The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume III: War in the Air—Combat, Captivity, and Reunion
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[11] the day before Vesuvius erupted- Mt. Vesuvius most famously erupted on August 26, AD 79, destroying and burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum . Quite active in history many times since, the last major eruption on March 18, 1944 destroyed over six dozen USAAF aircraft and damaged many others.
[12] counting blades-the engine quits, the propellers slow their rotation to become visible to the pilot
[13] all these exhibits of WWII- The US Army Ordnance Museum, Fort Lee, VA.
[14] keep this gun bottled up in there-To the GIs, this monster gun was known as ‘Anzio Annie’. It had a crew of 85 men, sported a barrel more than 70 feet long, and could fire its 283mm 550+ lb. shells over 40 miles.
[15] Mark Clark-Commander of the US Fifth Army. Rome was liberated on June 4th, 1944, the first Axis capital to fall.
[16] Colonel Davis-Benjamin O. Davis was only the fourth black officer to graduate from the West Point. As the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, he had to deal with early Army criticism of underperformance, with the suggestion that black pilots were not capable of performing on a scale with whites. This argument was put to rest when in January, 1944, the 99th Pursuit Squadron shot down 12 German fighters in a 2 day period. Benjamin Davis went on to become the Air Force’s first black general. See www.greatblackheroes.com.
[17] Norden bombsight-The physics involved in dropping a bomb from thousands of feet to hit a target on the ground are astoundingly complicated. Carl Norden, a Swiss born engineer, developed a 50 lb. analog computer that was so valued by the US military that it invested 1.5 billion in 1940 dollars in it (for comparison, the Manhattan Project came in at around 3 billion). Bombardiers went to school for months to learn how to use it; it was installed in the bombers under armed guard and set to self-destruct upon the crashing of the aircraft. Unfortunately, its accuracy was highly questionable, given all of the combat conditions and high altitudes; the bombardier also had to be able to visually sight in the target. See www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell for an interesting discussion.
[18] through the Spanish revolution-The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, where the Germans assisted the forces of General Francisco Franco and his fascists, testing their air force and refining their tactics.
[19] Lake Balaton-Western Hungary.
[20] just a milk run-in World War II airman lingo, a milk run was an easy roundtrip mission with little or no enemy resistance, an analogy taken from the old-time dairy practice of the milkman delivering bottles of milk to one’s door.
[21] This was March 23rd, in 1945- This dramatic mission was actually on March 24th. “Forty-three P-51 Mustangs led by Colonel Benjamin O. Davis escorted B-17 bombers over 1,600 miles into Germany and back. The bombers’ target, a massive Daimler-Benz tank factory in Berlin, was heavily defended by Luftwaffe aircraft, included Fw 190 radial propeller fighters, Me 163 rocket-powered fighters and 25 of the much more formidable Me 262s, history's first operational jet fighter. Pilots Charles Brantley, Earl Lane and Roscoe Brown all shot down German jets over Berlin that day. For the mission, the 332nd Fighter Group earned a Distinguished Unit Citation.” Source: www.everworld.com/tuskegee/332dfightersquadron.htm, via en.wikipedia.org/Tuskegee Airmen.
[22] the Me-262s- Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first combat jet-powered aircraft.
[23] I dropped my tanks- auxiliary fuel tanks carried by aircraft externally on long distance missions; they would be jettisoned to reduce drag and provide ‘catch-up’ power.
[24] I went AWOL-absent without leave, a punishable offense.
[25] Crispus Attucks-victim of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770.
[26] the Massachusetts 54th-“Glory”, 1989 winner of three Academy Awards, depicting an all-black regiment’s assault on a Confederate stronghold.
[27] it didn't end until 1954-The armed services were officially desegregated in 1948; Mr. Dart refers to the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional, both paving the way for further desegregation.
[28] you couldn't use the PX-Post Exchange, or the place on a military installation where consumer goods could be purchased.
[29] there was not to be any segregation of all officers- The Tuskegee Airmen of the 477th challenged the all-white officers’ club at Freeman Army Air Field in Seymour, Indiana. Scores of black officers were arrested and three were court marshalled over several incidents in April 1945. Forty years later, their records were expunged; the incidents were regarded as an important step in the eventual integration of the military, and a spark for the fledgling civil rights movement.
