Pappy’s War: A B-17 Gunner’s Memoir

Pappy’s War: A B-17 Gunner’s Memoir

John Pappy Paris

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World War II Memoir 5

Bennington, Vermont

2015

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Second eBook Edition

Copyright © 1998 by John Paris

First published in 1998 by the Merriam Press

Additional material copyright of named contributors.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The views expressed are solely those of the author.

ISBN 9781576384336

This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 133 Elm Street, Suite 3R, Bennington VT 05201.

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Notice

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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On the Cover

A wartime illustration of an FW 190 going head-to-head with a B-17 as another fighter falls away trailing smoke. The insignia is the shoulder patch of the Eighth Air Force.

A Note About the Photographs

Most of the photos have been selected by the editor to represent some of the experiences which the author describes. Most are not of the unit which the author belonged to, and some sharp-eyed readers will be able to spot the unit markings on the aircraft as belonging to a variety of other units.

Several of the photos of aircraft were supplied by the author and these were obtained from the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, and the Eighth Air Force Heritage Museum.

Dedication

To my wife, Juanita, whose love, understanding, and devotion made this possible.

To my grandchildren, great and otherwise, for dragging this out of me. May they never see war.

Acknowledgments

My wholehearted appreciation to Norm Dawson for his valuable criticism, suggestions and unfailing good humor in the preparation of this book.

I thank Marge Richards plus an anonymous friend for their generous assistance.

Finally, to my friend and neighbor, Raymond McNeely for his superb illustrations.

Preface

I have decided not to use peoples’ names. Some of my Kriegie cohorts were thrust upon me. I did not see all of them in a good light, and there is no point in soiling the reputation of those no longer able to defend themselves.

I will try to convey an idea of what war was like to those of you who did not fight one. I apologize for any inaccuracies or embellishments, as my old memories have been repressed for more than fifty years.

Any similarity between the characters in this book and persons living or dead is intentional. I grieve for my comrades who gave their young lives. These were fine men who saw themselves not as brave or daring, but simply doing their duty. One of every ten American servicemen killed in World War II flew in the Eighth Air Force.

Chapter 1: Big Ass Bird

Recently, while enjoying a vacation in Wisconsin, my wife Juanita and I visited the Air Museum in Oshkosh. There, parked on the museum floor, sat a relic of World War II. It was a worn and weary B-17, encircled with a rope fence bearing a sign stating that a local club was attempting to restore the airplane and needed funds. For three bucks I could enter and look it over. It had been almost fifty years since I had been on the inside of a Big-Ass Bird. It was early Monday morning and there was no one around, so I laid my three dollars on the caretaker’s table and stepped inside. It struck me immediately how small and cramped everything appeared to be. Why, I remember the first B-17 I ever saw. I wrote Dad that it was so big that I could easily park a Piper Cub under each wing. The only reason I can think of that it seems so small to me today is that I have recently made several flights in the Boeing 747. I could probably park a B-17 under each wing of one of those huge things! Entering, I worked my way slowly through the airplane’s waist, past the ball turret, and on into the radio compartment.

Suddenly, I seemed to be in the Twilight Zone! The years fell away like calendar leaves in a windstorm. Time swept backward. I was over Berlin again and could feel the icy cold, the vibrations, and the throb of the engines. We were at thirty thousand feet and Bombardier had just released our payload of six tons of bombs. Pilot had reassumed control of the airplane and turned for home.

This is Radio, looks like there’s a bomb hung up, maybe two.

Top Turret here, I read you. I’ll see if I can get rid of them.

First, I unplugged my electric suit and intercom connection. Then I unhooked my oxygen mask from its normal connection, and plugged it into a portable bottle. Next I clipped the bottle onto my parachute harness but I could not snap on my parachute, for with it there was no way I would be able to get past the braces in the narrow walkway through the bomb bay. The portable bottle would only last five minutes but that would not make much difference. The last time I glanced at the thermometer, the needle was pegged at its lowest reading which was forty degrees below zero. No matter, the gale I would encounter in the bomb bay with the doors open would freeze me solid as a rock in five minutes anyway. I would surely have to shake a leg.

