1
10
3
-
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/3e3884ee2694c534b1610f4d0fc07d39.mp4
2d15fc09208d23e557c7d303c8999269
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/e05a964c4415b22baf011bd17ef68d90.pdf
d8e9d843799d60ffd5c381e7cb28618a
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Herb Phelan
Interviewed by: John Barth
Date: February 22, 2018
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�2
Abstract:
Aeronautical engineer Herb Phelan is interviewed about his career in the aviation industry and
his involvement in several aircraft restoration projects. He discusses his work with various
aviation companies and his career at Boeing, circa 1950s-1990s. Projects discussed include the
727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), Minuteman III missile, and the AWACS program. He
then discusses his restoration work on the Boeing Model 80A, the B-17F Flying Fortress, and the
B-29 Superfortress. All three of these vintage aircraft are now on display at The Museum of
Flight in Seattle, Washington.
Biography:
Herb Phelan is a retired aeronautical engineer who has worked on several restoration projects of
vintage aircraft. He was born on March 6, 1928 in Everett, Massachusetts and grew up in a foster
home in Dorchester. He attended John Marshall Elementary School, Grover Cleveland Junior
High School, and Hyde Park High School. While in high school, he studied drafting and worked
as an apprentice draftsman for the Clifford Manufacturing Company (Boston, Massachusetts).
He then apprenticed for Westinghouse.
In 1946, Phelan received his draft notice from the U.S. Army. He completed basic training at
Sheppard Field (Texas) and advanced training at Scott Field (Illinois), where he earned his
qualification as a teletype operator. He served at Holloman Air Force Base (New Mexico) until
1947, when he was honorably discharged.
After completing his military service, Phelan enrolled in the aeronautical engineering course at
Cal-Aero Technical Institute (California). He completed the course in two years and then worked
a series of engineering jobs with Lockheed, American Machine and Foundry Company, Chance
Vought, and Pratt & Whitney. During this time, he also completed an aeronautical engineering
degree at Boston University. He was hired by the Boeing Company in 1960 and relocated to
Washington State.
During his career at Boeing, Phelan worked on a variety of engineering projects and contributed
design details to numerous aircraft, including the 727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), and the
E-3 and E-6 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) programs. He also worked on the
Minuteman III missile and served as the Boeing representative to the Dornier Company in
Germany.
Phelan assisted in the restoration of The Museum of Flight’s Boeing 80A by repairing the lower
left outboard wing. His next aircraft restoration project came in 1993, when he joined the team of
volunteers restoring the Museum’s B-17F Flying Fortress. The team successfully restored the
aircraft to flying condition, and Phelan served as the B-17 crew chief when it went on display at
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�3
the Museum’s main campus. He also served as the crew chief for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
restoration project, following the passing of crew chief Dale Nicholson in 2009. As of 2018,
Phelan is still an active volunteer at the Restoration Center and has logged over 13,000 hours of
volunteer work at the Museum.
Phelan married his wife, Isabel, in 1954. They had four children together.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
Interviewer:
John Barth is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent Corps, which he joined in 2016. He
has over 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry, including manufacturing, supervision
and management, and research and development.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Mark Jaroslaw. Jaroslaw Media.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�4
Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 5
Aeronautical engineering career and early projects at Boeing ....................................................... 6
Next Boeing projects: SST, Minuteman III, and AWACS ............................................................. 8
Model 80A restoration project ...................................................................................................... 10
B-17 restoration project ................................................................................................................ 11
B-29 restoration project ................................................................................................................ 18
Career reflection and closing thoughts ......................................................................................... 20
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�5
Herb Phelan
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
JOHN BARTH:
My name is John Barth. It’s 5:00 in the afternoon on February 22nd, 2018.
We’re located here at The Museum of Flight in Tukwila, Washington, and we are here to
interview Herb Phelan. Thank you for taking the time to participate in The Museum of
Flight’s Oral History Program. Herb, can I get you to state your name and spell it?
HERB PHELAN:
Yes. My name is Herb Phelan, P-H-E-L-A-N. Phelan. That’s a fine Irish
name. My ancestors came from Waterford County in Northern Ireland. I think they were
in charge there in the 11th or 12th century. I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. But they spelled
it F-I-O-L-I-N, Fiolin. It means “little wolf.”
And I was born on March 6th in 1928 in Everett, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston,
grew up in a foster home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, also a suburb of Boston. I
attended an elementary school, which was next door to the foster home, called John
Marshall, and then went to junior high school, Grover Cleveland Junior High School,
in—also in Dorchester.
Then I went to Hyde Park High School in Hyde Park, Mass, and enrolled in a cooperative
industrial course. Now, cooperative industrial is where you go to school a week and you
go to shop a week, go to school a week, go to shop a week. And the shops were a
machine shop and a drafting class. Now, in my sophomore year, I was in the machine
shop, and then when I got to my junior year, I switched over to a drafting class with an
expert teacher called Mr. [Ekroyd?]. And he taught me all the basics of drafting:
orthographic/isometric projections and perspectives, line work, and lettering. And when it
came time to go to work at the A-16, I contacted Mr. [Lee?], our coordinator, and he
wanted me to go to work in the machine shop. And I said, “No, I want to go to drafting.”
So he said, “Well, I’ll miss you. Go check with Mr. [Ekroyd?].” So Mr. [Ekroyd?] pulled
out my records, and there’s a long string of straight As. So Mr. Lee says, “Oh, okay.”
So he got me a job at Clifford Manufacturing Company in South Boston as an apprentice
draftsman, and I stayed there through my senior year. Okay.
JB:
So after your high school and your co-op work, what was next for you?
HP:
Well, I worked as—still as an apprentice draftsman, this time at Westinghouse, until
March of 1946, and I got this really nice letter from the government inviting me to join
the Army. So I did. And they sent me to Sheppard Field, Texas in Wichita Falls for basic
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�6
training. Then I went to Scott Field, Illinois, near St. Louis, for advanced training as a
teletype operator. And then they sent me to Alamogordo, New Mexico, which is now
Holloman Air Force Base, and I was there for a year as a teletype operator. And I was
discharged in 1947.
[scene transition]
00:03:36
[Aeronautical engineering career and early projects at Boeing]
JB:
At the end of the war when you were discharged, what was next for you?
HP:
I was still working at Westinghouse as an apprentice draftsman, and I decided I wanted to
go to school at Cal-Aero Technical Institute in California. They had an aeronautical
engineering course that seemed attractive, so I went down there to Glendale, California
and completed a 4,000-hour course in two years. After that, I went to work for Lockheed
in Burbank as a stress analyst. And after that, I decided I didn’t like Los Angeles very
much, and I went back to Boston. And got to work at the American Machine and Foundry
Company, where I met my wife. And I transferred jobs again to Chance Vought Aircraft
in Boston, at which time—that’s when I married my wife, in 1954. I was working for
Chance Vought as a design draftsman on the Regulus missile.
Then I went to work for Pratt and Whitney as a design draftsman on jet engines. Then
Pratt and Whitney picked up and left home, and I went to work for Raytheon as a
methods engineer, doing time and motion study. All during this time with these three
companies, I was going to school at Boston University. And fortunately, the companies
were sub-subsidizing the tuition. All I had to do was buy the books.
So that brings us to 1960, when I graduated from Boston University with an aeronautical
engineering degree. So here I am in Boston with this degree, and there are no airplane
companies in Boston. What am I going to do? So fortunately, Boeing was in town
recruiting, and I saw the ad and I went to an interview. And shortly thereafter, I got an
offer from Boeing, and I picked up, put the dog in the back of the car, and drove to
Seattle. And my wife came in later. She stayed back to finish selling the house and work
with the movers. And she came all the way across the country with these four kids, one of
them 18 months old that screeched all the way across. I don’t know how the heck she did
that, but she did.
So then that’s when I started working for Boeing. My first job was on the 727, and I did
detail design work on the mid-spar and then design work on the fin tip fairing. And then I
went over to a proposal for the CX-4, which turned into the C-5A Galaxy, and we lost
that contract to Lockheed. And then I went back to the 727, doing design work,
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�7
sustaining work, where we had to make changes if the shop ran into trouble or there was
a mistake. And I was there for a while, then I went to the TFX, which is the F-111
Tornado. And that—we lost that one to General Dynamics.
JB:
I got a photo here. [hands photograph to Phelan] Maybe you could tell us about that.
HP:
Oh, this is the B-52 that lost its tail in 1964 somewhere over Colorado. And I was
assigned to go down to Wichita to figure out how to make that not happen again. And
what we did was add an auxiliary spar to the leading edge to keep it from bending. And
they had string gauges on the airplane, so they knew that was the problem. Yeah. You
know, I am amazed when I look at this photo at how these pilots got that airplane back
down on the ground. And I can only imagine they must have used differential thrust for
yaw control and eventually got to Barksville—or Barksdale, Louisiana and landed the
airplane in one piece. And that was an amazing piece of pilotage.
JB:
So after fixing the tail on the B-52, where did you go next?
HP:
Next I went to the 707-800, which was a proposal to stretch the 707 even further than it
was on the Dash 300. And I was working on the vertical tail, which needed to be
enlarged, and trying to figure out how we could enlarge the acoustic vertical tail without
having to make a brand-new one. While I was in the middle of that study, all of a sudden
the word came down, “Cancel everything. We’re not going to do that.” “Oh, okay.”
So they sent me over to 747 preliminary design and working for Joe Sutter. I was doing a
lot of different things, and then finally I got into the landing gear support structure and
the wing box. Then all of a sudden, they sent me out to the design group where LTV,
Ling-Temco-Vought, was doing the actual design work on the tail feathers in Section 48.
So, again, I was assigned to work on the vertical tail, and they sent me down to Texas,
where LTV was doing their design work, as a—to do oversight. And I was down there for
a year, then I came back from Texas to work on the 747.
JB:
So, Herb, after the LVT [sic – meant LTV] design, what was next for you?
HP:
Well, I worked on the 747 here at Boeing for a while, and then I went down to California
to do oversight with the Northrop Corporation on the body sections. And I was down
there for a year, and then I came back to Boeing again and—I forget what I did.
JB:
Upper deck supports, overhead, luggage bins.
HP:
Oh, okay. Want to start that one over?
JB:
So let’s cut in about—after Northrop, okay?
HP:
Go ahead.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�8
JB:
So, Herb, after Northrop, a year down there working on the fuselage for the 747, what
was next for you?
HP:
Well, I came back, and I was working on the 747 design work and doing detailed design
on the floor for the upper deck, 747 upper deck. And then also did the design work for the
overhead luggage bins that runs down the center of the airplane.
JB:
So if we were to walk out to the 747 in the Pavilion out here, where would we look to see
your designs and the work you did on that?
HP:
If you go in the forward entry door, just look straight up and you’ll be underneath the
upper deck floor, and you’ll see the floor beams and all the control cables running
through them. And the support structure for the baggage bins runs the entire length of the
airplane. The bins aren’t there, of course, because the airplane out on the Pavilion is in a
flight test configuration.
00:11:01
[Next Boeing projects: SST, Minuteman III, and AWACS]
JB:
So about that time, the 1970s, there was a big sign in Seattle that said, “The last one out
of Seattle, turn out the lights.” Seven thousand out of 10,000 engineers were laid off.
What was it like? What was it like in Seattle?
HP:
That was a terrible, terrible time. I was very nervous, wondering, “Am I going to be one
of ones that’s getting laid off? And if I do, what am I going to do?” Fortunately, I was not
one of the ones that got laid off, and I wound up at Everett for a year, twiddling my
thumbs with absolutely nothing to do. Then they sent me back. Did I go to the SST or the
Minuteman first?
JB:
SST.
HP:
Oh, okay.
JB:
So after—let me start that over. [laughs] After working in Everett with very little to do,
what program did you work on next?
HP:
They sent me back to work on the SST proposal. We were making the mockup over there
in the 101 Building, and my job was to design the aft section behind the pressure
bulkhead. That was going to be a fuel tank. And I was really looking forward to doing
that work, but it was going to be a real challenge. But the Congress scratched the funding
for that job, so we didn’t—we never did get to do it. So I went on to the—what did I do
next?
JB:
Minuteman missiles.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�9
HP:
Oh, yeah. So after the SST, I went on to—
[production talk]
JB:
After the SST program, what was next for you, Herb?
HP: They sent me to the Minuteman III, and I was on there for a year. I was designing clamps
for the guidance and control cable. One of the guys decided to call me El Clampo. [laughter] I
thought that was funny. Then—God, I can’t remember that sequence. After Minuteman, where
did I go?
JB:
So, Herb, after—
HP:
AWACS.
JB:
Yeah, AWACS. A-3 base unit, and then A-3 and A-6 [sic – meant E-3 and E-6].
HP:
Oh, we’re going to forget the base unit. Okay, good.
JB:
Okay, let’s forget the base unit. So after being called El Clampo and working on the
Minuteman, where’d they put you next?
HP:
[laughs] I went to the E-3 program, the AWACS, and my job was the interface control
drawing for the radar that Westinghouse was providing. And we started off with a couple
of sheets, and that gradually grew and grew and grew, and eventually we had a 21-sheet
ICD for the Westinghouse radar that was in the aft lower level on the upper deck.
Then also the E-6 came into play here towards the end of that, and I was involved with
the aft antenna. There was a five-mile long antenna that sprang out of the backend. And
there’s this huge bent winch on the main deck. That thing must have weighed over a
thousand pounds. Then shortly after that, I retired.
JB:
During the A-3 and A-6 program [sic – meant E-3 and E-6 program], weren’t you a
representative for Boeing in Germany?
HP:
Yes. I had several trips. I went to Germany and interacted with the liaison people for the
Dornier Manufacturing Company in Oberpfaffenhofen, which is a little town close to
Munich. And I was anywhere from two weeks to two months over there. In fact, I
managed to go one time with Isabel. I took my wife there. And so she spent two months
shopping, and I spent two months working at Dornier.
00:15:20
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�10
[Model 80A restoration project]
JB:
[laughs] Yeah, that sounds about right. So during all this time—and you had quite a
lengthy and varied career here at Boeing—you moved several times for work, you raised
four children, and during that same period of time you were volunteering at The Museum
of Flight. Let’s talk about those projects next.
HP:
Well, I originally was told about the 80A, which is the genesis of the Museum, that was
being restored down in Auburn. And so I went down there because I was interested in
restoration stuff. And they needed to have the wings repaired. So I took the lower left
outboard wing back to my house and hung it in the garage, and I spent about a year
repairing all the rips and the other structure. And then they came and sent a Boeing
flatbed truck, and they retrieved the wing and brought it down to—back down to Auburn
for assembly. And that was the end of my association with the 80A.
JB:
What was the condition of the 80?
HP:
Oh, it was a disaster. They had thrown a choke chain around the tail up in Anchorage and
dragged it off to the dump, when this reporter—I’ve forgotten his name—got ahold of it
and managed to get it down to Seattle and—yeah.
JB:
Who was in charge of that project?
HP:
As far as I know, it was a fellow named Al [Beheimer?].
JB:
How was that project funded? Do you know?
HP:
I don’t know. No.
JB:
Okay. Where did you work on it, other than your garage?
HP:
That was the only place.
