B0737M5NDQ

by Matthew Rozell

  The English wanted us to bomb to kill people, because [their cities had been attacked]. Then the Germans turned around got the ‘buzz bomb’ and started sending them over.[25] All it was a great big bomb with wings and it had a motor on it. I remember the first day that I got to England, I was standing in line going in the movie house, I heard the ‘bzzzz’. Everybody said a buzz bomb was coming. I didn’t realize that we were the closest air base to where they launched the buzz bomb. Every buzz bomb went over our base and if it kept going and we didn’t worry about it. But if it sputtered and stopped making noise sometimes they keep going through the air; other times they would turn and come right down. When it stops, you head for the bomb shelter.

  This one is going and it started sputtering and stopped and everybody ran in. Somebody looked up and said we were okay. Then, we watched it. It got down behind the hill, and all the sudden you could see the concussion coming before you felt it.

  One night, they were sending a lot of buzz bombs and it rained and it was muddy outside. They had the planks to walk on. Somebody said ‘buzz bombs’ and we all ran out in our pajamas and jumped into the shelter and went back, We weren’t then sleeping another fifty or sixty minutes and then another buzz bomb and another one. By the time of the fourth one, I said the heck with it and I slept the rest of the night. They kept coming up every night [for a while].

  Most of the missions you’d get flak—some more intense than others. A couple of times, we had fighters come in. The CO of our group, Colonel Shower, was a sticker on tight formations. The tighter the formation is, the less the fighters bothered you because you have too much concentrated fire power. So, we weren’t attacked as bad as the other groups flying with us. Once and awhile they’d come over but didn’t bother us too much. But outside that, like Dresden and Nuremberg and places like that they had a lot of flak.

  Dresden

  I loved the crew that I was on. They were great—Chapman, Wallace, and our other navigator. We had two navigators on the lead ship—a DR navigator [dead reckoning] and myself a radar navigator.[26]

  Dresden was a bad one, one of the worst missions. It was one of our early ones. Well, what happened there was we got hit bad, and [we got off course]. We were leading three hundred planes. We’re in the front and they’ve got to go where you go, so you have to [be very accurate]. We’re on the flight deck. The pilot was here [points to table] and the DR man was sitting right next to him back to back, and I was here [motions again] just cut in behind the co-pilot.

  We had signals [because it was very loud on the plane] and the DR man said, ‘Okay, five minutes, take a fix’. I would check my watch quickly and he would get a fix with the radio, and I’d get a fix with the radar and he would compare them and then give me the okay. He never gave me a sign that we were off.

  Dresden had heavy, heavy, flak and we got hit, but we made it through. We got a hit with flak the size a little bit bigger than a softball; I would say about a six-inch piece of shrapnel came up through about the middle of the plane. The fuselage was open. Thank God nobody was hurt.

  [There was some confusion on the bomb run]. I gave the first course correction on the bomb run; I gave an eight degree correction when we went from the rally point heading for the target. That eight degrees would have been okay. It’s like you turn here and the targets up here [points to piece of paper]. I came to eight degrees. I was supposed to be heading there, and the bombardier calls up and says, ‘I don’t want that. I’m making a visual bomb run.’ Okay, so I’m going to kill the course for him. Two minutes later, I gave him a ten degree [approach] and he still wouldn’t take it. He said, No, it’s a visual bomb run.’ So, I wouldn’t make the bomb run. He’s going to make it visually. I said, ‘I can kill the course for you.’ He said, ‘Never mind.’ So what happened was, we kept going way off course instead of coming up. Instead of doing about a 45 degree course to the target, we got off so far that when the bombardier found out where he was, he had to almost turn it north. Now what happened was all these other planes came up, and they were now underneath us. I looked out the bomb bays to see the bombs drop. I looked down when they were ready to drop and saw a plane right below us! So, I hollered, ‘Don’t drop the bombs!’ It was too late. They went; one bomb went between the wing and the fuselage of that plane and almost killed ten men.

