Grateful acknowledgment is made to Jack S. Pry, for his help in clarifying the sequence of events leading to our plane being shot down, and to Kenneth Miller, who was so encouraging and helpful in editing the manuscript.
    It has often been said that ex-prisoners of war are not easy to live with so I must thank my wife, Phyllis, for putting up with me for all these years.
 
 

    This memoir was written so that my children and grandchildren would have some idea of what war is really like. I became concerned that World War II seems to be fading into history and the Vietnam War now seems to have become the favorite subject of fictionalized and "dramatized" war movie scenarios. Ridiculous "Rambo" type movies and TV programs glorify violence and the use of tremendous firepower. They seem to make it a great sport to kill people. However, most of the TV soldiers must be very poorly trained in the use of weapons as they seem to fire thousands of rounds and hurl many grenades without hitting anyone. When they do hit someone, they usually do it very nicely with little or no blood or guts being splattered. It is as if they are enjoying playing games and, when the game is over, they can all get up and go home just like the game of cowboys and Indians we used to play as kids.
    War is not all fun and games and it has very little glory. It is a dirty, strenuous, dehumanizing experience even for some of those not actually involved in combat. However, only those who have actually experienced combat can truly know what it is like.
    The following memoir was written from some notes that I jotted down shortly after the war and from many indelible memories.
    When I undertook to write these down as they happened, they jogged my memory of many other events and of people and names that I had long ago let slip from my conscious memory. In writing about some of the events, I found that I ended up almost reliving them and it reactivated some of my old nightmares. It thus appears that combat is permanently traumatizing.
    "My War" was painful in many ways. The events that I had to live through and the suffering that I had to experience were probably more difficult than those that many other people lived through. However, on the other hand, I could never really begin to feel sorry for myself as I could always look around and see many others who had a tougher time than I did.

    As Captain Joe Alexander, a pilot in the 532nd Squadron of the 381st Bomb Group, once said when getting back to the base one morning after a long night in Ridgewell, "War would be a hell of a great time, if no one got hurt."
    He chuckled as he made that statement, so I asked him what he was chuckling about. He proceeded to tell me the following story. It seems that he had met an English girl in the King's Head Pub in Ridgewell, the first time that he went to town. After drinking with her for several hours, she invited him to go home with her. When they arrived at her house, he found that she was living with her parents, so he was hesitant when she invited him to spend the night in her bedroom. However, she assured him that her father would not have any objection. The next morning, when he got up, he found that the girl's mother had breakfast ready and he was invited to eat with the family. The parents were very pleasant and told him that he would always be welcome in their home.
    For several weekends, he went through the same routine with the English girl until the night before he told me the story. He said that on that night, when they got to her house, they found a bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table so they killed the bottle before going to bed.
    The next morning when they came down to breakfast, he noticed that the girl's father seemed to be quite unhappy and did not want to talk. Hesitantly, Joe asked him if something was wrong. He finally replied, "You know captain, I don't mind ye screwing me daughter but don't drink all me whiskey up!"
    Every individual has his or her own view of war depending on where they were and how they were personally affected. To me, combat was a long, rapidly moving nightmare you conditioned yourself to endure. It was like being on a grotesque merry-go-round over which you had no control and no way of getting off safely. The last time that I saw Joe Alexander, his plane was going down in flames above Hamburg, Germany.
    My World War II experience really started when I became a "replacement" in a "replacement crew." I had started my B-17 training in a crew piloted by Lieutenant Malcolm Westbrook, with a group of crews organized into the Saunders Provisional Group. We were training to replace some of the first crews in the 8th Air Force which were shot down.
    We had finished our training at Walla Walla, Washington and were about to go to Grand Island, Nebraska to pick up new planes to fly to England when Lieutenant Westbrook was hospitalized with circulation problems in his leg. We were then told that the crew would be broken up to provide replacements to crews that had personnel problems.
    I was assigned as the replacement navigator on Flight Officer Jack Pry's crew. When I first met Pry, he told me that he got rid of his former navigator because he wasn't good enough. He then asked me if I was any good - I could see right then that I'd be on trial. I told him that I had graduated in the top of my navigation school class, had been offered a choice of being an instructor at a new navigation school in Austin, Texas or go into combat and that I was sure that I could do the job for him. I later found out that he had started in the Army Air Corps as a flying Sergeant and was then given a warrant as a flight officer. As most of the other pilots were Lieutenants, he made every effort to show that he and his crew were better than the others. Two days after we met, we left for Grand Island by train. Our first flight together was to Salina, Kansas to pick up some parts in our new B-17 that we would be flying overseas.
    The flight to Salina was uneventful and we hit the airport right on schedule, even though most of the flight was in cloudy weather. I later discovered that Jack was an excellent pilotage navigator and had tracked me all the way. I guessed that he was satisfied with my navigation as he said nothing to me. We spent the next several weeks equipping our new plane for combat, loading supplies to take to England and making some short check flights.
    We finally took off for Presque Isle, Maine, and wouldn't you know it, we were socked in solid with a thick cloud layer and had to fly through a front. The cloud cover broke just as we were approaching the airport. Again, my dead reckoning navigation got us there right on course but we were two minutes early after crossing the front and picking up a tail wind. Again Jack had nothing to say.
    After a few days, we were told we were to leave for England via Gander, Newfoundland. We took off in clear weather but by the time we hit Prince Edward Island, we encountered a solid cloud layer at low level below us and could no longer see the ground. When we reached my estimated time of arrival for Gander, I called Jack and told him he could circle and start his let down. His only comment was, "Are you sure?" I gave him an equally short answer, "Affirmative." We finally broke through the clouds with a very low ceiling and could see the airport through the rain, about a mile off our port wing. Again, Jack made no comment so I figured that I was meeting his anticipated navigational requirements.
