Reese's 457th Bomb Group
Anecdotes
Definition - Anecdote: "A short narrative of a particular incident or occurrence of an interesting nature"

 

 

Early Morning Crash Landing
It was a cold dark morning and we were on the taxi strip awaiting our turn to takeoff. I don't recall the mission but several planes had already taken off and we were about fifth in line on the taxi strip with our running lights on. Without any explanation, takeoffs were halted. As we sat there with our engines idling we suddenly saw coming toward us out of the darkness, one of our groups planes that had taken off minutes before. He was obviously in distress with fire streaming from engine #3. His landing gear was down and his approach indicated that he intended landing on our takeoff runway.
Under these circumstances, with a full gas load and a full bomb load, the standard procedure would not permit your landing in the dark with dozens of other planes on the taxi strip - anyway, here he was.
The approach looked good as his wheels hit the runway about 200 feet from where we were parked. At the instant of impact the landing gear collapsed and the plane dropped on it's belly with a tremendous crash that could be readily heard over the roar of our idling engines. The plane, as it skidded down the concrete runway was engulfed in a halo of sparks which trailed far behind the injured bird. The whirling props dug into the concrete and pieces of metal flew in all directions.

The real concern here was that if the skidding plane were to leave the runway it might crash into one of the planes on the taxi strip. Such a crash, with most of the groups planes standing nose to tail, might set off an explosive chain reaction that could wipe out the whole squadron. I was not alone with this thought because, as I looked out the pilots port window seconds later, I saw the shadowy figures of several crewmen running into the nearby wooded area. To this day none of our crew will admit to abandoning the plane on that morning - I'm not too sure.
The skidding plane, fortunately, stayed on the runway. Within minutes the ground emergency crews and fire trucks had the situation in hand. All the planes awaiting takeoff were diverted to a different runway and the launching of another mission continued.
This was just one more of those unexpected events that often added to the excitement of a mission day.


Losing a Friend
There are certain events from 54 years ago that are fresh in my memory to this day. One memory is about my experience with a fellow flyer in the 751st squadron named John. I don't remember his last name so I will refer to him here only as John.
I guess I had about 10 missions under my belt when I received the message that on our next mission my copilot, Jim Stoner, would be replaced by a newly arrived pilot whose name was John. It was customary for all new pilots to fly their first mission as copilot with an experienced crew. This would give the inexperienced pilot a chance to become familiar with the procedures and routines that were peculiar to an actual combat mission. I can well remember the anxiety and fear I felt when I flew my very first mission with an another crew. Flying with a strange crew was always a challenge but flying into combat with total strangers was an experience that would remain in this pilots memory for many years.

 
John and I met the morning of the mission we were to fly together and immediately took a liking to each other. We had much in common....we had trained at the same airfields in the States, we were almost exactly the same age, and his family background was very similar to mine. There was a bond that developed between us from the moment we first talked. I liked John and recognized in him someone whose friendship I would like to cultivate. I think he felt the same way.
 The mission we flew together was fairly routine. We experienced the customary amount of bad weather and a moderate amount of flak over the target with no damage to our plane. During the flight I watched John, thinking at the time how I felt on my first combat flight, and knowing that he was experiencing those same feelings. We dropped our bombs and returned to the base without incident.
 In the following days, while we were grounded because of bad weather, we got to know each other much better. John went to London with me for his first visit to the big city. He was from somewhere in the Midwest and had never ridden in a subway. It did not take me long to introduced him to the London "Underground" and other tourist's stops around the city. It was a fun day for both of us.
 It turned out that on the next mission the 751st flew both John and I were to be in the same formation. This would be John's first mission to be flown with his crew. I was flying a deputy lead - the number two position on the low squadron leader. John was assigned a spot that flight crews referred to as "tail-end-charlie". This was the lowest position in the low squadron and the furthest plane back in the group formation. It was a difficult position to fly because all changes in speed or altitude by the lead plane were magnified the further back in the formation you flew. In addition, because of this partially isolated location, the tail-end-charlie position was the most likely to be the target of enemy fighters. We flew our first mission in that position as did almost every new crew.
After takeoff and during the flight, I found myself checking with our tail gunner and asking how John and his crew were doing. Because of our location in the formation our tail gunner, Sgt Mack, was able to see and report on all the planes in our squadron . As we crossed the Dutch coast and started into Germany, Sgt Mack reported that John's plane had fallen back and seemed unable to keep up with the formation. As we proceeded further into Germany his plane fell further and further behind. There was no visual indication of trouble and no apparent radio contact. Sometime in the next hour, Sgt Mack reported that he could no longer see John's plane....he had fallen too far back and the squadrons trailing contrails had obscured his plane. This meant also that he probably could no longer see our group.
We proceeded over our target, dropped our bombs, and turned 180 degrees to return to our base. Still no sign of John's plane. I hoped that he had joined up with another group, all the time worrying that something much worse might have happened to him and his crew.

