1 10 216 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/de4386a460e9ea889c1ef9cc37b37d3e.jpg e8782dcbb448c90fdfd3ba95c9e54ce8 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/0aff141d4ccfc71abf137462e6aaf8f5.mp3 edda70aa5e76f0845a76a88430701c76 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/47b7821c435202f1e24990ed5e46a0b1.pdf 13cba4b5b20ad8ec1e60f448480ae402 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Franklin W. Troup Interview Date: circa 1990 �2 Abstract: Fighter ace Franklin W. Troup discusses his military service with the United States Navy during World War II. Special focus is given to a combat air patrol mission in December 1944 in which he encountered a Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” aircraft. After scoring a hit on the aircraft, Troup watched as the pilot leapt from the cockpit without a parachute, which he describes as one of his most peculiar experiences during the war. Troup recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel. Biography: Franklin W. Troup was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was born on February 8, 1921 in Decatur, Alabama. Prior to his military service, he attended Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama. He enlisted in the Navy in May 1942 and earned his commission as a naval aviator in December of the following year. He was then assigned to Fighting Squadron 29 (VF-29), which deployed aboard the USS Cabot (CVL-29) in 1944. During his wartime service, Troup flew missions over Japan, the Philippines, and other areas of the Pacific Theater. After the end of World War II, Troup left military service and returned to Alabama, where he opened a Coca-Cola bottling plant. He married his first wife, Margaret Louise Nash Stuart, in 1945. After Margaret’s death in 1991, he married his second wife, Jane Walker. Troup passed away in 2014. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �3 Franklin W. Troup [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 FRANKLIN W. TROUP: Well, Eric, here’s—[laughs]—the great procrastinator, I guess. You probably already got your book published and already got it on the market. I haven’t seen it, however. Anyway, this is Frank Troup from Decatur, Alabama, and there have been several reasons why this tape has been as long coming. And probably the biggest thing is my wife has developed a blood cancer, and we’ve been kind of concerned and back and forth with that. And the last week or so, I’ve been trying to run down a date that I could put this particular experience to. I’ve got a diary, more or less, that I pretty well kept up most of the time on board ship, but I cannot find this particular thing in there and I don’t know why. But anyway, this is probably in December of ‘44. We were—of course, our group, VF29, was on board the USS Cabot, CVL, and we were operating with Task Group, Third Task Force and [unintelligible] Fifth. Of course, it alternated back and forth depending who on who was the Fleet Command, as you know. But anyway, we were on combat air patrol. One division of us were up. And the ship called the division leader, which I think was—I’m positive, though—it was A. J. Fecke, John Fecke. And at that time, he was from, oh, up around the Cape up in Massachusetts. And he and his wingman were—well, let me back up just a minute. The ship called us and said that there was a bogey and vectored us out to a bogey. And we went for about 10 or 12 minutes toward this bogey. And the ship called again and gave us an altitude, and when we got to about the place where we should’ve been able to see this plane, there was this great big cloud, and that’s where he was. He was right in this cloud. And the division leader, John Fecke, F-E-C-K-E, he motioned for me and my wingman to go up on top of this cloud just to wait, and he said that he and his wingman would wait down below and we’d just—we’d try to outwait him. And so—at the time, we were like about 8,000 feet, so my wingman and I climbed on up and got up on top of this cloud. We had just about gotten on top at about 12,000 feet, and we had no sooner gotten up to just where we could sort of see over the top of the cloud till this guy stuck his nose out. He’s been climbing in this cloud also, and it was a— [audio break] �4 FWT: Excuse me, I dropped the recorder. [laughs] Now, it was a Zeke, and this was one of these things that worked just like the book said it would work. And I looked over at my wingman and gave him kind of a push sign, and he moved out from me. He moved out to my right. And this was—by doing this, we assumed a bracket position on this Zeke. And he saw us and he still kept on trying to climb. But my wingman—we had gotten in, oh, I’m going to say like within maybe 150 yards of him. And he was, of course, watching both of us. And my wingman started to turn toward him, feinted toward him. And then this is just kind of like the book said it was going to happen. And, of course, when he did that, he turned away from him and turned right in front of me. And, of course, we had our guns armed, and it was almost just a matter of pulling the trigger. And it was one of their newer planes, apparently, because it didn’t just immediately burst into flames. It started smoking. And we both—my wingman and I both, I guess, had the same idea at the same time, and we were going to get up and get a little closer look at this bird. We saw him jettison his canopy, and we assumed that he was going to jump. And so—but we had, it seemed like, all the time in the world. We got right up, I mean, awfully close. And I’m not exaggerating this, Eric. We got within—I guess, the plane, the closest that our—my wing to his wing was maybe 10 or 12 feet. So we were like, you know, 20 or 25 feet away from this bird. [laughs] So he had kind of gotten up on his haunches in his seat, and he looked around at my wingman because my wingman was on his starboard side and I was on his port. And he looked over there at my wingman and shook his fist at him. And he looked over at me, shook his fist, and he jumped. And he had no parachute. And he had on what I’m going to say is his ancestral robes. He came out there to do the kamikaze and go to meet his ancestors. And he jumped at 12,000 feet and no parachute, nothing. And you can guess what happened. But it was a real eerie experience watching this guy jump. And we just—we couldn’t get over it. And we got back and telling all the guys about that, and they just hardly would believe us. But it happened. And this is probably the—well, there’s a lot of peculiar experiences that we had, but this was probably the—one of the most peculiar that happened to me. A lot of them—a lot of the guys in the squadron had other things, but I’m sure you probably heard from them. So if—Eric, I’ve got—like I said, I’ve got this diary that’s been all over the country [laughs/unintelligible]. It’s about to come to pieces, but if you have any inclination to look at it or read it, well, I’ll be glad to send it to you and see maybe if you can get anything out of it for your book. You’re welcome to use anything that’s in it. It’s not all that documentary, but it’s pretty easy. �5 So with that, I’ll bid you adieu. And if you can use this, fine. And I’m sorry it’s been so late. [audio break] FWT: Eric, one little addendum here. My wingman was Grady Hickle, H-I-C-K-L-E. And he was from California, and I’m not sure where. And I can’t remember to save my soul who John Fecke’s wingman was at the time. But just in case you write this, you might put those names in. Okay, let me know if you want the old diary. 00:09:36 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Troup, Franklin W., 1921-2014 Biographical Text <p>Franklin W. Troup was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was born on February 8, 1921 in Decatur, Alabama. Prior to his military service, he attended Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama. He enlisted in the Navy in May 1942 and earned his commission as a naval aviator in December of the following year. He was then assigned to Fighting Squadron 29 (VF-29), which deployed aboard the USS Cabot (CVL-29) in 1944. During his wartime service, Troup flew missions over Japan, the Philippines, and other areas of the Pacific Theater.</p> <p>After the end of World War II, Troup left military service and returned to Alabama, where he opened a Coca-Cola bottling plant. He married his first wife, Margaret Louise Nash Stuart, in 1945. After Margaret’s death in 1991, he married his second wife, Jane Walker. Troup passed away in 2014.</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 [Franklin W. Troup oral history interview] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>Audio recording of an oral history with fighter ace Franklin W. Troup, circa 1990. Originally contained in a mailing envelope addressed to Eric M. Hammel. Accompanying handwritten note to Hammel was dated January 11, 1990. Postmark stamp on envelope was dated April 1990. Microcassette 1 of 1.</p> <p>Abstract from transcript: Fighter ace Franklin W. Troup discusses his military service with the United States Navy during World War II. Special focus is given to a combat air patrol mission in December 1944 in which he encountered a Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” aircraft. After scoring a hit on the aircraft, Troup watched as the pilot leapt from the cockpit without a parachute, which he describes as one of his most peculiar experiences during the war.</p> <p>Troup recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) microcassettes Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Cabot (Aircraft carrier : CVL-28) Fighter pilots Mitsubishi A6M Reisen (Zero Fighter) Zeke (Ben, Ray) Family Troup, Franklin W., 1921-2014 United States. Navy United States. Navy. Fighting Squadron 29 World War, 1939-1945 World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Pacific Area Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990 circa Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound cassette (9 min., 36 sec.) : analog ; 2.2 x 1.3 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_216_01 2002-02-13_AV_216_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/6f169fed8ef78d22e13418c51e2fbd4b.jpg de76a260c39f621c5195e9295fa22419 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/cf30770b1b992d17f2da13bd4c74b74b.mp3 679b1afee9ab235982a8a239c1cdb74d https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/28b123cd5b69be11b22949ccda9c08a7.pdf 7cf68356e5febe6111f8fd8209e3e8b0 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Herschel H. “Herky” Green Interview Date: January 22, 1992 �2 Abstract: Fighter ace Herschel H. “Herky” Green discusses his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. He describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot and his time with the 317th Fighter Squadron, 325th Fighter Group, in the Mediterranean Theater. Particular focus is given to a bomber escort mission to Cagliari, Italy on May 19, 1943, when Green experienced his first aerial combat and narrowly escaped from a group of Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Green recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel for his The American Aces Speak book series. Biography: Herschel H. “Herky” Green was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. He was born on July 3, 1920 in Mayfield, Kentucky. While studying at Vanderbilt University, he enrolled in the Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) program and earned his private pilot’s license in 1941. In September of that year, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, receiving his commission in April 1942. Green initially served in stateside assignments with the 57th Pursuit Group and 79th Fighter Group, then joined the newly created 317th Fighter Squadron, 325th Fighter Group, for oversees deployment in early 1943. During his service in the Mediterranean Theater, he flew the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and North American P-51 Mustang. After World War II, Green remained in military service with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included serving as deputy commander of the 4th Fighter Group and serving on the staff of the Air Defense Command in Finland, Fifth Air Force Headquarters in Japan, and 25th Air Division Headquarters in Washington State. He retired as a colonel in 1964 and passed away in 2006. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: �3 Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �4 Index: Background information on the 325th Fighter Group; deployment to North Africa ...................... 5 Service in the Mediterranean Theater ............................................................................................. 5 Bomber escort mission to Cagliari (May 19, 1943) ........................................................................ 7 Other service details and conclusion............................................................................................... 9 �5 Herschel H. Green [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Background information on the 325th Fighter Group; deployment to North Africa] HERSCHEL H. GREEN: This tape is for the use of Eric M. Hammel and is being dictated the 22nd of January 1992 by Herky Green. Eric, I’m going to tell you about my first mission in a P-40. However, before I get to that mission, let me set a little background. I was with the 325th Fighter Group, 317th Fighter Squadron—[audio distortion]—during the entire time that I flew combat in World War II. The 325th was activated on the East Coast on 20 July 1942. The headquarters of the group in the 317th Squadron, which was the squadron I was in, was located at Theodore Green Field at Hillsgrove, Rhode Island, which was the airport for Providence. Two other squadrons, the 318th and the 319th, were located at Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire and the—and at Hartford— Rentschler Field, Hartford, Connecticut, respectively. On 1 January 1943, Special Orders No. 1 from Headquarters Boston Air Defense Wing ordered the group to proceed without delay by rail to Langley Field in Virginia for further movement overseas. When we arrived at Langley, we were met by 72 new P-40Fs. After a few days of training and carrier takeoffs supervised by the Navy, we flew our airplanes over to a Navy field at Norfolk and then taxied down the streets to the docks and alongside the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier. In fact, it was the only carrier in the Atlantic at that time. Our airplanes were hoisted aboard, and then we were led to our state rooms. The carrier departed Norfolk on 8 January 1943 at 1130 hours, and we were accompanied by six destroyers, two cruisers, and a tanker. All of the way across the ocean, I’d get back on the fantail of that carrier and look down the flight deck, which as I recall was 700 feet long, and I thought to myself, “There’s just not enough room here to get a P-40 off. But if the Navy says they can do it, then we’ll at least give it a fair country trial.” 00:03:37 [Service in the Mediterranean Theater] HHG: On the 19th of January, we were off the coast of North Africa in the proximity of Casablanca and were ready to launch. You can imagine my surprise when our individual P-40s were moved forward on the flight deck to a point which gave us 425 feet of usable deck. This is what the Navy had calculated, and I think had allowed us a little bit �6 additional over what they would have had. In any case, they didn’t want airplanes flying or airborne over their carrier. Once the thing was airborne, they wanted them to clear—be clear of the carrier. When it came my turn to takeoff, the signal officer gave me the flag and I let her roll. I had full military power and 15 degrees of flaps down. Of course, with the big nose that the 40 had, you can’t see anything straight ahead, and I could only see out the sides until I got the tail well up in the air. So about the time I got rolling good, the tail was beginning to get a little light. I thought I saw the end of the deck approaching. Now, actually what it was was a place where the deck narrowed to permit guns to be installed along each side, so it was actually about half of the run to the end. But nonetheless, I thought it was the end, so I literally and miraculously lifted that stick up and lifted the airplane off the deck. And I couldn’t have been more than a half a knot above a stall. But I staggered off the end, and fortunately there was about 60 feet between the flight deck and the ocean. So that was enough cushion for the airspeed to come up a little bit and for me to kind of get control of things. Now, at this point, a flying suit, which I had stuffed back behind my head behind the armor plate in this old P-40, began coming out. We had the canopy open, of course, for takeoff. So out comes one arm, then another arm, and I grabbed it. And there I was just off the water with the flying suit in one hand and the stick in the other, the gear down, flaps down, and the canopy open. [audio distortion] Well, I got the stick between my knees and got the flying suit inside and got the canopy closed, then cleaned up the gear and the flaps, and everything was okay. We joined up our 72 airplanes that came flying down alongside the carrier, and up on the tower there was a big sign that gave us the heading and direction to make landfall at Casablanca. When we arrived at Casablanca, it was quite a shock because nobody knew we were coming. Our group commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon H. Austin, contacted the higher headquarters, and although they hadn’t expected us, they certainly knew what to do with our airplanes. It seemed that Phil Cochran, who had the 33rd over in Tunisia, was short of aircraft, so we dispatched 20 right away and another 24 a few days later. Shortly after that, the North African Campaign folded up and we got some of our airplanes back but not a full complement. When we finally did get enough airplanes to outfit two squadrons, they were permitted to move forward to Montesquieu just south of Bône and begin flying combat. We cut cards to see who would stay behind, and my squadron, the 317th, lost, so we stayed back at a base called Tafaraoui near Algiers. �7 When we finally got enough airplanes, then the 317th moved forward to Montesquieu, and my first mission then was flown on 19 January 1943. [audio distortion] The other two squadrons had flown by this time, oh, maybe 15 missions, all of which were almost totally uneventful. They had maybe seen 20 airplanes in all that time and never more than five at once, and they had all elected to run away instead of fight. So when we arrived, these old experienced fighter pilots told us how lucky we were to be coming in at that time, that the activity level was very low and it would give us a chance to learn the country and get our jittery nerves calmed down and sort of get our feet on the ground. But how wrong they were. 00:09:50 [Bomber escort mission to Cagliari (May 19, 1943)] HHG: The mission on the 19th was an escort mission. We were escorting medium bombers against Cagliari in Sardinia. And our route took us parallel to the west coast of Sardinia up to a point where we were about abeam of Cagliari, then we turned east to strike the harbor there. Just after we turned east, my section of four airplanes—and let me say we were flying the finger formation with these sections of four stacked all around the bomber stream, and our instructions were to maintain our position and defend the bombers unless we were attacked. So just after we turned—headed east, my section of four was attacked by 109s. And a turning, swirling, dogfight ensued, and it didn’t take long for us new sports to become separated. And the next thing I knew, it was me and about a half a dozen 109s that were yo-yoing over the sky. No matter which way I turned, I would set myself up for somebody else. So the whole thing began to look a bit dismal. At one point, I recall an airplane that was coming head-on descending in a shallow dive at me, and my reaction was just to pull up and head straight for his prop. You see, if he pulled up, I’d pull up. If he nosed down, I’d nose down. I guess I’d have flown through him because I just kept boring straight at him firing. Fortunately, I hit him, and he—parts flew off and smoke, and he went spinning away. Shortly after that, a bunch of tracers came zipping by. And I guess looking back on it, I did a snap roll to get off of that spot. All I wanted to do was to get away from that piece of airspace that was filled with tracers. And that’s what I did. I had already decided by this time that things just aren’t going the way they’re supposed to. Realistically, under these conditions, I really don’t have very long to live. I can’t possibly exist in this environment with airplanes coming in from both sides and live through it. And that’s when the tracers came by, and I did the snap roll and spun out. �8 By this time, I’d been running the engine full bore with the supercharger on for some time, so I’m sure it must have been smoking. And I had a cannon shell explode right behind my head, behind the armor plate, and that had left a hole and a bunch of smoke. So when I spun out, I went spinning down into an undercast which we had drifted over by this time. And I’m sure the opposing pilot got credit for a victory. Anyway, I leveled out in the undercast, managed to recover, and I stayed in it as long as I could, headed south toward North Africa. I finally popped out and nervously looked all around and couldn’t see an enemy. Eventually, I saw a speck way off to my left, and we slowly worked our way together, and it turned out to be one of my original four. He came up on my left side, looked at the airplane, shook his head, went down under and came up on the right side, still shaking his head. We had no radio contact. My radio had been shot out along with some of the instruments. But anyway, he looked at me and drew his index finger across his brow and shook his head. He escorted me on back to base and led me in for landing because I didn’t have any airspeed indicator. And the landing was uneventful. After I was down, they dragged the airplane off in—to the junk heap. The group was flying a mission every day at that time. After my first experience, I was so shook up that I couldn’t sleep. And we knew every day whether we had to fly a mission the next day, so that meant I could lay awake all night thinking about it. I continued to fly because there just wasn’t any honorable way out of it. But it was literally hell. After I’d flown a few more missions, I began to calm down a little bit. And, oh, along towards the end of time—of the time that we were flying the P-40s, I got to the point that once we were in the air, why, I felt okay and was really kind of anxious that we would find some enemy aircraft and we could have a go at them. The point that I want to make, Eric, is that from that low of being absolutely terrorized, I kept flying until later on—and I guess it was probably at the time I was flying P-47s—I realized one day that everybody that fights a war can tell you about the time that, for the grace of God, they would have been dead. And I said to myself, “You’ve been through that about a half a dozen times now.” And a great light came on. I wasn’t going to get killed in this war. And that was quite a revelation. So from then on—and it improvingly got better—but from then on, I had no fear, no inhibitions. I could go tearing into a gaggle of enemy airplanes with just a wingman and not be worried at all about getting killed. My main concern was how many were going to get away before I could shoot at them. We had an expression back in those days about fighter pilots. It said, “You don’t have to be crazy to be a fighter pilot, but it sure helps.” And perhaps this was a good case in point. 00:18:24 �9 [Other service details and conclusion] HHG: Well, that essentially is the first mission. In the fall of ’43, we changed to P-47 aircraft and moved to Italy, and I continued flying. In fact, on a mission at the end of January in ‘44, I got six victories on one mission with the Jug. I ended up getting ten victories in the Jug. In April of ’44, we changed to P-51s. And before I stopped flying in about August or September of ‘44, I had gotten another five with the P-51. So those 15 added to the three that I got in P-40s brought me to a total of 18 with which I ended the war. At that time, Fifteenth Air Force gave me a choice: I could either go back to the States or I could come to Fifteenth for staff duty. But they thought it was important to retain that experience and keep me alive. So I really never knew when I flew my last mission. I wasn’t aware of it until later. Eric, in looking at your questionnaire I’ll see if I can answer some of the things you raised there. I guess my rank at that time of that first mission was first lieutenant, and I was a flight leader in the 317th Squadron. Background prior to that had obviously just been training for a few months in the P-40 back in the States. We had been overseas since January when we landed at Casablanca. And it was my first combat. Okay, I guess that’s about the size of it. If you have any questions or want to flesh it out anymore, give me a call. And later on, if you need it, I can send you a photograph. That’s the end of this tape. 00:21:09 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Green, Herschel H., 1920-2006 Biographical Text <p>Herschel H. "Herky" Green was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. He was born on July 3, 1920 in Mayfield, Kentucky. While studying at Vanderbilt University, he enrolled in the Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) program and earned his private pilot’s license in 1941. In September of that year, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, receiving his commission in April 1942. Green initially served in stateside assignments with the 57th Pursuit Group and 79th Fighter Group, then joined the newly created 317th Fighter Squadron, 325th Fighter Group, for oversees deployment in early 1943. During his service in the Mediterranean Theater, he flew the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and North American P-51 Mustang.</p> <p>After World War II, Green remained in military service with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included serving as deputy commander of the 4th Fighter Group and serving on the staff of the Air Defense Command in Finland, Fifth Air Force Headquarters in Japan, and 25th Air Division Headquarters in Washington State. He retired as a colonel in 1964 and passed away in 2006.</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 [Herschel H. "Herky" Green oral history interview] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>Audio recording of an oral history with fighter ace Herschel H. "Herky" Green, January 22, 1992. Microcassette 1 of 1.</p> <p>Abstract from transcript: Fighter ace Herschel H. "Herky" Green discusses his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. He describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot and his time with the 317th Fighter Squadron, 325th Fighter Group, in the Mediterranean Theater. Particular focus is given to a bomber escort mission to Cagliari, Italy on May 19, 1943, when Green experienced his first aerial combat and narrowly escaped from a group of Messerschmitt Bf 109s.</p> <p>Green recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel for his "The American Aces Speak" book series.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) microcassettes Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Cagliari (Italy) Casablanca (Morocco) Italy Morocco Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Curtiss P-40F Warhawk Fighter pilots Green, Herschel H., 1920-2006 Messerschmitt Bf 109 Family United States. Army Air Forces United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Squadron, 317th World War, 1939-1945 World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Mediterranean Region Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-01-22 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound cassette (21 min., 9 sec.) : analog ; 2.2 x 1.3 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_215_01 2002-02-13_AV_215_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/1c6d37219917be2f03349b512768d555.jpg 96088133531575a43e136d16ab0efb79 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/19d6d3bbb19de58877e58dc8175a740c.mp3 c730ec12d55f0255101d03d25022ba99 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/8dc9b75430749128a3704e8ef566704b.pdf 2186c5e922b1a215e6e44b5055974309 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Paul S. Bechtel (Part 2 of 2) Interview Date: circa 1980s-early 1990s �2 Abstract: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace Paul S. Bechtel discusses his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. In part two, he provides clarifying details about the combat mission over Munda Airfield discussed in part one. Bechtel recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel for his The American Aces Speak book series. Biography: Paul S. Bechtel was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. He was born on March 4, 1917 in Goodland, Kansas. He attended the University of Wyoming and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. In 1939, Bechtel enlisted in the Army Air Corps and entered flight training, which he completed the following year. He was initially assigned to the 31st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field (Michigan) and was later transferred to the 12th Pursuit Squadron, 50th Pursuit Group, for deployment to the Pacific Theater in early 1942. Bechtel participated in the Solomon Islands Campaign and flew missions over Guadalcanal, the Russell Islands, Bougainville, and other areas in the Southwest Pacific. He also served as commander of the 12th and as an operations office with XIII Fighter Command. After World War II, Bechtel remained in military service and went on to command a reconnaissance squadron during the Korean War. Other assignments included serving with the Air Force Research and Development Command (ARDC) and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Bechtel retired as a colonel in 1963. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �3 Paul S. Bechtel (Part 2 of 2) [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 PAUL S. BECTHEL: Okay. I had to get this thing working right, Eric, before I can answer some of the questions you’ve given me here. On your first question, you ask who the pilots were that were in my flight that day. You’ve named six of us, and that’s as well as I can do. And I’m—I have to work from a diary that Little Smitty kept. And it’s a real good one, and he mentions all the same people. [audio distortion] Now, I think I can give you those names. The other two fellows were [Decker?] and [Wade?]. [audio distortion] [Decker?] and [Wade?]. There were eight of us. I was leading the first flight of four, and [Baird?] was leading the second flight of four. And as I remember, [Baird?] went in sort of as medium cover, and we went to what they’d call high cover, but it wasn’t very high. It was only about, oh, say 16,000 feet. We could have gone higher than that, but we didn’t see anything above us, and there wasn’t any need to go any higher. There were nine SBDs. To the best of my memory, we were in a morning flight, but I don’t believe it was an early morning flight. It’s a long time ago, but I would guess that it was 9:00 or 10:00 when we got over Munda. As far as our deployment off the SBDs, the SBDs, as I remember it, would go about 120, 125 mile-an-hour in their climb, and we were doing around 200 even when we were throttled back. So we had to weave around an awful lot above them, off to the side, all over the place, keep them in sight, stay around them, and stay with them. The Grummans had the same kind of problem. And we didn’t have any fixed position where we had to hold off of the SBDs. Our job was to cover them, and if anything came in and started an attack on them, we would be there to do that. And we stayed close enough so that we could have done that sort of thing. The weather was pretty good. I didn’t have any complaints. We had gone into snowstorms with the B-17s the day before, but on this particular mission we didn’t run into any weather. It would be my guess that the bombers started their dive from around 10,000 to 12,000 feet, but again, I’m doing this strictly from memory. We came in from the east, and we could see the Zeros taking off. And as I remember, they were taking off to the west. And the reason we could see them taking off is because they kicked up quite a cloud of dust as each one—or each group—I don’t know whether they went off in singles or pairs or just what, but there was plenty of dust down there from airplanes taking off. As far as how many were there, I was up high, so I had no idea. However, I could see the flamers as the, oh, Marines went around the circle with these Zeros were in in their takeoff and gathering pattern, and they were just one right after another. �4 As I indicated in my last note to you, all the Zeros I saw were the ones that were at about our altitude, which, again, I think was probably around 16,000, something like that. And they, as I remember, were off to our west and possibly a little on the northwest. And in other words, we were up-sun from them. Again, I think there was probably four or five or six, but I don’t remember for sure. They were in an echelon sort of deal. And as I say, as we approached them, they went into a gentle turn to the left, oh, I’d say about a oneneedle-width turn to let us join on to their rear. And it was in that kind of a position that I first started to shoot. As far as the antiaircraft is concerned, I’m quite sure that the AA was shooting at the SBDs and possibly the F4Fs also. I don’t remember any antiaircraft at our altitude, and I don’t think they would pay much attention to a small flight like ours at that high altitude when they had SBDs and dive bombers and Grummans coming in on dive bombing runs and strafing runs. These guys had apparently taken off earlier and were circling and I presume were aware that the battle was going on down there but still were holding their position at altitude until they knew where the enemy were. And when they found that out, we were right behind them. You say how far behind the rear Zero was I when I fired. Well, I would guess—and I don’t know how to really tell you, except I would guess several hundred yards, 200 or 300 yards. And as I say, we were in about a one-needle-width turn to the left. So I had a gunsight—the gunsight we had in those days were what we called the Christmas tree sight. They had a vertical line, and as I remember, there were three lines across. The middle one was—if you’re shooting at something and not using any deflection. The other two were to give you some kind of an idea of something, but I never did really know what. I think that I used a little more than one deflection on my first burst, which was unsuccessful, and I probably used twice that much on the second one, which was successful. I was firing only the .30s and .50s. I didn’t think much of the 37millimeter as a fighting gun, and I—at least an air-to-air gun. It’s kind of like trying to shoot ducks with a .30-06 as far as I was concerned, and I sort of held that in reserve in case we ran into a ship or a barge or something on the surface where you could lob in a good shell. But even then I didn’t expect to ever get more than about three rounds out of them before they jammed. That’s just the way that gun worked. As far as an attack of buck fever [unintelligible], I think I probably had it because that was the first time I’d ever shot at an airplane. [laugh] But I went at it in a sort of a methodical way. I tried once and it didn’t seem to be enough, so I doubled it and that one worked. And I was working on the next guy before the show broke up. The fellow I was working on, they all, as I remember, went into tighter turns and pulled up and to the left. As far as seeing any strikes, no, I did not. But I did see smoke come from the first one I �5 shot at, and the same thing at the—the one I shot at when I was all by myself. This was a straight and level in both cases. We were in about one-needle-width turns, and as I remember, they were turns to the left. I didn’t see strikes. I wasn’t that close, and I don’t think 30-millimeter strikes give you much anyway. In fact, I never saw strikes on anything I was—you’re pretty busy. [laughs] When the formation broke up, none of the other fellows had had a chance to fire because they were all behind me. I didn’t do a very good job of leading them in, I guess. On the other hand, I don’t know just how I could have got them in to where we could all have done much more shooting. As I say, we tried to follow them, but it was hopeless. They turned right inside of us. And as far as I know, Anglin [Everett Anglin] was the guy who advised me that there was a Zero on my tail. And I was trying to turn around, looking for airplanes. They had kind of—they didn’t all stick together, as far as I know. I don’t really—they just kind of scattered like a flock of ducks scatter when they realized we were there. And when I look back, I—as I—I don’t remember whether I was turning or flying straight and level, but I was probably turning—and I got a hunch I was still turning to the left. But now as I think back on it, when I watched those tracers creep up on me, I was looking over my right shoulder, so I must have been in a turn to the right. [audio break] PSB: Now I’ll try to get this thing going again. It’s going now. I can see that. About the spin. I didn’t put this airplane into a spin purposefully. It stalled and went into a spin naturally when I pulled it in too tight. And I—it would have been a spin to the right because I was turning to the right when it happened. As far as recovering from the spin, I don’t think I—there was any problem to do that. And I—but I lost some altitude in the process. And as far as where was I when I recovered, well, all of this action had taken place, I would say, south and somewhat east of Munda itself. There was a—there’s a [unintelligible] island just offshore from Munda. I think it’s called Rendova, but I can’t remember for sure. I think a good share of our action took place over that island or just over the bay to the east of the island. As far as how long was I alone, it wasn’t very long, because I was looking for somebody to go home with and it was just shortly after I recovered that I—from the spin that I saw this single airplane. And he was a little above me. By a little, I’d say maybe 1,000 feet. But he was off probably four or five miles. So I just climbed and turned towards him and climbed up to his altitude. And as I got closer, I could see that he was not a P-39. He was a Zero. And as I said before, he was a very accommodating guy and soul. �6 As far as the—closed to firing range, I would guess again probably, oh, a couple hundred yards from him when I opened up and used about the same deflection sight picture as I’d used on the other fellow when I hit him, and it seemed to work on this guy, too. I didn’t overrun him. He—well, in a way I guess I did, because he started to smoke and lost power and leveled off and turned to the right. And I turned off to the left, as I remember, then and—because I was afraid I might have another one on my tail. I was up there all by myself and I didn’t have any wingmen or anybody to help me look out for myself, so I didn’t—having got this guy smoking, I was satisfied that he was going to go, and I left him. As far as who it was I joined on the way home, I’m darned if I know. I’m darned if I know. I don’t think it was Anglin. It might have been [Eames?]. It might have been [Eames?]