Page 90 - Anthology

The unit was activated 1 May 1943, at Gowen Field, Idaho, where initial training for flight crew was
conducted. Then the unit moved to Wendover Field, Utah, on the fourth of July 1943, for the second
phase of training.

Boise is where one of the men saw the actor Jimmy Stewart and talked to him. He asked could we
volunteer and be put on the same crew together. Him and this boy had been through school together,
stood up for each other when they married and were good friends. The next morning it was on the board,
you see Jimmy was a big wheel.

So, me and Dickey, we ask too. We had made friends. We met at the gunnery school. I don't think he
flew any there. We got assigned to the crew and went down to Pocatello, Idaho, that’s where you flew.
They were training pilots, so every time the pilot flew, the entire crew flew. I remember we would get in
the plane and all the pilot did was take off, circle around, land, and take off. He did that for hours it
seemed like. I would take a parachute as a pillow and sleep. You see we didn’t have anything to do.
We went to Kansas City, Kansas, to get on the plane to go over. Going overseas was aboard a B-17
Flying Fortress. There was a Ferry Command Pilot; you didn’t take your own plane over. They had some
green crews going over to England and they overshot and landed in France. So, they went to Ferry
Command Pilots who knew more about where they were going.

We went to Buffalo, New York and spent one night. I went over into Canada to a good size town. Then
we flew up into Canada and spent the night, then on to Prescott, MA, then to Newfoundland. The field
was a quarter mile wide; you could land two planes easy at a time. We were there about a week waiting
for the wind to get right. They started taking off at dark, we took off at midnight. On the way we were
piled up behind the bulkhead. One guy took his things and moved back to the tail and stretched out. It
wasn’t but a few minutes till the engineer came back and said to all get back up front. It changed the
weight and was using too much fuel.

We landed about Liverpool and stayed two nights. We went up to a little town a few miles out of London
for about a week. We would walk into town. I went into London two or three times. We hired a taxi, all of
us that could get in it, and the driver took us around to the main sights.

There had been big blocks blown out of the Tower of London, I saw Big Ben, and the London Bridge.
They used the Tube as bomb shelters, and one had a direct hit. Buildings that had been bombed out
were cleaned out and a wall was built around them and they were flooded with water to make them
stronger against the German bombs.

When there was a fire, they didn’t have to pull on the hydrants. I was downtown in London and they blew
the siren. I went out and looked, but I didn’t see anything, so I went back to bed. London was so big I
didn’t hear anything.

Then I went to Norwich, about 10 or 15 miles from London. This was right after Christmas in ‘43. While
we were in London, we did some flying. Once we were up flying around when all of a sudden, they said
get back and land now. Well there were a lot of planes and we had to wait our turn and the fog moved in
and they didn’t have no lights. We tried to land but the pilot could not line up. After two or three passes
they lined up two barrels of oil, but that still didn’t work so they had to put out two more half way down the
field.
One time he had to raise up; they said it looked like his wheels were rolling on the hanger. It kinda
scared the guys on the ground. Those runways were just wide enough to put your wheels on, no extra
concrete. And the service roads were just wide enough for your wheel. If another truck came up, it had
to wait till you got off.