    We waited for a number of days at Gander for the weather to break but it rained every day. Finally, the meteorologist said the weather was as good as it would get and we'd have to fly through a big front with high winds. We were supposed to hit good weather off Iceland and then have clear weather for the rest of the trip to Prestwick, Scotland.
We took off in a rain squall and were soon into the storm front. It was very bumpy with strong winds and I knew we could easily be blown off course. I hoped to get a good course correction with a celestial fix after we cleared the front. We did pass the major storm front at about mid ocean. However, we were still in heavy cloud cover with only an occasional star shining through. We then hit another storm front with turbulence and I started to worry whether I would be able to do any celestial navigation before dawn. I knew by now that we were probably quite a bit off course due to the high winds that were shifting directions.
    As the sky was starting to lighten up, there were occasional breaks in the overcast and I could finally see some stars. I found three stars that I could take a fix on and felt I could make the difficult determination as to their identity. Just as I finished shooting the stars with my octant, the cloud cover closed in and I never saw another star.
    When I computed the fix. I found that the shifting winds had blown us more than 100 miles south of our course and we were headed for the Cherbourg Peninsula in occupied France. As the Germans were jamming radio beacons and sending out false signals, I couldn't do a Radio Beam fix as a check. I thought to myself, "Now is the time I'll really find out if Jack Pry trusts my navigation." I hit the intercom button and said, “We are now 100 miles south of course and will have to make a course change 30 degrees left if we are to hit our checkpoint at Ballymorn, Ireland." Then there was a long silence, and finally a question, "Are you sure?"
    I told him that we had passed through two storm fronts with switching wind directions and that I felt that I had a good three star fix. Again, there was a silence on the intercom. Finally, I heard "O.K., we are changing heading." I knew then that I had passed Jack Pry's final test. I replied, “I'm glad we are turning, as I really didn't want to be a guest of the Germans in France.” Then I gave him an ETA for Ballymorn.
    The weather cleared above us as dawn approached, but there was a solid cloud layer below us. As we neared the west coast of Ireland, there were a few breaks in the clouds and for one short instance the rocky shoreline was visible. The crew got on the intercom and commented on how glad they were to see land.
    Ted Snyder, the bombardier, had slept most of the way across the Atlantic after we hit the storm. Cece Quinley, our copilot, thought he'd pull a joke on Snyder so he hollered over the intercom for Snyder to wake up. Ted about went berserk, when Cece told him that we had just crossed the coast of North Africa after being blown off course. We later found out that Ted's parents had some friends in England and that Ted was already lined up with a date with their daughter. The thought of being stuck in North Africa just about killed him.
    As we hit my ETA for Ballymorn, we could see houses and the greenest grass I ever saw through the break in the clouds. I was surprised to find that I was only one minute late for my ETA, so it must have been one hell of a good three star fix. I then gave Jack a change in heading and an ETA for Prestwick as the cloud layer again closed back in.
    Jack started his letdown, so we could clear the cloud layer below us before we crossed the Irish Sea. As we broke through the cloud layer, I could see that we were only about 1,000 feet above the water. Directly ahead of us was a cruiser or destroyer coming right at us and blinking rapid code signals. I hurriedly grabbed our Aldis lamp and blinked back the code of the day. I must have gotten the signal right and it must have been a British ship, as they didn't shoot at us.
    The ceiling was very low and kept dropping as we neared the coast of Scotland. Since we were low on fuel, Jack landed at the first airport we saw. It turned out to be an RAF fighter field, with a shorter runway than the main airport a few miles away. We used up all of the runway and it would be an understatement to say that the RAF personnel were amazed to see a B-17 land on a short air strip built for Beau-fighters. Two RAF vehicles met us and directed us to a hardstand and Jack then directed our tail gunner, Ted Brandt, to stay and guard the plane.
    The RAF people took us to Base Operations and while they talked with Jack about fueling and clearances to take off for Bovington, England near London, the rest of us were offered coffee by some ladies from the Society of St. John. The coffee proved to be the most awful I had ever tasted but I managed to gulp it down. When they wanted to refill my cup, I asked if I could have tea instead. They said "Oh yes, but we thought you Yanks like coffee." The tea looked like it had boiled until it was real black and actually proved to taste more like coffee than their coffee did. It was strong enough to float a spoon in.
    Jack sent me and the rest of the crew back to the plane to get ready for takeoff and to check on Tex. When we got to the plane, Tex was nowhere in sight. I asked an RAF airman on an adjacent hardstand if he had seen Tex and he told me that he had seen him walking down a trail behind the hardstand that went to a local village.
    I left the crew at the plane and started down the trail. I had only gone about 100 yards when I came to a curve in the trail. I stopped when I heard a low moan coming from around the curve. As I peered through the trees and brush, I saw a bunch of red fur and thought that perhaps a local villager had trapped a fox. However, as I walked around the curve, I discovered that the fur turned out to be a redheaded Scottish girl laying on the side of the trail with Tex on top of her. Tex heard my footsteps and looked up with a smile on his face and said, "I'll be with you in a minute, sir." I turned and started back up the trail thinking to myself, "Tex must have set an all time record in what he had managed to accomplish in less than an hour after setting foot in a foreign country.