JB:
The only place, just in the garage?
HP:
Yeah.
JB:
So you weren’t too involved with a lot of the other people in the restoration?
HP:
No. No, I wasn’t. In fact, the fellow who brought me down there, his name was [Rod
Franklin?]. That’s the only guy I actually interacted with.
JB:
Do you recall how many volunteers there were on the Model 80?
HP:
No. Uh-uh [negative].
JB:
Okay.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�11
HP:
I was never down there onsite very much. Once I got the airplane in my—the wing into
my garage, that was it. I just didn’t go down to Auburn.
00:18:01
[B-17 restoration project]
JB:
So then you moved on to the B-17 project. That started, actually, in 1991, when it was
flown into the Renton plant. How and when did you get started on it?
HP:
I got started—[clears throat]. Excuse me. I got started on it in 1993. A fellow who I’d
been working with on the AWACs program told me, “Hey, we got a B-17 down at the
Renton plant. You want to come down?” “Well, okay.” So I came down there, and I
walked in, and here’s this wreck of a B-17 sitting up on scaffolds. And I looked around. I
said—the control surfaces were gone. There was a big patch on the left side of the
airplane. Windows were gone. Nacelles, propellers, everything was gone. I said, “Well,
this looks like a pretty good challenge.” So I signed up. And I started off with small jobs
and generally—gradually grew up to bigger jobs as they came up on the learning curve.
JB:
Can you tell us about this photo? [hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh. [laughs] That’s when I first saw it in—up on the scaffolds that I just told you about.
All the control surfaces are missing and everything. It’s a wreck. And there were, I don’t
know, some of these—you can see there’s a lot of people standing around and working
on it. Yeah.
JB:
So back in those days, you were working from microfilm?
HP:
Yes. We had these—
JB:
What was that—
HP:
…thirty-three rolls of 35-millimeter microfilm with the B-17 drawings on them. So we
had to put those in a machine and roll the thing once you found—got from the index, you
knew what drawing you were looking for. You’d roll it up and say, “Well, okay. Maybe
that’s it. Yeah, that’s it.” Very hard to see. So you peg it and then you print it. And we
had a Dry Silver printer, and the prints that came out were terrible quality. I think that’s
why my eyesight is so bad, from working on those prints. [laughter] But that’s what we
had to do.
JB:
Who supplied the material for that project?
HP:
Oh, Boeing did most of everything. In fact, if Boeing hadn’t—if we hadn’t had the
support that Boeing gave us for the seven years that we were there, this airplane would
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�12
not be in the shape it is now. I don’t think we could’ve ever flown it off to Boeing Field
from Renton.
JB:
So with a project that big, what kind of a system did the team use for the restoration?
How do you decide what gets fixed or what’s wrong, that kind of thing?
HP:
It was a matter of search. We didn’t know what we needed to do at first, that thing was in
such bad shape. So we just started in on it. And there was no way to make a list of things
because we didn’t know what we needed to fix. As we went through the process for the
seven years that we were there, somebody would see something that needed fixing, and
he’d call us over, and we would—we’re treating the airplane just as if it was a production
airplane on a production line. We had quality control, engineering—that was me—and
working on rejection tags.
And as I said, somebody would see something that needed fixing and call us over and
show us what it was, write it up on the [unintelligible 00:21:46] work order, and then
write a disposition and give that disposition to the mechanic who was going to do the
work. And he would finish it up, then we’d go inspect it, sign it off, move on to the next
one. Yeah.
JB:
So how did you decide to divide up the projects? Who would get what? Or how they
would get divided into different—to different volunteers?
HP:
We never did do that. It was just the guys were there and—we didn’t decide to divide
anything. Whatever anything you—whatever anybody discovered would be what we
would work on.
JB:
So you had approximately 280 of these rejection tags?
HP:
Yes. So that—those 280 rejection tags actually describe the restoration. It was a history
of the restoration.
JB:
Got a couple more photos here. Maybe you can tell us about them. [hands photographs to
Phelan]
HP:
Okay. This is the male mold that was used to make the blister, the nose blister. The one
that was on there was in terrible shape. In fact, that’s over in the Red Barn now. This
male mold was used to make the female molds, and from there we got to there, which is
the blister—the completed nose blister. A perfect rendition. Okay. You got that one out
of sequence. [referencing photograph]
JB:
Yeah, you—no. Well, tell us about this one, too.
HP:
Oh, okay.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�13
JB:
This is another one of the projects that you worked on there.
HP:
Yes, it is. This is the Station 5 bulkhead, as if you were standing in the bomb bay looking
up at it. And I did all of the work on the bench and just made all these parts. And still
working from an existing Boeing drawing and those crummy prints that came off the Dry
Silver printer. Yeah.
JB:
That’s a pretty substantial part of the structure.
HP:
It is. And that’s just Station 5. There’s another one very similar to it at Station 6 that I
did.
JB:
You also had to replace all the gears and the mechanical parts for the bomb bay doors?
HP:
Yes. I had to reinvent that whole thing. There was nothing there, so we had—except we
did have the jackscrews. Then I had to repair the gearboxes and then torque tube,
[unintelligible 00:24:31] torque tubes and pushrods, and the electrical system had to be
repaired.
JB:
What about this photo? Can you tell us about that? [hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh, here’s the bombardier’s instrument panel. And that’s another one that I worked on.
The box itself that the instruments are in was all beat up, and I had to straighten things
out, maybe cut a piece out, put a—replace it with a new one. And so any—that is also an
authentic replica of the bombardier’s panel. Yeah.
JB:
Herb, another project that you and I had talked about was the new overhead hatch for the
radio map.
HP:
Yes. The glass was all crazed and in terrible shape, so I took the glass off and I used it as
a template to make a mold with one of our local vendors. And from that mold, I made a
new glass, which I then assembled back on to the hatch structure—the frame. Yeah.
JB:
Okay, Herb. I have another photo for you. Maybe you could explain this one to me.
[hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh, okay. That is the—that’s the other side of the Station 5 bulkhead, with the brackets
on it to support the radio equipment. And that’s just one example of the brackets all
around the radio rooms supporting all kinds of different equipment.
JB:
Do you have any idea how many sets of brackets you made for radio equipment?
HP:
There’s two there, there’s two on the Station 6 bulkhead, and the—I think there’s three
on the other side of the Station 5 bulkhead.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�14
JB:
Here is a couple of photos of another section of this aircraft. [hands photographs to
Phelan]
HP:
Okay, that’s the—under the floor of the radio room was completely corroded and just a—
we had to tear it all out. So I’m making this thing. It’s upside down on the bench, you
see. And the other volunteers took a look at it, and they decided that’s Herb’s coffin. So,
anyway, that’s me in the middle there. And this is the—completed. Do I got that in the
right—no, this way. Yeah, that’s the completed unit. Now, of course, I had to take that all
apart in order to install the sections on the airplane.
JB:
Yeah, I can see it’s all held together with clecos there. That’s a pretty substantial
structure piece—structural piece, also.
HP:
Yeah. And where would we be without clecos? I don’t think we could build airplanes
with clecos.
JB:
That could possibly be so. You also restored all the walkways, didn’t you?
HP:
Yes. There’s a walkway that goes from the aft end of the radio room all the way back to
the aft entry door. It wasn’t there. People have been walking on the circumferentials, and
they were all crushed. Those all had to be replaced, too. And, yeah. It’s wooden, and we
got that replaced.
JB:
Can you explain this one? [hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh, this is the APU, mounted in the backend right inside the aft entry door. We didn’t
have this structure here that supports it, so I got the drawings and made the parts and got
it installed. Now, the APU itself is—it’s shown here, but the airplane doesn’t fly with an
APU. It’s only used if you need to start the engines if the batteries are dead or for some
other reason. And I’m told they delivered one with every fifth airplane. But anyway, to
take it out of the airplane, use it to start the engines, and then the airplane goes away.
JB:
Do you take it back out again and save it for the next airplane or—
HP:
Yeah.
JB:
Oh, okay. So they—one of out of five, they rotated the APU between planes?
HP:
Yeah. I think it’s one out of five because they didn’t need one for every airplane and it
was only there for—just to be ferried.
JB:
Okay.
HP:
I think once they took it out of the airplane, they probably never put it back in.
JB:
I have a couple more photos here. [hands photographs to Phelan]
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�15
HP:
Yeah. Oh boy, do I remember that. This is the instrument panel. And this is an example
of what the airplane looked like when we first got it. It was just a wreck on the inside.
There was nothing there, just a shell, wire bundles hanging down and all that kind of
thing. I don’t know how the heck they would explain it. But anyway, we worked on that,
and we wound up with that. And that is a perfect replica of the 1940s B-17 instrument
panel.
JB:
Where were you able to find the gauges, the instruments that went in there and the
controls? It must have taken a lot of research and work and—
HP:
That’s right. It did take a lot of research and work. But I don’t know where they came
from. I didn’t work that part of the airplane.
JB:
I have a couple more photos. This is about 1998. [hands photographs to Phelan]
HP:
[laughs] Yeah. This is May 9th, 1998. We’re doing a preflight on the engines, getting
ready for flight. Now, when we flew, we were supposed to fly on May 9th at about 10:00
in the morning, and there was a big gathering at the Museum waiting to do the reception.
Well, the weather was so crummy that we didn’t get off the ground until 3:00 in the
afternoon.
Anyway, we finally did get off, and there we are flying over Elliott Bay. Now, I think the
airplane was just supposed to leave Renton and do a quick turnaround and land at Boeing
Field. Well, I think the pilots all said, “Well, everything’s in the green. Let’s see—we’ll
play with this for a while.” And I think they stayed out for about an hour before they
came back. And then they did a missed approach and flew by the Museum and then
turned around and came back and landed. And then that’s when we had the reception.
JB:
What was the mood like? What was the mood like when you guys fired up those engines
and got ready to take it out after all those years in the plant restoring it?
HP:
Well, we were very excited while we’re doing the preflight and getting ready to fly, but
when the airplane took off and lifted up, at Renton Field it was a very, very emotional
time. I got all choked up and watched that airplane just fly away in the distance. Then I
drove over to Boeing Field to be there when the airplane landed, and then that was
another exciting time. All in all, it was a lot of fun.
JB:
How’d you become the crew chief on the B-17?
HP:
Oh. [laughs] After that flight in 1998, the Museum hosted a dinner for all of the
volunteers. And when I got to the dinner, there was a signup sheet there and everybody
signed up on the top block as who wants to be in charge, the chief interpreter, because
they were planning on putting the airplane on display and having people stand around to
answer questions. That block was empty. And I said, “Oh, okay. Well, nobody else wants
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�16
to be in charge. I’ll sign it.” So I did. So I guess I became crew chief by default.
[laughter]
JB:
How long was it here at the Museum on display?
HP:
Oh, I think about a year.
JB:
With the new crew chief?
HP:
Yeah, with this new crew chief. [laughter]
HP:
I think it was about a year. And we finally wound up in Plant 2, the 204 Building, along
with the B-29. And that’s when we continued with the restoration. A lot of things we
didn’t do on the inside. And what we did, up till 1998, was to get the airplane airworthy
so we could fly it. But there was still a lot of work to do on the inside, and so we
continued on with that. Yeah.
JB:
Is that about the time you received actual prints for it?
HP:
Oh, you—I think you’re talking about the digital. Yeah, yeah.
JB:
Yeah.
HP:
We were finally able to get digitized prints. I got them from a group that was restoring an
airplane in Urbana, Ohio that they called the Champagne Lady. And they sent me the
digitized version on discs, along with the index. And that was a godsend, to be able to get
easy access to whatever drawing you were looking for without having to go through all
this cumbersome activity with these doggone reels. And as I say, that was a godsend.
JB:
So do you have any idea how many volunteers worked on that plane?
HP:
We always thought about a hundred, but a lot of guys would come in for a little while and
then they’d leave. And I’ve always thought that 90% of the work was done by 10% of the
people.
JB:
That sounds about right. Did you ever get to fly in it?
HP:
Once, when the Boeing—sent the airplane over to Renton back from Boeing Field, and I
flew as flight engineer on that one flight. Yeah.
JB:
What was that like?
HP:
[laughs] It was pretty doggone exciting.
JB:
I bet it was.
HP:
To fly in an actual B-17. Yeah.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�17
JB:
Did you guys take the long way around?
HP:
No. They were more direct this time.
JB:
[laughs] Okay. The B-17 is—has been touted as a very airworthy plane that could take a
lot of abuse and continue to fly. What can you tell us about that?
HP:
Well, I’ll tell you, I think that’s a bit of a myth. The airplane was very vulnerable in many
places, and in other places, it would take a lot of abuse. But 4,700 of these were lost
during the war to—in combat, forming up accidents, and things like that. So I saw a
video one time of an airplane like this one just going down in a spin. [demonstrates with a
scale model] And there was no apparent damage on it, so the only conclusion I could
make is that the flight crew was disabled. And the airplane just went down in a spin.
JB:
It also had redundancy in controls. Tell us about some of those.
HP:
Yes. The control cables. There were two sets, one for the pilot and one for the copilot, so
if one side went, the other side was okay. There were also backup systems for the flaps,
the landing gear, and the bomb bay doors. The hand cranks in case you lost the electrical
system. Yeah. So you could operate the flaps, operate the landing gear, and operate the
bomb bay doors.
JB:
So when you and your fellow volunteers started the restoration on this B-17, it was on the
brink of the boneyard. It had been modified several times. It was used for spraying crops,
fire retardant, dusting crops. You people, in 25 years—approximately 25 years—took it
from that to the most complete, accurate B-17 anywhere.
HP:
Yeah.
JB:
What are your current projects?
HP:
There aren’t many. Right now, we’re polishing the windows on the top. But we only—
we’ve only gotten the waist gun windows and rear window because the weather started
turning bad and we put the covers on. So we’ll be able to finish that to work next
summer. Currently, I’m doing some research on the camera doors, the ones that are
underneath the camera floor—underneath the radio operator’s floor, and going to check
the feasibility of adding those. It’s a little complicated mechanism for opening and
closing them.
JB:
Herb, where did the aircraft come from?
HP:
After the war, in—when it was—I think to a little town in Arkansas called Stuttgart.
[unintelligible 00:37:45] And they had it in their main square, and it was painted white. It
was called “The Great White Bird.” And it was there for about five years, and I think the
patriotic fervor wore off, and the city fellows wanted to get rid of this great big thing in
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�18
the middle of the main square. So it was taken apart and trucked over to the airport,
where a pair of brothers—I think their name was Weimer [sic – meant Biegert]—they
bought it. And there was a big controversy about that. The Air Force still owned it when
it was at Stuttgart and—some difficulty in the sale. But eventually, they—I think they
bought it for $25,000. And those are the folks who used it for the crop dusting and
firefighting and all that.
And a fellow named Bob Richardson bought the airplane. He used it as a personal
transport just to fly around and have fun with. And he donated it—or, no, I’m sorry. He
sold it to the Museum. And the number I’ve heard is $750,000, but that could be wrong.
But that’s where it came from.
00:39:02
[B-29 restoration project]
JB:
Herb, can you give us a little bit of the history on that B-29 and how we came about
getting it?
