Copyright 2000, Charles C.

Huff - All rights reserved

FORWARD

The following story is the war-time experiences of our father, Charles C.

(Charlie) Huff. He was a young man in rural northeast Florida in 1942,
married to our mother, the former Dorothy (Dot) Scoville of the same small
community of Elkton.

The upheaval in their lives caused by this beast of a war was surely the same
as that in countless other young lives. And yet they must have felt that it
was happening to them alone. The fear, the loneliness, the uncertainty of
what the future would bring, must have seemed unbearable at times. But
they, like all the rest, had no choice but to go on.

It is hard to know just who had the worst time of it: our father who endured
much hard work in training followed by the terror of combat, or our mother
who must have faced so many painful and empty moments alone. It
certainly doesn’t matter though, for together, they, like all the rest of the
young people serving their country, made sacrifices that had to be made,
gave up a part of their lives that should have been spent in much happier
times, and faced the dread that only possible and sudden death can bring.

The rest of us will always be grateful for stories like this.

Charles A. (Butch) Huff William C. (Bill) Huff

And in Memory: Michael D. (Mike) Huff

 Lt. Charles C. Huff - U.S. Army Air Corps
8th Air Force 486th Bomb Group 833rd Squadron

1942 - 1945

2
PREFACE

I am going to write about the things that happened to me and things that
happened around me during the three years that I served in the military.

During this time, the air service was part of the Army and was known as the
Army Air Corps. After World War II, it became a separate unit and was
known as the Air Force. I remember just about every detail of events that
happened to others and me even though it has been fifty-six years ago.
Some of them were very comical and some were very tragic.

As a young teenager, I dreamed of airplanes all the time. The airlines at that
time did not resemble what they are today. The planes then were DC 3’s
and carried about twenty passengers. There were two flights a day over our
area, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I was thrilled to see them
and watched them when they appeared until they disappeared. I never got
tired of seeing them and had many dreams about them. Since money was so
scarce and times were hard and the depression was on, I knew my only
chance was to join the Army Air Corps.

HERE IS MY STORY !

3
------------------ PART ONE: TRAINING ----------------

It all began May 15, 1942, five months after Pearl Harbor Day.

After the work on the farm was finished for the season, I made the trip to
Jacksonville to the recruiting office to inquire about the possibility of getting
into the pilot training program. When I went into the office and sat down,
the first question the Sergeant asked was whether I had had two years of
college. Of course I didn’t, and I thought I was stopped even before I got
started. However, he said if I wanted to take the exam and if I passed it, I
would be accepted. I could tell by the way he looked that he was very
doubtful. Much to his surprise, after taking the two-hour test, which he
graded as soon as I finished, I passed with a very high mark. After much
paper work, I signed the enlistment form and was officially an aviation cadet
in the Army Air Corps. He told me I would receive my orders in the mail in
a few months.

I WAS AVIATION CADET CHARLES C. HUFF

SERIAL NO. l4077030 23 YEARS OLD

I WAS ON MY WAY!!

4
When I got back home, Dot and I decided to go to Alabama and stay with
her mother and stepfather during the summer. At that time our little son,
who was called Butch, was two years old. While up there I worked for
Crescent Bus Line as a mechanic. We came back home in October, but
there still were no orders waiting for me. Dot applied for a job at the
railroad offices in St. Augustine and was accepted, while I odd-jobbed
around and killed time.

THE FARM BOY LEAVES HOME – November, 1942

A week or two later I got my orders along with a voucher for railroad fare to
Nashville, Tenn. My departure date was Friday, November 13, 1942. It was
also the time my pay would start at seventy-five dollars per month. When
the date arrived I said my goodbyes and
boarded the train in St. Augustine. When they
invented the phrase LOST SHEEP, I was the
one they had in mind. I wasn’t just lost, I
was scared to death, and I stared out the train
window and wished I was back home. Before
long I noticed that every time the train
stopped, which was often, three or four or
more boys about my age would get on. When
I overheard a couple of them talking I realized
that they were also cadets, and joined them.
We all became friendly and the tension
evaporated. From then on we watched for
newcomers and gathered them in, and by the
time we The world sure seemed a lot reached Nashville there were a
hundred or smaller then than it would 3 more. We were all whooping and
years later
hollering like boys will do and the conductor
was glad to get rid of us.

We were met at the station and taken to the base, which was called the
Classification Center. I had traveled six hundred miles from St. Augustine.
The weather was terrible! It was raining and freezing. There was mud
everywhere. Then it snowed, which was the first I had ever seen - but not
5
the last! We marched in the rain and mud; we had phys-ed in the snow. It
would warm up and rain and form more mud. It was near freezing all the
time. Inside we washed dishes in the mess hall; we scrubbed floors in the
mess hall; we set the tables; we took out the garbage cans; we scrubbed the
platforms that they sat on; we had guard duty, we took tests - all sorts of
tests! They were trying to find out if any of us had brains enough to learn to
fly. We saw no planes; there wasn’t a plane within a hundred miles. We
cursed ourselves, each other, and the army. However, there was one good
thing about it - everybody had to take a turn doing it all.

Then my thin southern blood caught up with me; after a few weeks of
having all that fun in the snow and rain and mud and freezing wind, I came
down with pneumonia and off to the hospital I went where I stayed for two
weeks. For a while I thought I was going to die and then I hoped that I
would. I had Christmas dinner there and couldn’t eat it. A person hasn’t
lived until he has spent some time in a military hospital. It was almost full
and there must have been a hundred patients for every nurse. I got to feeling
a little better and started pestering the nurse about letting me out. She told
me I had to be without fever for three days before I could be discharged, and
right away I had the answer. The next morning when she came in to take my
temperature, I removed the thermometer as soon as she left, and when she
came in about ten minutes later it was right on normal. I pulled this trick
three days in a row, and she said, “get going”. I left with a high fever but I
had to get out of there or I would have died for
sure.

My new orders read to proceed by train

immediately to Maxwell Field, Montgomery,
Alabama - distance two hundred and fifty miles.
It was a beautiful warm day when we arrived,
and my fever cleared up immediately. I was
ready to go off into the wild blue yonder - but
there wasn’t a plane in sight! We weren’t within
a mile of the field. This place was called
“preflight”. There were many tests of all kinds,
and we were asked if we wanted to be fighter
pilots or bomber pilots. All this was entered in
our records and I found out later the ones who
stuck to their choice usually got what they
Brand New Cadet !
wanted. I chose bombers because I figured
6
when I got out (that is, if I survived the war) I would have enough flying
experience to go into the airlines, and sure enough when I was discharged in
nineteen forty-five, Eastern Air Lines was hiring military pilots with multi-
engine experience. To get back to the pre-flight school, nothing of
importance happened during our two months stay there. We had the first of
a long line of physical examinations with emphasis on eyesight (mine was
very good at 20/15).

PRIMARY TRAINING - April, 1943

After this period was over we got our next orders to proceed by train to
Helena, Arkansas to begin our primary flight training. Distance - about two
hundred and fifty miles. When we arrived at Helena, which is right on the
Mississippi River, our transportation met us and took us out to the base,
which was about five miles away. When we arrived there, the first thing we
saw was airplanes! They were everywhere; this was what we had been
waiting for!

We were assigned our quarters, which were as nice as motel rooms, with six
men to a room. The person who assigned our rooms had a list of all our
names in alphabetical order. He picked the first six, the second six, the third
six, and so on until everyone was taken care of. In my room were Hall,
Huff, Hightower, Hasek, Hogan and Jordon. Hightower was from St.
Petersburg and was a good friend, but Hall (called R.T) and I became real
buddies all through the war, until his tragic end, which I will discuss later.

The next day was spent in orientation, which meant finding out what was
ahead of us. All of us - about two hundred cadets - met in an auditorium
where the base commander spoke to us about how things were run, and what
was expected of us. We found out that every class moved up every four
weeks. Our class would be known as 43-H, which meant that if we were
successful we would graduate in August, 1943. January was coded A - on
down to August which was H. We would start as underclass and in a month
would move up to be the upper class. The present upper class would leave
and go to the second phase of flight training - called basic - in Walnut Ridge,
Ark. There they would be underclass again until they moved up again in
four weeks. This procedure would continue until graduation here and at all
other flight training centers around the country.
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When the base commander spoke to us, he emphasized one important thing:
that everything had to move so fast, we had to learn everything in a hurry
and on schedule, and if we couldn’t keep up, we would be eliminated and
sent to gunnery school in Biloxi, Miss., after which we would be assigned as
gunners on a combat crew. The thought was very depressing. Every day in
ground school we had classes in navigation, meteorology, and aircraft
structure, plus physical education. The ground school instructors were all
civilians, as well as the flight instructors, most of who were former ag-pilots
(crop dusters). We had classes in the morning and flight instruction in the
afternoon, but every week this was reversed. Each flight instructor had five
students and I think this ratio held all through the training period. My
instructor’s name was Charles Holmes and was a peach of a fellow. We had
to solo in about eight hours, but could go to ten if your instructor thought
you could make it. My bunch all made it in the allotted time. If you failed
you were out and packed your bag and headed for Biloxi. At this stage there
were a lot of boys who started leaving.

I can’t begin to tell you what a thrill it was to start learning to fly an
airplane! The planes were PT-19’s and were built by Fairchild. The PT
stood for primary trainer, and they
cruised at about ninety miles per
hour. They had an inverted one
hundred seventy-five horsepower
engine with a wingspan of about
twenty-eight feet, which was built of
plywood. When my instructor found
out I was a farm boy, I think he took
special interest in me, as the other
four boys were city slickers. Most of
the maneuvers that we did involved
PT –19 Primary Trainers
lining up the airplane with section
lines. This was farming country and
the land was marked off in quarter, half, and full section lines (in other
words, checkerboard). The first time Mr. Holmes tried to explain that to
those city boys they were completely baffled. He told them that Huff knew
what section lines were, and later on they asked me to explain what he was
talking about. That was no easy task!

After about seven hours of instruction, he sprung my solo flight on me right

8
out of the blue. We had been away out over the farms where I had been
practicing the things I had learned - or thought I had -when he said over the
speaking tube to return to the field. Naturally I wondered what I had done
wrong. When we got back to the field, which was a mile, square and had
been a cow pasture (no runways), I made a pretty good landing, and he told
me over the voice tube to stop. I didn’t know whether he was going to pull
me out of the cockpit and give me a beating for being so stupid or just make
me walk the mile back to the flight line. Instead he climbed out on the wing
(he was in the rear cockpit), reached back in and refastened his seat belt.
Then I got suspicious. He said “it’s all yours” and I had such a horrified
look on my face that he smiled and said, “you can do it”. When he said that,
all my fear left me.

There was still plenty of room left for me to take off in, so away I went. I
cleared the ground and climbed out to five hundred feet and made a left
ninety-degree turn on to what is called the crosswind leg. After about
another ten seconds I made another left ninety-degree turn on to the
downwind leg, which is parallel to the field or runway, whichever it may be.
I continued beyond the field boundary and make another ninety degree turn
to the left, which is called the base leg. After another ten seconds I made
another left ninety degree turn, which was my final approach to landing. I
made a pretty darn good landing and taxied back to where I left my
instructor. He knew what a happy feeling it was and smiled as he climbed
back in and I taxied us back to the flight line. Every pilot remembers the
thrill of his solo flight, and he never forgets it - for there is no other like it!

The traffic pattern that I just described was standard for all bases and
airports at that time. Later on in my story I may write, “I entered the traffic
pattern, which can be left or right, on the downwind leg at a forty-five
degree angle”. After you start flying planes that are radio equipped, the
tower will clear you for a straight-in approach if you have an emergency, as
I did later on.

As these were open cockpit planes, we wore helmet and goggles, but you
had to wear them on the back of your neck until you soloed - then you could
wear them on your forehead when you were not flying.

As soon as you soloed, when you got back to the flight line, your friends
were waiting with a special treat. A hole had been dug a long time ago
about two feet deep and ten feet in diameter and filled with water. The
9
Arkansas clay made it just a big mud hole. Four of your good friends would
take hold of your arms and legs and throw you as high as they could in the
air, and you would land right in the middle of that mud hole. It was winter
and very cold, but no one minded, for it was such a happy occasion. There
were among the cadets three military men who were already officers and
they were thrown in too, but they were good sports. One was a captain and
two were second lieutenants.

One of the lieutenants told me that his wife was born and reared in Florida,
but it was such a hick place that I probably never heard of it. When I asked
him where it was, he said San Mateo. I asked him if it was near Palatka and
he said yes. He was so surprised to learn that was my home territory.

As there were about two hundred students in our whole class, the soloing
period lasted quite a while. The ones of us who had already soloed had great
sport watching others take that most thrilling ride of their lives. A lot of
planes were bashed up, but no one was killed or hurt. One student hit the
ground so hard that one of his wheels broke off. The plane bounced so high
that he decided to go around again. He didn’t realize that he had left one of
his wheels behind. When he went around and came in on his final approach
again, the ground crew had gone out in a jeep to pick up the wheel. They
went racing along beside him holding up the wheel for him to see. He said
later that he didn’t know what those crazy people were doing. He landed all
right, though, and didn’t even tear up the plane. It just skidded around and
came to a stop. He was so surprised that he had made a one-wheel landing.

Another incident happened when one plane tried to land on top of another.
They were about fifty feet in the air; one plane was close behind and a little
above the other; they closed up and the propeller on the rear plane chewed
up the tail section on the other one only slightly. They didn’t crash, though,
and both landed safely. Another student made such a bad landing on his
solo flight that he totaled the plane - they washed him out.

After the excitement of soloing was over, we all settled down to a serious
routine. Our days were full from early till late. We had to pass all of our
ground classes with high marks. Our flight training was precise and nothing
less than perfect was accepted. Every time we flew our instructor
demonstrated something new. About every third day we went up alone and
practiced what we had learned. We didn’t go sightseeing around the
country, we didn’t have time. Many students couldn’t keep up with the fast
10
pace and were eliminated. Many of these boys would have made good pilots
if they had had more time, but the time just wasn’t there.

As the days went by everything seemed to start getting easier, but it was still
a rough ride, and we had a long way to go. There were a few boys in our
class from well-to-do families who owned small airplanes, and these boys
already had pilot’s licenses and some hours in their logbooks. All of us
envied them because we figured they had a head start on the rest of us, but
our envy was wasted, for every one of these fellows washed out before they
got started. The reason for this was they had learned to fly in a haphazard
way and they were unable to change over to the strict rules of military
flying.

After four weeks, as mentioned, we moved up in status and became the

upper class and had a few more privileges, but we were in the same quarters
and had the same classes. We didn’t worry about our ground school classes,
for we could all learn them without any trouble, but our flying really kept us
on edge. We knew we had to absorb the new instructions and not forget
anything we had already learned. As we logged more and more airtime we
gradually gained more confidence in ourselves and became more at ease in
our airplanes.

As the second four weeks began to draw to a close we all began to breathe
easier, for we knew that the primary training period produced the greatest
number of washouts; about forty percent of the class failed in this period.

Finally the last few days arrived and we were elated. We knew that we had
conquered the hardest step of the whole training program. On my last flight
my instructor was with me and it was kind of a goodbye trip. We landed out
at one of the auxiliary fields, which was nothing but a cow pasture. There
were some old chairs there and we got out of the plane and sat there for half
an hour or so talking. He asked me what kind of planes I hoped to fly, and I
told him I was going for the big ones - the four engine jobs. He said I was
very wise, for after it was all over I could go straight into the airlines. He
never said “IF I got thru” - He said “WHEN”. I think he had the feeling that
I would get thru all the rest of my training and get my wings and
commission. When we got back to base and got out of the plane we shook
hands and he wished me all the luck in the world. He certainly was one fine
fellow.

11
This phase of our training is over and we all packed up and made ready to
leave. I had sixty-two hours in my logbook, and boy, was I proud of that
time! I wouldn’t have believed that three years later when I was discharged,
my flight records would show sixteen hundred and eighty-three hours flight
time. Of that, fourteen hundred would be first pilot or command pilot time
in four engine bombers, and my last year in service I would be an instructor.

BASIC TRAINING - May, 1943

We boarded the train the next day and headed for Walnut Ridge, Arkansas -
distance about two hundred miles. Once again we would be under class.
The living conditions and routine here will be about the same as was at
Helena, except that here everyone is military. The ground school subjects
varied but all were related to flying. My flight instructor here was a second
lieutenant from Penn. and was a fine fellow.

The planes that we would fly

here were BT- 13s built by
Vultee Aircraft Co., and cruised
about one hundred and ten
miles per hour. The BT stood
for basic trainer. They were a
bitch of an airplane and felt as
heavy as a ton of lead. They
had a thirty-five foot wingspan
and were all-metal. They were
powered with a four hundred
and fifty horsepower engine
BT – 13 - Basic Trainer with a controllable pitch
propeller. They had Plexiglas
covered cockpits with sliding canopies. The engine had so much torque that
when you started down the runway (we had paved runways here) you had to
hold full right rudder to keep it on the runway until you gained some speed.
For the fuel system they had a right wing tank and a left wing tank and also a
small reserve tank. You took off and landed with the fuel selector valve in
the reserve position because the fuel coming from this tank was supposed to
12
be free of any foreign matter such as water, dirt, trash and etc. - or so the
manufacturer said. This is about all I can tell you about this monster. It
reminded me of a sleeping giant that was ready to wake up and bust your
butt if you made a mistake.

One of the maneuvers we had to learn was a deliberate spin and recovery,
the same as we did in primary training. Most planes are easy to recover
from a spin, but this thing was a real lulu. When you recover from a spin
you use opposite rudder to stop it from turning, and most planes respond to
this - but not this thing. A lot of times you could stop the spin and it would
decide to spin in the other direction and all the time you are losing altitude at
an alarming rate. One time I spun one down from four thousand feet to
about fifteen hundred before I convinced this bird that since we were fast
running out of space, some changes had to be made. Some times they would
go into a flat spin, which was a dangerous situation, but I won’t go into that
now. I could demonstrate that with a model, if someone was interested. I
soloed the thing without too much trouble, though, since I was already an
“expert” pilot (about 70 hours).