. And I could probably find that out if I talked to Roger because Roger’s still alive. Young is alive also. [audio break] PSB: What I missed here. [sound of paper shuffling] [audio break] PSB: Regarding who was the probable, the probable was the second fellow I shot at in the first group that we caught up with. I got a shot at him, but I didn’t see any smoke. In fact, it was at that time that they apparently got the word we were there, and they just took off. [laughs] They just got out of there real fast, and we couldn’t turn, keep up with them. [audio break] PSB: So, Eric, I’ve listened to all that malarkey, and I’ve got two or three comments I’ll add here that may help clear up some of the—some of it. First of all, I didn’t remember what time of day, and I gather now reading back through your comments here that you had the time of day when the thing went off, and it was apparently a little earlier than I remembered. However, you want to realize that it’s something like 47 years since this all happened, and that’s a long time ago. Insofar as escorting the SBDs, our system was to stay above them, oh, I would guess 1,000 feet, maybe on some occasions even up to 2,000 feet, and stay over them and cross back and forth above them. We might get a little in front of them, we might be behind them, but mainly we were trying to stay above them and fairly close to them so that if any enemy fighters came in, we were where we could get between them and the SBDs. Now, I noticed somewhere in there that I talked about shooting 30 millimeter guns. That wasn’t quite right. I was talking about .30 caliber. And the 30 millimeter—we had a 37 �7 millimeter. That was the cannon. And we tried to replace those with the 20 millimeters if we could get ahold of them because they fired real fine and they were a wonderful weapon. But that 37 was just not a good one. [audio break] PSB: As I wind up here, I have a couple of points that I’d like to add. You can question the altitudes for high cover and so on in here at such a low altitude. You want to remember that this—a dive bombing mission and the dive bombers are going down to several hundred feet—or I mean several thousand feet. And when they come out of their dive, they—if they’re attacked at that point, that’s where you’re supposed to be of some help to them. So you don’t have a high cover that’s going to be very high or an intermediate cover that’s going to be very high either. Now, our intermediate cover did shoot a Zero or two, as I remember, off of the F4Fs’ tail, and that was the job they were supposed to do. And actually, I guess we were doing the job we were supposed to do at the top cover, which was—even though it was at a rather low altitude. Why the F4Fs went down with the SBDs, that was the plan from the start, that they would follow the SBDs down, and they did. And we provided intermediate and top cover. And it worked out pretty well. 00:21:32 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bechtel, Paul S., 1917-2003 Biographical Text <p>Paul S. Bechtel was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. He was born on March 4, 1917 in Goodland, Kansas. He attended the University of Wyoming and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. In 1939, Bechtel enlisted in the Army Air Corps and entered flight training, which he completed the following year. He was initially assigned to the 31st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field (Michigan) and was later transferred to the 12th Pursuit Squadron, 50th Pursuit Group, for deployment to the Pacific Theater in early 1942. Bechtel participated in the Solomon Islands Campaign and flew missions over Guadalcanal, the Russell Islands, Bougainville, and other areas in the Southwest Pacific. He also served as commander of the 12th and as an operations office with XIII Fighter Command.</p> <p>After World War II, Bechtel remained in military service and went on to command a reconnaissance squadron during the Korean War. Other assignments included serving with the Air Force Research and Development Command (ARDC) and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Bechtel retired as a colonel in 1963.</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 [Paul S. Bechtel oral history interview (Part 2 of 2)] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>Audio recording of an oral history with fighter ace Paul S. Bechtel, circa 1980s-1990s. Microcassette 2 of 2.</p> <p>Abstract from transcript: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace Paul S. Bechtel discusses his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. In part two, he provides clarifying details about the combat mission over Munda Airfield discussed in part one.</p> <p>Bechtel recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel for his "The American Aces Speak" book series.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) microcassettes Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Munda (Solomon Islands) Solomon Islands Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Bechtel, Paul S., 1917-2003 Bell P-39 Airacobra Family Fighter pilots Grumman F4F Wildcat Family Mitsubishi A6M Reisen (Zero Fighter) Zeke (Ben, Ray) Family United States. Army Air Forces United States. Army Air Forces. Pursuit Squadron, 12th World War, 1939-1945 World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Solomon Islands Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980s-1990s circa Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound cassette (21 min., 32 sec.) : analog ; 2.2 x 1.3 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_214_01 2002-02-13_AV_214_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/521bf963b804699385ae7292730b155d.jpg 96088133531575a43e136d16ab0efb79 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/493152e09aa804c7ae9dabe1555f1bfc.mp3 0946ef80b0b5301b70598b5fcf6e4a95 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/2e4e196091589f781f3876e06b4f8fc1.pdf aa721aef18a461a8f701f9a58b1fe274 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Paul S. Bechtel (Part 1 of 2) Interview Date: circa 1980s-early 1990s �2 Abstract: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace Paul S. Bechtel discusses his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. In part one, he describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot, including his training with the 31st Pursuit Group and his time with the 12th Pursuit Group in the Pacific Theater. He focuses in particular on two stories from his service: an emergency landing he made in a Seversky P-35 while training at Camp Steel (Michigan) and a combat mission over Munda Airfield on December 24, 1942. Bechtel recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel for his The American Aces Speak book series. Biography: Paul S. Bechtel was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. He was born on March 4, 1917 in Goodland, Kansas. He attended the University of Wyoming and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. In 1939, Bechtel enlisted in the Army Air Corps and entered flight training, which he completed the following year. He was initially assigned to the 31st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field (Michigan) and was later transferred to the 12th Pursuit Squadron, 50th Pursuit Group, for deployment to the Pacific Theater in early 1942. Bechtel participated in the Solomon Islands Campaign and flew missions over Guadalcanal, the Russell Islands, Bougainville, and other areas in the Southwest Pacific. He also served as commander of the 12th and as an operations office with XIII Fighter Command. After World War II, Bechtel remained in military service and went on to command a reconnaissance squadron during the Korean War. Other assignments included serving with the Air Force Research and Development Command (ARDC) and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Bechtel retired as a colonel in 1963. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: �3 Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �4 Index: Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5 A memorable incident in a Seversky P-35 ...................................................................................... 5 Combat mission over Munda (December 24, 1942) ....................................................................... 8 Service with Don Yost and conclusion ......................................................................................... 11 �5 Paul S. Bechtel (Part 1 of 2) [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Introduction] PAUL S. BECHTEL: This is Paul Bechtel, and I got your January 9th letter today regarding the information I’ve been promising you for months. I’ve had my troubles, and I’m sure that you’re not aware of them, but I had to move this fall because my house on Merritt Island was sold. And it was on rather short notice, but I got a good price for the house, so I made it. And I’ve moved to a small townhouse down near Melbourne, which is about 20 miles south of where I lived before. Only problem was I had to move right fast, and everybody packed for me, and I had—can’t find half the things I really want. And those I do find in the boxes as I unpack I don’t have any place to put and—so I have to pack it back. And that becomes a rather hopeless sort of arrangement. [audio distortion] Another problem that I’ve run into is that I don’t have a gadget on which to record the information I want to give you on the type of a—oh, the tape deck that you require. I have a small one that’s a General Electric jobby, but that is not going to work for you. However, what I’m starting to do tonight is record on that, and in the next few days I hope to get a large tape deck back from the repair unit, and on it I can manage, I think, to take what I’ve put on this deck and put it on one that you can use. That’s my idea. 00:02:01 [A memorable incident in a Seversky P-35] PSB: Now, really, I’ve got two stories for you. One of them does concern a combat mission. The other one concerns a mission where I guess I was trying to learn how to prepare for combat. I think when it’s through, you will chuckle over it. And it may not be of any use to you in the book that you’re writing now, but it’s a story that I think needs to be recorded because it’s—well, it’s good Air Force—Air Corps history. [unintelligible due to audio distortion]—my [unintelligible] fighter field, I was sent to Selfridge Field up at Mount Clemens, Michigan and joined the 39th Squadron in the old 31st Pursuit Group there. I’ve always felt that I was very fortunate in the flight commander and deputy flight commander that took over my career. For a flight commander, I got [Jackson Auld?], who was the General’s son, as flight commander. And his deputy was a fellow by the name of Joe Parker. People who have been in the Air Force since before World War II and/or during World War II that had anything to do with �6 Republic Aircraft will remember Joe as their chief test pilot during World War II. He was lost, I think, at Ie Shima right near the end of the war when a P-47 cut out on takeoff, and he had to go into the rocks. And that’s not a very desirable way to land. But going back to this story I wanted to tell you, I had been with the squadron about six months when they went up to a gunnery camp at Oscoda, Michigan, a place called Camp Steel. We’d been there I guess a month or so, and it was getting into October, which up there is a pretty nice time of year. And Jack gave me a mission to fly that was quite a bit different from anything I had ever done before, and he gave me a rather thorough briefing on what to do and what not to do. At that time, we were flying the old Seversky P-35s. And it was a nice old airplane, but it was a tricky son of a gun in lots and lots of ways. What Jack was getting me to do—or having me do was climb that airplane to the max altitude that it could be climbed to. He told me that would be around 26,000 or 27,000 feet. And he went on to tell me that I would have a problem in that my propeller, which was a hydraulic-controlled propeller, would probably freeze up around the 17,000, 18,000, so I better get a good pitch on the propeller at that altitude, because from there on up, it was going to be a fixed-pitch prop and there wouldn’t be any control over it. What he told me proved to be true, and it did freeze up on me at about, oh, 17,000, 18,000. Meanwhile, I was sucking away on the oxygen system that was standard at that time, which didn’t amount to an oxygen mask, but amounted to a pipe stem on the end of a tube and a little control gadget that you could supposedly set at the altitude and acquire the right amount of oxygen through the pipe stem. Well, I seemed to be doing all right on it. And I had flown on it before, but I had never flown at this altitude with it before. I got it up to around, I think, a little over 27,000 feet, and then the next thing I knew, I smelled smoke in the cockpit. And when I looked at my altimeter, I was down around 17,000 feet. Somewhere I had lost 10,000 feet, but I didn’t know where. I decided I’d make—try to make an emergency landing at Oscoda and promptly put my wheels down I think at around 16,000 feet. What had happened, I’d gathered when the accident investigation board went over it later and got stories from the people who saw what happened, the fellows were in their—the barracks at gunnery camp, and they heard this engine wind up and just scream. And they all ran outside to see what it was, and here was a P-35 diving from some high altitude and beginning to show smoke out behind it. Apparently what had actually happened, according to the accident report, is that I passed out from lack of oxygen and the airplane, which was essentially hanging on the prop at that time, fell off into a dive. The prop, being in fixed pitch, over-speeded, so to speak, and the engine—a bearing in the induction section burned out and let the oil pump into the induction section, which ran it right into the cylinders, and, of course, they promptly popped off all the cylinder heads. �7 And with the hot engine and oil all over them, we had a—not a fire like you’d have with gasoline, but we had a fire with oil and plenty of smoke. Well, I came on down, gliding down with my gear down, figuring I’d land, I think, to the south on the run—on one of the two runways we had there. But as I came over the lake, which is just north of the field, I realized I was too low. I wasn’t going to get to the field. I was going to go into the trees. I had thought about this before, fortunately, and I knew that behind me was a hay field. So I made a—I managed to make a 180-degree turn and landed to the north in a hay field. Actually, I guess I made a pretty good landing, and I was rolling along fine until I hit a ditch. And that kind of messed things up. It tore the landing gear off. Fortunately, instead of turning it on its back, which is what usually happened to a P-35 when it stopped suddenly during a landing, it turned it sideways and the left wing took up all the shock of coming down on the ground. And while it bent up, it still didn’t let the airplane turn over on its back. It just spun around and stopped in the middle of the field. Things were pretty much afire by this time because when it tore the landing gear out, of course, it opened up some of the gas tanks, and gas burns very easily. I climbed out of the airplane like a [unintelligible], I guess, and got out in the hay field. And then I suddenly remembered that, gee, I—I’m supposed to fill out an accident report when I have an accident, and I have left the kit that has that in the baggage compartment behind the cockpit. So I went back to the airplane, opened up the baggage compartment, and got the accident kit out and then went back over to the—away—in the hay field, away from the fire and sat down, started to fill out my accident report. I’d been there a little while when all of a sudden I heard a car coming and way up from the north came an old Chevrolet bouncing and a-roaring across the hay field. So I stood up, and the car came up and stopped right beside me, just almost skidded to a halt. And a guy jumped out of the car, and he looked at the wreck, at the fire, and he looked at me, and he looked back at the wreck, and then he looked back at me. Then he come up with his finger, and he says, “You know, you guys got that barber out at the field. That SOB is a Red. We rode him out of town on a rail, and now you guys got him out there at the base as a barber.” Well, I stood there with my mouth wide open, I imagine. And that’s all this guy said. He then climbed back in his car and drove off. He didn’t say, “Can I give you a lift? Have you had a problem? Do you need—are you in trouble,” or anything. That was the end of the story. And that really is the end of my story. [audio break] �8 PSB: —listening to this, I see where it got fouled up a little bit early. I went to Selfridge after I had graduated from Kelly Field. And actually, the old 31st Pursuit Group was not old at that time. It was a brand new group that had just been formed when they broke the 1st Pursuit Group into two groups and formed the 31st. That group later, however, fought during World War II and is now the old 31st Fighter Group—or Wing stationed out at Homestead Air Force Base below Miami. I attended a reunion there several years back but was unable to find a soul there that I had ever known before. Actually, I gather what happened, when the war broke out, for some reason they took all three of the squadrons, the 39th, 40th, and 41st, and sent them to New Guinea, and they attached three new squadrons to the 31st Group Headquarters, and later on they went to North Africa. I never got a full story on why the group didn’t go with the squadrons to the Southwest Pacific, but it ought to make an interesting story for somebody to dig out one of these days. [audio break] 00:14:32 [Combat mission over Munda (December 24, 1942)] PSB: Now, to get on with the story about combat, I will do my best to recount an engagement that took place on Christmas Eve of 1942 over Munda. We had been at Guadalcanal at that time about four or five days and on this particular day were assigned as high cover for a small contingent. And when I say “small,” I’m talking probably 8, 10, or 12 SBDs that were going to dive bomb the Munda Airfield. At that time, and just prior to that time, the Japanese had been building an airfield at Munda Point up on Rendova. And they had built the airfield under the palm trees, and it was only in the past week or so that they had taken the palm trees out and were now beginning to operate fighters out of that airfield. It at this time had become one of the prime targets of the Cactus Air Force. Along with the eight P-39s that I was leading, there were four F4Fs, which were being led by Major Don Yost of the Marine Corps, and the SBDs. We didn’t enjoy escorting SBDs very much because they flew pretty slow as they climbed to altitude with their bomb load. But that was not the part of the problem that we were there for. When we got to Munda, we discovered that the Zeros were taking off from the airfield, and the dive bombers immediately went into their dives and raised Cain with those taking off and those that were starting their engines around the field. The four F4Fs followed them down and had a field day shooting down Zeros essentially in the traffic pattern. �9 Meanwhile, we were up, I guess, oh, 12,000, 14,000, 15,000, and I noticed a group of— not a big group—I think there were four, six, or maybe even eight Zeros in formation. And I turned to them to encounter them. And surprisingly enough, apparently they thought we were another bunch of Zeros, and as we approached them, they turned away so that we could join on to the tail end of them. Well, this was very accommodating, of course. As the leader, I pulled up behind the rear Zero and took what I thought was an adequate lead and fired a long burst. Nothing happened. Obviously, I was shooting behind him because I didn’t get any hits or tracers or anything in front of him or he would have realized I was back there and was not friendly. I then took a bigger lead and fired a second burst, and this time I was more fortunate. He promptly began to smoke, lost his power, and the fellows behind me said he later broke into flame. I was pulling up to get another shot at the next guy in line when they apparently discovered that we were there and broke formation. Very shortly after that, I got a call from one of my boys saying, “Paul, you’ve got a Zero on your tail.” When I looked back, I sure did, and his guns were blinking, and the tracers were creeping up towards my— towards me. I remember the tracers very well because they came at me in a sort of a spiral way. And instead of coming straight at you, they came in in a corkscrew manner. Anyway, I promptly went into a tighter turn to try to get away from this guy and kept my eyes peeled behind me as these tracers drew closer and closer to me. About this time, the inevitable happened. I stalled and spun. I guess that’s probably what saved me because the guy who had been shooting at me apparently figured he’d got me and went after somebody else. When I recovered from my spin, I ran into one of those things that seems to happen to you quite frequently in air combat. I looked around, and I couldn’t see an airplane anywhere. One minute in combat you’ve got airplanes everywhere you look, and maybe a minute later, you look around and you can’t see any anywhere. I think it has something to do with the way you focus your eyes at different distances, and at higher altitudes you don’t have anything to focus on. Anyway, I flew around trying to find somebody to latch onto to go home with, and I saw a single airplane off towards Munda, and I thought it might be one of my lads, so I turned over to join him. He turned out to be a Zero, however, and like the first bunch I ran into, was very accommodating. It apparently thought I was another Zero, and as I got closer, he turned so that I could join on his tail. Well, this time I was a little luckier than I had been the first time. I had a little—I had a better idea of how much lead to put on him, and I hit him on the first burst. And, again, he started smoking and lost power, and I overran him. And when I looked back, I never saw him again. Somebody down below, however, did see a Zero burst into flames at about that time, and as a result of that, I was able to confirm that victory. �10 I started home then because I figured it was a good time to get out of there. I was in okay shape, as far as I knew. And on the way home, I did find one of my lads, and the two of us returned to Fighter Two all right. The raid itself turned out to be quite effective apparently, because as I remember, the four F4Fs shot down ten Zeros, the SBDs figured they did about as well as that on the ground when they dropped their bombs, and my group of boys got, I think, four or five confirmed victories. [audio break] PSB: I’ve just finished listening to that review, and I think there’s one error in there that— Munda, I believe, was on New Georgia rather than Rendova. But it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at a map of that area, and I don’t happen to have one handy. I guess about the only comment I’d have regarding the whole mission would be that, really, it was a pretty doggone nice Christmas present for our little Cactus Air Force. It would be my hunch that the Zero outfit that had been brought into and stationed at Munda were not familiar with the look of the P-39. Neither myself nor any of my gang ran into a circumstance like this from that day on, where they would turn or accommodate you by letting you join their—the tail end of their formations. From then on, most of the time when I saw a Zero, the son of a gun was back there spotting, flaming some of those corkscrew tracers at me. And this was true for my lads also. I would guess that we were just quite fortunate in that the Japanese who were at Munda at that time were new to the theater and were just not familiar with the profile of the airplanes that they encountered. [audio break] PSB: Okay. It’s the next morning now, and I’ve listened to that thing again to see what I can do to improve it. And I think I can give you two—a couple bits more information. As my memory—as I recall it, now that I think about it, I think my wingman Anglin [Everett Anglin], got that Zero off my tail. So he may not have abandoned me. I think that maybe Anglin got him about the time I spun in. The other thing that is kind of funny about the whole thing is on my way home, I—as I said, I found another guy, and we joined and started on our way home. And I looked at the altimeter, and as I remember, it was about, oh, 5,000, 6,000 feet. So I took off my oxygen mask and looked over at whoever I had flying on my wing. And he still had his mask on, so I said, “What you wearing your [unintelligible]—your oxygen mask for?” He looked kind of funny at me and looked at the altimeter and looked back at me and then shrugged his shoulders and took off his oxygen mask. And we went gaily on our way until we got down to around 2,000 feet, and I looked over the side. It didn’t look quite like 2,000 feet, so then I really checked my altimeter, and it wasn’t 2,000 feet. It was �11 12,000 feet. I think this is a good indication here of how you get shook up when you get in combat. Maybe you’re worse the first time than the later one, but I really don’t think it—you ever think as easily and as straight as you’d like to. I’ll shut up for a minute. [audio break] 00:27:43 [Service with Don Yost and conclusion] PSB: I think I’ll let that go about like it is, Eric. There are a couple things I can add that will maybe be interesting for your files. I don’t think you’ll need to write a—want to write about them, but that’s up to you. I mentioned the F4Fs and the fellow who was leading them as being Don Yost. Don was a squadron commander in the Marine Corps, and we both got to Guadalcanal about the same time. After we’d served a couple tours as squadron commanders, we both ended up on the ComAirSol staff. I was an ops officer in Fighter Command, and Don was an ops officer up in ComAirSol staff. I was at Fighter One, and the Air Force planes were at Fighter Two. Those planes that were at Fighter One were Marine Corps or Navy airplanes. And that’s where we started to on our flying time—I’m talking about Don Yost and I—because that was easier to get a flight there than it was to go clear over to the other fighter strip. I was flying with Don the day I shot down my fifth Zero. And I think you’ve got copies of that story somewhere, but I just wanted to bring it to your attention that I’m talking about the same guy in both instances. As I indicated when we talked over the phone the other night, feel free to throw any questions at me you want to. And maybe you can use this little tape or one like it to do so. I haven’t even used half of it, as far as I can tell. I’m going to sign off for tonight and get this thing wrapped up so I can put it in the mail to you tomorrow. Hope it does help you. Goodnight now. 00:30:10 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bechtel, Paul S., 1917-2003 Biographical Text <p>Paul S. Bechtel was a fighter ace who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. He was born on March 4, 1917 in Goodland, Kansas. He attended the University of Wyoming and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. In 1939, Bechtel enlisted in the Army Air Corps and entered flight training, which he completed the following year. He was initially assigned to the 31st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field (Michigan) and was later transferred to the 12th Pursuit Squadron, 50th Pursuit Group, for deployment to the Pacific Theater in early 1942. Bechtel participated in the Solomon Islands Campaign and flew missions over Guadalcanal, the Russell Islands, Bougainville, and other areas in the Southwest Pacific. He also served as commander of the 12th and as an operations office with XIII Fighter Command.</p> <p>After World War II, Bechtel remained in military service and went on to command a reconnaissance squadron during the Korean War. Other assignments included serving with the Air Force Research and Development Command (ARDC) and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Bechtel retired as a colonel in 1963.</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 [Paul S. Bechtel oral history interview (Part 1 of 2)] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>Audio recording of an oral history with fighter ace Paul S. Bechtel, circa 1980s-1990s. Microcassette 1 of 2.</p> <p>Abstract from transcript: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace Paul S. Bechtel discusses his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. In part one, he describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot, including his training with the 31st Pursuit Group and his time with the 12th Pursuit Group in the Pacific Theater. He focuses in particular on two stories from his service: an emergency landing he made in a Seversky P-35 while training at Camp Steel (Michigan) and a combat mission over Munda Airfield on December 24, 1942.</p> <p>Bechtel recorded this oral history at the request of historian Eric M. Hammel for his "The American Aces Speak" book series.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) microcassettes Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Michigan Munda (Solomon Islands) Solomon Islands United States Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Bechtel, Paul S., 1917-2003 Bell P-39 Airacobra Family Douglas SBD Dauntless Family Fighter pilots Grumman F4F Wildcat Family Mitsubishi A6M Reisen (Zero Fighter) Zeke (Ben, Ray) Family Seversky P-35 United States. Army Air Forces United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 31st United States. Army Air Forces. Pursuit Squadron, 12th World War, 1939-1945 World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Solomon Islands Yost, Donald K. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980s-1990s circa Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound cassette (30 min., 10 sec.) : analog ; 2.2 x 1.3 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_213_01 2002-02-13_AV_213_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/4c5fb9f7a67d4d205e7d1a9baa71d299.mp3 e801316bace384af79f340a976b1d8c4 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/d032af4953d3557a7ca6c0e1d81c0177.pdf f010aa8be35d987aebe179b1ea3e49ad PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Delno “Del” Carlton Interviewed by: unidentified interviewer Interview Date: circa 1980s-1990s �2 Abstract: Fighter pilot Delno “Del” Carlton is interviewed about his military service with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. The interview focuses specifically on an incident in 1944 or 1945, when VM(N)F-542 (Marine Night Fighter Squadron 542) deployed from the USS Sitkoh Bay (CVE-86) to Yontan Airfield, Okinawa, Japan. Due to navigational errors, Carlton’s flight of Grumman F6F Hellcats and Vought F4U Corsairs ended up at Iriomote, off the coast of present-day Taiwan. The interview is conducted by an unidentified interviewer, who then forwarded the tape to historian Eric M. Hammel. Biography: Delno “Del” Carlton was a fighter pilot who served with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He was born on January 9, 1923 in Lynd, Minnesota. He attended Crosby-Ironton Junior College from 1941-1942 and afterwards enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He was one of five Navy pilots recruited by the Marine Corps for a newly formed night fighter squadron. Carlton served with VM(N)F-542 (Marine Night Fighter Squadron 542) in the Pacific Theater, flying missions out of Ulithi, Okinawa, and other areas. After the end of World War II, he continued to serve in the Reserves. He also wrote a book about his military career, titled Sent Forth a Warrior. In his civilian life, Carlton earned a bachelor’s degree in mining engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1948 and worked for Pickands Mather & Company until his retirement in 1980. He and his wife Ruth also served as Christian lay counselors. In 1982, they founded the Cornerstone Christian School in Emily, Minnesota. Carlton passed away in 2019. Biographical information derived from interview and from an online obituary. Koop Funeral Home. “Obituary for Delno ‘Del’ Carlton.” Accessed December 1, 2021. https://www.koopfuneralhome.com/obituary/DelnoDel-Carlton Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. �3 Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �4 Delno “Del” Carlton [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 UNIDENTIFIED INTERVIEWER: Now, what we’re doing—we’re recording on this thing— we’re talking about—what was the dates of your—that—when you were aboard that carrier? DEL CARLTON: I’ll really have to dig out my old logbook to give you an exact date. But it was when we were moving from Ulithi up to Okinawa. And we went up aboard the Sitkoh Bay. INT: Now, the—how many planes did you have? DC: Well, there were, I believe, our 20 Hellcats and about 30 Corsairs that were on the Sitkoh Bay at the time. INT: Now, when you were, what, two hours out when you say that you were going into Okinawa and you were supposed to follow the Corsairs in? DC: Right. For some reason, they split our flight of Hellcats in two, and we flew some Corsairs and Hellcats in with each flight. And I was in the second launch. And I believe there were 15 Corsairs and ten of us from 542, and we were to follow the Corsairs into Okinawa. INT: Do you remember who was flying those Corsairs? Any of the pilots? DC: No, I don’t remember the names. INT: Or the squadron number? DC: No, I don’t know that either. INT: Now, when you took off, you were supposed to be in Okinawa in two hours? DC: Well, less than that. INT: Less than that. DC: Yeah. It was about a 40-minute—five-minute flight, I believe, and we were to fly into a certain checkpoint, heading almost due west, and then we were to turn north and follow this certain flight pattern into Yontan. �5 INT: I see. Now, when you were—how many hours out when you found out that you were off course? DC: Well, I marked the information down on my chart board. INT: You were keeping a chart—your navigation chart board, this pullout, right? DC: Right. INT: Yeah. DC: And I guess I—I always liked to keep my own and not depend on someone else, even if we were following them. So I wrote down the wind direction and everything. And I was one of the last planes off, I guess because from where my plane had been tied down on the deck. And so I plotted the information, and we got into formation. As I remember, we were to head out at 3,000 feet, certain airspeed and so on and a certain bearing, but we ended up—for some reason or other, the flight that we were following held at 1,000 feet and at a different airspeed from what we’d been assigned, and our bearing was such that it wasn’t compensating for the wind. And it was obvious we were going to move off quite a bit south of Okinawa instead of finding the proper checkpoint. INT: Well, now when you went over the island, did you realize—when did you realize you were over Formosa? DC: Well, I realized—of course, after an hour had gone by, it was pretty obvious we had missed the mark. And, of course, we had radio silence. And so we just kept holding that bearing, and so I pulled out my chart board and started really calculating and figuring out where we were. And all of a sudden—there was pretty poor visibility that day. And all of a sudden, there was an island ahead. And we were still at 1,000 feet. And when we went over the top of this airfield, which was shaped like a wagon wheel, I realized that the only one that I’d seen on any charts we’d looked at aboard ship was on Iriomote, which was right off the coast of Formosa. I believe it was 60 or 70 miles off the coast of Formosa, which would have put us about something like 250 miles or so southwest of Okinawa. INT: Off course completely. DC: Off—way off. INT: Yes. Now, how—what altitude were you when you went over this island off of Formosa? DC: Just about a flat 1,000 feet. INT: A flat 1,000 feet. And all you saw was Japanese who were scurrying around? �6 DC: The planes, and we could see the people. INT: How many planes would you say had—they had there? DC: Oh, I don’t know how I’d estimate number. But— INT: A bunch? DC: It was a bunch of them. INT: Yeah. And so then you broke radio silence. DC: Right. I had been plotting. And I don’t know who I was flying wing with at the time, but we had been trying to use some hand signals back and forth to confirm location. And I felt that I knew exactly where we were once we spotted that airfield. So I broke silence and I said, “I know where we are. If anyone wants to get home, you can follow me.” And then I broke formation, and I headed back in a northeasterly direction. INT: Well, then you took—did the Corsairs follow you, too? Or did the—everybody followed you? DC: All of the Hellcats swung out together then, and we all—they all realized that we were really lost. And it was approaching dark, also. INT: Oh, boy. Yeah. DC: And so we headed back northeast, and the Corsairs fell in with us on that point. INT: I see. Uh-huh [affirmative]. And then you, what, you cut back down on your airspeed because of fuel consumption? DC: Right. We throttled back and leaned it out and took up a bearing of around—oh, I believe it was 50 or 60 degrees. And it was about that time as we were heading out and following along this cloud bank that, all of a sudden, this Betty came out of the cloud bank and right in front of us. INT: Yeah. DC: And you just almost read the guy’s mind because he practically stood that plane on end in coming to a screeching halt and turned around and ducked back into the clouds again. Of course, at that time we were so worried about how much gas we had left that nobody was interested in chasing him. INT: And then you just went in and landed at Yontan? �7 DC: Right. We were really concerned because some of the planes that had been below deck had drained the belly tanks. And we were wondering, you know, whether they were ever going to get back. INT: Yeah. DC: And we went over a part of the U.S. fleet and again broke silence briefly to try to get a bearing to see if they could give us a confirm—confirm our location. And they wouldn’t break radio silence. And a couple of the guys began to look for—as we went over a couple of small, rocky islands, looking for a place they might ditch because they were really getting low. But all of a sudden, we hit the north end of Okinawa, probably around 30 miles or so north of Yontan Field. INT: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Well, then you—did you land first? The [unintelligible] landed first on Yontan? DC: I think once we hit the island, it seems like it was just kind of chaos of the whole flight. INT: [laughs] Everybody [unintelligible]. DC: Everyone—every man for himself— INT: Yeah. DC: —when they realized where they were. And everyone took off down the coast because when we realized that we had found the island. And some of the fellows then, you know, announced their gasoline. And a couple of them were reading right on the peg empty. INT: Yeah. Yeah. DC: And so we let them go in first. And, gee, when they—a couple of them, they couldn’t even find gasoline in the planes when they landed. And a couple of them, when they filled them up, there were maybe eight or ten gallons. But we all got back. Every single plane. INT: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Well, that’s good. You remember what the date was on that? DC: I’ll mail the date to you. INT: Okay. DC: Because I still have my old logbook, and I’m sure that it’s logged in there, the date that we flew in. But it was the day that the 542 squadron went from the carrier in and landed on Yontan. �8 INT: Okay. Well, swell. Well, that’s good. I hope we got this. [laughs] 00:08:10 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Carlton, Delno Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview unidentified interviewer Biographical Text <p>Delno “Del” Carlton was a fighter pilot who served with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He was born on January 9, 1923 in Lynd, Minnesota. He attended Crosby-Ironton Junior College from 1941-1942 and afterwards enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He was one of five Navy pilots recruited by the Marine Corps for a newly formed night fighter squadron. Carlton served with VM(N)F-542 (Marine Night Fighter Squadron 542) in the Pacific Theater, flying missions out of Ulithi, Okinawa, and other areas. After the end of World War II, he continued to serve in the Reserves. He also wrote a book about his military career, titled “Sent Forth a Warrior.”