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A Naval Air Crewman In WWII

Blue Raiders Triumph The combination of tight formation flying, concentrated firepower and flying as low as forty feet above the sea allowed these PB4Y-1s to outlast the eight Zeros attacking them in a forty-five minute battle. With almost no damage to their aircraft, the men of VPB-116 destroyed six Zeros. Based on the actual Aircraft Action Report #29, which is included with the print. Limited edition print measures 23"x 23" and is signed and numbered by the artist.

I was born in the Roaring 20's and grew up in the 'Great Depression'. I didn't remember the twenty's but the thirty's I'll remember for the rest of my life. We were very poor! I don't remember my father working much when I was a teenager. I worked in a grocery store when I was 14 years old and when I was 15 I got a job as a bus boy in the Broad Channel Baths, which was a summer resort. I made $12.00 a week for 40 hours or whatever hours I worked. On Wednesday and Friday evenings I worked in the same place as a waiter and made tips, which was more than my weekly salary. My brother, Jack, got me a job in a big commercial art studio named Becker Studio. When I wasn't running errands, I would sit at an art desk and practice until I was doing art work all the time. I was there until I joined the Navy. l was a sick child when I was pre-school age. I had a day and night nurse which was paid by home relief. I had double pneumonia, whopping cough, scarlet fever, chicken pox, diphtheria and infantile paralysis for two years. My mother didn't think I was going to live and was she surprised when I passed the physical for the Navy Air Corps.

My family moved to Broad Channel L.I., N.Y from the Bronx in 1933. This was the same time that Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany but back then the only worry we had was trying to get food to eat. Many a night my dinner consisted of a catsup or mustard sandwich. At nine years old I never realized what an effect he would have on the rest of my life. During the 30's even though we were poor we really enjoyed ourselves. Besides school, where I attended St. Virgilus Catholic School, I had a lot of good friends on 11th Road where we played touch tackle, stick ball and kept up with the Major League teams. My favorite team was the New York Yankees with the group they called the Bronx Bomber with Babe Ruth, Joe Di Maggio and my all time favorite, Lou Gherig, (The Iron Man). My father was very proud of me because I knew the batting averages and the home run total of all the players in both leagues. At that time there were only 8 teams in each league. The friends I made back then stayed with me for over 50 years.

When December 7th came, my first recollection of Pearl Harbor was on a bus going to a movie in Rockaway Beach. The only ones on the bus was the driver, my friend Jimmy, a lonely soldier and myself. When we got to the booth the man in the booth said, "Hey soldier you better report to your base.The Japs just attacked Pearl Harbor." Jimmy and I had no idea where Pearl was so we went on to the movies. The next day in Broad Channel where we lived, every one was talking about it and hating the Japs for what they had done.

I wanted to enlist and went to the Marine Corps but my mother wouldn't sign for me and thank God because I probably would have been on Guadalcanal. A few months later I enlisted in the United States Navy. After taking the Navy Oath we were put on a train. No one knew where we were going. I met a few guys on the train. One guy I liked but we forgot to tell each other our names and when we finally got to Newport, RI., they cut all our hair off and I didn't find him for a couple of weeks. The hardest part was we wore knitted hats and with no hair it was so itchy it drove us crazy. At that time there were only two boot camps, Newport and the Great Lakes. For 12 weeks we were called skinheads. One thing I remember was that I was on guard duty on a bridge going from the main land to the island. I was in a booth and it was bitter cold outside. I heard a noise and I jumped outside in the dark and yelled HALT and a duty officer on a bike was so startled he missed the bridge and went down the embankment right into the river and he almost died of pneumonia.

I took all the tests for the Navy Aviation Schools because I didn't know how to swim (a fine Navy man). After Boots were over I had a week's leave so I went home. It was nighttime when I knocked and my darling mother opened the door and said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I quit." My mother said, "Thank God!" The next day I found out I made my first choice in the schools. I was picked for Aviation Radio School in Jacksonville, FL. A nice place to go for the winter.

I was given 10 more days leave before I left for Florida. I was there for 10 months with sixteen weeks in radio school and 8 weeks radar school. The training was top secret as this was a new weapon. After radar school we went to Yellow Water Gunnery School for another 8 weeks.

The rest of the time I was in Flight training in the St. James River on PBY-5A Catalina. This plane was able to take off on water or land. I was sent to Oceana,VA and worked with the ground crew in the hangars, driving a tractor pulling a gasoline tank and helped gas up the planes. While in Virginia, I went to Damn Neck Aerial Gunnery School and fired every kind of gun from pistols, shot guns and machine guns. The school was in a swamp area and lots of times we fired at crocodiles.