    Our flight to Bovington was uneventful and we delivered the plane to the authorities, but on our way South, I noticed that the whole countryside seemed to be dotted with air bases. I thought then that it sure must be tough to find your own air base when the weather was bad. We waited for several days for an assignment to a group. While waiting there, we asked some base personnel how heavy the losses were on missions. We were told that there were about 25 percent losses in aircraft on the last two missions. Right then and there, I computed that with 25 missions to fly to complete a tour of duty, and 25 percent losses per mission, it would just about be impossible to avoid being shot down. From then on, I became pretty fatalistic that it was only a question of time before -we would be shot down. I later found out that most of the rest of the 8th Air Force flying personnel felt the same way. We finally got word that we were being assigned to the 532nd Squadron of the 381st Bomb Group at Ridgewell in East Anglia. It was about 20 miles southeast of Cambridge and 50 miles from London. We were told that we had lucked-out as it was the closest combat base to London.
    When we arrived at the base, we found that the group had only been flying missions since June 22nd, and that the 532nd Squadron had lost their first plane on that mission. We were the first replacement crew for the squadron. The four officers in our crew were assigned to a "Nissen Hut" - the earlier British version of a Quonset hut - that was also occupied by Lt. Baltrusaitus' crew. The enlisted men were housed in another housing area. "Baldy" was a real nice guy and proved to be a good roommate. However, the crew navigator, Martin Honke, was a real loner, and didn't even associate with his own crew. The copilot, Art Sample, was a real southerner from Hattiesburg, Mississippi and I really hit it off with him and we became the best of friends. My combat career was now really about to begin.
    We had arrived on base about the first week of July and spent some time checking out our newly assigned plane and equipment. We flew some test flights and some practice formation flights during which time I became familiar with the location of the base and the countryside. I also managed to sit in on navigation briefings for several missions to get an idea of what I'd be facing. I was up at base operations when a plane named "Old Coffin" came back with a dead navigator, who had bled to death from a flak wound in the groin. I later found out that since the Germans had changed their strategy to making frontal fighter attacks, that the navigators experienced the highest casualty rate.
    During this time, I also managed to find time to get to know the officers on my crew better. Cecil Quinley, the copilot, was older than the rest of us. He was very pleasant, but rather quiet, and didn't socialize at the Officers Club very often. Ted Snyder, our bombardier, on the other hand, was a real "Hollywood type," which is understandable as he was raised in North Hollywood. His father was a big wheel in the film industry and was also well known as the songwriter who wrote such songs as "The Sheik of Araby" and "Who's Sorry Now."
    I found out later that Ted was a good Catholic and hung his rosary beads over his bombsight. On almost every mission, he would grab his rosary beads and start saying Hail Marys when the first enemy fighters made a pass at us. Then I'd kick him in the butt and he'd drop his beads and start shooting. It was sort of a ritual. He was a damned good bombardier and we had a good working relationship. We became pretty good friends as time went by.
    Jack Pry was probably the best pilot in the squadron, if not in the entire group, because he was a perfectionist. He loved to fly and practiced whenever he could. He had a concern for his crew because he wanted them to be the best. He was pretty much a loner and was usually all business. On occasion, we could get him to loosen up and socialize at the club and he would occasionally get in the poker games.
All in all, for four people with very diverse backgrounds and very different personalities, we managed to develop a good working relationship and got along surprisingly well under very trying circumstances.
Our first mission was Hanover, Germany. Even though we had a few flak holes and the group was under fighter attack most of the time over the continent we didn't lose any planes. However, I did find out that between trying to navigate on a miniscule desk to keep track of our location and at the same time man a machine gun on each side of the nose of the plane, was like a one-armed paperhanger trying to eat his sandwich while at the same time trying to paper a wall. I was so damned busy that I didn't have time to think about anything else. I didn't even have time to get scared. It wasn't until after we got back out over the Channel and met the Spitfires that I had time to feel totally exhausted, shaking and scared. I later found that this was to be the pattern for all missions for me as well as for other navigators that I talked with. Actually this may have been the best way to fly combat. I always wondered how Cecil and the other copilots could stand sitting there doing very little except watching the German fighters attacking us. It's a wonder that they all didn't go "flak happy."
    I don't actually remember much about our next missions, except for the mission to Kiel, Germany, as they seemed to be scheduled so frequently. The raid to Kiel was an unscheduled one. I understand that the RAF recon planes had spotted the battleship Tirpitz steaming toward the Kiel Navy Yard in the Baltic Sea, so a mission was hurriedly planned to catch the ship while it was tied up at the dock.
The group had been beaten up for several missions and we had few planes or crews in flying condition. Even though we had flown a mission the day before (my birthday), they grabbed me to fill in as navigator on a crew from the 535th Squadron that had a flyable plane but had the navigator in the hospital. I think we got only six planes off from our group and we joined a squadron from the 91st Group to make up a shorthanded group. I later heard that the whole 8th Air Force could only put up 90 B-17s.
    After we left the RAF Spitfires a short distance out of the "Wash," we were on our own flying over the North Sea. As we neared Helgoland, an island base off the coast of Germany, German fighters jumped us and we were under a fighter attack all the way across Denmark and then to the shipyard target. We dropped our bombs in the navy yard and I could see them hitting the docks and ships; but I doubt if our bombs had any more effect on the battleship than number eight dove shot would have if it was used in a shotgun to shoot a goose. We had been hit by flak before we dropped our bombs and lost number two engine. However, the pilot managed to feather the engine so we could stay in formation as the fighters hit us on the way out from the target area.
    The fighters stayed with us out over the North Sea and finally hit our number four engine. The pilot feathered it but we could no longer stay in formation. He dived for the sea with the fighters trying to get on our tail. He "redlined" the airspeed indicator and pulled out of the dive just a few hundred feet above the water. Just as it looked like the fighters would get us, they turned back toward land. They must have reached their fuel limit on getting back to Helgoland Island.
    We hopped waves and made it back to an RAF base near the "Wash." After making emergency repairs to the engine oil lines, we took off and landed back at Ridgewell. The crew chief told me the plane had 27 flak holes and seven 20 mm holes. It was the only time that I ever flew with another crew. I don't even remember the name of the pilot but he did a hell of a job.