  Coming back, we ran into a [weather] front. We were advised to look out for it, but where they told us it was going to be was way off. I checked my radar continuously to take a fix on it. We hit the front but it was a lot earlier than we had been briefed on. I realized something was wrong and I found that we were being blown way off course. So, I got on to the rally point where we had to meet and head home. I called up the pilot and said something’s wrong, we were about 15 miles off course. I said, ‘We got a new heading we should take.’ Now we were flying deputy lead and there was the wing lead. Everybody wants credit for the big lead because you get promotions that way—to Wing, to Division. We had a pilot and co-pilot and a command pilot. The command pilot is there to make sure that everything is running. He is in charge of everything.

  Our pilot evidently called up and nothing was said. I never got a response so I called up again, ‘Mickey to Pilot’. He said, ‘Go ahead, Marty’. I said, ‘We’re twenty-five miles off course. Something better be done.’ I marked the heading that we were going towards and we we’re heading right for the Ruhr Valley and that’s an all industrial place. There must be a thousand anti-aircraft guns around there. It was heavily, heavily, heavily defended. They make their steel and everything else down there.

  He didn’t say anything and I called up again, ‘Mickey to pilot. Chappy, we’ve got to get something done. We are thirty-five miles off course and we’re heading to an area that we will be getting flak soon and we are going to lose several planes.’ There was going to be forty or fifty men killed guaranteed. He said, ‘I checked with everybody, and everybody said we were on course except one guy said we’re fifteen miles off.’ All the other planes said were on course and we weren’t. We were thirty-five miles off and I was right.

  We got over the Ruhr and I said, ‘We were going to be getting flak soon.’ The guys in the waist said, ‘It’s already popping out ahead of you, waiting for us!’ So, the lead plane finally said, ‘Since you know where we are, take over.’ So, we swung up to the lead and I said, ‘Take it up north quick and get the heck out of here!’ The Germans would have shot many of our planes down.

  I headed north and got on our old track that was on the map to follow home and we went across the French coast across the Channel. You could see the White Cliffs of Dover coming up, and you know you’re home. I finally relaxed a little bit.

  ‘I Cried Like A Baby’

  We got in, and had a meeting and they had all of the officers from the base. I said to myself, ‘Geez, they are probably going to pat me on the back for doing a good job.’ I got up there and they wanted to crucify me, take my wings, and they said they wouldn’t let me fly. They said, ‘What’s the matter, were you sleeping to get that far off course?’

  I had a good crew and I didn’t want to lose them. I didn’t want to tell [the brass] that I gave the course [correction] several times to the pilot. I didn’t want to tell them that when I gave the first course correction on the bomb run [which was not accepted], we first made a big ‘boo-boo’. I gave an eight-degree correction when we went from the rally point heading for the target. That eight degrees would have been okay, but now I was blamed for [that mishap, too]. The plane [below us] didn’t get hit [with the bomb], but it was close. It was the pilot’s fault. It was the command pilot’s fault, really. He should have told Chapman to put that angle. By the time the bombardier gets a target in sight, it’s got to be about a seventy degree angle. Hell, if we were forty miles away from there, I could kill that course dead. You don’t have to correct it more than one or two degrees with the bombsight after. They didn’t do it.

  I didn’t want to say what I did, but I thought one o
f them would stand up and speak for me—the pilot, the command pilot or any member of the crew. They heard it all. The bombardier. I suppose they were all scared that I might say something; I didn’t want to say something. So, [the brass] said to me, ‘One more move like that and you’re off your crew.’

  I went back to the barracks. I felt bad, real bad, because I could have blown the whistle but I didn’t want to get off that crew. I took my shoes off and went to bed with my clothes on; I covered my head and cried like a baby. Then I heard my pilot and Sidney, Captain Sidney came in. Sidney was in charge of all radar men. He said, ‘Chappy, I don’t know what happened up there but I know this man wasn’t to blame.’ He said, ‘He’s the only one that comes to this shack after every mission to find out if he could have done better with the radar. If anything’s wrong, he wants to find out. He’s the only guy to ever come up there. He’s very interested in his bombing. He’s good. I know it’s not his fault. I know it.’ Chappy said, ‘No, it wasn’t. It was my fault as well as the bombardier.’