Not as many interesting things happened here as did at primary school.

Most of the flying here was getting used to bigger, heavier airplanes. These
planes were equipped with radios so we had to learn the technique involved
in their use. We were in contact with the control tower at all times so they
always knew what area we were in. After starting our engines on the flight
line, we had to ask permission to taxi out to the runway; we had to ask
permission to line up on the runway; we had to ask permission to take off,
and after we were off we had to ask permission to leave the traffic pattern.
When we came back to the field we had to ask permission to enter the traffic
pattern. When this was granted, they would tell you the wind direction and
velocity and what runway was in use. All runways are numbered and the
numbers are the compass heading. They would also tell you if the pattern
was right or left and would also tell you what the barometric pressure was.
All altimeters have a small window on the face, which shows the barometric
pressure. You can change it with a small knob that is located alongside the
window. All this is very important as it enables all planes in the area to have
their altimeters showing the correct height. All this would be easy to
understand if you flew from Denver, CO, which is a mile above sea level to
New Orleans, which is at sea level. I would bet that there are a lot of private
pilots who fly just around their home field that are not aware of this fact.
We also started flying cross-country trips, which were called “round robins”.
13
The one used the most left Walnut Ridge, flew to Malden, Mo. (about eighty
miles), then to Popular Bluff, Mo. (about thirty-five miles), than back home
to Walnut Ridge (eighty miles) - for a total of about two hundred miles.
These trips were very exciting for us, for it was the first time we were
allowed to leave the vicinity of our home base. On one of these trips I made
a real boo-boo. I missed the town of Poplar Bluff as a checkpoint, and flew
on up into the Ozark Mountains - and was thoroughly lost. I finally came to
a railroad and dropped down very low and followed it until I came to a depot
and read the name painted on the end of it. When I found it on my map I
realized that I was a hell of a long way from Walnut Ridge. When I checked
the distance and looked at my fuel gauge, I realized it was going to be damn
close.

I made it back all right but it was after dark and there was a ground fog
hanging just above the concrete runway. We had been briefed on this
condition, and I knew just what to do. When I entered the fog, which was
about ten feet above the runway, I just shut my eyes and hung on until we
slammed into the concrete runway. There was no way you could call that a
good landing, but as there was no one around to see it, I didn’t have to lie
about it. When I parked the plane the gasoline gauge was hugging the empty
peg. Boy, that was close but I made it, so what the hell! I learned
something, though, and on all the rest of my cross-country flights I made
sure I didn’t miss any checkpoints. As you can guess, my honorable
instructor wasn’t one bit pleased. It would have been embarrassing if one of
his students had been reported as missing in action.

One of the other students had a comical but near fatal experience; as he was
taking off, he was airborne but still near the runway, a slight crosswind was
drifting him to the right. In this plane the nose of the plane blocks off your
forward vision when climbing. There was a dump truck waiting to cross at
the end of the runway. The right wheel of the plane hit the cab of the truck
on the drivers’ side just above the door and bounced over it. An eyewitness
said you never saw a truck driver leave his truck so fast. If the plane had
been a foot lower, the result would have been spectacular, but this is one of
those situations where you always say “what if”.

I had a close encounter myself: one day I was descending from four
thousand feet where I had been practicing maneuvers when another BT
popped up about two hundred feet ahead of me and was climbing. Both of
us were at fault. I was at fault for coming down without making “S” turns so
14
I could see below me, and it was his fault for climbing without looking
above him. This is another one of those situations where you say “what if”.

In this training period, there wasn’t the first plane banged up, so I guess you
could say we were all getting better. As this period is drawing to a close,
you can bet that all of us are a lot wiser than we were.

I haven’t mentioned my buddy R.T. because I didn’t see much of him until
the weekend. After “SMI” (Saturday morning inspection) our little bunch
got together and whooped it up until early Monday morning. This is how it
has been since we first started at primary.

We will be getting packed up to leave for Seymore, Indiana pretty quick -

four hundred and fifty miles. I might add that the students who chose to be
fighter pilots will go to a different school, but all my friends and I are going
to Seymore to twin-engine school. I logged eighty-two hours here plus
sixty-two in primary for a total of one hundred forty four hours. We lost
another fifteen percent of our students here at Walnut Ridge, making a total
of fifty-five percent gone. We are off on the morning train.

ADVANCED TRAINING - July, 1943

After another long tiring train ride, we

arrive in Seymore, Indiana looking
forward to this next phase of our
training. Here we will be under class
again, but there is not that much
distinction here. Everyone is growing
up and beginning to act like adults. Our
ground school will change some. Here
we will have some lectures on military
procedures and how to conduct
ourselves as officers. We will start
learning radio navigation and Morse
code. In this class the instructor sits at
his desk and sends out signals with his
key, which we pick up in our earphones.
We learn the alphabet first and then go
on to receiving complete sentences. I
15
think the requirement was to be able to receive and write down twenty words
per minute. R.T. and I accomplished this before the course ended and were
excused from the class for the rest of the time. One of our friends who was
ten times smarter than we were had nothing but trouble with this course.

The planes that we flew here were Beech craft A.T.10s, which meant
advance trainer. They were made completely out of plywood and were
called “flying coffins”- which was a joke for they were fine airplanes. They
were twin engine, of course, and were powered with two two hundred and
ninety horsepower engines. We were very pleased with them and no one in
our immediate group had any trouble whatsoever in learning to fly them.

A – 10

Advanced Trainers

They cruised at about

one hundred forty miles
per hour and were very
easy to fly and land. I
soloed in a few hours but that doesn’t mean you fly alone for these planes
require a copilot. When the instructor is not there, another student takes the
copilot’s seat. Therefore, some of your flights will be as copilot and some as
first pilot. In spite of this, I logged seventy-nine hours as first pilot and the
same amount as copilot. My instructor was Lieutenant Moody and was a
very fine fellow, being very much like my primary instructor.

We flew quite a lot of cross-country trips that, as I said before, were called
“round robins”, but these were a lot longer. These trips were a lot of fun and
we enjoyed them immensely. R.T. and I flew together a lot. We did a lot of
formation flying and learned how to make short field takeoffs and landings-
on these you learned how to get in and out of a very small field. R.T. was a
farm boy too, so one day he and I flew up to his home which was near
Crawfordsville, Ind. - about one hundred miles northwest of our base. We
buzzed his house and farm, and his mamma came out and waved at us. He
sure was pleased to see his home and surrounding country from the air and I
was pleased for him. On the way back to base one engine started to act up,
but we got it cleared up all right.
16
One day our instructor took us (we five students of his) out to the skeet
range - the first time I had ever seen one. They had a little machine that
threw clay targets out and away like a bird. We used double barrel shotguns
and I knocked those things down right and left, one at a time and two at a
time. My instructor said, “ah, hah, we have a quail hunter here”. He was a
hunter himself. Those city boys couldn’t hit a barn. We also had a softball
team and had a lot of fun playing against the other teams. I think everyone
would agree that this phase of our training was the happiest of all. We only
lost five percent of our students here, so that makes sixty percent that were
eliminated since we started at primary. I wouldn’t say that the ones of us
who made it were lucky; I would say that we were fortunate. In a few days
it will all be over and we will be rated military pilots, which is something to
be proud of! To the ones that fell by the wayside, we honestly say that you
have our sympathy.

I am pleased to say that my wife, Dot with our three-year-old son and my
sister-in-law, Mary, have driven all the way up from Florida to see this big
day in my life. Graduation day arrives and we are as excited as little kids.
We are seated in a large building with the students up front and family
members in the rear. The presiding officers who are in charge of the
ceremony sat at a large desk up front and called our names in alphabetical
order. As each name was called, the student would rise, walk up to the desk,
and stand at attention and salute. The officer in charge would present us
with our certificate that stated you were a qualified pilot in the Army Air
Corps, and presented us with our first silver wings. He also gave us our
certificates that proclaimed we were commissioned officers with the rank of
Second Lieutenant. My new serial number was O-811085.
HALLELUJAH- !!!

Wings and Commission 

The fruits of all my training

17
 This happy day was August 30, l943 !

The ceremony was over by noon so we had the rest of the day to fool around
and act silly. Flying officers are
allowed to take the grommets
(that is a steel ring inside our
service caps that make them
stand out) out of our caps. This
was necessary so you could wear
headphones. It was also the
mark of a “hot pilot”! The
ground officers hated us because
we had this privilege. Actually
they hated us for a lot of reasons,
mostly envy. We learned right
away that to a flying officer, a
ground officer was called a
paddle foot or a damn gravel Graduation Day Freeman Field: Left to Right
grinder. R.T. Hall, J. R. Jones, C.C. Huff, A.C. Hightower,
and C.F. Jordan
That afternoon my instructor, Lt. Moody, came looking for me to tell me
that my squadron commander would like to see me in his office, and he, Lt.
Moody, was requested to be present. Naturally I was curious as to what he
wanted to see me about. When we arrived there and I found out, I was
absolutely speechless. He said they were short of instructors here and would
I consider staying on as an instructor pilot. He had looked at my records and
remarks made by my different instructors, and after discussing it with Lt.
Moody, the two of them decided that I was well qualified to take the job.
This was the most flattering thing that ever happened to me before or since.
It was amazing that they would take me as an instructor on a plane that I had
just learned to fly. In my own mind I knew that I was a pretty good pilot but
I didn’t know if anyone else knew it. He went on to say that if I turned the
offer down there would be no hard feelings whatsoever. I asked him to give
me an hour or so to talk to my wife and I would get back to him
immediately. When I talked to her she said she wouldn’t try to influence me
one way or the other. I went back and told him that since I planned on going
with the airlines after the war, I thought it would be better for me to go on to
B-24 school as soon as possible and log as much four-engine time as I could.
Both of them said they were disappointed but that I was making a wise
choice and they didn’t blame me one bit. I thanked them for the offer and
18
we shook hands and I left. It was just as well, though, for about three
months later I heard they were pulling all flight-instructors and squadron
commanders out and sending them to combat.

This brought to an end the six months of training I had been through to
obtain my silver wings. There was a lot more to learn as my next orders
were sending me to Smyrna, Tenn. to start my four-engine training on B-
24s. I have logged seventy-nine hours here making a total of two hundred
twenty-three hours

FOUR ENGINE (B-24) TRAINING - October, 1943

My family and I loaded up our things and

headed south, for I had thirty days leave
coming. When my leave was about over
my wife and son and I headed back up to
Smyrna, Tenn. where I would start the
next phase of my training - this time in
four-engine bombers. R.T. and Hightower
would also be here. Everything was
different here, for we could live anywhere
we wanted to - on base or off base. There
was no ground school or anything else -
just flying. We did start taking Link
Trainer here, but I will explain that at the
end of the story. We had a schedule of
when we were to
My wife, Dot, and son, Butch, with me report to base, so we
in Smyrna. were able to plan
ahead for different things. We flew about four or five
hours a day and the rest of the time was our own. This
was certainly a lot different than what we were used to,
and we were very much pleased with this setup.

Our little flyer.

19
We found a place to stay in a trailer park - it
wasn’t very fancy but we didn’t have much
choice. We were satisfied, though, for this
would be our home for the next two months.
Archie Hightower and his wife Gladys stayed
here too, but R.T., since he was unmarried,
stayed on the base a few miles away. But he
was around here with the rest of us a lot of the
time.

The town of Smyrna was just a little hick

place so there wasn’t much to do there as far
as entertainment was concerned. I am sure it Archie and his wife, Gladys,
had a movie theater but that was about all. and our son, Butch at Smyrna.

The first part of our flight training consisted of getting checked out in a B-24
- you didn’t call it soloing. My instructor, (who was a second Lieutenant
same as we were) had two students: Hightower and a flight engineer plus
myself. After starting our engines, we had to call the tower for taxi and
takeoff instructions. We taxied out to the runway, which was twelve
thousand feet long and stopped. Incidentally this was the longest runway I
ever encountered.

To start with we practiced landings and takeoffs. We went thru a long

checklist of things to do before takeoff, and believe me there were a lot of
things to be done. We ran each engine up to twelve hundred RPM’s and
checked both magnetos and then ran them up to full power while holding the
brakes. We lowered the flaps to twenty degrees and we were ready to go.
We called the tower and asked permission to taxi out on to the runway. This
was necessary, for there might be a plane coming in on his final approach.
When the tower gave us permission, we taxied out and lined up on centerline
and stopped. We called the tower again and told them we were ready to go,
and they would reply, “You are cleared for takeoff”. This exact procedure
was followed for all military bases at that time.

We gradually applied full throttle to all four engines, which were rated at
twelve hundred and fifty horsepower each, but with emergency power
setting would produce fifteen hundred. We started down the runway holding
exactly on the centerline. We picked up speed rapidly and at one hundred

20
miles per hour we applied a little backpressure on the control column and
she would fly off at about one hundred twenty five. When we raised the
landing gear and flaps, the air speed would jump to one hundred and forty
mph. We held our heading until we reached one thousand feet altitude, then
we called the tower and asked permission to stay in the traffic pattern, which
would be granted.

Coming back in to land, we lowered the wheels on the downwind leg and
checked the green light, which meant they were down and locked, and set
the propeller controls at twenty four hundred rpm. On our final approach we
set the flaps at twenty degrees and cut the rpm to fifteen hundred and
dropped the nose until it pointed to a spot just short of the runway. With
everything set up like this your airspeed will be one hundred forty mph but
no less. In a B-24 if you let the airspeed drop below one twenty five, you
had better be close to the runway, for it will fall out from under you. If you
follow these procedures you will have your full weight on the runway well
within the first third of the runway. All runways are marked with a broad
red line across them at the one third and two third marks. It was generally
accepted by all pilots flying large airplanes that if you weren’t firmly down
by the time you reached the first third mark, then you should pull up and go
around again. It was no disgrace to do this; it was good judgment.

After practicing these landings for a few days, we changed to touch and go
landings - which meant after you had landed and your speed had dropped to
forty or fifty mph, you went into a take-off mode again, and you had to do
all this in a hurry. You needed at least seven thousand feet of runway for
this operation. All this time the instructor was riding in the copilot’s seat
and Hightower and I would change places in the pilot’s seat, which is the left
seat on all large planes. The one of us who wasn’t at the controls would
stand behind the two pilots and could learn a lot just by observing what was
going on and listening to the conversation between the student and instructor
over his earphones.

After a week or so of takeoffs and landings and getting used to the feel of
the airplane, we flew out away from the base and started learning how to
shut down one or two engines in case of an emergency; such as damage
from enemy anti-aircraft guns or machine gun fire from enemy fighter
planes. You did this by pulling the throttle lever back (that is, closed) and
pushing the feathering button located on a panel at the top of the windshield.
This turned the blades so that the edge was straight ahead into the wind, and
21
the engine would come to a complete stop. If an engine has sustained
damage that caused it to lose its oil supply (this happened to me) and you
cannot feather the propeller, the engine will freeze up. When this happens
the prop will fly off in any direction, sometimes thru the fuselage into the
cockpit area. As the blades are twelve feet in diameter and weigh five
hundred pounds, this can create a lot of havoc on the flight deck.

After I was out of the service and back home, I heard of this happening to an
airliner that was off the coast of Jacksonville. It was a four engine
Constellation and the prop came thru to the flight deck and killed the flight
engineer. The plane made an emergency landing at Bunnell and all the
passengers were taken off including the victim.

After mastering these emergency procedures, we moved on to other things

such as simulated engine fires (I had one of these) on the pilot’s order, the
flight engineer whose station was on the flight deck, would activate the fire
extinguisher that was built into each engine. Some times they actually
worked (it did in my case). If you have an engine fire and you can’t
extinguish it, you are in big trouble, for the flames blowing back over the
wing in a 160 mile-per-hour slip stream, will burn the wing off very quickly.
If the flames burn into the fuel tanks you are going to have a spectacular
explosion.

There are many things that can happen to a bomber when in combat while
flying over enemy territory, so it is very important that you know how to
handle any emergency that may arise. Another thing that could happen is to
lose your power supply (this happened to me and at night). You have no
instruments except air speed indicator - no radio, no flaps, no running lights,
but you can crank the wheels down by hand. I will add more on this when I
get to the next phase of training at Davis Monthan Field at Tucson, Ariz.

We made a lot of cross-country trips to practice our radio navigation, and we

also flew the radio beam. These were signals sent out from towers located
on all the larger airports. They were just like a highway in the sky. When
you were on the highway you heard a steady drone in your headphones;
when you strayed off the signal changed. When you passed over the tower,
all the sound stopped for a few seconds and then resumed. These radio
beams were very susceptible to thunder storms, though, and I don’t think
they use this system any more.

22
Hightower and I make a trip to El Paso (with an instructor) and while we
were en route Hightower went back to the tail section to talk to a fighter
pilot, who was hitching a ride with us to El Paso. Neither of us had seen him
when he got on the plane at Smyrna but we knew he was there. When he
came back to the flight deck, he said he was so surprised to find out it was a
fellow named Hill that had been in Cadet training with us.

Our instructor took us up one afternoon to show us how high a B-24 would
go. It took us two hours to climb to 34,000 feet and that was as high as she
would go. However, we found out later on when we were in England that a
combat loaded B-24 which weighs sixty-five thousand pounds will not climb
anywhere near that altitude. It took another two hours to descend and dark
overtook us.

We ran into the most severe thunderstorm that I have ever been through. It
rained in torrents and lightning was flashing constantly, but we made it back
to our base without any trouble.

After our instructor was satisfied with our performance on takeoffs and
landings and emergency procedures, which took
about ten days, he turned us loose and we were on
our own. He rode with us occasionally to see that we
weren’t picking up any bad habits, but he never
criticized us for anything.

