurate.  They could sense your altitude and it would be a delayed action anti-aircraft fire that would explode exactly at your altitude.

CH:  Right, and they’d have boxes and things and you’d have to fly a box and you’d see it as you were coming to it.  It was an exciting time, the whole thing.

CH:  So you were discharged?  Did you stay in?  You came back.  You finished your tour of duty.  Can you bring me up to the end of World War II and give me a little bit…

DH:  Oh, OK.  When I finished my missions I was sent to the 447th Ordinance Group – not ordinance group – Bomb Group – 447th as a gunnery instructor.  It was a brand new group that came over and I helped them put their guns in the guides and all that.  And I lived with the Armors at that time.  I went back to the states, went to aerial gunnery instructor school at Laredo.  Then I went, I was assigned as a gunnery instructor at Drew Field in Tampa, Florida.  And then I was re-assigned to Avon Park bombing range where I met an awful lot of guys that I had flown with that were gunnery instructors.  And we trained new crews at that base.  We would go out on six-hour missions and gunnery practice would be maybe one hour of it.

CH:  Were you shooting at towed targets?

DH:  No, they did camera gunnery at other planes they’d have up there.  Then they would fly low level and they’d have these silhouettes of planes on the ground that they’d fire at – well, simulate strafing.

CH:  Well, of course I guess you could simulate an aircraft on the ground.

DH:  And they had that. And then we use to drop practice bombs and we would have round trip fly to Havana and back.  You know, that was a thousand miles, over water.  I flew about a hundred hours a month.  And then, I did that until the war ended and then I went back to my old job.  And then I entered the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant three years later.

CH:  Okay, so after the war you reenlisted?

DH:  No, I got out altogether.  The tech sergeants got out all together.  And I was out for three years and I was reading in the paper, “Would you like to be a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army?” and I was working for Mac trucks and I thought, “I think I would.”  And so I got a direct commission in the Reserves, got called to active duty and I spent total of 30 years in the Army, and I retired as Chief Warrant Officer, W-4.

CH:  What year did you retire?

DH:  I retired in 1975 and I got up to be a Captain in the transportation corps.  I was over in the Korean War as a white officer in a black unit – transportation.  I was up in North Korea and I got all kind of experiences there.  And then I – later on when they turned my category down to stay on active duty, which they did after the Korean War – I didn’t get riffed.  So I enlisted, and I was first sergeant of a nuclear weapons outfit, see.  And I thought, oh, this is great stuff. 

CH:  You were down in the silos, and all like that?

DH:  No, I was in an ordinance outfit – direct support and depot support on nuclear weapons – for missiles that the army had.  Never in the air force, just army.  I was assigned to one of our stockpile sights.  I went to school to be a nuclear weapons technician because I wanted to find out what the troops under me were doing.  So I went to school, and they assigned me to Killeen Base, Texas, which at that time was a stockpile sight, and I spent 20 years in nuclear weapons and became and they made me a chief warrant officer.  I never had to go through the – I became a CW-2 and I went 3-4.  And because I had commissioned experience, I usually had staff jobs as a warrant officer.  I was an inspector general in headquarters US army – Europe.  Inspector general’s office in Korea, and 32nd army air defense command, etc.  And also, I had the first nuclear weapons maintenance organization.  I was in charge of that at San Francisco – first one. 

CH:  You served your country well.

DH:  Well, it’s served me well too, because I’ve never been shot; I’ve never been wounded; I’ve never really been sick, outside that time in England when I had tonsillitis.  I feel pretty good being 80 years old.  I play golf right now three times a week, and walk the course, and I have no troubles, aches, pains, or nothing.  And I feel lucky, and I’m glad to come to this reunion. 

CH:  And we’re glad to have you.  Want to make sure that, while you were in the 95th, you were awarded the DFC – Distinguished Flying Cross.

DH:  I was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for 20 missions showing – and they have a big thing showing what you did on the 20 missions.  Also, I got credit for one fighter.  And then I got four air medals for the same 20 missions.  Every five they give you one.  And later on in my service, I got the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service medal, five army commendation medals.  I have theatre ribbons all over.  I was in Korea, up in North Korea the first year of the war, 1950 – I’m always in there early.  And I feel that I earned some of these awards, and some you get for just being there. And the ones that I felt that I really earned were in the Eighth Air Force.  The others, it’s kind of, at your retirement they give you the Legion of Merit or something like that.  But I was raised all over the country.  I lived in Chicago and all over, and I had two years of college at Columbia University.  I was in the class of ’43, but I ran out of money and I got drafted and all that.  And things just worked out fine.

CH:  We’re just so glad you’re able to be here at the reunion, particularly to give this oral history.  It’s really important to do so.  I think we’ve got everything.  Wanted to make sure.  But once again, on behalf of the organization, we really appreciate your time, Tech Sergeant.  So this concludes the oral history of Tech Sergeant Dean J. Hall.

DH:  Dean P.

CH:  Dean P. Hall, I’m sorry.  I had it written down – Dean P. Hall.  And this is October 1st, 2001.  So once again, thank you very much for your time and your service to your country and the 95th Bomb Group in particular. 

DH:  You’re welcome.