[30] but he was a big crook- Mr. Dart may be referring to the ENRON scandal, which broke in 2001; our interview was in 2003.
[31] Battle of the Bulge- Hitler’s last gamble to counterattack between the advancing American and British forces in northern France and the Low Countries began on Dec. 16th, 1944. After the Normandy landings, the incredible magnitude of American industrial capacity dictated to Hitler that somehow the supply lines had to be cut, and he chose the Ardennes Forest for the avenue of attack in the hopes of reaching the port of Antwerp, combining the elements of surprise, rough ground, and bad weather for a quarter-million man offensive. On December 16th, 600 tanks broke through the thinly manned American lines after a tremendous artillery barrage, creating a bulge or pocket they hoped to exploit to the sea, and sowing desperation, panic and confusion. The weather cleared just before Christmas, and American air power helped to turn the tide as temperatures plunged to coldest in European memory during the winter of 1944–45.
[32] the Wash in England- the square bay and estuary on the east coast of England, among the largest in the UK.
[33] nine plus seven—sixteen people were killed- On this mission, the 100th Bomb Group lost 3 airplanes and thirty men. This incident claimed over half of the men and 2 out of three of the planes. The technical details are as follows for Richard’s crew: Killed in Action, Munich ,18/3/44-Pilot: Paul Martin, Co-pilot: Tom Cryan, Navigator: Tom Hughes, Bombardier: Albert Racz, Flight engineer/top turret gunner: Levi Tonn, Radio Operator: Russ Longdon, Waist gunner: Lonnie Albin, Waist gunner: Veryl Lund,Tail gunner: John Howley. MIA-Ball turret gunner: Dick Faulkner (evaded capture); mid-air collision with 42-37913 (100BG); crashed Frevent, near Haudricourt, 16 miles SW of Poix, France. Missing Air Crew Report 3234. BERLIN PLAYBOY. Source: Imperial War Museum, www.americanairmuseum.com/aircraft/7212.
[34] .303 machine guns-the Vickers gun, a water-cooled British machine gun with a reputation for great reliability.
[35] General LeMay- General Curtis LeMay (1906-1990) was one of the developers of the ‘combat box’ formation of the 8th Air Force over Europe, often flying with his lead crews on the most hazardous bombing missions. In the Pacific Theater, where the combat box formation style was not applicable, he became the major architect of the controversial strategic firebombing campaign, discussed in my first book, Voices of the Pacific Theater. He was later Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1961 to 1965.
[36] Cottbus is the second-largest city in Brandenburg, Germany, about 125 km southeast of Berlin, and a major railway junction.
[37] We ended up in a factory-this march is further discussed in the chapter entitled ‘B-17 PoW Reunion’; they were evacuated away from the rapidly advancing Russian armies. The factory refers to a pottery factory, and the fact that these freezing, sick prisoners were given shelter there saved many lives on the evacuation march.
[38] We had no choice-the men were probably suffering extreme intestinal discomfort due to the contaminated ‘soup’. This incident is also recounted in the chapter entitled ‘B-17 PoW Reunion’.
[39] Camp Lucky Strike- The so-called ‘Cigarette Camps’ were located in the Le Havre, France port area, set up immediately after the liberation of this area following D-Day as depots and supply camps for combat staging. Mr. FitzGibbon arrived as they w
ere transitioning over to repatriating American GIs and PoWs. Camp Lucky Strike was probably the largest of these, a tent city that reached nearly 60,000 at its peak. Other camps included Old Gold, Chesterfield, Pall Mall, and five others. The codenames were designated primarily for security reasons. See www.skylighters.org/special/cigcamps for a good discussion.
[40] Colin Kelly-Colin Kelly, Jr. (1915-1941) piloted bombing runs against the Japanese navy in the first days after the Pearl Harbor attack. He ordered his crew to bail out during an attack shortly before his bomber exploded on December 10th, 1941, killing him. It was the first American B-17 to be shot down in combat. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and a Liberty ship was named after him.
[41] Thorpe Abbotts- Home of the 'Bloody Hundredth’. The base was under USAAF control from June 1943 to the end of the war. Some of the airfield survives today, and it is the home of the 100th Bomb Group Memorial Museum. Source: Imperial War Museum, American Air Museum, www.americanairmuseum.com/place/373.
[42] Stalag 17- 1953 Oscar-winning film which tells the story of a group of American airmen in this PoW camp.