    I did get a chance to rest for a while and I finally got to know some of the enlisted men better. One day I walked up behind Russell Frautschi, our radioman, and I heard him muttering dit dot, dit dot dit, etc. as he walked along. I thought to myself, "My God, I know that some people talk to themselves, but I just can't believe that someone would talk to himself in Morse code.” He turned out to be a real good guy. I probably got to know Ed LaPointe, the flight engineer, the best as he was up front in the top turret and spent more time with the officers. I found out that Tex Brandt, our tail gunner, who was much bigger than Ed, enjoyed picking on Lapointe. One day I had to step in and stop a fight between them by offering to go behind the hangar and have him try to take me on. After that, Ed and I were good friends but Tex avoided me from that time on.
    Like most everyone on base, I bought a bicycle so that I could pedal down to the club, which was too far to walk to from our "Nissen Hut" site. On occasion, I would bike into the pub in Ashen, or to the King's Head pub in Ridgewell. I remember that after one mission, I was cleaning my machine guns - which we officers had to do for ourselves - and Al Johnson and Carl Baird asked me if I wanted to go to the pub in Ashen for a beer. I told them I'd meet them later on after I cleaned up.
    I was late getting away and by the time I got to the pub, I found that an MP was hitting some of the enlisted personnel with his billy club. Just then, he hit Al Johnson on the head and I stepped up behind the MP and told him to stop. He turned around and swung at me and I ducked. He then saw that I was an officer and he told me to stay out of it as he was trying to control a drunken disturbance and went back to swinging his club. I went to a phone and called the O.D. on base. He and the captain of the MP's arrived and I preferred charges against the MP for trying to hit an officer.
    After they took the MP away, Al and the other flight personnel told me that the MP sergeant had a habit of antagonizing them and using his club on them when they were only getting a bit noisy while drinking to relieve their tension after a mission. The MP was transferred from the base and after that I was sort of a hero to some of our enlisted flying personnel. It was the only time in my military career     that I ever "pulled rank." I never really got to know Smith, the turret gunner. He was very quiet and truly shy.
    It was very hard to develop any real friendships as we had such a turnover in personnel. You would see a replacement crew come on base and they might get shot down on their first or second mission. It was easier not to make many friends and then you wouldn't have to feel bad when they got shot down. We had such great losses in flight crews, that toward the end of my time on base, there were only a few old time crews left. As I mentioned earlier, Art Sample became my only real close friend. We drank together at the Officers' Club and went on passes to London or Cambridge together whenever we could and played a lot of poker with the other officers in the club or in the "Nissen Huts." I got quite good at poker and as my winnings added up, I managed to keep a nest egg of 200 pounds (that's $805 in American money, which was a lot of money in those days), and at the same time had plenty of money to spend on my recreational endeavors in town with Art.
    Art was a tall good-looking guy with a real southern accent. Many of the nurses took after him when they came to our club from a nearby hospital. But the night that I remember best was the night a bunch of WAFs and some of their senior officers came over for a night of entertainment at our Officers' Club. One of the WAF Lieutenants kept trying to monopolize Art and kept cutting in on him when he was trying to dance with other WAFs. Finally, just as the music stopped and there was a lull in the conversation before the next piece started, Art's voice was clearly heard all over the club, as he shouted, "Damn it woman, leave me alone, or I'll turn you over my knee and paddle your fanny."
    The music didn't start up again and all of the RAF people stood paralyzed and red-faced in embarrassment. Joe Nazarro, our colonel, went over to the RAF group captain and asked him what was wrong. The group captain stammered, "My God, what that officer said!" Joe replied, "Well, it wasn't too polite, but it wasn't really too bad!" Finally the group captain asked, "What is a fanny over in the states?" Joe replied, "Well it's your backside!" The group captain then smiled and said, "Oh, but over here, it's the other side, you know!" The whole room roared and the embarrassment was forgotten. However, Art's reputation was established.
    After the Kiel mission, I couldn't keep track of the missions as they seemed to come up so fast. The next mission that I really remember well was the infamous Schweinfurt mission - the one dramatized in the movie, "Twelve O'clock High." Actually, the mission was originally planned for Aug. 10. We got up at 4 a.m. for the briefing but the flight kept being delayed because of the lousy weather. After waiting many hours, the mission was finally scrubbed.
    We flew a mission to Paris on the 16th and as good weather was reported over southern Germany for the next day, we were awakened at about 4 a.m. on the 17th. The Schweinfurt mission was on again. Supposedly, it was planned to be the mission that would be "the start of the end of the war." We were to knock out most of the German ball bearing factories, which all happened to be in Schweinfurt and thereby cripple aircraft and vehicle production. Unfortunately, with their excellent espionage system, the Germans knew we were coming by then and pulled most of their fighter aircraft over to airfields along our route into the target area. Also, unfortunately, it was a hell of along way into southern Germany - further than we had ever flown before and we had no fighter escort.
    We did have Spitfire escort to about mid-channel, but when they turned back, we were on our own. The German fighters hit us before we got to the Belgian shore. We were under constant fighter attack all the way to the target. No one had ever seen so many fighters. They came in at us in waves of 10-20 planes, slowing rolling and spraying 20 mm shells as they flew right through our formation. Both B-17's and fighters were going down all over the sky. Our only relief was when we got to the target area.
    It was a real relief to enter the heavy flak area over Schweinfurt, as the fighters all left us to go down and gas up and fly to an airfield along our route out so that they could hit us again. We hit the target and destroyed part of the industrial complex. Our intelligence officer later told us that the Germans had all the women and kids in the city picking up ball bearings the day after the mission.