Flight Crew Tim Tinny, Pilot, Florida Tom Howell; Co-Pilot, California Dave Wiseman, Navigator, W Virginia George Suminski; Radio, New Jersey Ray Humbert, Ordinance, Pennsylvania Ed Doonan, Mechanic, Florida Frank J. Carroll, Radio, Florida Paul Straub, Mechanic, Ohio Raul Harris, Mechanic, New Jersey C. V. Carlton, Ordinance, Oklahoma

Then I was sent to the Chincoteague Naval Air Station. It was here I had all my training for future combat overseas. I was finally assigned to my permanent flight crew. We stayed together for the rest of the war.

It was here during our training that I met William (Bill) Cuff, another radioman. He was to have a big effect on the rest of my life. I met Bill in January. On June 19, 1944 Bill and his whole crew of ten were killed. Pilot, Lt. Harpold, and crew took off late at night on a routine flight and they went down in the Virginia woods past the runway. I was asked to be a Navy escort and take his body back to New York. When I arrived in the Pennsylvania station, I met Bill's uncle and undertaker.The uncle took me to meet his mother and two sisters, Marian and Frances. His mother asked if she could have a military funeral. I went to Pier 92, which was a Navy base, and got a bugler and 6 riflemen. During the 4-day wake I spent a lot of time with the family. After the funeral I went back to Virginia and a week later I was sent to Boca Chico in the Florida Keys for training in searchlight bombing in the Caribbean.

After the training was over, I was given a weeks leave which I spent most of it with Bill's sister, Marian. A short time later I went overseas and we started writing once a week. We fell in love by mail and I ended up proposing from London. We found out before I went overseas that we were born the same day and year. Our birth certificates had 8 serial numbers and mine was issued one before hers in the New York City Board of Health.

Our crew went to Norfolk Air Station to pick up a brand new plane right off the assembly line. We had to preflight it first. We then went to Grenier, NH and took off for Goose Bay the next morning. We stayed one night and took off just about dusk. The trip across the Atlantic was the only time I didn't see night fall because of the midnight sun in the North Atlantic. We were leading 12 B-17 Flying Fortresses and 12 B-24 Liberators over seas and we were leaving each base at one minute intervals. When we arrived in Meek's Field, Iceland there were no planes behind us for two hours and we didn't know what happened. Then they started coming in and after landing we found out the plane right behind us crashed on the runway and all ten member of the crew were killed. It took them a couple of hours to clear the wreckage off the runway.

We wore oxygen masks as we flew over Greenland. The mountains were over 20,000-ft. The temperature was about 20 degrees below zero and we wore heated suits but you still felt the cold. We had 11 crewmembers and only 10 electric outlets. When I was on the radar with another crew member every two minutes I had to pull my plug out and let him plug in so we could keep from freezing. The radar compartment was the only place that had this problem so the crews alternated positions all the way across the Atlantic.

While I was flying over the Atlantic, unknown to me, my brother was also crossing. I left Goose Bay, Labrador on 17 August 1944 and arrived in England on the 23rd. My brother left New York on the Queen Mary on 20 August and didn't arrive in England until 27 August. So for a short time I was probably flying above him like a Guardian Angel and never realized it at the time.

We stayed in Iceland for two days. In town the people didn't like us because they were all pro Nazi's. The next day we took off for Valley Wale. We knocked 7 feet off our wing when we arrived and were taxing in. One of the English ground crew said we had plenty of room going past a cement mixer. The Army crews left their planes there and went by train to London and they thanked us for the trip across. We stayed on the R.A.F. base in Valley Wales for a week while they repaired the wing. One day our crew went down to the beach, which we believed to be the Irish Sea, and we sat looking out over the water. A Welsh family arrived and spread a blanket out on the sand about 50 ft. from us and started to disrobe all the way. There were two women about 40 years old and two teenagers, a girl and a boy. We thought it was either a nude beach or they were just trying to impress us Americans. Whatever, we didn't mind in the least. After they had their dip, they got dressed so we went over and introduced ourselves. They invited us back to their house and we had tea and crumpets. They were glad that we had come over to help for the War effort. It was a pleasant encounter in a foreign country.

After the plane was fixed we took off for Dunkeswell, Devon in southwest England. We spent the next year in Bombing Squadron 103, crew 15 in Fleet Air Wing 7. Before every mission each member of the crew had a job to do to get the plane ready The other radioman, George Suminski, and I had to check everything on the radio and radar compartment. We checked the electric outlets to make sure they were working. Checked all frequencies we were to use, checked the code books and the range markers on the radar screen to make sure everything was in good condition. We even cleaned our huts and made our bunks before we left. We had faith in our plane and knew it would bring us back safe.

