The REAL 'Masters of the Air' | Bloody Hundredth Co-pilot on Air Combat | 8th Air Force | John Clark

The flak has several different threats. One is, of course, the damage from the flak itself. Because when it explodes, it throws steel particles in all directions. And we were virtually flying through clouds of flying steel when we were over the target. Then it exploded near us. We could feel the flak hit the airplane. And when it hit a wing spar or another structure, remember, the aircraft goes boom. And then we'd also hear the flak hitting the rest of the airplane. Hit fuel lines, hit gas tanks. I've seen airplanes blow up. And then trying to put on a flak suit the last minute, pilots would lose a little control. Sometimes they'd collide with the guy next to them. I've seen that happen several times. And both those aircraft would just go down. You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade. To meet this mounting aggression. And make no mistake about it, good will prevail. On that day, on the 7th of December, we had arranged a drive from Royal Oak to Battle Creek, Michigan, to visit my brother, who was in Camp Custer, called Fort Custer now. When we got there, the gates were closed. And they were not allowed on the base. No explanation was given. But, so we had no choice but to turn around, drive back to Royal Oak, about a three or four hour drive in those days. And when we got home, the first thing we did was turn on the radio. And the first thing we heard was a static. With little background noise. And then we learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor about 7.30 that evening. That's the first we heard over WJR in Detroit. We knew there was some disagreements by newspaper talk in the previous month or so. But a surprise attack of such veracity was a shock. We really didn't quite know what to think about it. Except that we were sure we were in a fighting war with Japan at that point. Well, the first thing I did was to spend six weeks at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, where you learn to march and walk and salute and say yes sir, no sir, no excuse sir. Just plain GI in the spring of 1943. Rain, mud, mosquitoes all the time. We called it, well, it wasn't a very pleasant name. And then after we finished that real basic training, they shipped all of us. We were all part of Air Force, interested in the Air Force. They shipped us to a college in Iowa because the lines in training were still jammed. I went to Iowa State Teachers College at Cedar Falls for about, well, I think the people I went with stayed there about a month or two months. But I'd been there about two or three days, and the dean, under civilian management, the dean called three of us in, he said, there's no need for you to spend any time here. We have the results of your general service exam, and you all got almost 100%. I'd been in college for a year or so. The other two had. So they shipped us on out to Santa Ana, California for classification. I got graduated in April of 44, and went on as a flight officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps. I arrived at Las Vegas. Oh, I think it was a late evening, and the next evening I went to the officers club just to write a letter home, routine thing, to let them know where I was and what I was supposed to do, I thought. But when I sat in the officers club writing a letter, I looked up and here came this really beautiful young woman walking down the aisle in a uniform and with silver wings on her blouse. Well, of course, I couldn't let that go by. So I put my pencil down and said, I see you have pilot's wings on. Do you fly airplanes? And she said, yes, I am a member of the WASP. That's the Women's Air Force Service Pilots, of which about 1,000 were trained after a very difficult course of getting admitted to the Air Force. And I fly fighters and AT-6 trainers out of Las Vegas, because Las Vegas was a flexible gunnery school. So that means, flexible means they trained gunners for heavy bombers, the guns mounted on a pivot. And under her arm, she was carrying a classical record of La Mer by Debussy. And because it turned out she was a superb professional musician before the war and a national flute champion in high school. I didn't know that at the time. But she said, I'm going to the library to play La Mer, and you may come if you wish. Well, I thought about that. I thought, well, I'm way ahead of her. So I went along, and that was our introduction and our first date. And we dated. I was there for a very short period. We had a date just about every night. So we had a very nice time. In the meantime, I was assigned co-pilot studies. It was not exactly a formal program. You just sort of sat there and learned by doing. It wasn't formal training in a V-17, but it was the first time I'd ever been in one. But I got quite familiar with it. We had a wonderful ground school. Motors and pumps and so on, all mounted on boards and hooked up to work. So we learned a lot about the aircraft. And it's a good thing for a co-pilot to know, because in operations, things