    We got a bunch of small flak holes over the target and as we headed west, we were again hit by a massive fighter attack. As we were bucking a strong headwind, we crawled back at about one half the ground speed that we made on the way in. After almost four hours of constant fighter attack, except for the time over the target, we finally made it to the channel. Our group had taken a beating. We lost 10 crews and one plane that ditched before we got back to Ridgewell. The brass from the First Air Division and 8th Air Force Headquarters were at the base operations when we got back and they sat in on our debriefing. I remember that when we told them that the other groups' losses were about as bad as ours, they told us that the mission had been designed to give Germany a fatal blow and if necessary they were prepared to sacrifice any number of planes. In fact they said that they didn't think we'd bring back as many planes as we did. The whole 8th Air Force had taken the greatest loss of planes on a mission that they would for some time to come.
    Later that night, when we were all drinking at the club and feeling pretty bad about all of the old crews that went down that day. Joe Nazzaro came in and sat down at the bar next to Art Sample. With tears in his eyes. Joe said, "My God, we lost just about the whole group!" Art leaned over and put his hand on Joe's shoulder and said, "That's O.K., we know how you feel!" Joe then sighed and said, "It's terrible, now I am going to have to rebuild the group!" Art got so mad, I had to drag him away from the bar before he hit Joe.
    After I got Art away from the bar, he said, "I ought to kill the son of a bitch!" "He doesn't give a damn about the guys we lost, thinking about the work it will take him to rebuild the group!” Art, like most of the officers on the flight crews, never did like Col. Joe Nazarro. He called him a genuine "Chicken Colonel." Joe flew five "milk runs" so he could get an air medal for flying five missions. After that, he had Lt. Col. Conway Hall and the squadron C.O.’s lead all of the missions. As a result, we lost all of the original squadron C.O.'s except Major Kunkel and also lost the replacement C.O.'s.
Needless to say, almost all of our flight crew personnel got “bombed out” that night. Come to think of it, most of us did a hell drinking almost every night. It was about the only way to relax your nervous system and be able to maintain your sanity. If you drank enough, you didn't have to think about the possibility that mission might be your last. If the American public ever knew that were flying hung-over or still slightly drunk, they would flipped. Luckily, we found out that if you breathed pure oxygen for a while after you got on board the plane, it would cure your hangover in a hurry. If you weren't quite sobered up when the enemy fighters showed up, you would sober up immediately after they made their first pass at you. (Note: the title, Flying High, not only relates fact that we usually flew at 24,000-27,000 thousand feet, fact that we may not have taken off entirely sober).
    A couple of days after the Schweinfurt mission, I was called into group operations. I was told that as part of the group rebuilding process, they were picking the best remaining pilots and the best navigators to fly lead planes. As they felt that Jack Pry was a top pilot, they were giving him his commission as a first lieutenant making his crew the "A" Flight lead plane. They then told me that I was to be a lead navigator and that they were sending me to an RAF school for special training and that after I returned to our base, I’d be expected to train some other lead navigators and break in replacement navigators.
    I was sent to an installation on the edge of Bovington Air Base near London. When I arrived along with six navigators from other groups we were welcomed to the RAF Radar School. We were told that "radar" was highly classified and that we were to never to use the word, but were to refer to the equipment by code names such as "Mickey" or "Gee." The RAF was giving the 8th Air Force equipment for a number of lead planes in each group and we were the nucleus of navigators who would train others.
    After long hours of schoolroom time and some practicing in the air, we finally approached graduation time. We found that our RAF instructors loved to play poker, even though they were lousy players, and since we couldn't leave the base at night, we had a game going every night. I soon had winnings of over 100 pounds, as various RAF officers sat in and lost their money. A navigator from the 91st Group and I ended up with pretty big bankrolls.
    One day, our head instructor said, "You are lucky, you are going to meet Sir Watson Watt on Thursday." Our immediate question was, "Who in hell is Sir Watson Watt?" We were then told that because of tight security, it was not known but he was in fact the inventor of radar. We were told the secret of the famous commando raid at Dieppe, France. It seems that the French underground reported that the Germans were building a secret facility at Dieppe and low level RAF aerial photos indicated that it could be some type of radar station.
    It was decided that a commando raid would be made to capture the facility and remove any radar type equipment and bring it back to England. Unfortunately, no one knew what to look for in the building complex as it might look like other radio gear. Sir Watson Watt volunteered to go and supervise the dismantling of the equipment. The RAF brass flipped their lids at the thought that Watt could be captured in the raid. A compromise plan was then agreed upon. Sir Watson Watt was to be guarded by two very big Canadian commandos, who had strict orders to shoot him if there was the slightest chance he would be captured.
    Watt returned from Dieppe with the Germans' equipment. However they lost many commandos there. We all thought that Watt must be some real "macho" type and looked forward to meeting him. He arrived in the classroom and proved to be a man of slight build, wearing a black suit and tie and a "bowler" hat. He was a very mild-mannered person and would have passed as an English clerk or bank employee. We were amazed at the guts that the little old guy must have had.
    We were told that we were learning so fast we'd graduate a day early. As we all had a two-day pass before going back to our bases, it meant that we'd be able to spend three days in London. The navigator from the 91st Group and I decided that we would bankroll a party in London with our poker winnings and invited the three RAF instructors to join all seven of us if they would show us the town.
    When we got to London they took us to the Russell Square Hotel and we got a suite of rooms for the ten of us. As whiskey was rationed, we had to buy "black market," but one of the RAF officers had a connection and we soon had quite a few cases of Scotch whiskey, gin, Irish whiskey, and beer. We all went out to eat in Oddinio's, a top London restaurant, and then came back to start the party. The RAF types made a few phone calls and people started showing up. What a party! It went on 24 hours a day for the three days, with WAFs and other RAF types wandering in and out and with everyone periodically catnapping or passing out.