</p> <p>In his civilian life, Carlton earned a bachelor’s degree in mining engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1948 and worked for Pickands Mather &amp; Company until his retirement in 1980. He and his wife Ruth also served as Christian lay counselors. In 1982, they founded the Cornerstone Christian School in Emily, Minnesota.</p> <p>Carlton passed away in 2019.</p> Note Any additional notes about the item. This recording is presented in its original, unedited form. Please note that some interviews in this collection may contain adult language, racial slurs, and/or graphic descriptions of wartime violence. 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 [Delno Carlton oral history interview] Description An account of the resource <p>Fighter pilot Delno “Del” Carlton is interviewed about his military service with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. The interview focuses specifically on an incident in 1944 or 1945, when VM(N)F-542 (Marine Night Fighter Squadron 542) deployed from the USS Sitkoh Bay (CVE-86) to Yontan Airfield, Okinawa, Japan. Due to navigational errors, Carlton’s flight of Grumman F6F Hellcats and Vought F4U Corsairs ended up at Iriomote, off the coast of present-day Taiwan.</p> <p>The interview is conducted by an unidentified interviewer, who then forwarded the tape to historian Eric M. Hammel.</p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980s-1990s circa Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Okinawa Island (Japan) Japan Iriomote Island (Japan) Subject The topic of the resource United States. Marine Night Fighter Squadron 542 Carlton, Delno Grumman F6F Hellcat Family Vought F4U Corsair Family Sitkoh Bay (Cargo ship and aircraft ferry) Air pilots, Military Fighter pilots United States. Marine Corps World War, 1939-1945 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) audiocassettes Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound cassette (8 min., 10 sec.) : analog ; 4 x 2.5 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_212_01 2002-02-13_AV_212_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/9af5b4651fa9a68b0812dcb0b1077d98.mp3 ba3a281fa5cd2032f1af42b83bb1d220 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/1f1f56692b197f75d7bee197e4ead179.pdf f9797739545ae131a74d8632ef031bc7 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington American and German fighter pilots (Part 1 of 2) Recording Date: May 1961 �2 Abstract: This two-part recording contains conversations between German and American fighter pilots regarding their military service during World War II. The conversations took place during a goodwill meeting between the American Fighter Aces Association and the Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association that was held in Germany in May 1961. Excerpts from these recordings were later used in a highlight reel about the event. Identified speakers in part one include Eugene A. Valencia, Vice President of the American Fighter Aces Association; Jim Brooks, President of the American Fighter Aces Association; Werner Andres, President of the Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association; German fighter aces George Eder, Walter Krupinski, and Erich Hartmann; American fighter ace Hubert Zemke; and U.S. Air Force officer Raymond F. Toliver. Topics discussed include the Messerschmitt Me 262 and other military aircraft, the point system for aerial victories, and the goodwill meeting itself. Background: In May 1961, members of the American Fighter Aces Association visited West Germany as part of a goodwill meeting between them and the Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association. During their week-long visit, they toured German air bases and attended various events, including a war memorial dedication in Geisenheim, Germany. Several moments from the meeting were recorded, such as goodwill gestures and conversations between American and German fighter aces. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �3 Index: Conversation between Eugene A. Valencia and Georg Eder, part one .......................................... 4 Conversation between Valencia, Jim Brooks, Werner Andres, and Walter Krupinski .................. 7 Conversation between Valencia, Colonel Ray Toliver, and Erich Hartmann ................................ 9 Conversation between Valencia, Hubert Zemke, and Walter Krupinski ...................................... 12 Conversation between Valencia and George Eder, part two ........................................................ 17 Conversation between Valencia and Erich Hartmann .................................................................. 18 �4 American and German fighter pilots (Part 1 of 2) [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Conversation between Eugene A. Valencia and Georg Eder, part one] EUGENE A. VALENCIA: [unintelligible]. This is Commander Gene Valencia, the Vice President of the Fighter Aces Association of America. This was recorded during our trip during one of our brief interludes at Büchel. I’m very fortunate to introduce one of the most respected German aces, Mr. Georg Eder, that it has been our pleasure and privilege to meet. He was also in the group, the caravan that met and escorted the group from Rhein-Main. Georg, I am sorry to get you away from the table, but I’d like to ask you a few questions if I might. GEORG EDER: Let’s do it. EAV: All right. Georg, I understand that you were one of the—those instrumental in the development of the Me 262. Is this correct? GE: Yes, correct. In 1944, I—when Major Nowotny [Walter Nowotny] was killed in action, I became leader of this test group and tested the 262. And I have about 500 or 520 hours on this first jet plane [unintelligible]. EAV: Well, Georg, this, of course, was one of the great nemesis to the Allied forces. And I think you were quite surprised today to talk to a number of the American aces that we have that apparently met and one thought that you or your squadron shot them down in combat. GE: Yes, it’s all right. When he told me then that he was shot down on the 30th of July 1943 near Amsterdam, I told him it may be that it could be my group. And when I went home with the car, I pulled out my logbook and there—it’s true now—he was shot down by my group. EAV: Well, Georg, that—incidentally, Georg, while we are on the subject, what do you think of the new organization that we have, the Association of Fighter Aces, in which we include only those pilots who are, one, true fighter pilots and have been designated fighter aces, and our subsequent visit to your wonderful country? GE: When we founded our organization, it was in 1948, and I was one of the first members of the founders of our German organization. When we learnt that you founded an organization, the Aces Fighter—Fighters Organization in America, we were very glad. And I think our president took suddenly a connection with you. It’s all right? �5 EAV: Oh, he did indeed, and we were greatly pleased. Incidentally, being one of the founders of the Fighter Aces—or the Fighter Pilots of Germany, I understand that initially you had some 24,000 fighter pilots trained in Germany, and I was quite amazed today when you mentioned we have only 1,500. Is this true? GE: It’s true. During the Second World War, 24,000 fighter pilots who are trained and only about 1,500 are still alive. EAV: Well, Georg, one of the things that have been paramount in—and amongst the historians of the United States has been the erroneous reporting of the classification of ace. Can you tell me what in the German Air Force was required to be designated an ace fighter pilot? GE: Ace fighter pilot began in German with about 40 victories. You must understand, we had—our aces had about 500 to 600 missions during six years of the war. EAV: Oh, yes, Georg. I know your record well. Even with the vast amount of time as an instructor, I see 500 missions and also 40—or 93 confirmed victories. Incidentally, on the point system, another very important criteria that has been neglected in the United States and widely misunderstood, would you explain the point system versus the confirmed designation of a victory? I understand that a victory would be a definite destruction of an aircraft and a point system relegated to those who shot down an aircraft with more than one engine. Is this correct? GE: That’s correct. If you shot down a fighter plane, you got one point. If you shot down a two-engine plane, a light bomber or a medium bomber, you get two points. If you shot down a four-engine plane as a B-17 [unintelligible] you got three points. EAV: Well, Georg, that’s very interesting. And when a German fighter pilot has been designated, say—I was very pleased, of course, today to meet Colonel Krupinski [Walter Krupinski], Colonel Hartmann [Erich “Bubi” Hartmann]—Colonel Hartmann is an example. Three hundred fifty-two aircraft. Well, this is not too hard to understand, in that he has over 1,600—some of the German fighter pilots we have investigated have over 1,600 victories. Now, I know through documented forces—sources, excuse me—that I find no American fighter pilot with over—well, briefly, over 400 missions. Of course, as you mentioned during luncheon today, that this, of course, has been manifested by the desire for the fight over the homeland. Am I speaking correctly? GE: Yes, you are very correct. And I am very glad that you named Bubi Hartmann, as that’s his nickname in Germany. I trained him as a fighter pilot, and I am very proud of him that he get the best of our German pilots and he was one of the [unintelligible] boys who never was shot down or got any wounds. Myself, I was—I had to bail out [17 or 70?] times [unintelligible] wounded. And that’s a [unintelligible] between us. �6 EAV: I understand, Georg. That’s almost like a mark from Heidelberg. As you can understand—speaking for the Navy now, the carrier pilot shot down—our carriers were halfway back out of the reach of any possible wounded aircraft or disabled aircraft. Consequently, most of our pilots shot down remained behind. Your remarkable number of 17 ejections or bailout signify the effort that was maintained through the desire of the homeland fight. As you mentioned today—would you go into that a bit please? GE: I think that we wouldn’t fought for [unintelligible] during the war, that everybody in America or a French or a German only fought for his country and not for other—for another person. EAV: Well, that’s very good, Georg. Incidentally, another fact that was brought out today, the significance of the true fighter pilot, the sportsman, that actually shot down the vehicle and not the individual is indicative only in the realm of the fighter pilot. Do you have this belief, too? GE: I believe this, too. When I shot down—shot to a plane, I never saw the pilot. I only saw the technical thing in the air. EAV: Well, that’s the way we feel. Incidentally, not to take much more of your time, but I understand you were one of the first German pilots to be shot in a chute, and this dubious honor we decided was no true fighter pilot that endorsed or conducted this type of activity. Georg, do you have anything to say on that? GE: I can tell you the following thing. I am glad that I can say to you, it was no American, no English or French. It was a foolish [unintelligible]. EAV: Well, Georg, with that, again, I can’t tell you how fortunate we, the American fighter aces, are to be here, and we hope this is just the first such program. Incidentally, we mentioned at the luncheon table that the proposed date in October for our meeting with the Japanese aces will be carried on, and my project—our joint project together with Georg will be our endeavor to see that the three of us meet in Tokyo on a target date of October. Georg, do you have anything in conclusion? GE: I hope that we can fix it up, and I will be very glad when we—when you—when we can see us in Tokyo. EAV: And beyond that, Georg, I am certainly looking forward, as we all are, to seeing you in the United States. So until the next, thank you, Georg. GE: I hope so. [audio break] �7 00:10:05 [Conversation between Valencia, Jim Brooks, Werner Andres, and Walter Krupinski] EAV: Thank you again, Georg. Incidentally, we are fortunate at this time to have Mr. Andres [Werner Andres] and our own president, Jim Brooks, with us now. Jim, I realize this is at the—is the midpoint of our tour. Could you briefly tell us what your opinion has been thus far? JIM BROOKS: Yes, Gene. Up to this point, this is truly a historical occasion to meet with these gentlemen here in Germany. We’ve looked forward to this for quite a number of months, and I believe it’s unique in its—in the sense that never before have two groups of people that were involved in World War II as fighter pilots against one another have gotten together to sit and discuss intelligently and friendly politics concerning war and tactics that they used and the information we received and also the ideas that they had and the ideas that we have. So I think this is indeed unique. EAV: Jim, one thing that was certainly indicative of the true fighter pilot, Georg mentioned a few minutes ago that as a 93-victory German ace, he never at any time felt that he was shooting down a human but a machine and that the fighter pilot is the only true aeronaut that can be construed as a sportsman, and hence he felt this meeting has been long in coming. Mr. Andres, may I ask you your opinion of our visit as of this time, sir? WERNER ANDRES: [speaking in German] EAV: Mr. Andres, we thank you very much. We purposefully asked that this phase be carried out in the German language so that our many American German friends will have the opportunity to know Mr. Andres’ feeling. Now, we have to—for our American listeners, the distinct honor and privilege to introduce the commander—one of the three all-time German aces, and commander of this base, to whom we look forward to as a man that carries out our constant alert against tyranny, and one that we have maintained, through his efforts and respectability, the alert concept that we have come so well to know. Colonel Krupinski, would you please take over from this point, sir? WALTER KRUPINSKI: Yeah. Can I translate or— EAV: Could you translate? Yes, sir. WK: Mr. Andres said—I must say that I am not an official interpreter and so may be that I cannot interpret in the right words because my English is not so good as I like to have it. But what Mr. Andres said was that he is of the opinion that he is real glad to see you and your association and your president and the vice president here in Germany. He is thinking that fighters have every time the same ideas about a lot of things, and so he �8 thinks that we can make friends and that you and our organization will have a lot out of it. Our relationship between our both nations became closer and closer in the last years, and he is real glad to see your organization here. And he hopes that this is a first one and will not be the last step of this coming together. EAV: Colonel, speaking for the group, we thank you very much. And you, Mr. Andres, we are again honored to be your guests and guests of the German Air Force. [audio break] EAV: This is Commander Gene Valencia again, and I have the distinct pleasure to be with Colonel Krupinski. Colonel, one thing that was mentioned yesterday as a parallel to our training efforts was the road hazards, accidents that plague you here as the commander of this magnificent base. I believe you mentioned that it is—you were quite happy that your pilots were fortunate, your officers were fortunate enough to have a salary that would permit them a second car. Would you amplify that please? WK: Normally, our pilots do not have—earn so many money that they can buy a second car, but nearly 90 percent of our pilots were in the United States and had their training there. And when they—when in the United States, they earned a lot of money more than they normally earn in Germany, and that is the reason why they normally can buy the second car [unintelligible] the first is crashed anyway. EAV: Oh, I see. I understand that—is it—well, let’s say through osmosis, this through flying the aircraft that one is plagued with the same speed desire here in Germany that you might not find prevalent in other professions? WK: I would say it is more a question of this area here. You saw it yesterday. It is a very hilly area, and we have a lot of weather difficulties here in Germany. We have a lot of ice on the road, and there may be every time the opinion that the pilots do forget that they are now in a car and not in an aircraft. But it is my opinion that is more a question of that area than their age, their experience on road, and not so much the confusion that they are in an aircraft or on the road. EAV: I see. I might—I’d like to add this, that our publicity chairman, Mr. Bud Mahurin [Walker M. “Bud” Mahurin] from the Los Angeles area, which incidentally is our speedway of America, was quite taken aback when he drove in from Rhein-Main with Georg Eder. He was given truly a sportsman’s ride. And, in fact, when he reported for our luncheon, he was shaking so bad that people thought he was waving. They were waving back. [laughter] So I understand truly what you mean. �9 Incidentally, the Colonel has 196 victories, was one of the true fighter pilots that we have respected and have been so fortunate to meet. Colonel, how many missions did you have? WK: Yeah. I flew about 1,100 and some—a few more missions. But I never could count because I lost my flying logbook from the last time, and so I cannot say whether it is 1,140 or whether there’s 100—or 1,016. EAV: Well, that’s—we’re certainly very, very honored. Incidentally, the morale, respect and general decorum of this space is certainly a tribute to your fine leadership, sir. Thank you very much. WK: I have to say many thanks to you. 00:20:29 [Conversation between Valencia, Colonel Ray Toliver, and Erich Hartmann] EAV: Ladies and gentlemen, I am very fortunate again, the aces will not fail to keep coming out. However, at this time we have the all-time Ace of Aces and one of the finest gentlemen that I have met, who incidentally could also be a Hollywood celebrity, Colonel Erich Hartmann. But before we talk to the Colonel, I’d like to introduce Colonel Ray Toliver, United States Air Force, who has been instrumental in our visit but also is world famous for his research in the documentation of our true aces. As you recall, Georg Eder has well qualified the term “ace.” He also—and I can assure you that Colonel Toliver can verify this, that the 352 victories that Colonel Hartmann has are aircraft shot down, not engines. But before we introduce Colonel Hartmann, Ray, would you briefly tell us how you had the opportunity to meet the Colonel and your background in the Fighter Aces Association? RAYMOND F. TOLIVER: I’d be happy to. In 1950, I started writing a thesis for [unintelligible] War College and figured out that this was going to take too long, so I changed my thesis to something—some dull subject such as the status of the U.S. Air Force in 1964 or something like that. And I started working on the—trying to separate the aces, because in the United States, we had a program whereby the Eighth Air Force had given credit for ground victories, and we tried to cut these out because they should not count. This is how I started on the research. Then in 1955, after four years of research, I was transferred to Europe and took over as deputy commander of the 20th Fighter Wing. And while deputy—acting as deputy of the 20th Fighter Wing, I became acquainted with a man by the name of Hans [unintelligible], or [Brum?], as the Germans called him. He lived in Reit im Winkl down in southern Germany, and he seemed to be the historian for the fighter pilots of World War I and �10 World War II. Through him, he being a very prolific writer and thinker, and his connections with Galland [Adolf Galland] and Priller [Josef “Pips” Priller] and many others, he kept telling me of a Russian prisoner of war—or a prisoner of war who was a prisoner of the Russian government by the name of Erich Hartmann from a little town called [unintelligible] in—near Stuttgart. I wrote twice to his wife in an attempt to find out where Hartmann was. At that time, they had not heard for quite a while, and there was a great deal of apprehension as to whether he still survived. Then in October, I believe, of 1955, Erich and 39 other boys came out into Berlin from Russia. They were released after ten and a half years of service—of servitude under the— in Russian prison camps. Shortly after that, I received a letter from some Army colonel— I don’t recall the name—stating that he had met Erich and that Erich had queried about me and wanted to meet me. So we set it up, and I flew to Stuttgart two or three times. The second time, I managed to meet Erich, and we have been best of friends ever since. EAV: Well, Ray, that’s certainly very interesting. Erich, before we go into your glamorous career, do you have anything to say on this particular occasion? ERICH HARTMANN: I [can?] tell too much about this. [unintelligible] met us, and we’re very good friends. I think it’s—it will be for all fighter pilots—or it should be for all fighter pilots in the whole world. EAV: Erich, I’m glad you mentioned that. What do you think of the—about the formation of our Fighter Aces Association in America and our subsequent visit here to your country? EH: I think we are really happy that this fighter association comes together, and I hope that it is not only for one time, that we’ll keep all the time in the next future that we can meet us every year one time. EAV: Well, I do thank you, Erich. Ray, how about interviewing Erich? With your background knowledge, I’m sure that you might bring up some interesting highlights that I couldn’t scratch upon. RFT: Erich received his flying training in 1942, which was rather late in the war as far as the Germans were concerned. He was a very young man at that time, having been born in 1922. He was but 20 years old when he was receiving his training. Then he was assigned to his combat wing, JG 52, Jagdgeschwader 52, in—on the Russian front. I believe he was in the same squadron with Steinhoff [Johannes Steinhoff] and many of the other famous people. And then he got started with his victories and came along rather rapidly, but not until ‘42 and ‘43. Erich, you—when did you get your first victory? What date? Do you remember? �11 EH: It was in October ‘42. RFT: October of ‘42 he got his first victory. And by when did you get your 100th victory? EH: It was in August ‘43. RFT: August ‘43. So it—he did pretty well for the first 12 months, by our standards. EAV: Well, Ray, we mentioned earlier that the amazing total could certainly be justified by the number of combat missions. And you, as the expert, will you verify this? I mentioned that to document any American pilot that has flown over 400 missions, including World War I and the Korean situation, I believe we have possibly one or two. And we’re talking to people and about people that have over 1,600. Now, could you give us a brief as to why, aside from fighting for and over the homeland, that this is possible to have such an accumulation of victories, plus the fact that it has been so much—so ignored in both the UK and the United States? RFT: Yes. Erich, I believe, flew some 1,660 combat missions. EH: About this number. But I [unintelligible]. I think this big success on the Russian front was not so difficult [unintelligible] because our aircraft was really superiority against the Russian. It makes the speed about 100 miles in ‘42 and ‘43. And only after the lendedlease [unintelligible] with the American, if the Airacobra and Kingcobra is coming and the two-plus person, then the Russian blows up, so that in the end of the war it was more difficulty to get them. We had only a couple of fighters on the whole Russian front, and you had every time you could get them with their own aircrafts. Therefore, it was after my [unintelligible] comparing to Western front really easy to get the success there. RFT: I believe possibly one of the things that Erich has told me that might impress upon the people or the listeners exactly what the problem was, that there was many times in his— that he and his organization—or two squadrons would get airborne with 30 aircraft and that they would have—be against 600 Russian aircraft in the air at the same time. So you can see there was ample targets, there was a great motivation for protection, and this is what made them so good. EH: Yeah, that is true [unintelligible]. We had the chance every time to find the Russians, but you boys, you didn’t get the chance to find us. [laughter] EAV: Very good, Erich. And we’re not going to say goodbye because we have another tape to go, plus the fact that we’ll be fortunate to be with you again in the United States. Erich, thanks very much. I consider you a true friend. EH: Thank you very much �12 EAV: Thank you. All right, now I need Zemke and— RFT: Did you mention anything on your tape about how they counted the victories? EAV: Yeah. We got that. RFT: We got that? [audio break] 00:29:48 [Conversation between Valencia, Hubert Zemke, and Walter Krupinski] EAV: Ladies and gentlemen, we are again fortunate in our star-studded aces review to bring you Colonel “Hub” Hubert Zemke, Air Force ace, commanding officer of the 56th Fighter Group, England, during the war. And at the present time—incidentally, he’d just joined us—he is the Chief of the Air Section at the Military Air Advisory Group at Madrid, Spain. I know that to the many Air Force listeners, Colonel Hub is well-known and respected. And we thought it extremely appropriate at this time to discuss the dedication tomorrow. Colonel Hub, if you’ll take over, sir. HUBERT ZEMKE: On this occasions, amigos, being from Spain, I desire to take the opportunity to tell you what a marvelous occasion this is to meet with the Fighter Pilots Association of Germany, and in particular at this moment, I am to converse with one of their top aces, whose base we are presently visiting, and this is Oberst— WK: Leutnant. HZ: —Leutnant Krupinski [mispronounces last name]. WK: Krupinski. HZ: Krupinski. Pardon my German pronunciation, amigos, but I wax up between Spanish, German, and English. He has the 33rd [JaBoG?]— WK: Geschwader. HZ: Geschwader, which means in English the fighting—fighter-bomber unit equipped with F84Fs and a top organization in all respects and in all areas that I have seen. It is incidental to the point that this gentleman and I have been in the same air masses on various occasions in the past. I have found that while I was an observer in the Soviet Union and on occasion visited Moscow from the north, that he had his geschwader on a very close front, at least 60 miles away from me, in the drive on Moscow. In the same �13 respect, I find after I had returned to the United States and had gone—had organized a group of P-47s and gone to England, this man was returned to take command of a fighter unit in north Germany over this same area. There have been many a long hours—many a long sweating hours, I might say—in the defense of our bombers against his same forces. This being the first occasion of an American fighter ace reunion with a German fighter ace reunion, the atmosphere is filled with stories on both sides, occasions on both sides, events on both sides, and is certainly something in the best interest of the entire free world. Now, let me ask him a few questions. They have a terrific monument that they have built in honor of all of their fallen fighters in the pilot field. This is at the town at Geisenheim, lying on the Rhine, not too far from Wiesbaden. We are to go tomorrow, we will view this, we will dedicate—give a dedication and respect to those fallen dead, too, in honor of their efforts for their cause. It will be a real occasion for all of us assembled here. Let me ask the Oberstleutnant, which is Lieutenant Colonel, how this developed, the construction of this monument? WK: After the war, we had in Western Germany every year a meeting of all formal pilots at Geisenheim. The reason for this—for selecting this village was it was nearly in the middle of Germany from the north to the south and also from the east to the west. On the other hand, there were some fighters at this village, and they’re organizing every year this meeting. That was the reason why we were selecting this place also for our monument. There were a lot of speeches before we constructed it where we should have it, and every time nearly everybody was saying we should have it at Berlin, but in respect that there was no possibility at that time, we then decided to have it at Geisenheim [unintelligible]. HZ: Now, I have seen the picture of the designer and the architect for this monument. Would you kindly tell me this man’s name? I saw that he was also wounded. He is a former fighter ace, as I recall, and he is also quite known throughout your country. If at all possible, can you give me his name and what the purpose of the two eagles are on the top of the monument? WK: The name of the designer is [Klaus Zettelmeyer?], and the purpose—well, the design has the sense that this two eagles will fly over not only Germany but will fly every time, and that the idea was to tell our fallen comrades that they were still flying and that we are still flying. HZ: Let me ask you a bit about the combat in the north around Dümmer Lake and Hanover and Celle as the bomber streams of the Allied forces, the Americans, came in. What were your most difficult encounters in this respect? Can you recall any at all? Or the difficult situations in this odds? �14 WK: Well, one of the most important thing was that we every time were a very, very small number, and when we were looking around, we saw a very big number of [unintelligible] fighters. And especially my group was—what’s it called—a high-cover fighter for our other fighters who had to attack the bombers, and we especially every time got the first stroke from your fighters because we were [unintelligible] and had to protect these. And so normally it was most difficult work for us. And I can tell you the story. Normally, we had 50 pilots in a group at that time, and every month we had a complete new outfit because they were gone. Not all of them were dead, but a lot of them in hospital and a lot of them in recreation centers and so on. And every month we had a total of 100 percent roundabout. HZ: In this same respect, I can now recall, and have often wondered why in the tactics that we used of putting a squadron of fighters on each flank of the bombers and one for top cover, who these odd individuals were that came up and hit our top cover, thus pulling off the side squadrons and scattering here and there. For your information, this Oberstleutnant has a definite confirmed number of victories of 176. This does not mean four engines, but this means one each airplane per victory, and also, compared with ours, means that he has gone on many, many a mission. In my own respect, after a year and a half and having gained only 31 missions, in 155 missions against Germany, this gentleman here was able to survive 1,040 missions against our forces. In the future, may I wish him the best of success on many, many better missions in the interest of the Western forces. EAV: Colonel Hub, you brought up a very interesting point. May we discuss the point system, why it was instigated, and the victory—point victory system? And I think this would be an apropos time to make that discussion. And as much as you entered into it, would you please, sir? HZ: Well, the point system, of course, knowing how difficult it was to fight against the German Air Force and how they wiggled and how they fought against us considerably, and having the number of missions and the number of efforts in back of us, we have continually challenged the number of German victories. Our top aces, for instance, the present one, Colonel Gabreski [Francis S. “Gabby” Gabreski], who was in the same unit that I commanded, has a total now between World War II and Korea at 40 victories. I know how desperately Gabby used to fight, and we could not conceive how someone could shoot down over about 50 or 60 aircraft. The situation remains that in the German, in the fighting for their homeland, they went up fast, in the air intercepted, were down at another base, refueled, and up again. They had the opportunity, of course, if damaged, to return and turn over to another airplane. They had to use every man, every pilot, and if the boy was able to survive at all, they then used him to the final end. As you’ve heard from the Lieutenant Colonel, his losses were very, �15 very high, and he is most fortunate in all respects, as has brought out, that he was able to survive through the very many missions. I do not know how many times he has bailed out. I will interview him on this point. EAV: Would you please, sir? HZ: How many times did you have to bail out in the course of combat during the war? WK: I bailed out four times during the war and was wounded five times. I do not know how many belly landings I made in Russia because I lost my report books about that. But as you’ll see, four bailouts and five times wounded. HZ: Well, having bailed out four times would have meant four escapes from Germany, which was next to impossible for— EAV: Or Japan. HZ: Or Japan. Let me put this in. For an American to be—have wounded five times, this is many clusters on the Purple Heart and we’d probably being sent back to the United States. [laughter] The number of belly landings and damages means that he was experienced the most terrific of combat at all times and taking the greatest risk. In this same respect from their president, the Fighter—German Fighter Pilots’ President, Mr. Andres, I find that of the total of some 20,000 pilots that they had record of, there exists in the order of 1,000 to 1,500 at present, which is quite a loss rate. This same respect in our areas, we were more tolerant and sent our people for—home for rest and leave during the course of the time. Now, let me ask you of the German aircraft, the Me 109s, the Fw 190s, were you able to enter a unit of the Messerschmitt 262? WK: I did. HZ: You flew for the most part what type of aircraft? WK: The most of the time I flew the 109. That means from the beginning of the war till January ‘44. Then I changed over with my group to the 190, but this so-called long nose 190. And at the middle of March till the end of the war, ‘45, I flew the 262. That was our first jet what we had. I flew it in that squadron of General Galland. HZ: [unintelligible] squadron of General Galland. I recall that your tactics were at that time in—I’m talking of the 262, the Me 262—was that you were flying in singles or pairs. We saw a few of you. I could never catch up with you, could actually not combat with you because of the superior performance, superior altitude. I never saw great numbers. That �16 is, the masses that you had before, the formations that you had before. Was your tactic at the time to fight individually? WK: And I think it is that we have to say it in this way: there was no tactic at all. It was a brand new aircraft for us, and we had to find everybody his own tactics. On the other hand, there were a lot of difficulty with the maintenance, so the biggest number of aircraft of the Type 262, what we had in the air at that time, was as far as our—as I mentioned at, I think, eight only. And this eight, we had to find out how to fly together. And so you cannot say it was our tactic to fight individually. But the point was we normally were alone. Especially after the first attack, you never saw the other one because he was to pass anyway. [laughter] HZ: This is true. I’ve often wondered why they were individually and streaking fast. As probably noted by the other fighter pilots in the United States, you could see the high contrails for a second that dives through the bomber formation, where one or two B-17s were plucked out, up again, and in our endeavor to encounter, there would be two or three circles they would engage us, swoop down, up again. It was a matter—the best we could do with our P-51s and P-47s were to turn in and cause a head-on attack, which had had very little damaging effect. Now, of the conventional aircraft, between the Fw 190 and the Me 109, in my preference, if I were a—had have been a German fighter pilot, I have a feeling that the Fw 190 would have been a nicer airplane to fly. This I cannot confirm, but what is your personal opinion relative to these two airplanes? WK: The 109 was a tricky aircraft, especially on takeoff and landing. But in respect that I flew nearly 90 percent of all my combat missions, I am—was feeling much more comfortable on a 109 than another aircraft at all. And I think every pilot will say it in the same way. When you fly only a few missions on another aircraft and fly the whole time on one type—that was for me the 109—then you feel more comfortable in the type that you flew such a lot of missions. HZ: Well, I can appreciate that point, that once you get a good horse to ride, you want to ride that horse. Let me ask you, I saw a very few, as you call, needle-nose Fw 190s. These Fw 190s, as I understood, had a larger engine in—not a larger—more powerful engine in, and the performance seemed to be much improved in this Fw 190. We were greatly concerned—at that time, I was flying P-47s—because of this superior performance. What happened to that airplane that we did not see increased production? WK: I would say it came too late. That was the most important point. They started to change wings on about in summer ‘44. And at that time, they had a big number of aircraft of 109, and the production line was in progress, and so they couldn’t change it fully and not �17 changing it so fast. That was the reason why this long-nose 190 came very, very slowly into the service. But the performance of these long-nose 190 was much better than the 109s, especially in lower altitudes. In the higher altitude, we had a special 109, special [unintelligible]. We flew it as a fighter cover. And in these higher altitudes, this 109 was real good. HZ: I also know this during odd combat that we were being scouted. This means we were being looked at. And no doubt in your warning of the country, a special type of aircraft was built to fly very, very high. This was above the level of our P-51s and P-47s. What type of aircraft was that? It would follow the bomber stream, the formation, no doubt calling back the position over the ground, I believe. Because we could not get up to engage it, there was no harm. We endeavored to get at these people, but I could never exactly tell what type of aircraft this was. Do you know of this system at all? WK: I must frankly tell you I do not know it. But the only type who could be it was 109 with these special tanks for flying in very high altitudes. We had a special injection, and with this injection you could go very high, and you had the possibility to be very fast at this height. So it may be that it was one of these 109s with these high injection. HZ: Well, this is about the size of it. We will—Colonel, we will certainly welcome the occasion to be at your—the dedication tomorrow. I wish you a—luck, all of the success with your command in JaBoG 33. And as an incidental gesture, I hope you take the occasion to visit me in Spain, where my house is open to you. As in Spanish, mi casa es su casa. WK: I hope I can come very soon, and I will be glad to spend a weekend with you in your house and with your family. Thank you very much. EAV: Colonel Hub Zemke. Colonel, this has been one of the highlights of our meeting, and let’s not say to be the last. Thank you very much for your time, sir, and, again, your hospitality. WK: Thank you very much. [audio break] 00:50:58 [Conversation between Valencia and George Eder, part two] EAV: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re back again. Georg Eder just returned. Georg, you mentioned something today during our inspection of the field, in referencing the F-84 aircraft, you �18 mentioned that for one aircraft of this heavy type that possibly four 262s could be manufactured. GE: Yes, that’s right. EAV: Could you amplify that please? GE: Yes, that’s right what you said. I think that’s an 84 when I told you that you can manufacture a four 262. It’s very heavy. And I think that now the pilot is sitting on his turbine and driving this turbine. The otherwise, the 262, you flew a plane and not the turbine, and that’s a great difference between these two planes. And I think that now you have more—to have more technical experience for this turbine when—but—when we fly the 262, we were only a flier and not a technician. EAV: Really a true fighter pilot. One thing else you mentioned that was quite interesting this afternoon, Georg, was that you referred to other pilots as possibly a horse we would see out in the field, and a fighter pilot is a true thoroughbred. Is that so? GE: Yes, that’s so. If you would be a bomber, you would be a heavy horse rocking on the fields. If you would be a fighter pilot, you would be a racing horse. That’s right? EAV: That’s very good, Georg. And thank you. We’ll be back with you in a few minutes. 