Bobby E. Pride Oral History

              EW:	My name is Edward B. Williams. I am a military historian. I live in Cold Springs, Texas, area code 77331. Today’s date is 7 May, 2003. This interview is taking place, appropriately enough, in Bedford, England. We’re in the United Kingdom with former members of the 91st Bomb Group, revisiting their old station at Bassingbourn. For the next few evenings, we’re going to be staying at the Moat Hotel in Bedford, England. The veteran’s name that’s being interviewed this evening is Bobby E. Pride. Mr. Pride’s birth date is 4 August, 1925. His current address is 717 Osborne Avenue in Springfield Illinois, zip code 62702. Mr. Pride served in World War II in the United States Army Air Corp at that time, and the highest rank that he achieved was that of Staff Sergeant. Glad to have you here, Bobby. Appreciate you taking the time. Why don’t we start? Maybe you can tell a little bit about what your life was like before the war—you know—where you were born, where you were educated, that sort of thing.

BP:	I was born in southern Illinois, in Marion, Illinois. My father was in road construction, so we moved around quite a little bit and ended up in Springfield, Illinois. There, I finished my early education through high school. And as soon as I got out of high school, I went into the service. 

EW:	That quick?

BP:	That quick. Well, the only way that I could guarantee getting in the Air Corps was to volunteer for induction. I had to go to Rantoul—Chanute Field—and take all my physicals before I was 18. So I had all the paperwork done and everything.

EW:	And you were still in high school when you did all that?

BP:	Yes, that’s right. 

EW:	Was that Springfield High School?

BP:	Yeah. Well, it was Lanphier High School in—

EW:	In Springfield?

BP:	02:41.0 In Springfield, right. So as soon as I was 18, I volunteered for induction and started on my way to the Air Force. 

EW:	And that was—? When was that? Was that in ’41?

BP:	That was in 1943.

EW:	In 1943. Okay. The war had been going on a year, year and a half or so—

BP:	Yeah. Right.

EW:	—at the time you graduated from high school. So you graduated probably in May or June of 1943?

BP:	Yes. 

EW:	Okay. So you entered the Air Force very soon after graduation?

BP:	That’s right.

EW:	Where’d you go?

BP:	We had to take a bus on our own to—oh, I can’t even remember the camp. It was up in—just up in Illinois—up around Rockford or something like that. 

EW:	Oh, okay.

BP:	And stayed overnight in the armory there. They loaded us onto trains the next day and took us a 17-hour trip down to Jefferson Barracks.

EW:	That’s outside St. Louis?

BP:	That’s right. A whole 250 miles. And we started our—more or less—our camp there.

EW:	That’s where you started your basic military training?

BP:	Basic training, right.

EW:	Tell us a little bit about that. What sort of training did you receive? The usual military stuff?

BP:	04:20.4 Just the usual stuff, building up to a 25-mile hike.

EW:	Did you drill? Did you have weapons?

BP:	Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, at the end of the 25-mile hike we added a couple more miles out to a machine gun range. The next day, I got to go on KP to make coffee in a 55-gallon drum.

EW:	Yeah.

BP:	Probably the worst coffee anybody had ever had.

EW:	So on that—let’s back up there a little bit. You said you went on a machine gun range. Is that one of those deals where they were firing live ammunition and you crawled under that?

BP:	Yes. Oh, no. No, we were just—more or less—getting the experience of having one in our hands.

EW:	Oh, you got to fire the things.

BP:	Yeah, and whenever you fired it, it raises up. So if you’re going to aim at something, you have to aim down low to shoot and come across it.

EW:	You wouldn’t think about that, would you?

BP:	(Laughs)

EW:	So how long were you there at Jefferson Barracks?

BP:	I was there until the end of December. I think I was probably on the train New Year’s Day going to Las Vegas, Nevada.

EW:	You know, that was a long time. You were there from—say—roughly, June to— They must have put you through a lot of basic training. And everyone has to remember, that was the United States Army Air Corp in those days.

BP:	That’s right. 

EW:	06:04.7 So you probably did have a lot of infantry-like training, didn’t you?

BP:	Oh, yeah. 

EW:	And that was a long time all the way from June to— So you underwent quite a bit of basic military training there? What other kind of duties did you have? Do you remember any?

BP:	Just the normal thing—you know—KP once in a while.

EW:	Did you ever have to peel any potatoes?

BP:	Well, actually, yes, but they had a machine that did the peeling for you. 

EW:	No kidding?

BP:	Just throw them in a big, like a washing machine that had little pins or spikes around the outside of it, and it just kept whirling them around until they peeled. 

EW:	No kidding? I was in the Marine Corps a few years later. I don’t remember any machines like that. As a matter of fact, I think my experience was in the scullery washing pots and pans or something. And we did that just for a week at a time. You’d go and do your duty, and then that was it during our particular training. So you served in World War II, you say. So after you left Jefferson Barracks, you said you went to Las Vegas?

