The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume III: War in the Air—Combat, Captivity, and Reunion

by Matthew Rozell

  I said, ‘No!’

  He says, ‘Well, look at this!’

  There was a hole about the size of a basketball [uses hands to show size of hole] in the wing wood that could have caused that wing to fold up, but I just think the Lord was with me that day.

  Berlin

  Another time, my last mission was to Berlin. This was March 23rd, in 1945.[21] They had ‘maximum effort’, where every airplane in the 15th Air Force up that day—all the bombers and all the fighters they could get in the mission to Berlin. We were assigned to a group of bombers, and when we reached a certain point, we were supposed to leave and go back to base and another group was supposed to come up and relieve us. Well, they never showed up, so we had to continue on to Berlin with this group of bombers. The Germans sent over their jet fighters that they had developed, the Me-262s, and you could see them coming [uses swooping hand gestures to depict the position and movements of Me-262s].[22] They were way up above us, and then, when they started down to attack, the exhaust from their engine was just like a streak of black in the sky. So they hit a few bombers and I got on the tail of one of them, I dropped my tanks and then all of a sudden I realized my engine had quit; I'd forgotten to switch to my internal tanks![23] [Laughs] I was right on the tail of this guy, and I guess he sensed I was back there. All of a sudden there was a big cloud of black smoke and he was gone—he just disappeared! That's how fast those things were.

  Messerschmitt Me 262A at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Credit: USAF, public domain.

  But our group shot down three of them that day, because they made the mistake of slow downing to fight with us. Their turn radius was so large at speed that in order to fight with us, they had to slow down, but then it was to our advantage. When they slowed down—because our airplanes could turn inside their circle—we shot down three of them that day. Of course, I wasn't one of them; I was a dummy. I just got so excited because I hadn't seen a fighter, a German plane, in so long; I just figured I would get credit a kill. And just that one little mistake in that short length of time cost me!

  After we got back to the base, my commanding officer says, ‘You've had it, you've been over here long enough, you've had enough excitement, you've got to go home.’ But I told him, ‘No, the war's almost over, I want to finish the war,’ you know? [Pauses] He said, ‘No, you've got to go home’. [Shakes head] So I said okay; I packed up my kit and got a ride on the 6x6 back to Naples, where the replacement depot was, but I didn't sign in. I went AWOL [chuckles].[24] So I was roaming around Naples, you know, and I was getting ready to go someplace else. One of the guys who was back at the base happened to come over, I guess he was going to a rest camp, and he said, ‘They're looking all over for you—if you don't hurry up and sign out and go home, they're going to court martial you!’ [Laughs] And so I signed in, and I got a C-47, no, it was a DC-4, and I went to LaGuardia in New York in April of '45. I got leave to go home for a couple of weeks, and then they transferred me back to Tuskegee, where they made me an instructor—an instrument instructor. That only lasted a couple of months, because they closed the field at Tuskegee and sent everybody up to Columbus Ohio, at Lockbourne Field. And there things really slowed down and it was very boring, because, since our group was still overseas, there was no place for us to go. There were no jobs on the base—I mean, there were a few jobs, but the other groups weren't accepting us.

  So, I finally went home and went to school, Aero Industries Technical Institute, out in Oakland, California. And when I finished there, I came back home and went to work. Well, I didn't get a job right away. I got married, and then I went down to General Electric. I walked in the door, and the receptionist said, ‘We don't have any jobs for you.’ I had just gotten inside the door and that's what I was confronted with! I didn't even get a chance to ask her, you know, were they hiring anybody. [Laughs] One of the interviewers just happened to be walking by and he heard her, so he caught my eye and he beckoned me with his finger, and I followed him into his office. He said, ‘Let me see what you've got.’ I had my portfolio with me, and he looked at it, my school records and everything, and said, ‘When can you start?’ I said, ‘As soon as possible’; he said, ‘Okay, show up Tuesday morning.’ Well, Monday was a holiday, but I got paid for it—my first day at GE and I didn't even work and I got paid for it, because it was a holiday! That was in April of 1948; I went to work for GE and stayed there for almost 40 years.

  I had several positions at GE. First I went to work for the General Engineering Lab, and then they transferred me to Flight Test. I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning. That's the best place I'd ever worked in my life. It was a very interesting place. We did all kinds of things there. They had all kinds of airplanes—B-29s, B-17s, B-35s; they had a jet that was designed by the British, but Martin Aircraft was building them under license and we were doing some work on that, and improving. And, I was at Flight Test for I guess two years, and then they closed the place. We were doing a lot of repair work—along with other test work, which we were doing for customers. In fact, we had one of the early 707s, and my job was to design a stable platform for it. This was like a telescope, but it was a device that would read the signatures of missiles coming through the atmosphere, so that you could tell whether it was really a missile, or a decoy. But in examining the airplane—the airplane had just come from a place down in Birmingham, I think it was—and they did some repair work, and so we called a pilot, and showed him what had happened—those guys had put rivets in that were too long but instead of heading the rivets, like you were supposed to do, they just bent them over! [Laughs] And the blood just drained out of that fellow's face, because, well, it was really a hazard. If any real stress had been put on that airplane, it would've come apart in the air.

