High above Texas one April afternoon, a B-24 ball turret was raised, and the hatch opened.
‘Your turn,’ our instructor said to me. ‘In you go.’
Sperry ball turret, retractable model. Credit:browningmgs.com.
I settled myself into the compartment and connected my oxygen tube and intercom line. The hatch was closed and latched above me. The twin fifties and I were pointed straight down at the ground, thousands of feet below. The turret was slowly lowered into the sparkling air. Using upright hand levers that pivoted in all directions, I leveled the turret and rotated it so that I could look all about. overhead was the fat underside of our bomber and its big, oval twin rudders; around me was the vast sky. A camera was mounted in the turret to record simulated attacks by friendly fighters. One appeared from below—an old Bell P-39 Airacobra, coming straight on. I fixed him in my gun sight, pushed the firing buttons on top of the levers with my thumbs, and ‘shot’ him with my camera. It was an exciting moment.
Between flights we went to classes, learned survival techniques, and studied our manuals. I remember sitting in the lighted stairway of our barracks one night, reading a lesson after the rest of the building had been darkened. To ‘wash out’ of gunnery school would have been a terrible disgrace, far worse than missing out on preflight training. If I failed I could be sent to the Air Transport Command, where I would spend the war safety loading freight into cargo planes instead of flying missions over enemy territory. That was a fate to be avoided. The boy who never hunted animals now was willing to shoot at other men—or would be chagrined not to be shooting at them. I had not hardened or developed a killer instinct; I was simply responding to the pressures of the time.
I did not feel fear while suspended below the bomber, nor did I question the assignment. I should have; the turret was top heavy, and could swing violently if not locked into place inside the airplane as I was sliding in or out. And if the ship's electrical system were knocked out, the ball turret could not be retracted. Worst of all, there was no room in the ball for a parachute. One was totally dependent upon the crewmen above to raise the turret, secure it, and help one get out, in order to put on a parachute. It occurred to me that if my bomber was aflame and spinning to earth, the crewmen above might well decide to save themselves rather than lose time retrieving me. How many ball turret gunners plunged to their deaths in World War II in the same fetal position in which they had begun their lives? Their casualty rate was high. Despite the problems, I continued on, and was destined for duty beneath a bomber when our training period came to an end. I had inherited my parents' stoicism, or their optimism, or both.
Our daily calisthenics exercises saw acres of lean, tanned men, wearing white shorts and black sneakers, swinging arms high and legs wide in chanted unison. Watching them, I speculated on the thousands of other young men at other bases around the world who at that same moment were preparing in the same way to do battle against their enemies.
‘Look!’ someone called out as we were returning from our mess hall after dinner one evening. He pointed to a B-24 with a smoking engine that was swinging low over the base, racing toward the landing strip. We stopped to watch the bomber bank sharply downward and drop from sight beyond the barracks. Soon a pillar of black smoke rose high in the sky. As I lay in my bed that night I imagined myself in the place of that crew in its terrifying plunge to earth. Later we learned that the bomber had leveled out to land and burn, and that everyone had escaped unhurt.
Soon, we took a battery of tests, received our silver wings and corporal's stripes, and were ready for assignment to a combat squadron. We were rolling out of gunnery schools across the south and southwest every week by the hundreds, ready to join the shiny new bombers that were steadily flowing off their own production lines.
Andy Doty went back to ‘Hometown, USA’ again on leave, and on his return to base he was assigned to the crew of a new bomber, the B-29 Superfortress, destined for the skies over Japan. It had been developed secretly and was well suited to the demands of the Pacific theater: long, over water missions without fighter escorts. Before shipping out to the Pacific, he returned home one last time.
Once again, the two weeks vanished in a flurry of visits, movies, high school basketball games, and trips to the drug store. I picked up Bake at her house on those frosty evenings, and we walked briskly down Mechanic Street to the corner of Main Street to catch the bus to Glens Falls. The bus was crowded, its windows coated with steam or frost. A man gave up his seat to Bake and I stood proudly beside her in the aisle, swaying slightly as I held onto an overhead strap. As the bus moved along its lights showed high snow banks on either side of the road and dark clusters of people waiting in the cold at the bus stops ahead. We were on our way to Glens Falls to see ‘Since You Went Away’ at the Paramount theater. It staffed Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker as young lovers in wartime. Bake and I held hands in the darkened theater and identified with the two characters.
We ended the evening in the Baker family's warm front room, where we waited for her parents to go to bed after we had finished our ice cream ritual. When they were gone, Bake sat on my lap in a large, blue easy chair. Soft dance music, broadcast late at night from a hotel in New York City, formed a romantic backdrop. We kept the radio low so that we would not disturb her parents beyond their closed door. But after a time, Mrs. Baker's call emerged: ‘Eleanor!’ once again it was time for me to leave. I walked home in my heavy overcoat, cupping my ears in the cold, running to slide across patches of ice in the street.