We had to fly over the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay for most of our missions which took about 12 hours.The Bay of Biscay was far south off the coast of Portugal and a rendezvous for the German U-boats. We were on a mission over the Atlantic when I saw a blip on the radar. I gave the location to my pilot and we traveled about 30 miles and came upon an English merchantship. We exchanged VERY pistol recognition shots with them and then flew real low and we could actually see their faces. We waved and continued on our way for about 20 miles when I noticed the blip disappeared off the radar. Again, I notified the pilot and we went back to see wreckage and a few survivors hanging onto it. We radioed back to the base, gave the location and then dropped sonar transmitters. I finally found a signal that sounded like a sub and dropped some depth charges. We saw the explosion and a few months later we received credit for the kill. We circled around the survivors for a couple of hours until a ship, a British Corvette, arrived and picked up the crewmembers.

Some of our missions were convoy duty over the Atlantic. Sometimes we were joined with the R.A.F. Coastal Command. When a large convoy left the United States they were given air and sea protection. Once they were out to sea, about 500 miles, the air cover was over but they were still patrolled by Navy ships. When they were about 500 miles from England we arrived to escort them back to the coast of the British Isles. It was a beautiful sight to see hundreds of allied ships spread over the horizon. Most of the allied ships were sunk in that area between the air cover. The German U-boats traveled in this area for thousands of miles.

Being in a foreign country was strange until you learned their culture and the money exchange.The quickest way to learn their money was to get into a good old crap game or a card game. We made good money overseas. We got 50% of our base pay for flying, 20% for being over seas and 10% from the English, which just about doubled our pay. The leave rotations for the crews gave us a five-day leave every 5 weeks. We went to London, Edinburgh and to Paris when the Germans were shoved back.

On our first leave in London we naturally visited all the sights, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle with the Changing of the Guard and the most interesting of them all was Madam Tussards Wax Museum. While in London we stayed and dined at the best hotels and restaurants. We traveled by cab except when we traveled outside the city. We visited White Chappel where `Jack the Ripper' operated back in the 1800s. We dined at The Lions Corner House where the legendary Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson often dined. When you walked in a maitre d' met you at the door, took you to a beautiful table and gave you the menu and all they had were fish and chips and beans on toast. The black market had steaks and potatoes and fresh vegetables and whatever else you desired. We stayed at a big hotel, The Regents Palace, and took 4 bedrooms connecting with 4 sitting rooms on one side of the hotel.

When we traveled to the outskirts of town we went by subway or as it was called, the Underground. London's subways were so deep they were used as air raid shelters. When the subways closed, usually about midnight, about the same time we were coming in from out of town, you would find hundreds of people either sleeping or walking along the platform in their nightclothes. l can't say enough about the English people for what they went thru during the Blitz and the V2 rocket raids. They were magnificent!

Just around the corner from Picadilly Circus there was a Red Cross called Rainbow Corner. Thousands of GI's went thru here. I met my brother there. Liquor cost more then it does now. I loved the English trains traveling back and forth from London. I felt as if I was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. On one trip I shared a compartment with a very attractive W.R.E.N. (Women's Royal English Navy) This was a very enjoyable 8 hour trip back to southwest England. Her name was Eileen and we exchanged letters but we were stationed too far apart to date again.

The weather on most of our missions was awful. On a particular mission the visibility was zero. I had 3 positions to take care of. I did 4 hours on the radio, 4 hours on the radar and 4 hours in the bow turret. I was manning the radio and you couldn't even see the ocean. We were about 400 miles out over the Atlantic. I was reading a book and occasionally the pilot would ask me if there were any recalls. I replied, "Not yet Sir", not knowing I had drifted off frequency. So I retuned my transmitter and picked up a message from base that had originated about 3 hours earlier. All the other planes had returned to the base except us. By the time we reached England it was closed in and we had to go to Northern Ireland. We were so low on gas that my pilot was livid. I never read a book in-flight again and I really believe I should have been awarded the Iron Cross from Germany. Fifty-six years later my girlfriend, Gerry, and I located my pilot living in Pebble Beach, FL. Jim Tinny said he didn't remember it happening. We had dinner and a very nice visit with Jim and his wife, Kate. Jim and I spent most of the day reminiscing about old times and convincing each other that America wouldn't have won the Battle of the Atlantic without the two of us. Since we last met on the Alameda Air Station in 1945, we have had between us 11 children, 21 grand children and he has 6 great grand children. Gerry took the picture of us shaking hands. The article and picture appeared in the St. Petersburg Times Newspaper.

After a mission back at our hut I found a telegram on my bunk from my brother, Jack, telling me that my other brother, Buddy, was missing in action in the Battle of the Bulge. He was in General Patton's 3rd Army. He was listed missing in action 17 December in Luxembourg. I was shaken by the news so I left the hut and went to the Chaplain's office and spoke to him. He was a great guy. The next day 4 squadrons attended the mass in our big Quonset hut regardless of religion. About 4 months later I received another telegram from Jack, telling me Buddy was alive and well in a German prison Stalag IV in East Germany. When the Russians entered Germany they liberated his camp. He was 6ft. 1in. tall and weighed 69 lbs. Thank God he survived and at 81 he is retired in Palm Harbor, Fl.