  After Flight Test, I was transferred to Knolls Atomic Power Lab outside of Ballston Spa, where they run test reactors, for different—either submarines or ships. Very interesting work, but for the years that I worked there, you didn't dare get caught talking about what you did there. Well, like I said, I retired and so, that's it. That's the end of the ‘Clarence Dart’ saga. [Laughs]

  *

  It was time for a question and answer session with the students.

  Student: How did you feel about Eleanor Roosevelt before you went overseas?

  Oh! She was one of the reasons that they finally decided to train black pilots. Our chief, Chief Anderson, he gave her a ride in a Piper, I think that's what it was, a Piper Cub. But she went back and she told Franklin that we could fly just like anybody.

  I don't like to get into a lot of arguments about what black people can do or what they have done. But, if you do the research, just like all the war pilots I've told you about, black men have served in every war that this country has ever fought—from Crispus Attucks on up to this day.[25] Back in the Civil War, there were 18 Congressional Medals of Honor given out to black soldiers. But people conveniently forget all of that stuff—from Bunker Hill to the Spanish-American War—and of course you saw the movie about the Massachusetts 54th?[26] In fact even during the World War I there was a destroyer that was manned, officers and sailors, by blacks. Of course, there's a lot of black history. We did the first open-heart surgery with Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and the guy that invented the most annoying things to people who drive cars—the stop light—Garrett Morgan. And he also invented the first breathing device that they used to rescue some people when they were putting in a water line out in—I think it was Cleveland, Ohio, out into the lake—they rescued some guys that were in the tunnel; they used his breathing device! And what about the doctor who invented the way to preserve blood plasma? But over the years, people like that knuckle-headed senator, who said that black people's cranial cavity was too small to hold the knowledge to fly an airplane, well, he demonstrated that he was way behind the times, because we had people that had flown cross-country trying to prove that black pilots should be trained for the war and World War II! And it continues to t
his day—

  Interviewer: What about the white bomber crews that you escorted?

  Well, early on they didn't want us, because they had listened to the propaganda, but when they found out that they weren't getting shot up by the Messerschmitts and 190s when we were escorting them, then they started requesting us for coverage. In fact, a couple of times—you know what photo reconnaissance is? They had a stripped down P-51, and I had to escort two of those things on two different times. You were all by yourself, deep in enemy territory. But those guys, their airplanes were very fast, because they were all stripped down, and all they had were cameras in them, and it was tough trying to keep up with them—once they got their pictures, they just took off, of course, and myself and my wingman, we would just be left out in the middle of Germany someplace, trying to get back home. [Laughs]

  Student: Were you restricted from any white establishments?

  Well, that was the norm back in those days—up to World War II. In fact, it didn't end until, let's see, 1954.[27] With my background, being brought up in Elmira, New York, we didn't know what [segregation] was, because in my neighborhood, everybody was mixed. We had white kids that came to my house for dinner, or I'd go to their homes for dinner, and there was never any of that kind of stuff, you know, generally. Not until we got below—well, I can remember, going south in the summer to visit my cousins, of course; my father worked on the railroad. He could get passes to go on different railroads. When you got to Washington, DC, whatever car you were in, you had to go get in one separate car for black people [pauses], to go south of Washington, across the Mason-Dixon Line. You couldn't ride on the sleepers, and you couldn't go in to the dining car. So my mother and grandmother, what they would do was fix up a basketful of food that would last for a day and a half to travel to South Carolina. That was in those days—

  Student: Was there any difference in the way you were treated here and when you were in Italy?

  Well, the Italians, they weren't prejudiced. Prejudice was only in this country. In fact, when the war was over, and they brought everybody back, by boat, and they got off the boat, there were signs saying ‘Coloreds’, you know. You'd been overseas for almost two years, you'd go to an army base, and the German prisoners of war were treated better than you were; it was a hard pill to swallow. [Pauses, expressing sadness] Because even if you went to a movie theater, this was back in ‘45 and later, you'd go to a theater and they'd have a place for black soldiers to sit, you know, in the movie theater. And you couldn't use the PX, you'd have to use a different PX, they had one for blacks and one for whites.[28] In fact, they had formed a bomb group, the 477th Bomb Group, B-25s and it was somewhere out in the Midwest, in Kentucky or someplace, and these guys weren't going to have any of that nonsense. They went to an officers’ club, and even in those days the army had said that anybody who was an officer could go into any officers’ club, but at this particular field, I think it was Freeman Field, the guys went to the club, and they tried to keep them out, and they went in anyhow, and because one guy happened to rush past one of the officers at the club, they court martialed thirteen of them, I think it was. But the people who held on to that segregation eventually were court martialed themselves. Plus, their orders were sent around to all the military bases that there was not to be any segregation of all officers.[29]

  Student: How do you feel about the new war—the war in Iraq—how do you feel about that?