BP:	Yeah. That’s where we had our gunnery training at. 

EW:	Had you already been designated to be a gunner at that time?

BP:	No, I think they told us there was too many in the cadet training program, so there was a whole slew of them—a few thousand—that got moved to something else. So a lot of them got moved in the regular infantry, and I was one of the lucky ones. They offered me a position in the Air Force. They said you can be a gunner or a gunner or you can be a gunner. And so I willingly accepted it. Anything that kept me in the air. 

EW:	So what kind of training did you get there in Las Vegas? Gunnery training, obviously, but what all did that consist of? Did you know at that time—let me ask you. You didn’t have any idea at that time what your assignment would be, whether it would be in Liberators or Flying Fortresses or what have you?

BP:	No.

EW:	08:28.4 You were just trained generally as a gunner?

BP:	Right.

EW:	Did you train with 50-caliber machine guns?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Probably the 30s, too?

BP:	Yeah. Also shotgun training, where you would shoot skeets—being able to lead at a certain distance. And putting us in the back of a truck and bouncing around and trying to hit something. 

EW:	Had a machine gun mounted in there?

BP:	Well, it was a shotgun, at the time. 

EW:	No kidding? They were just teaching you to lead targets?

BP:	Right. And then of course we had air-to-air, where a target plane pulled a big windsock, and the bullets we shot were color coded so that if we hit it, it would show up on the target. 

EW:	In other words, the rounds that you fired—say, just for example, they were painted red, then they could tell which hits were yours on that sleigh. Were you airborne when you were doing that?

BP:	Yeah. Right. 

EW:	What kind of an aircraft?

BP:	09:40.4 We were in a— I think we were in a 17.

EW:	In a B-17?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	And this plane just flew along parallel with you with a sock behind it?

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	I didn’t realize they did that, but it makes sense.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	To give you some experience in actual aerial gunnery. So how long were you in Las Vegas?

BP:	Probably around 3 months.

EW:	And I imagine that was constant gunnery training, right?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Okay. Where did you go from Las Vegas?

BP:	We went to, I think, Kearney, Nebraska, where they, more or less, assigned—all the crews got together, and we were assigned a crew—our pilots and navigator and bombardier. 

EW:	And that’s where everybody came together, and you were actually assigned? You began to function as a crew?

BP:	Yeah. Well, we didn’t function as a group; we were just assigned as a group. From there, we went as a group to Alexandria, Louisiana, where we were on the airplanes and did our air training there. 

EW:	What kind of training was that?

BP:	Training as a crew.
EW:	Flying practice missions?

BP:	Yeah. Right.

EW:	11:06.7 Do you remember any of those?

BP:	Well—

EW:	I guess I ought to ask first, before we get into that, what position had you been assigned in the crew by that time?

BP:	I think I probably just flew as a waist gunner. 

EW:	To begin with?

BP:	Yeah. As an extra thing, they had me fly at nighttime as a camera man. They would drop their bombs and I was supposed to count to ten and turn the camera on.

EW:	To record the strike?

BP:	Yeah. So I can’t really say that I knew anything about a camera, but that’s what I was told to do, and that’s what we did. 

EW:	Since your pilot was a friend of mine—my family—next door neighbor some time after the war—and since I’ve seen his memoirs, that might have been one of those times when— Didn’t you all bomb some sort of lighting plant—a power plant or something?

BP:	I wouldn’t know anything about that. (Laughs)

EW:	Well, I’ve forgotten exactly, but I know one time that there was a drop on something that was unintended. I’ll have to check on that. You all were flying all types of missions—daytime and night—to get the feel of that thing.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Did you ever get it up to altitude back then and realize what it was like flying in a B-17 at 25,000 feet or so?

BP:	Not at that time. We stayed down below 10,000 so we didn’t have to have any oxygen on. We had gone through the pressure chamber before, where we had to keep oxygen on.

EW:	13:04.2 Oh, you had had some training with that—some kind of a pressure chamber?

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	Where you could experience what it was like at a high altitude. I might just add here for any future viewers that might not be aware of the fact that aircraft in that era—military aircraft in that era—were not pressurized, since you were going to be subject to enemy action—flack from ground batteries and rounds from enemy fighter aircraft and what have you. So pressurization certainly wouldn’t have worked. So those aircraft were just open to the world. 

BP:	That’s right. 

EW:	And when you had—and they were just a thin-skinned, aluminum aircraft. And when you were flying up there—say at—I imagine your average bombing altitude was somewhere roughly around 25,000 feet.

BP:	Yeah, 25-30—someplace in there. 

EW:	And then you’re talking about temperatures up there at that altitude at least 40 degrees below zero, sometimes even colder than that.

BP:	Yeah. Paul called us up one day on the intercom and said, “Hey, so you want to know what the temperature is today?” He said, “Well, it’s 72 below zero, but that’s as far as it will go.”