[43] leading a group, it’s one thing, but if you’re leading a division or a wing, that’s another one-Silverman refers to the size of the strike force a lead crew would be responsible for. A B-17 ‘squadron’ might be six planes; by 1943, a heavy bomb ‘group’ included nearly 300 officers and 1500 enlisted men to fly and service 48 B-17 bombers. Their ‘wing’ included 3 such groups.
[44] DR navigator-dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's position by estimating direction and distance traveled by using a previously determined ‘fix’ (position) and advancing that position based upon estimated speeds over time and course, rather than by electronic navigation methods.
[45] the Germans came back and told us ‘Komrade bleeding’, but they wouldn’t let us go to him-Radio operator Charles Lindquist, 20, of Iowa, Joseph Salerno, 16, of Michigan, and Robert Koerner, 22, of Kansas are listed as KIA November 2, 1944.
[46] Jewish PoWs- Jerry Silverman was Jewish.
[47] honey wagon- a cart or vehicle for carrying human excreta to dump or distribute elsewhere
[48] German guards we called ‘ferrets’-special anti-escape guards
[49] BBC- British Broadcasting Corporation
[50] as old as Bruce Willis is right now-‘Hart’s War (2002).
[51] Volkssturm-the national militia, composed of units of conscripts between age 16 and 60.
[52] Sing-Sing- a maximum security prison in New York State.
Mary and Jimmy Butterfield were married for 67 years. After the war, they were the proud owners and operators of Butterfield’s Grocery Store in Glens Falls for 40 years. It was said that Mr. Butterfield could tell the denomination of the bill that was handed to him by its texture and touch. Mary passed in Oct. 2012; Jim passed the following summer.
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[1] Bailey, Ronald H. The Air War in Europe. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1979. 28.
[2] Bailey, Ronald H. The Air War in Europe. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1979. 29.
[3] Bailey, Ronald H. The Air War in Europe. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1979. 30.
[4] Miller, Donald L. The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 38
[5] Bailey, Ronald H. The Air War in Europe. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1979. 28.
[6] Tooze, Adam. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. London: Allen Lane, 2007. Location 7803
[7] Miller, Donald L. The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 257.
[8] 45,000 people were killed and 400,000 left homeless -Miller, Donald L. The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 259.
[9] ‘B-17 Flying Fortress’, Boeing http://www.boeing.com/history/products/b-17-flying-fortress.page
[10] Ambrose, Steven. The Wild Blue: The Men and the Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 23
[11] Miller, Donald L., The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 483.
[12] For an excellent discussion of the Tuskegee Airmen, see the CAF Red Tail Squadron website, http://www.redtail.org. “The CAF Red Tail Squadron is a volunteer-driven organization dedicated to educating audiences across the country about the history and legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first black military pilots and their support personnel.”
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Imperial War Museum, Richard J Faulkner. www.americanairmuseum.com/person/182944
[16] Miller, Donald L., The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 217.
[17] Miller, Donald L. Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War against Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. 493.
[18] Nichol, John, and Rennell, Tony. The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Germany 1944-1945. London: Viking, 2002.
[19] Miller, 495.
[20] Miller, 496.
[21] Source Notes: Clarence W Dart. Interviewed by Matthew Rozell, December, 2003.
[22] Source Notes: John G. Weeks. Interviewed by Michael Russert and Wayne Clarke, May 22, 2002. Deposited at NYS Military Museum. Also, John G. Weeks’ unpublished memoir, ‘The Story of a Photo Reconnaissance Pilot during World War II’.
[23] Source Notes: Richard Faulkner. Interviewed by Michael Russert and Wayne Clarke, September 24, 2003. Auburn, NY. Deposited at NYS Military Museum.
[24] Source Notes: George FitzGibbon. Interviewed by Michael Russert and Wayne Clarke, May 18, 2002. Johnson City, NY. Deposited at NYS Military Museum.
[25] Source Notes: Charles Corea. Interviewed by Michael Aikey and Wayne Clarke, November 20, 2001. Rochester, New York. Deposited at NYS Military Museum.
[26] Source Notes: Earl M. Morrow, Sam Lisica, Jerry Silverman. Interviewed by Matthew Rozell, July 31, 2001. Hartford, NY. Deposited at NYS Military Museum.