come up that you never heard, but you know where they were and what they're supposed to do. So after six weeks, about, at Las Vegas, I got orders to report to Lincoln, Nebraska. Well, that was a center for gathering all of the components of flight personnel, pilots, navigators, bombardiers, and gunners, who were all sergeants, to form a flight crew for the four-engine bomber. And then we went to two months of active flight training in Dyersburg, Tennessee, to join a flight group, flying formation, flying, actually, Eighth Air Force methods. The school, about four or five of them in the country. So the crews assembled in Lincoln, Nebraska, shipped to the flight school for two months training in European Eighth Air Force operations. So we became quite familiar with how formations they had, but we had a lot more to learn. But we were then prepared to go to a combat zone after that time. American Military University is a proud sponsor of this video. AMU is excited to announce a 10% veteran grant for eligible veterans and their families, which can be applied to undergraduate and master level courses. I personally love AMU because I took many courses on my deployments to Afghanistan that really helped me get a head start when I left the military. For more information and eligibility, follow the link in the description below. At the end of August of 44, we were shipped back to Lincoln, Nebraska, assigned an airplane, which in Air Force terminology meant we bought the airplane. We actually signed papers that we owned it. And then when we got to England, because we were going to fly to England, the Air Force bought it back from us. It sounds like a bookkeeping. That was kind of amusing to us. If we ever hurt the plane, we couldn't have ever paid for it. But anyway, we were assigned an aircraft. And then after about three or four hours around Lincoln, Nebraska, just flying the aircraft. I had about 150 hours down in Dyersburg. So we were very familiar with the aircraft. But these were the latest things off the line. And we flew it from Lincoln to Wales in several steps. When we got to Europe, everything was different, quite a bit different. And for that first year or so, the Air Force we were assigned to, I was assigned, our crew was assigned to 100th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force with bases around central England. And the operations, they started out with no real background. So elementary things is formation flying. And the first thing we ran into was the group commander. He would say, get in formation, you're lagging, get in, tighten it up, tighten it up. So the 8th Air Force had to learn how to fly tight formations because the bomb pattern on the ground is what's important. So that's why we're there. And it's formed when the aircraft are flying tight formation of 12 aircraft in a squadron. And so that had to be mastered. And it's much harder than it seems because the aircraft could collide, and sometimes they did. But you have to keep constantly monitoring the throttle and the controls. And as a co-pilot, I would fly the plane all the time we were on the left wing of the lead ship. And when it was opposite, then the pilot would fly it. And in combat operations, we had a sort of agreement that the pilot would fly it, we'd take off and land alternately. One day he'd take off, the next day I would. And but in the air, he'd fly it for 5 or 10 minutes, depending on if we're out over the sea, we'd loosen the formation so you can relax a little bit and just fly it. All hand flying, no automatic pilot on that. Automatic pilot would be too dangerous because you got to make quick changes. So that was what our mission consisted of in the air to fly tight. And I don't think our colonel ever said, you're doing a good job. He said, tighten it up, tighten it up. We get almost so our wings would overlap. And he constantly explains that I told you before, the bomb pattern will depend on how close you are in the air, which is perfectly logical, but that's why we're doing this. So we just started flying ready to combat missions. We would take off in the morning and assemble and take about two hours circling over England to get a group of 36 aircraft together. That's a group. Three groups made a wing, one ahead of the other. And three wings made a division. A division might have 800 airplanes in it. And so we learned to assemble that way. It sounds like it's very difficult. It's something that must be done with precision. But we had techniques. The tail gunner on the aircraft that we were going to fly off of would have an altar's lamp with a color of a selected cover. Ours was yellow. And he would give a Morse code, D-D-D-D. That's Morse code D, which was the code for the 100th Bomb Group, the bloody 100th. And so we'd circle and get in a formation of three ships together and flights together until we left. Then we'd line up about 15 miles along as the division of the 8th Air Force headed for the target. And that would take us right into, we'd almost get to Poland sometime. That's when the fighters were