Buddy told me how he was captured in Luxemburg. He and three of his buddies were separated from their outfit when the Germans broke thru in all that confusion. They came across a farm owned by an old German couple. They hid them in their barn and fed them for a week until a German Patrol came along and told them that any one harboring allied stragglers would be killed. So my brother and his friends gave themselves up. They were taken to a cattle train and with hundreds of Allied prisoners were loaded onto the train. It was so crowded that they had to stand up and a lot of the prisoners were wounded and sick. They traveled about 700 miles into Germany. On the way allied planes strafed them. The Nazis didn't mark the train. Many of them died standing up. The camp food was low; even the German guards had very little. He said the guards were old and some of them treated them good. They knew the allies were getting close. All they got to eat was a cold bowl of potato soup after working 16 hours a day repairing the railroads and burying the dead. While they were working they would find a frozen potato and would take it back to their barracks until it thawed out. One of the guards had a sister in New Jersey and he gave my brother a hand carved pipe. He hadn't seen his sister or heard from her since 1933 when Hitler took over. When the Russians entered the camp they killed every German without asking any questions. When my brother got out of the service he located the German guards' sister. He told her how he met her brother but didn't tell her about his death.

Before Buddy was captured, he fought a lot of battles in France and Luxembourg. After he passed away, his wife found a lot of small notes Buddy wrote down. He told how during the Battle of the Bulge, he jumped into a trench that was full of ice water. When he climbed out his long Army coat was so frozen he couldn't fold his arms but he was so warm underneath. I'm reminded of this story now that I live in Florida. When they have a frost in the winter, to protect the strawberry crops, they spray them with water to get a thin layer of ice and it keeps the berries warm and safe. Another story from those small notes was that he was in another German prison called Stalag IIIA. When the prisoners were working outside, the German civilians used to throw away moldy bread that the GIs used to pick up and put in their pockets to eat later in the barracks.

Stalag IIIA was in Dresde, Germany and the Allied Bombers were leveling the town. The prisoners were marched 150 miles in the snow and cold into Germany. If anyone fell out of line, they stabbed them in the leg, stripped them of their uniform and left them to bleed or freeze to death.Then they reached the cattle trains, as I mentioned earlier, and onto Stalag IVb.

While I was at Jacksonville, three things happened that were serious and scary. Two were because of the fear of the water. The other was pure stupidity. While flying on PBYs we landed in the St. Johns River. Two of the crewmembers had to get out of the plane and climb to the end of the starboard or right wing and lay down. This was to weigh the wing down to enable the beach crew to put the wheels back on so they could pull it up the ramp and park it. Well, being a non-swimmer, I stood up on landing so I would be the first one out of the plane. When I got to the end of the wing, there was a radio antenna which I would hold on to. We each had a life jacket on and I would stick my feet in the flaps of the wing. As soon as the second man laid down next to me, those crazy Marine pilots would rev up the engines and make believe they were going to take off. As they were moving they would cut the engines and come to a full stop and the guy next to me would take off like a torpedo and land in the water. Then they would taxi over and pick him up. I held on for dear life and would never fall off. Three different pilots tried to get me off but they couldn't so they nick-named me Cowboy.

The second incident was in Jacksonville's big outdoor pool. Every once in a while we had to go for swimming lessons and being a non-swimmer, I was at the shallow end of the pool. The instructor taught us how to kick our feet, move our arms, etc. He was finished with our group and he told us we could do what we wanted. l decided to sunbathe. I was laying there for a while and I became so hot that I decided to cool off. I stood up, not realizing where I was, and jumped into the eight-foot section. Everyone else was at either end and didn't see me struggling to reach the side of the pool. Luckily, I made it. I could have drowned with a hundred sailors within shouting distance.

The third time was our first night flight. My job was to get up on the wing with a fire extinguisher. When the mechanic started the engines I was ready with the fire bottle. I had never done this before. Just before the mechanic started the engine he turned and looked up at me through the glass top on the cockpit and said something. To hear him I stepped down with one foot between the props. He saw me and he turned white and he cut all the engines and I could see him cursing. He wasn't the only one who saw me. There was a Lt. Commander on a scooter and he got so excited he lost control of the cart and he ran into the side of the plane. I jumped down inside of the plane to hide and I heard him screaming outside and the other crewmembers said to me, "He wants you!" I went outside and he called me everything. I wasn't supposed to get killed until I was overseas and then he told me I had to write `I must not walk between the props' 5,000 times before I could get my liberty card. Well, it took me a week in my spare time and I never did that again.