  Oh! We shouldn't be there—we shouldn't have gone without the cooperation of the United Nations. Now, it hasn't been that long ago when the president said that Iraq was a direct threat to the United States and I looked at my wife and I said, ‘What's he talking about?’ and I said, ‘You know Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, but he doesn't—after the first Gulf War—he doesn't have a navy, he doesn't have an air force, he's probably got a big army, but how can he reach the United States? He doesn't have any missiles. And I don't know how he could be a direct threat to the United States. I said, ‘All they're going to do is get a lot of people killed for nothing.’ And we did—we went over there, and of course, with our airplanes and technology, it didn't last long. Two weeks, I think it was? I think it lasted for two weeks, but look at what's happened since then—because I think we should have insisted that the UN, that since Saddam is guilty of all those things against, what do they call it?

  Student: Crimes against humanity.

  Yes. Since he committed all these things, then it's up to the UN to take care of it. We shouldn't be the policemen of the world. Our military is spread so thin now, if a couple other big countries wanted to jump on us, we'd be in big trouble! We got people in Afghanistan, Korea—all over—islands, Guam, et cetera. We shouldn't be spread like that. And my basic thing that I tell my young grandchildren, I say, George Washington, in his Farewell Address, at one point he said, ‘Beware of foreign entanglement.’ I think those were the last words he said— ‘Beware of foreign entanglement’. But I don't know what's happened in this country, we've exported out technology, and you go to buy something in a store, you look at the labels—all our textiles and clothing are coming from overseas. It shouldn't have been that way! But the CEOs, you've seen what's happened to a lot of these CEOs, like the guy that gave his wife a million dollar birthday party, and built, I don't know, five or six million dollar homes around the world, but he was a big crook![30] I remember when the president of SONY came over [from Japan] and he said, ‘You're paying your CEOs too much money.’ Now this was by a man that has one of the biggest electronic firms in the world, he said, ‘You're paying your CEOs too much money’! Look at what [a famous CEO] got when he retired from [a Fortune 500 company] [laughs] —he did give back some of it, of course; his wife, I guess, got the other half for her shenanigans. [Laughs] What—why do they deserve that? If you run a large company, sure, you set the goals and you hire people to help you attain those goals, but why should one guy get as much money as it would take to hire maybe a hundred workers? It's not fair, you know, for a lot of money to be all in one, or among certain groups of people. But I'm not a communist or anything. [Laughter in room]

  I got so mad at professional sports too, there, a while back, and so I don't watch football and basketball like I used to. And especially the rappers—I saw a piece in one of the Sunday papers where one guy is a billionaire already! You know, of course he branched out into a line of clothing and whatnot, but, I know my kind of music, and what kids like today—

  Student: What kind of music do you like?

  Oh, I'm a jazz man. You know, Duke Ellington, Count Basie—

  Student: You'd get along with my grandfather.

  Yes, [laughs] I don't laugh at the kids nowadays, but when I was growing up, the Elks Club used to have dances for teenagers a lot, and you'd learn how to dance, you'd learn how to dance with a girl. [Laughter in room] You [pointing to male students] take a girl to a dance and you might not find her until the evening is almost over; you're out there, jumping up and down [jerks shoulders and arms up and down repeatedly, to much laughter] in one spot! That's not dancing! When I was in the cadets, we used to go to the Institute when they had dances for the cadets and of course the rule was, ‘no buckle-polishing’—you couldn't dance close, more than six inches closer to a girl [shows distance with hands]. But at least you could dance with her and talk to her, and put a bug in her ear, or something, you know… [much laughter in room]…Well, I mean romancing, you know. Convince her that you were the one for her! But, I know times have changed—I've raised eight kids, I know what it's like; six girls and two boys. The only hard thing was putting them through college.

  Student: Did you take advantage of the G.I. Bill, when you came back from the war?

  Most people with half a brain, that's what they did, but some people didn't.

  Student: Why didn't you try to be an airline pilot, or wouldn't they let you?

  Oh, no; we tried. But [my reasoning on it]was that they had a lot of bomber pilots coming back, guys that had flown multi-engine
airplanes. We did have two guys that were vice-presidents of airlines—one guy was vice-president of Eastern Airlines, and another guy was vice-president of another airline,I've forgotten which one—but we had a lot of guys who were doctors and lawyers, bank presidents. [Pauses] Yes, there were a lot of successful people who took advantage of the G.I. Bill. Well, it was the only thing to do, the smartest thing to do. I don't know if they offer that to the guys coming back from Iraq. [Someone answers in the affirmative] They do? I'm glad to hear it, because veterans for the most part have gotten the shaft, especially as far as health care is concerned. That's kind of tragic...