becoming an important issue. Although at our time, at that part of the war, the Mustang single-engine fighter was coming in large quantities. Before that, they didn't. And the German Air Force tore the groups apart. The Mustang solved that problem. And then we just could go to the target. And 8th Air Force techniques were to, a target would be at one point. And then about 30 miles away, it would be another point. And the groups would come and hit that initial point, they called it. And because the squadrons were kind of ragged. And then from there to the target, they flew straight and level and didn't do anything except get organized. The lead navigator, see, we all carried bombs. But we only, each plane did not navigate itself to the target. We followed the plane next to us, which followed the lead airplane, who had the lead navigator to identify the target to make sure it was the right one or make a good guess, which was often the case. And the lead bombardier, he'd get his Norton bomb sight, if he could see it, on the target. And then the lead bombardier dropped his bombs. Everyone else dropped theirs, just by sight. We'd always say, bombs away, because the aircraft would bounce up a little bit. Just like the movies. And for the same reason. And then we would, a technique was to go into a steep right turn and drop, because the Germans caught on right away that from the initial point to the target, we were flying straight and level and were tight together, the best targets they could ever have. So flak caused most of our problems. The flak had several different threats. One was, of course, the damage from the flak itself, because when it explodes, it throws steel particles in all directions. And we were virtually flying through clouds of flying steel when we were over the target. If it didn't explode near us, we'd feel the flak hit the airplane. And when it hit a wing spar or another structure member, the aircraft would go boom. And then we'd also hear the flak hitting the rest of the airplane. When we got back, first thing the ground crew did was go around and look for holes in the airplane. And when we flew through a flak area, not all targets had a lot of heavy flak, but when we did, there'd be, oh, eight or ten parts of the airplane. You know, thin aluminum doesn't stop anything. They'd have to patch that up for the next flight. No one ever got hit. But I got pieces of flak given to me by the ground crew, and that was really the most serious aerial damage. Hit fuel lines, hit gas tanks. I'd seen airplanes blow up, and then trying to put on a flak suit the last minute, pilots would lose a little control. Sometimes they'd collide with the guy next to them. I'd seen that happen several times, and both those aircraft would just go down. At that point, some of the main problems that 8th Air Force crews had, not often mentioned, showed up. Fuel consumption, particularly. Twice we ran low. One time we crash landed in Belgium because we ran out of fuel. The target was Frankfurt, Germany, and as we pulled off the target and dropped it down, I noticed the fuel pressure on number three engine was showing some irregularities. The pressure gauge was doing this, and finally it went right to zero, which meant there was nothing in the tank. I thought perhaps we had been hit by flak and it damaged something, so we dealt with that issue as you deal with any engine that quits. You try to feather the engine. Do you know what that means? The propeller blades are largely airfoils, just like the wing, except it lifts the plane in the forward direction, which is flying. But in order to operate efficiently, those blades could be adjusted from the cockpit to a high RPM, where the blade would go right in and hit the air like a knife. Then crews would be a little bit off of that because there's an oil pump on each engine, oil-driven, which would fix the blades. But when the engine quits, it's no longer useful, and your feathering system fails to work, you're in big trouble. Because the air itself flowing past the propeller turns it. It's called wind milling. Then you're four hours from home with an engine that's not running, but it's being turned over at maybe 1,000 RPM. You run out of oil, lubricating oil, and then that engine gets white-hot by friction. Right behind that engine is the 400-gallon fuel tank. A wind milling prop that does not control and stop over several hours is a death sentence to the engine and more than likely to the airplane itself. Fortunately, number three, which was first noticed as running out of fuel, or oil pressure wasn't running, the props were feathered. They lined up with the airstream and didn't turn, didn't windmill. That was the first thing we checked because windmilling is a death sentence, basically. So we fell out of formation at that particular time. Then we couldn't keep up with the formation. All the rest of them were running properly, other engines, and we fell out and fell behind. Between Cologne and the French border is where a lot of the German jet fighters were. We were all by ourselves and, of