EW:	So it might have been even colder than that. And you’re talking about Paul Chryst, another friend who was the bombardier in that particular group.

BP:	That’s right. 

EW:	If you remember, and I would assume you probably do, tell us a little bit about your crew. Who was the pilot, who was the captain in charge of the vessel—more or less?

BP:	Ed Garner was our pilot.

EW:	My parent’s former neighbor.

BP:	Yeah. And then we had Kermit Burman, who was from the Los Angeles area. He was our co-pilot. 

EW:	15:04.8 Did those co-pilots—they took over the aircraft from time to time, didn’t they, to relieve the pilot?

BP:	Yeah. I didn’t know at the time, but the co-pilots didn’t have quite as much training as a regular pilot did.

EW:	Really? I wasn’t aware of that.

BP:	And so they were pilots-in-training, actually, themselves. But he was good. 

EW:	And he—let’s see. After the war, he worked in the aviation industry, didn’t he? He was an air traffic controller. I never met him.

BP:	I didn’t keep up with him too much. I should have because I was in the Los Angeles area quite a lot. 

EW:	Yeah. I’ve never met him, but I knew through Ed Garner that he lived out there—that he was—I think his career was as an air traffic controller. And I also know that, generally, new pilots would fly at least one mission with another crew just to get the feel of it, I would suppose. 

BP:	Yes.

EW:	Make a mission, experience whatever opposition they might encounter, be it flack or enemy aircraft. And then once they had done that, then they would take over their aircraft and begin the slow—it must have been very slow—march toward the required number of missions. I guess that in your era, your missions were flown roughly between the first part of August of 1944 into December of ’44?

BP:	That’s right. 

EW:	And by that time, how many missions were you required to fly?

BP:	Thirty-five missions. 

EW:	Okay. The original number required, I think, was 25.

BP:	Twenty-five, right. 

EW:	And then I guess if they knocked the Luftwaffe down more—and the fact of the matter, I guess there weren’t that many qualified people available. They had to stretch you guys out.

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	17:11.1 So 35 missions, which you began, as I recall, it was somewhere around the first part of August—the second or third of August perhaps?

BP:	Well, yeah. We actually were—left the states around the 4th of July in ’44. Yeah. And so by the time we went over in a convoy—

EW:	You went by ship?

BP:	Yes.

EW:	A lot of people flew aircraft over there. I know a lot also went by ship, but you guys went by ship. Where did you embark from, do you remember?

BP:	New York.

EW:	Port of New York? 

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	What kind of vessel were you on?

BP:	It was just a crowded troop ship.

EW:	And I guess you were down below with all of the bumps, 5 or 6 days?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	No room in between?

BP:	We had—looked funny because most of us in the Air Force were used to the rocking and rolling—you know—the motion. But we had a bunch of new recruits from the Navy, just out of boot camp, on there, and a lot of them were handing over the railings.

EW:	18:34.0 I know about seasick. I’ll tell you about it sometime. There’s nothing worse. Did you have any problems with seasickness?

BP:	No. 

EW:	None whatsoever? That’s interesting. Where did you all land?

BP:	As I remember, we landed in Liverpool. 

EW:	Yeah, I think—

BP:	And then transferred on to Bassingbourn. 

EW:	By train probably, right?

BP:	Yeah. Right.

EW:	And that’s a crowded troop train?

BP:	I really don’t remember exactly how that was. It just seemed like we were there, then we were there. 

EW:	So when were you assigned—? I never really have been exactly clear, when did you get your assignment—the crew get assignment—to the 91st Bomb Group in this particular case? Do you remember?

BP:	Well, as I understand it, there was—out of all that went over there, there were 10 crews assigned to the 91st Bomb Group.

EW:	And that was assignment was before you ever left the states?

BP:	It probably was, yeah. And out of those 10, they said that we were assigned to the 401st. There were six of us—six of our crews assigned to it because it was a hard luck squadron.

EW:	They had suffered some heavy losses, huh?

BP:	20:10.6 Yeah. So the majority of us were assigned to that. 

EW:	I might add here on the camera that a bomb group generally consisted of four squadrons. In this particular case, the 91st Bomb Group was composed of the 322nd, 323rd, 324th, and the 401st Heavy Bombardment Squadron.

BP:	Right. Right. 

EW:	And together, those four squadrons comprised the 91st Bomb Group. And then, I believe those groups were joined with several other groups to form the 1st Air Division, and then on from there to the Wing, etc, etc, was the basic organization. 

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	So you guys were dispatched to Bassingbourn, which is near Cambridge—just south of Cambridge, England. I believe that was designated Station 121 in Bomber Command. Do remember arriving there—what it was like? That was a long time ago, I realize.

BP:	It’s a long time ago. The weather was nice, and we were—

EW:	So this is summer of ’44?

BP:	Yeah. Sort of surprised. It seemed like we were greeted by a B-17 buzzing us as we came in.