HP:
Yes. It was at China Lake, and it was being used for target practice down there. And then
I think it went to Lowry Field, and they were doing some restoration there. And then the
Museum somehow or another made contact with the Air Force, and apparently, it was
taken apart and trucked up here to the—start the restoration.
JB:
Any restrictions on that aircraft from the Air Force?
HP:
Yes, a lot of restrictions. The original intent was to get the airplane to taxi. We were
going to start the engines and taxi the airplane. And the Air Force says, “No, you can’t do
that. You’re not even going to start the engines.”
JB:
Have we missed any subjects or anything we didn’t cover on the B-29 that’s—
HP:
Well, no, nothing that I can think of right now, anyway.
JB:
Okay. How did we—how did you get involved in the B-29 restoration?
HP:
Well, in February of 2009, Dale Nicholson, who was the crew chief, passed away,
unfortunately. And Tom Cathcart, the Director of Restoration, asked me to step in and
take over. So I did.
JB:
Can you tell us about that restoration project? What condition was it in?
HP:
I’m not sure because I came in so late, but at the time, most of the equipment was ready
to be installed. And when I got there, I looked around and I saw all this equipment sitting
on the benches, and I wondered why it’s not in the airplane. So I told the guys, “Hey,
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�19
let’s start getting this stuff in the airplane.” So we did. And I got to say that the B-29 right
now is pretty close to the same condition of accuracy as the B-17.
JB:
But the B-29 never flew again.
HP:
No. It will never fly. It still belongs to the Air Force, and their edict is, “Don’t fly it.
Don’t even start the engines.”
JB:
So from what we talked about on the B-17, this was sitting next to it in Plant 2?
HP:
Yes.
JB:
Is that where you were working on it?
HP:
Yes. Working on both of them.
JB:
Okay. In that project, how did you divvy up or pick the projects or divide up the work?
HP:
It was the same as the B-17. Look and find something wrong. Although now, since
almost everything is done, it’s easier to identify the remaining work because there’s not
much of it. So the guy who is now running things—his name is Dale Thompson—he has
a to-do list, and it has about maybe 15 items on it.
JB:
So that’s getting pretty close.
HP:
Yes.
JB:
So, again, you started with microfilm on this project. You had 150 rolls and 125,000
images.
HP:
Yes. And—
JB:
Tell me about that.
HP:
I talked to Bonnie Dunbar, who was the chief of the Museum at that time, and explained
our problem that we’re having with these microfilm reels. And she understood, so she
gave me a purchase order for “Not to exceed $15,000.” That was the estimate I got from
a local vendor. So I sent those 150 rolls down to that vendor, and he took them. I think he
sent them down to Wichita, and he had it all digitized. And we now have both the B-17
and the B-29 on computers. So much easier to access drawings than it was with those
microfilms.
JB:
During your restoration, where did you get the materials to make the new brackets, all the
new components, to restore the B-29?
HP:
Same as with the B-17. Most of that stuff came from Boeing.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�20
JB:
Were you again supported with their manufacturing processes?
HP:
Yes, yes. We had the same kind of support. The shop right next to us in the Plant 2
building—machine shop, a sheet metal shop, welding. Just about anything we needed.
JB:
So maybe you can tell us about some of the some of the projects, like the supports for the
APU.
HP:
Oh, yes. We had to support the APU and then did a lot of sheet metal work on brackets
for supporting different kinds of radio equipment. One of them was a challenge, the one
for the IFF equipment. It was very similar to what I was doing when—on the B-17.
JB:
You did the walkway for the tail gunner?
HP:
Yes, yeah. And then—oh, one of the more challenging ones was the support for the radar
that hangs underneath the airplane. We didn’t have any drawings for that. I had to work
from a photograph.
JB:
Oh, that must have been very challenging.
HP:
It was fun. Yeah.
JB:
Yeah. So isn’t some of the fab work for that being done here at the Museum?
HP:
Yes. We now have—we’ve moved the break in the shear from where it was in the Plant
2, and now—it’s now in the woodshop downstairs here in the Museum, so we can
continue on with the project. As I say, there’s not that much left to do on the B-29, so it’s
easy to do here. We don’t need a lot of big, heavy work.
JB:
Can you give us a comparison between the B-17 and the B-29? What do they—what are
their differences, strong points?
HP:
There’s a world of difference between the two. The B-29 is an order of magnitude
advanced in technology. Pressurized airplane, much bigger, two bomb bays, and flies
higher and faster. It’s just a much bigger airplane.
00:45:46
[Career reflection and closing thoughts]
JB:
So you’ve led a very interesting career as an engineer, and it must have been very
rewarding in itself. You’ve also got over 30 years and 13,000 hours of volunteer work in
the Museum, leading the restoration of both the 17 and the 29. What’s been the most
enjoyable and satisfying for you?
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�21
HP:
That’s an easy one. My interaction with all of the B-17 and B-29 volunteers and the folks
here on staff, that has been my most satisfying part of all of this.
JB:
What advice do you have for a young person today pursuing any kind of career?
HP:
Just to pay attention, study, and work hard. That’s—those are the three elements for any
endeavor.
JB:
I can’t express—I don’t believe the Museum can express the gratitude owed to you for all
of your work, volunteers, and years of what you have accomplished for this Museum.
And I want to thank you for your willingness to participate in this oral history program,
and I would also like to wish you the best of luck of finding that toilet.
HP:
Well, thank you very much. And again, it has been a huge pleasure. These last 25 years
have been among the best in my life.
00:47:25
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2018 © The Museum of Flight
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from an item
<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Phelan_Herb.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Phelan, Herb, 1928-2020
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Barth, John
Biographical Text
<p>Herb Phelan is a retired aeronautical engineer who has worked on several restoration projects of vintage aircraft. He was born on March 6, 1928 in Everett, Massachusetts and grew up in a foster home in Dorchester. He attended John Marshall Elementary School, Grover Cleveland Junior High School, and Hyde Park High School. While in high school, he studied drafting and worked as an apprentice draftsman for the Clifford Manufacturing Company (Boston, Massachusetts). He then apprenticed for Westinghouse.</p>
<p>In 1946, Phelan received his draft notice from the U.S. Army. He completed basic training at Sheppard Field (Texas) and advanced training at Scott Field (Illinois), where he earned his qualification as a teletype operator. He served at Holloman Air Force Base (New Mexico) until 1947, when he was honorably discharged.</p>
<p>After completing his military service, Phelan enrolled in the aeronautical engineering course at Cal-Aero Technical Institute (California). He completed the course in two years and then worked a series of engineering jobs with Lockheed, American Machine and Foundry Company, Chance Vought, and Pratt & Whitney. During this time, he also completed an aeronautical engineering degree at Boston University. He was hired by the Boeing Company in 1960 and relocated to Washington State.</p>
<p>During his career at Boeing, Phelan worked on a variety of engineering projects and contributed design details to numerous aircraft, including the 727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), and the E-3 and E-6 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) programs. He also worked on the Minuteman III missile and served as the Boeing representative to the Dornier Company in Germany.</p>
<p>Phelan assisted in the restoration of The Museum of Flight’s Boeing 80A by repairing the lower left outboard wing. His next aircraft restoration project came in 1993, when he joined the team of volunteers restoring the Museum’s B-17F Flying Fortress. The team successfully restored the aircraft to flying condition, and Phelan served as the B-17 crew chief when it went on display at the Museum’s main campus. He also served as the crew chief for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress restoration project, following the passing of crew chief Dale Nicholson in 2009. As of 2018, Phelan is still an active volunteer at the Restoration Center and has logged over 13,000 hours of volunteer work at the Museum.</p>
<p>Phelan married his wife, Isabel, in 1954. They had four children together.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OH_Phelan_Herb
Title
A name given to the resource
Herb Phelan oral history interview
Language
A language of the resource
English
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Herb Phelan and interviewer John Barth, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, February 22, 2018.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-22
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Airborne warning and control systems
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Family
Boeing B-29 Superfortress Family (Model 345)
Boeing Company
Boeing E-3 Sentry (AWACS) Family
Boeing E-6A Hermes (TACAMO)
Boeing Model 707 Family
Boeing Model 727 Family
Boeing Model 747 Family
Boeing Model 80A
Engineers
Minuteman (Missile)
Museum of Flight Restoration Center
Phelan, Herb, 1928-2020
Supersonic transport planes
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Airplanes--Design and construction
Boeing Company--Employees
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
1 recording (47 min., 25 sec.) : digital
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>Aeronautical engineer Herb Phelan is interviewed about his career in the aviation industry and his involvement in several aircraft restoration projects. He discusses his work with various aviation companies and his career at Boeing, circa 1950s-1990s. Projects discussed include the 727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), Minuteman III missile, and the AWACS program. He then discusses his restoration work on the Boeing Model 80A, the B-17F Flying Fortress, and the B-29 Superfortress. All three of these vintage aircraft are now on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- Aeronautical engineering career and early projects at Boeing -- Next Boeing projects: SST, Minuteman III, and AWACS -- Model 80A restoration project -- B-17 restoration project -- B-29 restoration project -- Career reflection and closing thoughts
-
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/1acdebd2bff2bcec59eaf6f441d764b3.mp4
eaa35ec3919e21401c04b8d1b54343b1
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/65ba21b643af526db1d3f834ec6c0067.pdf
633de88e3329c0f841d5b718b5bd815d
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Joseph Polocz
Interviewed by: Dan Hagedorn
Date: October 22, 2014
Location: Everett, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�2
Abstract:
World War II veteran Joseph Polocz is interviewed about his military service and his expertise in
mechanics and machine restoration. He describes his wartime experiences as a member of the
Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force, his time in a French prisoner-of-war
camp, and his post-war life as a laborer in Germany and France. He then discusses his
immigration to the United States and his technician career with Philco and RCA. The interview
concludes with an overview of Polocz’s volunteer work at The Museum of Flight Restoration
Center, where he served on the restoration teams for the Boeing 247 and several Link Trainers.
Biography:
Joseph Polocz served with the Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force during
World War II and afterwards immigrated to the United States, where he had a decade-spanning
career with RCA as an electronic technician. He was born on May 10, 1921 in Pannonhalma,
Hungary. His father was an ornamental metalsmith. During his youth, Polocz studied his father’s
trade, worked at a brick factory and movie house, and assisted family members on the family
farm.
During World War II, Polocz was called to military service with the Royal Hungarian Army. He
later transferred to the Royal Hungarian Air Force, where he trained as a mechanic and served as
an instructor at a mechanical school. He also participated in glider training. At a late point in the
war, Polocz and another serviceman escaped from advancing Russian forces by flying an
obsolete Dornier Do 23 aircraft out of their abandoned airfield. Polocz’s unit was captured by
American forces soon after, and he spent approximately three months in a French prisoner-ofwar camp. Following his release, Polocz worked in Germany as a farmhand, then attempted to
return Hungary. When he learned that many returning Hungarian soldiers were being sent to the
Gulag, he decided to return to Germany.
In the post-war years, Polocz worked as a coal miner in France but soon became worried that the
heightened international tensions might lead to another war. With the help of UNRRA (United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), he immigrated to the United States and
settled in Pennsylvania. Though he initially did not speak English, Polocz’s strong mathematic
and mechanical skills led to a job opportunity with the Philco Corporation. He later was hired by
RCA as an electronic technician. During his 38-year career with RCA, Polocz worked on
technology related to the Moon program and the guided missile cruiser, among other projects.
After his retirement, Polocz relocated to Washington State and settled in the Everett area. In the
1980s, he joined The Museum of Flight Restoration Center as a restoration volunteer. He served
on the restoration team for the Boeing 247 and also helped to restore several World War II-era
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�3
Link Trainers to operational status. As of 2014, he is still an active volunteer at the Restoration
Center.
Polocz married his wife, Mary, shortly after his immigration to the United States. The two had
one daughter, Maxine.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
Interviewer:
Dan Hagedorn served as Senior Curator and Director of Collections at The Museum of Flight
from 2008 until his retirement in 2016. Prior to his tenure at TMOF, he was Adjunct Curator and
Research Team Leader at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Hagedorn is
a graduate of Villa Maria College, the State University of New York, and the Command and
General Staff College, and served in the U.S. Armed Forces for almost three decades. He has
written numerous books and articles about aviation history in general and Latin American
aviation in particular. For his work in documenting Latin American aviation history, he received
the Orden Merito Santos-Dumont from the Brazilian Government in 2006. Since his retirement
in 2016, Hagedorn has served as a Curator Emeritus at the Museum.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Peder Nelson, TMOF Exhibits Developer.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�4
Index:
Introduction and personal background .......................................................................................................... 5
World War II and call to service ................................................................................................................... 8
Early aviation memories ............................................................................................................................. 10
Mechanical school instruction and glider training ...................................................................................... 10
Escape in a Dornier Do 23 .......................................................................................................................... 12
Time in a French prison camp and post-war life......................................................................................... 17
Coming to the United States and career with Philco and RCA................................................................... 19
Settling in the Pacific Northwest ................................................................................................................ 21
Restoration Center work and restoring Link Trainers................................................................................. 22
Favorite airplane and closing thoughts ....................................................................................................... 24
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�5
Joseph Polocz
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
DAN HAGEDORN: It’s October 22nd, 2014, Wednesday, 2014. We’re at The Museum of
Flight’s Restoration and Reserve Collection at Payne Field in Everett, Washington. With
us today is Joe Polocz.
JOSEPH POLOCZ:
[correcting pronunciation] Polocz.
DH:
Polocz
JP:
Polocz. P-O-L-O-C-Z.
DH:
And he’s one of the restoration volunteers here at the Restoration Center. And Joe, we’re
so glad that you’re here with us today. What I’d like to do is ask you first to tell me your
full name and pronounce it as slowly as you’d like.
JP:
My name is Joseph Polocz. That’s P-O-L-O-C-Z.
DH:
And your first name is Joseph?
JP:
Joseph.
DH:
How is that spelled?
JP:
Uh… [pauses] I never spelled that before. [laughs]
DH:
Okay. All right.
JP:
I would have to read it.
DH:
That’s okay. And can you tell us your date of birth, Joe?
JP:
May 10th, 1921.
DH:
My birthday is May the 10th as well.
JP:
[laughs] Wow. Wonderful.
DH:
We’re going to celebrate birthdays together.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
Mine was a little bit later than yours, however.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�6
JP:
[laughs] Probably.
DH:
And can you tell us what city or town you were born in?
JP:
I was born in a small town with a big heritage, a place called Pannonhalma. It’s three
hills in a row, and it has a monastery on one of them. And in Roman times, it was part of
Rome in the early centuries.
[scene transition]
DH:
So tell me the name of your place of birth again.
JP:
It’s called Pannonhalma, which means “hills of Pannonia.” And under the Roman
Empire, it was called Pannonia. And there are some—there’s a—after the Romans,
priests came from Italy, and they established a monastery up on one of those hills.
DH:
So what nation was that in at that time?
JP:
Rome, at that time.
DH:
At the time you were born, it was part of—
JP:
No, back in—a thousand years before.
DH:
So when you were born, it was part of Romania?
JP:
No, it was Hungary.
DH:
Hungary. That’s what I thought. Did you go to school there?
JP:
I went to school. I had a sixth grade education. That was my—and I loved school. I
missed it. I cried for days when I graduated from the sixth grade because I know this is it.
