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

  Now out of time after two days of conversation, we wished Mr. Dart and his wife and family a Merry Christmas and holiday season. It was the last time that we saw him. On March 30, 2007, he and his fellow surviving Tuskegee Airmen were presented with the Congressional Gold Medal by then President George W. Bush, who gave them a long overdue salute. Clarence Dart passed away at age 91 in February, 2012.

  After Mr. Dart passed, I had the opportunity to speak with his son, Warren Dart, who drove up to my classroom to meet me to share more stories and photographs of his dad.

  ‘Though my dad liked to talk to young people, there were some things he couldn’t share. Once, he told me of a time when he was returning from a mission to base, and spotted a German truck parked behind some trees. He circled around, dove in and opened up on them. As he attacked the German soldiers, it occurred to him that they had pulled off the road to have their lunch. They were killed, and it’s something that probably bothered him for the rest of his life.’

  The Tuskegee Airmen Fight Song

  Contact –

  Joy stick back –

  Sailing through the blue

  Gallant sons of the 99th –

  Brown men tried and true

  We are the Heroes of the Night –

  To hell with the Axis might

  FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

  Fighting 99th.

  Rat-tat, Rat-tat-tat –

  Down in flames they go

  The withering fire of the 99th –

  Sends them down below

  We are the Heroes of the Night –

  To hell with the Axis might

  FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

  Fighting 99th.

  Drink up, Drain your cup –

  To those daring men

  Flying torch of flame, Oh GOD–

  Red White and Blue – Amen.

  For We Are –

  Heroes of the Night

  To Hell with the Axis might

  FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

  Fighting 99th WINGS![14]

  *

  John Weeks holds a photo portrait of himself and four of his friends, captioned, ‘THE FIRST FIGHTER ESCORTED PHOTO RECON MISSION TO BERLIN’

  (L to R) Lt. Schultz, Lt. Belt, Lt. Weeks, Capt. Batson, Lt. Davidson

  13th Photo Recon Squadron – Mt. Farm Airfield, England’

  Credit: Wayne Clarke, NYS Military Museum.

  chapter Three

  The Reconnaissance Man

  John Weeks sits in a chair in a public library where he volunteers to teach business investment classes at night. He appears with an aura of contentedness at being able to share his experiences, certainly grateful for the opportunity to remember his friends, generations after they were all ‘touched by fire.’ To the camera he holds up a framed photograph. Five young men are smiling for the camera, posing in front of a plane, standing on a perforated steel Marston Mat. ‘Three out of the five men in this photograph did not survive the war; there was only one other survivor besides myself.’

  In 1994, John was contacted by ‘two gentlemen who run a museum in Plzen, Czech Republic which is very active in gathering artifacts and information on World War II historical events that took place over their country, including the fate of airmen that were killed and perhaps missing in that area.’ They got his name from his former commander.

  ‘These men were particularly interested in a mission I took on April 26, 1945—which may very well have been the last photo reconnaissance mission of the war. I'm not sure why they were so very interested in that particular mission, but I have the feeling that one of them may have been flying one of the jets that came up after me on that mission.’

  *

  John G. Weeks

  I was born in March 7th, 1922, and brought up in western New York State in a little town called Lyons. My father was a fruit farmer there and I worked on the farm, of course. After high school, I attended college in Grove City, Pennsylvania where I majored in industrial engineering, which was a combination of business and engineering. I went into the army during my junior year.

  I was 19 and I was playing bridge at college with some fraternity brothers of mine and we had the radio on and we heard about Pearl Harbor. We couldn't believe it. I don't think we had any idea of the significance of what was happening but as I say it was just a kind of an unbelievable thing; we even wondered if it was a fake or not.