EW:	You remember that, really?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	No kidding? Bassingbourn was rather unique compared to most of the other 8th Air Force stations because it had formerly been a Royal Air Force base, and as such, it had permanent barracks.

BP:	Yes.

EW:	In other words, they were barracks that were made of brick and mortar. And also, it had four rather large hangars. All of that came about—it was before your time, but that’s when the original Group Commander Colonel Stanley Wray had more or less commandeered that base, so the story goes. He’s been assigned to another base originally and found it unsatisfactory. The runways weren’t long enough and they were not in good condition, so I heard—perhaps you heard the same thing—that he got wind that Bassingbourn was available and he just hustled on down there and looked it over, and without consulting anybody, brought the group down there. This was back the year before you got—well, probably a couple of years before you got there—in the summer of ’42 or thereabouts. He just moved the group down there to Bassingbourn, and by the time anybody knew anything about it, it was a fate accompli, and it was sort of too late to do anything about it. Is that the story you heard?

BP:	Yeah. That’s why they call us the Ragged Irregulars.

EW:	23:35.0 The Ragged Irregulars, yes. I know. How long was it before you began your combat missions after you arrived there? Did they put you to it pretty quick?

BP:	Yeah. We got started in fairly quick. I would say by the 1st of October we were flying our missions. 

EW:	Did you start your missions as Ed Garner and those guys started their missions, or did you come after them?

BP:	No, Ed flew missions day before. 

EW:	Okay.

BP:	And we flew with him after that. 

EW:	Okay. I’ll correct you because you all began the first part of August, somewhere in there. Because I recently read Ed Garner’s memoirs. As I recall, he flew a mission, maybe more, with another crew, and then by a few days into August—again, as I recall—you all started on those. By this time, had you been assigned a different position on the aircraft—a definite position?

BP:	Well, I think this is a different series of events. I think Mac probably was injured. He got some shrapnel in his back, and so he stayed down for a few. So I took over the tail position. 

EW:	Oh, so one of the other crew members—we got off the track there. I want you to tell us about the rest of those crew members here in a minute. So you all had flown a few missions as, apparently, as a waist gunner?

BP:	25:23.9 Yeah. Right.

EW:	To begin with?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	And then this other crew member—was that Norris Malachowsky(??)? 

BP:	Yes. That’s right. We were just talking to his son and grandson down here at dinner just a few minutes ago. So he had received some kind of injury?

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	And you moved back to the tail position?

BP:	Uh-hunh (affirmative).

EW:	Did you fly the majority of your missions back there?

BP:	Yes, I did. Yeah. I was the lightest one, so Ed said I could get back there—easier to handle. 

EW:	Go ahead. Again, I got off track there. You said Ed Garner was the pilot, Kermit Burman was the co-pilot.

BP:	Yeah. Of course, John Allen was our navigator.

EW:	All 6 foot 5 of him.

BP:	Yes.

EW:	I met him. 

BP:	And Paul Chryst was our navigator. 

EW:	Who is with us on this trip? 

BP:	Right. And the engineer was—oh, my goodness.

EW:	Name eludes you?

BP:	No. Stan—

EW:	You know, I don’t have a list of those names handy. I have it at home, but I don’t have it with me. So he was a flag engineer in the top turret, as well?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	The radio operator.

BP:	27:03.8 That’s Dave O’ Day. And then we had Bob Gruetter, which was in—the waist gunner. 

EW:	One of the two waist gunners. 

BP:	Right. And he also was qualified as a radio operator. After we put in a few missions, Dave O’ Day was called back to the states because his mother was ill.

EW:	He might have been an only son or something.

BP:	Yeah. So Bob Gruetter took over as the radio operator.

EW:	Okay. And you got another waist gunner probably. 

BP:	No. At first they were flying 10 men as a crew, and then they—through losses and other things like that—they started flying just nine men. So with Dave O’ Day leaving, that put us down to a nine-man crew. 

EW:	Really? You all only had nine men after that, huh?

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	I thought that that usually resulted from—I know that later on, the bombardier was replaced by what they call a togglier because the dropping of the bomb was timed with the lead plane’s dropping.

BP:	Right.

EW:	It didn’t require any great skill, you just threw a toggle and it released the bomb.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	28:42.9 And I guess that was a tactic that they designed after a little experience and what have you. You all had Paul with as bombardier. But you all flew a lot of lead missions, didn’t you?

BP:	Yeah. Right. 

EW:	So that meant everybody behind you had a togglier, and they were toggling on Paul’s.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Okay. Who was the other—you remember who the other waist gunner was?

BP:	Well, it was either Mac or myself, and sometimes we would switch back and forth. Ellison was the ball turret gunner. 

EW:	Did you ever fly in that ball turret?

BP:	No, I don’t think I’d care for that. 

EW:	Talk a little bit about that. Do you remember anything about that?

BP:	Well, you just had to arrange the ball so that the opening was up in the plane.