Hightower and I kept practicing everything we had

learned over and over until we were really good at it.
We shared the time we flew as pilot and copilot so
that we were logging the same amount of flight time.
After this phase of training we will always be flying
as command pilots. In fact, this school only turns
Archie and me at
Smyrna.
out first pilots, which is the same as Command
pilots. The schools that train copilots give them only
a limited amount of training. They have to be proficient in takeoffs and
landings, but that is about all. When they are assigned to a crew as co-pilot,
they take orders from the first pilot who is responsible for everything that
happens. The latter part of our training here, which is two months, is like all
the rest of our past schools.

23
Hightower and I make a lot of long cross country flights where we practiced
our navigation. This phase of our training is about over and we are starting
to wonder where we will go next. We have each logged about 150 hours
first pilot and 150 hours copilot time. Finally the last day arrives and it is all
over here. We are no longer students but professional pilots. My total flight
time, not counting copilot time, is three hundred and seventy-three hours.

I have logged forty hours in Link Trainer, which is a flight simulator. Every
military pilot has to have an instrument rating and this is how you get your
training. A lot of the time when you are flying you will run into bad weather
and the time that you fly on instruments is recorded separately.

It has been eight long months since our solo flight at Helena, Ark. Military
flight training has always been called the most precise and exacting of all
flight training, and this statement has certainly proven to be true!

ON TO TUCSON & COMBAT TRAINING - January, 1944

The next day we got our individual orders. We are to report to the
reassignment center at Salt Lake City, Utah in one week. We have to make
our own travel arrangements. They don’t care if it is by train, bus, car or
mule train - just be there when you are supposed to be. Everyone who has
attended this school goes there, but when we leave there everyone goes in a
different direction.

R.T., Hightower and I and a few more of our close friends are leaving on the
train for Chicago. Hightower’s wife and my wife and our little son are there
at the station to see us off. We have no idea when we will see them again.

The distance to Chicago is five hundred miles, but with a bunch of boys
traveling together, time passes quickly. We changed trains at Chicago and
as it is thirteen hundred miles to Salt Lake City, we all get Pullmans. We
were reimbursed for all our travel expenses. As we leave Chicago I am very
anxious to see all this new country that I have read so much about. However
when we get into Iowa and Nebraska, it became boring. There was nothing
24
except rolling hills and prairies with very few trees. There were several
poker games started as soon as we left Chicago, and these games continued
with different players day and night until we reached Salt Lake City. I
played a lot, too, but got tired of it.

We crossed the corner of Colorado and on into Wyoming at Cheyenne. We

were getting into the Rocky Mountains and these high mountains were really
fascinating. We crossed over the Continental Divide about halfway through
southern Wyoming, and continued on down into Utah and Salt Lake City.
We were glad to arrive there for we were a little tired of this train ride. We
disembark and take a cab to the reassignment center.

It is a very large barracks building that could probably sleep five hundred
men and has a reception office where we all go to present our orders. We
are told that we will be here from several days and up to a week while our
new orders are being prepared. We can stay here in the barracks or we can
find other lodging at our own expense. We have to check in every morning
to see if our new orders have been issued. Hightower, R.T. and I get rooms
in a downtown hotel, for we are too high-class to stay in a mere barracks -
that is for the peasants!

Nothing of importance happens here so we spend a lot of time walking

around town to see the sights. We hear the story about the seagulls coming
here, a thousand miles from the sea to feed on the locust (grasshoppers)
swarms that were destroying the crops. All the churches got together and
said prayers for something to stop this plague. It must have worked for they
built a statue of a seagull in the city square.

We finally get our orders and our little clique is being broken up. R.T. is
going to a new bomb group being formed - the 487th - but I don’t remember
where it was located. I am also being sent to a new bomb group - the 486th
which will be located in Tucson, Arizona. I do not remember where
Hightower was sent. It will be six months before I see R.T. again and that
will be for the last time. I ran into Hightower at Trinidad on my way over-
seas. The three of us have shared a lot of good times together, but now it is
over.

I am supposed to board the train tomorrow along with a lot of other fellows,
and we are in for a big surprise if we thought we were going to ride a
Pullman like we did coming from Chicago, we are sadly mistaken. These
25
are just plain old wooden boxcars with three deck bunk beds built on all of
the walls with enough beds for about thirty of us to a car. There were twenty
or twenty-five cars, and every one of us was going to Tucson. It is about
nine hundred miles and it will be a ride to remember.

We move out and head southwest to Las Vegas. When we leave Las Vegas
we have to go around by California to avoid the Grand Canyon. When we
arrived there (Las Vegas) the train stopped for about thirty minutes for some
reason, and I get off and mail a postcard back home. The depot there sat
right out in the desert by itself. I could see some buildings off in the
distance but it looked to me like an old cow town. What a difference it is
now!

We leave here still heading southwest and into more desert. We cross over
into southeastern California and get into some rugged mountains. The track
clings to the side of the mountain with deep gorges on the other side. It
creeps along about ten miles per hour and we go thru lots of tunnels. We
finally leave the mountains and cross the Colorado River into Arizona -
turning back to the southeast. We arrive in Tucson after a very tiresome
nine hundred mile ride on a troop train. This is Davis Monthan Air Base. I
might add the civilian operation where the airlines are located is on the
opposite side of the field from the Army, but everyone uses the same
runways. Keep in mind that during the war there were no private planes at
all - only the airlines and they had only a few flights a day.

I check in at the reception office and am assigned a room in the officers’

Quarters, which are very nice. They tell me that after
everyone is settled in, there will be six or seven
hundred officers and enlisted men. There will be a big
meeting and the commanding officer will explain what
it’s all about. The group will consist of three squadrons
now, with another to be added later on overseas. There
will be the 832nd, 833rd and 834th. I will be in the
833rd.

We are told the names of our squadron commander and

where we are to report to him for further information.
At the squadron meeting I am given the names of my
crew members. We are not men, only boys, as the In Tucson
average age is about nineteen. At twenty-three I am the
26
old man. I have three officers - Thorstenburg, co-pilot - Parrish, navigator -
and Palmquist, bombardier, and six enlisted men - Miller, flight engineer -
Barnett, radio operator - Crosby, top turret gunner - McMahon, tail gunner -
Shock, ball turret gunner - Ellis, waist gunner. During this phase of training,
I will lose my co-pilot and my navigator, but more on this later. I have a
meeting with them and we all get acquainted with one another. They are a
fine bunch of fellows and I am very pleased with them. I don’t think any
one of them knew any of the others before coming here, as this is a new
group.

Top Row: Left to Right: Lieutenant Charles C. Huff (Pilot), Lieutenant

J.H. Pearson (Navigator), Staff Sergeant Dick Crosby (Assistant Engineer
and Top Turret), Tech Sergeant William F. Miller (Engineer and Right
Waist Gunner), Lieutenant William R. Palmquist (Bombardier)
Bottom Row: Staff Sergeant Earl R. Barnett (Radio Operator and Left
waist Gunner), Sergeant Orville D. Schock (Armorer and Ball Gunner),
Lieutenant Edwin M. Webb (Co-Pilot), and Sergeant Dick Ellis (Nose
Gunner)

“Sad Sack” Our mascot

27
 The 486th

The new Bomb Group

being formed in Tucson.

No one in the whole outfit has ever been in combat before, so everyone has a
whole lot to learn. A great deal of the training here will be close formation
flying, the whole group flies as a unit, you never fly alone in combat. We
will, however, make a lot of individual flights so the navigator or
bombardier can practice their skills.

On one night navigation exercise, I was taking orders from the navigator on
what compass headings he wanted me to take. We changed headings a
number of times, and after about an hour and a half of flying, I called him on
the intercom and asked him where we were. He answered, “I have no idea”.
I turned on the radio direction finder and after taking two or three bearings, I
discovered we were way the hell down over Mexico. Everyone in the crew
had a big laugh over that one, but not the navigator. We were about one
hundred fifty miles over the border, and it took us about an hour to fly back
to our base.

When we got back the field was covered in a solid overcast. I had enough
instrument flight training to know that I could descend down thru the cloud
cover and end up over the field by using the radio beam being transmitted
from the tower located on the base. There was one catch, though, a few
miles to the west there was a seven thousand foot mountain, and to the east
there were several that topped nine thousand feet. As it was a very dark
night, I could tell that it was going to get very interesting before it was over.
I kept making close circles around the base by using the radio beacon while I
was planning what to do next, when of all things that could happen, the
clouds parted and a small hole opened and I could see the field lights below.
I turned that B-24 over on its side and down we went just like a dive-
bomber. I called the tower and told them I was coming down in a hurry, and
please clear me for a straight in approach, which they did. We landed
without any trouble and when we all got out and looked up, the hole had
28
closed up again. We all said the same thing, “What if?” We will say that
many times before the war is over.

We make a lot of flights of several hundred miles so the copilot and I can
practice our different systems of navigation and the navigator can check his.
We also keep practicing our emergency procedures.

After about a month of individual flying, we start to participate in the whole

group flying as a unit, which is twenty-seven planes flying in close
formation. These are called simulated combat missions and we fly to many
different cities. We went as far as San Diego, CA on a few of them. These
flights are very tiring for in close formation flying you have to be on your
toes at all times, but it is a sample of how it is going to be in actual combat.

On one of these flights - after we had formed up in group formation over

Tucson like we always do, we headed out for California. We had just
reached the Colorado River when my flight engineer called my attention to
the copilot. As I couldn’t take my eyes off the plane I was flying on but just
a second, I told him over the intercom to see what was the matter with him.
He came back to me and told me that the copilot had jerked back and up in
his seat and then slumped forward and appeared to be unconscious. I told
him to get the top turret gunner to help and get the copilot out of his seat and
lay him on the flight deck, and see if they could bring him around. I then
called the group leader and told him what had happened, and requested
permission to leave the formation and return to base, which was granted. It
is not easy to get out of a group of planes flying in formation, but all of the
pilots had heard the conversation so they gave me enough room to slip out to
the side so I could turn back to base.

When I was clear of the formation and on my way back, I could devote all of
my attention to the efforts to revive the copilot, but all of the efforts were in
vain, for he was probably dead when they pulled him out of the seat. Miller,
the flight engineer, who was familiar with everything in the cockpit, took the
copilot’s seat where he would take over the copilot’s duties when we were
ready to land. About five miles out from base, I called the tower and
explained the situation and they cleared me for a straight-in approach and
landing. They would also have an ambulance and doctor on hand as soon as
I could get off the runway.

When I stopped and cut the engines, the doctor was on board immediately.
29
He worked on the copilot for about thirty minutes but to no avail. He said
that he was probably dead when they took him out of the seat, and later on
after they had performed an autopsy it was found that he had suffered a
stroke.

I had to hang around squadron operations for three or four days while
waiting to be assigned another copilot. One day while waiting, I heard over
the Tanoy, which were loud speakers placed all around the base, that a plane
was coming in with an engine burning. (This time the extinguisher didn’t
work). So I hurried down to the flight line to watch the excitement. He was
coming in on his final approach, and sure enough he had a good fire going in
no.3 engine, which is the right inboard engine. The black smoke was
pouring back over the wing, and I know that every one of the crew members
were holding their breath, for fire on board an airplane is a pilot’s nightmare.
After they had landed and turned off the runway, and while they were still
rolling to a stop, the crew members jumped out of every exit on the airplane
like a bunch of ants, and I didn’t blame them one bit. Just the thought of a
fire in my airplane just scares me to death.

Two or three fire trucks were there as soon as it stopped rolling and started
pumping foam on the burning engine. They had the fire out in a few
minutes, and the firefighters stood around waiting to see if it was completely
out, but the fire must have been burning inside the wing and reached the fuel
tank, for all of a sudden the flames shot up in the air about thirty feet and
before the firefighters could go into action again, the whole plane was
burning. All they could do was back off, for it was very possible that it
would explode. It didn’t, however, but it was completely destroyed.
Aluminum will burn like paper when it gets real hot, so all that was left of
the plane were the few steel parts that were in the engines. I’ll bet that
someone got chewed out for this incident. This wasn’t nearly as tragic as
what was going to happen this same day, though.

30
 The group, twenty-seven planes, had
taken off early that morning on a
simulated combat mission to San Diego
when somewhere over the desert two
planes of the formation collided and
locked together. They didn’t blow up on
impact, which was a miracle, but they
fell fifteen thousand feet and exploded
when they hit the ground - and killed
nineteen young men. There was
supposed to be ten men on each plane,
but one man went on sick call that
morning. Just another case of “what if?”

I finally get my new copilot, and he turns

out to be another fine boy from
Kentucky - named Ed Webb. He fits
right in with the crew and everyone likes
him. It is very important for all members
of a combat crew to like each other and
get along in close confinement, and I
was very fortunate in having the bunch
that I did.

It is getting on towards the end of the

training period and since we were having
some free time, one of the fellows
suggested that we take our plane and do
some sight seeing around the country, as
it would be a real pleasure to just fly
around without having to try to learn something. We had a meeting with all
our crew and it was a unanimous decision that we take a look at the Grand
Canyon. We didn’t have anything scheduled for the next day so we agreed
to meet on the flight line the next morning.

Everyone was happy as a lark when we took off and headed north. We
didn’t plot any course to follow, for we knew we couldn’t possibly miss that
big gorge. After a two-hour flight (about three hundred miles) we found
what we were looking for. It was the most fantastic sight that any of us had
ever seen. We descended into the canyon until we were level with the rim,
31
and then started following it westward. I didn’t get any lower for if we were
to lose two engines, I would never be able to climb out. In a B-24 you don’t
climb on two engines; you are lucky if you can hold your altitude.

The Colorado River down at the bottom looked like a ribbon, for this gorge
is a mile deep. The two rims are ten miles apart in places, but it varies a lot.
There were many round columns of rock extending from the bottom of the
canyon up to level with the rim. They looked to be about a hundred feet in
diameter at the base, and many of them had a huge boulder on top. There
were a lot of them and they reminded you of a lot of tremendous
smokestacks. The different colors of rock in the canyon walls were
amazing!

After following the canyon for about fifty miles, everyone had seen enough,
so I started climbing for altitude, and headed back to base. When we got off
the plane, we all stood around and talked about what we had seen. Everyone
was thrilled with what we had done, for none of us would ever be able to do
that again. We had traveled six hundred and fifty miles and had burned
eight hundred gallons of gasoline at taxpayers’ expense - but what the hell.

There was one other incident that happened here that could have been a
disaster. We were among about a dozen planes that were practicing touch &
go night landings. In this operation everyone stays in the traffic pattern and
just goes round and round, land, make a running takeoff, go around and
come in again. It is a very dark night and we can’t see the planes ahead or
behind except for their running lights. We have to maintain our precise
speed to keep from running over the plane ahead or lagging back and getting
chopped up from behind. The control tower has the numbers of all the
planes involved in this night exercise, and as we call in when we turn in on
our final approach it is up to the tower to keep track of everyone.

After we had made a few touch & go landings, the worst thing that could
happen, did happen. We lost all our electrical power - we had no running
lights, all of our instruments quit working except the air speed indicator. We
couldn’t change the propeller pitch, we couldn’t lower the flaps, but worst of
all we had no contact with the control tower. We could and did hand crank
the wheels down. This was a time for pure panic, but when you are twenty-
three years old you can cope with anything - or so you think. I knew one
thing for sure, we had to get down on that runway immediately or we were
going to get run over. The flight engineer and the radio operator cranked the
32
wheels down as fast as they could but we had no green light to tell us if they
were locked or not, but we had to gamble on that.

We came around to our final approach and we all started to breathe again,
for we had made the trip around in the traffic pattern, not seeing or being
seen by eleven other planes and without a collision. Without flaps and the
propellers in high pitch, I knew I had to set it down on the runway at no less
than one hundred forty miles per hour, and I knew I couldn’t let the nose
wheel touch at that speed. I also knew that if I misjudged something it
would be impossible to abort the landing. If I ran out of runway I would just
have to go through the boundary fence and hope for the best. As you can
imagine, it was a hot landing and the tires screamed in protest. I got it
stopped just in time to pull off on the taxiway at the end of the runway, but I
made it so what the hell.

Going back to my final approach, there was something that happened that I
didn’t know about, and I was glad that I didn’t know. An airliner, not seeing
me, turned on his final approach about two hundred feet behind me, and my
prop wash almost turned him upside down. Later on, after I had returned
from England, and was instructing at Avon Park, an instructor friend of mine
told me of a conversation he had with an airline pilot who told him of a near
collision he had with a B-24 at night at Tucson, Arizona. He was
flabbergasted when I told him that I was the pilot involved in that near
collision. This was another case of “what if?” Suppose I had been flying a
little slower or he had been flying a little faster - we could have met at
exactly the same spot. We made it though!

I am definitely bragging when I say I was a damn good four-engine pilot! I

decided a lot of hours back that a big heavy airplane is much easier to fly
and land than a little airplane. I could put those things down on the runway
so softly that you could hardly tell when it touched.

One day when we were coming in from a simulated combat mission, the
base commander was in the control tower observing the landings, and after
we were all down he had all the pilots and copilots meet in the briefing room
where he did some real chewing out about the sloppy landings. He didn’t
call anyone’s name; he called plane numbers so that saved some
embarrassment. He finished up by saying one plane made an excellent
landing - plane #758; that was my plane.

33
It is all over here and we are waiting to get our orders to leave, when Parish
(the navigator) comes down with mumps, so we lose him from the crew, and
we all hate to leave him behind, but that’s the way it happens. We get a
replacement right away, though, so it doesn’t delay our leaving. Our new
navigator’s name was Pearson, but he wasn’t as well liked as Parish.

I was out here during Christmas and my mamma and daddy made the trip
out here on a rattletrap train. I wasn’t able to visit with them very much, but
we had Christmas dinner together anyway. I guess they figured that since
they might not ever see me again, the long train ride would be worth it. My
wife came out here a few days before I was to leave, and as I was thru with
my training, we had a little time to spend together.