00:52:56 [Conversation between Valencia and Erich Hartmann] EAV: Again, ladies and gentlemen, we are back to our ace of aces, Colonel Hartmann, my very dear friend. Erich, you mentioned something today that I was quite interested in, having just reported to NORAD from an active fighter-interceptor squadron. You are standing by to transition into the 104 aircraft. Is that correct? EH: Yes. I know that what I have heard, we should get the 104 next year. I’m really happy to get this bird, that we get a little fast in the air and high altitude. EAV: I’m happy to hear that. But one thing I’d like to bring up that you so adequately covered today. Many of our fighter pilots, our own active fighter-interceptor pilots, are standing by to transition into more modern aircraft, and they are somewhat disgruntled or displeased with the birds that they are flying. However, I was very interested—and again, this shows your morale, your fighter spirit—when you engage aircraft with afterburners, what you do and your concept. This to me is the true spirit of Erich Hartmann. RFT: Afterburners come down. Remember, you mentioned that? �19 EH: Yes, that’s what we find out in our own birds, that you can’t put in the afterburner and then [unintelligible], then you have cut down the afterburner because you don’t have only a special consumption of fluid. Then we can stay in a lower altitude, you catch them because we know where their aircrafts with afterburning have to go. EAV: Well, Erich, this is certainly making the most out of what you have. Incidentally, I was very fortunate to see some of your recent gun camera film and to say that they were zeroed in as well as your sight, I can assure any young tigers not to tangle with you. Erich, thank you very much. EH: You’re welcome. [possible audio break] EAV: Well, Erich, as I understand it, the—your techniques or tactics is that when you engage an aircraft with afterburner that can zoom away to come back and fight another day, you wait until they utilize their endurance, use up their fuel, and return to your atmosphere where you have comparable tactical conditions. What do you have to offer as far as the afterburner aircraft is concerned? EH: At time, I still can’t tell you what I—I am thinking that in the practical, we would find a new flying tactical for aircraft with afterburner. That’s the only thing what at time I can tell you. EAV: Well, Erich, thanks. I’m sure by the time our convention concludes, we’ll have the tactics. Thank you very much. 00:55:41 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Series II - Events, circa 1960s-1970 Description An account of the resource Events, circa 1960s-1970 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Series II Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Biographical Text <p>In May 1961, members of the American Fighter Aces Association visited West Germany as part of a goodwill meeting between them and the Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association. During their week-long visit, they toured German air bases and attended various events, including a war memorial dedication in Geisenheim, Germany. Several moments from the meeting were recorded, such as goodwill gestures and conversations between American and German fighter aces.</p> Note Any additional notes about the item. This recording is presented in its original, unedited form. Please note that some interviews in this collection may contain adult language, racial slurs, and/or graphic descriptions of wartime violence. 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 [American and German fighter pilots (Part 1 of 2)] Description An account of the resource <p>This two-part recording contains conversations between German and American fighter pilots regarding their military service during World War II. The conversations took place during a goodwill meeting between the American Fighter Aces Association and the Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association that was held in Germany in May 1961. Excerpts from these recordings were later used in a highlight reel about the event.</p> <p>Identified speakers in part one include Eugene A. Valencia, Vice President of the American Fighter Aces Association; Jim Brooks, President of the American Fighter Aces Association; Werner Andres, President of the Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association; German fighter aces George Eder, Walter Krupinski, and Erich Hartmann; American fighter ace Hubert Zemke; and U.S. Air Force officer Raymond F. Toliver. Topics discussed include the Messerschmitt Me 262 and other military aircraft, the point system for aerial victories, and the goodwill meeting itself.</p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961-05 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Germany Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military American Fighter Aces Association Brooks, James L. Eder, Georg Fighter pilots Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Family Germany. Air Force Germany. Luftwaffe Hartmann, Erich, 1922-1999 Krupinski, Walter, 1920-2000 Lockheed F-104 Starfighter Family Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots’ Association Messerschmitt Bf 109 Family Messerschmitt Me 262 Family Toliver, Raymond F. United States. Air Force United States. Army Air Forces United States. Navy Valencia, Eugene A. World War, 1939-1945 Zemke, Hub, 1914-1994 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) open reel audiotapes 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound reel (55 min., 41 sec.) : analog ; 1/4 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_093_01 2002-02-13_AV_093_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/1c9c801dbd83c6e7cfe335583d7cfd30.jpg 3d51794c942e73de117fe668787c42ef https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/1a280e0ac1c4f76bf26f51f8ddadc211.mp3 bd30c779c099f1645fef5ca44696a1bc https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/2b7a665d4767151945fbce4f1039a039.mp3 790d8f7990592e8e320e0830b494120c https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/820e8593850fddedff82a6846d876c51.pdf de23ab684b1b35774daa4cd01e143943 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington John Richard Rossi (Part 5 of 6) Interview Date: circa 1980s-1990s �2 Abstract: In this six-part oral history, fighter ace John Richard Rossi discusses his military service with the American Volunteer Group during World War II. In part five, he discusses his wartime experiences with the AVG’s 1st Pursuit Squadron in the China-Burma-India Theater. He provides an overview of the group’s movements and missions, beginning with his arrival in Burma in November 1941 and concluding with the group’s disbandment in July 1942. He also touches on his personal history and his post-AVG career with the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and other airlines. Some sections of audio are heavily affected by static and distortion, which obscures much of Rossi’s dialogue. These sections are noted in the transcript. Biography: John Richard Rossi was born on April 19, 1915 in Placerville, California. After a tour with the Merchant Marine, he joined the United States Navy Reserve and graduated from flight training in 1940. The following year, Rossi resigned his commission in order to join the newly formed American Volunteer Group in Burma. He served with the AVG’s 1st Pursuit Squadron until the group disbanded in 1942, then joined the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) as a transport pilot. By the end of the war, he had flown over 700 trips across the “Hump” between India and China. Rossi remained in China after the end of World War II, flying for Civil Air Transport and the Central Aviation Transport Corporation. In 1948, he returned to the United States and joined the Flying Tiger Line. He also served as president of the American Volunteer Group/Flying Tigers Association. Rossi retired in 1973 and passed away in 2008. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �3 Index: Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 4 Joining the U.S. Navy ..................................................................................................................... 4 Joining the American Volunteer Group .......................................................................................... 5 Service in the China-Burma-India Theater ..................................................................................... 7 Disbanding of the AVG, return to the United States, and service with the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and other Chinese airlines ........................................................... 19 �4 John Richard Rossi (Part 5 of 6) [START OF INTERVIEW] [Begin Side A] 00:00:00 [Introduction and personal background] [faint, staticky audio] JOHN RICHARD ROSSI: My name is Dick Rossi. [unintelligible] full name. I’m recording this for Eric Hammel. And I’ll—putting it on tape so I can ramble a little bit and put in a lot of stuff without having to write it down. A short bio about myself. Born in Placerville, California, 19—April 19th, 1915 and mostly grew up in San Francisco. I was in San Francisco from the time I was in third grade. I had all my schooling essentially in San Francisco and then later at Berkeley. During—getting out of high school, things were pretty tough in the middle of the Depression, got out in ‘33. And after a half a term—or one semester at San Mateo JC, why, I was hunting around trying to get work and finally landed—got a job with the Merchant Marine. And I spent quite a bit of time over—the next several—four or five years in and out of the Merchant Marine and using that income as getting myself to Berkeley. 00:01:22 [Joining the U.S. Navy] JRR: And about ‘38 I had taken a trip around the world and became acquainted with some Navy people. And I had a slight health problem. I was underweight and had asthma. But I was trying—I tried to get into either the military—I didn’t figure I could get into Annapolis or West Point, that I wouldn’t pass it, but later I started seeing these ads at school about flight training for the Army or for the Navy and ended up on this trip around the world with two high-ranking Navy officers and got a letter of recommendation from one and ended up back home and applied for flight training at Pensacola. And waited around during the summer, didn’t get anything. In the meantime, I decided, well, maybe I’ll have to go back to school. I can’t get anything else in the meantime. I was also trying to get a job as a steward on the Pan American Clippers on the basis of my training in the Merchant Marine because I was in the stewards department all the time I was in the Merchant Marine. And about the time I got notice from Pensacola, I had just signed up to go back to school at Berkeley. Had just �5 paid my fees and gotten the notice to report for a physical for the Navy and also got a notice to come over to Pan Am for an interview. So I took the Navy deal first, was able to sneak through the physical by getting a special dispensation. I was quite a bit underweight, and they told me it wasn’t considered disqualifying. And I didn’t enlighten them about my asthma problem. And I had the stipulation that when I went into my Reserve base training at Oakland that I had to report to the dispensary after every meal and drink an ounce of cod liver oil, which was one of the worst things that happened to me for a while. And anyway, finally got through the Navy training, got down to Pensacola, got through Pensacola and was down there—the training that I got—they had just then gone into where they were specialized the training. Previous to that, we got trained in all the different departments, all the different flight categories, but now they had started to sort of—emergency steps, so they were training in different categories only. You either got flying boats or you got seaplanes or you got fighters, carrier-type stuff. And the fighters, of course, with the fighters—along with the fighters was also included dive bombers and all carrier-type planes. And, of course, my third choice was seaplanes, and that’s what I got. 00:04:29 [Joining the American Volunteer Group] JRR: So I finished my training in seaplanes, and then it was time to go to the fleet, why, you got three choices. So I had been at Pensacola [unintelligible]. I wanted to go somewhere else and requested duty in the Philippines. And the second choice I had was Honolulu, and third choice Panama. So my choice that I received was instructor at Pensacola. So that was it. I had taken slight—had a month off, went home and come back and started instructing there. Instructed there for almost a year. And it was about the time we—another good buddy of mine from California and also from Berkeley was Freeman Ricketts. And we had heard about the Dutch hiring some pilots, Navy-type pilots, out in Surabaya to work for them and fly for them and to help them train pilots because they were at war with Germany at that time. And so we contacted the Dutch Embassy, and we were told—we were thanked for our interest but told that they didn’t need any more pilots, that they had gotten all the ones they wanted. But in the meantime, because some people that we knew had heard about our trying to get this job—excuse me—one of them informed us that there was another group that was hiring pilots to go to China. And we thought it was through the Navy. We had the information—the information was all kind of wrong, but it was—so Ricketts and I wrote �6 a letter to the Navy Bureau of Operations and requested that we be accepted for this flight training that was—they were hiring pilots or taking pilots [unintelligible] go to China. We thought at that time that it was a Navy operation. We didn’t get—asked our commandant on the base and our letter arrived to him, why, he called us into the office and told us there was no such thing. The Navy didn’t do that sort of thing. And advised us—we were new ensigns—that it would be wise of us to withdraw our letters rather than have them go through. Which we did, being young ensigns. But in the meantime, the executive officer in my squadron had come back from Washington, where his dad was a three-star admiral, and he had talked to them—to his dad about this Navy—this thing for China, and his dad said there was such a thing going on. And so he said, “Well, I thought you were crazy to do it, but I told him to, you know, put in a good word for you.” But when he come back, I told, “Oh, they already told us to tear up our letter.” But in the meantime, we found— someone that got through to us and told us that this wasn’t being done by the service. It was being done by Intercontinent Aviation out in New York. It was in Rockefeller Plaza—Rockefeller Center, and here’s the address. So Rick and I wrote to them and told them we were interested and wanted to know what to do about it. We had a nice letter back from him saying that they were going to have a recruiter down at Pensacola shortly and that he would look us up. [audio break] JRR: Okay, back to—back to reading our letter from Intercontinent. I got interrupted by a phone call. Anyway, when the recruiter arrived down, there were notices on the different bulletin boards of the squadrons that there was someone there who wanted to visit—talk to pilots who were interested in something—I don’t remember how much—the notice wasn’t very specific. But we were to meet on a Sunday afternoon down in the San Carlos Hotel in Pensacola—downtown Pensacola. So Ricketts and I, of course, went down there, and there were—quite a few people showed up. And the recruiter already had a list there made out of people who wanted to sign up, and Ricketts and my name were already on the list because of our letter. So we listened to the story, and the story was about that we would get permission, we’d have to resign our commission, and we could go out to China for a year and help to defend the Burma Road, but we would be doing it as civilians and sort of undercover and as employees of Central Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation, which was a subsidiary of Intercontinent and—which was called CAMCO. And they would handle all our arrangements, pay our salaries, our bills, and provide our transportation, passports, et cetera. �7 So after a lot of discussion and everything, why, a bunch of people did sign up. I believe they signed up about 36 pilots at that time. And it had turned out that they had been having trouble getting pilots. Originally they wanted only fighter pilots. They had reached the point where they were taking anyone who would go. And so we signed up for it and started moving real fast. We were doing papers to resign and sign out, check out of the base. And this was exactly when President Roosevelt was having his meeting in the Atlantic on the battleship with Winston Churchill, and our commandant, who was Captain Reed, was out as one of the aides to Roosevelt. And when he came back and found out that we were all leaving, why, he raised hell and canceled all our resignations and said none of—nobody could go. And, of course, we had already signed out of this stuff and everything, so now it’s all canceled. Well, in the meantime, the wires and the phone started buzzing between Intercontinent and Pensacola and Washington, D.C. And Captain Reed had a fair amount of clout up there in Washington. As a result of all this, why, they said, “Well, 50 percent of them can go, and 50 percent will have to wait.” And so they just cut off—bottom 18 off the list. And fortunately, Rick and my names were at the top, so we weren’t cut off. And they just cut it off just the way they’ve signed up in that order. Cut the bottom half off, and the rest of us were allowed to go. We were told to report to San Francisco, and our transportation would be arranged there. 00:11:38 [Service in the China-Burma-India Theater] JRR: So in the end of September, a bunch of us sailed on the Boschfontein, a Dutch ship, heading for Rangoon. And we went out—we had a fairly long trip. We ended—we left San Francisco around the end of September, and we didn’t arrive in Rangoon until around the 12th of November. So we had quite a trip out. We were three weeks in Surabaya. I mean, not in Surabaya, but in Indonesia [unintelligible] Surabaya and Batavia and loading and offloading. And, of course, we stopped at Honolulu, and we stopped at Singapore, and we were having a real fun trip out there. And the ship was blacked out at night because submarines—the German submarines were patrolling the Pacific at times. But we arrived at Rangoon, and we were met—[coughs] excuse me—met and transported up to a place called Toungoo, which was about 180 miles north of Rangoon, and that was to be our base until the China facilities were ready for us. The story that we were told was that they had planned some nice facilities that was to be built for us and everything, but everything was running so far behind time that none of it was ready. And they were—in the meantime, were making sort of emergency standby facilities that could be used, and in the meantime, we would train at an RAF field in Toungoo. Well, now the Nazis were �8 pretty heavy on the British, and the Japanese were in with the Nazis, so the British let us use a field they had in Toungoo which they weren’t using. It had a paved strip and a hangar. So our stay was rather short there. There are many stories told about all the training that the AVG pilots got and how Chennault [Claire Lee Chennault] had to approve each man, and he had to do X number of hours of training and flight and had to pass all these rigid tests. Well, we didn’t see any of that. I don’t know what went on in the months—couple of months before we got there. But I was going to say, we got there near mid-November and some of us didn’t even get into a P-40 until the end of November. Some didn’t even get into it at all and had never flown a P-40. We were all—the bunch of Navy pilots [unintelligible] none of them [unintelligible] had never even seen a P-40. And we had—on the ship coming out, we were joined by an additional group and some Air Corps pilots, and some of them were— they were—three of them were B-17 pilots. They had P-boat pilots there. It was quite a mixture. But we were there just barely getting underway with our training. We were—by then, the squadrons had been formed. The squadrons did have their commanding officers or leaders—squadron leaders, they were called. And we were assigned—we were split up between the three existing squadrons. I ended up in the 1st Squadron. And like I say, my training was pretty late in coming. We only had a few hours before it was December 8th, Pearl Harbor Day. So that came as quite a shock to us there. We had—we were thinking we were going to be sitting around Toungoo for quite a while, doing a lot of training and getting gunnery practice and fighter in-the-air practice, combat practice. But not much of that materialized for our group that arrived late. The next thing you know, why, we were on a kind of a war footing. War was going on, and we were sitting there with airplanes that had guns and bullets. And now the British wanted us to go down to Rangoon and work the dam. The Chinese wanted us to rush up into China. In the meantime, they got a—they had a university that they turned into a dormitory for the—two squadrons and headquarters. It wasn’t enough for all of us. They had some newly built barracks over near the—right near the airport, which they gave to the 1st Squadron, which we moved into when we got there. But for the next ten days, we were still in Toungoo, sort of—in this sort of state of flux. We kept a couple planes in the air. We kind of thought the Japs would come over and wipe us out immediately because they knew we were there. They knew we were in Toungoo. But I guess they didn’t figure it was that important. They had other things to do. �9 So about the 18th of December, why, the 1st and the 2nd Squadron flew up to Kunming. And the trucks and the convoys and the ground maintenance people, all our equipment and everything, much of it had already gone up the Burma Road by convoy. [coughs] Excuse me. In the meantime, after a consultation between the Chinese and the British, the 3rd Squadron was moved down to Rangoon to work with the RAF. So now we end up with the 1st Squadron and the 2nd Squadron in Kunming and the 3rd Squadron in Rangoon. And we arrived on the 18th of December. And the—Kunming had been bombed that day. There was a lot of destruction around. So the next day we’re all standing by and nothing happened. But on the 20th, we got a report again the Japanese were sending bombers over Kunming, so this time they put the squadrons—both squadrons in the air, 2nd and—1st and 2nd. But it was my day off. I didn’t have a plane. There were approximately—you had about every other day off there. Guys would [unintelligible] a plane, and then the guy’s day off, you’d use it—you’d use it on your day off. And so they went up. And eventually the 1st Squadron made contact with the bombers after a few series of mishaps and miscommunications and everything and did a pretty good job of bringing down—they were just this squadron of ten bombers. There were no fighter escort. And they had been using Kunming as kind of a training ground for their cadets and their new hires—I mean, their new people. And as a result, why, they didn’t feel they needed any fighter protection because they were just going over to bomb Kunming, which was defenseless. But this time, they made a bad [unintelligible]. We don’t know that—how many of their bombers ever got back. There were supposed to be one or two that might have made it back, but we never did find out. And so that was the last time they’d come over Kunming for more than a year. They never did come back while the AVG was still in existence. But that night, of course, we were really pretty much heroes to the Chinese because we warded off their bombing raid on the city and turned them around. And, of course, that was the first time that it happened to them up there. There had never been—had any protection before. So everything was going pretty good [unintelligible]. Then nothing came back over there. In the meantime, why then—in Kunming, we just sort of went into patrols and to instituting some setups where we could do—practice and gunnery. And then the 3rd Squadron, on December 23rd—nothing happened between the 20th and 23rd—they got into heavy action in Rangoon, and on the 25th they got into heavy action in Rangoon. And then after the—then the 3rd Squadron suffered a few losses there and had done very well as far as victories went. And they decided to give them rest and bring them back, �10 send the 2nd Squadron down to Rangoon. And so the 2nd Squadron was down around the 1st of the year to Mingaladon to replace the 3rd Squadron. Then the 1st was still sitting around, but around the 10th of January, action was getting pretty heavy in Rangoon. They decided the 2nd Squadron needed some more help, so they asked for eight people to volunteer to go to Rangoon. So I volunteered for that, but it looked like I didn’t get in in time. Prescott [Robert W. Prescott] was ahead of me. He was the one who got the last spot before me. And then he decided he didn’t—he changed his mind about going because he wanted to fly with Greg Boyington. They were pretty good buddies, and he wanted to fly on his wing with him. So he said he backed down, and I got to go. And as it turned out, it was kind of funny because then the next day there was— because of some changes in the structure of the squadron, all the—replaced a couple of the guys and sent one to [unintelligible] after all, and Bob didn’t get to go. Bob Prescott. But when we were taking off to get ready, Bob Little had some trouble with his airplane, and there was a little delay. And finally it was fixed, so we were all set to go again. But we didn’t have maps as such then. We were given a mimeograph printed page with general details of the terrain, and that was about it. And the only map was in the hands of the leader, flight leader leading the flight down. And when they—we all took off, my engine cut out. It started backfiring, misfiring. And I was able to get enough altitude to make a 90-degree turn crossways across the field, which was a great big grass field, and got on the ground. And, of course, they immediately got my baggage out and got another airplane that was on standby and switched me over to it. And I started it up and took out after the flight. And Sandell [Robert Sandell] told me I—he was our squadron commander. He wasn’t going down there. But he told me, “Well, you can either go or you can stay. You can either try to catch them or you can wait and not go at all.” So I said, “I’ll go.” So I took off, but by then I had lost about 12 minutes and I never did find them. And we were—we ran into these jet streams and headwinds that nobody was familiar with at that time. Nobody realized that the winds blew over 100—150 miles an hour up there at those altitudes, and especially across the Hump. So the plan was that they were supposed to fly to Toungoo, which was our old base, overnight there, refuel, get all set so that they could take off in the morning and arrive at Rangoon with plenty of gas and ammunition in case there was going to alert or anything on. [unintelligible] I never found the other flight, and they went on, and because of the heavy headwinds and all, they were—they ended up going in and landing at Lashio. That was as far as they could get. They got on the ground at Lashio, and there was a little bit of mechanical trouble, and they had to refuel [unintelligible], so they just decided to overnight there. �11 In the meantime, I was flying and flying, trying to get her up there and trying to reach— [section of unintelligible dialogue due to heavy static on tape] JRR: —housing had to be in town, and the British people and families were putting up a lot of the pilots. So I stayed in this—three of us were staying in this [unintelligible] and myself were staying with this family, British family, [unintelligible] small children like three and six years old. [unintelligible]. [section of unintelligible dialogue due to heavy static on tape] JRR: But it was the 19th of January. We were going to go over to Tavoy and evacuate some British officers. So they were going to take two P-40s and two RAF Brewster Buffaloes, and we were supposed to escort—I was told we were escorting three Blenheims. It turned out we were escorting six, actually. So they had—the RAF people were supposed to know where to go, and the two P-40 pilots, myself and Frank Lawlor, were just going to fly wing on the British pilots. So we take off and the Blenheim bombers take off, and we’re going—we were sort of flying up above them, actually, right over—the guys were flying practically overhead of me. I had to look almost down below you to see them. And it turned out that three of them joined—more joined us later. There were actually six, but I didn’t know it at the time. And as we were going out across the Gulf of Martaban, heading on a southeasterly course for Tavoy, ran into a huge fogbank. And all of it just completely lost the airplanes. You couldn’t see anything. So we just proceeded—I just proceeded on course to the man I was flying, but somewhere inside that fog boat—fogbank, they changed course a little bit further northerly. They changed course to their left of it and I didn’t know it, so I just kept flying the same heading and I came out fairly—after the fogbank not too much later, and I saw the British pilot that I was flying with, he had done the same thing I did. He didn’t know there was a change of course, so he flew straight. So I just joined back on him, and he proceeded towards Tavoy. And we were about 2,500 feet. Then when we got there, there was nobody around. The field looked deserted. And we didn’t see any of our other planes. So we started flying around the field at about 1,000 feet. I was on one side, and he was on the other, kind of going in circles around there, just kind of looking at each other across the field. And after a few minutes of that, I suddenly saw six bombers come over the—up over the hill there, coming down a little from a northwesterly direction. I thought, “Uh oh. Japanese bombers coming in.” So I immediately dove over towards the RAF guy, who was—he had his back toward—turned towards them, and motioned to them and pointed to them and then started to head off �12 towards them, thinking they were Japanese bombers. Well, it was the six Blenheims that I—because I thought—I was only expecting three. I thought they were Japanese. Well, as I got closer, I saw Japanese fighters flying down attacking the Blenheims. And that’s when I realized the Blenheims were starting to turn. They were in formation. And realized they were British. So we took into the fighters, and one guy started making a head-on pass at me. And so I was—we ended up pretty close to being right over the field. And made a head-on pass at me, got under me, dove under me. And, of course, I couldn’t get a beat—lead on him because he was—he kept flying lower, and I couldn’t get my nose down far enough to get a lead on him. And he went under and came back. We did that twice. Then I thought I’ll turn around and—I think after the third time I decided I’ll turn around and try to catch him because he would just go underneath me, do an Immelmann, and come right on back. But since I was much faster than he was, I’d get out of his range and then turn around and come back at him. So this time I thought, well, I’ll just start firing early, and there’s no way he can get under me without flying through the fire, through the field of fire. So I took—I started flying low doing that, and then as I pulled up—out to the other side—the other Japanese fighters had kind of seen, I guess, this going on back and forth, were all waiting for me out there at the other side and got on me. And so I made a quick turn and dive and headed out for the water and the fog because this field was just a little inland off a little bay there—and dove out towards the gulf into this fogbank. And, of course, by then, I’d expended a fair amount of gasoline in this dogfight, plus most of my ammunition. And I got out into the fog and then went out till I figured I was high enough. I knew I didn’t have enough fuel to get back to Rangoon, so I climbed up and started heading north to where there was a field, Moulmein Airport, which was under British control. And we had gone over there before—or passed it on missions, on escort missions. So I climbed all the way up to 20,000 feet on my way to Moulmein because I wanted to have plenty of altitude. And just as I’m getting ready to start a letdown at Moulmein, I saw four more fighters coming across. And I thought, “Oh, boy. No fuel, no ammunition. Here’s four fighters.” But turned out they were P-40s going on some kind of a strafing mission. So I went down at Moulmein and landed. And when I got there, the other British pilot was there. And he said that he had come over the field about 4,000 feet, and they didn’t know that the two of us were down below. They never did see us. They just saw planes down there, figured they were Japanese. And they had just—the Blenheims turned and went back to Rangoon, and they had just left. And he had some kind—he had oil trouble. �13 And so he had some kind of a leak in his oil tank. I think he got a bullet in his oil tank. And so he had landed at Moulmein, too, and they were patching the oil tank. They just put a wooden plug in it, tied a big rag around it. But it took about an hour and a half to refuel there because they had to strain all the gasoline and everything. Apparently, the other British pilot had turned south when we were fighting. He had gone down to another little island called Mergui, where he was a week before he could get home. He had to come back to Rangoon by sea. And Frank Lawlor had gone back to Rangoon in Mingaladon and just reported that the—that we were all lost. So the Britisher, he—when he got his oil tank patched, he was a little bit leery about flying out over the gulf back to Rangoon, so he said he wanted to fly along the shoreline, which would be a little longer, but he wanted to be—if something went wrong, he wanted to be able to put it down on the beach. So he asked me to fly with him so in case he went down I could report where he was, which we did. We both got back to Rangoon okay, to find out they were dividing my stuff again. They’d already thought I was lost coming down to Kunming. Now they thought I was lost again. You have to go back and get all your belongings. Everybody’s dividing your stuff, you know. But from then on—after that in Rangoon, we just had a continual sort of series of strafing, escort, and fights—you know, dogfights against bombers and fighters over the city. It just was kind of a continual thing. Of course, we were off almost every other day because they were—there weren’t that many planes that were usable. They had about two pilots for every plane, so—that was flyable. So we were off just about every other day. But it was yet—got to be such a blur. You know, it was just hard to separate one from the other, one day from the other. One morning—and finally, somewhere around February, early February, then they decided to take the 2nd Squadron out of Rangoon and bring it back to Kunming and just leave the 1st Squadron there. So now that the 1st Squadron’s there, we were getting all of the action. And, of course, it never did let up from then on. And right on due—towards the end of February, we’re having all kinds of rumors and rumors of paratroopers and one thing and another. And then they’d say that they’re going to send in an armored division to help us out, and they were going to send in another air force, and we were to hold Rangoon at all costs. And the next day, it looked like nothing good was going to happen. In the meantime, the Japs were continually advancing on the ground. And I remember one trip in—in February, Bob Neale had planned a deal. By now, Moulmein had fallen. This was near the—getting towards the end of February. Moulmein had fallen, and Bob Neale was planning a mission to go over there and do some strafing because he figured there might be Japanese planes there. Well, we got—there were eight of us who were �14 going to go, and so we got all briefed for it. And then there was a—an alert came in just about the time we were getting ready to go, so everybody scrambled. And we got up, and it was a false alarm. One of the guys in our eight had engine trouble and had to go back. We were up in the air now. There was seven of us up there. And Bob Neale said, “Well, since it’s a false alarm, we’re in the air, we might as well go over and finish—do that strafing mission.” So we headed over for Moulmein across the Gulf of Martaban there, and Bob brought us in low after we got close, then brought us in pretty low. And there was a satellite field about ten miles south of the regular field over a small hill there. We came in there. There were a couple planes on the ground, and we all went in, took a shot at them, and started them on fire. And then he pulled us up over the hill and down onto the main airport at Moulmein. And there were just—because one person was missing. Burgard [George Burgard] didn’t have a wingman, so I was flying Bob Neale’s wing. And Burgard had joined up on me, so we had a kind of a three-plane echelon going in there, echelon to the right diving down as Bob, you know, come over in range of the field. And the Japanese fighter squadron was just taking off. So we come diving down, and Bob took—for some unknown reason, took the plane on the right. I had to go underneath him, skid underneath him and go over to the middle one. I caught the leader. It was a three-plane formation that was taking off. And got him. Bob took a shot at the other one, and Burgard come in and finished them off. I made a turn, came around, got another fighter taking off. And just about that time as I was making the turn to get back