  Shortly thereafter, after being turned down by the Marine Air Corps and the Navy Air Corps because of a misalignment of my back teeth, I was accepted and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. I was sworn in at the post office in Pittsburgh and immediately left for basic training at Miami Beach, Florida—where I had my first introduction to the war. We lived in one of the big hotels on the beach and every morning when we got up, we looked out over the ocean and there would be black smoke on the horizon. It was a little sobering to learn that that smoke came from ships that the Germans had torpedoed the night before out in the Gulf Stream right off the coast of Florida. The reason they were able to do that was because we didn't have a blackout in Miami Beach, and so that highlighted the targets that the Germans were after and it made it easy for them. Later, that was corrected.

  After about six weeks in Florida, we were shipped to Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio. We spent about two months in Wittenberg where we took a concentrated course—mostly in mathematics—from arithmetic through calculus. I have never worked so hard on academics before or since. Many of the budding cadets washed out at this point. From Wittenberg, we went to Santa Ana Army Air Force Base in California. We spent about six weeks here with great concentration on astronomy for celestial navigation, and aeronautical engineering—including hydraulics, electrical systems, aerodynamics, and navigation. We also went through altitude chamber training where they put you in a tank and sucked the air out to simulate altitude, as well as other equipment training. Then we went to Ryan Field in Tucson, Arizona, where we were going to learn to fly at last; I have never had such a thrilling good time in my life.

  We flew a Ryan PT-22 which was originally designed in 1930. We had to have nine hours of instruction before we could solo—I had nine hours and three minutes. What a thrill! I just loved it. I had really found a home in the Air Corps.

  Then we went to Marana Army Air Field in Arizona where we flew the BT-13. It was ‘affectionately’ known as the ‘Vultee Vibrator’ because it shook so hard in a spin. I never liked the airplane very well and I don't think many other cadets did either. It was very poor in acrobatics.

  From Marana, I was sent to Williams Field in Chandler, Arizona for my final advanced phase of cadet training. Here we flew the AT-6, which was a delightful plane to fly—very good at acrobatics. We also took a heavy concentration of ground school at Williams Field, where we had already been assigned to fly the Lockheed Lightning P-38—which simply delighted me; that was the plane I wanted. Ground school concentrated almost exclusively on the various systems on the P-38. After a couple of months at Williams, I graduated as a bright new 2nd lieutenant and had a very coveted pair of pilot's wings.

  I stayed right at Williams Field for my transition training into the P-38. We flew lots of lesser airplanes to get used to handling two engines—AT-9s, C-45s, UC-78s, B-25s. Because the P-38 was a single place plane, the day finally came when they put you in one and simply said, ‘Go!’ It was quite a transition from 600 horsepower to 3,500 horsepower, from 160 miles per hour to 400 miles per hour in one jump—and all alone!

  After Williams, we went to Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma City. Here we learned how to perform our specialty, photo reconnaissance, most of which was done at high altitude—25,000 feet or higher. You see, our mission was much different than that of the ordinary fighter pilot—we flew all alone in planes with no guns, only cameras—and had to survive only on our skill as a pilot and the speed of our planes to evade the enemy. Our training here was a combination of pinpoint navigation and high altitude photography. I think I photogr
aphed every tiny little town in the Midwest.

  From there we went to Coffeyville, Kansas, for our combat training. I thought I was a pretty good pilot until I got to Coffeyville. Here our instructors were all pilots who had completed their combat missions and had returned to the States as instructors. They were really good. We practiced day after day doing nothing but evasive maneuvers and mock combat; it was very hard work. Our training was cut short, however, because the loss of reconnaissance pilots in Europe was so great during the Normandy invasion that they needed replacements badly.

  Overseas

  We were rushed overseas on the ocean liner Île de France which made the crossing, unescorted, in five days, landing in Glasgow. We were processed very quickly and rushed to the Mt. Farm air base near Oxford, England.

  The reason for the rush was immediately evident. The 13th Photo Recon squadron, to which I was assigned, had only 13 pilots left out of a full complement of 25, and those thirteen were exhausted. There were only five of us replacements—which meant that even with us, the squadron was still far below its full complement. Our mission was to photograph bomb damage of the major cities in Germany and France at that time, also ground movement of troops and so on—we were just trying to keep track of what the Germans were doing, and our bombing missions were based on the photographs that we took.