The farewells this time were much harder, for we all knew I was going overseas. Again I left Bake early the night before departing, and went through the routine of packing with my parents watching. Ken Howe drove us, Agnes and Bake to Albany in a Buick that held three people in the front seat. Mom, Bake and I sat in the back. It was a sad ride, but we tried to be cheerful, talking about anything but the future.
Standing on the slushy pavement in front of the railroad station, we said good bye. I hugged Mom and shook Dad's hand. He had been taking nitroglycerin tablets for an angina problem for years and puffed after the slightest effort. I looked into his eyes and wondered if I would ever see him again; I imagined him wondering the same about me.
Dad was not given to long statements. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he said. ‘I will—you, too.’ We did not embrace, for men did not do such things in those days. I wish I had, for I never saw him again.
I gave Bake a brief kiss, picked up my bags, and disappeared into the station.
*
Andy Doty survived 21 combat missions in the Pacific late in the war, detailed further in my first book, The Things Our Fathers Saw: Voices of the Pacific Theater. He returned home in December, 1945, and pursued higher education. His brother Chuck also survived the war, and went to work in the mills like their father. Andy and Eleanor Baker married in July, 1950.
*
Andy Doty
I think we shall never see the likes of it again. The nation was fully united and mobilized in a popular military effort. The youth of America was under arms, generally willing, and often eager, to serve their country. Young men who had never traveled more than fifteen miles from home fought land, sea, and air battles in every quarter of the globe.
Richard ‘Dick’ Varney, flight engineer, first row second from right,
and the crew of his B-24 Liberator. Source: Richard Varney.
chapter Five
The Flight Engineer
Richard ‘Dick’ Varney was born in 1911, and was already an ‘old man’ when he was drafted at age 32. Mr. Varney lived on the corner of the block where I grew up, with his wife Anne and two children. He always had a smile on his face and a loving twinkle in his eye when I saw him; his wife Anne came into the house and minded us as young children when my mother started to work as a school nurse-teacher. When I started sending my students into the community to do interviews with veterans 40 years later, two of my students happened to meet him at a garage sa
le, and got to talking. Though he had been a part of my own family’s life for decades—he was even my younger brother’s godfather—I had no idea that Richard Varney had been in the war; he flew 28 missions in the B-24 Liberator. He gave my students a wide ranging interview in his home in December 2003. Here he is, at age 92, talking to two 17-year olds, and passing advice and his take on the current state of the world with the same smile and sparkle.
***
Duties of the Flight Engineer
Size up the man who is to be your engineer. This man is supposed to know more about the airplane you are to fly than any other member of the crew.
He has been trained in the Air Forces' highly specialized technical schools. Probably he has served some time as a crew chief. Nevertheless, there may be some inevitable blank spots in his training which you, as a pilot and airplane commander, may be able to fill in.
Think back on your own training. In many courses of instruction, you had a lot of things thrown at you from right and left. You had to concentrate on how to fly; and where your equipment was concerned you learned to rely more and more on the enlisted personnel, particularly the crew chief and the engineer, to advise you about things that were not taught to you because of lack of time and the arrangement of the training program.
Both pilot and engineer have a responsibility to work closely together to supplement and fill in the blank spots in each other's education. To be a qualified combat engineer a man must know his airplane, his engines, and his armament equipment thoroughly. This is a big responsibility: the lives of the entire crew, the safety of the equipment, the success of the mission depend upon it squarely.
He must work closely with the copilot, checking engine operation, fuel consumption, and the operation of all equipment. He must be able to work with the bombardier, and know how to cock, lock, and load the bomb racks. It is up to you, the airplane commander, to see that he is familiar with these duties, and, if he is hazy concerning them, to have the bombardier give him special help and instruction.
Your engineer should be your chief source of information concerning the airplane. He should know more about the equipment than any other crew member -- yourself included.
You, in turn, are his source of information concerning flying. Bear this in mind in all your discussions with the engineer. The more complete you can make his knowledge of the reasons behind every function of the equipment, the more valuable he will be as a member of the crew. Who knows? Someday that little bit of extra knowledge in the engineer's mind may save the day in some emergency.
Generally, in emergencies, the engineer will be the man to whom you turn first. Build up his pride, his confidence, his knowledge. Know him personally; check on the extent of his knowledge. Make him a man upon whom you can rely. —Duties and Responsibilities of the Airplane Commander and Crewmen, 1943
***
Richard Varney
I grew up during the Depression. I remember that day in 1929 [when the stock market crashed] very well. I was about 17 or 18. I had been working for two years; I went to work at 15 years old with working papers. My parents, God bless them, they grew up in an era when school was not that important. You went to work as soon as you were able to help the family. I don’t think you people understand what I am saying or what that means, but it meant a lot. But I wish that I had gone to school. I did later on, but I made it in life without [a formal education]. I had to do it my way. I worked at the sawmill on Haskell Avenue in Glens Falls; it’s not there now. I also started playing at dances in a band when I was 17 and did it for a long, long time; it was a lot of fun. It was quite necessary then because the wages then weren’t what they are now. I took lessons for a little while on the violin, but I played by ear from then on. I also taught myself to play the alto and tenor saxophone, which I still have, incidentally.