Six Grateful Lib Members

When I worked in Becker Studio, there was a very beautiful young girl named Susan Dunne. She worked as a booking agent for the models but she could have been a model herself. I never dated her. When I got overseas and was in the squadron for awhile, one of our planes was named Little Susan. I still have a guilty feeling because I wrote to Sue and told her my crew named the plane after her. I posed in front of it and then had the whole crew pose in front of it. I sent her the pictures and today she's probably a grandmother telling her grandchildren that she had a WWII 4 engine bomber named after her. However, if it made her happy, I guess I shouldn't worry about it.

Life In Dunkeswell, England

When we weren't flying, on leave or on liberty, we were in our Quonset hut. In there were two crews consisting of 7 enlisted men. Each crew had a plane captain who was the first mechanic, two other mechanics, two radiomen and two ordinance men.We were all equal so we set up a duty roster. On Monday, the two plane captains were the cooks, did the cleaning and went for the mail. The rest of the week two other crewmembers did it. This worked out just right because there were two guys and 7 days. When we went on a flight we ate in the Air Mess Hall and were served by other sailors, some that had the same rank as we did. They didn't like it but it was their job.

Our hut had a pet dog named Boliver, a big and clumsy St. Bernard that we all loved. He slept in front of our potbelly stove and some nights he would snore. It took four of us to pick him up, carry him outside and throw him in the pool which stored the water for air raids. Then we would let him back in the hut to dry by our potbelly stove.

Now, I'll go back to our missions. I flew 44 missions and on every one of them we all had the same gun positions. My place was up in the bow or the nose and I loved it! It made me feel like it was a separate plane. I had complete control over it. I could point the gun straight down and if I put it straight up I could look at both pilots in the cockpit. We had the ERCO Bow Turret which was so much better than the Consolidated Turret the 8th Air Force had. On one mission, without getting permission from the pilot, I had been in the radar compartment for 4 hours. I went up to my bow turret. After the 4 hours on the radar I was so used to saying, "Pilot from radar," instead of saying, "Pilot from the bow," there is a British Lancaster about 10 miles off our starboard bow" The pilot said roger and then thought about it and said, "How do you know its a Lancaster?" I replied, "I'm sorry Mr. Tinny I'm in the bow" He thought I was getting to recognize those blips.

Well, this was a long time ago and there are only four of the crew of ten left. I am the youngest having turned 80 on April 5th. My other Radio man, George Suminski, living in New Jersey, Jim Tinny, Pilot, is in Pebble Beach, FL and my Co-pilot, Tom Howell, is in California. I lost a close friend, also a crewmember, and his wife, who passed away a few months ago, Ed and Elly Doonan.

The end came on April 30th for Hitler and Eva Braun when they retired to their room in the bunker in Berlin. Eva took poison, then Hitler took the poison and then shot himself in the temple. Germany officially surrendered on May 7th. We flew two more missions after that. Our 43rd and 44th missions were just in case there were any more subs that hadn't received the word about the end of the war. On June 1st, Tinny, Straub and I flew over France, Holland and Belgium to see all the devastation left by the war. Before Germany retreated to the homeland, they opened the dykes in Belgium and Holland and flooded the low countries. We packed up the Squadrons and left Bristol on June 4th on the U.S. Unimak, a seaplane tender slightly smaller than a destroyer. On board the ship we didn't have any duties across the Atlantic. It was the first Navy ship I was on in three years and believe me, I will take a plane ride any time instead of that. When we pulled out of the Bristol Harbor the weather was terrible for the first six days and for the last 4 days the ocean looked just like glass, calm and beautiful. It was so calm that the crew showed movies on the fantail every night until we pulled into Norfolk, VA on the 14th of June. I arrived home on leave on the 21st and saw Marian, Mom and the rest of the family. For the next 36 days, Marian (my love) had bought tickets for almost all the top shows playing on Broadway. We saw Annie Get Your Gun, Harvey with Jimmy Stewart, My Sister, Eileen with Rosalind Russell and Edde Adams, Voice of the Turtle with Margaret Sullivan and many more. I had a great time. I went out with Don Robbins a few times and then came the time to go back to the war in the Pacific.

I went to Floyd Bennet Field to get a Navy plane out to the coast. Marian, Buddy, and my brother's friend, Nat went on the bus to see me off. It was a long trip with lots of stops. At each stop I thought 1 would get bumped but I didn't. We stopped at Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Olathe, Amarillo, Winslo, Bakersfield and finally Oakland, CA. I was based at Alameda Naval Air Base from August until I was sent back to New York to Lido Beach, Long Island where I got my honorable discharge. While I was in California I flew on a new Navy bomber, PB4Y-2 Privateer. We would use this plane if we were going to fly in the Pacific against the Japs. I guess I was very lucky to have the war end before I had the chance.