This the end. And I loved the teachers. I loved school. I liked it. I liked to learn, and I did
anything and everything to make it as pleasant as I could. And I was a good student. And
I just keep thinking back, even nowadays, that—what a wonderful time it was when I was
in school.
DH:
What does your father do, Joe? What was his profession?
JP:
My father was an ornamental metalsmith, and he did gates and railings that—elaborate,
hand-formed. It’s all hand-and-foot operation. And I tried to do like my father. And I did,
and I did some little odds and ends things. I have some [at] home—every once in a while.
When I lived back in Pennsylvania, on the river, Delaware River, where William Penn
landed, there’s a place called Penn’s Landing. And it’s a historical place, and they have
old-fashioned blacksmith shop and an old carpenter shop and things like that. And I used
to go there on my weekends. All week I was working for RCA on electronics and things,
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�7
and on the weekends, in 90-degree heat, I was in the forge and doing demonstrations for
all of these visitors. [laughs]
DH:
Bet it reminded you of your father.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DH:
Did you have brothers and sisters?
JP:
Yeah. I was the last one, the seventh. And now everybody is gone, you know. I’m 93
years old. And everybody passed away, and I have no relations left.
DH:
So you grew up in Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s.
JP:
Yes. Yes.
DH:
Tell us about your life then. After you finished school, what did you do then—what did
you do following school?
JP:
There was a brick factory there, and I worked in the brick factory. They were cutting
those red—mud bricks, and they’re loaded in little carts, and the kids—us kids were
pushing these little carts out into the areas where they had a roof over, where they put it
in a certain way to dry. And it took a couple of—two or three weeks to dry for those
bricks.
DH:
How old were you then when you were doing that work?
JP:
Oh, about 12, 13, 14.
DH:
What kind of workday did you have when you were working in that brickyard?
JP:
6:00 to 6:00. That was the norm. And an hour break for lunch.
DH:
So what was life like back in Hungary in those days? I know that you probably suffered
from the Depression, just like everyone else did.
JP:
Yes, it was, except it was worse because Hungary was—lost more territory than it
remains because other countries, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Serbia—and they all
took—
DH:
Help us to place your hometown in our mind’s eye. Which direction was it from
Budapest?
JP:
I can show it to you on a map.
DH:
Oh, that’s okay. Was it northwest or—
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�8
JP:
It’s roughly my—my hometown, roughly halfway between Vienna and Budapest.
DH:
Okay.
JP:
So it’s sort of west.
DH:
So it’s actually south of Budapest—west of Budapest. Yeah.
JP:
Southwest.
DH:
Southwest. Yeah. Just kind of wanted to get it in my mind’s eye there. I think that’s a
beautiful part of the country if—I’ve been over there once myself. And beautiful,
beautiful part of the country.
JP:
Yes. Yeah. It’s nice country. And then it go a little further, and you get to the Lake
Balaton—that’s the biggest lake in Europe. So it was very nice in pictures. No big
mountains. Just little hills and things.
DH:
So did you work at the factory long during your teenage years?
JP:
And I worked—we had some—a few acres of land, and I worked, helped my
grandmother, my mother. I was—I liked to do things, and I was busy helping everybody,
whoever needed help. I worked with my father, then I worked with my grandmother. She
was doing things, and I would help her, whatever she was doing. And with my mother,
we went to pick the fruits, the apples, pears, plums—whatever was in season—and
carried it home in baskets on our head. [laughs] It was a little bump—you know, wind-up
rags, so you can carry it on your head. Because there’s really no other way. You can’t do
it on your shoulder because you have to hold it. So this way we used to carry that home.
00:10:00
[World War II and call to service]
DH:
So let’s fast forward a little bit toward the late 1930s. The world situation is deteriorating.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
At what point did you become aware that war was coming?
JP:
I was very young. I was born in 1921, and it was after the war, and people were drifting
back from Russian prison camps. And I saw the situation as it was, and I saw it coming.
It was just a matter of when. When Hitler came on, it was just a matter of time.
DH:
So you must have been around 20, 21 years old when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.
JP:
Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�9
DH:
Yeah. Do you remember that event at all?
JP:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I was—you know, like I say, I liked to do things. On Sundays, I
used to clean the movie house. We had a movie house opened up, and I used to sweep it
and clean it and then I become a flunkey in the projection room. I could handle the films,
glue it, patch it together, fix it, glue it, because they were old films. And I was watching
all the newsreels. And I was very much aware of—I saw, just a matter of time, you know.
I saw Hitler came prancing along, Stalin and—because it was—for me, it was so obvious.
And I know I’m going to—I tried to figure out how can I get out of it, but there’s no
place to run. It’s a landlocked country. There’s no place to go. So I figure, well, I can’t
run away from it, but maybe I can survive it. And that’s what I did. I volunteered for this,
volunteered there for that, I volunteered there for technical things and things I liked. And
that’s what saved me.
DH:
Were you called to service in the Hungarian Army?
JP:
Yes, yes.
DH:
Okay. So you—what type of unit did they induct you into?
JP:
Eventually, I got into the Air Force. [laughs]
DH:
Very good. Tell us about that transition. I’m sure you must have gone through basic
training. And how did you come to be in the Hungarian Air Force? I think it was—at that
time, it was the Royal Hungarian Air Force, wasn’t it?
JP:
Yeah. Yeah. But—well, people—I liked to learn things, and I volunteered. I volunteered
from here to there. But [if] I didn’t like something, I volunteered for something else.
[laughs] And I loved to learn, and I loved it. And it saved my life, more or less, because I
was in a training school, you know, where they were training mechanics. And then I
became a teacher.
DH:
So you were an instructor?
JP:
Instructor. But I didn’t like to talk to people who didn’t know what I was talking about,
so I—like I said, I was a handy kid. I made things out of metal and wood and wire,
whatever it take to demonstrate what it was, like made a compass and things and basic
fundamental pieces. And one [of] my commanders—officers saw it. I didn’t have to teach
anymore, talk to the kids anymore.
DH:
Do you want to cut? [referring to lawn mower noise in background]
PEDER NELSON:
DH:
Yeah, we might need to cut for a second.
I thought those guys were done out there. They’re getting close again. Doggone it.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�10
[lawn mower noise stops]
DH:
Sounds like he cut it then. Okay.
JP:
You shut him off. [laughs]
00:14:42
[Early aviation memories]
DH:
You ready to roll? Well, let me back up just a minute, though. I want to ask you another
question, and this is something I ask everybody we interview. What is your earliest
memory of an airplane or of aviation?
JP:
Well, I didn’t bring a picture, but I just find some old pictures I have from when I went
back to Hungary. And I made a model airplane. I mean, in those days when you wanted
to make something, you make it. You don’t buy it. And I made a model airplane out of a
piece of copper because it was easier to work with than iron. And we didn’t have
aluminum.
DH:
Do you remember what the model was of? What type of airplane it was?
JP:
It was just a plane with one engine. And I just—the one I saw in pictures or I saw
sometime flying over.
DH:
Do you remember how old you were when you did that?
JP:
Oh, about 10, 12. That’s when I—
DH:
So you had an early fascination with airplanes.
JP:
Yes, yes. Because I saw some planes flying and I thought it was fascinating, you know.
DH:
Very good.
JP:
Technology fascinated me.
DH:
Want to cut again? [referring to lawn mower noise in background]
[scene transition]
00:16:24
[Mechanical school instruction and glider training]
DH:
So you built small airplanes when you were younger, and then later, around 1940, ’41,
you became a member of the Hungarian Army and then the Royal Hungarian Air Force.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�11
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
You were an instructor in a mechanical school.
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
What type of mechanical instruction did you give? Was it on engines or airframes or…?
JP:
We train mechanics, you know. And funny things happened at the time, once the war was
on and schoolkids were transferred out into the country, because the cities were bombed
all over the place [unintelligible 00:17:15]. And some school evacuated into that—and
we were evacuated into—from the city to a place called [unintelligible 00:17:31]. It’s a
small town. And it had a patch of grass on the end of the town, and we had some old
airplanes the guys were working on. You know, just practicing. No flying, just
mechanical.
DH:
Instructional airframe? Yeah, uh huh [affirmative].
JP:
And we were in that small town and—
DH:
Were these Hungarian Air Force airplanes or German Air Force—Luftwaffe planes?
JP:
Mostly German, you know, because I think—yeah, there was, I think, one fighter plane
was my—I forget the name of it, but very few and far between was Hungarian.
DH:
Did you see much aerial activity during that period in terms of air combat or—
JP:
No, not much. And once schoolkids get bombed out from the cities, then they were
hanging out there. And they were—had a glider school there. Flying gliders, the glider
plane. And they fly by, have a drum on the rear end of the pickup truck, jacked it up, and
it was full of wire. And we pulled it out, hooked up the glider, and then you got pulled
up. Then you watched down—because the plane was just a wing and a tail and a structure
to hold the thing. We had no body on it—
DH:
What they called a primary glider.
JP:
Yeah. Very primitive. It was made by some people. And you were sitting out there
looking down between your feet, you know. And you controlled—had your feet and you
were strapped into that seat and that’s it. But it was nothing around you.
DH:
Did you take that type of training yourself?
JP:
Yes. Yes, I did. And it helped me an awful lot. And the reason I’m telling you this,
because you have that story about the Dornier. That was our training to fly the Dornier.
DH:
So that’s the only training you had prior to that event?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�12
JP:
That’s the only—
DH:
So this was like 1942, ’43, ’44?
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:15
[Escape in a Dornier Do 23]
DH:
Okay. So one of the airplanes that happened to be on this field was the Dornier Do 23?
JP:
Yeah. Well, our field got emptied because the Russians were coming, so all the planes
were loaded on railroad cars and transferred out.
DH:
I see.
JP:
The Dornier, they left it there because it was too big and too old. It was 1935.
DH:
So describe this airplane for me. As I recall, it had two engines.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
It was a monoplane. Basically designed as a bomber, I believe, originally.
JP:
Yes.
DH:
And how many—a three- or four-seat? Pilot, copilot, gunners?
JP:
It was one gunner in the back, one gunner in the front, and a pilot.
DH:
So a single pilot? No copilot?
JP:
No. And that was it.
DH:
But it was a pretty big airplane for that time?
JP:
Yes, yes. For those days.
DH:
Yeah.
JP:
And we were training the glider—well, you have that—
DH:
Yeah, we’ll find it. That’s okay.
JP:
So anyway, that’s one of—oh, we were out in some kind of—they set up some kind of
a—we set some kind of a defense line. And we were out there. And I was a pretty handy
kid, and the captain know me pretty well, so he told me how about I go in and—because
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�13
all of the other planes were gone—to see what’s going on with the Dornier, if it’s still
there. Because this were—we were in enemy territory, and the people were stealing—
DH:
This must have been in early 1945 then.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went back to see the Dornier. And we were trying to fix it up
because, like I said, they couldn’t fly it out. And it was too big to take it apart. So I don’t
know why, but the captain thought that maybe we can do something with it, you know,
maybe—
DH:
Was it primarily the engines were the problem or was it—
JP:
Yeah, the engines.
DH:
Primarily the engines.
JP:
And I remember the left engine because the covers were off of it and I was working on
the valves arrangement and things and trying to get something done on it. And I saw
Russian soldiers on the other end of the field. You know, on our end, so it wasn’t close,
but that’s as close as I got to the Russians when we went back there. And then we tried to
find the captain. We couldn’t find him. And me and another guy, Pete—
DH:
Do you remember Pete’s full name?
JP:
Uh… Yeah, wait a minute. What’s his name? Pete. [pauses] I’ll think of it.
DH:
Don’t worry about it.
JP:
But anyway—
DH:
Was he another mechanic or—
JP:
Yeah, he was like me. And anyway, we were buddies, and we were flying the gliders and
things. Anyway, when we saw the Russians and we couldn’t find the captain, what are we
going to do, you know? So we figured if we just go in the other end of town, across the
railroad track there is another big, grassy patch. So we figured if we just go up over there,
we would be away from the Russians and safe. That was the plan. So we figured if we
can make it there, we’ve got it made, you know. So we cranking and cranking and trying,
and I crank, and he cranked, and his—keep changing and things. And finally he was in
the seat, and I did the cranking, and he got both engines working. But we never had the
cover—I remember the valve covers, we never put back on the plane. [laughs]
DH:
So this is the type of engine you had to hand-crank the engine to start it.
JP:
Yeah, yeah. [demonstrates] Hand-crank it and then you pulled—
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�14
DH:
That’s a lot of cranking, as I recall.
JP:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we got it—got two engine running. So Pete was in the pilot seat. He
just sit there, and I hold on to everything we got, and we took off. And we had nothing. It
was cold up there. And I went back to the—because it was empty, the bombing area—
bombing section. It was nothing, just a flat—and I saw a guy sitting there in the middle of
the—[laughs].
DH:
So there was another man in the airplane?
JP:
A guy climbed in behind us, which I didn’t—we didn’t even know. So we had a
passenger. [laughs]
DH:
A stowaway.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DH:
So neither of you had ever flown this airplane before.
JP:
No, no. [unintelligible 00:26:43] we flying gliders.
DH:
You knew the basic theory.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
But nothing like that or nothing anywhere near that large before.
JP:
And I remember when we were flying gliders, and in the gliders we tried to gain all the
altitude you possibly can. So you go up like this—[demonstrates]—and when you reach
the top point, somebody down there waves the flag and then you disconnect and then you
try to fly on your own, try to fly a—find a thermal or updrift or something, stay up as
long as you can possibly can. That was the practice. Anyway, the plane was going up,
and the plane was going up like this. [demonstrates] And it took me 50 years to figure it
out. The reason, because that’s the way we were training. And that plane wasn’t—but it
was empty, you know. Two engine, empty. We had enough power, and then we was
climbing like this.
DH:
Did you know how much fuel you had on the airplane?
JP:
Well, we checked it out. We divided evenly between the two tanks. We had a half a tank
in each one.
DH:
Do you know if the Russians on the other end of the field were shooting at you by that
time?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�15
JP:
We didn’t know—if they did, we didn’t know. And we didn’t care. But we figured if we
just go to the other end of the town and over the railroad station—and the other
possibility which I was thinking, our headquarters, the management, was at the next
town. So I figure we going over the railroad station, turn right, fly over the railroad, and
come down at the next town and down—here’s the plane. Okay, we made it. That was the
plan.
So when we were flying, finally I climb up there, up front, and I’m looking down, and I
didn’t see no railroad station. I saw about 15 or 20 towns under it. We were so high, we
passed—I couldn’t see railroad tracks. Nothing. We were lost, literally. So I figured we
come and—Russians come from the east, so we have to go west, by the sun. The sun was
out, so we were flying by the sun toward the west. And we figured, well, at least try to
cross the Danube now that we got this far because if we land anywhere, that should be
a—
DH:
So how long were you in flight then?
JP:
Oh, for about an hour or—
DH:
So figuring going 100 miles an hour, you went at least at 100 miles.
JP:
Quite a bit, quite a bit.
DH:
And you must have landed then in Austria?