Tucson Training  Learning to fly Combat Formation.

THE BIG TRIP….. March, 1944

I got my orders a couple of days before I was to leave, and found out I was
to go to Herrington, Kansas to pick up some combat equipment. A
Captain’s wife named Janelle Weatherly, whom Dot had become acquainted
with, was going to drive there in her car and asked Dot to go with her. As
they had a long way to drive and over some high mountains in the
wintertime, they left Tucson immediately so they would be in Kansas when
we arrived. Her husband was supposed to leave the same day that I was.

34
From here on until we arrive in England, we fly as individual planes with
individual orders. We will make eight stops on the way overseas, the first
being in Kansas. At every stop we receive new orders to proceed to the next
stop. We take off in the early morning and make the twelve hundred miles
to Herrington in about eight hours and land in the early afternoon. We can
see right away that this is not a place we would like to retire to. I thought
the weather in Nashville was as bad as it could get, but not so, as this is ten
times worse. We will be here only two or three days, so leaving here will be
something to look forward to.

Dot and Janelle were here when we arrived, and after hearing some of the
horror stories they told about coming across the mountains of New Mexico
and Colorado, I am surprised they arrived here in time to see us. We try to
make the most of what little time we have left, for it will be seven months
before I finish my combat tour of duty and return to the States.

I have already drawn our combat supplies and gone through the process of
clearing the base. Dot and I say our final goodbyes and we are ready to go.
When we take off the temperature is about fifteen degrees with a thirty-mile
wind and it is snowing like crazy. I can see the runway well enough,
though, to get us in the air without any trouble. We climb to ten thousand
feet and set our course for West Palm Beach - a distance of thirteen hundred
and fifty miles via Jacksonville, FL. If we had flown straight to Palm Beach
from Herrington, that route would have taken us over the panhandle of
Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

I veered off at Jacksonville, so I could get my possibly last look at my home

and surrounding farms, which is about fifty miles south of Jacksonville. I
would like to add that after we had left Kansas and headed south, the out
side air temperature got warmer and warmer and everyone began to shed his
cold weather gear and by the time we reached Jacksonville everyone had
stripped down to their shirtsleeves. When we were about thirty miles south
of Jacksonville, I could see the farming area beginning to show up about
twenty miles ahead, so I started a slow descent, so I would be down to about
one thousand feet when I arrived over my home territory. When I got there I
made several big circles over the area. I spot my brother, W.A.’s, farm and
decided I would go down for a closer look. He has a large field planted in
cabbage near his house and I see he has a large crew of workers out in the
middle of the field harvesting the crop. I make a large circle out and around
and come in over the end of the field, which is one half mile from his house.
35
 I drop down to one hundred feet and fly
the length of the field and pull up just
over his house. He told me later on that
he thought all the windows and dishes
in the house were going to shatter.
When I passed over, the crew in the
field took off like a bunch of rabbits. I
thought it was very funny but they
didn’t. Of course this type of flying is
against regulations, but what the hell.
W.A. Huff in cabbage field in St. Johns
County When I left here I flew on down over
the little town of Hastings, about seven
miles south, where I had attended school, but I didn’t get any lower than five
hundred feet. We headed on southeast to West Palm Beach, and I started
climbing back to my original altitude of ten thousand feet. When I see the
base at WPB ahead, I call the control tower. I give my location and plane
number and ask for landing instructions. After landing the tower gives me
directions to my parking place, but also a jeep with a big sign on the back
that reads “FOLLOW ME” guides me to the spot. After we had parked and
cut the engines, we all got out into the glorious sunshine. The temperature
was eighty degrees and everyone was smiling.

I check in at the receiving office and hand over my orders that brought me
here. I am assigned quarters for me and my officers, and am told that my
enlisted men would be taken care of. We will be here for several days until
all the red tape is taken care of and we are issued new orders. We are also
issued forty-five automatic pistols with shoulder holsters that we will be
wearing from now on.

That night after we were settled in our room a strange thing happened.
Answering a knock on the door, I was surprised to see an M.P. (military
police) standing there. He asked my name and when I told him, he said he
wanted to speak to me privately. Ed Webb, my copilot, was the only one
there so I told him that he was free to speak. He said that my family was at
an outer gate in an isolated section where he and his friend were standing
guard, and they wanted very badly to see me for a few minutes. They gave
him my name and he told them he would find me. He was riding a
motorcycle and I climbed on behind him and away we went, across runways,
down taxi -ways and back roads that led to the post, which was a back gate
36
where he and his friend were stationed.

There were my brother and his wife and my mamma and daddy. They said
that when I flew over the farm and headed south, they knew I was going
overseas, so they all got in the car and left. When they were getting close to
West Palm Beach they saw a B-24 land there so they figured that was where
I was. They were lucky to meet that nice young fellow who was on guard
duty and would go to so much trouble for us. I visited with them for about
thirty minutes, and then climbed back on the motorcycle with my friend the
M.P. and back to my quarters we went. Needless to say, I was very grateful
for this fine thing he had done for us.

After two days here I am notified that my orders are ready so I can get my
crew ready to leave the next day. We are gathered around the plane the next
morning loading all our junk (including a bunch of comic books) when a
jeep pulling a small trailer comes up with something else for us. It is one
hundred cartons of cigarettes for us, ten cartons per man, for every plane
leaving here for overseas. As I didn’t smoke, the rest of the crew divided
mine up.

My orders were in two parts. The first part read that when I was airborne,
take a compass heading of one hundred thirty-five degrees and climb to my
cruising altitude, which was of my choosing. I nearly always flew at ten
thousand feet when I was traveling cross-country, and especially if I was
over water. The second part read that when I was three hundred miles out
on course, I could open the sealed part.

In spite of a lot of prodding from my officers, I waited until we were exactly

that distance from West Palm Beach before I told Ed, my copilot, to open
them up, which he did and read them to the crew over the intercom. We
were to proceed on our course for the island of Trinidad, off the coast of
South America - which was eighteen hundred and fifty miles from WPB.
They also said that if I had any mechanical problem, I could divert to San
Juan, Puerto Rico, which was only a couple of hundred miles off course, and
was eleven hundred miles from WPB.

Some of the boys had heard a rumor that in San Juan you could buy real
good whiskey very cheap. As I didn’t drink at that time, I just listened to the
discussion that went on over the intercom. They decided it was a good idea
and Ed asked me if I thought we could get away with it. I said yes, but
37
Miller (flight engineer) would have to cook up a fake problem with an
engine, and right away he discovered number three engine was running too
hot, so we headed for San Juan on a whiskey mission. When I called the
tower for permission to land the first thing they asked was - why? I said I
had an engine overheating. After giving me landing instructions, they also
told me that after I pulled off the runway to taxi to the maintenance hanger
and cut the engines. Everyone was to stay on the plane but the flight
engineer. He could get off and explain to the ground crew what the problem
was. When they took the cowling off and looked inside, they didn’t find
anything wrong, of course. They replaced the cowling and said, “Get
going.” The tower directed me back to the runway and we took off into the
wild blue yonder. That was the quickest repair job on record and we had a
good laugh, but we didn’t fool anyone. So much for the whiskey mission!

Back on course for Trinidad and we have seven hundred and fifty miles to
go. We should land in five hours. This part of the world is most beautiful to
fly over. At our altitude we can see about fifty miles in all directions and
there are tropical islands everywhere. Most of them have mountains, which
are the result of volcanic activity, but the Dominican Republic where Haiti is
located has the highest of all. They must have been about nine thousand feet
but we passed over them with plenty of clearance. The deep water is a
beautiful blue color that changes to blue-green near the shores. Even as high
as we were you could see that they were covered with palm trees, mostly
coconut. Before we landed at San Juan we saw Guantanamo, Cuba, off in
the distance to our right, and now off to our left we see the big semi-circle
chain of islands where, among others, you find the Virgin Islands, Antigua,
Barbados, and Grenada. Some of these islands are called the Windward and
Leeward Islands. No matter what you call them, one word describes them
all: just beautiful!

We can see Trinidad in the distance and it is about time for me to call the
control tower and go through the routine that I will be using until we touch
down in Prestwick, Scotland. After we land, the same old jeep with the
“follow me” sign leads us to our parking place.

We leave the plane and all go to the receiving office where we report in and
I hand in my orders. I am told we will be here about three days and I will be
notified when it is time to depart. We are assigned our respective quarters
and directed to the mess hall. After we have eaten we go to our quarters for
a short nap before we go to the officers’ club. After shaving and showering
38
we are ready to do big things. The only big thing to be done here is the
Officers’ Club. The first person I see when I walk in the door is Hightower,
who is playing a slot machine. He and his officers and my officers and I
find a big table and everybody started talking at once. Everybody ordered
cocktails except me, for I wasn’t drinking, so I had a coke. We went
through the usual - where have you been, where are you going, did you see
so & so on the way down here? No one stayed here very long, though, for
we were all tired so we left and went to our rooms and hit the sack (bunk).
Most of our time here would be spent at the club for there was nothing else
to do.

The next day my flight engineer came looking for me and said they were
going to take a hike back into the mountains, and would we be interested in
going with them. We were very enthusiastic and told him we would be
delighted. They had gotten some information from someone, and off we
went, all ten of us. They seemed to be as interested in this wild country as
we were. We did a lot of climbing and exploring and ventured quite a long
way from the base. I would say these mountains were about three or four
thousand feet high but the trees and undergrowth were much different than
those on the mountains back in the States. We wandered for hours until
everyone was hot, sweaty and tired, for this was close to the equator. We
worked our way back in a different direction and came across many
waterfalls and small rivers. As we were descending the last mountain we
came upon the most beautiful waterfall of all. It fell about one hundred feet
into a large deep pool and like all the rest the water was crystal-clear.
Everyone got the idea at the same time and we all hollered at the same tine -
“let’s go swimming”. In a few seconds we had all shucked our clothes and
jumped in - and the water felt like ice. We romped and played like a bunch
of kids for about an hour before we got tired out. When we got out of the
water that hot air made us feel like we were steaming. It was about a half
mile back to the base and when we arrived we were hot and sweaty all over
again, but we didn’t mind for we were all happy with our exploration. I told
Miller later that I sure appreciated them inviting the rest of us to go along
with them. I thought about it a lot of times afterwards that I sure had a fine
bunch of boys. The enlisted men treated us like we were one of them, but
not one of them got out of line. I wondered about this when I agreed to go
but everything turned out perfect and it turned out to be something to
remember.

On the afternoon of the third day I was called in to pick up my orders and be
39
ready to take off early the next morning. I called my crew together and read
the orders to them, for I always believed in keeping them posted as far as
possible. Our next stop was Belem, Brazil located on the south side of the
Amazon River and was thirteen hundred and fifty miles from Trinidad. This
route pretty much followed the northeast coast of South America, except we
would pass over the middle of French Guiana, which protrudes out into the
ocean a ways. We were told that somewhere along the coast we would see a
large freighter piled up on a reef, but not to worry for it had been there at
least a year.

After we had left Trinidad a ways we could see far ahead of us over the
mainland. A solid wall of clouds that reached at least thirty thousand feet
and extended to the right and left as far as we could see, and the closer we
got the more ominous it looked. I wasn’t worried, though, for like I said
before, nothing daunts a young mind. We got closer and closer and I knew
ahead of time that we were in for a rough ride. I knew this big bird could
take a lot of punishment for I had been in thunderstorms before and see the
wing tips move up and down about two feet without doing any damage.
However, the first time I saw this happen it scared the hell out of me. I’m
not kidding when I say the front wall of this thing looked like a concrete
wall. I didn’t tell everyone to buckle up in time and out ahead of the wall
was a downdraft that dropped the plane out from under us and slammed
everyone against the ceiling. When we hit our seats again no one had to tell
us to buckle up. We penetrated the wall and it was very dark. We hit an
updraft and the rate of climb indicator showed two thousand feet per minute
up and the air speed dropped to near stalling; almost immediately we hit a
downdraft and the indicator read two thousand feet per minute down and our
air speed jumped to two hundred and fifty miles per hour - one hundred mph
above our cruising speed. As soon as I got the thing under control again we
were still in rough air but not like that roller coaster we just went through. I
was flying on instruments now for the rain was so heavy and the clouds so
thick that you couldn’t tell up from down. After about thirty minutes, things
started to improve and I went back on V.F.R. (visual flight regulations). A
few more minutes and we were in the clear and I turned the plane around a
little so I could see behind me. That was one more hell of a tropical storm
system, but typical for this part of the world. When we left Trinidad I was
told there would probably be a thunderstorm over Belem when we arrived,
but just circle a few times until it moved on, and land before the next one
starts.

40
About fifty miles from Belem I see the Amazon River ahead. About a
hundred miles before it empties into the ocean, the Amazon breaks up into
hundreds of small channels and there are thousands of islands that look to be
from about one acre to maybe twenty acres in size. The total distance across
where all these channels go into the ocean is about one hundred miles.

I call the tower for instructions and we land. We have been in the air eight
and one half hours. The runway here, only one, which has one hundred foot
trees on each side of it, makes you think you are landing in a big canal. The
runway has been chopped out of the jungle and is six thousand feet long,
which is adequate since our planes are relatively light - only about fifty
thousand pounds. I might add that when we were coming in and were still at
ten thousand feet, we could see a lot of the Amazon rain forest. I would say
the jungle extends out about three hundred miles on each side of the river.
From what I’ve read, it starts at the Andes Mountains that are about two
thousand miles to the west. Altogether it is one tremendous jungle. If I
were younger I would go back there and spend about six months exploring
it.

The town of Belem is near the river and is just a few miles from the base. I
don’t know anything about the town, for we were not allowed off the base.

I checked in as usual and we were assigned quarters. I was told to come to

the office the next morning and my new orders would be ready. The next
morning after a good breakfast, I picked them up and was told to get ready
to leave immediately. I got my crew together and told them that our next
stop was Natal, Brazil, and we were leaving immediately.

Natal is right on the northeast point of South America closest to Africa -

distance one thousand miles. As this was on the equator, a thunderstorm
was building all ready, but we took off ahead of it and got in the clear.

We are on our way again and after about two hours we left the jungle behind
and the terrain changed to prairie - only it is called the Pampas. There were
rolling hills that were covered with something that looked like wheat, but it
must have been pampas grass. It continued like this for hour after hour until
we started getting close to Natal where a few trees started showing up. Up
ahead we could see the South Atlantic.

We started losing altitude slowly. When we were a few miles out, I called
41
the tower for landing instructions. The weather was beautiful and not a
cloud in sight - which was a relief after what we had been through. After
landing we go thru the usual procedure as to getting our quarters and finding
out where the mess hall is located. We get settled in, for I was told we might
be here as long as a week. The reason for this was since we were getting
ready to jump across the South Atlantic to Africa, they didn’t want us to run
into any bad weather. I agree with them on that, for storms over land I can
take in my stride but I don’t want to run into them over the middle of the
ocean.

We are allowed to go anywhere we want so we spend a lot of time sight

seeing around Natal. We do some shopping and I buy Dot some Chanel #5
perfume and a pair of nylon stockings that are about five sizes too big for
her. I also bought a Brazilian stiletto as a letter opening for my brother.
Everything is real cheap.

My flight engineer tells me that they heard a rumor that every plane leaving
here takes a lot of coconuts on board in case we have to ditch (land in the
ocean). It makes good sense, though, for coconuts float, will furnish food
and drink, and salt-water will not spoil them; and I agree with him one
hundred percent. I wonder if the people that sell coconuts didn’t start this
rumor. When we take off we are carrying a hell of a pile of coconuts.

After four days of waiting

around I am called to the
office and told to be on the
flight line at five o’clock
the next morning. For
security reasons, I won’t
be given my orders until I
am ready to board my
plane. I am given two
sacks of mail to be
delivered to Dakar,
Mail receipt for two sacks of mail delivered from Natal,
Senegal, East Africa. (I
Brazil to Dakar, East Africa. still have the delivery
(My only stint as a mail carrier.) receipt for this).

From this point some of the planes will go to the Ascension Islands, which
are halfway between here and South Africa, heading for the South Pacific.
42
Before boarding our plane, my boys gather around and I read the orders to
them, which state that we will proceed to Dakar, Senegal on the east coast of
Africa – thence north across a corner of the Sahara Desert to Marrakech,
Morocco in North Africa – then make a wide detour out in the ocean to
avoid the combat zone – and on to Prestwick, Scotland.

I get taxi and take-off instructions, so we head down the runway – and off
we go! The plane groans from the load of coconuts. We climb to twelve
thousand feet, which will be our cruising altitude for this leg of the trip. The
weather forecast we obtain from the weather office showed that we would
have a tail wind at this altitude, which is very important for a long flight
over water.

All the planes leaving here take the same compass course for about fifty
miles out, and then we turn to our respective courses. This is for the purpose
of fooling the German spies, who are known to be hanging out in Natal
where they could report the number of planes going either to England or the
South Pacific. We reach the diversion point and set our course for Dakar.

We have two thousand, two hundred miles ahead of us over open ocean, but
we are not worried, for with our gasoline load which is thirty-one hundred
gallons, we should have plenty of reserve when we reach Africa. We will
lean the mixture of gasoline going to the engines to get minimum
consumption, but we will lose a few miles per hour in airspeed.

As this will be about a thirteen-hour trip, we settle down for a long ride.
After a few hours everyone gets bored and almost everybody goes to sleep.
I put the plane on autopilot, and Ed and I take turns napping. One of us has
to stay awake, for autopilots, are very unreliable. The navigator rouses up
every now and then to take a fix on the sun, and plot our course. I check
with him periodically and he assures me that we are on course. I rely on him
completely for this far out radio navigation is quite impossible. I check with
my flight engineer occasionally to be sure that everything in his care is
running smoothly. This would be an embarrassing time to lose an engine,
but everything is going great. These four big engines just keep pounding
away – and that is a very reassuring noise.