 

 

After landing at Glatton, I waited on the field, hesitating to go into debriefing, and hoping to hear his plane pass over.....arriving late but safe. I waited for almost an hour. I checked with other pilots that were with us in that formation but no one seemed to know what happened. They had seen him fall back, but like us, lost sight of him before we reached the target area.

John and his crew were "missing in action" on their first combat flight!
I felt sick all that night. After all, I had checked him out and felt some responsibility for what had happened. Two days went by and our squadron operations officer, after making the usual checks, had classified John and his crew as "MIA".
 I never saw John again and I never learned what had happened. He may have strayed off course and been hit by a random burst of flak, a Luftwaffe fighter might have pounced on them as easy prey, or they may have had engine trouble or some other mechanical problem that might have prevented them from returning. I eventually stopped inquiring about my missing friend......perhaps because I was afraid of what I might find.

This incident has stayed with me for these many years and was an experience that troubled me very much at the time. None of the rest of our crew knew John so they did not know how I felt and ,of course, did not feel as I did.
After this episode I think that I intentionally tried to avoid close friendships with the members of crews other than our own. It was difficult to lose a close friend in combat and worse not to know what happened.

I returned to the States without ever knowing what had happened to John and his crew.

A Surprise in London
About once each month we got an overnight pass and had a chance to get off the base for some much needed recreation. On this particular weekend in January, 1945 Joel Lester and I took the train out of Peterborough to London. The English trains were a treat to ride after the troop trains we had to live with while in the States. We arrived in London at King's Cross station and proceeded to find a way to spend the flying pay which we had accumulated the past month. I don't remember all that we did that day but the weather was nice and we splurged a little by having dinner at a restaurant in one of the large exclusive hotels in London. All I can remember of the meal is that we had brussel sprouts and joked about it at the time. Whenever we ate at a British restaurant we always had brussel sprouts....at least it seemed that way. It's one vegetable that was plentiful in England during the winter of '44/'45.

 

 

After an evening visiting as many pubs as we could find around Picadilly Circus , we made our way through the darkness of the London blackout to a nearby service men's Red Cross shelter where we were to spend the night. I remember, after checking in at the desk, that we had to climb a few flights of stairs to where we were to sleep. The "bedroom", as they called it, was a hugh warehouse loft dormitory with perhaps a hundred or more army cots set out side by side almost as far as the eye could see. There were no partitions and windows only in the far end of the room. Almost no one else had chosen to sleep on this floor so we picked out a bed and began undressing for the night. When a soldier is tired, no place that is warm and has a cot is ever rejected. We were dog tired and ready to sleep.
Joel had just taken off his shoes and socks and I was preparing to do the same when suddenly all HELL broke loose. There was a tremendous explosion. The whole building seemed to heave and glass in the windows at the far end of the room crashed to the floor. Some of the cots seemed to move, dust fell from the floor (or roof) above, and the lights went out. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps we had survived enemy fighters and flak but were destined to end up buried in ruble in a collapsed building in central London. The building did not collapse. Joel looked at me and quietly said "Let's get the hell outa here and back to the base. It's not safe here". He was quite right but he reconsidered and we stayed.
What had happened is that one of the V2 rockets that frequently bombarded London had landed only about a block away from where we were staying. The V2 carried a two ton bomb on it's nose and, since it was fired from Germany into the stratosphere, it would return to earth noiselessly and without warning. An explosion of 4000 pounds of dynamite packs a major wallop.
 The next day we walked to where the bomb had landed and were amazed at the damage. We were witness to a major disaster. The British, however, just walked rapidly by on their way to work as if what had happened was a daily occurrence..... and it was. The bomb had landed about 500 feet from where we had been sleeping and had hit in the main shopping area of London on Regent Street immediately adjacent to Selfredge's Department Store. The front of Selfredge's was almost one hundred percent glass window and all that glass had landed on the sidewalk in front of the store piling up almost a foot in depth. For blocks around the sidewalks and roads were covered with glass and overturned cars. Fire trucks were pumping water into the buildings adjacent to a huge hole in the ground that was about 100 feet in diameter and at least 10 feet deep. There was no trace of the building that had been there the day before. It seemed strange to see no one gawking at this carnage. Instead we witnessed dozens of civilians helping to sweep up the glass and board up the storefronts so that the merchants could open their doors for business that same day.
On one other occasion I had seen a V-1 buzz bomb passing over London but this encounter with a V2 was too close a call not to remember it like it was yesterday.