Also, I was on the Shore Patrol for about two weeks on San Pablo Ave. in Oakland which was a very bad section. I had the midnight to 8 a.m. shift and I couldn't see myself telling some very tall and drunk sailors to square your hat and roll your sleeves down. My partner and I had to think of something. The movie houses were opened all night so when we went on duty at midnight we made our tour around our section and then ducked into the last row at the movies. We took our armbands and our hats off and stayed there for about 3 hours then went to the next movie. We thought no one knew until one night the Shore Patrol came in, looked in the last row and said, "Come on guys we need you." It seemed that the 3rd Fleet, back fresh after 3 years in the Pacific, was involved in a riot. I never saw so many drunken sailors in my life. One young kid, about 17 had been hit with a rather large mustard bowl and with his shaved head, looked exactly like a bronze statue. So much for Shore Patrol.

George and I saw a sign in the hangar which said anyone not having an annual leave in the past year could report to the Personal office. I told George, "it’s so crowded out here in California with all the guys coming in from Europe and the Pacific that they won't even question us." So, sure enough, we went there and they gave us a 30-day leave. We didn't have much money and it was about 2 weeks until payday.We decided to hitch hike across the country instead of flying to San Francisco.

We started hitch hiking and we had 17 rides the first day and never got out of California. We got a ride late at night with the USO and started back on the road early in the morning. It took a couple of hours to get out of that town but we finally got to Elko, NV where we met two Marines who had a room with two double beds. We stayed there that night. We got up early the next morning and got on the road. We were lucky getting a ride. He took us out in the desert where there was a big sign that read, "Salt Lake City 400 miles" and dropped us off at the sign. He made a right turn down a little country road where he lived. It was about 9 a.m. We stood there until we saw a car coming in our direction. Another car dropped a few more service men off while it turned down this little road.This kept up all day until it was about 5 p.m. By then there were about 20 of us and it was turning cold in the desert. Then a truck with a flat bed in back pulled up and all 20 guys got on and we went about 80 miles to the next town, which was Wendover, NV. We were frozen. We went into a bar and met a couple of soldiers who were really nice. They took us back to their Air Force Base that had the B-29s there; the same base that carried the Atom Bomb to Japan. They got us a bunk and we had breakfast in the morning in the Army Mess Hall. When the cooks behind the counter saw us in our Navy blues they asked us where we came from. I told them our ship pulled in to the Salt Lake and every one laughed. They told us a B-24 was about to take off for Salt Lake City. They rushed us out to the airfield in a jeep, threw in 2 parachutes and we took off. On the flight George fixed the radio as the intercom wasn't working. We landed in Salt Lake and made it to Ogden, Utah. That was as far as we got. We spent the next week trying to get a flight east but every plane that came in from the west was filled so we finally put our name on the west bound flight list.

We were back in San Francisco a couple of hours later, after a horrible two-week trip. We got paid and still had two weeks left, so we hitched south to Hollywood. We had a lot more luck going south and arrived the next day. With patriotism back, the people treated us like kings. We arrived in Hollywood with little money but it was enough. We didn't know where to go or stay. We stopped at a booth on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and asked the lady if she knew of a place. She told us to go the Beverly Hills Canteen. She said we ought to sign up for the weekend. It was Thursday and by Friday, with the guys getting weekends off, we wouldn't' get near the place. We stayed that night and it was so good, we stayed there for the rest of our leave.

The first morning for breakfast, Susan Hayward, Dane Clark and Wallace Berry fixed us a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee. Every morning after that we were surprised at all the stars that volunteered there. We had front row seats at all the Radio Shows. They had two rows outside, one for the Service Men and the other for civilians. George and 1 always managed to be at the front of the line. The wait was about an hour but right across the street there was a little bar called the Tom Tom. We took turns going over for a beer. We saw a lot of good shows, including Bob Hope's Command Performance Show. They created this show to send over seas for the service men. We met a lot of stars at the Stage door of the Radio shows but we met so many stars at the Hollywood Canteen where we went almost every night. Susan Hayward was there every night with her husband, Jess Barker. Dane Clark was there because his mother cooked in the back. I danced with Hedy Lamar, Peggy Ann Garner and a couple of other stars. We met Monte Whooley so many different places. In a barber shop, at a bar where he wouldn't let us buy a drink, at the Hollywood Canteen and at the Screen Guild Canteen. We went to Earl Carroll's Vanities.

After Hollywood we went back to the base. On November 5th, they put about 30 of us on a train in Oakland. We were in the last car and they wouldn't let guys go into the other cars. That's where the regular passengers were. We each had a bunk for the trip back east with a colored porter who sounded just like Rochester on the Jack Benny Show. We had plenty of booze with us and the train supplied the food. With five nights of traveling across country, we got the porter so drunk. Every night he would put down his little step stool to open the top bunk, start to walk up and fall over the other side. We would put him to bed. Every morning he would say never again but it continued until the end of the trip. We were so bad that the last night while we were sleeping the train crew disconnected the car and left us out in a freight yard in Buffalo. It was freezing when we woke up. So we all got dressed and walked across the tracks to the terminal for some hot breakfast. It wasn't until about 7 p.m. when they finally got us back to Penn Station, New York City. Then somehow we went to Lido Beach. We were finally discharged and were civilians again. It sure was a long war.