course, in a hazardous position. We have VHF radio, very high-frequency radio. I called a code sign and called for fighters and told them we were 30 miles southeast of point B. We didn't tell them where it was on the map. They had the map. Within five minutes, five Mustangs came right around us. Why did they look good? Because we were expecting trouble all along. During that brief time they were there, one of them pulled alongside. I saw him pull his canopy back. His oxygen mask was hanging down here. He was smoking a cigar. He looked over at me and he said, OK, sonny boy, we'll look after you for a while. But remember, we use gasoline, too, and so we'll have to leave in a little while. And he stuck his cigar back in his mouth and said, So, so long. I saw his head after a while. He was just off our wing. He was probably the commanding officer of the group, I think. I don't believe a second lieutenant would do that. But then, in a little while, I saw him pull it back. He said, oh, we got to go now, but there'll be others right behind us. Good luck. So long. Happy landing. Down he went and off the Mustangs left. And sure enough, pretty soon, the tail gunner said, Fighters at six o'clock. I said, yeah, Jimmy, I think there probably are. Keep your eyes on them. Keep your guns on them until we're sure. Don't fire until you're sure. And they came up alongside. They were another four Mustangs. They just circled around us, looked us over, probably curious, you know. And they didn't call at all. After a while, they left, and we were left to ourselves then. Well, we had a crew of 10 in those days. During the time I was there, the crews were reduced to nine because a bombardier was kind of superfluous on most of the aircraft. In a squadron of 12, in the original plan, there'd be 12 bombardiers. But the lead bombardier did all the sighting for the target. And he had a deputy flying off his right wing. The other bombardiers were not necessary. So they took them off the crews. They never did that to our crew, and I don't know why. But then it went from 10 to nine men. We had four officers and six enlisted men. The key members were the crew chief who operated the upper gun turret right behind the cockpit. And he was kind of a mechanic, expert on assistant operation. And then the radio operator right above the wing in the back. And he could maintain morse code and voice occasionally with other back to the base or whatever. And then there were the rest were gunners. Two gunners in the fuselage, a gunner in the ball turret. He hunched up like that all during the mission too. And then a tail gunner. Tail gunner had two guns and the ball turret gunner had two guns. 50 caliber guns and 400 rounds, I think they took. And the upper turret the same. And then there was guns in front. We were flying what we call the G model of the fortress. One that has a chin turret with two guns on it. The last third of the war of Boeing's were flown with those. Then we had a tagalier, not a bombardier, a tagalier. His job was on the bomb run. He'd watch the lead ship. And when he saw the bombs falling away, there also were four smoke bombs that were dropped at the same time hanging under the wing of the lead ship. So everyone could see that smoke bomb go down. He threw a toggle switch. And then he opened the bomb bay doors at the right time with one switch. And then his hand on the toggle switch. That's the interval of the bomb. Either salvoed, which is rare, or boom, boom, boom. Toggle the right time mechanism in the bomb release system. So he was a tagalier. He watched for the smoke flares and just do this. Everyone knew the bomb when the plane would rise up a little bit. So I flew with two crews. First crew was from Washington state. Very, very, usually it's older than the pilots. But they were experienced mechanics, experienced gunners, knowledgeable of the aircraft. Oh, the rest of them came from around the country. When I was first assigned a co-pilot back in the States, my first pilot was a fellow who'd been in the four-engine training command with 2,000 hours in the airplane. Chuck Blanding. When he got to England, he was quickly made a lead pilot. But I flew the first six or eight missions and all the training missions with Chuck. Chuck Blanding from New York state. And he was a wonderful teacher. He let me fly whenever I wanted to. He'd say, John, why don't you take it off now? And then he taught me all I really knew about the B-17. Then he went on to lead crew about Christmas time of 1944. And a lead crew meant that he took over the pilot here, the lead ship. And in my place, there'd be an airborne squadron commander replacing the co-pilot. And the co-pilot, in many cases, would replace the tail gunner and become what they call the formation control officer. I was offered that when Chuck went on to lead crew. But I told him I didn't want to. I joined the Air Force to fly, not to be a tail gunner. Besides, I thought the tail gunner could do a better job anyway. So I then sat around for a while until I joined another crew and finished up with them.