 

Dive Bombing
I don't remember what date or time of year this was but it was a time of very bad weather. We had prepared for a mission and had taken off with a full load of 500 pound bombs. Before all the group's planes were airborn there was a mission recall. This meant that the mission was scrubbed, probably because of very bad weather over Germany. I believe only a handful of planes were in the air when the recall came and we were one of them. We were told via radio that we were to dispose of our bombs and return to our field.
 Our Group's procedure for disposing of our bombs was to arm them and drop them in an area of the North Sea that cuts into the side of England known as "The Wash". The Wash was perhaps a hundred miles Northwest of Glatton airfield. The other primary rule in doing this was that the visibility must be clear, we must be out of site of land, and we were to drop our bombs only when we were sure no English fishing or military boats were anywhere near the area.
We proceeded to the Wash only to find that there was a low thin cover of clouds whose top was perhaps 400 feet above the water and extending as far as we could see. There was never any thought of returning to the field with the bombs. Landing with a load of bombs and full gas tanks was too risky.
What to do?
We decided to go down to determine how low the cloud layer actually was. We made a slow instrument descent through the clouds. When we broke through at about 200 feet we found the visibility to be clear and we could readily see for a considerable distance over the water . A suggestion from our bombardier and with gleeful agreement from the rest of the crew, we decided that we would rise above the cloud layer, which was only a few hundred feet thick, arm a bomb, then dive down through the cloud layer, level off, observe that no ships were in the area, quickly release one bomb, pull up as quickly as possible and get as much distance between us and the bomb before it exploded.

We did not know how close we could be to an exploding 500 pound bomb without sustaining damage.
 We first made a dry run or two before Joel finally armed one of the bombs. Then, down we went. We started at about 1000 ft altitude and dived down with engines at full throttle, broke through the clouds, "bombs away" came over the intercom from Joel, and up we went as fast as a B-17 could climb at full throttle. Just before we broke out of the cloud layer we heard the bomb explode with a loud 'WOOMMP'. Hearing the bomb explode surprised me. A check of the crew and the plane determined that there was no sign of damage and no one in the crew observed the bomb exploding through the clouds.
We continued this bombing, one at a time, until we had exhausted our supply of bombs. Everyone seemed to enjoy this adventure and I kinda wished that we could do this with some of the Group's targets in Germany. Bad, bad, bad idea. This may be the only B-17 in the 8th Air Force to practice dive bombing.
 There was much chatter on the intercom as we returned to our home field about the incident and the fun we had had.
 Dive bombing in a B-17G. 