  I woke up in the morning and everything’s okay. I went up to see the commanding officer and asked him if I could have a meeting with our crew. I would like to talk to the crew about my position and what I am there for. He gave me permission.

  I went up there and we had the meeting there. I told the guys what I could do. I could navigate when all other systems are down, or blacked out by the Germans. They can in no way block off my signals. I said I’ve got perfect navigational equipment. I said that I’d never been lost and don’t intend to be lost. I went up to [one of the crew] and said, ‘If you ever countermand a correction that I give you, I am going to punch you in the head and there’d be another hole in this plane! Don’t you ever do that again. It’s your fault.’ He said, ‘I know.’

  Everything was forgotten. We had a great crew, flew some great missions. After that, when I gave corrections to them, they took them.

  Berlin

  [Our last mission was on March 18th, 1945]; it seems like our worst mission was on a Sunday. They gave fresh eggs, so we knew it was going to be a rough one. If it wasn’t going to be a rough mission, you usually get powdered eggs for breakfast.

  We went outside after the briefing. There was a Catholic priest there. He’s there at every briefing—not at the briefing but outside waiting. We would come out and a lot of us Catholic boys would kneel down and some received communion. He gave us the blessing then we all jumped in the wagons and went out to our planes.

  The target was Berlin. By the look on their faces, a couple of guys kind of almost knew it was going to be a bad one. Going over was good; navigation was super—we were leading the squadron at that time. We were coming up on the bomb run. We had a little plane attacked us for a while and then the flak started greeting us, up ahead we could see it. The sky was black with flak. You can’t swerve, [or take evasive action]. You’ve got to go right through it.

  We got right into it. I had my bomb bay doors open. I was ready to turn it over and watch the bombs go off. We got an explosion; I thought it was inside the plane, it was so loud. Directly underneath the plane we had taken a direct hit. We had fires in the bomb bays. Up where the pilot was, there was some kind of white-hot metal that landed. The co-pilot stamped on it. It burned right down through the ship and a hole was left behind.

  The pilot and co-pilot had bucket seats made out of heavy steel. The rest of us had safety vests that sometimes stop the flak. There was fire where I was, around my legs. I turned around and grabbed the extinguisher; the plane went into a dive, and of course, it was hard to maneuver. It forced me down on the deck. I finally got the fire extinguisher and stood up and started to put the fire out. I got the fire pretty well out and looked around; my navigator wasn’t helping me. I noticed he was lying down and his eyes were very grey. His brains were hanging down the side of his head. All I could think of is that they looked like frog eggs; I went over and picked up the brains with my hands. They were warm yet. I didn’t know what to do. Hell, he’s dead. So, I spread some sulfa on it and went up to the pilot. [The engineer was supposed to be] in the bomb bay just below me where I could [normally] tap him on the head. I looked down. He was gone. I could see a piece of his clothes and stuff on the side of the plane; he was shot off when it hit. He just dropped out of the plane without a parachute.

  The nose was burning pretty good. They got that fire out with the wind was coming through nose put that fire out. They waist wasn’t hurt too much. Nobody got hurt back there. The steel seat the pilot was sitting in was hit so hard that [he had a minor injury] into his backside, but nothing serious at all.

  ‘Thanks, Van’

  We were blown into a dive and to this day, I don’t know how we could have managed to pull out of that dive because #1 and #2 engines were shot out altogether. The #3 engine was only pulling half power and was running at around twenty; #4 was the only good engine and he was pushing it to the limit about sixty-two, sixty-three. If we had flown another hour, that engine would have blown up. There must have been terrific pressure. They pulled it out of the dive.

