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44th Bomb Group

That'll Be $50.00 You Owe The U.S. Government, Sergeant

Wednesday, September 13, 1944 started out like any other mission from the 44th Bomb Group airfield at Shipdham. Our squadron, the 68th, had as its target the German jet propulsion aerodrome at Schwabish/Hall, Germany. This was to be our 22nd mission. Our pilot, Ray Mondloh, and copilot, Paul Holmes, would be pulling their 23rd.

At 6:00 a.m. we took off and formed up over England and Scotland with the rest of the group. We then crossed the Channel and headed for Germany. As it turned out, our group was flying low left in the box formation. Our squadron was low left and I was the assistant engineer-gunner in the left waist window position.

Just as we approached the Ruhr Valley, the Kaiser Wilhelm graduate school for 88 flak battery gunners was holding their graduation exercises. The instructors were showing the "new boys" how to pick off bombers by firing just to the left side of the formation - at us! When we first picked up the flak, we thought everyone was getting it, and when we called the lead ship, they didn't know what we were talking about! This went on for a few minutes and, since, we couldn't take evasive action without disturbing the box formation, the 88 gunners were preparing to pick up their Kewpie dolls for 10 out of 10 shots.

Our bomb load was 12 each 500 lb. M17 incendiaries and, when we were hit in #2 engine (feathered) and #2 gas tank, and that vapor trail from the gas went out by my nose, a quick poll among the crew said, "Let's get the hell out of here:" We made a long left turn back toward friendly territory to avoid the commencement address speakers below us and called for fighter protection (friendly, that is).

Within a few minutes those "twin tail devils," two P-38s, showed up and advised us they were running low on fuel but would call in a friendly P-51 they knew was on the deck below, shooting up targets of opportunity. We then salvoed the incendiaries and looked for the P-51 and M-109s. The P-51 came up from behind cautiously and tucked himself under our right wing. The name of his ship was "Bean City Charlie," and he had black and white checkerboard markings underneath the canopy, with a few swastikas to lend a little color. He told us he would vector us in to a P-47 base that had just been taken over from the Germans the week before, outside of Paris about thirty miles, a town called "Coulumniers.” He did, and we landed without incident. There we transferred the gas from the "self-sealing" gas tank, borrowed some more from the fighter base and looked over the cracked carburetor on #2 engine, plus other damage. We decided to go into the nearby town while some other crew members, who shall be nameless, headed for the fleshpots of Paris.

Having 4,000 francs in our escape kit, we sampled the local vino, bought some parfum for our wives and girlfriends, and spent about all of the francs. We must have looked strange walking down the street in our electric-heated flying suits with the cord dangling.

After a breakfast of "C" rations we borrowed from the 9th AF locals, we decided to see if Orville was Wright; although some of the crew wanted to stay - to go into the woods nearby, with our 45s, and help the Maquis eliminate some more Germans; however, wiser heads prevailed.

Our takeoff next day had a low overcast, so when we took off we stayed under, and flew at about 300 feet over the city of Paris. What a sight! Crossing the Channel, it was "May Day, May Day" to the English ladies manning the flak battery along the coast. Ray Mondloh's Minnesota accent helped.

We made a nice soft touchdown at Shipdham and surprised our crew chief, Calvin, that we had brought back our $250,000 ship. He did get out of sorts when we brought it back with holes that Consolidated Aircraft never intended to be there! Calvin was a good crew chief.

Naturally, all of our clothes, shoes, radios, pictures, etc. were gone when we walked into the hut. We had been reported MIA because other crew members had finally noticed there was blue sky where formerly a B-24 was and, seeing the gas vapor pouring out of the tank, they thought we were on fire and going down.

We walked down to the flight line the next day and turned in our escape kits for new ones. A few days later we all got a message to report to the Finance Office. It seems we were all short about 4,000 francs ($50.00 American) that we had spent in France. The U.S. Army Air Forces wanted its money - no ifs, ands or buts. If we had been killed, it would have been OK. The fact that we came back with a quarter million dollar plane almost intact cut no ice with the lieutenant in Finance. We had to pay up! Now I'm looking for that Finance Officer from the 44th. If I find him, I think he owes me a drink! But how can I drink up $50.00 worth? Anyone care to join me? The drinks may be on the Finance Department of the 8th AF back at Norwich.