Finally after about twelve hours of monotony, we see far ahead a smudge on
the horizon that has to be Africa! At least we didn’t miss the whole
continent. Everyone is wide-awake now, and we are all anxious to see how
43
far we will miss our objective. We approach the coast and the navigator
finds some checkpoints on the ground that matches his map. We are only
forty miles south of Dakar – and after flying over two thousand miles, that is
perfect, as far as I am concerned. We turn north, and in about twenty
minutes the base is just ahead.

I call the tower for instructions, and we enter the traffic pattern. When I turn
on my final approach I am in for a big surprise: the runway is made of
interlocking metal sections and is laid down right over the hills. It is plenty
long enough, but there are three or four hills that look to be fifteen or twenty
feet high down the length of the runway. I can see that my record for
smooth landings is about to be broken. I level off just above the runway,
and then my wheels slam into the top of the first hill. I cut the power
quickly to try to get down before the next hill catches me. I almost succeed,
but am still going pretty fast when I get to the next one and we bound over
it, but I get it stopped in time. I taxi on down to the end and turn off. The
tower inquires if I have any mechanical problems that need tending to, and I
tell him that we do not, so he directs me to my parking place.

I check into the receiving office and am asked about the flight from South
America – mostly about the weather. I tell them that it was perfect with
hardly a cloud in sight. The plane performed perfectly, and those big,
beautiful engines just kept roaring away. For once I was glad to hear all that
racket. I told him that we made our landfall about forty miles to the south
which I thought was pretty good; he said that was closer than most, and no
one ever hit it right on the nose. He told me we would be here two days and
leave on the morning of the third day. We went to the mess hall to eat and
then to our barracks for a much needed rest.

The barracks were Quonset huts that were open from one end to the other –
meaning there were no walls or partitions. There were perhaps fifteen bunks
on each side with an aisle down the center. Each bunk had a mosquito net
over it. There were doorways at each end but no doors. We heard a story
that a few nights before we arrived, one of the occupants woke up and saw a
full-grown five hundred pound male lion strolling down the aisle – in one
door and out the other. But it wasn’t meal- time for him. Needless to say, it
was a case of total paralysis for the observer.

The next day we just lay around the barracks resting from our tiring trip.
The next day, which would be our last, we all got together and decided to
44
take a long hike out into the wilderness. We would make a big circle out
and around, and come back in from another direction. We weren’t worried
about getting lost, for we could see planes landing and taking off from the
base.

This is not jungle country; I think it is called the Veldt. It is very dry with
tall grass in places and bare spots showing the red soil in others. The tall
grass is where the lions hide, but I guess they were all asleep today. There
were a few small trees in places, but you could see off for quite a distance.
The most amazing were the elephant-trees. They were huge trees with
trunks ten or fifteen feet in diameter but only ten or fifteen feet high where
they branched out into limbs that were as big as large trees. From a distance,
they looked like huge toadstools. I saw a program on TV about these trees,
and they said the wood was soft and salty, and the elephants would tear out
big chunks and eat them. They showed a picture of one that had been dug
out so much that it fell down and killed an elephant. There were a lot of
these trees.

We rambled on and came upon a native village with five or six huts. They
were round and made entirely of straw, and there was a family sitting around
in front of each one. There were buzzards sitting on all the huts and around
on the ground next to the people. I don’t think they were after scraps, for
these people didn’t look like they had any scraps – in fact, they looked like
scraps themselves. They sat around on logs or stumps or flat on the ground,
and didn’t make the first sound even when we walked by. They just sat
there with stupid looks on their faces. They might have been waiting for
someone to bring their welfare checks. It might have been that the buzzards
were waiting for one of them to keel over so they could jump over and grab
them. We didn’t get any closer than about a hundred feet for the smell
would knock you over.

After this “exciting” meeting with the citizens, we moved on. I never did
figure out which one was the mayor. After we had gone a little farther, we
saw a man coming in our direction, and as we got closer we could see he
was wearing some kind of uniform, and we thought maybe he was with the
game department. He was a very nice looking white man, and the first
words he said were “What are you doing here?” I started to explain but he
just got a baffled look on his face, and started speaking a language we
recognized as French, and we found out that the only English he knew was
what he had just spoken. With a lot of monkey-motions and silly sign
45
language, we got him to understand that we were from the base, and were
just exploring. When he finally understood that we were from the base, he
smiled broadly and gave us a speech in French which we hoped was one of
welcome – but he could have been telling us to get the hell back to the base
where we belonged. We parted with smiles and handshakes, though, so I
supposed everything was all right. We continued on our hike and arrived
back at the base pleasantly tired but happy with our exploration.

We delivered our mail as soon as we arrived, and received our receipt.

The next day was departure day, so early the next morning I went to the
clearance office while the rest of the crew went out to give our plane a
thorough check and make sure all the gas tanks were full. I received our
written orders and any information I might need for my next destination. A
jeep took me out to the plane, and my boys had everything ready to go. I
didn’t read the orders, for they already knew we were heading for
Marrakech, Morocco.

We all climbed aboard and the copilot and I went through the usual pre-
flight check, and we were ready to go. I contacted the tower for directions to
the takeoff end of the runway, and as there was only one runway, I couldn’t
get lost. I stopped before taxiing out on the runway to run the engines up to
full power for a few seconds and to call the tower for permission to line up
for takeoff. I line up on the runway and hold until I get my final clearance.
I look down the runway and know this takeoff is going to be just as exciting
as the landing was.

A B-24 has the same flight characteristics as a brick, and sometimes seems
very reluctant to take to the air. I can imagine a big eye looking back at me
through the windshield and a voice saying “If you think I have fouled you up
before, you ain’t seen nothing yet – just watch this.”

I get my clearance and look at the ski-jumps ahead. I run the engines up to
full power and stand on the brakes. The nose wheel shock absorber on a B-
24 is very sensitive and every time you relax the brake pressure a little, the
nose of the plane bobs up and down. Whenever I watch a B-24 start its
takeoff run, it reminds me of an angry rhinoceros charging the hunter. It
snorts and bellows and bobs its head up and down while it is getting under
way. I release the brakes, and we are off for the great adventure.

46
We reach the first hill and I’m only doing about sixty; we bound over it and
down to the valley on the other side, and the airspeed jumps to eighty. Our
speed increases to one hundred as we approach the next one, and we zoom
over it and we are in the air – nope, she settles back down and here we go
again. When we approach the next one, she is doing one hundred and
twenty; over this one, and she sails into the air at one hundred and thirty.
Gotcha, nope – we roll our wheels across the top of the last one and she
picks up to one hundred and fifty miles per hour. The copilot pulls the
wheels up, and we are here to stay. I have outfoxed this old bucket of bolts
again. Back in the tower the operators are pounding each other on the back
and laughing like crazy. They have seen a lot of weird takeoffs, but this one
beats them all. I heard back at the field that the control tower operators here
really enjoy their work, for it gives them a chance to see some spectacular
performances.

We set our course for Marrakech – distance fifteen hundred miles of which
twelve hundred will be over the Sahara Desert. About two hours out of
Dakar, we see the desert ahead. Another two hours and all we can see is
sand everywhere. The sky is very clear, as there are no clouds over a desert,
so we could see about fifty miles in every direction and there was nothing to
see but sand. We were flying on autopilot, so Ed and I could set back and
relax.

We all started noticing that down on the ground, but very far apart, there
were small clumps of palm trees, which were water holes or oasis. They
were all over the desert and seemed to be twenty or thirty miles apart in all
directions. They were all connected with one another with trails, but not
roads as we know them. They were probably camel trails. Around each of
the oasis there was a cluster of small huts, probably mud. We were flying at
nine thousand feet, so we didn’t see any caravans, but I am sure there were
some on the trails.

We notice something far ahead of us that looks kind of strange, and the
closer we get, the stranger it is – and all of a sudden it dawns on us. It is a
tremendous sand storm! The leading edge of it down on the surface looks
like a big breaking wave on the ocean shore, and it extends right and left as
far as we can see, which is about a hundred miles over all – and no one
knows how much farther it extends. It is a very fascinating sight, and it
would be a terrible thing to be caught on the ground in that mess. We pass

47
over the leading edge of it, and the sand behind the front seems to be closer
to us for some reason.

It is interesting to see something like that and be out of reach of it – or are

we? We are perhaps twenty miles past the leading edge, and we can see the
sand a few hundred feet below us. A few more minutes, and we are in the
middle of it, and the sand is so thick we can hardly see the wing tips. All of
a sudden it dawns on me that the engines cannot stand this, so I call the
flight engineer in a hurry to see what he thinks about this. He says the filters
will keep the sand out for a while, but not for long. If and when they quit it
will probably be all at one time, and the prospect of making a forced landing
in a desert sandstorm with four dead engines gives me a very uncomfortable
feeling. I think I could handle an emergency landing in the desert, but there
are two things I must have: good visibility and at least two engines running
– but in this case I would have neither, so the prospects do not look too
good. I have just decided to turn back and climb to twelve thousand feet to
try to get above it, when all of a sudden we are out of it and in the clear! I
turn loose my breath that I have been holding all this time. We couldn’t
have gone above twelve thousand feet because we had no oxygen. We all
look back and see the sandstorm behind us, so we all relax and continue on
course.

We keep looking ahead and finally see the Mediterranean Sea off to our
right, and the Atlantic Ocean on our left. We could see the Pillars of
Hercules at the mouth of the Mediterranean.

This ten-hour flight is about to come to an end as I call the tower and go in
for my usual perfect landing, and the “follow me” jeep guides us to our
parking place. Transportation is waiting and takes us into the main part of
the base where we go through the usual routine.

We will be here several days waiting for the weather to clear out over the
Atlantic Ocean. We have nice quarters to stay in, and the eating facilities
are very good, as they have been since leaving Tucson. In the receiving
office they explain why we have to make a detour out over the ocean. A
direct route to Prestwick from here would take us over a corner of France,
where we would be sure to run into German fighter planes and anti-aircraft
guns, and we were ready for neither.

48
We are free to go into town any time, but keep in close touch with the office.
When we do leave here, it will have to be very early of a morning, for it is a
two thousand mile trip and we need to get into Prestwick before dark.

I tell them about the sandstorm, and they say, “Yes, they do happen, but it is
one of the hazards of desert flying.” If they had told me about them before I
left Dakar, I would have known to climb to a higher altitude when I saw it
ahead and would not have gotten caught like I did.

After a good night’s rest, we eat a fine breakfast and head for town. It is
close to the base, so we walk for a change,
which we don’t mind at all.

When we get there we see flight crews

everywhere, and Arabs all over the place.
They all wear dirty sheets and turbans on their
heads. They have booths set up along the so-
called streets, which are just dirt, so they can
catch the suckers as they go by. My enlisted
men have gone off by themselves, but my
The officers of the crew in officers and I stay together.
Marrakech, Morocco, North
Africa.
Something very funny happens at the first
booth – it seems that the first soldiers that came through here had taught
these jokers all sorts of cuss words and the most obscene language that you
could imagine. They had no idea what they were saying for all the time they
were smiling and bowing. When you started to leave, one of them might say
– “Well, go to hell, you bastard”. You can imagine trying to buy something
and the clerk directing a lot of filthy language at you. One boy, not one of
ours, got so mad he pulled his forty-five and threatened to shoot one of
them, but his buddies calmed him down, explaining that the S.O.B. didn’t
even know what he was saying.

At sunrise and sunset, every one of these boogers got down on their knees
and prayed to the sun no matter where they happened to be. We were
cautioned not to stare or take notice of them in any way. This advice was
easy to take, for every one of them wore long wicked-looking knives with
curved blades.

49
Each of us bought some piece of junk for souvenirs, but that was about all.
One visit to this place was enough, and we didn’t go back. There was a big
olive grove on the edge of town and this was interesting to me.

The rest of the time we hung around our barracks and played poker.

I finally got my call to go to the office for my orders and information for my
navigator. We would leave early the next morning, take an easterly course
out over the ocean for a hundred miles or so – then north for eighteen
hundred miles – and westward into Prestwick, Scotland - for a total of two
thousand miles. This course takes us well away from the combat zone, and
it suits us just fine. We land and after eating at the mess hall, we go to our
quarters for a much needed rest.

After breakfast the next morning, we learn that we will leave our plane here
and take a train all the way to Sudbury, England, which is about fifty miles
north of London – for a distance of about three hundred miles. It is a very
nice, comfortable train, though, and not a troop train with cattle cars.

Since leaving Tucson, Ariz., we have flown thirteen thousand miles, and I
have logged eighty hours flying time. It is impossible to describe what a
pleasure this adventure has been to all of us. In spite of the fact that we have
a war ahead of us, it doesn’t detract from the experience we have had. All
the places that we have seen and things we have done, we will remember for
the rest of our lives. It has been like a free vacation over a good part of the
world.

There is one other thing that I would like to mention, and it is rather odd – in
my whole group there were perhaps forty B-24’s (counting spares);
Hightower’s and R.T.’s groups, with about the same number of planes - we
all took off individually from our bases in the States and followed the same
route after leaving West Palm Beach – so we must have been strung out for a
thousand miles. I don’t know how many were ahead or behind me, but on
the entire trip from WPB to Prestwick, we didn’t see another plane of any
kind.

50
 B-24 #758 – It was brand new when issued to me in Tucson.
(I had to sign a receipt for it at a value of $258,000.)

We trained in her, we flew halfway around the world

in her, now we’re about to go to war in her.….

51
---------------- PART TW O : COMBAT --------------

Sudbury, England

We arrive at our permanent base late in the afternoon, which is located a few
miles from the little town of Sudbury. We are among the first to arrive, so
the place looks deserted. We have our pick of the barracks, which are
Quonset huts, and they sleep eight men. They do not have maid service,
though. There will be officers from two crews in each one. The one we
pick is empty, so we save the other half for some friends of ours – a pilot
named Burkhardt and his officers.

The base covers probably forty acres, not counting the runways. We have
two nice wide runways, one five thousand feet and the other seven thousand
feet long. All over the base there are loud speakers, which are called Tanoy,
and are placed on tall poles. Everyone can hear important announcements
no matter where they might be. There is a big map of the place in every hut,
so we all study it carefully to find out where everything is located. We hike
to the mess hall and find that the food is just fair, and later on in our stay
here, it will get so bad you can hardly eat it.

The officers’ club has been set up and is open for business. As all the clubs
are, it is a very large room and very swanky, with a bar, of course. We will
spend a lot of time here in the next six months, although I still don’t drink.

There is no transportation around the base, so everyone buys himself a

bicycle. By the time the base goes into operation, everyone will own one,
and the casualty rate from bicycle wrecks will be very high.

Incidentally, this was originally an English field, and like others in England,
had recently been turned over to the Americans.

52
 One of about 40 airfields built in England during WWII, Station #174 was constructed betwe en
October, 1943 and March, 1944. The Americans took possession in April and flew the first
mission from here on May 7, 1944.

It takes about a week for everybody to get settled in, and we can start getting
ready to do what we came here for – make war! We listen to a lot of
lectures from people from other bases, who are veterans and have already
made their quota of combat missions. No matter how much you hear,
though, you won’t know how it really is until you make your first mission
across the channel into the combat zone, and see those big black clouds all
around you that are exploding anti-aircraft shells. When you get back to
base and see those holes torn in your plane from those exploding shells, it
dawns on you that you can get killed in this business.

After everything gets settled down, we start off by flying simulated combat
missions. We go through the procedures just like it were real. We move out
on the taxiways all over the field in precisely the right order, with the group
leader taking off first. If the weather is good enough, which it seldom is, he
will start circling the field at two or three thousand feet, with everyone in the
right order, as they climb up to his altitude, they fall right into place. With
everyone in place, as you see the group from the front, the lead squadron
with the group leader will be in front and center; the second squadron will be

53
a little higher and a little behind; and the third squadron will be a little lower
and a little behind. Each squadron will be either six or nine planes. Most of
the time I was over there, the weather was so bad we had to climb up thru
the clouds and form up at twenty thousand feet right over the field.

This is how it worked: the group leader took off first, of course; he climbed
straight out for exactly fifteen seconds, gaining altitude at exactly three
hundred feet per minute, at exactly one hundred and forty miles per hour. At
the end of exactly fifteen seconds he would make a one hundred and eighty
degree turn back over the field, and fly thirty seconds, and then back & forth
following this same procedure until he broke out of the clouds at about
eighteen thousand feet – and in the clear. The planes took off at exactly
fifteen- second intervals, so everyone was the same distance apart.

All of this sounds simple, but remember, as soon as you cleared the runway,
you were in the solid overcast at about two hundred feet, and would be
flying on instruments until you broke out on top. If you didn’t follow this
exact procedure, there was a great danger of running into the plane ahead of
you or lagging back and getting run over from behind. The clouds would be
so thick that you could hardly see your wingtips, and down on the ground it
would be drizzling rain day and night. It took about an hour and a half to
take off, climb up thru the clouds, and get the group formed – before we
could head out on our mission – whether it was simulated or an actual
bombing mission. When we came back, we did just the opposite. The group
leader, by using a homing device similar to radar, would bring us back
directly over the field and start circling. The last plane to join up when we
were forming would be the first to peel off and start back down thru the
clouds using the same technique as before in reverse. When he had
descended down to about five hundred feet, he really had to be alert for the
first sight of the runway, so he could land and clear the runway for the next
plane close behind him. This kind of flying really took nerves of iron. It
didn’t bother us too much, though, for at our age we were invincible.

After four or five practice missions around England, we are ready for our
first bombing mission. Over here it doesn’t get dark this time of year until
about midnight, and it gets light again around four o’clock.

When we are alerted for a mission, some from squadron operations would
come around about three a.m. and turn on the lights in our barracks and
make sure that some of us were awake. We would shower and shave, and
54
always wear clean clothes. The flight surgeon had told us that this was very
important, for if we were hit with a chunk of flack it would take a piece of
dirty cloth with it, making the chance of infection a certainty. We would go
to the mess hall for breakfast first, then report to the briefing hut about five
o’clock. However, all these times varied widely depending on what the
takeoff time will be.