    The morning that we had to leave, the three RAF officers were really hung over and we had to haul them to Euston Station and put them on the train for Watford. One of them asked, "How often do you bloody Yanks do this?" We told him we did it every time we got to town and he said, "My God" and passed out. We called their base and told the administrative officers to meet them at the station in Watford. I ended up at my base with the biggest headache I have ever had.
    Chaplain Brown, the group chaplain for the entire war, wrote a book about the group after the war was over. How he managed to compile so much information and make so few mistakes in the book, I'll never know. However, a few errors did creep in.
    He wrote a section of the book about me and Jack Pry. He mistakenly referred to us as being original crew members of the group, rather than as the first replacement crew. In the article, he stated that I was a great talker and I guess that I can't argue with that too much. He also told how I gave him hell about not being on the flight line when the crews were coming back from a mission that day. He didn't tell the whole story.
    As he said, we frequently used to sit at the bar and talk a lot. That night he kept complaining that there just were not many flight personnel attending chapel and he wondered what good he was doing on the base. He was filling in his time on Sundays by preaching at the local church in Ashen.
    I told him that as far as the flight personnel were concerned most of us were pretty fatalistic and didn't care if he shut down the chapel. We felt that he had a more important job to do. With Col. Joe Nazarro not seeming to care about his crews, what they really appreciated was seeing the chaplain on the flight line "sweating out" the crews’ coming back. I mentioned that just that day, some of the guys asked "where's Brownie," when they didn't see him on the flight line. He apologized for not being on the flight line, and said, "I really didn’t know they cared that much and I'll promise never to miss another mission." As far as I know he never did miss another mission for the duration of the war.
    Getting back to the war, I soon began the damnedest month possible. Between flying practice missions, I was training navigators or flying with Jack and the rest of my own crew as he trained replacement pilots in formation flying. In all, I logged over 90 hours of flying time. including missions. I can't remember any of the missions except the Stuttgart mission, as they all seemed to run together. It like I was on an endless belt, flying missions, and flying training flights - and I just couldn't get off and I was about to go “flak happy."
    Stuttgart - I remember, because it was the mission damned fool colonel from the Pentagon came over to ride a copilot seat on a mission and get a silver star for "gallant leadership” and a Distinguished Flying Cross. It seem that colonels stuck at a desk job in the Pentagon were jealous of the medals that were being accumulated by 8th Air Force colonels who were junior in grade. They would manage to get a short detail in England to pick up some medals, and then get back to their safe desk job. Once in a while one of them would have their luck run out and they would be in a plane that got shot down.
    We took off for Stuttgart with an overload of incendiary magnesium bombs. When we got to Stuttgart, it was socked in solid with a low cloud layer. Instead of going immediately to a secondary target, the colonel wanted to be a hero, so he had us circle Stuttgart several times looking for a hole in the clouds. Finally, he ordered that we drop the bombs at random on any target.
    The bombardiers toggled out bombs over a wide area of southern Germany and France. We never knew where the bombs landed, the French underground later reported that there were fires burning in a 100 square mile area. The wide circling of Stuttgart used up a lot of fuel, and as we approached Paris from the south on our way back, Jack called on the intercom and told me that the red lights on the gauges were on and he wanted an ETA for our base at Ridgewell. I asked him how many minutes of fuel he had left and made some calculations. I informed him that we could not get back to our base and worse yet, we might not make it back to England. Our only possibility was an emergency metal-mat landing strip on the sand at the tip of Dungeness Point on the channel.
    As soon as we hit the channel, Jack leaned the engines down as much as possible, and put the plane in a long glide as I gave a heading for Dungeness Point. The crew prepared to ditch, and threw what they could, to lighten the plane. I looked out of the plane, and as far as I could see, there were a great number of planes ahead of us and behind us, all making a straight line for Dungeness.
We came in very low, just over the water of the channel, and made one straight shot at the temporary strip on the beach. We used up all of the strip, and our engines started to "konk out" as we pulled off in into the sand so that the plane behind us could land. Quite a few planes landed behind us and we could see planes ditching just off shore, out in the channel.
    The only fuel available at the strip was a big pile of five-gallon cans (the British called them "four gallon tins" as they used imperial gallons). We had to form human chains passing cans of gasoline up to the wings, so we could take on enough gasoline to get to the nearest RAF base and yet be able to take off from the short strip. We lost a bunch of planes that day but the crews were all rescued by the air-sea rescue boats and we didn't lose any planes due to enemy action. They were all lost due to the action of some dumb colonel who ran us out of fuel.
    I don't remember the next missions we flew in September as they all fit the pattern of trying to navigate and run two machine guns at the same time for hours on end. I do know that I can't remember a single one of those missions when we didn't come back with holes in the plane. Sometimes, it would take several days to patch all of the holes. It finally got to be a real problem, when they had to place patches on top of patches. We had so many patches, it was causing enough drag to reduce our air speed.
    The October Fourth mission was to Frankfurt, Germany. Our squadron was to lead the group and the group was to lead the 1st Air Division, so our squadron was to lead the whole 8th Air Force that day. Because we were flying Deputy Group Lead, we had an officer from division flying the copilot's seat and we left Quinley home.
    We were on the route in and had just passed Aachen, Germany when we lost oil pressure on one engine. I guess the air division officer panicked as he ordered Jack to pull out of formation and head back toward England. The first thing that I knew, Jack had put the plane into an almost vertical dive after feathering the engine. He was headed down for a low cloud layer with some fighters trying to get on our tail. He called on the intercom for a heading back to our base but I was pinned against the bulkhead and couldn't move. My immediate thought was, "I guess we are going to buy the farm this time." After all, it was the 16th mission for me and Jack and we had survived much longer than most of the rest of the group. The airspeed indicator was "redlined." and the whole plane was shaking and vibrating so much that the insulation patches that were glued to the interior skin of the nose fuselage started shaking loose and fine insulation particles were floating in the air.