Reflection

In the gray light of the English winter dawn the ponderous white-bellied Liberators waddled down the runway and lifted slowly into the sky. Out over the rocky Devonshire coast and the choppy waters of the channel they streaked south toward the Bay of Biscay, hunting grounds of the enemy's undersea fleet.

Over the Bay the crews suddenly became alert,shaking off the drowsiness induced by their early rising and the constant drone of the four engines. Waist gunners stared at the faint line of the horizon almost imperceptibly separating the gray of the sky from the gray of the sea. Bow and crown turrets whined and twisted, their twin .50 caliber guns seeming to search for every dot in the air that would mean a Ju-88 or any change on the surface that might indicate a U-boat.

This day the search was more intense. One of the big boats had failed to return from the night's patrol. From the northern shores of Spain to the Brittany coast, shuttling back and forth, only 100 or so feet above the choppy waters, they watched for a life raft or a cluster of small yellow patches; a drifting wisp of smoke or a white-starred wing. Twelve, fourteen grueling hours later the big planes circled the base and wearily settled down on the flare path. One by one they came to rest on the hardstands. Only one had news.

Somewhere on the vast Bay the crew had sighted two oil slicks in the patrol area of the night's missing Lib. One patch was small, the other large. On the official reports the plane and crew were listed as missing in action but that was not their only epitaph. To Coastal Command headquarters went the one phrase from which they had worked so long and arduously: probably destroyed enemy submarine.

Such was the perilous job of five Navy patrol bombing squadrons comprising Fleet Air Wing 7, now back in the States. Front-line fighters in the Battle of the Atlantic, they struck at the very heart of Germany's U-boat campaign, hunting the enemy in his own waters before he could reach Allied convoy lanes with his destructive torpedoes and sinking 14 of the undersea raiders.

When Hitler's legions stormed down through the Low Countries and into France in the spring of 1940, they not only wanted to defeat and drive from the Continent the British and Allied armies but, on Hitler's orders, they wanted to secure for Admiral Karl Doenitz, then chief of Nazi "unterseebooten" adequate bases from which to launch a submarine offensive of unprecedented magnitude. When the Nazi armies finally halted they had driven all the way to the Spanish border on the Atlantic coast of France. It was there, in the Biscay ports of Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, La Pallice and Bordeaux, that the great sub pens with their massive roofs and complex underground repair and supply depots were built and from there that the U-boats sailed forth on their missions of destruction.

With outmoded Swordfish, Whitleys, Wellingtons and even early Flying Forts, Coastal Command of the RAF opened a blockade, while what bombers were available attacked the bases. Soon after arriving in England in the summer of 1942 America's 8th Air Force contributed squadrons to the battle. Then three veteran Navy squadrons - 103, 105 and 110 relieved the Army and joined in the fight.

They knew the task before them as a child knows its alphabet. They had learned it by rote, flying from bases in the South Pacific, Caribbean, North and South Atlantic. Some of the pilots had piled up 200 missions - 10, 12, 18 hours at a stretch, with the roar of the engines drumming into their memories the slogan of antisubmarine patrol planes: "Even without bombs you can keep `em down."

Their first patrols were similar to the milk runs out of the Stateside ports, monotonous and uneventful except for weather that would ground a seagull. After a few weeks the men seldom knew where they would land on their return from the Bay. Unpredictable weather made diversion a habit rather than a rarity

Action came quicker than the flying bluejackets expected. Two planes disappeared over Biscay in the first week of operations. Then Lt. James A. Alexander, USNR, later killed on a training flight, ran into a formation of six Ju-88's over the Bay. The venomous long-range, twin-engine fighters were roaming the skies as escorts for outbound subs. Lt. Alexander's gunners shot down one 88 and damaged others and he and his co-pilot were awarded the DFCs and Purple Hearts, the first decorations for naval aviators in the European theater.

Sill the Navy airmen had not as yet met the enemy for which they were searching - U-boats. Early one morning four Navy Libs were out over the Bay on routine patrol. One of them sighted a submarine running on the surface, charging its batteries. In response to an urgent call for assistance the other Libs sped to the scene followed by other Coastal Command aircraft. The German sub was harried above and below the surface from 0400 until dusk when it was finally destroyed. A final assessment gave a Czech-manned Liberator 50% of the kill, an RAF Wellington 10% and the remaining 40% to the Navy.