Swapping Places
 
I recently watched a program on the History Channel on television titled "Suicide Missions - the Ball Turret Gunner".
What a great show. Nothing I have ever seen before portrayed the bravery and dedication of the ball turret gunners in WWII more clearly than this show. Watching this documentary brought to mind my one and only experience in the ball turret......and other experiences while "swapping places".
    As the pilot of a B-17, I spent about 95 percent of my time in the pilot's compartment. There were ocassions, however, in training and when overseas, that I would stroll the plane while the copilot flew in the pilots seat.  Frequently, on training missions, we would let one of the other members of the crew fly in the copilots seat with the opportunity to handle the controls for a short period. Everyone on the crew got their chance and seemed to enjoy the experience. It broke the normal routines and helped to convince them that piloting a B-17 was no "walk in the park".  By the same token I would often spend time in the nose of the plane with the Navigator (Don Scheuch) and Bombardier (Joel Lester). I also spent time in other parts of the plane; with Ed Peters where I got to operate the top turret, with Clair Hetrick checking out the operation of the waist fifty calibre guns, and with Charles Kenny in the radio compartment. I suppose these visits were an attempt to experience what other members of the crew experienced while performing their specialty in flight. Besides, it gave me a chance to stretch my legs and reduced the boredom of long training flights .
On one of these ocassions when I ventured to the rear of the plane I offered to exchange places with our tail gunner, Percy Mack. Now, you all know that the tail gun position is at the extreme rear of the plane and the only access to it is from the waist position but what is not obvious is the difficulty in getting to that position in flight. The passage is very narrow and one must squeeze past the tail wheel of the plane which retracts up into the plane when in flight. One then crawls on hands and knees into a position where there is less and less room to move. When you reach your destination you are on your knees and your head is touching the top skin of the aircraft with barely enough room to turn your head from side to side.
With a full compliment of high altitude clothing and equipment and an oxygen mask, just getting into position was a fete of heroic proportions.
The only redeeming feature of this gun position was the fact that it had its own personal escape hatch. A small hatch, perhaps 18 inches square was immediately to the left and behind the gunners postion and provided a way out in an emergency......albeit somewhat difficult.
On my first visit to this position I came to the realization that the tail gunner had much more to contend with than the cramped quarters. Each movement of the plane controls in flight was greatly accentuated at the tail. Flying formation particularly, resulted in continuous small adjustment to the elevator and rudder by the pilot to maintain position. These small adjustments resulted in a rise and drop and a left to right of the tail......often a distance of four or five feet. I was in this postion only a few minutes when I began to feel queezy from this constant motion..... as if in a small boat on a stormy ocean. It took me no more than five minutes to conclude that I if I stayed there much longer I'd be losing my breakfast. After that experience I had a new respect for Sgt Percy Mack and the tail gun position. It was his job to stay in that position for as long as ten hours at a time and that surely required a high degree of stamina and endurance.

My next trial run was to the ball turret. For this I needed some instructions from our Ball turret gunner,Ed McCloskey. He reviewed with me all the procedures to follow for getting into the ball and what to do once I got settled there.
The only access to the ball is through a small hatch in the top of the ball that is only accessable when the ball was in a special postion with the guns pointing straight down. I proceeded to connect my intercom before entering the ball as this would be my only means of communication once that hatch door was closed. Since we were not at high altitude it was not necessary for me to wear the heavy clothing and oxygen mask that were normally required of the ball turret gunner when flying a mission.
As I slithered through the small hatch down into the ball I had a queezy feeling that I was leaving the airplane. A very uncomfortable feeling for sure. I placed my feet in the footrests and settled down into the seat as my knees slowly pulled up almost to my head. My head was between the two 50 calibre guns with the barrel only inches from my ears. Can't even imagine what it would be like when the guns were firing. I was now seated in place and fought the tight space to fasten a chest chute to my harness. The chute had been handed to me by one of the crew through the open hatch above my head. I now sat normally with the bulbous parachute sitting on my stomach, my legs pushed up in a fetal position, and a couple of gun barrels just a few inches from my head. I had been so busy that I'd not yet looked around at the space outside the ball.....that was to come shortly.
Just as I was about to ask another question I heard the hatch door above my head slam shut. I was now on my own.
I roughly grasp the handlebars of the gun and ball control and immediately began to spin. The ball, and I, spun swiftly to the left. In an attempt to slow the spin, I overcorrected and immediately began to spin in the opposite direction. After fighting with this for a few minutes, I finally came to a full stop. I then tipped the handlegrips backward and immediately was thrown down on my back as the ball rotated and the guns came from a perpendicular position to a horizontal position. This is where I wanted to be......resting on my back and looking straight ahead out of the small glass window directly in front of me. It was at that moment that I lost my breath. I suddenly could see nothing of the plane, no fuselage, no tail, no wings, nothing. I'm floating in space in a ball with no reference to the horizon on this cloudy day. It was eerie and breathtaking.
I must have sounded paniky to the crew when I called over the intercom "Get me out of here". I had been in the ball for perhaps 5 minutes and I had had enough. The lonely feeling and the sense of abandonment from the rest of the plane and crew was something that I did not enjoy (and never would). I positioned the ball so that the hatch could be opened and when it was aligned I'm sure that I set a record for extracating myself from the ball up into the waist of the plane. I was out of there in less than 15 seconds, I'm sure.

I have said before that it took a special kind of person to fly the ball turret. Jim McCloskey was that person on our crew and I think he deserves a special debt of gratitude from the rest of us in the plane for the many, many hours he spent in that ball. That was my first, last, and only experience in the ball turret. God bless the ball turret gunners.


"More to come"