  Our training time was brief, out of necessity, and consisted of very little flying. It was assumed that you knew how to fly and that you knew how to navigate and take pictures, so most of our time was spent talking tactics with the more experienced pilots. Because we flew alone everybody developed their own tactics, so from talking with them, you sorted out what you thought made the most sense and determined to follow that course. We were also quite short of planes because whenever you lost a pilot, you lost a plane.

  Our early missions were shorter and less dangerous so that we could get the feel of things. I flew nineteen missions, and they were all over.

  Reconnaissance P-38 with bold black and white invasion stripes

  during the Normandy Campaign.

  Credit: USAF. Public domain.

  I was assigned an older P-38J which still had its invasion stripes painted on it. I never liked the plane—it was slow and was not equipped with dive breaks like the newer models. But because the loss of reconnaissance planes was so consistently high, the army tried to keep us equipped with the very latest model planes and equipment. Early on I got a brand new P-38L with larger engines, dive flaps, rear-facing radar—the whole ball of wax. It was a wonderful airplane—very fast, very maneuverable, and quick to handle.

  Let me explain a little about the dive flaps. The P-38 was so powerful, heavy and streamlined that it would, in a dive, quickly go into compressibility, which made the plane curl under which would eventually tear the tail off. Once it got into this condition, there was no recovery. The dive brakes were under the leading edge of each wing and were only about two feet long and about two inches wide. When extended with a push of a button, they would immediately pull the nose up and out of compressibility. They had an added bonus, too. In combat, if you were in a tight turn with an enemy plane, the turn would be tightened markedly when you popped these brakes. I'm sure that scared the devil out of many an enemy pilot, because he didn't know for sure whether you had guns or not, and that maneuver would put you right on his tail.

  Flying High

  I mentioned that each pilot developed his own tactics. Mine developed gradually, of course. I would fly as high as possible with my limit being 39,000 feet or the bottom of the jet trail [condensation] level—you didn't want to create a jet contrail, because it would point right to you [like a finger]. Though the plane could go higher, thirty-nine thousand feet was my personal limit. Our cockpits were not pressurized so my body would swell and get very uncomfortable because of the lack of air pressure. My legs would fill out my pants completely, my stomach would become much extended and my neck would fill up my shirt, even with the top button undone. It was also dangerous because even though we had a pressurized oxygen system, if anything went wrong with it, you wouldn't be able to stay conscious but for a very few seconds—you would never have time to get down to a safe altitude. On the plus side, there were very few enemy planes that could get above you, and flak couldn't touch you that high. So while it was uncomfortable and dangerous, I felt most secure being way up there.

  German Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet rocket-propelled fighter at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio.

  Credit: USAF. Public domain.

  It became more and more precarious as the war proceeded, however. First the Germans developed the Komet, the Messerschmitt 163, solely for purpose of shooting down photo reconnaissance planes. This was an amazing rocket-powered plane that could climb at 40,000 ft. per minute at a 70 degree angle and was very comfortable above 39,000 ft. The one saving grace for us was that it only had an eight-minute fuel supply which meant that it could fly only by using its engine in short bursts, and had to land without fuel. It was very vulnerable to our fighters in its glide mode. I was never attacked by a Me163 and only saw one at a distance a couple of times.

  The only time my plane was hit by enemy fire was on a mission to the Hannover area. If I was lucky enough to have thick clouds at high altitude, my tactic would be to fly just above the tops, quickly dive into the clouds in case of trouble. That was the situation on this day. When I was well over enemy territory, I saw a single plane off to my right going in the opposite direction. The British flew Spitfires on photo recon missions all alone just like we did; I thought probably that was what the plane was. But it was a long way off and German Me109 fighters looked a lot like a Spitfire at a distance. I didn't want take the chance that it was a Me109 trying to circle around behind me, so I watched him very carefully.