For Navy men accustomed to the best service food in the world and the smooth efficiency and cleanliness of seaside bases, the United Kingdom proved tough on the ground. Although their arrival had been expected, no provisions had been made for operating the base Navy style. A RAF regiment, the base defense force, dished out Spam and brussel sprouts. Military police, ordinance and supply companies were U.S.Army detachments. Other RAF units were in charge of maintenance of runways, hangars, roads and living sites. Only aloft did the men feel at home.

There was enough business in the air to keep them occupied. Along with their Biscay patrols the Liberators drew additional duty out over the Western Approaches to the United Kingdom. Vast men-and-equipment-laden convoys, spreading over hundreds of square miles of the Atlantic, had to be protected from the U-boats which managed to sneak out of Biscay. Fast blockade-runners from Japan tried to dash into Biscay ports at night. It was a busy, mostly monotonous life.

Not until December 1943 was variety to be introduced into the Navy's combat diet. Lone-wolfing out over the Bay one day, Lt. Stuart D. Johnson, USNR, sighted 10 German destroyers, apparently operating as escorts for U-boats. The Lib flashed a message to Coastal Command headquarters and within a few minutes, depth charges were removed from bomb bays of planes hundreds of miles away in England and replaced with contact high-explosive bombs. In seven minutes one Navy squadron had 10 planes airborne and heading for the DDs. Other Libs roared out to join the attack. Two British cruisers and their escorting destroyers raced dawn the Channel. Through curtains of heavy flak the Libs ran in at zero altitude, broadside to the enemy, scoring several straddles and near misses and strafing the decks with machine-gun fire. All the Libs came back, one with 100 flak holes in wing surfaces and fuselage. The battle ended in the sinking of four of the Nazi craft by the British cruisers, Glasgow and Enterprise.

Eventually the Lib squadrons had their own base. Dunkeswell, the field from which they had been flying, was formally turned over to them by the British and other than remaining under Coastal Command operational control, they developed it according to American methods. Later, as the Biscay battle grew hotter and the need for protecting shipping shuttling back and forth across the Channel to newly invaded France grew more important, two more squadrons - 107 and 112 were added to the Navy's force and another base, Upottery - a mile from the original Dunkeswell - was turned over to the Yanks.

Squadron 107 came with a hot reputation and maintained it until the end. Starting as Patrol Squadron 83 in December 1941 and using Catalina flying boats, 107 had operated from the mainland of Brazil and Ascension Island over South Atlantic patrol. During that time it changed to Liberators and eventually arrived in England to fight with the other squadrons of Fairwing 7. Its final count of kills was nine U-boats destroyed, two probably sunk and 16 damaged.

Veteran of the European theater, Bomron 103 once flew from Newfoundland but it served its last 21 months in Devonshire. Even during the final days of the Reich it got two enemy subs in March and April. Originally known as Patrol Squadron 31, flying Catalinas from the Caribbean to Newfoundland, Bomron 105 sighted and attacked 10 enemy submarines and destroyed two of them during its period based in England.

Another veteran of the Biscay patrols was Squadron 110. During 21 months operating from the United Kingdom its planes attacked 23 U-boats and even after V E Day it scored a victory Lt. Fred L. Schaum, USNR, a 110 pilot, accepted the surrender of U-249 and brought it into port, the first enemy submarine to give up after the cessation of hostilities.

Last of the five squadrons to arrive was 112, an anti-Uboat outfit that had kept watch over the eastern Atlantic and Straits of Gibraltar to close the Mediterranean to the enemy underwater boats. Early in 1945 it shifted to Upottery and from there participated in the destruction of another submarine.

Throughout their long grueling watch the five squadrons were somewhat depleted by enemy action. Replacements arrived from the States to fill in the gaps and enable Fairwing 7 to carry on. Some of the planes just disappeared. Some others fell prey to the changeable weather. Still others were shot down by heavy U-boats flak or the guns of the German fighters. But most of them took their toll before they were lost.

And so it will continue in the Pacific. Some of the squadrons are to be decommissioned. Pilots, navigators and gunners are to be retrained for new type of war. They may fly search Privateers or heavies based in the Ryukyus or the Philippines and their targets may be small freights instead of surfaced submarines. But their long experience as airborn warriors will stand them in good stead - their rigorous, courage-demanding experiences in the Atlantic will make them that much more formidable against the swindling sea power of the Japs.

Frank Carroll. Memories of a Naval Air Crewman in World War II. Bomber Legends. 2005 Volume 2 No. 4.

U.S. Navy PB4Y-1 (B-24) Liberator Squadrons: In Great Britain during World War II Here is the story of U.S. Navy Fleet Air Wing Seven, which flew the Navy version of the B-24 out of England. These PB4Y-1 crews flew search and destroy missions, seeking German U-boats in the Bay of Biscay and English Channel. Fighting tough weather conditions and unrelenting missions, these crews destroyed five U-boats and damaged many others.

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