This was the day we had been selected to carry incendiary and delayed-action bombs. These bombs were a diabolical little trick Ordnance had picked up from the Germans. The idea was to get fires started in the target area and then plant a few delayed-action bombs around in order to make the fire fighters too nervous to put out the resulting fires. The delayed action bombs had a little bottle of acid in them that Bombardier had broken as soon as we crossed the English Channel. This would make them impossible for a bomb disposal crew to disarm them. Our engineers calculated that it would take the acid four to eight hours to eat through the metal container that it was confined in. Once free it would then set off the bomb. The Eighth had issued orders forbidding us to drop bombs over France and the Low Countries, unless we were aiming at an assigned target. We might make it to the Channel where we could let down and I could work on them in relative comfort, and then again we might not. The four-hour safeguard would be long past by the time we got back to our airfield. There was no question of bringing them back to our base, even if we had the time. Our own people would shoot us down if they knew we were carrying back a load of high explosives about to go off.

When I reached the bomb bay and looked things over, it was, naturally, the worst-case scenario possible. Murphy’s Law worked in World War II every bit as well as it does today. A five-hundred pound delayed-action bomb was dangling on one hanger, the very lowest one. There was a cluster of incendiary bombs caught on the turned-up nose of the big bomb. The finned tail of the big bomb was hanging down into the slip stream. The whole thing was swinging back and forth with some of the smaller incendiary bombs scraping on the metal side of the bomb bay. There was no way I could reach that bottom shackle from the cat walk. So, with my feet on the walkway, I inched along the end of the trusses until my body was horizontal. With an arm locked around a strut holding the door, I wedged my screwdriver under the shackle and gave it a mighty heave. Fortunately for me, the bombs went, I almost went, and I certainly lost a damned good GI screwdriver.

Chapter 2: Greetings…

A few months before World War II, our country began drafting men into the armed services. Every man between eighteen and thirty-two was given a draft number. With great fanfare, numbers were drawn out of a hat and men with the earliest-drawn numbers were called up as needed. I lived in a walkup flat in one of the poorer sections of St. Louis with my folks. One fall day in 1942 when I returned home from work, my mother handed me a letter that had come for me that day. It opened with these words, Greetings, you have been selected by your friends and neighbors to serve in the United States Armed Services. It further added that I would have a few days to settle my affairs. I resigned my job as a delivery truck driver, with a promise from my employer that the job would be waiting for me when or if I returned from the war. I took my girl friend, Juanita, out one last time. We had been going together for a few months, but I am sure neither of us were very serious. My 1934 Ford V-8 I left with my brother, figuring that I would never see it again, and I did not.

One cold December morning I reported, as instructed, to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, for induction. The admission process consisted almost entirely of standing in long lines with my fellow inductees, stark naked in drafty hallways, for a long and tiresome ego-deflating day. It appeared to me that the prime purpose of the armed service was to keep recruits in long lines for one thing or another for days on end. I was lined up with my fellow recruits to bathe, lined up to do calisthenics, lined up to eat, and a myriad of other things that only the Army could think of to induce torture upon an inductee.

In about a week I found myself on a train heading south with no idea where I was going. The Army always kept travel orders a strict secret. I cannot imagine the enemy having much of an interest in where a train load of raw recruits was headed. That was only one of many examples of a lot of unwarranted hysteria going around back in those trying times. Steam locomotives were the prime movers; diesels had not made their ungainly appearance yet. It was a real thrill for me hearing that lonesome whistle warning people and animals of the coming of the train as we raced south past the telegraph poles. Up to this time I had traveled very little, mainly up and down Route 66 between Oklahoma and Missouri. The train took me through many little towns with strange far-away-sounding names and several large cities that I knew were in the South. I was familiar with these only because I remembered them from the geography books that I had studied in grade school. After pounding along two or three days, I awoke one bright sunny morning to see palm trees gliding past my window.