around again and kind of get out of the way of the other strafers, a Japanese plane tried to ram me. It looked like he tried to ram me. Either that or he didn’t see me for some reason, but he was heading right—coming right straight at me. We were on a collision course. I pushed over as hard as I could, went underneath, and as I got down I was heading towards the bay there at Moulmein right—there’s a nice big bay across—inside the harbor—inside the gulf there. And I got—I was about—only about 20 feet off the water when I start—you know, flattened out, pulled up, and there right in front of me a little ways—distance away was a ferry boat full of Japanese troops. So by then, I just—by the time I could get squared away and start pulling my trigger, I got in a—I fired quite a few rounds into that thing. I could see them diving over the rails and falling down and glass flying. And went over the top of that and wondering who—what’s going to come up through my parachute when I’m over the top of it, but nothing did. As I turned around left to head back towards the field again, see what was going on there, I saw three planes heading down sort of in the southerly direction. I thought, “Oh, three of them are trying to get away.” So I chased them for five minutes. They turned out to be �15 British Hurricanes, so I—by then I was getting pretty low on gas and used up pretty much my fuel, so I headed on—or ammunition, rather—so I headed on back to Mingaladon. And by now, things were going pretty bad in town. People were getting to feel it was too late. You know, the citizens had mostly been evacuated. The foreign citizens had all been evacuated, essentially. And Japanese were getting much closer, and there were—the houses were being vandalized, and the hospitals had been abandoned. The lepers were turned loose, and insane asylums and jails were opened, and everybody was roaming free. And things were getting—the Japs were bombing at night. It was pretty bad. So that night we stayed out at a place they called the Ranch. It was about 18 miles out of town. It’s where the mechanics and the ground people were living. And about 2:00 in the morning, Bob Neale comes and tells us that the British had evacuated during the night and that there was no more radio detection finder or anything. And by then, we were out of oxygen, and we were out of tires, and things were pretty low. But we had parked all our planes out at satellite fields that we had around the area, converted rice paddies into little hideaways where we put the planes at night because the airport was being bombed every night. But there was one plane, number 78, that was still down at Mingaladon and had needed a little repairing. [unintelligible] crew chief had worked on it all night. And he got back and said it was okay to go. And so in the early morning, when the other people were going out to these satellite fields to get ready to evacuate, well, Bob Neale took me down to Mingaladon to get that plane and fly it out to—and we get down there, it had a little—there was an Indian Native sitting straddle on it, like he’s riding a horse, right in front of the tail section. And right away I’m thinking sabotage. He was blubbering. He was kind of like—he might have been one of the insane people or he was shell-shocked because they’ve been bombing during the night. There was a couple shrapnel holes in the airplane, but other than that, everything seemed okay. And this guy had a couple cuts on his head. He might have gotten hurt by shrapnel. He may have been in shock. But got him off the airplane, took a pretty good look at him [unintelligible]— 00:47:06 [End Side A] [Begin Side B] 00:00:00 �16 JRR: —pretty good look at it and decided it was okay. And there were about six of us and— well, I flew it over to the satellite field where there were—the rest of our planes were waiting and being refueled. [section of unintelligible dialogue due to heavy static on tape] JRR: —bombs there and British aircraft that were still up further north were firing at us as well as the others. [section of unintelligible dialogue due to heavy static on tape] [audio break] JRR: Well, I hope this is coming in all right. I had to turn this tape over. I don’t think I know what I’m doing running this machine. Anyway, our group went on up, and we ended up in Kunming, 1st Squadron. And, you know, the old man [unintelligible] giving us congratulations for the work and all that. And then they were going to send the 3rd Squadron, Olson [Arvid Olson], back down to Magwe to take over there. And so they were going to take a few extra, so I asked if I could go down with them. And said, “Okay.” So Prescott, myself, and Fritz Wolf were going to go down with the 3rd Squadron to Magwe. When it came time to go, I didn’t have an airplane. But we were going to go down with CNAC. And I had been to Magwe, so [unintelligible] was going [unintelligible]. He said, “Well, you can come up and ride with me and help me navigate down there and find the place.” Go down to Magwe. Magwe was a very desert-y type place. Different from the jungle type of Toungoo. It was more like a desert. Dry and dusty and— [audio break] JRR: Another phone interruption here. Well, anyway, I went back down to Magwe with the 3rd Squadron. And, of course, there weren’t maps in the way—there wasn’t much in the way of facilities in there. We lived in some houses. I don’t know where they’d gotten a hold— taken over, and we were sort of living in these houses that I guess had belonged to some foreigners or officials of some type. And went out to the airport. Was real windy. All we had at the airport were tents, and that was—we had some rather kind of windy, dust-like sandstorms there. We got plastered pretty badly there. And we had a ground person killed on a—one bomb—on one bombing raid, and another pilot was injured on that raid, but then he died later of the infection, but probably shouldn’t have because he died more than a month later in a hospital in India. And [Frank Schwartz?] was the pilot. He died in [unintelligible] India in a hospital. �17 We ended up getting blasted out of there, but we had several occasions—we didn’t have—we were at the point where we were getting no warnings they were coming over. They caught us on the ground a couple times and shot the heck out of stuff. And we had a few battles with them. And when it came time to evacuate, we didn’t have too many serviceable airplanes left. So we had—we did—we weren’t short on equipment, though, because we were able—had been able to salvage a lot of rowing equipment out of Rangoon before it fell. So they were able to send some convoys up the road with a lot of the—whatever equipment we still had with the ground personnel. And we had extra jeeps and stuff that we had scrounged around in Rangoon. So in order to get all this stuff to China, everyone that could drive was taking a vehicle. And pilots who didn’t have a plane that they could fly could take a vehicle, head over, and then I—each had a jeep, and we decided we’ll drive. They were going to relocate up to Loiwing, which was just into—in China just above Lashio. So we each had a jeep, and we were going to ride until we—decided we’d ride together—drive together in case there was any trouble or a car broke down or anything. But everyone kind of, sort of took off on their own. And we—that first day we drove, we just went up to Maymyo, which wasn’t too much further north, and that’s where General Stilwell had come in and was set up some headquarters there. So we spent—it happened at the time that Parker Dupouy and Arvid Olson were also there. And Ed Overend and myself, we stayed overnight. They gave us a place to sleep up there. As matter of fact, Stilwell was—the house he had taken over, we slept out on the porch there. And there was a missionary family there that Ed Overend knew, and they had—we stayed overnight, and then were going to take off the next morning and drive to Lashio— or start out for Lashio. We went over to the missionary place and had breakfast, and they gave us a real treat there because we had just like an American-type meal with biscuits and gravy and eggs and ham and fresh strawberries and was quite a deal. As a matter of fact, they gave us a gallon of fresh strawberries to take with us. I think that before noon came along, I think we had stopped along the road about a dozen times and finished it off. We kept—we would follow each other up the Burma Road. And as it turned out, why, our jeeps did break down a half a dozen times each. When one would break down, we’d have—the other would push it. And when finally we’d get it going again, and it—the other one would break down. And one was always pushing the other, I guess, for most of the time. �18 But anyway, we finally got into Loiwing okay and set up operations there. And that was when the first—we were at Loiwing when the first P-40s—P-40Es arrived at—now we’re getting some new airplanes. It was also at Loiwing where they had this so-called mutiny, but actually, the mutiny didn’t amount to much. You can read about it in some guys’ books. Of course, these were people who weren’t there, and there’s all kinds—they have all kinds of elaborate stories of it and how good and bad it was and all the vicious fights that took place. But it actually didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Frank Lawlor, who was kind of a firebrand-type of guy, who was upset on these strafing missions, where morale missions we were running down over the Chinese lines. The Chinese soldiers were down—they had brought Chinese soldiers into Burma to fight against the Japanese. And we were supposed to run morale missions. Go down and fly over them at about 1,500 to 1,000 feet back and forth so they could see the Chinese insignia and boost their morale. But it wasn’t a very good operation, and half the time you didn’t know where the front lines were. And, you know, one rifle shot could put a plane out of commission, and the planes weren’t in that good of shape. And there had been a lot of grumbling about it. But like I was saying, the people who refused to go, I don’t know of any case of anybody refusing to go. There was a lot of grumbling. I know one thing. If they called volunteers and not too many of us volunteered, nut if any of us were assigned, we went. But anyway, Frank Lawlor brought a petition around saying that if they didn’t, you know, cut out these morale missions and just go back into the aerial fighting, why, we would resign. And he—some of us were on duty. Some of us were at the clubhouse laying around on our days off, whatever. And I was on duty the day he brought the petition around, and he said everybody was going to sign except a few he hadn’t got to and that if no—if everybody didn’t sign it, he wouldn’t give it to Chennault. If everybody did sign, he would. Well, it turned out about six guys didn’t sign it, but he gave it to Chennault anyway. And Chennault just told him he rejected it and didn’t accept it and wasn’t accepting resignations and gave him a little lecture about America being in the war. And actually, it didn’t amount to a heck of a lot more than that. But in the meantime, they did—he did contact Generalissimo, I guess, or the Madam about the missions and the bad effect they were having on the group, and they were canceled. But I think that several—I don’t know whether any were still—were run after that or not. But like I say, they—there was always—there always actually were a few guys who volunteered for them. And anybody—I don’t—I never heard of anybody who was assigned one that didn’t go. So it didn’t amount to all that much. And sometime around—towards the end of April, I got a break there, got sent on a ferry trip to Karachi to pick up some P-43s for the Chinese Air Force. George Burgard, Jim �19 Cross, and myself with 13 Chinese pilots to run over and pick up 15 P-43s. So that took us a couple weeks by the time we got them over there, got checked out in them, and carried them back through weather and mishaps and whatever. And got back to Kunming, and about that time we were getting ready to be moved up to Chungking. And when we got up—we eventually were moved up to Chungking, and by the time we just got moved into nice quarters which they built for us in Chungking, why, they said that they wanted us to go down to Kweilin because Kweilin was being bombed. And so a bunch of us—the 1st Squadron was sent down to Kweilin. And we flew down there, and [unintelligible] to get into a fight a day later. And they had sent over some bombers and fighters, which we were able to divert and to shoot down some of the fighters. That was the first time we saw the twin-engine fighter. And were able to shoot down some of those. And, of course, that was the first time people in Kweilin had had any aerial defense, so they were real happy and gave us a big party. And in the meantime, why, they started to move—shifting us around between Kweilin and Hengyang and Lingling. And it got to be kind of a nightmare. You’d take off. You didn’t have any—hardly anything with you, a toothbrush in your pocket, and be moving off for a—say you’re going up there for the day, and next thing you know you’re up there three or four days. 00:11:15 [Disbanding of the AVG, return to the United States, and service with the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and other Chinese airlines] JRR: And finally with the—they had—getting ready to disband us because we had been notified that we could either—that the Army was going—U.S. Air Corps was going to take over on the Fourth of July. So we would either go into the Air Corps or go home to the draft, they said. And so comes the Fourth of July—I think we’re in Hengyang—I went back to Kweilin because I wanted to get back to Kunming. And they asked us could anybody—they wanted us to volunteer to stay for two more weeks. And my good buddy Ricketts was up in Kunming, so I figured, well, he’s going to go on home, so I think I’ll go—I’m going to go home with him. We were both from California, from the Bay Area. So I didn’t volunteer, and I waited around a bit, got my transportation into Kunming, and when I got up there, found out Ricketts had told the guys there, he said, “Well, I wanted to go home with Rossi, but I figure he’ll probably volunteer to stay the two weeks, so I might as well do it.” And he went on down there, so we passed each other. He stayed the two weeks, and I didn’t. �20 And on the way home, why, I stopped over in—at Dinjan and talked to the CNAC people there. And they were very eager to get some pilots because the Hump—now there was— the Burma Road was—been completely closed, and they were flying supplies in the Hump, and the only one who was flying at that time was CNAC. They had pioneered the Hump route. And they were able to get airplanes, but they didn’t have pilots to fly them. So they were very eager to get them. Got them—ended up getting about 18—16 or 18 AVG pilots to fly there. And I was with Cavanah [Herbert Cavanah] and Hennessy [John Hennessy]. We were on our way home. We signed up to go to work for CNAC, but we said we wanted—we were going to go home first and then come back. They wanted us to start flying right then and then take a leave later. But since all the others were going to stay there, we said, “Well, we’ll go on home, and then we’ll come back, and you can let the other guys go home.” So we ended up going to Calcutta and then going across India to Karachi and on over the Gold Coast and to Sanction Island and Natal and on up to Florida, right up in Florida [unintelligible]. That was the end of the AVG. Then I stayed around in the States for a while and visited home, friends, and all, then ended up going back with CNAC on one of their planes they were ferrying up to CNAC. And I went out and stayed with CNAC till after the war, till the war ended. Flew the Hump for the rest of the time. Had a—flew over 738 trips across the Hump by the time the war ended. And then I stayed on and flew the Chinese airlines. Besides CNAC, flew with Chennault when he started CAT and also flew with CATC [unintelligible] and also with GTAC [unintelligible]. And I also flew for the missionaries out there on sort of a volunteer basis, donation-type basis. They had an airplane they were using to go around to their missions in [unintelligible] supply it there—I mean, maintain it for them. And when—then I came home to take a leave. And when I came home, why, China fell to the Communists, so I went to work with Bob Prescott in the Flying Tiger Line and stayed there till I retired. And that’s about it. 00:15:08 [End Side B] [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rossi, John Richard Biographical Text <p>John Richard Rossi was born on April 19, 1915 in Placerville, California. After a tour with the Merchant Marine, he joined the United States Navy Reserve and graduated from flight training in 1940. The following year, Rossi resigned his commission in order to join the newly formed American Volunteer Group in Burma. He served with the AVG’s 1st Pursuit Squadron until the group disbanded in 1942, then joined the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) as a transport pilot. By the end of the war, he had flown over 700 trips across the “Hump” between India and China. Rossi remained in China after the end of World War II, flying for Civil Air Transport and the Central Aviation Transport Corporation. In 1948, he returned to the United States and joined the Flying Tiger Line. He also served as president of the American Volunteer Group/Flying Tigers Association. Rossi retired in 1973 and passed away in 2008.</p> Note Any additional notes about the item. This recording is presented in its original, unedited form. Please note that some interviews in this collection may contain adult language, racial slurs, and/or graphic descriptions of wartime violence. 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 [John Richard Rossi oral history interview (Part 5 of 6)] Description An account of the resource <p>In this six-part oral history, fighter ace John Richard Rossi discusses his military service with the American Volunteer Group during World War II. In part five, he discusses his wartime experiences with the AVG’s 1st Pursuit Squadron in the China-Burma-India Theater. He provides an overview of the group’s movements and missions, beginning with his arrival in Burma in November 1941 and concluding with the group’s disbandment in July 1942. He also touches on his personal history and his post-AVG career with the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and other airlines.</p> <p>Some sections of audio are heavily affected by static and distortion, which obscures much of Rossi’s dialogue. These sections are noted in the transcript.</p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980s-1990s circa Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Florida China Burma Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military China National Aviation Corporation China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group. Pursuit Squadron, 1st China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group. Pursuit Squadron, 2nd China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group. Pursuit Squadron, 3rd Curtiss P-40 Warhawk Family Fighter pilots Overend, Edmund F Ricketts, Freeman I. Rossi, John Richard United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) audiocassettes 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound cassette (1 hr., 2 min., 14 sec.) : analog ; 4 x 2.5 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_152_01 2002-02-13_AV_152_02 2002-02-13_AV_152_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/9130108cad177a11fd2cffd004112849.jpg 159c48d71f01f243f979057705875da1 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/63edec237d8d6c0f0e5f5de132907c4a.mp3 36ec642fe13cf7bde5f48054e4d1ed92 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/adf2d1ec84227950e16138a0b4b19e4b.pdf bae287a852642475183e11c4b270aebb PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Hubert Zemke (Part 9 of 9) Interviewed by: Eugene A. Valencia and M. Jones Interview Date: April 28, 1966 �2 Abstract: In this nine-part oral history, Hubert “Hub” Zemke is interviewed about his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. In part nine, he continues to discuss his wartime experiences during World War II. Much of the interview focuses on Zemke’s time as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft I (Germany) and his running of the camp after German officials fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces. He describes life at the camp, his relationship with other prisoners and with Commandant Von Warnstadt, and his role as a camp leader. He also briefly touches on a number of other topics related to his service, such as his bailout and capture by German troops, the British direction-finder system operated by the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the circumstances behind his transfer to the 479th Fighter Group, and details about photo reconnaissance operations. The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia and a woman identified as Margery Jones (name spelling unverified), possibly Valencia’s secretary. Jones notes in the previous interview that they are at a Holiday Inn in Reno, Nevada, though the actual interview may have taken place at Stead Air Force Base, where Zemke was stationed at the time. Audio may be difficult to hear in some spots due to uneven volume levels and overlapping voices. The original order of the Zemke interviews is unclear, due to conflicting date and order information on the reel containers. The order presented here has been determined by an archivist using contextual clues within the dialogue. Biography: Hubert “Hub” Zemke was born on March 14, 1919 in Missoula, Montana. He studied forestry at Montana State University but left school in 1936 to enlist as an Aviation Cadet with the U.S. Army Air Corps. After completing flight training in 1937, he served with the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field (Virginia). In 1940, Zemke deployed to England to serve as an air observer with the Royal Air Force. At the conclusion of that assignment, he then traveled to the Soviet Union as an assistant military attaché and served as a flight instructor to Soviet pilots, teaching them how to fly their lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks. Zemke returned to the United States in 1942 and was appointed group commander of the 56th Fighter Group, the first fighter group to be equipped with the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. During its service in Europe, the 56th distinguished itself as a highly successful group, consistently receiving top scores in air-in-air kills during missions. The group came to be known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack,” in reference to Zemke’s firm but fair leadership style and his emphasis on aerial discipline and tactics. �3 In August 1944, Zemke took command of the 479th Fighter Group, helping the unit convert from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to the North American P-51 Mustang. A few months later, in October, he was forced to bail out over enemy territory after his P-51 sustained severe damage in a storm front. Zemke was captured by German forces and imprisoned at Stalag Luft I (Germany), a prisoner-of-war camp housing Allied airmen. As the war neared its end, German officials turned control of the camp over to Zemke and the other prisoners and fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces. Following the end of World War II, Zemke continued his military career with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included commanding the 36th Fighter Group during the Berlin Airlift, serving in administrative posts at the Pentagon, commanding the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the U-2 Program, and serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Madrid, Spain. Zemke retired as a colonel in 1966 and established a second career in agriculture, managing an almond ranch. He passed away in 1994. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �4 Index: Service with the 56th Fighter Group, continued from Part 8 .......................................................... 5 Experiences at Stalag Luft I ............................................................................................................ 5 Direction-finder system in Britain ................................................................................................ 18 Bail out over enemy territory and capture by German forces ....................................................... 19 Transfer to the 479th Fighter Group ............................................................................................. 23 Photo reconnaissance operations .................................................................................................. 24 �5 Hubert Zemke (Part 9 of 9) [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Service with the 56th Fighter Group, continued from Part 8] EUGENE A. VALENCIA: So as you broke out of the clouds, you told them all to take a course? HUBERT ZEMKE: Continue on course, and we’d reassemble up ahead. It turned out, when I climbed back through, continued on course, nobody in the group had fallen out except I. So I just joined up in my empty slot, and we continued on in silence. When I returned home, I fined myself fifty bucks, to the satisfaction of the crews, of course. [unintelligible]. You know, the old man, he doesn’t get away with this either. EAV: He’s human. HZ: Yeah, he had—he’d better fine him something. [audio break] 00:00:42 [Experiences at Stalag Luft I] EAV: Hub, you arrived at the prison camp, who was the first man you met in the group? HZ: There’s a little background to this. But this wasn’t a surprise. The Germans had an interrogation camp that was near Frankfurt, where they brought the people in and then they sent them to the various camps, large camps. The interrogation camp was just an assembly place where you went through your third degrees and identification. And then you were sent to an assembly place north of Frankfurt at Wetzlar, where there was a senior American Allied officer, but the Germans were still in command were—if there was any clothing or if there was any food, this was issued to you. And they would wait till about, oh, 500 or 600 prisoners would assemble and then throw them onto stock cars and move them off. Well, it took me about eight days to get through the durchgangslager, the interrogation camp. And I knew the senior Allied officer at Wetzlar. And I had been hit pretty bad in the bail out, where my shoulder was dislocated. And this was set there in the—I was sitting there talking with him for a while, a few days, waiting for this, not knowing where I wanted to go. But the information by that time had been carried by other prisoners of war forward that I would be coming to one of the camps. So it was finally determined �6 that—by the Germans, that I would be going to Stalag Luft I. And this information was secretively sent to Stalag Luft I, where, of course, I had a lot of pals. Gabreski [Francis S. “Gabby” Gabreski] and Ross Greening and Spicer [Henry Russell “Russ” Spicer] and Malmstrom [Einer Malmstrom] and a lot of the 4th Group aces. A lot of those types. They, knowing I’d get there, three of them, McCollom [Loren G. McCollom], Greening—what’s the name of the other fellow? My gosh, I roomed with him. Mark Hubbard. All fighter pilots. I rigged up my cot. And Greening, who my wife knew before—he happened to be a Washington State graduate, by the way—had visited his wife in Hoquiam, Washington. [MARGERY?] JONES: HZ: Hoquiam. Hoquiam, Washington. And a picture—she’d taken a picture. And this had been quite some time before, a year or two. And had sent this picture of herself, my wife, and McCollom’s wife, sent it over there. So when I got into prison camp, of course, these guys were the first guys to lam onto me and escort me to my new suite. And Ross was a marvelous artist, and he’d drawn a radio on the board—we didn’t have TV at that time— and had pasted this picture of welcome, and here are the three wives in prison camp. So Ross Greening was the—and McCollom were the first guys to welcome me in. EAV: That was Maria’s picture. That’s one thing we missed, too. Hub, how did you get the idea for the boxing match? HZ: Well, I’ve re-written it here. It’s to stem the athletic program. EAV: No, I mean in the camp. This is all— HZ: Well, in the camp—as you know, we went through a pretty arduous winter with lack of food. And you can’t get much of an athletic program going in the wintertime there with no gym or anything of the sort. So as the weather got better in March—and by that time, we’d arranged to get food across from [Gottingham?], Sweden. And things began to pick up when the food began to pick up again. So why not do the same thing as we did here? Let’s get baseball games going, all the rest. Well, having excelled a little bit in boxing, I said, “Okay. This doesn’t take many people, and we’ve got quite a few people here. Let’s start a boxing tournament between the compounds.” So I challenged anybody in camp, whether he was heavyweight or flyweight, to three rounds Simon Pure as the opening tournament match. [whistles] From there on, there were boxing matches till you couldn’t see straight going on in the place. And the man I pulled out, as I told you on this slip— EAV: [unintelligible] �7 HZ: —there were about 50 volunteers that were willing to clobber the colonel. Happened to be this Cyrus Manierre, this paratrooper that was in camp. He had boxed in college, but that— EAV: Little different than semi-pro. HZ: A little different than semi-pro. [laughs] And both of us were kind of then weak types. But he just happened to be thinner and weaker and didn’t have any experience. And he caught it. EAV: Hub, what other recreation—I think you mentioned, which was out—you had plays. You had a musical. HZ: We had plays. We had musicals. We had baseball tournaments. My gosh, we’d play baseball, softball till you couldn’t see straight in the center compounds. EAV: Competition between buildings or barracks? HZ: Between buildings. Between barracks. Between compounds. We finally got permission to do this. You had coin-tossing tournaments. Of course, you didn’t have any bow and arrows or archery or any of that stuff. [laughter] But you had—the British had their soccer, you know, their football back and forth. EAV: You mentioned this one type that was practicing pole vaulting? HZ: Pole vaulting. Well, this—he did this for a purpose. You had track fellows, and, you know, you’d have little sprints and races, and you had broad jumping. And you didn’t have any big track or anything like that, but you did anything that was competitive. And toss coins. My [unintelligible]— EAV: Well, didn’t the guards take a little notice of the pole vaulter? HZ: Well, he didn’t practice it. He got himself in real fine condition, you know. And he built his pole little by little by little. And it was—well, he knew something of pole vaulting before. And came the day that he thought he was in shape, and he just backed off across the field and sailed right over it. [laughter] Well, I think they’re about 10 foot high, aren’t those fences? He sailed over both of them. Not one. MJ: How do you build a pole? HZ: I’ll tell you, things that you have to go through the museum there that they made. I think I’ve got magazines and pictures of stuff. The slats out of—were rough crude slats out of �8 the bunks of the beds. One fellow made a violin that he played in Carnegie Hall. It had, you know, fiddleback maple in the back of it. And where the little black—there’s a double ribbon of black around a violin that is inlet. And this was inletted with a jackknife. Now, how do you make a pole? Well, if you are a prisoner of war, to build a pole and if there are any materials, okay, you just start taking the stud out of the wall and just shaped it and spliced it together and shaped it. What are they? Those fir studs in here? Well, I guess that’s eight foot, huh? Well, you just put another one on. And it only had to be used once. Wrapped. You know, wrapped, zap, she was ready. And, boy. [whistles] It wasn’t a beautiful bamboo pole issued, you know. [laughs] Or one of these fiberglass jobs. But it was a pole, and it worked. And he cleared it like mad. EAV: Hub, do you recall your first meeting with the commandant of the camp? HZ: Well, I don’t very well—there were so many meetings. I don’t really recall it. EAV: You got along well with him? HZ: The first commandant was a very, very arrogant Nazi type. And he had quite an arrogant staff and incipius [sic] bunch of types. And this wasn’t any conversation at all. It was all one-sided and insistency in drum-beating and all of that. The next fellow that came in, Von Warnstadt—and I’ve forgotten when he came. It must have been in January about ‘45, toward the end of January. I think the first fellow’s name was Scherer, S-C-H-E-E-R-E-R [sic], something of the sort. But Von Warnstadt came in. And by that time, you saw—we were always writing letters. You had to write for permission to go over there if I had something. But if they wanted something, they just got on the horn and said—ordered you [unintelligible]. But being able to speak German and this fellow being a pretty logical man—you saw his picture in there, with his monocle and whatnot [laughter]—we got along pretty well. And we could converse back and forth. It wasn’t anything like this hooligans zomp. You [unintelligible] tell him or joke with him or anything like that. But you could converse. And sure, there were [unintelligible] back and forth on certain things. And it’s like talking to a prison warden, isn’t it? Well, if the guy is communicable to conversation, you can talk to him. And if you give him guarantees and he gives guarantees, zomp. Well, after a while, then he used to call me over, and we’d go for a walk. He was allowed to do this. I also paroled myself that I wouldn’t escape, provided I could get outside and visit the other compounds. And so I had a special white arm band that was built. And the first time I walked out [laughing/unintelligible], walked right through the front gate, walked along the line, outside of the compound, down to the next place, and they let me �9 in. But they had phoned, see. [unintelligible], back and forth. And all the towers were phoned that “Don’t shoot the colonel” and all that stuff. And this worked well. This was really a step forward because then I could go and have meetings with these other guys and get better continuity and accept—instead of throwing little notes across the top of the fences. And though we had [unintelligible] meetings in rooms—I met with him several times, but we never conversed because they were always bugged. You had meetings with the group commanders and said, “Hey, this is going on. Zomp-zomp. Do this. What should we try here?” Boy, it worked well. It worked well. Yeah. MJ: You never did try to escape? HZ: Uh-uh [negative]. There wasn’t any use. When I wanted to escape, we had it so padded that, boom. In fact, toward the end when everybody got real, real brave, you know, and hell, they were all trying to zap them. I directed there would be no escape for the simple reason that I knew well that, with wide open countryside, then we’d lose a lot of guys. And for no reason. Hell, the war was over by that time. And we got a lot of—one of my toughest propositions was at the end. We were free for 16 days. Then everybody wanted to be heroes, you know. And a lot of them took off. And some of them never made it. About 700 and some. And I sent court-martial procedures to—against all [unintelligible]—hell, the war was over. MJ: You were free for 16 days. HZ: The Germans—I told you about [unintelligible] Von Warnstadt. “Okay, you go, and we’ll take over the camp.” Hell, anarchy had completely gone over into the countryside. And sure, there were sporadic SS outfits and resistance here, there, and yon, and there was fighting around Berlin. But up in this north country, by that time, there wasn’t even a policeman, a train that had—would run. Nothing would work. Nothing. Well, this is the time when you organize yourself into a combat formation. And this is when the time the [unintelligible] is down there. And this would be fine for the old man after holding everybody around to take off to the Allied side. The Allied side was only 100 miles away. Big things was, okay, look at all the damn guys we have sick. You saw all of the guys with flak wounds and fractures, and, Christ, we didn’t have the medicine. All right. Get these guys out. When I wanted escape to be accomplished, two guys went to the Russian lines just as smooth as silk. Two guys went to—not a shot fired. They just disappeared. And they came back. EAV: This was all arranged by you. HZ: Completely arranged in the underground with the Germans. Well, when I say I’m not going to escape, there’s a reason for it. �10 MJ: I got all this last night. HZ: Sure. EAV: Yeah. We did— HZ: Hell, there were guys that came to me. Germans said, “Okay, I’ll get you right smack through. I will really get you.” Several of them, the Abwehr, which was the resistance guys that were always busting our buildings down and—but they were just saving their hide then. Just saving their hide. Well, the other basic thing is that you have to—and we were getting through the BBC and the rest from [SHAPE or SHAEF] Headquarters: “Remain in your positions. Remain in your positions. Maintain discipline and remain in your positions.” Well, it’s logical. Because these wandering types along the countryside, well, boy. Trigger-happy American troops or British troops. Who the hell is this guy in this? [unintelligible] wham. And what happened? I think I told you. Of that little peninsula that we were on, when we knew that we were going to take over camp—this was by March. The war was still going on a month and a half, so—we had plotted where the caches of 20-millimeter ammunition, rifles, machine guns, everything else. And I had to work out with the various people, the [unintelligible] and all the rest of that, how to feed these guys. My God, 9,000 guys eat miles of—I mean, mountains of potatoes, mountains of flour. And so all these caches and dumps in an area about 40, 50 miles around Barth were all located. So the day that the Germans moved out, these scavenging parties went—[whistles]. Christ, they even were herding cattle back in. You know, we had to set up a dairy. EAV: This was all arranged by you and your staff. HZ: Well, you confiscated cars, you know. EAV: How did you arrange to stay at the camp when you were ordered out? We didn’t get that [unintelligible]. HZ: Well, I think I told you about—this was a deal between the commandant Von Warnstadt and myself that— EAV: We don’t have it on— HZ: All right. Well, let me finish this other—she asked me a question there. So you had to keep organized, and you had to keep things in hand. Now, I could only organize about 1,500 of these people to really be occupied and be effective, 1,500 combat troops. And they were organized into combat organizations by Mackenzie and this paratrooper, British paratrooper, T.A.G. Pritchard. Real commando types. Use of German machine �11 guns, antiaircraft stuff. In fact, we were doing repair for the Russians and everything else when they finally arrived about 16 days after. Well— EAV: And where did you keep this ammunition and your ordnance gear? HZ: Well, we were by ourselves, and we brought it right into the camp. And what we did was establish a regular defense system for the camp with trenches and minefields and everything else. Now, here’s a case in point that some of these types who wouldn’t obey [unintelligible] rules went out into the countryside themselves and got themselves a car and came breezing back in and half-tanked up and—[makes sound effect]—and ran over one of these Teller mines. I was telling this to [unintelligible] this morning. Blew