Briefing is held in a large Quonset hut that has a raised platform at the back
end. On the wall at the back is a very large map of Europe – on which the
route of the mission will be marked out with a heavy red string. We will
pass over the coast at one point, go in and bomb our target – make a circle
back and cross the coastline at a different place coming back.

AND NOW THE WAR BEGINS

Our first mission is to Brussels, Belgium, which is under German

occupation. We cross the coast of Holland and get our first taste of anti-
aircraft fire – and it is very frightening. Most of the guns are eighty-eight
millimeter, which fire a shell, which is about five inches in diameter, and
explode in a black cloud with a ball of fire in the center. Some of the targets
we bomb later on will be guarded by seven or eight hundred of these guns.

A plane ahead of me takes a hit in one of its fuel tanks and gasoline streams
back in a white cloud, but it doesn’t ignite. Our gas tanks are self-sealing
and will take care of bullet holes or small pieces of shrapnel. There are no
enemy fighter planes around but plenty of flack. We drop our bombs and
make a wide circle back to the coast. Incidentally, when we made our
bombing run over Brussels, the bombardier in the lead plane does all of the
aiming for the whole group. When the bombs leave his plane, all the other
bombardiers drop their load at the same time. This system will hold true on
all missions.

When we get back to England, the base is still covered with a cloudbank, so
we descend through the clouds using the method I have already described. It
is still raining when we park our planes and unload. We go back to the
briefing room for interrogation where we are asked questions, such as, where
55
along the route did we run into flack guns, and was it light or heavy – was
the weather like the meteorologist said it would be – were there enemy
fighters and if so, what kind – and many more questions.

When we were thru with all this, there was one other thing. By the exit door
there was a table with several cases of whiskey. As each man left, he was
given a double shot of whiskey. After what I had been through today, I
figured I wasn’t going to be around very long, and if there was any pleasure
in drinking I had better get started now – so I took my share along with the
rest.

After eating at the mess hall, we go to our barracks and fall into our bunks
completely exhausted. Flying B-24’s in formation is very tiring, for they are
not stable airplanes when compared to B-17’s, which I flew later on.

Our mission for tomorrow is in the afternoon, so in the morning I go to

squadron operations and tell the Lieutenant in charge of scheduling that I
want to fly on every mission that the group makes. I know I have to fly
thirty-five missions before I go home, so I want to make them as fast as
possible. The chance of survival is just as good one way or another. The
pilot of the other crew in our barracks and I had a contest to see who could
finish first. It rocked back and forth all the way thru, and he finished first in
the group and the next day I finished second. Day by day we fly out on one
mission after another – some are relatively easy and some are rougher than
hell – and many times we come back with flack holes in our plane, but none
of them serious. We know that “D-Day” (the invasion of the continent) is
coming up, and we are very anxious for it to happen.

Finally we are alerted to stand ready to go on a moment’s notice. The order

comes in: be at briefing at three a.m. the next morning. The big day is here
and I am ready to go! This will be my sixteenth mission. The group will fly
two missions that day, and I will go on the first one. Our targets will be
railroads, bridges, crossroads, and anything related to transportation that will
keep the Germans from bringing in reinforcements. Everything for a
hundred miles inland will be bombed and our fighters will take out the
enemy airfields. Unfortunately, there are a lot of clouds below us, but
between the breaks we can see that the Channel is full of ships of all kinds.
This mission is below twelve thousand feet, and it is a relief not to have to
use oxygen. Above the clouds where we are, there are planes of all kinds
everywhere, and I counted twelve hundred four-engine bombers. We finish
56
our mission and return to base where the planes will be refueled and
reloaded with bombs for the second mission. But I am not scheduled for that
one.

Missions were planned to avoid as many Anti-Aircraft Installations as possible.

Red line in above diagram shows route of mission; lined areas are Flak sites.

57
On one mission later on, after we had passed over the target and dropped our
bombs, we were heading for our rally point and back to our base in England,
when my flight engineer, whose station was on the flight deck where he
could see thru a little window into the bomb bay, called me on the intercom
and said we had a five hundred pound bomb hanging on one hook in the
bomb bay, and it was armed. I knew I couldn’t land with it like that, for it
might jar loose and fall thru the bomb bay doors onto the runway, where it
may or may not explode. If it didn’t, it would be a hazard for the other
planes. I called by bombardier and he said if I could get out of the
formation, he thought he could instruct the flight engineer to go back in the
bomb bay and flip it loose with a screwdriver. As I was on the outside of the
formation, I slid out a couple of hundred yards and the bombardier opened
the doors. The flight engineer tripped it loose, and away it went – where, I
don’t know. Altogether, it was a touchy situation.

Every day for a week after “D-Day”, we go out and bomb targets ahead of
our advancing ground troops. Then we resume our missions against
strategic targets, such as factories that make parts for German fighters and
bombers. On one of these I take a hit in my #2 engine that cuts an oil line,
and the oil sprays back over the wing in a black cloud that looks like smoke.
My friends behind me said they thought sure it was burning. I feather the
prop and shut the engine down, for I have already described what happens if
an engine runs out of oil. I increase the power on the other three engines to
make up for the loss, and everything goes fine. A four-engine bomber
running on three engines will consume more fuel than it does running on
four, but we have enough gasoline to make it back all right. When we get
back to the base and I am on my final approach to the runway, I start the
engine back up so I will have enough power to pull up and go around again,
if there happens to be a crash on the runway ahead of me. Nothing happens,
though. And as soon as I land and taxi off of the runway, I shut the engine
down again so it won’t sustain any more damage.

A few missions later, that same engine swallows a valve, which means a
valve on a top cylinder comes loose and falls down into the cylinder itself.
The piston comes up and blows the whole cylinder off the engine, and then it
catches fire. The extinguisher built into the engine works perfectly and the
fire dies out. We are very lucky, for if it hadn’t worked properly, we would
have had to bail out and end up as prisoners of war.

58
A few missions later we get a pleasant surprise: my crew and I are standing
down for two weeks and are being sent on R&R to Southport, England. The
Army has a big hotel leased there for the use of flight crews, and it is a
swanky place. The town is on the northeast coast of England and is a
beautiful place. It is the only town I saw over there that looked like an
American city, with straight streets and square corners. It is full of soldiers
on leave and we have a wonderful time – but it all ends too soon.

When we get back to our base we have another nice surprise – we are
changing over to B-17’s! We hear a good joke about this later on – the
Commander of the Eighth Air Force found out that the B-24 was Germany’s
secret weapon. The conversion is very simple, for all it amounts to is to
have a B-17 pilot ride in the copilot’s seat, and you fly out for a short
distance so he can show you the things you are not familiar with, and you
come back and make a couple of touch and go landings. After flying so
many miles and hours in a B-24, this plane was a pure joy to fly. It was so
easy to fly in formation it was unbelievable. When we came back from a B-
24 mission we were completely exhausted, but not in this plane. When we
were flying B-24’s, we got a two-day pass every time we flew six missions,
but we were all so worn out we just wanted to sleep.

After the B-17’s came in, we felt so much better that we really began to
enjoy life, such as it was. Now when we get a two-day pass, we were off to
London to see the sights. It was a two-hour train ride, but was very
comfortable. Piccadilly Circus was the center of town, and when you saw it
you would agree that it was just that – a circus.

Before the invasion (D-Day), Germany was sending over unmanned flying
bombs aimed at London, and they did a terrific amount of damage. The
Germans called them “V-1” rockets, but over here they were called “buzz
bombs”. They were launched from the coast of France, and were
programmed for the correct course and altitude for London, which was
probably twenty miles from one side to the other. The fuel supply was
calculated to run out over the city, which it did, and dive straight in with a
ton of explosives. When they hit a block of seven or eight story apartment
buildings, they would destroy them right to the ground and leave a big
crater. We saw and heard a lot of them, while we were on our visit here.
The noise they made sounded like a big tractor engine, and when it stopped,
there was silence for five or six seconds and then a tremendous explosion.
There were thousands of innocent civilians killed by these things – they
59
were truly a terrorist weapon. I might add that they flew at a speed of four
hundred and fifty miles per hour, and they were very hard for the British
Spitfires to catch and shoot down. They came to a halt after the invasion
and the Allies occupied France. They were working to develop another one
they called the “V-2” that would come up to our bombing altitude, and in
time they would have been successful. We saw some of these, but they
seemed to give out at eight or ten thousand feet. After the war ended, this
country found out that Germany had one on the drawing board that would
reach the United States. If the war had lasted a year longer, the conclusion
might have been a lot different. Germany also had a jet fighter in operation
that they were perfecting – long before our country had them in use. Our
defense department didn’t want to believe that the Germans could do such a
thing, but they sure found out differently!

Flak destroys nerves as well as planes.

60
We continue flying our missions and they begin to add up – getting closer to
the magic number of thirty-five. As I said before, flying our B-17 was
almost a pleasure except when those anti-aircraft shells begin to explode all
around us, and then we were plenty scared. Anyone who said he wasn’t
scared was either a liar or just plain crazy.

Another incident that happened here brought the war right to our doorstep –
one morning when I was standing down (or not flying), I was in the mess
hall eating breakfast while the planes of the group were taking off on their
mission, when an announcement came over the Tanoy that one of the planes
had crashed immediately after takeoff and was burning out on the edge of
the field. Soon after hearing this, we heard the first of the bombs on the
plane starting to explode. The rest of the load – twelve five hundred
pounders – went off at intervals and shook the building each time. Unarmed
bombs will not explode on impact, but heat will set them off. With three
thousand gallons of gasoline burning, there was plenty of heat there. The
pilot was unlucky enough to lose an engine at a critical time. The fully
loaded plane weighed sixty-five thousand pounds and needed all of its
engines producing full power to keep it in the air. After you have dropped
your bombs and consumed some of your gas load, you can hold your altitude
on three engines. Twenty-two thousand pounds of gasoline and six thousand
pounds of explosives make a lot of difference. There were no survivors!

Back when we were still flying B-24’s, one day when we were standing
down, my crew and I decided to do some sightseeing, so we took off in our
plane and headed up to the mountains in North England. They were three or
four thousand feet high and covered with heavy timber, and looked very
much like the Blue Ridge Mountains back home. We saw four or five old
castles sticking to the side of the mountain with a five hundred foot cliff on
the opposite side and only one narrow road leading up to it. The top of the
walls where the roof was had big square notches where the defenders could
shoot arrows down on their enemies. They looked exactly like those you see
in picture books. In the foothills was a lot of pastureland with herds of
sheep and cattle. We pretty well cover this part of England, so we head back
to our base.

The southern half of England is dotted with airfields about twenty-five or

thirty miles apart in all directions, so we have to keep close watch for other
planes on our way back. The visibility has been perfect all day. We see
ahead of us pieces of an airplane falling from above, and it looks like a piece
61
of paper that has been torn into many small pieces and thrown out the
window. We could see the engine falling as a smoking streak. Evidentially
it had blown apart somewhere above us.

We get back to base well pleased with one more – and our last – exploration
venture. My crew and I have seen a lot of wonderful and exciting things
since leaving Tucson. On another mission – after we had landed and taxied
to our hard-stand and parked, we had all gotten out of the plane and were
walking around stretching our legs, when I looked around and was surprised
to see a plane setting flat on the ground without benefit of wheels only a
couple of hundred feet away. He had landed on his belly and skidded in
while we were parking. When I looked up, the pilot whose name was
Dickerson, was walking around kicking his squashed up plane. Military
pilots are noted for being a little bit off-center at times.

We continue our missions and one of these is to Berlin, which is our longest
one – being about seventeen hundred miles round-trip. This is one of the
cities that Hitler said would never be bombed – but before it was over,
thousands of tons of bombs would reduce it to rubble. On one of our
missions, we bomb a factory on the outskirts of Paris, and we see the Eiffel
Tower, but from four miles up it doesn’t look very impressive.

Our missions continue and we close up to that magic number. There is one
more incident that I must mention and it was kind of comical. At the end of
one of our runways about four hundred feet out and in line with the center,
was a tremendous stump. It was probably a very large oak tree and was
about five feet in diameter where it had been cut off about three feet above
the ground. This stump gave us a lot of concern, for we wondered what
would happen if we came in without brakes or slid in on the belly and past
the end of the runway. One of our friends took care of the problem – he
came in with both landing gear shot up and set it down on the belly. He slid
straight into that stump and knocked it completely out of the ground. Of
course it sheared off the bottom half of the fuselage all the way back to the
bomb bay. Several of us got there while the crew was still there and found
them laughing and joking, as no one was hurt. We thanked our pilot friend,
and he gave us a big grin.

When we finish number thirty-three mission, squadron operations informs

me that all of the crews will be allowed to finish with thirty-four missions if
the crew will buy ten thousand dollars worth of war bonds, which was a
62
thousand dollars apiece. I call my crew together and let them decide. It was
a unanimous decision to take the offer, for everyone knew it only took one
mission for you to get shot down.

THE LAST MISSION

We are scheduled to go on our thirty-fourth trip – so here we go! After

taking off and heading across the channel, we all had our fingers crossed, but
it turned out to be one of our easiest missions. When we got back to the
base, I asked the tower for permission to wait until everyone else had landed
and then buzz the tower – which they granted, for they knew this was our
last trip. When all was clear, I went out about a mile and came back in over
the tower at about one hundred feet and wagged my wings.

We have beaten the odds - and made our last landing from combat flying –
and needless to say, when we got out of the plane, we were all smiles!! As I
said before, we were the second crew in the Group to finish. The camera
crews came out to our plane and made a lot of pictures, so each one of us
would have a complete set. After eating, we went to our barracks to get
cleaned up, and headed for the officers’ club. I am sure we stayed there so
long that they had to run us out to close up.

We were what you could call “Happy Warriors”!

63
The “Happy Warriors” (minus Pearson) After 34 Missions
(That’s me in the middle of the bottom row.)

WE BEAT THE ODDS ! ! !

64
I forgot to mention about enemy fighter planes. By the time our group had
arrived over there, they were getting pretty well thinned out due to our
bombing the factories and our fighters destroying so many on their airfields.
They were also getting short on fuel, for we were giving their refineries a
hard time. We had a few fighter attacks on us, but not many. On one
mission, I glanced out of my side window for a few seconds, and saw a lot
of white puffballs all around my wing – and the next instant there was a
German fighter (an ME-109) coming up through our formation from below.
Those white puffs were exploding machine-gun shells and he had been
shooting at me. He missed, though, so what the hell. It was the only enemy
fighter that I actually saw, for when you are flying formation, you don’t have
time to look anywhere but at the plane you are flying on. However, there
were plenty of them shooting at the planes in our group, but no planes were
shot down. We were very fortunate, for earlier in the war there were a great
many of them, and they shot down a large number of our bombers.

I also forgot to mention my promotion. Back when I had made about twenty
missions, I went into our Quonset hut one day after a mission, and as I sat
down on my bunk to take off my shoes, I saw on the floor, almost hidden, a
typewritten page with a lot of names on it. When I read it I discovered it
was a list of officers who had been promoted to First Lieutenant, and I was
on the list. It had been placed on my bed, but the wind had blown it on the
floor. I was really surprised, for I hadn’t been expecting the promotion.

Another thing that I might mention was that I, and a number of others, was
ordered to be present in a large building where a meeting of all the group
personnel was to be held. We were lined up on the stage and the group
commander moved down the line, and each one of us, about a dozen, was
presented with the
Distinguished Flying Cross.
We had already been awarded
five Air Medals, but not in a
big ceremony with a lot of
hoopla. This is all kind of
silly, when all we were trying
to do was stay alive. Well, so
much for heroes!

65
I had the authority to promote the enlisted men in my crew, which I did as
fast as it would be accepted at squadron operations. They had been excellent
crewmembers as well as very outstanding men, and I couldn’t have asked for
a better group.

Well, all the worrying and anxiety is over now, and all I have to do is lie
around the hut and sleep late or whatever I want to do while waiting for my
orders sending me home. I am called to squadron operations to discuss
something ridiculous – I am offered a promotion to Captain if I take thirty
days leave and come back for another tour of duty. I gave them one short
answer – BULL.

I get a call from the officers’ club, and it is my old buddy R.T., who I
haven’t seen for at least eight months, and I surely will be pleased to see him
again. So I jump on my bike and hurry over there. After the usual
backslapping and hand shaking, we get down to serious talk. “ Since your
base is twenty miles from here”, I ask him, “how did you get here?” He said
he borrowed a jeep, but he probably appropriated it. He probably caught the
driver looking the other way.

He had finished his missions about the same time as I had, and received his
promotion to First Lieutenant about the same time. When I asked him when
he was scheduled to leave, he gave me an answer that floored me: he had all
ready applied for and been accepted into a fighter group. He was going to
do another tour of duty as a fighter pilot flying P-51 Mustangs and also
getting promoted to Captain. When I told him that he was a damn idiot, he
agreed with me – but knowing him as I did, I really wasn’t surprised.

We had been having a few drinks all along, and by the time they ran us out
so they could close up the place, we were both higher than kites. I imagine
he drove that jeep back just like he would drive a fighter plane. When we
shook hands and parted, we didn’t know it was for the last time ever.

After I returned home and was a B-17 instructor at Avon Park, I got a letter
from him telling me all about his P-51, and what a pleasure it was to fly. He
told me all about his activities, and how much he was enjoying his second
tour. I told him all about my instructing job, and I had to admit I wasn’t too
happy with it. We didn’t exchange any more letters, but after I was
discharged, I wrote to him at his home address in Indiana inviting him to
come down to Florida. His mother answered, saying she had received a
66
telegram from the War Department notifying her that R.T. was missing in
action and presumed dead. She said she had heard R.T. speak of me many
times and she was so pleased that we had such a fine friendship. These
things happen in war time, but you are never ready for them.