JP:
No, we landed—we crossed the Danube because you can’t miss it, you know. It’s the
only big river there. And we crossed the Danube, and then we were flying north. And we
came down because we didn’t know where we were. We saw the railroad tracks, came
down, and must be a railroad station. And I’m trying to read the railroad station—it has a
big sign on it—so we know where we are. And we passed that little town, and then we
tried to get back up, but the plane keep on coming down. And the left engine was
smoking. Well, we didn’t have the valve covers on, and it was pumping out the oil all
[unintelligible 00:30:56]. And that was a life-saver because what we didn’t know, the Air
Defense guys under us [had] been watching ever since we—flying. And they watched the
plane, and they couldn’t identify it. There was no insignia on it.
DH:
Oh, dear.
JP:
Because it wasn’t an operational airplane. And the wings were covered with fabric. They
were waving in the breeze, falling apart. [laughs] And they couldn’t identify the plane,
and they were handing us over and following us with the guns and tried to talk to each
other to identify the plane, but nobody saw anything like it ever or heard anything like it.
And we made it across the Danube, and the agreement among them was we can come
down but we cannot go any further. Because there’s a bridge was coming, which was
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�16
very critical, and we [were] approaching Budapest, and that was a no-no. And
fortunately, the left engine started to smoke, and we were losing altitude. We were
coming down. So we had no choice. We came down, and that’s what saved us because
we would have been pulverized. And the guys who came—you know, the military guys
came and checked us out and all that. We had IDs and everything. And they told us that
you’re lucky because you could—agreement was this is [as] far as we can go.
DH:
So did you make a decent landing? Clearly you walked away from it.
JP:
We made a—[demonstrates]—little bumps, but we made a decent landing and everything
was okay. I was standing up there.
DH:
So what happened next, once you got out of the airplane? Did you just run or—
JP:
No, no. We just stayed there. And people from town came out because they heard noise
and things. And police came, and then the military came, and they told us the story that
we had been watched and it was a good thing we landed because the agreement among
them was this is [as] far as we can go because from here on out there is no more. And
that’s what saved us. And through the country that we were flying, they were following
us with their guns, handing over one from another. And it was almost a miracle. I
didn’t—we didn’t know. We didn’t know any of that.
DH:
That’s miraculous.
JP:
It is. It’s almost by the grace of God. It’s—
DH:
So what happened next after you landed and safely got away from the aircraft?
JP:
Pete, he—because he started the—and I didn’t like to be the head honcho, so I told him,
“You go—the report into our headquarters.” They told us where it is and things. So he
went, and I was staying there with the plane. And then finally—he didn’t get back, but
somebody came and told us that—told me that was the story, he’s not going to come
back, and I should pack up and go report to my command.
DH:
So did you head west then or—
JP:
So I left the plane there, packed up, and I went to report to my captain and things. And he
chewed us out, how stupid we were. [laughs]
DH:
They had more important things on their mind, though, I expect at that point.
JP:
And they were getting ready to transfer again from someplace else.
DH:
So you knew that, basically, things were starting to unravel, that the Russians were
coming from the east. The Allies were coming from the west.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�17
JP:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
DH:
What happened next?
JP:
I asked my captain and—because my hometown wasn’t too far from there, where they
were stationed—let me go to visit my parents because my father was sick—was old and
sick. And I went home to visit for a day or so. Very short visit. But trains were bombed
out in the area and things and I couldn’t get back, so my group went out to Germany and
I [was] left behind. And I joined some other group which wasn’t our group, but they were
going to the same place and went with them to Germany into a city called Plauen in
Northeast Germany.
00:36:43
[Time in a French prison camp and post-war life]
DH:
Do you remember when the surrender was announced? Did it become clear to you right
away or how was it made known to you?
JP:
Well, we know that it was just a matter of time, you know. And we were captured by
Americans and within a few weeks was handed over to the French because it became a
French-occupied zone.
DH:
I see.
JP:
And we were in a prison camp and just—
DH:
Were you interrogated by the French?
JP:
No.
DH:
Okay.
JP:
No, no. Because we were by the thousands.
DH:
So they basically just released you and sent you home?
JP:
Well, not yet. We were in a prison camp, and it had lights around it. And I was—I could
hardly stand up, but I volunteered to work on the lights. And they didn’t want Germans to
work on the lights because the Germans get out and they never come back. [laughs] They
went home or just disappeared. But they know we couldn’t do the same thing, so they
picked us Hungarians. And we were working on that light—on the lights. And that’s what
I did.
DH:
How long were you in the camp?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�18
JP:
Oh, about three months. And because I worked on the—they closed the camp and put the
prisoners somewhere else, but they let me go because I was working on the thing there.
They let me out.
DH:
So did you go home then or—
JP:
And it was three of us, and we—I didn’t speak a word of German. So we stumbled into a
small town which wasn’t bombed called [Eppelsheim?]. It’s [unintelligible 00:39:15]. It’s
a little south of where we used to be. And I worked for a farmer, and we used to talk on
the weekend—three of us for three different farmers—and we figured we can do that [at]
home, too, so why work here? And we didn’t—we got some—I think 20 marks a month,
but you couldn’t buy anything in Germany. Money wasn’t—it was useless. You couldn’t
buy anything. But we were working for what we got to eat, which was potatoes morning,
noon, and night, seven days a week, because that’s all they had. But at least we were
eating.
So we packed up and went home and went through all the things, you know, the cities,
the big cities like Vienna and—I don’t know. I forget the names of some of the cities.
They were all Four-Power occupied. Russian zone, American zone, British zone, French
zone. And you got checked out. We had our [unintelligible 00:40:33], as they say, that
the—pass. So they let us go. And we get to the Hungarian border. And some people
spoke some Hungarian. They told us, “You’ll never make it home because Stalin is
sending everybody into the Gulag.” So we turned around and worked our way back—
[laughs]—
DH:
Good for you.
JP:
…to the same old farmer, but a couple of months later because trains weren’t running.
Sometimes we walked for days, and sometimes we catch a train or catch some kind of a
ride.
DH:
So there were other Hungarian soldiers with you?
JP:
Yeah. There was three of us. We were buddies. And we went back to the farmers who are
there, and it was just going on and on and on. And I was in the French zone, and I have to
check in with the French commandant once in a while. And he told me in German that—
“Why don’t you go to France? You can earn money and things.”
DH:
So you picked up some German by that time, huh?
JP:
Oh, yeah. I spoke very good German. So I went to France, and I figured I don’t know
anything. It was a distribution center somewhere down in Toulouse. That’s Southern
France. And they sent me to a farmer. But now we were treated like—well, I was—not
“we.” I went to a farmer, and the other guys went some other places. I don’t know. We
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�19
got split. But the French farmers, I was—lived over the pig sty in a haystack. That’s
where I was sleeping. And when I was eat—when they come and call me to lunch or
something, it was in the kitchen. I was eating with the dogs and the kids. I couldn’t sit at
the table. It was—and I figured, “Oh, hell, this is ridiculous.” So I went back to the—
when we left from Germany, the French stole some clothing and things, and they give us
a set of clothing, pants and a jacket and things. It was brand new as a reward for us to go
to France. And I find somebody, and I sold it to them for whatever, but it was enough for
me to get a bus ride and back to the command center. And I told them I don’t want to
work for a farmer. So I went to the coal mines, and I worked in the coal mines for three
years.
DH:
That’s a tough living.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was better than anything else. But it was brutal because it was
very deep, it was very hot, it was burning all over the place. Every once in a while some
section became so hot, you could—you drill into the chute, put a dynamite in there, and
you saw the fire on the end of the—when you pulled the drill out. So we closed it up,
started to drill somewhere—
DH:
So this must have been in Northeastern France.
JP:
No, southwest.
DH:
Oh, Southwestern France. Oh, okay. Down near the Pyrenees.
JP:
Toulouse—yeah, yeah, yeah. I could—saw the Pyrenees.
DH:
I see. Yeah.
JP:
And Toulouse, Marseilles, all the area there. And it was a small place called
[unintelligible 00:44:59]. [unintelligible 00:45:00] of the mines.
00:45:04
[Coming to the United States and career with Philco and RCA]
DH:
So did you have any concept at that point in time that you would ever be in the United
States?
JP:
No. But it came the ‘50s—1950s—the Berlin Crisis started, and I thought it’s going to be
another war. And there was a place called UNRRA. That’s for the refugees in big cities.
So I went to Toulouse, and I told them I would like to go to Canada, United States,
Brazil—anywhere, just out of Europe. Because I thought it’s going to be another war.
And I volunteered for wherever they send me. And by the grace of God, I wind up in the
United States. [laughs]
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�20
DH:
So you came by steamer, I suppose. Some sort of ship.
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
Leaving from France?
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
Where did you land when you came to the United States?
JP:
In the Philadelphia area.
DH:
Philadelphia?
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DH:
And, of course, you didn’t know a word of English.
JP:
Not a word. But I could do things. And in Philadelphia, a lot of German population—I
went somewhere, and they sent me to an area where the Germans lived in Philadelphia.
And it was like home. And I worked for the Germans. I worked for a builder for a while,
digging ditches, whatever flunkey—mortar bricks for the guys who were doing the job
and doing that kind of a work and living on that.
And then I went to the school, [unintelligible 00:47:12] school, I had discovered
electronics. And I still didn’t speak any English, but I gobbled it up. And I never forget it
because I was—surprised the hell out of me. I heard Philco Corporation is hiring. They
were making televisions. Television was coming on line. And I went there, and I—gave
me a sheet of paper, and I could read everything and answer—do the mathematics,
trigonometry, geometry, whatever. I did the math. I answered the—put down the answers
to the question. It was all mathematic—electronic questions. Mathematics. And I was
working for Philco. And Philco was laying off, and I heard RCA in Camden, New Jersey,
I go over there, give me a sheet of paper, I answered all the questions. Without interview,
nothing, I was in. [laughs] I couldn’t speak English, but I was working for RCA. And I—
DH:
So what was your job title when you were hired by RCA?
JP:
Electronic technician. And—
DH:
So you had no formal training as electronic technician at all?
JP:
No, no. Well, I learned a little bit, yeah. But it was my passion. It was my entertainment.
It was my hobby. I loved it. I like it. I was fascinated by it. And I give it everything I got,
you know. And I eat it up. And I work for RCA for 38 years. Now, RCA paid for
education, and I was taking courses, college courses, until I was 60 years old because the
technology was changing, you know. Everything was vacuum tubes and then integrated
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�21
circuits, you know. Microchips and things. And I had to keep up with it. And I was
working on the Moon program, the guided missile cruiser. Everything that was avantgarde, I was on it. I had degreed engineers working for me because I know what I was
doing. I was in California installing the [unintelligible 00:49:55] on the Aegis ships. It
was Port Hueneme in California. And I just—
00:50:07
[Settling in the Pacific Northwest]
DH:
So how did you end up in Seattle?
JP:
Well, I lived in Philadelphia, and my daughter was out—they moved out—my daughter
moved out here to—
DH:
Well, wait a minute. We haven’t asked you about your family life. Somewhere along the
line, you stopped being a bachelor.
JP:
Yeah. Because in Philadelphia, I got to know a lady who was Hungarian descent, spoke
perfect Hungarian, and we were—
DH:
What was her name?
JP:
Mary.
DH:
Mary.
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
And you had children, obviously.
JP:
One daughter.
DH:
One daughter.
JP:
One daughter. And they lived out here, and when I retired, we packed up, sold
everything, and moved out here.
DH:
That’s a long way from Hungary.
JP:
[laughs] Yes. Yeah, yeah.
DH:
A long way from a Dornier Do 23.
JP:
But it worked, you know. It was a smart move because, like I say, I figured it out. This is
the best place in the United States to live.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�22
00:51:18
[Restoration Center work and restoring Link Trainers]
DH:
How did you find out about The Museum of Flight and the Restoration Center?
JP:
There was an air show here. And I came out, and I stumbled in there. A bunch of old
guys—George, you know, and company. There was an old airplane. They were hanging
around that old airplane, the Boeing 247, on that air show. And I got to know George,
and we lived very close, and we became like buddies, you know. I still visit George’s
grave every once in a while when I pass by. I got in there, and they didn’t even let me
work on the 247 because I wasn’t Boeing. And then they discovered—George
[unintelligible 00:52:19] was the guy who saw that I could do things.
DH:
You know, come to think of it, a Boeing 247 bears an uncanny resemblance to a Dornier
Do 23.
JP:
Yes. Yes, it’s similar. [laughter] But I could do things. I can [ask?] and get that surface
plate, and I made things, you know. All the Boeing employees wind up working for me
because I could do whatever I wanted to do and it worked. And I got a flight in a 247, and
they let me fly it. And I have a picture to prove it.
DH:
There’s not very many people who can say that, that’s for sure.
JP:
I flew it.
DH:
That’s wonderful. So had you ever heard of a Link Trainer before you came to the
Museum Restoration Center?
JP:
No, I never—I didn’t—I never heard of it. I never saw it. I didn’t know what it was. But
like I said, I’ve been training for this stupid job all my life. I’m the only one who could
do it because nobody knows what the hell was going on. The only thing I didn’t know,
was new for me, is the bellows, which was a piece of rag, you know. It’s no big deal. We
find organ makers in Massachusetts, and we dig them up, and we bought the fabric.
DH:
So what was the first one that you saw? Was it a C3 or was it this C8 behind you?
JP:
C8.
DH:
This was the first one you saw. Was it a wreck? Was it pretty much used up?
JP:
It was so beat up that it’s almost incomprehensible. [stands up and walks to work table]
Somebody stole it. Anyway, I had a picture. [walks back to Link Trainer]
DH:
That’s okay. We’ll find that later. So it was in pretty bad shape.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�23
JP:
We took everything out. I mean, everything. Because this was all crushed in. The bottom
was destroyed, and this was all just a rusty, dirty mess. The bellows were all rotten. And
so we removed everything, and we got some woodworkers—guys who can do the
woodwork. They fixed up the body here. And this thing was all—oh, we didn’t have a
desk. [moves to desk] And we got the instruction books for it, and we know what we
needed. And we get this desk and modified it. I made the pipes and things and made the
changes, lowered the—made different things for this. [indicating drawer] Big enough to
put the things in here—put all that in there, because it just had a little slide. And we made
the handles and things and installed everything.
DH:
So this is probably the most complete Link C8 assembly in the world.
JP:
[returns to seat] As far as I know. And this was our first one. And we did the one
downtown and—
DH:
But you also did the C3s. Now, were the C3s smaller and less complex than the C8?
JP:
Yes. Yes, they are.
DH:
And they’re fully operational, also.
JP:
Yes, every one of them. And I made one for Bellingham Museum, too.
DH:
What do you think the significance of the Link Trainer is in aviation history?
JP:
I think it was a big breakthrough at the time. It was a big thing because they could—I
read—there’s a book here somewhere about the Link Trainer. It can separate the men
from the boys. People who volunteer to become a pilot, they put them in here and close
that door, and if he has the knack for it and the instructor can determine—select the guys
who had the capability, and then they graduated from here, went on to flying lessons. The
ones who couldn’t make it, they went for—somewhere else. And I think it was a big
thing to—
DH:
This is a wonderful contribution to the history of this Museum and to aviation history. I
think is—between this and the Boeing 247, they’re probably your crowning achievements
here at The Museum of Flight.