that thing sky-high and killed three of them. If you don’t maintain order, boy, zappo. Another incident occurred that I didn’t like too well. Of course, a lot of our boys wanted to retaliate in kind. But we were on this peninsula, and the tide had come in and out. You can’t landmine the beach too well. And, of course, the Germans wanted to surrender to the camp, this entire county around Barth. You know, I had enough problems trying to keep the guys fed. And we trained all the rest of the stuff that was going on. We had to have practice shooting, charging, machine gun defense, hand grenade throwing with those long, long things. You had to train guys like mad. And they did this on the underground all the time before we really took over. At any rate, we didn’t have a very secure defense where this tide came in and out. And the Germans wanted to take refugee in there. And a woman and two daughters slipped around somehow at night. By God, we found them shot all through the head in our camp area. The only guys that could have done it was Allied boys. I really had an investigation on that. I never found out how it happened. But it was inside of our area. And, Christ, one of those kids was about three years old. Who the hell did that, I don’t know. But we had some real bloodthirsty guys in our camp, too, I’ll tell you that. But—in our patrols and they picked them up. So you didn’t have any saints in a lot of those types. You had a bunch of criminals. You know, you begin to think that way after a while when you’re in camp, too. No. There was no reason after the 1st of April for any guy to be a hero. Before then, boy, there were no restrictions because we wanted to irritate the Germans, you know, wanted to really keep them going. But after that, I really put the kibosh of it. Plomp. I’ll save you. You have no reason. Hell, the war’s over. You aren’t going to do anything. And you’re liable to get killed. And sure enough, we lost six guys from the time the war was over till—six deaths. Three of those guys in that stupid drunken car thing coming back in and didn’t know the way back into camp. And zap-zap—[makes sound effect]. That Teller mine went off. And I can still hear it. �12 EAV: Now, why did you plant those mines? HZ: Well, you’ve got a defense position there. There are slave labor running around the countryside. There are Russians coming in. And, hell, there were no signs on the place that said, “This is [unintelligible] German installation,” you know. And, so, yeah. We had everything that we could lay our hands on in case somebody wants to get hot and heavy. We had order and a regular, smooth operation. [laughs] Going outside of the place, it was just wild as hell wherever I went. I usually had—well, I finally had a staff car. I have four or five guys, and we’d have a couple open jeep Volkswagens with Tommy guns, go down to the flour mill to take a look at that place. And I went outside of that place, oh 15, 20 miles a couple of times to see what was going on, just out of curiosity. But a lot of the other guys wanted to, too. But you had regular organized salvaging parties. Just petrol. Boy, go get it. And they’d take this German, you know, [unintelligible]—[makes sound effect]—and it’s got a trailer in back, and they’d come back with drums. After the Russians got there, we had a hell of a time. On a couple of occasions, the Russians commandeered our people and took their damn guns away. And they walked back and everything. Yeah. It got stickier than sticky. Because they didn’t believe they were Americans. Then I had these meetings back and forth and had this separate telephone line put into the Russian division commander right into his main office with the chief of staff. Get off of this stuff. MJ: Gene, you wanted the story about the salt. EAV: Yes. MJ: You asked me to remind you EAV: I understand you did—when you didn’t have the necessities, you had enough ingenuity and imagination to produce those necessities. HZ: Out of 9,000 people, Gene, you know pretty well that you get a—quite a cross-section of talent. And especially if you’re getting pilots who have a college education and some types that are way beyond that. And there was seldom an occasion that they couldn’t develop something, if they had the material, out of ingenuity, to take care of the situation. Maybe it didn’t take care of it in the best way, but it took care of it. Well, in the mid-winter of ‘45, the camp completely ran out of salt, German-provided salt or any salt. And this becomes pretty, pretty critical [unintelligible]. A boy in camp came up to us one day at staff meeting and said, “I can make salt right here.” And so we said, “Okay. You can make salt? Well, how can you make salt?” The soil around that area where we were is strictly a sandy, sandy soil. And they did have a skating rink in the �13 wintertime. And what he did was improvise, and he flooded this skating rink and then leached it out and flooded it and leached it out with Baltic water that had salt in it, of course, until he got a sort of crust of alkaline salt-looking thing. It didn’t take him very long. EAV: But you got permission from the camp commandant. HZ: Not before. He proved that he could do this by— EAV: Oh, I see. HZ: —little method. And he then used a—took this crust off of the skating rink, after the permission of the camp commandant in proving to him that we could produce salt, and put it in barrels. And it still had to have water in. And then he filtered this thing out to get the dirt out of it and took that end and boiled off the water, some of the other water, and made all the salt that the Germans wanted and we wanted. Plenty of it. And we had a regular operation going right to the end. EAV: Well, didn’t you take a walk with the camp commandant and— HZ: I didn’t have to under the circumstance like that. EAV: Was he surprised at the— HZ: Why, of course he were, sure. All of his entire staff and everybody else. In fact, to prove it to him, we produced—he produced in about 24 hours about two grams of salt that I took into the commandant’s office and said, “Okay, taste this. This is salt. This is what we produce in camp.” [unintelligible]. EAV: [laughs] MJ: Was it toilet paper you filtered it through? HZ: Well, the filtering material was the two carloads of toilet paper that had been set there about a year earlier that you couldn’t [unintelligible] use this. And made fine filter paper, this salt operation. Yeah. EAV: Well, how were you able to remain at the camp when the German ordered you to move? HZ: This was a concern for a long time. And daily, you saw the front lines approach from both sides, and you knew that something had to be done to keep order and keep continuity and keep life and soul going. So it was first [unintelligible], okay, the protecting power will come in March. And you took off all the violations that the Germans had violated with them, and they’re supposed to listen to a justice. And it was �14 thought, well, it’s best to approach them and get some sort of arrangement for the transition of this camp to Allied command. The protecting power [unintelligible] would have had nothing to do with it. Boy, they threw up their hands when I proposed this to them and Warnstadt. This left the door open with Warnstadt a little. Now, the Germans knew pretty well after that that the house of cards was going to come down. They began to fidget around, like I mentioned just a moment ago, that—offered me a free passage all the way through if I turn them over to the Allies and take care of them. So I approached the commandant himself and said, “Now, the handwriting is on the wall. And if you people don’t want to be slaughtered either by the Russians or the American prisoners of war, we’ve got to work something out. And I want it done in a transition doesn’t lose any of my troops and certainly don’t lose any of your troops. And I can guarantee that your troops can get away. Okay.” So it was worked out that—this was by the end of April. This took several meetings, several walks in the field. Nothing was written down. Boy, this is something you don’t write down. [laughs] Okay, comes a certain day, then—it was right after the 1st of May, I think. I’ve forgotten the exact date. Right before the 1st of May or right after the 1st of May of ‘45. Your troops will walk out of the towers. Leave all their machine guns and their guard equipment right in the tower. You’ll get on your wagons and your stuff. At 12:00 midnight, you’ll move out, and our troops will go in. And you will be allowed to take off on the countryside on your own. And we’ll escort you as far as the city of Barth, which was about six kilometers away, and say, “Adios.” Well, they needed several days lead-time before the Russians got there. So it was worked out. Came the day, the next morning, up went the American flag. The POW woke up and looked around, and here were American guards in the tower. [laughs] Their buddies, you know. Well, the fence didn’t stay up very long after that. But at least—and then, of course, Mackenzie and his types started getting all this stuff in. And the scavenger troops begin to hit the countryside and hit the stockpiles of ammo and food and everything else that we needed. Just like, oh boy, just went—[makes sound effect]. Yeah, you had no trouble as far as people sitting down—sitting around the place and griping. Man. By that time, guys are really gung-ho. My only problem was to try to keep everybody busy. You just can’t do that. You’ve got too many people. They’re too crowded. And so you had radio programs and— EAV: Were you allowed radios? HZ: No. No. But we got radios. Hell. [laughs] Go over to that house and just yank them off the wall. �15 EAV: Hub, how did you—what was the operation of your newspaper? How did it work? How did you get the news? HZ: Well, I can’t give you all of that details. And I think—I don’t think I should for this thing here. EAV: Okay. HZ: We had our own radios. They were listened to at certain times, just like behind the Iron Curtains right now. It was printed up—and it was type-written and printed up in a certain room by a certain group of people, morning and evening, and one copy was tossed over the fence. It was then read in each one of the barracks. And you realize that each barracks, as long as we were open in the daytime, until we were closed, had an American guard on the front door and the back door. There were two doors on each barracks. So that when a German came in to the compound, anybody, boom, it was all [unintelligible]. They never got in. They complained to the high heaven. And I said, “What am I going to do with these guys? You’re always snooping on me.” EAV: You mean the Germans were not allowed in the barracks? HZ: Why, sure they were. They could go any place they were. But they couldn’t ever crash in with surprise. EAV: Ah. HZ: They never could. Each barracks, there was guard like out here, all the time. We were opened up in the morning, and boy, there was a roster for a guard. It gave guys something to do, too. And then, boy, you learned to go up and zap-zap, every place you went. And they’d come in. They were free to come in. And they did needlessly. EAV: Was the Russian commandant surprised when he saw the camp? HZ: Why, he was so billowed, he couldn’t see straight. Of what organization? Man, were they—we strung telephone wire for him, fixed his trucks, repaired machine guns. Oh, Christ. The island of Peenemünde were—was right opposite the camp. And this is a famous test ground of—do you want some—I got some matches. Famous test ground for the V-1 and V-2. And we saw their rockets going up and their test firings into the Baltic. This was holding out with SS troops. And, well, I had organized an attack against the island of Peenemünde with a confiscated German airplane on the Barth Airfield. Had arranged for Fw 190s to be piloted by American airplanes out of the—American pilots out of the prison camp to attack that island up there. Christ. That Russian commander was so surprised, he couldn’t see straight. He thought he’d run into a bunch of emaciated �16 types. We had more food than they. Boom. We had wines, liquors, chefs, everything else. [laughs] Well— [loud, metallic scraping sound in background] HZ: [unintelligible]. But you could do this. Some people [unintelligible]. Well, that’s a tough proposition if they don’t allow them and don’t allow them and don’t allow them, as in Korea. But you still can do it. And you still have to instill in the military force, before they’re shot down, that when you get in the prison environment, you will have a command. Now, one of the obstinate types was this ex-convict, this [Angione?]. And he was an anarchist. This is the first order. He’s a convict from New York [hood?]. And he tried to up—overthrow this. And he came from Hammerstein, a sergeant’s camp to the east, and he had a couple of cohorts up there and one of which he—and one of who he killed. Came to our camp, and he was thrusted into Gabby’s compound. Gabby was the compound that was filling up the last and the last types in there with vacant space, and tried to overthrew—throw Gabby. So we got Von Warnstadt to transfer him down to our compound then. As I told you, this man, including the day he stepped onto an American airplane, never went even to the latrine without having two guards right next to him. And boy, he was hammered several times, I’ll tell you. He didn’t get away with any murder after that. And a couple, three other cohorts were like that, too. Americans. Really Americans. EAV: Going back to that proposed 190 attack, of course, it never did come off, but the plans were— HZ: Well, we had a boy in camp, a Lieutenant Colonel Gus Lundquist, who was a test pilot at Wright Field that had been sent to England to see how the P-51 was up and doing. And this man was a real, real first-class engineer. Well, to keep people busy and whatnot, it was known that there was an airfield near Barth—it’s on the map in there—which was an active fighter field. Or whether it was fighter or not, it was a Luftwaffe field. So it was for him and his crew, immediately when the war came to a screeching end, get to that airplane, that airfield, confiscate anything you could before the Germans could blow it up in case we needed it. The other thing, I had instructions already that there was a good possibility of we being flown out of there. So the airfield had to be, yeah, de-mined. And the Germans had left big 2,000-pound bombs all over the place. And, boy, there were some valiant guys. They screwed those fuses out and drug them off with teams of horses and cleared that field over. And, boy, when the Americans actually did arrive after we got the agreement, B17s came in, and there was a follow-me jeep and an orderly transition with the frequency �17 in the tower, and everything was functioned like you—just as good as down here at the line. EAV: I’ll be darned. HZ: Well, we had about—I still have the list of how many airplanes. We had some Dorniers and little putt-putt airplane. And they reassembled from broken pieces three of four Fw 190s. And we volunteered to fly one from Stalag Luft I, one Fw 190 with American stars on it, to Paris to give it to General Spaatz. And we got a communication back: “Hell, we got all the Fw 190s. Forget about.” But we would have loved to have done that. But Gussy Lundquist was responsible for that and his crews. He had about 30 guys that were pretty sharp hombres. Yeah. Confiscated fuel and [unintelligible]. EAV: Follow-me jeep, huh? HZ: Yeah. Follow-me jeep. And air-to-surface control out of the tower, proper frequency, and all the jazz that went into—regular parking areas. Regular [unintelligible]. Well, that isn’t hard when you have the aviation troops. And those things came right up there and parked. They just came in, B-17, B-17, B-17. And they knew—we knew how many people they had on board, and we marched them from the airfield. They walked right on the airfield, manifested, blough. [laughs] And they were—turned around and took off. EAV: Terrific. HZ: In 48 hours, we moved—well, the first day, we moved out all of the wounded. And I’ve forgotten. We’d have count them up in there. But there were C-46s. There must have been 25, 30 loads of wounded in ambulance cases and in ambulatory aircraft. And then in 48 hours after that, every doggone last type flew out in the First Division—Third Division B-17s. The last of— EAV: Did you have any humorous experiences at the camp during the war? HZ: Oh, sure. Yeah. I think I told you about some of them. They did it in spite of the Germans, just to heckle them. EAV: [unintelligible]. HZ: I didn’t have any objection to that. Well, on one occasions, I recall the—we were counted every evening in what was called appell, A-P-E-L-L [sic]. And they counted you off, five-ten-fifteen. You were lined up five deep. And if there was one man missing, like an escapee or something like that, then you just stood out there, and they re-counted and recounted and re-counted until they got him [unintelligible]. And all the sick people, they’d have to be re-checked. And we’d stand out there a half to three-quarters of an hour in all �18 kinds of weather. God, it was terrible. Morning and evening, we had to do this. Well, this got a little exasperating. And they did it in a military fashion in certain order. You did it by squadrons that came from each barracks. And we called these [unintelligible] squadrons. And they go down for the ranks, and they’d salute you. Finally, it was, “Heil Hitler,” you know, down through the ranks, which we refused to salute back to them. [laughs] That’s beside the point. They still did it. They were told to. Well, two of these guys got an idea. Said, “Okay, we’ll have a little fun.” So they got a great big Belgium long coat that went down to about here, and they shaved the heads off of two of the jokers, just as slick as slick could be. And as they came down through the ranks—[laughter]—this one guy pulled his coat way up and put a piece of meat on his head, a piece of raw meat, put his arms around [unintelligible]. And here are these two bald heads looking up there and this headless man. Jesus Christ, [unintelligible]. Imagine that they went in and poke you in the head about six—well, 15 or 16 days, strict [unintelligible]. Bread and water, you know. But stuff like that [unintelligible]— [audio break] 00:40:29 [Direction-finder system in Britain] HZ: —selves. And to home on various bases. EAV: That’s Darkies. HZ: Darkie. It was a code name. EAV: Oh, I see. HZ: The thing was worked up on the British system of direction finders. EAV: Ah. HZ: And it was tied into the Fighter Command. And therefore, all you had to do was, if you were lost, request a fix to closest base, and they immediately put two direction-finder fix on you and gave you a steer. Most of the operators were the gals that they had in the WAAF system. Boy, they saved many, many thousands of lives with that British weather. And, of course, the British countryside, we weren’t acquainted with this thing and invariably everybody got lost once or twice to start with. But they would—in a split second after you conversed with them would come back and say, “Okay, heading of soand-so, so many miles to such-and-such a base,” or lead you right to your own base if you want to. �19 EAV: How far could you pick them up, sir? HZ: Well, the—we never used it when we were over the continent, of course. But over in the North Sea, you used it. And over the—they had complete coverage all over there, their British Isles. And where you were concerned most of all was right over the British Isles, with their low ceilings, fog, and bad visibility. With 800 bases that they finally built there, they could get you on the ground in short order requirement for GCA and whatnot like that. It wasn’t as apparent as we need in the United States. But it was a lifesaver to us guys. 00:42:23 [Bail out over enemy territory and capture by German forces] EAV: Hub, one thing that faded out that we need badly is how you went down. Just completely— HZ: How I was shot down? EAV: No, not shot down. How you—how your plane iced up or entered the turbulence. From the time that happened to the time you were picked up and got out of the plane. HZ: Well, that’s a fairly long story. But to put it in a thumbnail, I had gone to the 479th Fighter Group, which was a brand-new little organization, was building them up and putting them on combat status. And I was scheduled to—following this tour, which had been about three months, to go to be the chief of staff of the 65th Wing or to another unit that they had in mind that was—had a lot of losses and was down. I didn’t favor the 65th Wing because I’d have to work for General Auton. But the indications was that General Auton would be returning home and I’d be taking over the 65th Wing. So I wanted one more combat mission. And we’d been waiting about a week or so—this was always the case—and knew that I’d be going off operations, that they’d require me to be grounded So it was scheduled. And the ops order came in, and it was an escort mission to Hamburg to give escort to B-24s. The weather was scheduled to be better, as was then in the— about the 1st of November. But it was pretty stinky. But with the weather report and cancelations that we had, we figured it’d break. As it turned out, over the North Sea, it was real clear, fine weather. Visibility unlimited. And we picked the bombers up about the Dutch coast, and the weather began to deteriorate a bit. Contrails were all over the place. The bombers were having a few problems. So we went up a little higher. And you could look down below, and it was completely undercast for maybe 20,000 feet. And you knew that the Germans wouldn’t be coming up. They were sending up only flak. And we continued on and on until the—we entered cirrus ourselves. �20 Now, to stay out of the bomber trail, I had the boys close in a little closer so that they could fly right on our wings. And we were about 28,000 to 30,000 feet at the time, staggering along. It was decided, okay, we’ll go a little farther east than Hanover. The turn point of the bombers to go north into Hamburg was at Hanover. We go a little east so we wouldn’t run into any of their formations. In going east, we ran into the front that had passed, which was a real vicious job. And the first thing I knew, this P-51 was bouncing up and down, this way, that. So I told the boys, “Okay, let’s climb out of the top of it.” But before this occurred, I could see the instruments were beginning to tumble. What happened was the aircraft in the turbulence of these high [unintelligible] just iced up. I don’t know whether the pitot was unfunctional or whatnot. Well, I spun. And, of course, the first thing to do in a spin is to get yourself going in a straight line to get out of the spin, and then after the spin, then to pull back, recover. There wasn’t any panic on my part. I knew that all the rest of the boys were in difficulty, too. It was a rough turbulent situation for a little P-51. Well, the spin was stopped. At what altitude, I don’t know. But it really was winding up in speed and also intensity. The next step was to pull back on the stick to recover. Pulling back on the stick, there was a terrific explosion, and the right wing came off. So I must have been doing about 400 or 500 miles an hour. Tanks had been released before that to—so I wouldn’t hit the tanks as they spun around—as the airplane spun around. And as the right wing came off, it hit the—must have hit the fuselage, as I can concoct here. Next thing I knew is, hell, the airplane left me, and I was hit in the shoulder and the head. Canopy was gone. I was just floating in the air in the midst of a great big thundercloud. [laughs] So next reaction was to—where the heck is this D-ring? And sure enough, it was on my right chest. So I gave this a pull, and there was a big jerk, and I looked up in the air, and I could just barely see it in the inside of this cloud. The canopy had opened up. And then after that, your concern is, where the heck is the ground? So I looked down and looked down and looked down and broke out at about 200 feet, and there was the ground. I fell right in the middle of a swamp like you would toss a 100-pound sack off of an end of a truck. At that moment, I thought I was dead. It knocked all my wind out. You were gasping. But pretty soon, you know, the wind began to come back, and here I was sitting in a very quiet place in the middle of the swamp water. First reaction, of course, is my God, I’m in enemy territory. Get out of here. So you took the harness off and ran like mad for maybe about 50 yards. I’d sprained my knee, also. And so I said, “Well, nobody’s going to be around here anyway. Nobody shot me down.” It was snowing and sleeting. So I walked back and cut a sling out of the canopy and looked over the situation. Walked out of the swamp over into a forest area, looked around the area. Opened my escape kit and looked at this map and this 10-cent store compass. I knew generally where we were. As it turned �21 out, it was a little east of the present airfield of Celle, C-E-L-L-E. But as to that map orienting me—and it was about 3:00 in the afternoon. And I was soaking wet. I decided, “Okay. I’ll go a little ways.” So I walked through this forest a ways. I saw houses and whatnot. Went around those and decided, well, I guess what I have to do is somehow get to the Holland border. Looked over the map, decided, “I’ll build a fire.” So I walked maybe a couple miles more—and it was dark by then—Built a fire and tried to thaw out a little, get my socks dry. You couldn’t take off all your clothes to dry out your underwear and all the rest of it. About that time, you had a little shock effect, you know, from the bailout. As it turned out, two of the other boys were killed and one other fellow was captured—later captured—from running into this terrific thunderstorm. Well, there’s some satisfaction to it. I didn’t have to go to the 65th Air Division. And as subsequent you will see, being shot at and seeing the other side of the picture in prison camp, it was still a combat story for another five months before the war ended. I think that just about covers it. EAV: Going back to the—Blakeslee [Donald Blakeslee] mentioned something in this Thousand Down book [unintelligible]. He said that Blakeslee was going in to argue about being taken off flight status, but he had learned that you had already gone in and pounded the desk and were told no. HZ: This, I don’t know. But I know that when I came back, I talked to General Kepner. And once I went down—they wanted some [unintelligible] for future years, as you probably know. And they had quite a few people. They had Dave Schilling and Red Mason, Blakeslee. So there was a meeting of the generals, and they just directed these guys who had been over there a couple of years in combat continuously be taken off and they put out an edict to the effect that so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so would be pulled off. And they pulled them off. EAV: Well, Hub, how were you finally picked up? HZ: How was I finally picked up? EAV: Captured. HZ: Well, after wandering about three days and with this knee, I decided, well, I need some help. And I don’t think in three days’ time—most of the time I moved was late in the afternoon or real early in the morning. And the problem of food wasn’t with me. But I was always wet and always cold. I never did thaw out. So I said, “Okay. I know some German. I’ll try to get some help.” I don’t think I moved over about 15 miles in that time. �22 So one evening late, wandering through the forest, I broke out into a farming area, where I looked across the field and there were two people cutting sugar beets—tops off of them and throwing them into a cart. And I said, “Well, this isn’t too bad. I’ll give them a try.” So I walked across—right across the field to them. And it turned out to be a very, very old man and a very, very old woman. And they looked up when I was about five, ten yards away from them and recognized me as a flyer, probably an enemy flyer. And just— it just scared the living daylights out of them. The old gal went running across the field like mad, and the old fellow was—thought I was going to kill him or something. He just shook and shook and shook and shook. He had a red—I mean, a yellow band with black stripes on his arm. And he said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t help you.” I spoke to him in German. “And I’m too old. And I’m a zwangsarbeiter,” which was a forced laborer. Both of them were Poles. They were Polish forced labor, the forced draft to work on farms. And I talked to him a second and realized, well, this isn’t any good. So I turned and went across the countryside. But what she did was run over to the local farmhouses and boy, alerted the whole front countryside. And as I passed across a—maybe a mile or so away from there, a Macadam country road, boy, down the road came foresters and dogs and all of that stuff. And they came up to me and said, “Ah ha, we’ve got you. For you, the war is over.” Their biggest disappointment was I didn’t have a pistol because they wanted a trophy. So, okay. EAV: You didn’t fly with a pistol, Hub? HZ: Well, none of us did. Hell, you aren’t going to fight your way out. I did for a while, and it was so bulky and hurt so much that—this old .45 that—this isn’t any good. Anyway, they took me over to a village, Gasthaus. G-A-S-T-H-O-U—H-A-U-S and alerted the countryside. And about, oh, a couple of hours later, quite a group of German Luftwaffe people are picked up at Celle and came—picked me up, took me up to Celle. That was it. EAV: [unintelligible]— [audio break] EAV: [unintelligible] HZ: Sitting in the car was the guard, this German officer and this mistress with his—her mink coat, as I remember, and myself. And I’ve forgotten whether it was an Opel or—it was a small German car, sedan type, with this cross-eyed driver up in front. [laughter] Well, he flipped it all right, and it went over in the ditch off the Autobahn and rolled over. And we scrambled out. And the gal was hurt a little bit. Oh, bruised about. Of course, I had a couple knocks back and forth. And the officer was sitting up in the front and was bounced around a little. But it really didn’t mash the car completely. It was—as far as a �23 repair job, it—[laughs] a good, solid repair job. The top and the fenders and everything like that, but it didn’t mash it in the front end. It just rolled, zow-blough, over into the soft mud. And we were probably fortunate. Anyway, we pulled out the gal, and she was moaning and crying. She was beat up a little bit. And then the guard and the officer took me over to a farmhouse that was close by. And there was I called again. You know, they call up and—and they get some more people. And by this time, it was late, late afternoon. And they took us into Frankfurt. And then from Frankfurt, we walked out of Frankfurt a ways and got a streetcar and took us up to Dulag—Stalag Luft—or [unintelligible], the interrogation center. That’s right. [audio break] 00:58:26 [Transfer to the 479th Fighter Group] HZ: The 479th, the P-38—well, there’s some background to it. Before I went to the United States in November of 1943, it had been arranged, agreed on, and worked into the programs that the 56th would be the second fighter group to pick up the P-47—P-51 aircraft. I’d wanted the P-51 because it had longer range than the P-47. You could see that the war was going deeper and deeper in and to get into the happy hunting grounds that you’d have to have something like that. An arrangement was made for an assistant director of Operations, Colonel Robert Landry, to come down and take over the group for a while, and Dave Schilling was to remain there as flying exec. Bob Landry came down. And, of course, then I was involved in making a motion picture for this bond tour and salesmanship tour for the Eighth Air Force, with promise that I would return to my same unit. Well, in the course of my departure from the group back to the United States for this tour, Landry was showing his enthusiasm, liked the Republic and—or liked the P-47, prevailed upon the higher headquarters to change that program. And when I got back in December—or in January, I found that it had been put in the books that we would remain with P-47s. I stayed with the 56th quite a while after that, subsequent to that. And one day, I was given a call from General Kepner saying that, “Do you still want to fight with a P-51 organization? And if need be, we need either you or Schilling to take this new unit over that was having some difficulties.” Well, this was in late July after D-Day, 1944. So I called Schilling in and said, “Dave, you’ll never get a group unless I get shot down or I’m pulled back. There’s an officer—offer for you to get the 479th.” And he was partial, of course, to the group and knew all the types and all the rest of it. Hemmed and hawed, and he wanted the P-47. So I said, “Okay, Dave. I will take this new group. You �24 will become new group commander here.” So I got right back on the horn, called the old man, and I was transferred about two or three days to pick up this new group. EAV: Ah. HZ: The new group had P-50—no, they had— EAV: P-38s. HZ: —P-38s. And I had to fly that damn P-38 until they got it about two weeks later and got a few missions— [audio break] 01:02:04 [Photo reconnaissance operations] HZ: —film and a lot of other things. And fortunately, their efforts in that unit were to support the big bomber efforts and their bombing accessories and things like that. Assessment. So it was decided, well, we’ll run our own photo reconnaissance. And what we did was hang on with their assistance in working up in velometers, a few things like that, we hung on the armor plate of Schilling, Gabreski, and myself a K-25 camera, which is a small thing that looks like a Graphix, but it’s an aerial photography cam, on the armor plate. And on the stick was an intervalometer. So whenever we went over on a raid, we would go down to 8,000 feet after the raid was over and take pictures of this and that, especially the airfield, which were being loaded. By doing this, we had our photo lab built up a bit, and we would have the negatives on German fields right that evening after the mission. And our intelligence boys were beginning to build stuff up fast. We picked up all sorts of things and—until it became a point where the top commands were requesting copies of all our photos, such things as V-1 sites, V-2 sites, old dumps, and, of course, minute-tominute order of battle of various airfields. I had no objection to this, except to put another workload on our undermanned troops. 01:04:08 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Note Any additional notes about the item. This recording is presented in its original, unedited form. Please note that some interviews in this collection may contain adult language, racial slurs, and/or graphic descriptions of wartime violence. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Zemke, Hub, 1914-1994 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Valencia, Eugene A. Jones, M. Biographical Text <p>Hubert “Hub” Zemke was born on March 14, 1919 in Missoula, Montana. He studied forestry at Montana State University but left school in 1936 to enlist as an Aviation Cadet with the U.S. Army Air Corps. After completing flight training in 1937, he served with the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field (Virginia). In 1940, Zemke deployed to England to serve as an air observer with the Royal Air Force. At the conclusion of that assignment, he then traveled to the Soviet Union as an assistant military attaché and served as a flight instructor to Soviet pilots, teaching them how to fly their lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks.</p> <p>Zemke returned to the United States in 1942 and was appointed group commander of the 56th Fighter Group, the first fighter group to be equipped with the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. During its service in Europe, the 56th distinguished itself as a highly successful group, consistently receiving top scores in air-in-air kills during missions. The group came to be known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack,” in reference to Zemke’s firm but fair leadership style and his emphasis on aerial discipline and tactics.</p> <p>In August 1944, Zemke took command of the 479th Fighter Group, helping the unit convert from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to the North American P-51 Mustang. A few months later, in October, he was forced to bail out over enemy territory after his P-51 sustained severe damage in a storm front. Zemke was captured by German forces and imprisoned at Stalag Luft I (Germany), a prisoner-of-war camp housing Allied airmen. As the war neared its end, German officials turned control of the camp over to Zemke and the other prisoners and fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces.</p> <p>Following the end of World War II, Zemke continued his military career with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included commanding the 36th Fighter Group during the Berlin Airlift, serving in administrative posts at the Pentagon, commanding the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the U-2 Program, and serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Madrid, Spain. Zemke retired as a colonel in 1966 and established a second career in agriculture, managing an almond ranch. He passed away in 1994.</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 [Hubert Zemke oral history interview (Part 9 of 9)] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>In this nine-part oral history, Hubert “Hub” Zemke is interviewed about his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. In part nine, he continues to discuss his wartime experiences during World War II. Much of the interview focuses on Zemke’s time as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft I (Germany) and his running of the camp after German officials fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces. He describes life at the camp, his relationship with other prisoners and with Commandant Von Warnstadt, and his role as a camp leader. He also briefly touches on a number of other topics related to his service, such as his bailout and capture by German troops, the British direction-finder system operated by the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the circumstances behind his transfer to the 479th Fighter Group, and details about photo reconnaissance operations.</p> <p>The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia and a woman identified as Margery Jones (name spelling unverified), possibly Valencia’s secretary. Jones notes in the previous interview that they are at a Holiday Inn in Reno, Nevada, though the actual interview may have taken place at Stead Air Force Base, where Zemke was stationed at the time. Audio may be difficult to hear in some spots due to uneven volume levels and overlapping voices.</p> <p>The original order of the Zemke interviews is unclear, due to conflicting date and order information on the reel containers. The order presented here has been determined by an archivist using contextual clues within the dialogue.