    As soon as we leveled out, I took a quick "GEE" radar fix and gave Jack a heading. As we were a little over a thousand feet off the deck, I knew that we would be vulnerable to light flak guns in every town in Belgium even though we were in a solid cloud cover. I told Jack to go ahead and fly evasive action as he saw fit and that I would keep track of his position to make sure we didn't get too much off course. I had a map showing all major flak installations and the cities and towns with possible flak guns, and I'd keep giving Jack changes in headings to avoid them.
    Unfortunately there were unrecorded flak guns along some of the railroad tracks. Periodically there would be a few flak bursts in the clouds near us, and Jack would have to take quick evasive action. We skirted every town in Belgium and finally cleared the coast. I gave Jack a heading for Oxford Ness on the English coast east of Ipswich. We broke out of the clouds just before we hit the coast and I gave Jack a heading for home. Luckily, we made it back without a single hole in the plane. Jack and I thought that the air division officer was crazy for ordering us out of formation, as it was usually suicide.
The only things that we had going for us were the solid cloud layer and the fact that I had the "GEE" radar which I could use to take very quick fixes and make necessary heading changes. Even at that it was very difficult to read the radar at that low level and extended range away from England, and probably would have been impossible for a newly trained operator to do.
    Having survived so many missions with near misses, I then decided that we had just about run out our string of luck.
After a two-day pass, I got back to the base - well hung over, just in time for our next mission on October 8th. It was Bremen, not as far into Germany as Schweinfurt or Frankfurt, but very heavily defended by 90 mm and 120 mm flak batteries. It was to be an all-out effort with coordinated night bombing by the RAF.
    We got rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. as usual for most missions. We were told that we were lucky, we would have P-47 fighter cover all the way to the border between Holland and Germany. This would be much further over the continent than the fighters had gone before. That did make us feel good, until we heard that Bremen had just about the greatest single flak installation in Germany.
Art Sample had been offered the choice of becoming a pilot of a new crew, or staying on as copilot with Lt. Baltrusaitis. Baldy tried to talk him out of leaving his crew, but Art decided he would take a chance, and finally get to do some flying instead of mostly sitting. This was to be his first mission with his own crew and he was to fly on our right wing.
    We made a typical rendezvous with the 91st and 351st groups over Braintree, and after joining the other wing of the 1st Air Division, we headed out over the channel at 27,000 feet with our Spitfire escort. The Spits dropped off and we picked up the P-47 escort. They flew above us as we crossed the Dutch coast and crossed over the middle of the Zuider Zee. They mixed it up with a bunch of FW 190's, and kept them away from us for a while. Finally, the P-47's left us at the German border near Papenberg, and we were once again on our own, headed toward our turning point near Rastede.
    There were German planes coming at us from all directions. There were the usual FW-190's and Me 109's but, unbelievably, there were twin engine JU-88 dive-bombers and twin engine Me 210's equipped with wing racks hanging off just out of our machine gun range. We were getting heavy fighter attacks, and to my surprise, I saw a JU-88 shoot a rocket toward us and watched it sail high over the plane. It was the first time we had ever encountered dive-bombers and the first time that we ever saw air to air rockets. We turned on the I.P. near Vegesack, and headed south toward Bremen. As we turned, the JU-88's fell behind us.
    The FW 190's and Me-109's kept up the attack, until we hit the flak zone, and they peeled off to wait for us to clear the target area. Just before Ted dropped his bombs, and while I was looking out of the starboard window, we took a direct flak hit on the number two engine behind me. Several pieces of flak came through the nose and one piece lodged in my right wrist. I pulled it out and grabbed the first aid kit and bandaged the wrist before we left the target area. I noticed that one piece of flak had taken out our intercom and being up in the nose, we could no longer hear what was going on in the rest of the plane. Ted dropped the bombs and the formation turned to head back for England.
    The number two engine started windmilling because Jack evidently couldn't feather it. Then we got hit with another burst of flak above my port window and next to the cockpit. I later learned that this was the flak that probably hit Cecil and cut the hose on his oxygen mask. Since Jack couldn't keep up with the formation with number two engine windmilling, he pulled out of formation. Art Sample's plane had also taken some bad flak hits and he pulled out with us.
    I later found out that Jack had ordered the crew to bail out and that Cecil had bailed out of the bomb bay but we could not hear the bailout order with the intercom shot out. Then, the number two engine really wound up and parts were flying through the nacelle. The windmilling prop made such a loud noise, it really hurt my ears as the tip of the prop is only about three feet away from the navigator's ear when the port machine gun is being manned. The prop finally froze up and the whole engine tore off and flew up over the plane.
    About that time, I turned to glance out of the starboard window, just in time to see a rocket hit Art Sample's plane. It blew up with a big flash and I couldn't see any parachutes open. All that I could momentarily think was "Goodbye old buddy!" Then I checked my charts and saw that we were only about 30 miles from the point where we were supposed to rendezvous with the P-47 fighter escort planes.
I thought, maybe we can hang on long enough and make it there, as Boeing sure as hell makes tough airplanes. Just then, when I was looking out the port window, I saw a rocket take off about 15 feet of our left wing. I then figured that our chances of making it back were nil. I am not sure how Jack managed to keep the plane level but I thought that I'd stay with the plane and continue to keep shooting at the fighters who started coming in close for the "Kill." Ted must have thought the same way as he was still up front burning up ammunition.