JP:
[laughs] Yeah, yeah. I did more than anybody. I’m not a bragger, but I know I’m here,
you know, for a long time.
DH:
Well, just the other night, I gave you an award for 15,000 hours of service as a volunteer.
That is an extraordinary number. It has never been achieved here before.
JP:
Yup. My daughter’s friend and I put it up there. [pointing off-camera] And Bob [Port?]
and myself—and Bob, he came much later than I did, but he puts in more time, you
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�24
know. Nowadays, I don’t stay six, seven, eight hours. He stays longer, so he accumulated
more hours. But in the olden days, I was here.
00:58:21
[Favorite airplane and closing thoughts]
DH:
Well, Joe, I have to ask you this because this is a question I ask of everybody that I
interview for our series. What’s your favorite airplane?
JP:
The 247. [laughs]
DH:
I kind of thought that might be the response. And finally, if you have to leave a message
for the youth of both America and the youth of all nations as to what is the secret of the
incredible life that you’ve had, what is the secret?
JP:
I don’t know. I’m thinking back, and I come to the conclusion that I never was the
outstanding one, generally speaking. I never stick my head up. I keep my head low and
keep doing. And I keep doing no matter what. The bombs were coming down, and
everybody was running. I was doing things, you know. Whatever you do, keep on doing
what you’ve been doing, and that’s—I think that’s what saved me a lot of times.
DH:
Perseverance.
JP:
Yes, yes. Yeah. I was committed to do something, and I stayed with it.
DH:
I think this is evidence of that, that’s for sure. [indicating Link Trainer]
JP:
I didn’t cut and run. I stayed with whatever I was doing, no matter what was going on
around me. And I think that’s what saved me.
DH:
Is there anything that you would like to add that we maybe missed or that you would like
to expand upon?
JP:
I don’t know. I think I told you just about anything and everything I can think of. If I left
out something, it isn’t much. [laughs]
DH:
You’re a fascinating gentleman, and we really appreciate you doing this with us today,
Joe.
JP:
It just happened that way, like I say. I didn’t plan it, and I didn’t expect an interview or
anything or, you know—
DH:
Well, we’re honored to have you as part of our oral history program.
JP:
I just do, you know. I just like to do what I like to do. Find something to do and do it.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�25
DH:
Words to live by.
JP:
That’s my word of wisdom.
DH:
That’s your motto. There you go. Okay, I think that’s a wrap.
01:00:59
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from an item
<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Polocz_Joseph.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Polocz, Joseph, 1921-
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Hagedorn, Dan
Biographical Text
<p>Joseph Polocz served with the Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force during World War II and afterwards immigrated to the United States, where he had a decade-spanning career with RCA as an electronic technician. He was born on May 10, 1921 in Pannonhalma, Hungary. His father was an ornamental metalsmith. During his youth, Polocz studied his father’s trade, worked at a brick factory and movie house, and assisted family members on the family farm.</p>
<p>During World War II, Polocz was called to military service with the Royal Hungarian Army. He later transferred to the Royal Hungarian Air Force, where he trained as a mechanic and served as an instructor at a mechanical school. He also participated in glider training. At a late point in the war, Polocz and another serviceman escaped from advancing Russian forces by flying an obsolete Dornier Do 23 aircraft out of their abandoned airfield. Polocz’s unit was captured by American forces soon after, and he spent approximately three months in a French prisoner-of-war camp. Following his release, Polocz worked in Germany as a farmhand, then attempted to return Hungary. When he learned that many returning Hungarian soldiers were being sent to the Gulag, he decided to return to Germany.</p>
<p>In the post-war years, Polocz worked as a coal miner in France but soon became worried that the heightened international tensions might lead to another war. With the help of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), he immigrated to the United States and settled in Pennsylvania. Though he initially did not speak English, Polocz’s strong mathematic and mechanical skills led to a job opportunity with the Philco Corporation. He later was hired by RCA as an electronic technician. During his 38-year career with RCA, Polocz worked on technology related to the Moon program and the guided missile cruiser, among other projects.</p>
<p>After his retirement, Polocz relocated to Washington State and settled in the Everett area. In the 1980s, he joined The Museum of Flight Restoration Center as a restoration volunteer. He served on the restoration team for the Boeing 247 and also helped to restore several World War II-era Link Trainers to operational status. As of 2014, he is still an active volunteer at the Restoration Center.</p>
<p>Polocz married his wife, Mary, shortly after his immigration to the United States. The two had one daughter, Maxine.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OH_Polocz_Joseph
Title
A name given to the resource
Joseph Polocz oral history interview
Language
A language of the resource
English
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Joseph Polocz and interviewer Dan Hagedorn, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, March 17, 2017.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-10-22
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
France
Germany
Hungary
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Aviation mechanics (Persons)
Boeing Model 247
Dornier Do 23
Gliders (Aeronautics)
Hungary. Magyar Királyi Honvéd Légier?
Link trainers
Museum of Flight Restoration Center
Polocz, Joseph, 1921-
Prisoners of war
Radio Corporation of America
Royal Hungarian Air Force
World War, 1939-1945
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
1 recording (1 hr., 59 sec.) : digital
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>World War II veteran Joseph Polocz is interviewed about his military service and his expertise in mechanics and machine restoration. He describes his wartime experiences as a member of the Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force, his time in a French prisoner-of-war camp, and his post-war life as a laborer in Germany and France. He then discusses his immigration to the United States and his technician career with Philco and RCA. The interview concludes with an overview of Polocz’s volunteer work at The Museum of Flight Restoration Center, where he served on the restoration teams for the Boeing 247 and several Link Trainers.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- World War II and call to service -- Early aviation memories -- Mechanical school instruction and glider training -- Escape in a Dornier Do 23 -- Time in a French prison camp and post-war life -- Coming to the United States and career with Philco and RCA -- Settling in the Pacific Northwest -- Restoration Center work and restoring Link Trainers -- Favorite airplane and closing thoughts
-
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/a6ca84c8c6423e66cc6a35c09ace9650.mp4
2238b0b31818d1b41c12501bb77d2553
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/081f6a40e8941624e2d8b6c13ef78e4e.pdf
35f6b2dc68bea2614b37e0cd5f5bfdb7
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Jim Jackson
Interviewed by: Dan Hagedorn
Date: September 23, 2014
Location: Everett, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�2
Abstract:
Aviation mechanic James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson is interviewed about his life and military
service. Particular focus is given to Jackson’s time with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World
War II, when he worked as a B-29 mechanic in the United States and Guam. Afterwards,
Jackson discusses his involvement with The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center and his
work restoring various aircraft, including the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress and Lockheed YO3A Quiet Star.
Biography:
James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson was a B-29 mechanic during World War II. Later, he
volunteered at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center, assisting with the restoration of the
Museum’s B-29 and YO-3A.
Jackson was born in Seattle, Washington on May 31, 1915 to Herbert Robinson and Margaret
(Metzgar) Jackson. He grew up in the Kirkland and Bellevue, Washington area. His father was a
friend of Bill Boeing Sr. and worked as the first foreman for the Boeing Company’s woodshop in
the Red Barn. Jackson graduated from Bellevue High School in 1933, in the midst of the Great
Depression, and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) shortly thereafter. In this role, he
ran telephone lines across the Cascade Mountains. He worked for the CCC for a little over a year
and continued to work in residential construction before losing sight in one eye from an accident.
Afterwards, he worked as a security guard on docked ships in Lake Union.
At the beginning of World War II, Jackson was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces. He
attended Arrow Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, California for training as a sheet metal
worker. Following the completion of that training, he was sent to Oklahoma City Air Service
Command and then was transferred to Pratt Army Airfield in Kansas, where he encountered his
first B-29 Superfortress. Despite being blind in one eye, Jackson was sent on overseas duties to
help construct what would become Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. He also serviced B-29s
returning from missions over Japan, working with the 29th Bombardment Group of the 314th
Wing.
Jackson was discharged from military service in January 1946 and returned to Seattle. He
worked at Wilson Machine Works in West Seattle until his retirement in 1974. Following the
death of his wife, Cynthia, he joined the restoration team at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration
Center. He worked on the Museum’s B-29, YO-3A, and other aircraft.
Jackson died on July 13, 2016 and is buried in Anderson Cemetery in Snohomish County,
Washington, alongside his wife.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�3
interviewee.
Interviewer:
Dan Hagedorn served as Senior Curator and Director of Collections at The Museum of Flight
from 2008 until his retirement in 2016. Prior to his tenure at TMOF, he was Adjunct Curator and
Research Team Leader at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Hagedorn is
a graduate of Villa Maria College, the State University of New York, and the Command and
General Staff College, and served in the U.S. Armed Forces for almost three decades. He has
written numerous books and articles about aviation history in general and Latin American
aviation in particular. For his work in documenting Latin American aviation history, he received
the Orden Merito Santos-Dumont from the Brazilian Government in 2006. Since his retirement
in 2016, Hagedorn has served as a Curator Emeritus at the Museum.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by TMOF volunteers and staff.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�4
Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 5
Early aviation memories ................................................................................................................. 7
Civilian Conservation Corps and other employment ...................................................................... 8
Service during World War II and experience maintaining Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft ... 10
Overseas service in Guam ............................................................................................................. 14
Postwar life and involvement with The Museum of Flight Restoration Center ........................... 18
Concluding thoughts ..................................................................................................................... 21
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�5
Jim Jackson
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
DAN HAGEDORN: I’m Dan Hagedorn, the curator at The Museum of Flight. We’re here this
morning at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration and Reserve Collection with Mr. Jim
Jackson. It’s the 23rd of September, Tuesday, 2014, and we’re so glad that you could join
us here today, Jim. We’re just really looking forward to talking to you. Now, what I’d
like you to do for me is to say your full name, including your middle name, and then spell
it out for me, if you would. Go ahead.
JIM JACKSON: Okay. I am James Hawthorne Jackson. And James is the usual spelling.
Hawthorne, H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E. That’s an old family name on my mother’s side.
DH:
I’m glad to know that.
JJ:
And Jackson, of course, is on my dad’s side.
DH:
Now I’m going to ask you the magic question. What’s your birthday?
JJ:
May 31st, 1915.
DH:
And where were you born, Jim?
JJ:
I was born in Seattle at the Swedish Hospital.
DH:
Okay. Now, can you tell us your mother and your father’s names?
JJ:
My dad was Herbert Robinson Jackson. He was born in LaGrange, Michigan in 1879. He
was 21 at the turn of the century.
DH:
And your mother’s name?
JJ:
Margaret Metzgar. She was born 1880 in Fayette, Iowa.
DH:
Okay. Now, I gather that you must have grown up in the Seattle area. Where was your
home when you were young?
JJ:
The family was living in Ballard when I was born. My first recollection is Kirkland.
JJ:
About eight, nine blocks south of downtown.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Hm-hmm [affirmative]. What did your dad do?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�6
JJ:
My dad was [unintelligible] and was in the lumber industry.
JJ:
I don’t know just what the deal was down in Hoquiam. My dad left Michigan when he
was 21. That’s kind of what his family [unintelligible]. The older brother takes over the
plant, and my dad didn’t like the idea of working for his older brother, so he came West.
DH:
Go West, young man, huh?
JJ:
And they roomed at a boardinghouse, [Waymire’s?] boardinghouse in Hoquiam,
Washington. And a group of them had a cabin at Pacific Beach.
JJ:
They would take the train out to—oh, across Copalis Crossing, then go by wagon out to
the cabin at Pacific Beach and come back. And of that group, one of the guys who came
in after two or three years was Bill Boeing. My dad got to know Boeing real well then.
DH:
So they were staying at the same boardinghouse?
JJ:
Yeah. And later on, about 1909—yeah, 1909, they—a bunch of them moved to Seattle.
And my mother was teaching school in Hoquiam, and she moved to Seattle. My mother
and dad got married in Seattle in 1910, and one of the guys in the wedding party was Bill
Boeing.
DH:
Did he stand up with him as his best man or—
JJ:
I don’t know. And they were—you know, kind of associated over the years. And when
my youngest brother was born a year ahead of me, Bill Boeing came to the hospital and
they handed him my brother, and my mother said, “Oh, he’s going to drop him! He’s
going to drop him!” [laughter]
DH:
So did you ever meet Mr. Boeing yourself?
JJ:
No. This is something maybe I shouldn’t say, but my mother and the lady that Bill
Boeing married were not compatible, didn’t get along. So that stopped the association.
DH:
[laughs] I see. Okay. Where did you go to school when you were young? What was the
school that you went to?
JJ:
My first six grades were in the Central School in Kirkland. My seventh grade was in the
Phantom Lake Elementary School. The Phantom Lake Elementary School covered six
and a half acres. That is basically Lake Hills at Eastgate now. And we had 19 student in
seven grades—eight grades.
DH:
You had a lot of room in that school then. [laughs]
JJ:
Yeah. I have a picture that I could—
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�7
DH:
Very good. We’ll look at that later on then. So—
JJ:
Then from there, I’d been the only guy in eighth grade, so we rode the high school bus
for eighth grade in Bellevue. And I graduated from Bellevue High School in 1933. There
were only 33 in our class.
DH:
So you went right through the Depression while you were in school.
JJ:
Just the start of it.
DH:
I see.
JJ:
And just really beginning to feel it, you know. We’d used up all our reserves and
everything else, you now.
00:06:28
[Early aviation memories]
DH:
Well, let’s back up just a minute now. I want to ask you about the very earliest memory
that you have of airplanes or aviation.
JJ:
Well, of course, I remember my dad talking about the plant and that. But the first time I
really remembered them, really interested, around-the-world flight—
DH:
1924.
JJ:
—back to Sand Point. We stood on the beach in Kirkland and watched them come over
the lake and land at the end of that. It was in the paper that they were going to come back.
So we—all of us kids were down there watching those planes come back.
DH:
That must have been thrilling. Very, very good. Did you get to meet any of the aroundthe-world flyers yourself, by any chance?
JJ:
Louis Marsh, Boeing. My dad put him to work in the woodshop after he graduated from
the University of Washington as an engineer, and he worked in the woodshop until there
was an opening in engineering. And at the end of the war, he retired as the longest
continuous employee there. Head of Material Testing and that. I have an article on that
here.
DH:
Very good. We’ll take a look at that.
JJ:
And I was visiting him at his house in Kirkland, and I think Erik Nelson—one of the
pilots—was visiting Boeing. He came and visited Louis Marsh. I met him. That’s the
only one I met.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�8
00:08:14
[Civilian Conservation Corps and other employment]
DH:
Very good, very good. So let’s see. You finished high school in 1933. I think I heard that
you went into the Civilian Conservation Corps at some point. Was that right after high
school?
JJ:
In November, I went into the Civilian Conservation Corps and went up to Camp Cherry
Valley, which is just south of the town of Carnation. And we were reworking the old
logging railroads for fire roads. We had to take the old ties out, and where the bridges
were over the deep gullies, we’d make a road up around the hillside to get it. And those
roads are still there as fire roads.
DH:
That must have been valuable training.
JJ:
And then in May, I moved over—we moved over to Camp Naches, and I was on the
telephone crew. And as luck would have it, I had got the Forest Service foreman
[unintelligible] telephone crew, and he kind of took me under his wing, and I got to
install the telephones and lightening protection.