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) open reel audiotapes Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Germany Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Fighter pilots Great Britain. Women's Auxiliary Air Force North American P-51 Mustang Family Prisoners of war Stalag Luft I United States. Army Air Forces United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 479th World War, 1939-1945 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-04-28 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound reel (1 hr., 4 min., 8 sec.) : analog ; 1/4 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_211_01 2002-02-13_AV_211_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/08b55f68de8dd56a427fab94788ee3f5.jpg 159c48d71f01f243f979057705875da1 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/eadf7f52be042e8f86b4cb650e67b2ea.mp3 34a9e2bb1ffd489cd80a5988a663af5b https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/59802d515d174050aa46f085c7b4e580.pdf 3c9df139cea21bf0c086f9b96690296d PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Hubert Zemke (Part 8 of 9) Interviewed by: Eugene A. Valencia and M. Jones Interview Date: April 28, 1966 �2 Abstract: In this nine-part oral history, Hubert “Hub” Zemke is interviewed about his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. In part eight, he continues to discuss his wartime experiences during World War II. A sizeable portion of the interview focuses on Zemke’s time as an assistant military attaché in the Soviet Union, prior to the United States’ entry into the war. He describes his initial journey to the Soviet Union by convoy, his experiences working with Russian and British service members, and his work as a flight instructor for lend-lease Curtiss P40 Tomahawks. He also shares a number of stories related to his time with the 56th Fighter Group in England and comments on the development of fighter aircraft during World War II. The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia and a woman identified as Margery Jones (name spelling unverified), possibly Valencia’s secretary. Jones notes that they are at a Holiday Inn in Reno, Nevada, though the actual interview may have taken place at Stead Air Force Base, based on information on the reel’s label. Audio may be difficult to hear in some spots due to uneven volume levels and overlapping voices. The original order of the Zemke interviews is unclear, due to conflicting date and order information on the reel containers. The order presented here has been determined by an archivist using contextual clues within the dialogue. Biography: Hubert “Hub” Zemke was born on March 14, 1919 in Missoula, Montana. He studied forestry at Montana State University but left school in 1936 to enlist as an Aviation Cadet with the U.S. Army Air Corps. After completing flight training in 1937, he served with the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field (Virginia). In 1940, Zemke deployed to England to serve as an air observer with the Royal Air Force. At the conclusion of that assignment, he then traveled to the Soviet Union as an assistant military attaché and served as a flight instructor to Soviet pilots, teaching them how to fly their lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks. Zemke returned to the United States in 1942 and was appointed group commander of the 56th Fighter Group, the first fighter group to be equipped with the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. During its service in Europe, the 56th distinguished itself as a highly successful group, consistently receiving top scores in air-in-air kills during missions. The group came to be known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack,” in reference to Zemke’s firm but fair leadership style and his emphasis on aerial discipline and tactics. In August 1944, Zemke took command of the 479th Fighter Group, helping the unit convert from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to the North American P-51 Mustang. A few months later, in �3 October, he was forced to bail out over enemy territory after his P-51 sustained severe damage in a storm front. Zemke was captured by German forces and imprisoned at Stalag Luft I (Germany), a prisoner-of-war camp housing Allied airmen. As the war neared its end, German officials turned control of the camp over to Zemke and the other prisoners and fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces. Following the end of World War II, Zemke continued his military career with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included commanding the 36th Fighter Group during the Berlin Airlift, serving in administrative posts at the Pentagon, commanding the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the U-2 Program, and serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Madrid, Spain. Zemke retired as a colonel in 1966 and established a second career in agriculture, managing an almond ranch. He passed away in 1994. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �4 Index: Introduction and experiences as an air observer in England........................................................... 5 Journey by Allied convoy to the Soviet Union ............................................................................... 8 Lend-lease assignment and experiences in the Soviet Union, part one ........................................ 13 Fighter aircraft development during World War II....................................................................... 25 Rivalry between the 56th and 4th Fighter Groups ........................................................................ 27 Journey back to the United States and assignment to the 56th Fighter Group ............................. 27 Lend-lease assignment and experiences in the Soviet Union, part two ........................................ 30 Service with the 56th Fighter Group ............................................................................................. 33 �5 Hubert Zemke (Part 8 of 9) [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Introduction and experiences as an air observer in England] EUGENE A. VALENCIA: Okay, it’s rolling. [MARGERY?] JONES: [unintelligible] ace, Hub Zemke, leader of the Eighth Air Force, 56th Fighter Group. Zemke’s contribution to those fighter tactics which permitted daylight bombing of the European continent through the proper use of fighter aircraft rates only after General Claire Lee Chennault as America’s leading World War II fighter jack—tactician, a man that made possible the pursuit ship fulfilling in the European sky. As told to Gene Valencia and Don Florea—John Florea. [audio] MJ: —the Holiday Inn Hotel in Reno. The story—this is going to be told to us by Hub Zemke. EUGENE VALENCIA: MJ: [Margery?] Jones, Gene Valencia. [Margery?] Jones and Gene Valencia. [audio break] HUBERT ZEMKE: The embassy made reservations for us, and though there was a housing shortage, you had no trouble getting into the Dorchester because nobody wanted to sleep on the top three floors. So where our room was was right smack on the top floor. And after we went to bed, then we’re awakened as you—Johnny [John R. Alison] [unintelligible] out here and heard this “clonk, clonk, clonk.” We went through the escape hatch, you know, up on top side on the roof. Boy, you heard “bloom, bloom, bloom.” And, of course, you’d duck in back of those raised chimneys they had up there, until we found this was not a safe place. Whether there were bombs or not coming down, the damn shrapnel was coming down. You know, the casing? EAV: Ah. HZ: [makes sound effect] So we got off of that in a big rush. So out of curiosity, we dressed up, went downstairs. Immediately when an air raid came in—there were an awful lot of old dowagers staying in this place. Everybody descended down to the main lobby, which was better protection. And here you saw these old gals with their curlers and [laughter]— �6 God, they were an awful-looking mess, you know. Old guys, old tottery guys that— sitting down there and they’d sit and drink tea [unintelligible]. Well, you got tired of sitting there, so we went back up to the room and went to bed. Okay. Cut it. [audio break] EAV: How were you and Johnny selected? HZ: Johnny was the group operations officer of this 8th Fighter—8th Pursuit Group that had been sent to Mitchel to start—to be split up into various cadres. And he was a very junior lieutenant, of course. First lieutenant. And I was an assistant materiel officer. So a request had come in—come through from Washington stating, “Well, do the best you can. Select a materiel officer and a group operations officer to go on a special mission.” So first of all, they knew in the front office a General Bill Wise, knew in the front office—or he wasn’t a general then. He’s not—he was a—about a captain. Bill Wise—knew the mission and they wanted a—two bachelors to zap over there. Johnny wasn’t married. I was married, but since I didn’t have any children—they went through the roster back and forth for a couple days and finally called us in and said, “We got a special mission overseas for you type.” “Oh?” MJ: Why bachelors? HZ: Well, the responsibility—of course, the war hadn’t really not gone on much, and we really hadn’t—on our [unintelligible]. And this is a—something new. And they didn’t know how long we were going. They were going from three to six months, which is quite some little time. And so a lot of the people didn’t have housing, you know. And so it’s easier to push a bachelor out, zap him over. EAV: That’s SOP. HZ: And especially in wartime conditions where you’re moving families like this mess here— [audio break] HZ: —the rest of that. EAV: You were assigned different tasks. HZ: Oh, yes. To demonstrate this P-40 unit. We combatted, aerial combat, back and forth. [unintelligible] lost a— EAV: Was it apparent at that time of the P-40 was not the airplane, as you mentioned later? �7 HZ: Well, it is inferior, definitely, to the Spitfire. Oh, definitely so. In fact, the Spitfire’s performance, the later grades of them, were better in short fights, you know—defensive and no distance—than the P-47. There’s no doubt about it. EAV: Well, this— HZ: Turn inside, climb, acceleration. EAV: [unintelligible] incident people send reports back that— HZ: Continually. Well, yeah, but when you get a production line going, as you know, in the United States, you don’t turn that off and turn something else on. And this is why the RAF called over Dutch Kindelberger [James H. “Dutch” Kindelberger], North American, sat him in the same Dorchester Hotel, and in two days put the specs down for the P-51. They said, “Your American airplanes aren’t [unintelligible].” True, in time of war, you use anything that flies. But this is—was toward the end of the Battle of Britain, as you know, and therefore their production of Spitfires were catching up and this was secondhand stuff. The lead time to produce and get P-40s that were the best that we had to England takes many, many months. You know that. EAV: But it was apparent to you at the time that— HZ: Oh, it was being very, very apparently because we flew there. It was about the same performance as our Hawker Hurricane. EAV: Was it an eye-opener or a sudden shocker to you that— HZ: Yes, because, you see, we didn’t send many people overseas, and you had attachés that probably knew this, but for—this didn’t all filter down—you don’t have the—you didn’t have the people going back and forth, here, there, and yon, exchange officers and all of that. So actually, what we were kind of—were exchange officers to take care of the maintenance and the operation of the P-40 as to assist the British. Well, we found out, in short order, it didn’t take—it doesn’t take you very long to take an aircraft off and wring it out and find out in one or two flights whether you’ve got a superior airplane or whether they have. Sure. And even as to firepower. It didn’t have the firepower of the British with their three canons—two canons in each wing. We had— [crosstalk] EAV: You mentioned this later on— [audio break] �8 00:06:54 [Journey by Allied convoy to the Soviet Union] HZ: —captain, the station commander, whose name I’ve forgotten, but maybe I could look it up in my records. EAV: And then you both separated [unintelligible]— HZ: And I had gone that afternoon fishing. He had rented, for trout fishing, about 300 yards of the stream. And they gave me all this gobbledygook about the outstanding fishing in England. Of course, having fished in Montana as a boy, I was—loved trout fishing. So we went out and stalked the trout over the edge of the bank. EAV: Stalked? HZ: Stalked trout. You prend—crawled on your hands and knees. You whipped this fly back and forth and dropped it in the water. I was permitted to catch three of his trouts [sic] with a British light rod and fly. Had just gotten back to the station. It was just a matter of walking maybe a mile or so to where he leased this little stretch of water and also stocked it. He had to do his own stocking of trout. Just gotten back when he received a special call from London—it was in the late afternoon—saying it was most important that the American on station not get off station nor go anyplace and to pack immediately and that a car would be there sometime during the late evening to pick him up. So what’s this about? I haven’t done anything wrong. Then there was—that was all the message. And the group captain didn’t know what the score was. So I packed up and waited. We had tea, had dinner. And at the station gate, here came a great big old black car with two bowl-hatted types from Scotland Yard. I’ll never forget them. The first time I’ve ever met a Scotland Yard type. EAV: Are they distinctive? You can actually tell them? HZ: By gosh, they signed me over a receipt from the RAF to Scotland Yard on a piece of paper. [laughs] MJ: You must have felt like a dead body. [laughs] HZ: Yeah. Yeah, really so. And they were jovial enough. They didn’t talk about what—where I was going or what I was going to do or anything like that. But at any rate, they didn’t communicate what the hell the score was. And we drove in the dark to London and drove to Grosvenor Square to the American Embassy. EAV: You still had no idea. �9 HZ: No, not the vaguest idea. Then is when I met Johnny, and I asked him, “What the hell is this about? What you doing here?” I thought maybe he was in trouble. And I knew that I was a Christian little guy. [laughter] And so we sat down in the outer office of the ambassador. And by this time, it was 12:00, 1:00 in the morning, I guess. And there was something going on in the inner office. You could tell that. Pretty soon the door opened, and the ambassador who was—what was his name? EAV: Kennedy? HZ: No. No. He was a—he came from Maine or Vermont, and he committed suicide in the United States afterwards. Or lost his mind. But we can look it up at the time. It should be looked up. And he invited us in where the air attaché, a Brigadier General Royce [Ralph Royce] was, and Mr. Harry Hopkins, Mr. Mac—or General Mac McNarney [Joseph McNarney]. And he said, “Boys—” I’ve forgotten who said it, Hopkins or Macnamare— or McNarney. “We got a special mission for you guys,” whereupon these two lieutenants said, “Yes, sir.” [laughs] Eyes are like saucers, you know. “Johnny, you’re leaving tonight.” Does he put this down in here? EAV: I don’t know. Let—I better [unintelligible]. HZ: “You’re leaving tonight. And Zemke, you are going up northland, and you pick up all the tech orders that you can on the P-40. You are going to get three British crewmen.” Was it three? EAV: Five. HZ: Five. “Five British crewmen. And you will go on the first convoy to Murmansk and Archangel with P-40s.” Oh. “So—” Wait a minute. “Tomorrow night is when you will leave. So, Johnny, you get everything that you need.” No, “that night you will leave.” Because the next day, I went to the famous British department store with a— MJ: [unintelligible]. That’s in the— HZ: Selfridge. EAV: It is? HZ: Is it? MJ: [unintelligible]— [audio break] HZ: It was a pathetic situation when you scoop down and get two first lieutenants to— �10 EAV: They actually told you you working— HZ: Yeah. EAV: You were working for the British? HZ: So every place I went after that for the next—I don’t know, it must have taken about four or five days—I was getting these tech orders and trying to buy long underwear, Johnny’s size and [unintelligible] and getting this heavy sheepskin flying clothes and helmets for ourselves. I had these two Scotland Yard types with me. They rode the train to Glasgow and delivered me to the captain of the boat, the Llanstephan Castle. EAV: What was that? HZ: The Llan—it was a Castle-line boat. And how you spell that in Welsh, I don’t know. The Llanstephan—it’s double L, something like that, Castle. It was an old South African running boat in Britain. Turned me over to the British captain with a receipt to—[laughs]. MJ: Say the name of the ship again. HZ: Pronunciation. It is something— MJ: Or spell it. HZ: Well, I’ll try to make it—but Welsh doesn’t spell out right, you know? It’s L-L—Llan— Llanstephan. And I—it’s two words, Castle, C-A-S-T-L-E. EAV: Now, had you picked out your five crewmen by this time or [unintelligible]— HZ: No, they had provided—they were on the boat. This is one of the guys that just about shot me. EAV: Yes, sir. HZ: Yeah. An old roustabout type from Hong Kong in Middle East service. EAV: But they just—you turned over the captain of the ship, and there were the planes and the crewmen? HZ: Well, on this first boat—of course, there were only six boat that made up the first convoy. I was on the boat, and they had a quite a few other people who were going along. The British provided one squadron of Hurricanes that went to Murmansk as this first gesture, and it was commanded by—[pauses]—group captain—he was killed in [unintelligible] later on—I can find his name, too. A group captain. And it was the 401st Squadron. I remember the number. �11 EAV: Were they on the ship? HZ: And they were on the ship, too. EAV: Ah. HZ: So they had chucked these people on. They had put a couple British commies on. And the commies were all popular then, you know. And a couple MPs, Members of Parliament. EAV: British Communists? HZ: Oh yeah. Yeah, they came out of the underground then, that type. And they tried to tell us about the glorious things of the Soviet Union and all that. And we were 30 days on this. Anyway, there were six ships. And this was the first gesture of the British on lease-lend to the Soviet Union. So there was this fighter squadron that worked for that summer in the Murmansk area with Hurricanes. And they had the—on these six ships, they had Hurricanes, and they had, oh, maybe a half a dozen boxes of P-40s. They were boxed up. And then they had some Centurion tanks, and they had armament and whatnot. We then left from there after four or five days where you had to stay on the boat and went to Scapa Flow. Now, Scapa Flow is a big, big British naval base in the Orkney Islands way up in the north. And from there, also, the escort for the military—or the naval escort for the boats formed up, and then that’s where the Argus, which was an aircraft carrier, zapped in. And then we started on “ze voyage.” Well, needless to say, the Germans were in Norway, so we [unintelligible] with this 10, 12—8, 10, 12-knot convoy to Reykjavik, Iceland. Yeah, we went northwest. We were there about a day loading on water and whatnot. We went to the Greenland coast and due north to the icecap. And then we started east. [laughs] Jesus, what a route. Well, in the meantime, all I was doing was talking to these commies and the British types and studying Russian like mad. I was on there about 30 days. EAV: Anything interesting happen then? HZ: Well, no big fights, but a great amount of political stuff. Oh, well, we were under attack a couple, three times by submarines. And fortunately, they didn’t get any. And going past the Cape North when we had several alerts by the first of the Ju 88s that were antisubmarine. But the fog settled down, fortunately. Christ, you could hear them flying up there. You could hear them flying up there. Fog settled down and they were just going a dead reckoning course, zoomp-zoomp. And I don’t know whether you recall, but our radar on boats weren’t too good, though they had radar, I guess. But the way they followed each other and you were in convoy �12 force, they threw a big, long cable out from a boat in the head, you know. And then they had something like you scrape off a sidewalk with snow, you know, a sled sort of thing. And then a pilot—they sat him right on the bow of the boat—would yell up to the topside and would be watching that splash. You couldn’t see that damn boat because of the fog. And it really came down. Boy, it saved us. Until we got to Novaya Zemlya—and that’s the island. I’ve got an atlas here. Novaya Zemlya, which is the island way up in the north where they do the atomic explosions. And then swung down and went down into the White Sea and into Archangel. MJ: Did you acquire some warm weather clothes or were you still— HZ: Yeah. Oh, hell, yes. Yeah, I had—I chiseled the British till you couldn’t see straight. Had enough. And we wore it all the time. God, it stunk after six months till you couldn’t see straight. EAV: Were the communists trying to convert you? HZ: Oh yeah, all the time. And, of course, you have to—who do you learn Russian from? From the—those types. Now, onboard that thing was the first Free Polish, Free Czech legations that were going back to set up embassies. And, of course, you know, when the war ended, they—[makes sound effect]—eliminated all those guys because they weren’t good communists. So you talked with these guys in the conditions, naturally, that you’re curious about it. And you took lessons every damn day. I studied eight hours a day on that thing. There wasn’t anything else to do. And we saw a few little movies and things like that. But it was jam-packed. Man, that thing was jam-packed with this RAF squadron. EAV: What kind of food did you have? HZ: Oh, typically British. Kippered herring and that stuff, you know. But we were just lucky as hell. And the first one got through without being—having anything sunk. EAV: Hub, on that cable that goes from the lead ship— HZ: Yeah. They had maybe about 1,000 feet out. EAV: A thousand feet. HZ: And they’ve got about a—well, 500 foot, 1,000 feet—they have a—like you scrape off a sidewalk. A V wedge. Now as you go along, pull it along, this throws a big wake and [unintelligible]. EAV: Ah. Ah. �13 HZ: And this is what this—it was right ahead of the boat about 20, 30 yards. EAV: And this guy is up in front watching the— HZ: Yeah, and zapping back— EAV: I see. HZ: —to the pilot house, “Power, cut it.” And Jesus, we went days in that fog like that. Now, how the hell they—[laughs]. EAV: What did they do at night? HZ: We checked on the—you reduced to speeds at times about four to five knots. Christ, it had hardly—you could hardly see the water going past the boat. [laughs] MJ: Well, how did the lead ship find his way—their way? HZ: Well, you do this by dead reckoning and navigation, you know. And how they kept those escorts is beyond me. EAV: What type of an escort did you have? HZ: They had the—well, the aircraft carrier Argus was close to us for a while, especially going over to Reykjavik. But then with its supporting little destroyers and stuff like that, it moved quite out to the side. And it wouldn’t have been any good anyway. And it didn’t go all the way over there. It went past the North Cape and then came back. And then they had—well, they had quite a few little—what’s smaller than— EAV: Corvette? HZ: Yeah, they had quite a few of those. Maybe a half dozen of those. They had more damn battlewagons—I mean, more naval stuff than they had— EAV: Convoy. HZ: —convoy stuff. But this was a first of a first, and they wanted to get that son of a bitch through. 00:21:14 [Lend-lease assignment and experiences in the Soviet Union, part one] EAV: What was your first opinion when you pulled into your [unintelligible]— �14 HZ: [unintelligible], Archangel? EAV: Archangel. HZ: Well, Archangel is a town—it’s on the Dvina River, D-I-V-E-N-A [sic]. And this is above the Arctic Circle, as I recall. And it’s a low country with just miles and miles of tundra and spruce and aspen trees. Well, the docks were all wood, and it’s a razzmatazz, broken-down thing. You could tell that. EAV: Was there any delegation to meet you? Was Johnny at the dock? HZ: No, John didn’t get there for—he got tied up with his diplomatic stuff. And I didn’t know where the hell he was. I expected him, but Russians just don’t trust anybody, even in wartime. But he came up two, three weeks later, I guess. EAV: Who was the first to greet you? HZ: The first to greet me was a— EAV: That knew you as— HZ: What? EAV: —Lieutenant Zemke. HZ: Johnny. But I meant—of course, the Russians had people there, their first delegations and all that stuff. You know, I didn’t know any of the Russians. Oh, hell, no. They were— EAV: They were expecting you as the— HZ: They knew that it was coming in, sure. And you had to have a harbor patrol boat to get up this Dvina River into the dock area. But there were just miles of pulpwood. This is really a type of pulp center. MJ: Was it— HZ: Just piled up in stacks. MJ: The little short pulpwood? HZ: Yeah. You know, where the small spruce trees [unintelligible]. MJ: No, that’s what I [unintelligible]— HZ: Just miles of it. And, of course, this was exported to—I don’t know, to Europe— �15 MJ: They called them logs. Being from the West Coast, I didn’t think these were logs. Up in northern Canada. HZ: Right. Well, at any rate, Jesus, what got me is we weren’t allowed off the boats for about the first three days, you know. The Russians came onboard [unintelligible]. But you could look over there at—all the lumberjacks were women. All of them. There wasn’t a damn man on the whole thing. Maybe they had a foreman, whatnot. And these gals with their valenkis—our felt boots, you know—running around there and using peaveys, and holy jumping Jehosaphers, what is this? But they didn’t—weren’t mechanized either. And Christ, there was work. [whistles] What a—but all these crews were—later, I found most of the women were section gang people, too. Christ, and you’d see 10 of them lift one of these iron rails and [unintelligible]. And it [unintelligible]. And you were—later on, I’ll tell you about the— EAV: [unintelligible]— HZ: —slave labors building Tenth Kilometer. [audio break] HZ: After the third day and I was cleared that I was the right guy—and they had expected about 20 American technicians. They didn’t expect just one person. Well, wait a minute. I was second lieutenant then. One second lieutenant and five GIs. They had expected a real effort. They were disappointed, as you well know. But anyway, they wouldn’t let us live with the Russian troops at the airfield. There was a railroad spur that came—a railroad line that went past there to Archangel. This was south of Archangel. Tenth Kilometer was the name of the place. In Russian, I’ve forgotten what the name was. But they had a special spur built for us where they had two sleeping cars and one dining car, old wooden jobs. EAV: Hub— [audio break] HZ: Well, the roads because it’s [unintelligible] is made of just logs laid down. And since there’s plenty of wood there, they just lay logs down here in a continual line, and they’re about 15 feet wide. And, of course, after—when it rains and the bark begins to decay off of them, it gets just slipperier than hell, doesn’t it, huh? So it was about four or five miles to the airfield itself where the airplanes were being assembled. And, of course, this thing, this airfield, was being cut out of the tundra. And it was unique the way they built it. They drove logs into the ground for piling, like you �16 build a dock. And then they put planks on top of this for a kilometer-and-a-half long, and it was 300 feet—meters wide. It was a wood runway. Of course, when the snows came, then everything froze up and they just rolled that big thing. You could have never gotten it off. But in short order, you wondered, “Well, who the hell are these people that are being [unintelligible all the time?” And they had hundreds of them working there, all working by hand. And, you know, these troikas-type, three-horse-drawn little carts taking mud out. And you had to have drainage ditches, and, Jesus, that—the boys were there in the morning before we got there. They’d be shoveling in this muck and be stepping through the ice. In September, when it started to get cold in the arctic, ooh. EAV: Is this where your driver ran into trouble? HZ: Well, it’s the same place. But at any rate, I’m talking about the slave labor. Well, the slave labor were both Poles that had been captured when Germany and Russia had gone—had made an agreement to split Poland in half. And this was the Polish Army types. And they just died like flies. Most of them were dying of pneumonia and things like that. And, Christ, they’d carry them back every night. [unintelligible] these damn Russian guards just forcing them like dogs [unintelligible]. They moved in companies, you know, back and forth. Yeah. I saw hundreds of people die, I’ll tell you. Hundreds of them. MJ: Were there [unintelligible] besides Poles? HZ: Well, a lot of them were political prisoners, Russian. And I’ll tell you, it doesn’t make any difference if you’re a Russian or a Pole or anything. Once you get inside that jail system—[whistles]—you are an enemy of the state and you are lower than dogs, I’ll tell you. So a lot of them were Russians. And they used to—well, I used to walk past them with Johnny, just on a walk, you know. Christ, they’d chittle and everything else. [unintelligible] cigarette and you’d throw [unintelligible], stuff like that. But we were always being escorted fairly closely by the—what was known then by the NKVD. And one man in particular, who was a lieutenant, a political officer. So you never got really to know these guys. And you were kind of wondering what the hell the score was, but [unintelligible] then watching them. MJ: You probably wondered if it was good to know them. HZ: Hmm? Why, you could soon find out that the—by that time, you had a little Russian language—that they were Poles. And these guys would talk with you. Hell, you couldn’t talk with them. I didn’t know any Polish. Now, some—they had some interpreters up �17 there, English-speaking. But I found out that I could converse like mad in German with those guys. Boy, here I was, an American talking German, fighting the Germans. So this helped out a lot, too. But little by little, the Russian came on. I never did get really terrific in the months with Russian, but it isn’t too hard a language. It isn’t as hard as it may seem. They had no articles, so all they do is put a prefix on a word. Take a root word—you learn root words and take a prefix, and pretty soon you get their guttural expressions and—or you put a suffix if it’s a past tense. And it begin to come, and so you could talk light chatter back and forth in Russian. And the aeronautical terms, since you heard this and heard this and heard this, [unintelligible] and whatnot, this begin to come, too. EAV: Well, Hub, on the driver. We skipped that. HZ: Now, the case of the driver was we were picked up one morning, Johnny and I, by this NKVD lieutenant. EAV: Oh. HZ: Yeah, they—as you recall—we’ve got to go to lunch, too, when he comes back. As you recall, Henry Ford sold all his machine tools for the Model A to the Russians. EAV: I didn’t know that. HZ: And they turned out Model As till you couldn’t see straight. And in particular, their little trucks. You didn’t know that? Oh yeah. So, sure, they turned out Model T Fords. And a practical little car. It really was. And so they—we were picked up by one of these little jobs every morning. Christ, we were elite. EAV: [unintelligible] Model T? HZ: No, a Model A. EAV: Model A. HZ: Model A. Not a Model T. And we were picked up by this guy, and he was driving the car. Of course, they were all equipped with pistols and whatnot. Well, right ahead of us— I’ve forgotten what kind of a truck it was, but it was kind of a little pickup. And this “bump-de-bump.” And I thought, goddamn, that—it was a drizzly day, and it was wet. This guy was going a little too fast this morning. And then, sure enough, we came to a bend in the road and—[whistles]. He was kind of weaving back and forth. And slip, blough, and over went the truck—I guess it was about 100 yards ahead of us—onto the side. �18 So we drop next to this thing—or right a little bit in back. This lieutenant was just madder than hell. You could tell that. Well, I would, too, I suppose. MJ: The lieutenant’s your driver? HZ: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. He was the NKVD type that was taking us to work. So he gets out of the car and walks around. About this time, this Russian driver—a service type, a young guy, I’d say he was 18 years old, something like that, 18, 20—lifts open the door of the truck and he stamps out. [laughs] He was—[imitates stomping feet]— beating the dirt off of himself a little bit. And the [unintelligible] grabbed him by the check—chest, pulled out his pistol, and went “bom” and shot him right there. MJ: Just hanging onto him, he shot him? HZ: Yeah. Powder burns on the guy’s tunic. MJ: In the chest or in the— HZ: Right smack in the chest. Jesus Christ, what is going on here? And John looked at me, and I looked at him. [laughs] We had—this guy could speak English, this NKVD type. And he was specially planted out there. There’s no doubt in my mind. And here the damn guy is dead, blomp, right next to the truck. Well, zappo. I didn’t say a word to John, and John didn’t say a word to me. He came around here, sat in the car, and drove off. And, of course, I’m looking at him, and John’s looking at him. He makes the first move, and he said, “This guy destroyed government property.” Well, you don’t think I’m going to get in an argument with him. [laughter] Okay, he destroyed government property. So what? There’s a dead guy up there. So we went zapping along. Of course, Johnny and I was talking after we got out of the car and up there. But it didn’t faze him at all. He wasn’t court-martialed. He wasn’t tried or anything. When we came back that evening, the truck and the guy was gone, the dead guy. He gave me one real fine impression of what’s going on, you know. MJ: You weren’t about to steal any of the Russians’ property after that, were you. HZ: No. Well, that wasn’t theft. It was just— [audio break] HZ: —real well. The embassy that came over, they then set themselves up in Moscow. And periodically, between convoys, we’d run out of airplanes, and so we didn’t have anything to do. So they’d fly us south to Moscow. And we wanted to see Moscow anyway. And on one of the occasions, the—all the foreign embassies were evacuated. It’s when the Germans got close to Smolensk, which is about 60 miles, almost had Moscow encircled. �19 Well, they threw all the diplomats, including us, on a train. And I think Johnny probably has a tale in there, has he? About this? It took six days to go to a place called Kuybyshev on the Volga River, where the foreign embassies were set up again. Well, while we were there waiting to go back up to the north, by this time, the winter had set really in, the Russian winter, and those steppes are just colder than—[laughs]. It’s like Saskatchewan, you know. Hoo. We then were told by Ivan—yeah, the American attaché, Ivan Yeaton to find out about what they were doing about forming the new Polish Army. And that Polish Army eventually was formed and went to Iran. And it was under a General [Andres? Likely referring to General Władysław Anders] and fought on the Allied side up the Italian straits up to the—but anyway, they wanted certain information. And, Christ, American government was asking for it all the time, you know. So we got to know the Poles real well. And on one occasion—and there were two incidents, in particular—you would see refugee trains going to the east and troop trains coming to the west and refugee trains going to the east. God, it was pathetic. They were going in stock cars, you know, anyway they could go. EAV: This is in the winter? HZ: Yeah. EAV: Stock cars. HZ: Yeah. Oh, hell, there wasn’t any heat on that elite train that we went on. It was terrible. Boy. Oh, man. Cold? Well, Johnny can give you some real good stories, if you want, on that stuff, too. I went down to—with one of the Russian—or one of the Polish attachés one day to check a train that was bringing in some Poles that were to go down to—toward their training— new training area, which was north of the Caspian Sea. And so we went down there. And he had the—you got a kind of a bill of lading and notification that, okay, there are a certain number of parties who will come in, zomp-zomp-zomp. You could tell whether people were living or not in the train because they had boxcars and they’d have small ventilating holes about that long and about this wide, and they—because of the heat of the bodies in there, you could see the steam coming out of them. And it might have had cattle, too, but mostly it was this refugee stuff or the troop train stuff. Mostly humans. So we went down there and waited and waited in the damn cold. And it was just like going to a—going to any railroad yard. Not the depot. Zapped up and down it and, hell, couldn’t find this thing. Went back and forth. And I’ll be a son of a gun, the Poles found the car that these guys were coming in, and it was all boarded up. And I said, “Well, another one of the damn Russian tricks, you know.” They locked them in there �20 supposedly or something like that. And they won’t turn anybody over. Well, why is it boarded up? So we got a crowbar and went back and got a crowbar and ripped the boards off. Jesus, they’re all corpses, frozen solid. They were delivered [unintelligible]. But there must have been 50 of them in there. All dead. EAV: And who were these people now? HZ: Poles. They’d been bringing them out of Siberia to send them down to this—oh, a real fine delivery. On another occasion, Johnny and I were down there, and you’d—the refugee trains going from the burned-out area, you know, the scorch-the-earth policy, were Russians themselves. And hell, you couldn’t go down to someplace and check a piece of baggage in and expect it to ever get anyplace. You just didn’t do that, either. You carried anything that you could anytime and if you got there, okay. Well, this train came in, and it was piled up with a hell of a lot of Russians. And they just overflowed, you know. Well, naturally, if a train is going, oh, eight or ten hours, zompzomp-zomp-zomp. And there are no private relief facilities on boxcars that I know of, and everybody is mixed up with everybody else. So the natural thing is when a train stops, the whole damn thing gets off. Boom, 2,000 or 3,000 people, and they take care of themselves and everything like that. Well, we were [unintelligible] and thinking what a damn situation this is. And the railroad yards were filthy. God, this is total war. It really is. Well, fortunately, it was cold and everything was frozen. You know, the [unintelligible]. Anyway, they didn’t have a very good system of alerting people to get back on. And usually, the general system was blowing the train whistle, and you—they’d blow the train whistle back and forth, and, blomp, people know what the score was, and they’d all jumped on. Well, we walked past this one gal, this little child. And she was a hell of a cute little kid. They’ve got some good-looking little kids. They really have. And in their nursery systems, they just dress them up to the peak of their lives and they walk around with these little bundled fur things and got them all regimented, you know, like they have over in Europe. And we noted that this little kid was about four or five years old. Real cute little job. God, the whistle blows. We were way down the track. The whistle blows and on jumps the—[addressing newcomer] Hi, Smitty. SMITTY: HZ: Hello, sir. On jumps the crowd. Pretty soon, it goes chug-chug-chug and moves out of town. We’re walking back. The mother had missed her child, and here was that goddamn poor little kid sitting on the track there. Who the hell was going to take care of that kid? Nobody. �21 MJ: How old was she? HZ: About four or five. Damn train had pulled out. Mom had run in the rush with maybe a half dozen other kids. [whistles] Christ. So we take them over to the stationmaster and he says, “What the hell am I supposed to do with her?” Hundreds are going through. Hundreds. Oh, brother. They just didn’t care. “One life? [unintelligible].” Well, we said, “Christ Almighty, two bachelors. What are we going to do with kids? There’s