One day about midway my tour, I was lying around my hut, for I was
standing down, and an orderly came to the hut to tell me I was wanted on the
phone. I went to squadron operations, and when I picked up the phone and
said “ Lt. Huff speaking”, a voice on the other end said “Hey there, Charlie
Huff – how the hell are you?” I replied, “I’m fine, but who the hell are
you?” He said “I’m Harold Maltby – just dropped in for a visit with you.
You remember me – don’t you?” After a boisterous exchange of greetings,
he said he was at the control tower, and for me to come on over. I jumped
on my trusty bike and away I went, and he was the same old Harold! For the
ones who don’t know, he and his wife, Anna, and Dot and I graduated in the
same class at Hastings High School.

He and his pilot friend came in an old junk English plane that they had
borrowed from someone. After about an hour of talking about old times,
they had to return to their base (I have forgotten where it was located). They
got in that wreck but it refused to start. The engine coughed and barked and
sputtered and belched gobs of black smoke, but still refused to start. I
suggested that I call the wrecking crew and have them drag it over to our
junk yard, and I would get my B-17 to take them home, but they were
insulted and refused my offer. Finally, after the batteries were almost dead,
it began to show signs of life, and burst into a ragged roar. Running
smoothly – it was not! It showed symptoms of malaria, for it tried to shake
loose from the fuselage.

They finally got it going after a fashion, and managed to coax it out to the
end of the runway. They were afraid to run the engine up to full power for a
few seconds like you are supposed to do, for they were afraid it would quit
completely. They started down the runway and I doubted very much if they
would get it in the air, but they did and off they went.

When I signed up for cadet training, Harold did the same thing about a
week later, for he wanted to be a pilot the same as I did, but he was
classified a bombardier-navigator, and sent to California. This was the first
time we had seen each other since we left home. He was assigned to a crew

67
flying B-25’s, which is a twin-engine medium bomber just like the ones
Jimmy Doolittle used to bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

Before leaving here to go home, I hear what happened to my old B-24

(number 758). It was assigned to a replacement crew, and after making a
few missions, they were shot down over Germany. I don’t know how many
of her crew she took with her, but I imagine she made a big crater when she
hit the ground and exploded. In spite of all the nasty remarks I made to that
plane, I had a soft spot for her, for when she was mine she carried us over a
hundred thousand miles, and about twenty thousand of those miles were on
combat missions. I flew her a quarter of the way around the globe and
across the South Atlantic Ocean. She brought us home twice on three
engines and many times with her skin torn up from shrapnel, but she always
brought us home.

Another incident that happened here left me shaking in my shoes. On two

different occasions when we came back from missions – after I had landed
and just turned off the runway and on the taxiway, I had engines run out of
gasoline – two on one trip and one on the other. If I had been five minutes
later coming back to base, they would have stopped before I could land.
When I asked my flight engineer why he didn’t tell me that we were about to
run out of gas, he gave me a sensible answer: it wouldn’t have helped
anything and it looked like I had enough to worry about as it was – and he
was right. Another situation of “what if?”, but they didn’t, so what the hell!

While we are waiting around for our new orders sending us home, my
bombardier, Lt. Palmquist, goes into Colchester, a fair sized town about ten
miles north of the base, and makes arrangement at a nice restaurant for all of
us to have a big farewell dinner together. It is quite a swanky place and we
have a private dining room all to ourselves. In memory of our deceased co-
pilot, we have a place setting for him too. It may have been silly, but when I
suggested it to the crew, they agreed wholeheartedly with me. We had a
very fine meal complete with cocktails which we consumed all thru the
meal. By the time it was over, everyone was higher than a kite, but since we
had our own private dining room, we could be as boisterous as we wanted to
be. It was such a wonderful thing that we all made it through the war
without anyone getting a scratch. I was very thankful that I had such a fine
crew. None of us are boys any longer, for you grow up quickly in wartime.
When we got back to base, I never saw any of them again, except Ed Webb,
my co-pilot – as my orders came through and I had to leave immediately.
68
I am to report to Manchester on the east coast of England in two days, where
I will depart for the States. I get all my junk together and catch the train the
next morning at Sudbury for my trip to London, which will take two hours.
When I get to London, I have a layover of several hours to make connections
to Manchester, but I don’t mind, for it is such a happy feeling to be going
home. I have only one small bag, for the rest off my stuff will be shipped
home and will catch up with me at Miami Beach.

GOING HOME

The train arrives and I am on my way home! It is about two hundred and
fifty miles, and I arrive in Manchester about five hours later. I catch a
shuttle bus out to the airbase, which is about ten miles out of town toward
the coast. I turn in my orders and get new ones to – guess where – Presque
Isle, Maine. I am to ride as a passenger (ugh!) in a C-54 cargo plane, which
is a four-engine plane about the size of a B-17. It is the same plane as a DC-
4 airliner.

All military pilots dislike riding in a plane as a passenger and I am no

exception. I can fly this thing just as well as they can, but I have to grin and
bear it. It doesn’t have plush upholstered seats but just metal benches along
the sides of the fuselage. There are only about a dozen of us, so we have
plenty of room to walk around. One of the fellows going home was Bernie
Badger, a fighter pilot who was from the little town of Hastings, where I
went to school.

We take off early in the morning and head for Iceland, which is twelve
hundred miles and will take six hours. We arrive there about one o’clock,
and you can take my word for it, that is one damn bleak place with nothing
but ice and rocks. It had one redeeming feature – at the mess hall they had
white bread and fresh milk, which I hadn’t tasted since leaving West Palm
Beach about seven months ago. We stay overnight in Quonset huts, of
course, and take off early the next morning for Greenland – distance another
twelve hundred miles and six hours. It is a tiring trip with nothing to see but
ocean and icebergs.

When we get closer to Greenland, we run into a little trouble. There is a

German submarine sitting somewhere off the coast of Greenland sending out
69
fake radio beams hoping to draw us out into the ocean where we might run
out of fuel – but it doesn’t work, for our pilots are experienced enough to
separate the true beam from the fake one.

The base there is situated at the end of a fjord, and is twenty or thirty miles
from the ocean. The fjord is about a quarter of a mile wide and has ice walls
on each side about five hundred feet high, so it is like flying down a big
ditch. They have one runway that is in line with the fjord and starts at the
water’s edge and slopes uphill for about four thousand feet. You land uphill
and take off downhill regardless of the wind direction. There are two or
three more fjords exactly like this one along the coast, so the pilots have to
be careful to pick the correct one. The pilot knew this was the right one, as
it had a wrecked freighter about fifteen miles from the ocean. When we
land, it is a beautiful afternoon with bright sunshine. The river is full of
small icebergs and the icecap raises back inland to a height of nine thousand
feel – but you can walk around in your shirtsleeves and not feel a bit cold.

We stay here overnight and leave early the next morning for Presque Isle,
Maine, which is twenty-four hundred miles, and will take about twelve
hours. The first part of the flight is boring, but after we leave Greenland
behind, we cross the Labrador Sea – and could see Newfoundland ahead.
After that we cross the corner of Quebec and on in to our final destination –
Presque Isle! Hallelujah!

We land at the base, find a parking place, and step down on the good old
USA. I left West Palm Beach in March, and now it is the last of September.
From Manchester, England to here was five thousand miles. From Tucson
to Scotland was twelve thousand five hundred, making the whole trip over
the southern route – and back over the northern route was a total of
seventeen thousand five hundred, not counting the miles I flew on my
combat missions, which was about forty thousand.

I stay here overnight and the next morning I get my new orders to proceed to
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and I have to arrange for my own transportation
I call the railroad to find out about the train schedule and learn that one will
leave in a few hours for Fort Bragg. Other service men come through here
and everyone has to check in at Fort Bragg. It is nine hundred miles from
here, but as I have made friends with three or four of the fellows who were
on the plane and are also going there, it will help pass the time. It will be a
twenty- hour trip, for the train will start and stop many times on the way.
70
We finally arrive at Fort Bragg and I check in as usual. I lose my new
friends here, for after they clear through here, they will head on south. My
new orders grant me thirty days leave, after which I will report to Miami
Beach for two weeks of R&R. I stay here overnight and the next morning I
catch a train for Birmingham, Alabama. The distance is about six hundred
miles and will take forever. It is an old steam locomotive that spews out
black smoke and cinders in every direction, and is so crowded that I have to
stand up between the cars a lot of the time. As usual, during war- time there
were many service men in the crowd.

When we cross the line between Georgia and Alabama, I notice on the map
that we are about three hundred miles south of Nashville, Tennessee. I think
back to about a year ago when, after completing my four-engine training at
Smyrna, Tenn., I caught a train at Nashville, where I started my world tour
of almost twenty thousand miles, and ended up back here within three
hundred miles of my starting point.

TOGETHER AGAIN

We arrive in Birmingham and I get off of that thing as fast as I can, for with
all the traveling I have done, this train ride had to be the worst. I go to the
bus station, which is close by, and I am lucky to catch a bus that is leaving
immediately for Sylacauga, Alabama, where my wife and son have been
living with her mother and stepfather while I was overseas. I arrive there
and take a taxi to their house. When I got out of the taxi, my little boy, who
was playing in the yard next door, ran screaming into the house, hollering
“Mama, Mama, Daddy is home”. It was truly a happy reunion! I didn’t
write them that I was coming home, for I would have arrived before my
letter did.

I stay here for a few days, and then we load up

the car and head for Florida. After a pleasant
trip, we arrive at my brother’s home in Elkton,
where we will be staying for awhile. We stay
here for a week or so, and then, leaving our son
with his aunt and uncle, Dot and I head for
Miami Beach. The government has all of the
hotels leased there, and all of the service men
71
coming home from combat stay in one of these hotels for two weeks free of
charge. There are many activities, such as deep-sea fishing, dinner dances,
skeet shooting, and many other things available for our entertainment – all
courtesy of the Air Corps. We meet my copilot, Ed Webb, here and he and
his girl friend and Dot and I take in everything that is available, and we all
have a wonderful time.

It all comes to an end too soon, and we all have to go back on active duty. I
am given a choice of what I would like to do, and where I would like to
serve. I tell them that I want to stay in Florida and fly B-17’s, so I get my
new orders sending me to Avon Park Replacement Center as an instructor.
Here they train new crews in combat tactics before being sent overseas as
replacement crews in a bomb group already in operation.

INSTRUCTING DUTY - UGH !

I arrive at the base in Avon Park, and go through the usual routine of getting
settled at a new base. I am assigned to one of the three squadrons, but don’t
go to work immediately, for a crisis is developing. There is a big hurricane
churning around in the Keys, and no one knows where it is headed.
Everyone is put on twenty-four hour alert, and we have to stay on the base
until they decide whether we have to evacuate the planes. I am staying in
the BOQ anyway, so it doesn’t matter to me. Dot is still in Elkton tending to
some things there, and when she is finished, she will drive down here, and
we will scout around here trying to fine a place to live. I know I will be here
until the war ends, so we would like a fairly nice place.

The storm starts to move north, and we are directly in its path. The wind
and rainsqualls start increasing, and we are told to pack our overnight bag.
We wait around for a couple of hours and then the word comes down for us
to be taken to our planes – but do not start engines until notified by the
tower. There will be an instructor, a student pilot and a flight engineer on
each plane. The wind velocity picks up to fifty or sixty miles per hour, and
the tower informs us to start engines but hold our positions. The order
comes, and we all start taxiing out to the runway. Everything that will fly –
which will be twenty-five or thirty planes, will be leaving.

The first plane is cleared for takeoff and we all follow at thirty-second
intervals. As soon as we clear the runway, we are in solid overcast and it is
72
73
pouring rain, so we go on instruments immediately. Everyone has been
briefed to climb straight out to five hundred feet and then make a left turn,
still climbing, to a course of zero degrees, which is due north. There is a B-
17 base at Sebring, about ten miles south of here, and they are leaving also,
so we have to stay out of each other’s way. We continue our climb to five
thousand feet, and break out of the clouds when we are off the coast at
Jacksonville. We are going to a base at Columbia, South Carolina, which is
about four hundred miles from Avon Park. We land there and stay
overnight, and as the storm has moved on up thru West Florida and on
inland, we return home the next day.

As soon as everything gets settled down, we start the dull routine of trying to
teach others how to stay alive when someone is shooting at them. As time
goes by I will realize that this is the most boring job of my entire flying
career. There are a few bright spots, though, for every now and then, some
“gravel grinder”, which is a ground officer, would have to go to another base
for some reason or another, and would call one of the squadrons to find a
couple of off-duty pilots who wanted to chauffeur him. I always grabbed
these up if I wasn’t working, and made some interesting trips. I made one
flight to Chicago and stayed overnight, but that was one cold and windy
place. On the way back a P-47 fighter plane appeared and flew along just
off our wingtip for a while, and then peeled off and was gone.

I took someone to Lambert Field at St. Louis, and several more to other
places. A friend of mine, Lt. Mayo Adams, had two days off and wanted to
fly up to his home in Roanoke, Virginia and needed a copilot. I also had two
days off, so I went with him. The town had a nice airport, but when we
arrived and left, the runway was covered with ice and snow but didn’t give
us any trouble. We stayed overnight with his parents, who were very fine
people.

Incidentally, if you had time off from your work, you could take a B-17 and
go anywhere in the United States that you wanted to, as long as you were
back in time to go on duty. You could land at any military base and fill the
fuel tanks, check the oil and clean the windshield – all at the expense of the
poor old taxpayer. How about that?

Just before the war ended, a group of us took a C-47, which is the same as an
airline DC-3, over to McDill Field in Tampa, where there was a Civil
Aeronautics Board office, and they issued us our Civilian Transport Pilots
74
Certificates. They accepted us without any exams of any kind, for being
military pilots, they knew that we knew everything there was to know about
flying!

One Saturday we are notified that all flight personnel are to report to the
base at six o’clock Sunday morning for a simulated combat mission to Cuba.
We all arrive grumbling and growling, but it doesn’t do us any good. There
is a regular briefing just like they do in combat, where we get all the facts
and figures. All the instructor pilots are veterans, but none of the big shots
have been in combat, so they don’t know what the hell they are doing. All
of the squadron commanders are veterans, so one of them will lead the
group. Since there are three squadrons, there will be one instructor pilot to
each squadron, plus the group leader. In my squadron there are ten or
twelve instructor pilots, so we put each of our names in a hat and our
commander draws a name, and guess who had the honor of going to
Guantanamo, Cuba! I get ready to go while all my friends leave to go back
home with smiles on their faces. After a lot of confusion and fumbling
around, we take off about eight o’clock and it takes forever for these jug
heads to get in formation. I grit my teeth and wish I were somewhere else.
It is about sixteen hundred miles, so it will take about eleven hours. We
arrive over Cuba and fly to the far end, where the base is located, but we
don’t land – just circle the base and head back to Avon. It is almost dark
when we arrive and I breathe a sigh of relief, for I am getting damn tired of
this job. At least none of these clowns ran into each other.

Some of the things that have happened almost made me wish I was still
flying combat. One student of mine let the plane get away from him on
takeoff, and I just had time to grab the controls and apply full emergency
power to get us in the air before going into a big canal. It happened so
quickly that we were off the runway and on the grass before I could take
over. Those four big engines were producing six thousand horsepower, and
they never missed a beat. We staggered into the air at eighty-five miles per
hour, and I’ll bet the Boeing Company would say it was impossible, but I
did it. As soon as I got to a hundred feet, I started dropping the nose slightly
and we picked up to a hundred miles per hour, but it was still critical. At a
hundred and twenty five, I began to breathe easier, but it was still touch and
go, for I had some tall pines to clear at the edge of the field. At three
hundred feet I started to cut back the power a little, for these engines were
not built to stand that kind of beating, but just for a few minutes. At five

75
hundred feet and one hundred forty miles per hour, I had everything under
control, but I can tell you for sure I just had the hell scared out of me.

This was one of the hazards of instructing, even though these students had
been through four-engine training school. Shortly after this happened, I
learned there was an opening in base operations for an assistant base
operations officer, so I applied for and was accepted for a desk job. I was
finished instructing, and boy, was I happy. There were three of us assistants
and we worked eight-hour shifts, which were staggered – so some times we
worked days and some times nights, with two days off every four days. This
gave me time to fly some of those maintenance officers around the country,
as I have spoken of before.

One day after I had gotten off duty, I took our jeep and rode around the base
and out to the runway that was in use. I stopped at the end of the runway
when I saw a B-17 coming in on his final approach with number three
engine feathered. He passed in front of me and I waited to see him land,
although it didn’t take any real skill to make a three-engine landing. An
instructor friend of mine was in the plane, but he let the student make the
landing, much to his regret. He stalled it out ten feet in the air, and when it
hit the concrete, the right landing gear collapsed. It bounced back in the air
and came down again about two hundred yards farther on down the runway.
With no support on that side, it settled down on the wingtip, and when the
two propellers started chewing into the concrete it made a terrible racket.
My friend, the instructor, got chewed out for that mistake.

I also had the opportunity to watch a B-17 land with a flat tire, but you could
hardly tell it until the plane slowed down and the tire started balling up - but
it didn’t even go off the runway. Another day when I was going off duty,
we got a phone call saying one of our B-17’s was down somewhere west of
the base toward the Gulf, so I was appointed to fly out and have a look. The
only plane available was a BT-13, which I thoroughly disliked, but I took it
anyway. I searched right and left almost to the Gulf and didn’t find
anything, so I returned to base. It turned out to be a crank call.