DH:
So you learned how to skinny [shimmy] up and down the poles pretty good then.
JJ:
I did the pole work and that. And an interesting thing was, several years ago, we were on
Timberwolf Mountain, where the lookout was. This side is wilderness area. This is
National Forest. And I was telling the grandsons, we ran the telephone line up this ridge.
And supposedly they’d taken all the insulators out, all the wires out and that, so let’s walk
down the ridge. We walked down here, and up here in a tree, a very rugged tree hanging
over the edge, was an insulator. My oldest grandson says, “How in the world did you
ever get up to hang that up there?” [laughter]
DH:
When you’re young, you can do anything, right?
JJ:
Well, we weren’t scared.
DH:
So how long were you in the CCC?
JJ:
About 13 months. When I first went in, they only allowed two enlistments. Later, they
allowed people to stay for several years.
DH:
Do you look back on it as valuable experience?
JJ:
Two things: it was Army and Army routine. You know, for cooking and living and that.
Then I never got telephone work, but having had acreage [unintelligible] land and that,
having the ax and the saws, it was not too much.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�9
DH:
So what happened after the Civilian Conservation Corps? What did you do next?
JJ:
Anything I could find. There were truck farms in the area, but they—that was only
seasonal. They raised lettuce and cauliflower and peas and strawberries and stuff like
that.
DH:
Did you ever see yourself getting into a career in aviation in any way, shape, or form?
JJ:
There was no chance of it at that time. That was in the height of the Depression, ‘34, ‘35.
I worked any job I could find. And there were some people building lots on the lake and
building summer homes, and I got work helping building them. And then after they were
built, I built little docks for them and a little boathouse to keep people from stealing their
rowboats.
DH:
Yeah. Well, I’ve seen the pictures. You were a pretty handsome young fellow. Must have
been a girlfriend or something along the way through there, wasn’t there?
JJ:
I never got too involved with gals.
DH:
Okay.
JJ:
I had a lot of friends but never got real serious.
DH:
Okay, good. So what was the big—the next big event in your life after that?
JJ:
Well, in ’38, the family had moved in from Chicago, and the guy had built a log house
for them. And us being neighbors, I stopped by and I made some comment that the guy
did a lousy job. Well, a couple years later, they decided to put an addition on. So I spent
the whole summer of ‘38 with the owner’s son, and we put an addition on that log house.
DH:
How many rooms was it?
JJ:
What?
DH:
How many rooms was the addition?
JJ:
Well, two bedrooms and a big room and a loft.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. So you put to use a lot of the skills that you learned in the CCC
and working with your dad?
JJ:
Yeah.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�10
DH:
Very good.
JJ:
And that winter I stopped by to see a friend, and he was working on rocks for his wife’s
rock garden. And he used a sledgehammer on a rock, and a rock chip hit my eye. I was
blinded in one eye.
DH:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
JJ:
So that was in ‘39. Well, when you’re blind in one eye, you start missing things. You
can’t adjust to where things are. So I took a job for Alaska Steamship Company. They
had six ships moored in the middle of Lake Washington. And two of us split the time on
that. The insurance and Coast Guard required that somebody be on board at all times. So
two of us could split that. So I’d spent most of the time in the middle of the week there,
and then the other guy would spend Saturday and Sundays.
DH:
Did you ever actually go to sea with the ships?
JJ:
No, I never went to sea with Alaska Steam.
00:15:08
[Service during World War II and experience maintaining Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft]
DH:
Okay. So then World War II came along.
JJ:
I was working on the ships that had moved out. The [Victoria?] was converted into a
freighter and the Northwestern went—a floating hotel in Dutch Harbor. And they still had
two ships. They were moored just inside the locks.
DH:
I see.
JJ:
And one morning, all heck broke loose across the deal, the Coast Guard’s deal. And the
Coast Guard came out and swarmed the locks and that. And what’s going—I went in and
turned the radio on, and the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor.
DH:
That’s when you heard it the first time?
JJ:
That’s the first time.
DH:
What did—what was your first reaction?
JJ:
Well, I’d known a lot of Japanese going to high school and that, and I didn’t know how
that relationship would be. But it turned out that we got along fine. And I think the people
were very, very cruel in the way they treated them. And I remember one of the buddies
coming in to the Civilian Defense office. I volunteered there. And they were required to
turn in all cameras and all guns. And [George Namura?] came in, and they challenged
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�11
him. He was quite a photo nut. “Where are your cameras?” He pulled out a bill of sale for
them. He had sold them all.
But they were just going to—then another one of the fellows came in the very early part
of the deal. It was a family. I knew several of them. [Joe Matsuzawa?]. He was a couple
years older. He came in, and he just came from the draft board. And they were very cruel
to him about being a Jap and this and that, and he didn’t have no [unintelligible]. And we
talked. I said, “Well, Joe, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’ll all come out okay
in the long run.”
Well, that’s the last I saw him for several years. Several years later, I was bowling. I had
two [unintelligible] in high school with me on the bowling team. And all of a sudden, I
heard this familiar voice. Joe had a very peculiar voice. I looked around. Well, there’s
Joe. And here he’s in a staff sergeant Army uniform, just back from Japan with a
Japanese wife. And he went over and spent years as an interpreter for the military.
DH:
I see.
JJ:
I said, “Joe, everything worked out alright.” He said, “Yes, it did.”
DH:
So you must have been thinking about joining the service after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor yourself.
JJ:
Well, when the war started, I figured sooner or later they’d get me. And I had no wife, no
kids, and Dad was working and that, so I tried to join. And every service turned me down
cold on account of my blind eye. Called up the draft board, got turned down. Then
several months later, I called up and they said, “We’ll send you down to Fort Lewis. We
don’t think they’ll keep you.” But they did. [laughter] I went in [unintelligible] the
service.
DH:
Did you do your basic training at Fort Lewis?
JJ:
I went into Fort Lewis, and we got on a train, rode over the Cascades. We had a horrible
train wreck, ended up in Shepherd’s View, Texas, took my basic. From my basic, I went
out to Arrow Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, California for training as a sheet
metal worker. And from there, went back to Oklahoma City to the replacement pool.
Oklahoma City Air Service Command.
DH:
So you knew you were going into the Air Corps after you finished basic training at
Shepherd?
JJ:
Yeah. The basic training in Shepherd’s View was Air Force. Well, there, they decided
that they had to reclassify. So everybody with limited service reclassified. They kept you
as limited service or they upgraded you to regular duty or they kicked you out. Well, they
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�12
kept me. And I kind of killed time in the replacement pool there. And I was working in
the kitchen, so I didn’t have to go out and rake rocks in the hot summer. And I made a
couple complaints to a new officer that came in in charge. He checked all the guys in the
mess hall, the crew, and here I was in whites. And he said, “How come?” I said, “I’m just
here filling in.” And I made some comment.
And I got a call to come over to see the commanding officer. What am I bitching about? I
said, “Well, I’m a mechanic. I don’t belong in the kitchen.” And he said, “Well.” He
called for my service record, and the guy opened it up. Inducted in Kirkland, Washington.
“Did you know Jim Reese?” I said, “Jim Reese was a veteran of the First World War, and
he had an insurance office half a block north of [Ferry Dock?]. He said, “Well, I was the
district supervisor for an insurance company, and he was one of our top men.” So that
broke the ice and that. So he told me that the reason I wasn’t moving was all of these
outfits were being organized. They were being organized to be trained to go overseas.
And he said, “We’ll have to wait until we find a place where there will be a permanent
base. You know, where there’ll be a permanent training base.”
So about a month later, I found out I was shipping out with about 18 guys. Got on a train
and went up to Wichita, then out to Pratt, Kansas. Who in the heck ever heard of Pratt,
Kansas? Well, it was a new base. We got off the train, and the trucks picked us up. We
went up to the barracks and looked in between the barracks, and what in the hell is that?
Here was a tail of something we never saw. That was my first experience with B-29s. I
got to Pratt, Kansas a week after the first planes got to Pratt.
DH:
So this must have been 19—
JJ:
In the first week of October of 1942, there were four bases in Kansas: Pratt, Salina,
Walker, and Great Bend. Each got two YB-29s and three B-29s. That was the Corps.
DH:
So you were there at the very beginning of the B-29 [unintelligible].
JJ:
So I got there a week after the first ones were there.
DH:
Those must have been camouflaged airplanes.
JJ:
Yes, they were camouflage.
DH:
Yeah, those were the few B-29s that were actually camouflaged.
JJ:
Yeah.
DH:
Yeah. So what did you think when you saw that airplane?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�13
JJ:
I didn’t know what to think. We had been trained to repair airplanes, but who in the heck
had ever heard of a pressurized cabin? [laughter] You know, it was just altogether
different.
DH:
So you were at the Pratt Army Airfield and did you go to work on the airplanes right
away?
JJ:
We started in the shop, and first I was going out on the line with the other guys. Pretty
soon they found out I was handy with machinery, so I was held in the shops doing the
shop work and doing [unintelligible]. Some of the guys hadn’t worked with metal, you
know, and they were very green at it. And for example, aluminum tubing for gas lines.
They were starting to put in—figure out bomb bay tanks. Well, they had to put a little
bead at the end of the deal there. Well, the guys go in there and they’d try to run it out in
a hurry and then they’d break it out. So I got to the point, you know, where I was doing
that. And I was doing that stuff because I had the feel to the—work on it.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. So you had a natural-born talent for that from the very
beginning?
JJ:
Yeah. And they had—one of the craziest things, we had the upper dome over the turrets.
They would set them on there, and then the wind would come and [unintelligible], and
they could not hit and they’d come back. And they had eight holes in it to go over pins,
and it would be on a round. They’d come in, and, oh, they can’t fix them. [unintelligible]
tried to. So I came up with the idea, if they came down and had this side bent this way, so
that if I could make them bounce this way, so I picked them up and bounced them off a
rubber mat, and they came back to where they would fit.
DH:
Those early B-29s had a lot of technical problems, didn’t they?
JJ:
And they had an awful lot of trouble. The heat shield over the supercharger cracked out.
Early blisters cracked out, and it was just that.
Then in the spring of ‘43, they started what they called the Battle of Kansas. All the
planes that were going overseas weren’t ready, and they brought in guys from plants all
over the country. We went on a 12-hour shift, seven days a week, getting those planes
ready to go to the first trip over into China-Burma-India. It turned out that they didn’t
have any planes in the bases in Africa and India on the way to China-Burma-India. No
spare engines. Well, if an airplane gets over there and loses an engine, they’re grounded.
So we modified the cargo platform, and they made a rig, and we hung an engine in the
front bomb rack of the bomb—put four lines out from the propeller. Two to the back, the
bomb rack, and two up to the front bulkhead to keep that thing from rocking on the—
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�14
00:28:26
[Overseas service in Guam]
DH:
So how long were you at Pratt Army Airfield?
JJ:
Well, I was stuck there, supposedly. And after about a year, one night we come in and the
day shift is there, the night shift’s there, and the day shift foreman and the night shift’s
foreman, both civilians, were there. And here is this full colonel there. Full colonel, full
uniform. Get as far away as you can. Any time the colonel comes into the shop, that
means trouble. [laughter] All of a sudden, I hear my name called. I come over. The
colonel was the head of the hospital. They’d damaged an autoclave. They had surgery
scheduled in the morning. Could I fix that? Yeah, it’d probably be ready, oh, about 10:30,
11:00.
So about a little after 10:00, this colonel comes in. He’s standing opposite me on the
bench, watching me work. “What happened to your eye?” “Oh, I got a rock chip in it.”
“How in the hell did you get in the Army?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. I’m here.”
[laughter]
Well, as the routine, every few months you have to take a physical. So I go up to the
hospital and take a physical and take an eye examination. And the guy says, “Well, you
have to go talk to the colonel. He’ll sign you off.” Well, here is this colonel. He says,
“Well, hi.” He says, “That thing worked out fine.” And he said, “We’re down to that last
question. Qualified for overseas duty or not qualified for overseas duty.” I said, “Well, I
can fix an airplane anyplace in the world. They’re all the same work. Climate’s a little
different.” He said, “Well, I know you can do the work. I am going to put you down
qualified for overseas duty. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work out.”
A month later, I get a transfer to the bomb squadron. Well, I go up to the hospital to
check out the—sergeant [unintelligible], hell, you’re not going anywhere.” Here’s this
colonel again. I thought he—“I’m willing to try it.” He says, “Okay.” He says, “I can put
you down qualified.” So I take my papers and go over to check into the bomb squadron.
Well, I catch the bomb—the squadron medics just leaving for dinner in the late afternoon.
“Oh, you took a physical today at the hospital? No use taking another one. Can we
[unintelligible] transcript of records?” They took a transcript of records, and apparently
all they read was the last line.
So a year later, this outfit was ready to go, and the guys that were in the sheet metal shop
had all been training in the base. Less than a month later, I’m going overseas with them.
The guys were feeling sorry for me. I got in there after they were through with all their
training. Well, they didn’t tell me how to pack my gear in that. But the guys were feeling
sorry for me because I had no training. But I kind of laughed it off, and we got on the
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�15
train, came up to Seattle POE, and I got a couple passes home before we went overseas.
A month later on Guam, we follow—we landed on the—what was the taxiway, just
bulldozed out of the jungle. We followed the bulldozers into the jungle. They rigged up
the debris [unintelligible] and set up tents.
DH:
So you were a private first class or a corporal by this time?
JJ:
I was a corporal.
DH:
Okay.
JJ:
So we were cleaning up stuff, and the engineers came in with a great big pile of lumber.
And the supervisor then is—the guy comes over from the engineers and talks to the guys
before we have our morning roll call assignments of jobs. “Any of you guys know
anything about carpenter work?” “Oh, a little.” “Okay, get over and help the engineers.”
Next morning, the guy comes over to get some more guys. He says, “I want that guy.” I
was told to get about a dozen men, and I’d be lead. I was building a mess hall. Well, I
took the sheet metal men—crew and one welder, made our group of twelve, and I was
lead man building the mess hall.
DH:
You want to stop and get a drink of water, Jim?
[production talk]
DH:
So the mess hall was one of the most important facilities on any base, that’s for sure. So
you built one of the first mess halls on Guam then?
JJ:
Yeah, I got a picture of it here.
DH:
Okay.
JJ:
Well, anyway, I had the mess hall built, and one afternoon [unintelligible] call for KP. I
was on it. Ten minutes later, “Corporal Jackson removed from KP. So-and-so added.”
The guy said, “What the hell’s going on?” One of my buddies’ taking my place. So I
walk over to the—call the first sergeant. “What’s going on?” He said, “Well, we have
four units of prefab barracks coming in, and we want you to be a lead man on that.”
Okay. He said, “By the way, sergeants don’t pull KP.”
Well, two or three days later, it was posted. Well, as I said, I joined the outfit late and
that, and they had a staff sergeant in charge of the unit. And he stayed and flew over with
the group. And he came in [unintelligible], and he looked up at the—there, and he said—
that, and he looked over at that the first sergeant, and he says, “That’s not the man I had
picked for being sergeant.” And the first sergeant said, “You didn’t have a goddamn thing
to say about that.”