You have to realize that when I went to work at the Imperial factory, later, if you weren’t late or forgot to ring in and out, you got 40 cents an hour. Can you imagine that? You worked 40 hours; you got sixteen dollars a week! Now on this, you had a family to support—it isn’t like what it’s like today. In the Depression era you could buy a home for 1,500 dollars. You couldn’t hang a door for that now! Money was something you didn’t have, but you didn’t feel deprived in those days because nobody else had any money. No, you probably had one change of clothes, maybe one pair of shoes if you were lucky. You didn’t wear them in the summer because you didn’t want to wear them out. I’m not exaggerating, because you just didn’t have the money. You made do. You didn’t eat a lot of prepared food, you [improvised and] cooked your own. You ate a lot of things… [Have you ever had] dandelions? We used to go and pick them. Clean them, cook them, you make do. You just didn’t always have money with those kinds of wages.
*
On December 7, 1941, I was working at the Imperial Color paint factory in Glens Falls. It was a shock— I was outraged naturally, because it was a sneak attack. But it was not unexpected; believe me, we had been heading towards it. In fact, in my opinion we were already in an undeclared war; we were actually in it because we were supporting England. We had been giving them everything they needed; from then on it was just a matter of time before we all got into it. But Germany and Japan declared war on us first.
I was not a kid; I was 30 years old at the time. I was married and I had no idea what the future was going to bring for us, because I did not know what they wanted to do. I don’t think anybody relished the idea of going to war; nobody does. But nevertheless, I think we had a level of patriotism at that time that we won’t ever see again; certainly we don’t have it now. Everybody was behind it, the whole situation, at that time. I don’t think you heard anybody wondering whether we should go in or not, because we were in. In retrospect it was so long ago now, a lot of the details are not as sharp as they should be maybe, but I can remember most of it.
*
I was drafted in April of 1943, I think. Then we went through God knows how many schools, how much training, to prepare us for it.
I took my army basic training in Miami Beach. It was tough duty in Miami Beach. [Laughs] After that we were assigned to air mechanic school, and there I was trained for the B-24 Liberator. I was being trained as the aircraft flight engineer, and my job at that time was everything mechanical on the plane. It was the flight engineer’s responsibility, so you were taught everything about the airplane. Then after we graduated from there, they sent us to Panama City for air gunnery. After that we went to various places and to Westover, and from there our crew was formed. Now this crew, when it was put together, was the first time that I had met most of these people, the enlisted men I met. Then we went to Walker Air Base in South Carolina, and there we met our pilot, copilot, navigator, and bombardier; from then on, we were a unit—we stayed together, we trained together, all our practice missions and everything. Then we went to Langley, Virginia, and from there we took radar training. And that was the last duty in this part of the world—from there we flew to Goose Bay, Labrador and then to Iceland and from there to Wales. We flew all the way over. Now as a unit we stayed that way. And then when we got there, we were assigned to our bomb group. And there we went through even more training—that’s all you ever did, you train, train, train, and train.
*
‘There Are No Heroes’
The B-17 crews were the glory boys. The B-24 flew faster, carried more bombs, and flew higher, but the B-17s were the glory boys. We didn’t name our planes like they did. We had ten to a crew in the 24s, yes. Originally they had a ball turret on the bottom but when we got over across the ocean they took that out and they put the radar transmitter in the bottom, where the belly turret was. That left the engineer free to do everything mechanical and the assistant engineer flew the top turret [gun] in my plane.
Finally we were scheduled for our first mission, to Hamburg. It was a vital mission, in the sense that Hamburg had all their oil refineries. And without that, they couldn’t fly, they couldn’t have
gasoline, they couldn’t have anything, so you could destroy it because it would certainly limit their supplies. It was a very important mission. And because of that they concentrated their [fighter] aircraft and anti-aircraft guns to protect it. So that’s a target I really remember, believe me.
I’ve seen planes go down, naturally. And the only things you’d look for were how many ‘chutes came out of it because when an airplane gets spinning, you couldn’t get out. Sometimes because of centrifugal force, the spinning of the plane would kill you, because you couldn’t get out. As I said before, I never got hurt. It was always the other guy. And the frame of mind that you have is something that most people can’t understand—you can see this happening, but it’s not you. It becomes an impersonal thing; it has to be, because you would go crazy if it wasn’t. Not that you didn’t have sympathy for the people but still, it wasn’t you. I don’t know how to explain it. But there are no heroes, contrary to what people may think. It’s like a job. I don’t think there are any heroes up there because you’re just doing your job, you have to—you either did, or you didn’t come back. You don’t have time enough really to be scared a lot.
*
Our missions were all over. They were over the Rhineland, yes sure. And Cologne, Dusseldorf, whatever you can think of. And we hit them wherever they were—we bombed as far as Austria and Czechoslovakia; in fact we even hit Berchtesgaden, which was Hitler’s retreat.
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