Going back to when I first arrived here, there was an incident that happened
about a week earlier. A B-17 ditched (landed) in Lake Arbuckle, which is a
large lake about four miles long with the south end right at the base. The
Officers’ Club was built on this end out over the water, so there was
eyewitnesses that saw it happen. I never heard the official report, but since
76
 one of our runways was
almost in line with this
lake, it was speculated
that there was a fire on
board soon after taking
off, and the pilot decided
to set it down in the
water, which is exactly
what I would have done.
I know for sure that it
was never salvaged, so it
is still there where it
Officers’ Club built on Lake Arbuckle.
sank. I’ll bet that lake
has ten feet of mud on
the bottom, which acts as a preservative on metal, so I imagine it is still in
good condition. It would be worth a lot of money, and some day someone
will salvage it.

During the last part of my stay here I was offered a transfer to Andrews
Field, Maryland, which is just outside Washington, D.C, where all the
government planes are kept. This was a job flying the big shots around the
country, and would have amounted to a fantastic future, but I refused the
offer, for I had had enough of the military and wanted out.

As I mentioned earlier, when I first came to this base, I was here several
weeks by myself, while Dot was taking care of some things back home in
Elkton. When she was through she drove down here and we went house
hunting. Like all towns that were close to military bases, rental houses were
in short supply. We couldn’t fine anything in Avon Park, so we went down
to Sebring, which was about ten miles south, and found a vacancy in a trailer
park. It was right on a big lake and was a beautiful place, but the trailer we
stayed in wasn’t very fancy. We were lucky to find it, though, for there was
another B-17 base a few miles southeast of Sebring. From here back to
Avon Park and out to the base was about twenty miles, so I had quite a ways
to travel.

We met the Warren Barrett family here and we all became close friends.
Warren was a Lt. Colonel and had been overseas and served his tour of duty
the same as I had. He had been in the military a lot longer than I had.

77
Even after moving in here, we kept looking for a house in Avon Park. We
lived here in the trailer park for about ten months, and then were notified by
a rental agency that they had a house for us in Avon, and when we moved up
there it was a lot easier on me. We stayed in contact with our friends, the
Barretts, and had a lot of wonderful times together. Dot was pregnant with
Bill at this time and was attended to by a doctor out at the base.

THE WAR’S OVER !!

Finally in August (1945), the great news came in over the radio – JAPAN
HAD SURRENDERED AND THE WAR WAS OVER!! There were
celebrations all over the town, and at the base all activity ceased
immediately. There was no duty at all, and everyone just hung around doing
nothing but waiting for further orders.

A friend of mine, a Lt. Greggs, wanted to go down to Miami, where Eastern

Airlines had their main office, and apply for an airline job, and asked me if I
would fly copilot for him. I was tired of hanging around doing nothing and
was glad to have something to do. We went out to the B-17 that was
assigned to us, and then the fun began. That plane was a junk-heap if I ever
saw one! After a lot of cussing and coaxing, we got number one and two
started to run after a fashion, but all number three wanted to do was cough
up gobs of black smoke. We got it thoroughly flooded and gasoline ran out
of the cowling and all over the right tire, so we left it alone and went to
number four. The same thing happened and gasoline poured down on the
concrete, and you can guess what happened next. It backfired and
everything on the right side of the plane caught fire. I thought it was a good
idea for it to burn up, but I wanted to be off at a safe distance. The flight
engineer, who was on the flight deck, hollered for me to activate the fire
extinguisher. I hollered back that I had a better idea – I’m leaving, and I did.
That junk plane wasn’t going to catch me in an explosion. He and the crew
chief got the fire out, though, and I returned to the cockpit. I got in the co-
pilot’s seat and Greggs said, “let’s try it again” – I said, “You are crazy as
hell, and what’s more, I am just as crazy to get back in this thing”. He said
that maybe the fire burned off some of the oil that coated the engines and
they would run better, which was a misstatement because the damn things
wouldn’t even run. We kept pestering them, and they decided to run, but
they were awfully ragged sounding. Before boarding I noticed the tires had
some fabric showing, and both landing gear assemblies were sprung out of
78
line from too many rough landings. I could see right away that this was
going to be a battle between man and machine.

We managed to get out to the runway, but guess what we found out then –
we had no brakes. We couldn’t run the engines up to check the magnetos or
to run them up to full power. The fact was – these engines lost their full
power long ago. I was compelled to ask “CAPITAN Greggs – that if we
were lucky enough to get this thing off the runway, and if we made it to
Miami, and if both tires didn’t blow out when we landed, then how the hell
were we going to get it stopped? He waved his hand in the air and said not
to worry, we would run it into the boundary fence. I told him I didn’t give a
hoot about the plane, but how would we get back to Avon. He just brushed
off my questions, so I called the tower and told them I thought we were
ready to go.

When they cleared us for takeoff, I expected them to say that the crash
trucks would be standing by at the other end of the runway, but they didn’t,
so off we went. We made it down there all right and by Greggs setting it
down right on the near end of the runway, we got it stopped without having
to run it into anything. The Eastern Airline building was located on the
airport, so it didn’t take Greggs long to take care of his business. The
takeoff, the trip back, and the landing were all uneventful, and when we got
out of the plane, we checked it off as another exciting episode of life in the
military. I often wondered how he came out with the airlines, as I am sure
he was accepted.

A lifelong friend of mine by the name of Bob Brough was stationed here and
we had him to our house to eat with us a lot of times. Bob and I grew up on
neighboring farms back at Elkton, and we had known each other all our
lives. While we were waiting around for orders, he casually mentioned that
he would like to have taken a ride in a B-17 before he was discharged. He
was at our house at the time, and when I suggested that we go out to the base
right then and take a little trip, he was sure surprised. I guess he thought that
getting possession of a plane would be complicated, but I told him all I had
to do was round up a copilot and flight engineer, and we would be all set.

We went out to the base and I stopped at the officers club, which was near
the gate and found a friend of mine who was sitting around looking bored
and was glad to have something to do. The crew chief of the plane we were
taking, who normally takes care of the plane on the ground, is also a
79
qualified flight engineer, so he was happy to go with us. We take off and
head out east over the ocean and make a big circle around Cape Canaveral
(this was long before the Space Center was constructed at this place), and
then heading west, making a big circle out over the Gulf and around Tampa,
and then back to base. I enjoyed the flight, too, for I didn’t have some dumb
head student to contend with. I asked my friend, the copilot, to let Bob take
his seat for a little while, and Bob was sure pleased. After we landed and
got out of the plane, I realized that was the last time I would ever fly a B-17,
and it made me feel kind of sad.

While we were waiting around for orders, Dot

went into labor, and I rushed her to the base
hospital, where our son Bill was born. She
was in the hospital only two or three days
when I got my orders to report to Camp
Blanding for my discharge.

After everything was taken care of, I was given my discharge papers, and
asked – not told – to stop in at a certain office for a few minutes. I was
curious enough to comply, so I found the office, knocked on the door and
went in, and who do you think was sitting behind the desk – my old friend,
Harold Maltby – who hollers out “Hey, Charlie Huff, how the hell are you?”
I said, ”Harold Maltby, what in the hell are you doing here?” After hashing
over old times, he got down to business. He was, he said, in the process of
persuading discharged veterans to join the Army Reserve. He pointed out all
the wonderful things that would happen to the ones that signed up. When I
asked him if he was going to join up, he said, “hell, no, I’ve got better sense
than that”, and I told him that was my answer too, so we had a big laugh
over that one. It was a good thing I didn’t join up, for when the Korean War
came along, they sent all of the World War Two pilots who had joined the
reserve over there in spite of their ages.

80
 It took several days for me to return to Avon
Park to help with our move home to Elkton.
My brother came down in his truck to help us
with the moving chores, and it wasn’t easy, as
we had been in one place long enough to
accumulate a full truck load. We finally made
it, and with our five year old and our brand
new son, we were sure looking forward to
settling down to a more normal life.

I leave Camp Blanding with a sigh of relief,

for I was damned tired of military life! I had
decided long ago that my desire to be an
airline pilot was gone. Even though I knew I
could fly an airplane as well as anyone could,
‘Pilot Huff’ trying to show there was a lot of doubt in my mind about
‘Farmer Huff’ how to ride a being responsible for the lives of a planeload
motorcycle at Avon Park.
of people. Being responsible for my crew
was different, for they were all aware of the
hazards and dangers we were faced with. I had obtained hundreds of
thousands of dollars worth of flight training, and whether I made use of it or
not, it is certainly something to be proud of. Our flight from Tucson,
Arizona, to Prestwick, Scotland, a fourth of the way around the world in our
four-engine plane with all expenses paid, was an amazing adventure! The
experiences we had and the things we saw – the ones of us who are still
around – we will remember for the rest of our lives.

This concludes my story and if you ask me if I would do it all over again,
including the war, I would say “Hell, yes!!”

81
82
 ODDS & ENDS

Bits & pieces that didn’t get in the main story.

83
84
85
86
87
88
THE FOLLOWING FACTS will fill in some of the blanks in my three-year
story. I was not able to obtain complete records of my flight time from the
Army Air Force after my discharge – that would have been a big help!

*******************

The Link Trainer is a flight simulator, and is used in conjunction with

instrument training in an airplane. It will perform any maneuver that an
airplane will, except inverted flight. It is mounted on a bellows arrangement
like the point of a pin. It has short stubby wings and a tail assembly with
rudder and elevators. The cockpit canopy is solid and shuts out all light.
When you are seated inside, it is completely dark, and all you can see are a
complete set of instruments, which are lighted up.

You have to be an experienced pilot to fly it, for it handles exactly like an
airplane. After you have been in it for an hour and you open the canopy,
you are amazed to see that you have been on the ground all the time. Your
instructor sits at a very large desk, which is covered with a very large map of
the surrounding area for several hundred miles out from the base. Sitting on
the map is an apparatus called a BUG. It is mounted on three little rubber
wheels and has a device on the bottom that draws a line on the map as it
moves. It is connected with the trainer itself with a bunch of electric cables
and does exactly what the simulator does.

If the pilot turns north, the BUG turns north – if the pilot makes a circle, the
BUG does the same. It will duplicate anything that the simulator does. If
the pilot advances the throttle and increases his speed, so does the BUG. As
an example, the instructor tells the pilot over the intercom: the first leg to a
certain city so many miles away at a certain airspeed, altitude, and compass
course – and the pilot will have to determine by the clock what time he will
arrive over his destination. He might route you by three or four cities, and
then back to base. The instructor might throw in something when you get
back like: take a course south for ten minutes, then make a three hundred
and sixty degree turn to the right, and when you come back to south again,
repeat the same thing to the left. Then he will guide you back to the field
again, and on to your final approach – and you are clear to land.

After the period is over, the pilot can look at the map on the desk and see
just what errors he made, if any. I forgot to mention that if you let your

89
airspeed drop below a certain number, it would stall and go into a spin just
like a real plane. How about that!

It was quite a remarkable machine for its time. I logged forty hours in this
simulator, which I think was counted as actual flight time.

********************

The instructing I did at Avon Park was not teaching students to fly four
engine airplanes, but teaching them combat tactics.

********************

Comparison of B-24 to B-17

In my opinion, and I believe I am well qualified as anyone to make a

comparison having flown both in combat where the planes were a lot
heavier, and trained in B-24 and instructed in a B-17 where they were
considerably lighter, the B-24 was highly overrated.

The manufacturer claimed that the B-24 would fly higher, faster, and farther
with a bigger bomb load than the B-17. Every one of these claims is false.
Typically, when a company builds a plane for the military, it makes
outrageous claims about its performance, and the Defense Department
accepts it, and then tries to cover it all up. It was claimed the cruising speed
was three hundred – actually it was one hundred-sixty, which was only five
miles faster than a B-17. They said it would fly at thirty-four thousand feet
with a gross weight of sixty-five thousand pounds, which was ridiculous.
The bigger bomb bay made it possible to carry more bombs, but you had to
cut down on the amount of gasoline to keep the gross weight down –
therefore the range was less.

They carried thirty-one hundred gallons of gasoline, but were about seven
thousand pounds heavier than a B-17, which held twenty-nine hundred and
eighty gallons.

There were so many fuel tanks, lines, and pumps in the plane that if you got
in a B-24 and didn’t open all the doors and windows and hatches to clear out
the gasoline fumes, you were courting disaster.

90
91
At twenty thousand feet it flew so sloppy, you could hardly keep if from
colliding with the other planes. One pilot summed it up best when he said it
flew like a bathtub half full of water.

The B-17 had a gross weight of about fifty-eight thousand pounds. It carried
the same bomb load as the B-24 and just as far. Its cruising speed was one
hundred fifty-five miles per hour. It was as easy to land a light plane, and at
all altitudes was the most stable airplane I have ever flown. It had no bad
characteristics whatsoever.

********************

I heard that my flight engineer, Sergeant William Miller, stayed in the

service after the war. He went through pilot training successfully, stayed in
for twenty years, and came out as a Lieutenant Colonel. My congratulations
to him!!

********************

When you were getting the planes ready for flight, you started the engines
on a B-17 from left to right – one, two, three, four.

On a B-24 you started number three first – then one, two and four. Number
three had accessories that were vital to starting the others.

********************

When flying into an extremely cold place for an overnight stop, you had to
take certain precautions with the engines. With them running at about
twelve hundred RPM you depressed a toggle switch that pumped gasoline
into the oil supply. You watched the oil pressure gauge and when it dropped
to zero you shut the engine down quickly. The next morning when you were
ready to start them up the oil would be thin enough for the starter to turn
them over easily. When the engines got hot the gasoline evaporated.

********************

Both planes mounted ten fifty-caliber machine guns and carried about a
quarter of a ton of ammunition.

92
 ********************

June 6, 1944 was ‘D-Day’ – the day the Allied Armies crossed the English
Channel and landed at Normandy, France. There were ten thousand planes
involved, and I made my sixteenth mission on that day in my B-24 (#758).

Incidentally, on the 50th anniversary of this date, I received vital information

from the 486th Bomb Group’s English contact, Mr. Roland Andrews of
Sudbury, who had access to combat records. Among other items, he sent a
photograph of ‘Number 758’ with the notation that I flew it on D-Day, with
the target being Cinq-Mars, France.

********************

I flew thirty-four combat missions – average length of missions was eleven

hundred miles. The longest was to Berlin, Germany, which was fifteen
hundred miles. Altitudes were from eighteen thousand to twenty-five
thousand feet.

********************

B-24 #758 was shot down after I began flying B-17’s in July, 1944;
B-17 #034 survived the war and was cut up as scrap as so many were.

********************

Several months ago my family and I ‘discovered’ the Eighth Air Force
Museum in Savannah, Georgia. What a wonderful treat it has been!

********************

93
 Flying Time

Four engine (B-24) .......................................................... 700 hours

Four engine (B-17) .......................................................... 700 hours
Twin engine....................................................................... 90 hours
Single engine ................................................................... 144 hours
Misc. Military Craft.......................................................... 49 hours
Civilian Craft...................................................... (appr.) 100 hours
__________
Total Pilot Time: ........... 1,783 hours

Co-pilot Time:.................. 230 hours

Link Trainer Time:............ 40 hours

Distances Traveled

Total Miles Flown as pilot.................................................. 318,300

Miles Flown in combat......................................................... 35,500

Included in Total Miles Flown:

Distances from Tuscon, AZ to Prestwick, Scotland
Tucson to Herrington, Kansas......................................... 1,250
Herrington to West Palm Beach, Florida ........................ 1,350
West Palm Beach to Puerto Rico..................................... 1,100
Puerto Rico to Trinidad...................................................... 750
Trinidad to Belem, Brazil................................................ 1,350
Belem to Natal, Brazil...................................................... 1,000
Natal to Dakar, East Africa............................................. 2,200
Dakar to Marrakech, Morocco, North Africa................. 1,500
Marakech to Prestwick, Scotland.................................... 2,000

Trip Total:..................................................................... 12,500

94
 Airplane Passenger Miles

Flying home on C-54 (DC-4 airliner)

Manchester, England to Iceland.......................................... 1,200

Iceland to Greenland........................................................... 1,200
Greenland to Presque Isle, Maine ....................................... 2,400

Mileage Traveled by Train

St. Augustine to Nashville, TN .................................................. 600

Nashville to Montgomery, AL................................................... 250
Montgomery to Helena, ARK................................................... 250
Helena to Walnut Ridge, ARK.................................................. 250
Walnut Ridge to Seymore, IND ................................................ 450

Nashville to Chicago to Salt Lake City to Tucson.................. 2,700

Prestwick to Sudbury (base in England)................................... 300

Base to London ........................................................................... 50
London to Manchester.............................................................. 300
Presque Isle to Fort Bragg, NC................................................. 900
Fort Bragg to Birmingham ....................................................... 600

Total Miles by Railroad:................... 6,600

95
LAST WORDS –

I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this account of the most mind-boggling

years of my life – my experience as an AAF bomber pilot in the European
Theater of Operations during WW II.

Like all eighty-year-olds, I usually find it hard to remember what I did

yesterday. Therefore, it is a real surprise to me, as well as to my family, that
I have been able to recall these long-ago years with such vivid clarity.

I originally decided to jot down a few comical incidences that happened in

my early flight training. As I remembered a few things, other events came
to mind and the more I wrote, the more I remembered details of things I
thought I had forgotten.

I remembered the details (important and not so important) almost as if that

part of my life was a movie playing before my eyes. Places, dates, people,
and all kinds of experiences seemed to fall into place as I wrote. I couldn’t
stop! It was fascinating!

To the best of my knowledge, the events I have related are correct. The
opinions stated are my own – I am sure that other pilots of that era may have
different ones. And that is their right, of course.

It has been very rewarding that my entire family is so interested and anxious
to help tell this story. However, it wouldn’t have turned out like it has if it
hadn’t been for all the help from my daughter-in-law, Misty, and my son,
Bill. They have spent many hours editing, organizing, scanning pictures –
and making it presentable. Misty’s computer skills – and her patience –
were greatly appreciated and sorely needed. Thanks.

96
 (Picture was taken on our 50th wedding anniversary.)

This Book was written, compiled, and published during the summer of 2000.

97

Copyright 2000, Charles C. Huff - All rights reserved