EW:	It was hydraulically operated?

BP:	Yeah. Open it up and— I don’t think it was. I think you had to crank it up manually and scoot yourself down into this little ball.

EW:	Plexiglas ball, yeah.

BP:	Plexiglas ball.

EW:	And you’re hanging out the bottom of the aircraft.

BP:	Yeah. Right. It was two 50-calibur machine guns. 

EW:	And you’re curled up in that thing, and that’s up between your knees there. And you’ve got those twin 50s down there. It must have been a great view, but I’m telling you, you must have felt pretty vulnerable down there.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	30:27.9 I talked to a ball turret gunner out at the reunion in Tacoma last summer. He flew some early missions. His name is Steve Perry (??). He’s now the—edits the Ragged Irregulars, the 91st newsletter. 

BP:	Yeah.

EW: 	Have you ever heard of him?

BP:	No, not—

EW:	He was an early member of the 91st. Matter of fact, he told me that he was through with all of his missions by the summer of ’43. That was pretty fast.

BP:	Yes, it was.

EW:	And that was a tough time, too. He shot down— He had credit for four enemy aircraft, but he said he knew that he’d shot down seven. He just didn’t have those other three confirmed. But hanging down there—you know—that can be particularly dangerous. If you had to make a belly landing, you better not get caught down there in that ball because it would be the first thing to touch the ground.

BP:	Right. 

EW:	So you ended up as a tail gunner back there. What was that like back there? Did you have to crawl back there?

BP:	Yeah. You had to—from the waist, you worked your way back over around the tail wheel and it’s—you set on a low bicycle seat.

EW:	You had to crawl back through there, right?

BP:	Yeah, right. And you could move your legs enough so you could get them out in front of your, or sometimes you tried to get them back underneath.

EW:	32:09.2 You essentially were sitting back there like on a bicycle seat, more or less?

BP:	More or less, yes.

EW:	You weren’t lying down or anything? You were actually sitting up?

BP:	No, sitting up. 

EW:	That had to be terribly uncomfortable and cramped back there.

BP:	Well, there wasn’t too much room. 

EW:	Now, let me ask you this; was there any other way you could get out of back there?

BP:	Yes, there was a small escape door. Where you were sitting down, it was probably 6 feet in back of you. It was in between you and where the tail wheel assembly was. 

EW:	What did it have, just a catch on it that you could release?

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	And that would be the only way—the quickest way to get out there should you be hit and be forced down.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	But you know, I’ll tell you; I think what happened to a lot of people that were caught in that situation—you know—that were going down, not just in the tail, but in other parts, when those things started spiraling down, those centrifugal forces took over and you just couldn’t—there wasn’t any way to get out of those things. 

BP:	No.

EW:	I talked to—well, he was 91st Bomb Group tail gunner. I don’t think you knew him; although, you were there at the same time. His name was Roy Loyless. I interviewed him a couple of—well, probably a month and half ago now. And that happened to him. They were going down, and apparently the intercom system had been disrupted by enemy fire and he didn’t know they had left the plane. He saw some chutes going by, and he finally figured out that the other people had left the aircraft.

BP:	That it’s time to leave.

EW:	Yeah, it was time for him to get out of there. And he tried to get out that door, and he had a lot of difficulty. He was finally able to break out of there and did get out of the aircraft, but it was a real close call for him. Then, by that time they had P-51 fighter aircraft on the scene, and he said two of them escorted him all the way to the ground—P-51 Mustang fighters. And he said he was trying to waive them to get away because they were coming so close to him that they were spilling the air out of his chute, and he was in danger of plummeting to the earth. I tell you, being back there in the tail was kind of a precarious position to be in.

BP:	Yeah. You were confined a little bit. 

EW:	Bobby, why don’t you describe a little bit about how a typical mission day would begin. I know you all were sometimes called out at a pretty early hour. 

BP:	Yeah, they called us out early.

EW:	2:30-3:30, something like that?

BP:	Yeah. Any place along in there. Go eat breakfast then go do interrogation or to—

EW:	Mission briefing?

BP:	Mission briefing. There was a big map of where you’re going to.

EW:	Like in the movies?

BP:	Like in the movies. 

EW:	Did they have it covered up?

BP:	You know, it seems like they did. It seems like they pulled the curtain. 

EW:	And then you could see where the string led.

BP:	35:56.9 Yes, and they would tell us what time we were going to take off and what altitudes we would be flying at. 

EW:	Now the whole crew went to these briefings, right?

BP:	Yes, right. What enemy fire we could expect, of course, what the target was. Most of the time, it was a railroad yard, a plant, oil refinery, a bridge that would be knocked out for transportation. It was never a let-them-go-as-you-please for the civilian population. There was always some specific purpose of us being there. 

EW:	You know, backing up just a little bit because future viewers, historians, people that are just interested for one reason or another—you really get interested in some of the      nitty-gritty of your life there. You guys were housed at Bassingbourn, unlike some of those other stations. Were you billeted in those regular barracks?