  We were also still carrying a full load of bombs in to the target. Because the explosion tangled up the releases and everything so bad, they asked me to go back in the waist into the bomb bays. I took my parachute off. It was only a six-inch walkway; there was nothing underneath me but a six inch catwalk. I had a big screwdriver and I put all the weight that I dared put on it to try to open the releases to drop the bombs.

  I unhooked the arming wire. The arming wire goes from the nose of the plane up to the little place you hook on and down to the point where it’s going to the arming pin. When the bombs hit with the nose, the arming pin drives it in and makes the explosion. I unhooked that wire so they wouldn’t go off when they dropped. I fixed the ignition and all of that so they wouldn’t explode and shut a cotter key in it so there’s no way they could slip forward. So if the plane did land, [hopefully] none of the bombs would explode.

  We were over the middle of Berlin. I remember when we pulled out of the dive, I put my parachute on. Of course, the navigator [who had been killed], his parachute was okay. Mine had a hole in it; it was just burnt a little bit but I knew I couldn’t use it. So, I took his and remember saying, ‘Thanks pal; thanks Van.’

  I’m up talking to the other navigator and the bombardier. I was kneeling right between them. I tell the pilot that Van [DR navigator] is gone and George Fuller [engineer] is gone. I contacted the waist. The waist was okay. I said, ‘The waists are all okay.’ So I said that we had two killed in action. He said, ‘Okay’. I told him where we were and I gave him a heading to pull and said, ‘Take it 90 degrees for the time being.’

  The Russian Lines

  I went and set up and used my drift meter and all of that and I gave him a corrected heading more south because that’s the closest the Russians were to us, to the German boundary line, or rather the frontlines. As we were heading there, the plane stayed level but she kept losing altitude. So, it was a only matter of time before we would have to bail out, and there was no way we could land it because everything was shot up on the flight deck—the controls and everything. How he kept it level, I don’t know.

  We got over the lines and we started getting strafed by a German plane; he had one landing gear down, I remember, the other one was up. He made a pass and turned around to get another pass at us. Then, three Russian Yaks came in. The German flew away and they circled us a couple of times and then they came in and started strafing us to knock us down!

  The emblem was American on the plane, but I don’t think they could tell [from the angle]. After years went by, I think they must have seen the bomb bay doors open and saw the bombs in it, so probably figured maybe we were on a bombing mission. However, that day we were bombing Berlin, three American ships were knocked down by Russians. So, they did it every once and awhile. Of course, a couple of Americans knocked down a couple of theirs, too.

  They started strafing us and Chapman asked me to giv
e the waist gunners the signal to bail because the radio system between the waist and the flight deck was out. So, I had some object there that I heaved it at the doors, so they opened up the door going into the waist and I patted my parachute and said, ‘Go!’ He nodded okay.

  We got ready. I went over and touched my dead navigator again and went out and sat down by the bomb bay. I climbed down the bomb bay and sat on the walkway there—that six-inch beam. I sat with my feet dangling out. I never jumped out of a plane before. I waited for the co-pilot to come close to me that way we’d be close enough that when we landed, we’d find each other quick.

  The waist gunner, Twyford, jumped first. I bailed out and put my head between my legs and rolled out and fell far enough to make sure that I wouldn’t be around the plane. I pulled the rip cord and nothing happened and I started clawing at the thing and then finally it popped open—there’s an auxiliary parachute in there. It’s under spring tension and that popped a little parachute out; that auxiliary chute is fitted into your main chute and it pops out first and drives the main chute out. All I remember was an awful jar.

  As I was going down, I see the three Russian planes come down again. One picked on the pilot. One picked me, one was on the waist gunner.

  He started strafing me while I was falling and I waved my hands at him and everything, and he’s coming right at me. I saw him and thought, ‘Lord what am I going to do?’ What you should do if you are far enough from the ground, you pull the cord on one side and the other and it collapses the chute right away, and you freefall and just let it go and you get away before you hit the ground.

  I chose to play dead. I waited until he went around and he came back around and he’s heading square at me. I see the guns going off. I slumped down, put my hands along my side and hung my head down to my chest. He circled me two or three times then flew off.