  German ground crew pushes Me109 onto tarmac, fall 1943, France. Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-487-3066-04 via Wikimedia Commons.

  All of a sudden I saw tracer bullets going by my canopy! I looked up in my rear view mirror, which was fastened to the canopy about three inches above my head. He was firing at me from behind; I saw him for only a fraction of a second when my rear view mirror disappeared—it had been shot off! I quickly dove into the clouds right below me and made a turn. I flew along for a while and came up for a peek and my adversary was nowhere in sight. Needless to say, I was much more careful to look all around, all of the time, after that.

  About this time, things got really bad because the Germans had come out with the Me262 jet fighter. This plane could climb much faster and much higher than our P-38s. Our losses increased alarmingly mostly due to these new jet fighters. It was at this point that the Air Corps provided us with P-51 fighters to escort the P-38 recon planes. They did not provide us with trained fighter pilots, but told us we would have to do our own escorting. So some of the recon pilots elected to fly the fighters as escort rather than fly the P-38 recon planes.—they trained themselves. We used to laugh that the self-trained fighter pilots really weren't all that good, but I'm sure they looked formidable to the enemy. I didn't like the P-51, so elected to stay with the P-38 flying recon.

  My worst mission was taken on Christmas Eve 1944. This was during the Battle of the Bulge. The weather had been very bad for about two weeks, and the troops were taking a terrible beating on the ground. On the day before Christmas, the sky cleared completely.[31] Both sides had had two weeks to make repairs on all of their planes, so when things cleared, it was a ‘maximum effort’ on both sides. It has been estimated that there were 7,000 planes in the air on that day. My mission was to Cologne and then back to the Bulge area. I was alone and was ‘jumped’ six times on that one mission.

  [As I stated] we had very heavy losses; the Germans knew that if they saw one P-38, they pretty well knew that it was a photographic plane and they'd go after us. Sometimes if it was a ‘black star’ priority, which was a major ‘do-or-die’ type mission, they would send two photographic planes with P-51 es
corts, the idea that at least one would get back. A ‘black star priority’ mission might be perhaps on an oil refinery, or ball-bearing factories, sometimes a bridge. It would be varied and actually the pilot didn't necessarily know the specific target, but was told to take in the area, and it would include whatever they were after.

  Toward the end, I was made commanding officer of the outfit of 2,500 men. The regulations required that the commanding officer of a combat squadron be a pilot, and at the age of 22, I was the oldest and most experienced pilot in the squadron!

  The Last Mission

  The last mission I took was on April 26th of 1945; I think that that may have been the last mission of the war. My buddy Tom Vaughan from Texas also had a mission that day and I can't remember who took off first or who landed last, but I believe that it was the last mission of the war, and a bad one at that. It was to Prague, Czechoslovakia and the when we got over there, one of the targets was an airfield. As we went over the airfield—and usually when we took pictures we were at about 25,000 feet, but going in and coming out my personal tactic was to be much higher, as high as 39,000 feet—I looked down and I saw two fighters taking off from that airfield. The airfield had black marks on it, which meant that it was a jet field. We were terrified of these jets because they were at least a hundred miles an hour faster than we were and they could go higher. I had four fighters escorting me, and in a very short time I realized that the German jets were at our altitude! I called them out to my fighters and we all kept a very sharp lookout. In a surprisingly short time, I saw two specks in my rear view mirror at our altitude, and so I turned so that they would come in having a ‘deflection shot’ at me. I told the fighters to ram them, but this was not as dramatic as it sounds because the closing speeds were over a thousand miles an hour and to try to hit something [was next to impossible]. I called them out to my fighters and told them that when I said ‘Break’, we would all turn into [the German jets]—it was very important that we convince them that we were trying to hit them because if we didn't scare them off, they could make mincemeat out of us. What I did know was that the [German flight command on the] ground was listening to our conversations and was advising [the German pilots]; and I thought that what we were saying would scare them. I counted on the fact that they knew the war was almost over, and that they were not anxious to get killed at this point, either.