BP:	Yes. 

EW:	And it was just a big, typical military barracks with double-decker racks?

BP:	No, I don’t—it was a two-story building. It was one of those buildings in the shape of an H, where there were two wings that would come off, and then down the hall the other two wings would come off. The one that I was billeted in only had three wings. At some time or another—whether a bomb had knocked the other wing off or what happened to it. 

EW:	That was kind of unusual, I want to emphasize, because Bassingbourn was a, as I said, an RAF base prior, and therefore the fact that you guys lived in these permanent-type barracks was not the usual experience. On most of those bases, they lived in those Quonset huts, a semicircular-type Quonset hut.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	So before the mission, you went to—? I guess, actually, before you went to briefing, you generally went to breakfast, didn’t you? That might be 3:30-4:00 in the morning?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	What was the food like?

BP:	I really didn’t have any complaints about it. 

EW:	Powdered eggs?

BP:	(Laughs) Yeah. We got plenty of food.

EW:	No shortages. There weren’t any shortages.

BP:	No. 

EW:	Well, they talk about these powdered eggs. In these hotels we’re staying in, we’re getting these big English breakfasts. Somebody was saying they thought those were powdered eggs—the hotel we were staying at in London. I said, “Well, I tell you, more power to them. I love these things.”

BP:	Yeah. They’ve probably improved them.

EW:	Maybe so—maybe so. Okay. You’re through with the brief. You know where you’re going. So what happens next?

BP:	Well, we go get into our suits. We wore electrically heated suits and coveralls over those. 

EW:	And then the heavy, fur-lined sheepskin?

BP:	Yeah. And we had an oxygen mask that had been fitted to us. It was kept separate.

EW:	You had that specially fitted?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Every individual had a specialized mask? Okay.

BP:	Right. And everything—our electrically heated gloves. 

EW:	Did those things really work?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Did they?

BP:	40:06.4 Except one day, when we were coming back from a mission, and we were down to below 10,000 feet, mine started smoking.

EW:	Uh-oh. Short circuit.

BP:	Something shorted out, so I told Ed, the pilot, I said, “Hey, I’m getting out of this tail. I’m on fire.”

EW:	You just plugged into a port somewhere, didn’t you?

BP:	Yeah. So I got up into the waist and took it off in a hurry.

EW:	What was it a glove or what?

BP:	No, it was something in the jacket—the suit.

EW:	So you had to pretty well strip down because that was inside the fur-lined bomber jacket.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	And inside the coveralls.

BP:	Right.

EW:	Bobby, do you remember any one particular mission that was more memorable than others?

BP:	Oh, yeah. The first one. 

EW:	The very first one?

BP:	After that, I didn’t really have any concern.

EW:	Where was the first mission to? Do you remember?

BP:	We dropped an airfield in Paris—right outside of Paris.

EW:	41:26.9 Combuc (??) or something like that. 

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	I’m not sure that’s how you pronounce it in French. B-U-C or something like that. 

BP:	41:32.7 Nice clear day at 25,000 feet. We got a lot of flack. It knocked the gas line out to one of our engines.

EW:	So you actually had some flack damage on the first mission?

BP:	Yeah. The gasoline was coming through the wing down into the bomb bay, and it also knocked the oil line out to another engine on the other side. 

EW:	Oh, not good.

BP:	And you have to have the oil pressure to feather the prop so that it doesn’t start shaking, which would shake the airplane apart. Well, as soon as things happened, the pilot—or engineer—got on the intercom and said, “Don’t touch anything electrical. Don’t make any spark.” 

EW:	Because of the out gas.

BP:	Yes. And then our navigator, John, said— First of all, we weren’t keeping up with the rest of the squadron. We had to start going down. And John said, “Well, if we have to land in enemy territory—here, here, and here,” as we were headed towards the English Channel. 

EW:	So you all had a close call there already?

BP:	Yeah. This was just right after the invasion. I think we were—they had her about 50 miles in. Then John said, “Well, if we make it across this certain line, we can set down.” There were a couple of airports—

EW:	Within Allied lines.

BP:	Right. And our radio operator got on and notified the ships in the English Channel that we were in trouble.

EW:	Yeah, they had quite an efficient rescue operation out there, I know. 

BP:	Yeah, if we had to ditch it in the water. But, fortunately, we had Ed and Burman that got us home.

EW:	They were able to do that. Well, I must admit to you—and you’ve seen that memoir that I edited for publication—there wasn’t any mention really made of that first mission being any problem. Maybe they have forgotten. Although, you wouldn’t think they’d forget something like that. But you all had that much damage, huh?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	44:18.1 So you had one engine out?

BP:	Actually, two.

EW:	Two. Did you have the—because on the other wing, the gasoline tank had been—the fuel tank had been punctured. But you all were able to make it all the way back to Bassingbourn, thanks to Ed Garner and Kermit Burman, right?