    I didn't know it at the time, but a rocket had sheared off most of our vertical stabilizer and rudder and part of the right horizontal stabilizer was gone. The ball turret had also been hit and Smith had been killed. At about the same time (as I later heard), Baird had a 20 mm explode between his legs and it made hamburger out of his lower body. Johnson's chute spilled in the plane and he didn’t make it out. I understand that LaPointe and Frautschi helped Baird to bail out and then jumped themselves. I don't know when Brandt jumped, but I understand that he stayed after the other gunners had jumped.
    An FW 190 came at us from about 11 o'clock level a with a burst of 20 mm shells. It blew out a very large part side of the nose between me and Ted, taking the bomb toggle switch panel out with it. I was manning the starboard machine gun at the time, and one of the 20 mm shells blew up right behind my back, throwing me against the bulkhead. My flak suit was smoking and looked like a badly torn sack of tin plates. My left arm and the back of my neck were filled with very tiny splinters of metal.
    The wind blew through the big hole in the left side of the nose and the gale scattered my maps and charts all over the plane. Everything that was loose was flying around in the nose of the plane. I didn't know how Ted was doing as I couldn't talk to him with the intercom out, but he was still shooting away at the fighters that kept coming in at us.
    Soon after that, another rocket hit the number one engine knockIng it clear out of the nacelle. We now had no engines left on the left wing and lacked the outer 15 feet of the wing. Then an Me 109 came at us from two o'clock high and I saw him spurt a big cloud from his engine and the canopy flew off as I continued to shoot at him. He did manage to hit our number four engine before he dived down under the wing but I was sure I got him. The number four engine lost power and we now had only the number three engine running at full power. We were now in a long glide with Jack managing to hold the plane fairly level.
    An FW 190 circled in from about 11 o'clock level shooting at us and just as I was about to get my machine gun sights on him I was amazed to see that Jack was turning our plane right at him and we barely missed colliding. Later, Jack told me that he had become so frustrated that he had deliberately tried to ram the fighter,
    The plane then started to wobble and I thought that I had better go back and see what was going on in the rest of the plane. I grabbed an oxygen bailout bottle and crawled back to the front escape compartment and looked up to see Jack's legs as he was standing up with a parachute in his hand. Then I knew that it was time to bail out so I crawled back to the nose after pulling the release on the hatch and kicked Ted in the butt for the last time and pointed to the open hatch. He put his parachute on and headed for the hatch, and I turned around to put my "GEE" radar charts in the brief case, and pull the incendiary flare to burn them up. Then I put my chute on.
    As I turned to head for the hatch, I saw Ted kneeling there so I tapped him on the back and he went on out. Then I remembered that I had not pushed the button to blow up the radar set, so I turned back to the navigator's desk and punched the detonator. I happened to glance out the port window and was surprised to see an FW 190 coming up slowly from behind us with his flaps down, looking at our plane. He was so very close to our wing that I could see his face as he looked out of the plane. It made me so mad that I figured that he must be the son of a bitch that had hit me with the explosive 20 mm and I grabbed my machine gun and emptied the last rounds in the belt. The fighter was so close that I couldn't miss. I saw him crumple over in the cockpit and the engine blew up in fire as he fell off on a wing. I thought, "At least I got that bastard for me and Art Sample!"
    The plane was jerking badly and started to wobble so I had to lay down and crawl to the escape hatch. I had to push myself out against the force of the wobbling of the plane.
    I still had the bailout bottle of oxygen so I counted to ten and pulled the "D" ring on my chute. I had no feeling of falling and, as I looked toward our plane, I saw it go down past me about a mile away. The whole plane, from the cockpit back to the tail, was in flames. I never did know who was the last one in the plane, as Jack Pry said that he had gone back to hold the plane steady for Ted to jump, and when he looked down and saw that Ted was gone, he bailed out. It could have been between the time Ted and I jumped, or after I jumped. However, I never did see any other parachutes after I jumped.
    It felt great floating in space with absolutely no feeling of falling. I was just hanging there looking far down below at a low cloud layer. I don't know how much altitude we lost before I bailed out, but because we were at 26,000 feet when we flew over the target, I thought I must be at about 18,000 feet. I had heard that you could expect a big jerk when your chute opened but I had felt no jerk at all. I then looked up, and to my horror, saw that my chute had not opened. It was just waving back and forth like a streamer.
    I dropped the "D" ring that I was still holding and grabbed for the shroud lines. As I pulled on the lines, I could see that they were tangled up in the metal snap ribs of the pilot chute. After violently shaking the lines, I finally got all except two of the parachute panels full of air. I was exhausted and settled back to await my landing.
    I was sure glad that I had not delayed pulling my chute as I needed most of the elevation I had to have time to pull the shroud lines. I heard a plane coming toward me from the side and he circled around me and came in close. But, as he never pointed his nose at me I knew he wasn't going to shoot. He then waved and peeled off to go home to his base.
    Almost imperceptibly, the cloud layer started to come up toward me. And then it came up at me faster and faster. When I hit the cloud layer, it was like jumping into a giant head of beer; sort of frothy and wet. When I broke through the clouds, I could see a large complex of buildings directly below me. As I was already short of air in my chute due to the two unopened panels and because a 24 foot chest pack was none too big for someone my size and weight, I didn't dare spill any air to steer away from the buildings. The last thing that I remember is my feet hitting the edge of the roof of a one-story building.
    As I started to come to, I seemed to hear a voice far away. Then it became louder and I then heard, "Wo ist sie Kapoten?" When I opened my eyes, I saw what looked like a cannon about six inches in front of my nose. As my vision cleared, I could make out two German soldiers, with one holding his rifle in my face. I thought, "Oh, no, this is my welcome to captivity but I've actually survived unless I’m dreaming."