Edward J. Barton (44th). That'll Be $50.00 You Owe The U.S. Government, Sergeant. The Journal 2nd Air Division. Volume 43 Number 3, Fall 2004.

Joplin Jalopy

Distinguished World War II bomber flies only in memories

The Joplin Jalopy came in at just 300 feet above ground level, barely the length of a football field turned on end. It was March 24, 1945. "Today’s effort ... was one of the most important since the invasion of France,” reads the mission log. "In order to attain final victory, it was imperative that the ground forces gain a crossing of the Rhine River in order to break out of the north German plain.”

Allied soldiers, west northwest of Wesel, were making a final, fatal thrust into Germany in the waning weeks of the war in Europe. With them, as it had been since the summer of 1944, came the Joplin Jalopy, a B-24 bomber named for the town whose citizens had purchased $300,000 in war bonds.

Sixty-nine tons of supplies were dropped, according to the log, with "excellent success.” But the price of "excellent success” was severe. One of the bombers, its engine smoking, stalled, then nosed into the ground and exploded, killing all on board. Other planes were punched through with anti-aircraft fire.

Sgt. Anibal Diaz, a gunner from Tampa, Fla., was standing between the open ball turret well and the bomb bay in the Joplin Jalopy when somehow — no one knows exactly — his chest parachute deployed, spilling out the ball turret well and sucking him out through it. "I saw him go out of the aircraft and hit the ground and bounce like a ball,” said Robert Vance, of Ontario, Calif. He was a gunner and assistant radio operator who had flown on the Jalopy on two previous missions. This day, however, he was flying on Southern Comfort III. "The Germans later reported him as dead,” the log states matter-of-factly of Diaz.

Vance’s plane was then hit, lost control, bounced off the ground and for the next 90 seconds struggled to gain altitude. Then its right wing dipped, struck the ground and pinwheeled the plane into a disintegrating, fiery explosion. Vance was one of only two crew members to survive, with broken bones and teeth and lacerations. It was only his eighth mission and already he was an injured prisoner of war. Even in the final weeks of the fighting, the life expectancy of men and planes was short.

Scrap metal

In all of its missions — and there were 66 of them — Diaz was the only casualty of the Joplin Jalopy, which is a " remarkable” record, said Will Lundy, a historian for the 44th Bomb Group. He lives today in Cool, Calif., and said the Jalopy was part of the 506th squadron, which was part of the 44th. "Some of the crews who flew in it allegedly regarded it as a lucky ship,” said Robert Smith, of Pittsburg, Kan., who is researching the Joplin plane for an article and book, and who provided copies of the mission log.

But the Jalopy’s luck would soon run out. Having survived bombing runs over marshaling yards, railways and sub pens, having survived anti-aircraft fire over oil refineries and holdout German troops, it couldn’t survive Joplin, where it was brought after the war to serve as a memorial. Vandalism, indifference and outright cannibalization of parts left little more than the hull of the bomber rotting on the ground. At one point, it was described by an observer as looking like a "beached whale.”

The Joplin Jalopy ended up as scrap metal. But don’t be too quick to judge, said Smith. "The experience was by no means unique,” he said. Many other cities acquired planes from the war but later scrapped them.

Smith said the Joplin Jalopy was on something of a parallel course with the more famous Memphis Belle, a B-17, which was the first heavy bomber to complete 25 combat missions and keep her entire crew alive at a time when 80 percent of Allied bombers were shot down over Europe.

The Belle ended up in the same boneyard in Altus, Okla., as the Jalopy, and like the Jalopy was purchased for a few hundred bucks to serve as a memorial, said Smith. And, like the Jalopy, vandals and indifference nearly destroyed the Belle, although it was eventually restored.