BP:	Right. And the rest of the crew that just clicked off without any hesitation as to what needed to be done. 

EW:	That’s why training, like—you know—military training like that is so necessary, because in situations like that, you really shouldn’t have to think about it. You follow orders, and everybody works together. In that particular case, it probably saved all of your lives.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Any other missions you remember that—?

BP:	Well, of course, the day that we really got hit by fighters, November 2, 1944.

EW:	That was the Merseburg run?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Big raid. 

BP:	Fortunately, we were in the lead squadron. We dropped our bombs first, and the other two squadrons had dropped back a minute apart for better bomb coverage. They also saw that we were getting some flack and antiaircraft. So just about the time we got out of this cloudbank, here comes about 50 German fighter planes. Before they got caught up all together with us, they’d lost 13 ships.

EW:	46:06.8 Yeah, I was going to say, if I remember correctly, the 91st Bomb Group, on that day, put up something like 36 aircraft, if I’m not mistaken—somewhere in that neighborhood. And I did read that there were 13 aircraft lost. And out of that 13, there would be roughly 130 crewmen involved. You have, say, 10 per crew. And if I’m not mistaken, there was— And I don’t remember the exact figures. There was something like 48 of those were killed in action, and the rest of them were taken prisoner of war. This Roy Loyless that I was telling you about, he was on that raid. He got shot, but he was taken POW and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp. I also remember Ed Garner, if I’m not mistaken, in that memoir, stating that you all saw that Me 262 lay off behind you out there out of 50-caliber range.

BP:	Yes.

EW:	Did you see those?

BP:	Yeah. We always wondered, “Well, I wonder whether that streak of stuff going up there is—?.” They said it was a jet fighter that the—observation—to let the rest of them know where we were at. 

EW:	Yeah, the Me 262 was the world’s first jet airplane. And they had put some of those things into production toward the end of the war there. I know that you guys did run into some of those things. 

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Incidentally, too, I don’t know whether you know it or not, but the synthetic fuel plant there at Merseburg was an IG Farben plant, I read. IG Farben, among other things, produced the Zyklon B gas that the Nazis used in their concentration camps to gas their victims. You all might have made a strike at something that related to those horrible things that the Nazis were participating in at that time. Did you have any close calls at Merseburg?

BP:	48:36.4 We had one that had us in his sights. And we had about 20-millimeter shell burst—you know—coming right for us. Fortunately, it stopped maybe a couple hundred feet out away from us. And you just had time enough to—

EW:	One quick burst?

BP:	Give it a burst. Of course—

EW:	Were they coming from behind at the time?

BP:	Yeah. All rear.

EW:	Well, you might comment on this; I know that the tactic that the Germans—that the Luftwaffe—had adopted prior to the coming of the B-17 model G was head-on attack because that was where the least fire power was directed. But then, when the G came out, it had that chin turret there, so I guess they had gone back to attacking from wherever they thought they had an advantage. 

BP:	Yeah. There was a bunch of them. All you could do was sit there and watch these other planes go down. 

EW:	And I guess you saw a lot of that, particularly that day?

BP:	Yes, that day. We were—in my missions—we actually only had a fighter attack two or three times, I think. All of our trouble was from the ground—ground fire. 

EW:	What was that like? There was different colors of flack, wasn’t there? I guess it depended on the type of flack battery.

BP:	Well, most of it was black puffs so that psychologically you see it good. 

EW:	And those were mostly 88s—that famous German 88.

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	But I really didn’t know it here until just recently, but they also had some 155, which seems to be sort of a standard artillery caliber because the United States—we still have 155-millimeter artillery. We saw some of it on TV during the recent Iraq war. And those things, by the time that you guys were flying your missions, they also had some radar control there. 

BP:	51:17.8 Yeah, well, a lot of times, when we were flying, we would have the job of dropping chaff, which is—

EW:	Radar, yeah.

BP:	Little particles to mess up their radar. I think another time we were being real generous. We dropped German ration stamps so that they could go buy their own food. (Laughs)

EW:	So you had a couple of close calls there, but do you remember any other close calls that you all had? You were kind of lucky, really.

BP:	Yeah. We very seldom ever came back without some sort of holes in the plane.

EW:	But you didn’t actually have any wounded or anything other than you mentioned Malawchowsky (??). 

BP:	Yeah. No, that was about it. One day, Mac got out of the waist and said, “Hey, Bob, did you see this up here?” And I said, “No, I was taking my guns out.” There was a nice, big hole about that big around.

EW:	Flack, maybe. Near the waist?

BP:	The vertical tail.

EW:	The vertical stabilizer? Right above you?

BP:	Just right above my head.

EW:	No kidding? Just a big flack fragment, I guess.

BP:	Yes.

EW:	So you guys went ahead and you completed your missions along in the first part of December, I guess it was, 1944, right?