Miami Beach—what a pleasant surprise! Out of the cold north into the land of sunshine. Suddenly, I was beginning to like the Army after all. They quartered me in one of the finest hotels on the beach. Mind you now, they neglected to provide me with room service. With the war on, everyone started working at defense plants sixty hours a week for big money. The long work hours, combined with gas rationing, soon resulted in the tourist business dropping to zero. The high rollers with those fancy hotels on the beach suddenly found that they were stuck with white elephants. Somehow they managed to make a deal with the Air Force to lease them all those empty rooms along with the white sheets.

I cannot say all that much for basic training, but if it has to be done, I could not think of a better place than Flamingo Park in January. This is where I met my good friend, Snider, a fellow inductee from Illinois. I always wondered why Snider picked me for a buddy. Perhaps it was because of the one spark of brilliance I displayed while we were billeted in that classy high rise at Miami Beach. In order to recover our clothing from the laundry it was necessary to mark our underwear with indelible ink. Naturally during the process someone kicked over one of the ink bottles. Now we found ourselves in serious trouble. Had they made us pay for that plush rug, at our present wages of twenty-one dollars a month, we would have been in hock to the Army for our remaining days in the service. I quickly suggested we move the beds and furniture around until one of the beds covered the conspicuous stain. We awaited the inevitable Saturday inspection with dire misgivings. The day soon arrived along with our commander, accompanied by his officer of the day. The first sergeant was also along with his inevitable little book within which he assiduously recorded names for odious duties that only a first sergeant could think of. The commander was delighted with our new furniture arrangement and commended us for our ingenuity and leadership. He mentioned to the sergeant that it might be a good idea if all of the other rooms in the hotel were arranged like ours.

Snider and I were of the same opinion about the silliness of some of the Army rules and regulations. Perhaps this was another thing that encouraged us to stick together. Snider’s mind was always busy trying to beat the system. Snider was not a gold brick, he just did not see the sense in the chicken shit that went on in the Army, and resisted it at every opportunity. In particular, I remember an incident when we were shipped out of Miami Beach to Wichita Falls, Texas. Upon arrival at the train station, which was located inside a large Air Force mechanics’ school, the sergeant that came to lead us to our new quarters was in a hurry to get rid of us, and did not want to take the time to separate our baggage. He told us to each pick up just anyone’s barracks bag that was handy. We would then carry it along, and when we arrived at our new quarters we could then each locate our own. Snider suggested that he and I hang back until everyone had a bag. This was just in case some of the bags might have gotten lost on their way up from Florida and if so, we might be left without one to carry. Unfortunately, as everyone struggled down the street with a heavy bag on their shoulders, two rather lumpy barrack bags were lying there on the platform waiting for us. That bag must have weighed a hundred pounds. Somehow I got it on my shoulders and struggled down the street with that sergeant prodding me along. After packing this burden for at least a mile, I finally arrived at our destination. An aching back and curiosity stimulated me to find out what those peculiar lumps might be. Upon opening the bag, out rolled several large coconuts!

Reunited with my possessions, I was directed to a bed in one of the barracks. Snider was assigned nearby as a result of the Army’s system of making all assignments in alphabetical order. Exhausted, I lay back on my bed to relax. Several students came around who were presently enrolled in the school. They informed us that new arrivals were being kept busy working as KP’s (kitchen police) until their classes started, which would not be for a couple of weeks. Well, I had previously pulled a couple of days of KP, which amounted to scrubbing pots and pans and other disagreeable chores from five o’clock in the morning until seven at night so this was devastating news. My friend Snider redeemed himself for his last disaster. In fact, he came through with flying colors on this occasion. He came rushing in and told me that we were moving, and to grab my bag and follow him. I protested that we were assigned to this barracks and that if we moved we would surely get into a lot of trouble. Snider insisted, so trusting my good buddy there was nothing to do but grab my stuff and follow him to a neighboring barracks. One of the students assigned to this barracks had come down with a severe case of German measles. As a result the entire