Aviation bug

Smith’s passion for the Joplin Jalopy stems from his own background as the son of a Royal Air Force veteran. "I have had the aviation bug for a long time,” he said. His American wife works as a professor in the library at Pittsburg (Kan.) State University, and when they visit England they have an agreement. "We do a cathedral (for her) one day and an air base the next,” he said.

It was while working at the Joplin Public Library that Smith first learned of the Jalopy. He later came across a mention of it in another article in a recent edition of the magazine "FlyPast.” His own interest was launched. It turns out, said Smith, that in 1944, when Americans were hopping through the Pacific and slicing through what Churchill called the soft underbelly of Europe, and preparing for D-Day, Joplin residents were buying warbonds to support those efforts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in war bonds. It was enough to get one of the new bombers named in the town’s honor. The Joplin Jalopy arrived in Europe in the summer of 1944, flying its first mission on July 29 to bomb ship building targets at Oslebshausen.

Different crews rotated through the plane, and some flew in it several times. Like Gerald Folsom, 84, now of Salt Lake City, who was a co-pilot, and his tail gunner Perry Morse, 82, of York, Penn. They rode the Jalopy in October of 1944 for bombing raids of marshaling yards at Koblenz and Kaiserlautern, and oil refineries over other German cities, including Hamburg. "That was a rough one,” Morse said of Hamburg. "We had a lot of flak.”

Folsom remember another close call in the Jalopy. "All of sudden we lost power,” he said, sending the crew scrambling to check for problems. Fuel was OK, Folsom remembers. Their problem stemmed from a blown fuse in the supercharger. "Nobody had ever heard of a fuse blowing on a supercharger,” he said. But it was fortunate for the crew that it did. "At the moment we lost power there were four big fireball explosions right in front of us. We’d have been right there ...” Asked if the plane was lucky, Folsom replied: "We always figured somebody else was flying on that plane that we never did see.” The Jalopy’s last combat mission was April 25, 1945.

Headwind

After Germany’s surrender, pilots and crews returned to the United States to prepare for the war in the Pacific, but ultimately they were not needed. And the Joplin Jalopy joined thousands of other surviving planes in salvage yards like the one in Altus, Okla. It was there when the Joplin War Dads voted to buy it, The Joplin Globe noted in an article at the time, "as a permanent war trophy for the city.”

It was to be housed at Schifferedecker Park with other memorials of World War II. In August of 1946, in what would be its last flight, the Joplin Jalopy was flown to the Joplin airport. "Bucking a headwind and not able to make top speed, the famed combat-wise Joplin Jalopy ... returned home Sunday, tired and obviously well-worn ... but with its shining silver frame still worthy of the title Joplin Jalopy,” The Globe reported.

A large crowd was on hand for the event, but all of that enthusiasm wouldn’t spare the plane. The community was only able to raise 19 percent of what it needed for the project, The Globe reported, and the airplane remained at the airport for several years until it was eventually scrapped.

It was a different time, Smith explained, and attitudes were different. One argument for not pushing forward with memorial projects was based on the needs of the soldiers. "We’ve got veterans who don’t have houses over their heads. Why are you trying to put a roof over a bomber?” went the reasoning, Smith said. In The Globe that same summer were stories about G.I. housing being in short supply in Joplin and elsewhere.

Another argument was based on leaving the war in the past. "A lot of people just wanted to put it all behind them,” Smith said. Besides serving as a historical touchstone, the plane would have other value today, Smith said; it literally would be worth millions of dollars. "With its provenance, you could name your price,” Smith said.

Andy Ostmeyer Globe Assistant Metro Editor. Joplin Jalopy. The Joplin Globe. Joplin, MO. 1/22/06.

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The 44th Bomb Group in WWII The "Flying Eight-Balls" over Europe in the B-24. Mackay & Adams. The 44th Bomb Group, which flew the B-24 Liberator, amassed an impressive 343 missions and won two Distinguished Unit Citations between November 1942 and April 1945. Here, you'll read its complete history, including its participation in the legendary August 1943 Ploesti mission and the tragic loss of some 2,000 airmen Missing in Action.

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