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�16
DH:
[laughs] Now, what squadron were you assigned to at that time?
JJ:
I was the 6th Bomb Squadron, 29th Bomb Group, 314th Wing on North Field, Guam.
DH:
Very good. Okay. Okay.
JJ:
There were four groups eventually, two originally and two came in later there, which
would make a total of—a squadron had 16 planes, and there are three squadrons to a
plane. So that’s 48. So that’s around about 190 planes for the field.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, after you got those prefabricated barracks built, what
happened next?
JJ:
Well, they started flying. They hadn’t flown a mission at that time. And as soon as they
started flying, I went down on the line. And we had a tent between the two hardstands,
and we took a cargo rack out of a B-29, set it on bomb crates. That was our workbench.
And we had a little power plant to run the drills. We could run two drills at a time off of
that.
DH:
So how did they handle the maintenance in the squadron then, Jim? Were you assigned
an individual aircraft or did you just service what aircraft needed to be serviced?
JJ:
Each aircraft had a crew chief and a crew, and each department had a crew. Now, there
were 11 of us on the sheet metal, and we worked all the planes. The guy that took care of
the machine guns, the same way. The guy that loaded the bombs, the same way. The
propeller man worked the whole thing. But as I say, each plane had enough crew to be
able to do the maintenance and change engines and that. They had a propeller man that
came in, pulled the propellers. It took a special hoist and that.
DH:
So when did you—I’m sure you must have gotten to fly on a B-29 at some point, didn’t
you?
JJ:
During the war, I got one short flight. We were there and I had to finish up something
while they were getting ready for a test hop for a new engine. And I was in the cockpit
and the pilot was coming in and I said, “Hey, can I go along?” He said, “Why, sure.” So
we went up for a four-hour test flight. Well, they’d put in a repaired bomb rack, so they
had bombs in that bomb rack. We went up, and halfway between Guam and Saipan was
the island of Rota. Well, this was a new crew and that, so they got their experience
coming up and making a bomb run over water to this island and dropped that one island.
So I had about a four-and-a-half-hour flight.
DH:
Very good. Very good.
JJ:
Then came up VJ Day, and they said that all you guys that worked on the plane get
priority for riding passengers for the Surrender Day. Well, as luck would have it, all the
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�17
brass down in the island and the Navy brass all pulled strings, and only one of my
buddies made it on that flight on VJ Day. And he was there [unintelligible], and one of
the guys that was assigned didn’t show up, so he got to go.
DH:
So you were on Guam from sometime in 1944 clear through VJ Day?
JJ:
Yeah. And after VJ Day—well, let’s back up a minute. On the 9th of August, I was
working up at the building [unintelligible] bomb squadron service squadron. And a guy
came out and said, “Come in, listen to this.” And we went in, and the word was the
Japanese have offered to keep their emperor—surrender if they could keep their emperor.
Well, everybody stopped work. The island lit up like a Christmas tree. The guys went out
to the plane and got the flares and shot them off. Mess hall opened and stayed open all
night.
Well, that was the 9th. And we waited and waited. On the 15th, they sent out another
mission, last mission [unintelligible], and about half those planes were back when it came
in that Japanese had accepted the surrender. Well, the next thing was, they marked all the
prisoner-of-war camps, and we figured everything we could to load that could drop on
the prisoner-of-war camps. And it was drums with boards nailed over the ends and this,
that, and the other thing. And they went in and bombed the prisoner-of-war camps
because of all this food. The guys came back—this bothers me. [tearing up] It’s sad.
DH:
I see. Take it easy. You’re okay.
JJ:
Those guys were crawling—
DH:
I know.
JJ:
—on their hands and knees to get that.
DH:
Yeah, yeah. I know. Well, the war was finally over. When did you come home?
JJ:
The war was over. After the war, they had show-of-force missions. They were afraid
there were going to be resistant groups here or there [unintelligible]. So I joined a flight
of 12. I was riding bombardier on one of the planes. And we came in, made formation off
the coast of Japan, came in hot, low, and sweet right up over Tokyo Bay, so close we
could look down and see the American flags on the ship guards down there and see the
guards there. And there were ships in the harbor.
Then we came over, burned out Tokyo, and you wouldn’t believe the desolation. I just—
absolutely terrible. Well, then we broke up, and we had instructions to circle around and
see what we could see, but do not fly over the Emperor’s palace. So we came in and the
guy put that B-29 at a 45-degree bank and circled the Emperor’s palace. We looked down
there and there was the moat and there was the palace. Burned out right up to the moat
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�18
here, right up to the moat over here, and we couldn’t see a scar on the Emperor’s palace.
That is a little bit surprising, you know, with that heavy bombing at night that they didn’t
do any damage.
DH:
That’s right. That’s right.
JJ:
Then we zigzagged down the coast to Nagoya, and we spent about an hour and a half,
maybe two hours, flying back and forth over. Then we took off for home, started
transferring fuel from the center section, the outboard section. The outboard tanks took
quite a bit less gas than the inboard tanks. So they had to take about 350 gallons from the
center section and put it in each outboard to get back to Guam.
Well, I smelled gasoline. We opened the bomb bay, and boy, the guys back there smelled
gasoline. You could see gasoline running off the panel, just from the bomb bay—the rear
bomb bay doors. The fuel transfer pump had failed. So as we approached Iwo, the
navigator, the engineer, the pilot, and the copilot all compared notes. I was sitting there in
the bombardier seat listening to them. They came up we would run out of gas either five
minutes before or five minutes after we got to Guam. So Iwo, here we come. So I got to
land at Iwo.
DH:
Iwo Jima?
JJ:
That, as I say, Iwo was a dirty, stinking hole. But to the B-29 crews, it was beautiful.
DH:
I’ll bet. Yeah. I’ll bet. So was that your last flight in a B-29?
JJ:
That was my last flight in a B-29.
DH:
So when did you come home?
JJ:
In December. We got points. One point for every month stateside, two points for every
overseas, five points for every battle star, and points for if you got a medal or anything
like that, any special award. So as on points, I got to come home in December. When
points were awarded, one of the planes came in and one of the tail gunners had served
duty in 17th in Europe. And one of the guys says, “Hey, [unintelligible] points if you had
so many points.” He said, “I’ve got 20 more than that. Good-bye.” [laughter]
00:49:13
[Postwar life and involvement with The Museum of Flight Restoration Center]
DH:
Well, after the war you came back to Seattle, I assume.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�19
JJ:
We came back to San Pedro, went to a separation center in Camp Anza out at Riverside.
There, they broke us up into groups to come home. Then we came in a group up to Fort
Lewis, and I discharged out of Fort Lewis.
DH:
And you were a sergeant or a staff sergeant then?
JJ:
I was a sergeant.
DH:
Okay. So you did your part for the war effort, that’s for sure.
JJ:
Yeah.
DH:
So what did you do after the war?
JJ:
Well, we had a family that had a summer home next to us, and the owner had had a
machine shop. And he had a son a year or two older than I was and a daughter a year
younger. And I had worked for the owner for a few weeks before the war, and they
owned the [unintelligible] foundry, and I worked there for several months.
So I came home, I walked into Wilson Machine Works, and said, “Hi in there.” And all
of a sudden, “Hey, how about helping us out for a few days? We’ve got behind the time.”
I’ve got a picture of the—they were making [unintelligible] at that time. Several shops
were working on that, and Wilson Machine was making the final assembly. I started
[unintelligible] assembled that.
DH:
So how long did that few days last?
JJ:
Twenty-eight years.
DH:
I think that’s a pretty good career. Now, I need to ask you this, and this is an important
question. You’ve been working here at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center for a
long time. When did you first start?
JJ:
Here?
DH:
Yes.
JJ:
When I was 91, about eight years ago.
DH:
Oh my gosh. And what brought you to the Museum’s Restoration Center?
JJ:
Well, my wife died, and I had a lot of time on my hands. And I was driving by and I
heard about the Restoration Center, so I parked at the outside door there and walked in.
Lo and behold, four B-29 cowlings. And I said, “Oh, B-29s.” He goes, “What do you
know about them?” I said, “They were one of our biggest headaches during the war.” He
says, “Well, we’ve never seen one. We’ve never worked on a B-29. Can you come in and
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�20
give us a few pointers on what you have to do?” So there I was, telling him what we did
to repair them and that.
DH:
Now you mentioned your wife a minute ago. We haven’t talked about that. What was her
name, and when did you get married?
JJ:
Well, Cynthia was living on Main Street in Bellevue. She and her husband who broke up
[unintelligible], and she was living in a little house by herself. Well, one of my wartime
buddy’s younger brothers was dating her daughter, and I got to know her daughter, and
then I got to know her and—casually. She worked for a friend of mine for a while, and
she had the little lunch stand in the bowling alley for a while. And I saw her around,
didn’t think too much about it.
Then come up time for the Gold Cup. And the boss invited me [unintelligible], and I was
looking for a friend to go. I came into this restaurant and sat at the counter, and over
here—so I walked over and spoke to her. I said, “Hey, how about that?” So my first date,
we took her out on the boss’s yacht to watch the Gold Cup race.
DH:
That’s not a bad first date. [laughs]
JJ:
And we didn’t think much about it. But I’d see her there, and then [unintelligible] she
was working at the hospital in Renton. And I was working late, and I would come into
Bellevue and get a snack. And I’d call the hospital, and we’d go up and have a late cup of
coffee when she’d get home. And it just snowballed.
DH:
That’s the way they do, isn’t it?
JJ:
So when I got married, I got a readymade family. Three married daughters and five
grandchildren.
DH:
That’s the easy way to do it. [laughs] Okay, well, back to the Restoration Center now.
You walked in and you saw those B-29 cowlings. You’ve worked on a lot of airplanes
during the time that you’ve been at the Restoration Center. What airplanes have you been
involved with?
JJ:
Well, I did the YO-3A and—I’m trying to think what other planes that—
DH:
I know you’ve worked on the Comet.
JJ:
Well, I started the Comet. Bob Hall had something. He came in and he said, “Hey, can
you make this part?” Yeah. And It turned out that every time they need something on the
milling machine or the lathe, they’d call me and I make up the various parts.
DH:
I think you also—you’re working now on the Antonov An-2, aren’t you?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�21
JJ:
Yeah. I’m assigned the An-2 now.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, of all the airplanes you’ve worked on here, what’s your
favorite one?
JJ:
Well, I think the most interesting was the YO-3A because it was one of 11 built and it
had such a very different mission than any other plane and that, having to be silent, had
specifications that you don’t see on any other airplane. You don’t see a muffler on any of
these other planes. You don’t see belt drive instead of a reduction gear in the engines.
Belt drives are quiet. Gears make noise.
00:57:10
[Concluding thoughts]
DH:
That’s right. I’m going to ask you a question I ask everybody that we interview. What’s
your favorite aviation memory? What’s the thing that is the most memorable to you
involving aviation?
JJ:
Well, I think what I remember most is that show-of-force mission over Japan. It was on
planes I had worked on, and it was—showed the result. Tokyo and Nagoya burned out. It
showed what we’d done. It showed that all that work wasn’t in vain, that we’d
accomplished something.
DH:
That’s right. And the last question. I also always ask this of all of our narrators: if you
have to leave a message for future generations that are going to be watching this down
the road, what would you tell them about a life well lived?
JJ:
Just a lifelong…?
DH:
A life long—well lived.
JJ:
Well, two things. You grow up with the family you have. [unintelligible] You do what is
required. We had a war, we went to war, finished the war, we came home.
And the thing is, as you grow up, you have to build roads, you’ve got to build airplanes,
get into something where you’re building something that is permanent, something out
there. There’s no fun writing things. Make something. That makes it interesting. You
have to stop and think. If you don’t have something to stop and think about, you go stale.
I have, at home, a woodshop and a metal shop. I have basically a complete sheet metal
shop at home. And I have a joiner, a saw, band saw, sander, jigsaw, plus all the hand
tools. I have an eight-foot brake, four-foot shearer, and I bought an antique lathe. When
the weather’s good, I’m out and have a garden. That’s part of why I live so well. If you
have the garden, it keeps you busy and you eat a heck of a lot better.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�22
DH:
[laughs] That’s great. Okay. Jim, that’s it. We got what we need.
01:00:30
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jackson, Jim, 1915-2016
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Hagedorn, Dan
Biographical Text
<p>James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson was a B-29 mechanic during World War II. Later, he volunteered at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center, assisting with the restoration of the Museum’s B-29 and YO-3A.</p>
<p>Jackson was born in Seattle, Washington on May 31, 1915 to Herbert Robinson and Margaret (Metzgar) Jackson. He grew up in the Kirkland and Bellevue, Washington area. His father was a friend of Bill Boeing Sr. and worked as the first foreman for the Boeing Company’s woodshop in the Red Barn. Jackson graduated from Bellevue High School in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) shortly thereafter. In this role, he ran telephone lines across the Cascade Mountains. He worked for the CCC for a little over a year and continued to work in residential construction before losing sight in one eye from an accident. Afterwards, he worked as a security guard on docked ships in Lake Union.</p>
<p>At the beginning of World War II, Jackson was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces. He attended Arrow Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, California for training as a sheet metal worker. Following the completion of that training, he was sent to Oklahoma City Air Service Command and then was transferred to Pratt Army Airfield in Kansas, where he encountered his first B-29 Superfortress. Despite being blind in one eye, Jackson was sent on overseas duties to help construct what would become Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. He also serviced B-29s returning from missions over Japan, working with the 29th Bombardment Group of the 314th Wing.</p>
<p>Jackson was discharged from military service in January 1946 and returned to Seattle. He worked at Wilson Machine Works in West Seattle until his retirement in 1974. Following the death of his wife, Cynthia, he joined the restoration team at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center. He worked on the Museum’s B-29, YO-3A, and other aircraft.</p>
<p>Jackson died on July 13, 2016 and is buried in Anderson Cemetery in Snohomish County, Washington, alongside his wife.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jim Jackson oral history interview
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Jim Jackson and interviewer Dan Hagedorn, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, September 23, 2014</p>
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>Aviation mechanic James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson is interviewed about his life and military service. Particular focus is given to Jackson’s time with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, when he worked as a B-29 mechanic in the United States and Guam. Afterwards, Jackson discusses his involvement with The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center and his work restoring various aircraft, including the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress and Lockheed YO-3A Quiet Star.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- Early aviation memories -- Civilian Conservation Corps and other employment -- Service during World War II and experience maintaining Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft -- Overseas service in Guam -- Postwar life and involvement with The Museum of Flight Restoration Center -- Concluding thoughts
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-09-23
Subject
The topic of the resource
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Aviation mechanics (Persons)
Boeing B-29 Superfortress Family (Model 345)
Boeing, William Edward, 1881-1956
Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.)
Jackson, Jim, 1915-2016
Lockheed YO-3A
Museum of Flight Restoration Center
United States. Army Air Forces
United States. Army Air Forces. Bombardment Group, 29th
World War, 1939-1945
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Guam
Japan
Kansas
Pratt (Kan.)
Seattle (Wash.)
United States
Washington (State)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
1 recording (1 hr., 30 sec.) : digital
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OH_Jackson_Jim
OH_Jackson_Jim_transcription