BP:	53:01.8 Right. I had to complete my missions with a different crew because—

EW:	They were a little ahead of you?

BP:	They got a little bit ahead. So there were about two or three missions that I went on—filled in with another crew. 

EW:	One thing I failed to mention, what was the name of your aircraft? Some of these aircrafts were named and some of them weren’t. Those that were named had nose art, which I’m assuming anybody watching this sometime in the future will know what we’re talking about. What was the name of your aircraft?

BP:	It was Time’s-A-Wastin’. 

EW: 	Time’s-A-Wastin’. That was Snuffy Smith.

BP:	Snuffy Smith.

EW:	A comic strip character at that time.

BP:	Li’l Abner.

EW:	From Li’l Abner, right. So you completed your missions and then what happened? Did you remain in ETO, or did you return back to the states?

BP:	I came back to the states. 

EW:	Pretty quickly?

BP:	Just a few weeks before the war ended. 

EW:	Really? Where did you go? Do you remember?

BP:	I think I had orders to go down to Miami Beach for a little bit of R and R and reassignment.

EW:	Right. And then, probably on reassignment, where you went, that was for discharge, right?

BP:	No. Well, I wasn’t quite that far yet. I was reassigned to Laredo, Texas for gunnery instructor school. Of course, while we didn’t do too much of it there, our point system came out and—

EW:	55:04.8 Did you have enough?

BP:	Yeah, just enough.

EW:	What were they, like 85?

BP:	Yeah. 

EW:	And you got points for overseas service, number of missions flown, and various factors to add up to a certain number.

BP:	Yeah. We had different theaters of operation that we flew in. Most all of us received the Air Medal, and two of those Air Medals—with each of the different operations, you’ve got a—more or less—an oak leaf cluster, and additional—

EW:	Which means another air medal. Right. 

BP:	So with all those together, we were able to get points.

EW:	So when were you released from active duty? Do you remember?

BP:	Probably along September.

EW:	Of ’45?

BP:	’45.

EW:	So you were more or less in a gunnery instructional position until you were discharged.

BP:	Yeah. Right. 

EW:	Okay.

BP:	And they shipped us to Sheridan in Chicago.

EW:	Is that where you were mustered out?

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	56:26.6 With your 200 dollars, or whatever it was?

BP:	Two hundred dollars, and they said, “See you later.” 

EW:	Did you incur any kind of reserve obligation after that?

BP:	No, I didn’t. 

EW:	And that ended your military association?

BP:	Yeah. I often wished I had stayed in, but I didn’t. 

EW:	A lot of guys did.

BP:	Yeah.

EW:	Wished they did. And then, of course, like Paul Chryst, your bombardier, he did remain in the reserves. I think he ended up with something like 27 years service. Well, we’re getting on down toward the end here, so why don’t you relate a little bit about what happened to you after the war and what you did up to this point—sort of a brief account.

BP:	Well, here again, you don’t know what you want to do, so I got into a machinist school—tool and die making. 

EW:	Good choice.

BP:	David Ranken School (??). I was there about a year, and then they got to having some difficulties with their record keeping, so they said, “We’ll keep you here at school, but the government won’t pay you anything.” And that wasn’t going to work out. 

EW:	Well, you were probably using the GI Bill, huh?

BP:	Yeah. So we tried to find a school around and tried to find one in Chicago and really couldn’t get any information and ended up down in Memphis, Tennessee. I started in a school down there. The living conditions were so that they were still fighting the civil war.

EW:	We still are, Bobby. We still are. Let’s not get off into that. Oh, I ought to add—

BP:	We came back to Illinois and I—

EW:	Now you say “we,” are you talking about—?

BP:	My wife and I.

EW:	You had been married. We didn’t mention the fact that you were married to Mary, who is here in this very room now. You all were married prior to your going to the—

BP:	In the service, right. 

EW:	So she was waiting there in Springfield, right?

BP:	Yes.

EW:	And then when you came back, okay, so what happened after that? You all were back home.

BP:	There was a Sangamo Electric Company that I started working at, doing some precision lathe work. They mainly made house meters. They also worked with the Navy on their sonar. They were the ones that developed the sonar equipment.

EW:	Well, let me interrupt you because we’re just about out of time, as usual. This always happens to me. Is that pretty well what you did the rest of your career?

BP:	Yeah. The factory— After 15 years, the factory started going down, so my wife started wanting to get into daycare, so we got together into daycare. 

EW:	And you all continued that until fairly recently?

BP:	Yes. We operated a daycare center for 42 years—43.

EW:	Goodness—long time. Well, listen, we’re actually out of time here, so let me just say, on behalf of the Library of Congress, in my capacity as a volunteer interviewer, how much I appreciate your taking the time to do this. And I know I can speak for all Americans—well, I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure all Americans would feel the same thing, a great appreciation for your service in a very dangerous time in our country’s history. I appreciate your time, Bobby.

BP:	Thank you.