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On Monday, I published a Korean War story of my dad’s. He had written it in 2003 in an email to be read to an old friend who was in the hospital. There is one more such story in those emails, this one from WWII. Dad was the copilot of a B-24 and was stationed in the heel of the boot of Italy. There, he was part of the 1000 plane raids over Germany, an episode in aviation history that will never happen again. It boggles the mind of how that many bombers could be organized in the air before heading out from Italy to Germany. The sound of all those engines must have been something unforgettable.
The guys who flew those missions had no great expectation that they would live through them — and too many of them didn’t. Dad told me once that he never expected to live to 25 years. Thankfully, he lived to see 84 birthdays.
I’ve been thinking of my dad a lot and wanted to share this with you. I am very angry that the top seat of our nation is occupied by someone who cozies up to dictators and who cossets homegrown Nazis. I miss my dad terribly but am glad he was spared what we are seeing now.
He had told this story to me before as an illustration of that phenomenon in emergency situations wherein a whole bunch of stuff happens simultaneously in just a few seconds and yet the person experiencing it is aware of every little thing - as if time is stretched and everything is happening in slow motion. To me, the story is also a bit like scenes in Catch-22, especially the bit about the officer hitching a ride on a milk run flight to pad out his flight hours.
Since I just recalled this incident I figured I’d try to get it down before it slips away. This did not happen to me although, now that I think of it, it’s the sort of thing that could have.
It was toward the end of the war and we were flying B-24s on a mission to the Po River Valley in support of the British Eighth Army. As this was not a normal mission for us we were not flying our usual box formation but were wing tip to wing tip in a long line. Flying to my right was a Lt. Novotny, AC. The copilot (and hero of this account) was VanDyke. In the nose were the navigator, the bomabardier (whose names I can’t recall) and in the Emerson nose turret, a gunnery officer from the 5th Air Force who was obviously trying to rack up some milk runs so he could go home a hero. The rest of the crew were aboard but are not really involved in this story.
Now flak is a random thing. You could take a full burst and have very little damage, or a single piece could really spoil your whole day. Remember that all of this occurred at once in only a few seconds.
There was very little flak this day. The German Army wasn’t equipped with flak guns per se but did have the famous 88 that could be turned into a flak gun. So the flak that day was light and sporadic – not like Vienna, Linz, or Munich. For us, it was truly a milk run.
VanDyke, the copilot, was flying the plane and looking out the right window. Now the fun begins.
Just as we approached the bomb line, Novotny’s plane took a direct hit under the nose of the plane. Then several things happened all at once.
First, the navigator was hit on the forehead with the nose ring from the fuse. This of course knocked him out and the wound, as all head wounds do, bled profusely. A cut hydraulic line was spraying hot hydraulic fluid around the nose compartment and the gunnery officer started screaming for his parachute.
Now I guess this is the time to explain that the nose turret had two sets of doors. One set was on the turret (to keep the gunner from falling out) and one set was on the plane proper so the wind didn’t blow into the nose compartment. The bombardier was dodging hydraulic fluid and tying to give aid to the navigator. And now the gunnery officer was really freaking out, trapped in the nose turret, screaming for a parachute. So the bombardier quickly opened both sets of doors, threw a chute into the turret, and closed them again – trapping the gunnery officer with his (now useless) chute. This notched the screaming up several decibels.
At the same time, Novotny felt something hit his boot so he bent over to feel what it was. A piece of flak had punched a hole in his boot and came to rest between his toes. Aside from being hot the flak didn’t do any damage, not even a minor cut. However, when he bent over he hit his control wheel which flopped uselessly against the control panel. His controls had been neatly cut.
Now, we seldom used the interphone on these old planes. The interphone was prone to leak onto the radio and broadcast whatever was said. Of course, if you had fighters around, who cared? But in this case, the only person using the interphone was the gunnery officer who was fast reaching meltdown.
Novotny now made a mistake. In his excitement he punched the copilot on the shoulder and pointed to his controls. VanDyke, who was not on the interphone, responded to this time honored signal to take over the controls by letting go of the yoke, holding his hands up in the air. The plane entered a gentle spiral to the left as Novotny joined the gunnery officer in screaming and pumped his controls hoping for something to happen. About this time, VanDyke realized that all was not as it should be and took over the controls, getting things back to straight and level. (See, I told you the copilot was the hero!)
The bombardier finally let the gunnery officer out of the nose turret. Still blubbering, the gunnery officer scuttled for the waist of the plane and for all practical purposes disappears from this narrative.
Vandyke flew the plane back to the base, got the gear down manually, and made a no flap landing on our 4,000 feet of soft gravel. The navigator came to before landing. He had a colossal headache but recovered fully. I often wonder what he replied when asked about the perfectly round scar in the middle of his forehead. If he said it was an old war wound I am sure there would be a bunch of snickers.
That’s it for now. Get well.
Bob R.
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