thousands of them around here.” So we just left her there at the station. A cruel goddamn world, I’ll tell you that. Yeah. Here was this little kid crying and crying, train pulled out. Zap. Telegraph ahead? For one kid? Hell, no. But they were fighting a real war. [unintelligible] real tough. And not all of them were all in favor of the communistic system. Smitty, do you want to see me? S: [unintelligible] HZ: All right. Okay. There you have two incidents. Boy, we saw a lot of other ones, but along into the night. EAV: Well, Hub, when you talked to Smirnov [possibly referring to Aleksey Smirnov], the— HZ: The Russian-type up in the north? EAV: Russian-type and his apparent shunning of you in the—at the opera. HZ: Well, he—yeah. EAV: In Moscow. That was—that didn’t come off in the tape. Can we get that? HZ: It didn’t? Well— EAV: Smirnov was a Russian ace. HZ: He was the Russian commander in the north responsible for the airfield and the construction there. Now, this guy had two Orders of Lenin, I told you, which is a—gives him a statue in town and he gets free rail rides and an elited [sic] type and probably a couple bucks extra, like our Legion—or Medal of Honor. The only time I really talked to him—and he and I had walked together like the German commandant, you know, down the railroad track or something like that. And he expressed himself very thoroughly and very openly. And, of course, he had been out of the country. He had fought in Spain on the Red side. And this is where he got these two Orders. He’d also fought in Mongolia. EAV: Oh, yes. �22 HZ: And he had four or five out in Mongolia against the Japs. And he had been married to a doctor. And I’ve forgotten now whether—I think they had a couple of children, but the state was taking care of them. But he had seen his wife of two years before. Marriage is a kind of a—was then a kind of a peculiar little thing. It’s gotten a little stronger now, but you—if you want to marry some gal, you go over to the courthouse and sign in and give them two bucks. If you want a divorce, the first guy goes up and gives another two bucks, and you’re divorced. It was about as simple as that. But he did—he was a family man, after a fashion. And she was a doctor, and, of course, she was pressed right in and working hard with the system. And he said, “My only objection to all of this, I’m an elite type.” And his quarters were not as good as this room, I’ll tell you. Terrible. In all of my life, except for these two medals, I can pick up anything I want in two suitcases and move it. What kind of a life is this after he’d been in the west? We bought, as I told you, Life magazines, reading material and whatnot, and they lay in that dining hall. Boy, those guys said, “That’s propaganda.” They never looked at it. None of the Russians. Propaganda. New York City life? Ha. Well, the first thing is, I told you, also, they expected that, as a technician, that I’d be one of these Charlie Chaplin, waxed-moustache guys with the cellulose collar and a dapper little type. And they didn’t believe that, “Why, hell, he grows a beard,” you know. “He can get as dirty as anyone.” They had the worst conception of what an American capitalist should look like. And for us to fly those airplanes in that stinking weather and off that stinking field. “Would you do that over in the United States?” “Well, how the hell do you think we do it,” you know. Yeah, they had real warped ideas. And, of course, I had warped ideas on the Russians, too. But they reminded me, the fighter troops, of just like a Northwest lumber camp, a bunch of lumberjacks. Rough and tough, brusque guys, loved vodka, got stinking drunk at times, laughed like mad, beat you on the back, you know. Just like— MJ: Eat three times as much as anyone else. HZ: Eat three times as much as—and they did get better food, you know. And they—you eat a lot of food with fat in up for the heat factor, you know. Jesus, I’d eat some of those fried potatoes every so often, and they had cutlets and things like that. Special diets for us. Oh, boy. Special food. And the Russians used to like to come in and eat with us, you know, the top types. MJ: Did you have any game up there? HZ: What? MJ: Did you have any game up there? �23 HZ: Yes. Well, this wasn’t interesting. There wasn’t any—nobody’s allowed to go hunting, but I professed I loved to go hunting. And in my northwestern part of the United States, there’s good hunting and whatnot, and I’d like to go hunting up there. And so they said, “Okay, okay, okay, okay.” And I heard about reindeer. So okay, okay, okay. And then I forgot about it and damn, came the—came the snows in the end of September, middle of September, freezing and whatnot. I’d long forgotten this thing. One day, I get tapped on the back by Smirnov, “Okay, want to go hunting?” “Sure.” So they zapped me in, and they get a couple of military rifles, and we zap around off the field a ways. And they had been scouting this all the time, keep this in mind. Zap, we go around the corner, and here’s a whole damn big herd of them. And they say, “Okay, which one do you want to shoot?” So I shot a reindeer at about 20 yards. [laughter] Christ. EAV: Now, this is the same Smirnov that when you met him in Moscow— HZ: Yeah. Well, now, we would fly down—and they like entertainment and whatnot, and we’d fly down in one of their DC-3s. You know, they have many of them. And they were under lease to them, Douglas DC-3s. They build them. EAV: I didn’t know that. HZ: Well, they were stripped out, and they—we would—everybody’d pile on a little bit of stuff, and we’d go to Moscow, which was about 600, 800 miles to the south. That isn’t too far away, you know. Right down—you could tell this—right down through the forest is one stinking little railroad track that went up to the north there. And they were [unintelligible], and you’d see a little patch cut around a station with their little—their [unintelligible]-type cupola churches, stuff like that, wooden log houses, down in Moscow. When we got down there, of course, they had harped and harped and harped about the great theater, the Bolshoi Theater. And I must say that the performance of Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky’s, with Olga Lepeshinskaya as the ballerina—she was the top ballerina. She was married to Beria, the guy that was blomp. Hoo, was this done in an outstanding style. And here, Johnny and I would always get frontline seats. I saw it three or four times. I just love it. Sit there with a turtleneck sweater, and an A-4s jacket and— EAV: They didn’t have much opera in Missoula, did they? Or ballet? HZ: No, no. Well, the university had a little bit. But then I—when I came back, because having seen them over there, I went to see the Ballet de Russe in New York City. Not quite up to that. But we saw quite a bit of the stuff. Anyway, the colonel went, too, and— �24 he didn’t go with us, as immediately, he took off in some direction. I never saw him again, except running into him. And you walk, just like the Western style over here, between acts, up and down the foyers. You get a little bit of pink tea if there’s any for sale or something like that. And I saw him sitting up in the box. [unintelligible]. Yeah. “Hey, the chief is up there. So, hmm, we’ll run him down between the acts or the intermission.” Saw him in the foyer, walked [unintelligible], and say, “Hey, [unintelligible]?” I forgot. How do you say—que, que, que, que, que. Oh, I’m thinking in Spanish now. “Como estas?” [speaking Russian] is what you say [unintelligible]. Boy, this guy, you would think I had walked into the complete—most complete stranger that you ever saw in your life. He didn’t know me. He’d never seen me. So when we get back up in the north, hey, he’s there again. Say, “What is this?” And he says, “If you want me to live—or if I want you to live, don’t you ever talk to me in Moscow.” You know. “Don’t you ever.” Boy, they had a deathly fear of getting zapped in collaboration and all that. Okay. So I saw him several times when we went down to various places. But after I left, I never saw him again. After we left and went to Kuybyshev. But he—what he ever amounted to or what he didn’t—a brilliant man, brilliant, as a Russian. Yeah. Yep, he really was. MJ: Were the Russians generally large people? HZ: No. Johnny was a giant. You’ve met John. We saw several of their parades. You know, they have their annual parade like the Red Star—the Red Square Parade. And their rifles are the normal size, and they’ve got a big, long triple-bayonet, you know, on it. And some of those damn rifles and bayonets were a lot taller than the troops. And John said, “Christ, I’m in my element,” you know. [laughter] Little dinky-dinky guys. And the average Russian guy is two or three inches shorter. Our average man’s height, I think, used to be about five-nine. The average Russian’s height’s about five-six. They have some big men, but the average height is—and they complained about the cockpits, you know. Their pilots were a lot smaller. And there were a couple women pilots up there. EAV: You ever meet any of the women pilots? HZ: Yeah, yeah. I never got to talk to them very long, but yeah, sure, I—they had a hell of a [unintelligible], and they fought actively. You know, ours—our little WASP things were just transport-types. Christ, they—zapping them. One of the things in particular, the machine guns—you got to go to eat? The machine guns on the P-40 were—there were two under the wing in this P-40. They had two up in the cowling. And with the propeller turning over, it had to be synchronized like [unintelligible]. Now, this started one of the fights around the place, whether I commanded the [unintelligible]. These people are not—these British types are �25 [unintelligible]. At any rate, if—unless you turn this propeller over at normal speed, the synchronization isn’t effective. Well, one of these blow jokes left the gun switches on, and in starting up, it just goes—[makes sound effect]—and it isn’t going. And it’s—oh, it’s—I think it was about 1,200 RPM that—before it really started to synchronize properly. It shot between the spaces in the blade, you know. [hits table with hand] Bom, stops it. The machine guns go off—[makes sound effect]. What’s going on? So we walk over there, and here is a [unintelligible] .50-caliber hole in one of my blades. And where you get another blade? Back in the United States someplace. Well, what we have to do with blades over here is we have to set up a balancing system. It’s complicated, you know, and you have to balance this damn thing. The Russians went flop, filled that hole with some damn lead. [laughter] I never knew what airplane I test flew or where it went. And I said, “Hey, you can’t do this thing. This is going to vibrate in due time here, and it’ll just zap it.” And Smirnov said, “Forget about it. These things are only going to last about 16—15, 16 hours in combat, and then they’ll be all shot to pieces anyway. We’ll have plenty of [unintelligible].” Okay. Boy, they used them. EAV: Old power takeoffs [unintelligible]. HZ: Well, we—they knew. And we went—we translated in the—before Johnny got there had translated the tech orders. And they knew those things back and forth, and they worked these things out pretty well. And they listened to what cruise control was and anything they could. But there was a real war going on, and anything they could throw into battle, they threw in, you know. Yeah. And P-40s, they went up to—we tried to go with them. We got within that ace of getting down to where they’re operating and then the top echelon said no. However, we were the only guys who had lived with the Bolshevik troop in 20 years. And you can imagine, when Johnny and I went down to Moscow, how the embassies and the attachés jumped on us for information. Holy Christ. See, the Finnish front was right up in that area. It wasn’t as active as down—but how do you live zomp-zomp-zomp-zomp. Yeah, living right with them. Exactly. Okay. Let’s go eat. My tanks are running out. [audio break] 00:54:10 [Fighter aircraft development during World War II] HZ: The P-47 was not equipped with an outside tank to begin with, or any other American fighter aircraft at the time. The first radius of action and the first missions that we went on were fighter sweeps, as you probably recall. And to penetrate only 175 miles from �26 England, which was better than Spitfires by far, but still wasn’t going to give the bomber escort or deep penetration in Germany. So this was really not—realized by the higher command, something had to be done. Now, the first tank they gave us was a big 200gallon cardboard tank which leaked badly, and half of the airplanes would abort going back and run into suction troubles and—because of high-altitude lack of pressurization. And they were a dismal failure. And the Americans, experimenting with the British forces, developed a metal—small metal tank, 75-gallon one, which allowed us to go 50 more miles radius of action deeper in. Of course, the Germans would soon learn to where our radius of action were, and they’d stand waiting for the bombers at that point and watch us go home. But we caught them several times with extending ranges. Further, the first of our missions, because the P-47 was such a poor accelerator and such a heavy airplane, we flew around the courses at combat speed, max combat speed, which is about 75 percent of your gross of your—gross horsepower. And this burned up gasoline like mad. Immediately, people began to work on in the organization of increased deficiencies in cruise control. As you know, the leader never moves his throttle, or seldom moves his throttle, trying to keep the formation together. But the abilities of the boys to hold on was so marginal, throttle—the amount of throttle that they could use that at high speeds they could hardly hold on. Anyway, the improvements in cruise control found that we could lean out the mixture and lean out the mixture, got better consumption and, of course, enabled those people to—who flew formations to have better control of their airplane, which improved the range. Then a larger tank, which I’ve forgotten, about a 120- or 150-gallon tank, was put under the bottom, which again increased our range. By the time the end of the war, as you know, with two tanks on each wing, we were going all the way around—we had P-47s all the way around Berlin and back again, which was some 575 miles. Now, the P-38 and the P-51 still had better advantages and—for gasoline consumption and also for the tanks that they carry, especially the P-38, which carried a terrific big tank under each engine nacelle—or each side of the cockpit. It didn’t help it in combat any, but at least it could be ferried a long, long ways. This is the most important factor in pushing deeper and deeper into Germany. If you read the reports of the bombing surveys in Europe and interrogation of Göring, when he was asked what was the most important thing that brings to your mind in the air, one [unintelligible] the war was the introduction of the long-range fighter, which we never believed could be developed. Well, as you know, the P-51 flew all the way from—in mass formation, combat formation, from England to Poltava, Russia and from Poltava, Russia to Bari, Italy, and from Bari, Italy back to England again, and could combat in any of those stretches in there. This is what should be brought up in— �27 EAV: [unintelligible] [audio break] 00:59:05 [Rivalry between the 56th and 4th Fighter Groups] EAV: 48. Okay, [unintelligible]. HZ: This pertains to the rivalry that was developed between the 4th Group and the 56th, and in particular where Colonel Bobby Burns, the commander of the 8th Fighter Group—the VIII Fighter Command operation—it is not group—Command operation—had received certain officers from the 4th Group who worked up the daily operation orders and gave the missions to the various groups. Needless to say, these people were partial to their own group, which soon saw the 56th Fighter Group getting the end of the stick. And Bobby was kind of partial to the 4th Group. So to get back into the good graces, I offered two officers, including one of my squadron commanders, Colonel Tukey [Philip E. Tukey], Lieutenant Colonel Tukey, to be placed on his immediate staff in the combat ops to overcome this back-of-the-scene politics. For example, on escort missions into Germany, there were certain areas where with—it was well known that the German fighters would come up. They didn’t come out over the sea, the North Sea, nor did they come out over the North Sea when there was a withdrawal of the mission when they were coming back out. But to be placed repeatedly on escort from the English coast to Holland or very shallow into Holland or France or on withdrawal action, you would never get a victory. So this was countered by putting people on the staff of General Bobby Burns—he later became a general—and to overcome the counteractions of the 4th people that were put on the same staff. This then worked it out. But there were many heated battles in this combat room after that, too, because of this rivalry. 01:01:24 [Journey back to the United States and assignment to the 56th Fighter Group] EAV: Hub, before we go any further, why don’t we go ahead with these questions— HZ: All right. EAV: —and then we’ll see if they come up. HZ: All right. �28 EAV: You might recognize them. These are the ones that were [unintelligible]. I need a little break. [sound of papers being shuffled] Going back to the Russian situation, what were the events that led to your departure from Russia, your return, and those briefings, if any, when you left Russia? HZ: We’d been sent to England for a three- to six-month stint with the British Fighter Command. And because of lack of competent people in the British and working with the British with their lease-lend aircraft to the Soviet Union, we were then extended and sent to the Soviet Union. Well, this was well and good, as long as the United States was not in a war. But on the December the 7th, Johnny and I were in the Soviet Union, as you know. This changed the entire aspect of our assignments. And there was no use doing lease-lend test flying, as far as we were concerned, for the rest of the war when our people were beginning to fight and Pearl Harbor had occurred and all the rest of that. So a request was made to—direct to General Ivan—or Colonel Ivan Yeaton, the air attaché, to be sent back to the United States, that we be allowed to return. And the answer that came back said that, “Okay. One of you can return. One of you has to stay.” So Johnny and I talked it over, and since I was married—ha, ha—they say—and Johnny said, “Okay. You can go. I’ll get out of here someplace—somehow myself.” So we then got a hold of the attaché and said, “Okay, you go.” And so then the problem was how the hell to get out of Russia because the only way out of the Russia, the north, was froze in. Go by Trans-Siberian railroad with your little parcel and package to fly to Vladivostok and see whether you couldn’t get a—some sort of boat to go across the United States—Japan was in the war, you know—or to wait till spring and go out through Murmansk or to go down through the south. About a week later, a British airplane came in—we were at Kuybyshev then, on the Volga River—a British airplane came in and said, “Okay. We can get you as far as Kuybyshev.” Wait a minute. “Tehran.” So I hopped on board that and went down as far as Tehran. And then it was a matter of chisel-chisel back home from there, flying any way you could. Went down through the Middle East, Egypt, down through Khartoum, and by accident caught a Pan American flying boat coming back from Java that delivered .50-caliber ammunition and flew across to Natal and back home. And it took me about—took me till March, from January to March, to get home. EAV: How do you [unintelligible]? HZ: [unintelligible]. So—what? EAV: Checked in at the—or with the War Department? �29 HZ: Well, I checked in at Charlotte, North Carolina. This is where I thought the group was. Well, the group had moved up to Connecticut. [laughs] They had long [unintelligible]. The Charlotte—North Carolina commander, he didn’t know who I was and didn’t give a damn. [laughs] What the heck’s a lieutenant wandering around in a silly stupor? He doesn’t even know what’s going on, a few things like that. So, okay. Zappo [unintelligible]. I reported up the line and founded it a little—the group was at Teaneck, New Jersey in a National Guard armory. [laughs] There wasn’t an airfield or anything else around. It was pathetic. Yeah. EAV: Well, how did you get your orders—or how were you informed to report to the 56th? HZ: Well, the orders are very simple, you know. You got [unintelligible] lines all the way across to all the embassies. This came right through. Sure. EAV: So you knew that— HZ: They never knew where we—I was in the group. It went right to the War Department all the time. But the little fighter group in—the 56th, which was in—had been split off at Mitchel Field, had been sent to Charlotte, North Carolina, and from Charlotte, they bounced back up in the north. And they were splitting other cadres off. And this guy was just a name on the roster. They didn’t know who he was. And he would had been gone so long that—my God, I was gone a year. Finally gave up. MJ: You said you took a Pan Am plane across to where? HZ: Natal. MJ: How do you spell— HZ: Natal? N-A-T-A-L. EAV: T-L-E, right? HZ: No. Natalé, that would be. You go across from—we went from Khartoum to Léopoldville down in the Congo. We landed on the Congo River. And Natal is the furthermost extension of South America that goes to the east. EAV Hm-hmm [affirmative]. HZ: And it’s right up—just a little north of the Amazon River. It’s a very predominant base right now, Brazilian base, Natal. EAV: So when did you first receive word of your orders to the 56th? Do you recall? HZ: I had orders all the time. �30 EAV: To the 56th Group? HZ: Oh, sure. See, the War Department sends orders out little by little and zap. EAV: Did you brief the War Department or any official about the information you received in Russia? HZ: [unintelligible]. I had to go back down again to Washington for a few days. Very few days. EAV: Did you get anyone’s ear? HZ: Well, no, no. But you see, as a military attaché, they didn’t really want to talk to me. As a military attaché, every time we went to Moscow, we worked nights getting out reports. Hell, it was all recorded. EAV: Well, the background that you knew, the tactics, the need for a plane— HZ: Written [unintelligible], how they constructed the field and all that stuff. [Bob Lovell?], who became the Secretary of the Air Force later on after General Spaatz, before—under the Forrestal regime, read many of my reports. I later met him and—when we were over in the war. [unintelligible] over there, talked to me several times. He read them. EAV: Well, did they do any good? HZ: Well, this, I don’t know. At least it’s intelligence information. EAV: Oh. HZ: Yeah. 01:08:19 [Lend-lease assignment and experiences in the Soviet Union, part two] EAV: What happened to the captain that came in to report the shooting incident in Russia about one of those five enlisted men, this one gent that got up, attempted— HZ: The group captain. EAV: The group captain. HZ: Well, nothing happened. You see, when this occurred and when we got this guy, this chap, down and took his pistol away, and then he was locked in one of the rooms in the back end of the sleeping car. And I confiscated all the pistols. �31 EAV: Yes. HZ: Turned them over to Smirnov, you know. We didn’t need any pistols or anything around there. They had more guns than—what do we [unintelligible]? Then I realized that there was something amiss. Really, the British said, “Okay. You’re working for us and all of that. And anything you want, go.” But they didn’t give these boys written instructions that, “You are now under the command of the Americans.” So then I wired Moscow, the British Embassy, and said, “There’s been a fracas, and let’s get this thing straightened out. Either I command them or you pull them out. We don’t need them.” So this group captain from the British Embassy came to [unintelligible] and said, “I want to hear the circumstances.” Boy, he blew his stack. Boy, straightened that crew out in short order. And that’s all it needed, was the right man in the right place. And so he returned to Moscow [unintelligible]. Of course, they were—[whistles]. This was little things, you know, like that in embassy levels over on the other side. It went right to ambassadors, you know. American officer almost killed and then fracas, drinking, and women, and zap and zap. Well, all that happened was, in all reality, this guy had been a nipper all the way along the line. And sure, he’d fallen in love with this Alexandria. Boy, he was zappo. EAV: Hub, going back to—or staying in Russia, the next thing I have, the facilities that you had to put the P-40s, which arrived crated, together— HZ: Yes. They were in the—they had built revetments out of dirt. You know what revetments are. EAV: Oh, yes. HZ: Just open revetments that were cut into the trees off of a ramp, wood ramps, that we taxied out into the big main field. And they would—they used the boxes and, for instance, for the mechanic houses and storing houses and shelters and everything else. They were just open, rough—the roughest, most austere areas that you can imagine. Now, there wasn’t a great deal of work to be done in a certain respect. It was kind of tough. But the airplanes were all assembled already. See, the engine and all built. The engines and the tail sections and everything in a few slots were all in one box and the wings in the other. But there were certain things, like the prop was off. There wasn’t any sparkplugs in them. And the whole engine was Cosmolined. In the United States, we have nice, big steam cleaners and all of that stuff, and you don’t take a dirty airplane out. It’ll catch on fire. Up there, we aren’t going to work in the cold and gasoline with open hands. So we just burned it off. You know, short exhaust. It used to drop off Cosmoline until it’d clean your—your whole windshield would be covered �32 with Cosmoline. And fire hazard? [whistles] Okay. [unintelligible]. So you did the best that you could. And it was just open, hard work with their personnel. Now, we didn’t have to do any lifting. Neither did the five British airmen that we had along. The only airman I really had trouble with was this one reprobate who was in charge of all the rest of the group. And actually, this is mixed up a little here. The Scotchman was a marvelous type. He was a wireless mechanic and a real—he could make anything work in the wireless area. And a real jovial type, and he helped a lot. He didn’t have to work. He just supervised crews. EAV: We’ll change that. HZ: So he had a—also a—an armorer, who was a young guy about 19 or 20 years old. And this guy was a conscientious kid, a real good English boy, conscientious type. Now, there isn’t too much that’s difficult with a .50-caliber machine gun, but that boy learnt while he was up there. He just worked and worked and worked and stripping these down and boresighting them and things like that. [unintelligible]— EAV: But to put the wings on the planes, you actually used— HZ: Manpower. EAV: —manpower. HZ: Because their cranes—the cranes would have bent. And they were these little outside Aframe things. They would have collapsed, and you would have destroyed the fuselage. EAV: How many people did you have in the wing—or under the wing, roughly? HZ: As many as you could get underneath there and still hold it. As many as there are room. And it was all on backs, you know. They had to all stoop over. All of them had to stoop over. The first on the—it was flopped over on their knees, and then they all had to get up, you know, heave-ho, and tipsy around to get this thing underneath the fuselage. [laughs] Lift it, get this—screw this bolt in here and that—brutal work. And especially when the winter begin to set in because then you had snow and ice and putting sparkplugs in and trying to start these things in the cold and all of that that went on. heating them for four or five hours, taking the battery out and run there back in and getting it started up. And in this—as I told you, this— EAV: Fuel pump. HZ: [unintelligible] pump— EAV: [unintelligible] �33 HZ: —the fuel pump. And it had hit on one cylinder, [makes sound effect], and pretty soon you’d get another cylinder going. Arctic frost. All of that stuff. Oh, man. Man, they worked. Oh, boy. 01:14:39 [Service with the 56th Fighter Group] EAV: Hub, you were talking about McCollom’s [Loren McCollom] bomber, which faded. That sounded like a good story. HZ: McCollom’s bomber that faded? No, something has gotten tangled up in there. As you know, we did no dive-bombing training in the United States while I was in the service. The Navy did. EAV: Oh, [unintelligible]— HZ: Yeah. EAV: We have that part. But didn’t McCollom accidentally shoot a bomber, or did a bomber shoot him down? HZ: No, he shot—I shot a bomber down. McCollom shot a Spitfire down. EAV: Oh, a Spitfire. HZ: Yes. Now— EAV: Was there anything interesting about that or— HZ: Well, it’s a case where you run into that is common in war, that when—especially when you get big masses going that—a case of identity. And flying over Holland is beyond the radar range from England. Now, they had the advantage—the Germans had the advantage of radar coverage themselves. This to Rotterdam across from England is about 120 miles across the North Sea. And we would run fighter sweeps back and forth. They tried to keep us—“they,” namely the Fighter Command and the British Fighter Command—of all other units that were operating. And you’d get this on the morning schedules for your missions. On this particular occasion, the Spits were scheduled to sweep out around and—in the same area, and the 56th and a couple other P-47 groups were scheduled to go around the place. So the missions went off, and they were fighter sweeps. And Mac was leading that day, leading a group. And once this all happened, they get over on their sweep and first thing you see is bogeys up there that you can’t identify. And the bogeys made an attack �34 and—started to attack. And so there was a break and a couple fast swishes around. And before it got untangled, which was pretty fast, too, blomp, one Spitfire had gone down in flames like nobody’s business. But anybody that preempted an offensive move, he was going to get clobbered. And this is what happened in this case here. EAV: Oh, I see. HZ: Complete misunderstanding. Regrettable, but— EAV: One of the wartime hazards. HZ: [unintelligible]. Yeah. Shot down deader than dead. EAV: The B-24 that was doing odd maneuvers that you encountered. HZ: Well, the B-24 that I—of course, I haven’t any official credit for shooting down a B-24— [laughs]—but that’s beside the point. One of the toughest situations that the bombers had was to try to keep their stragglers in formation. And after going through flak and the heavy, intense flak that they had, there were always—out of 1,000 bombers, there were always 40 or 50 stragglers with engines shot out or engine malfunctions or something wrong with the aircraft. On withdrawal missions, the art and parcel was to put maybe two or four P-47s back and escort these individual people because they were preyed upon by the Germans like vultures. This makes it easy if you’re only fighting one little guy and you can overcome him with five or six Messerschmitts. As simple as shooting—swatting flies down. So on this particular occasion near Frankfurt, coming back on a withdrawal, there wasn’t much German activity. Looked over the wing and, my gosh, “Okay. A big brother is down below. All right. We’ll drop down and escort him. I’ll take four, the rest of you guys go on.” I only had the squadron—a squadron left with me. So we dropped down, and here is this big old B-24 going in a great, great big circle. Over the Ardennes area, to be exact. It was maybe 75, 80 miles west of the Wiesbaden area, over those rugged mountains that you remember? Well, doing this big circle, thinking, okay, this stoop in there is—he’s lost again, you know. And that happened in bombers, even with navigators and all the rest of that. So got on the bomber-fighter channel and said, “Hey—” I’ve forgot his numbers, but you could read it off the tail. “You’re going in the wrong direction. Let’s go about 290 degrees here, and we’ll get back to England.” And he just continued around in a big, big circle. Well, you knew that something was wrong there, so I said, “All right. The second echelon,” which is a couple little guys, “and my wingman, you stay back and I’m going down, take a look real close at what’s wrong with this guy.” You have an apprehension �35 because Germans were known to have reassembled B-24s and to go up and escort the— with our bomber formations. And they would call off to fighters where there wasn’t cover and whatnot. They wouldn’t engage in real actual combat, but needless to say, they had their little [unintelligible]. EAV: They would actually fly in formation? HZ: I don’t think so. That might have been professed, but I don’t think they ever joined it. But they did go up and escort the whole thing around the loop, calling out positions for the antiaircraft and every other [unintelligible] thing. So I dropped down and flew right in close formation at—my gosh, all the guns were—you know, the nose guns and top gun and the other guns, tail guns, were just hanging there. So I fly up around to the wingtip and look over, and there isn’t a soul in the cockpit. Not a soul in the cockpit. And here this thing—all fans were turning, just turning in this big circle, just dropping out very slowly. So I looked over on the other side and give another call on the radio. It would—it had been hit several times by probably heavy flak or something. But it was all—everything was turned over. So I said, “Okay, gents, instead of letting this thing get away with itself, she’s going to get shot down.” So I backed off about a hundred yards and gave one little squirt with five .50 calibers and—[makes sound effect]—went over—[hits table with hand]. Boom. Crashed. About 5,000, 6,000 [unintelligible]. EAV: That’s a good story. MJ: Was the crew [unintelligible]? HZ: As far as I know, there wasn’t a man on board it. A derelict, you know. EAV: That’s an amazing story. HZ: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. EAV: Hub, when you— HZ: I got a little—you saw it in there. I’ve got maybe 20 feet. I didn’t take hardly anything at all. My God, that .50-caliber tore into that thing from the tail end, just get up and it just— [makes sound effect]. EAV: Incidentally, when—at the time you took armor out of your plane and— HZ: It was front armor. EAV: Front armor. �36 HZ: Yeah, I didn’t take the back armor out. [laughs] But that was— EAV: And the—was a B-17 formation, you picked up a .50-caliber slug and [unintelligible] you change your mind and put it back? HZ: Yes. EAV: How did that come about? HZ: How did that come about? EAV: Yes, sir. HZ: Well, isn’t that in here? Well, you were trying to reduce all weight out of this old slugger. And so getting with Schilling and getting with the engineering officers, you thought of all things—for instance, they had a landing light for you, one in each wing, about this big around. We never flew at night. It didn’t do us any good. So you tore this thing out— there’s a pound-and-a-half there—and threw this away. I then took two machine guns off and, you know, the belts, I figured, well, if I can shoot, I can shoot with six. And those machine guns, .50-caliber machine guns, weighed about 80 pounds, and that great big belt of ammunition from here over the wall weighs quite a bit. And I took those ammunition cans out. They had a—for instance, an external power receptacle with the cable about this big that went in the back of the—or the side of the aircraft, where you could stick in power to turn over the engine to start it. When you started it with a battery, I had no trouble. So I yanked that out. And any odd little thing that you could yank out, we yanked out. Well, knowing that, at that time, we were not shooting at the ground and this stuff wasn’t coming up at you, no [unintelligible], well, I say, “What am I carrying that 16-pound piece of glass right up in front of me all the time? Yank it out.” Well, yanked it out, and it improved the [unintelligible] quite a bit, you know. About that time, we were on an escort mission. And it was coming back over Holland, pretty deep in in Holland, and here’s the German fighter that had just gone through the bomber formation. So—[whistles, makes sound effect]. And boy, we were really going down. Went past this other bomber formation. Baloom. I got hit in the—right in the front part. It just took out the front of the windshield, and boy, it blew air like nobody’s business. And then, boom, hit the armor plate in back of me, you know. [makes sound effect] Pulls up right away and loses the— loses out on the combat and all the rest of [unintelligible], this big blast of air coming through. �37 So I get home and I say, “Look around this cockpit and see what hit me.” They looked around in the cockpit, and here is a beautiful, flattened, partially flattened, .50-caliber bullet. God damn. Bombers had just shot the hell out of me. Yeah. EAV: That was close. HZ: Well, we’d been escorting them. Some trigger-happy guy had—[makes sound effect]. Close, yeah. So I put the armor plate back in again. [laughter] Yeah. EAV: Hub, when you—we have in there, of course, the—you returned back and you found the squadron buzzing the field, you fined them 50 dollars, and you had a 50-dollar fine going for violations. You even fined yourself 50 dollars when you spun out of formation? HZ: Yes. EAV: That faded on the other one, too. That’s— HZ: It did? Well, the reason for the fines was—it was understandable after this fiasco where I sent down—sent down Tukey to take out two German airplanes that were coming up so that we could continue, not drop our tanks. And they took eight guys down, and they flubbed the situation. Eight guys against two Germans and [unintelligible]. EAV: Incidentally, that came up next. That’s the one—Tukey’s trouble with—when eight 47s engaged two Me 109s. That failed, too. Could we hit that? That was another question that— HZ: Well, this is just air discipline along the line. And why send a boy on a man’s job? And you had to have it. You had to have [unintelligible]. There were other occasions when you said, “Okay, this is the plan of tac.” You went all through the problem with all the intelligence that you got, and then somebody’d get a brilliant idea of his own to change it all in the air. Well, this doesn’t work. When you start to execute something, you better do it that way. And if it all goes to pots, then you go home and try it over again. But don’t make these ramble, ramble—there’s only one leader in the air and just you best follow this one leader. If he’s an ass, well, get rid of him, you know. Or he’ll get rid of himself. But you don’t have 48 leaders up there. This was understandable, that you had to get this down pat. It stems from you—you finally get it to stem from the ground to start with, and then you get it in the air. And once you’ve got it in the air and people worked with teams and you didn’t get a wingman who was trying to cut his leader out to get [unintelligible] fighter and he was doing his job in back—and here’s the little case of Steve, that this guy ought to have been shot—[laughter]—that that individual thought— inexperience is no good. And you’ve got to—you’ve got to [unintelligible]. �38 But it’s very, very apparent. It’s brought up in very fine style in this Sergeant Saunders in Combat, with his little neophytes that he’s always bringing up, the—“Okay, we do it this way and stop doing it a thousand other ways till you guys get experience. You can do anything you want then when you’re the leader.” Well, in the case of number one that you asked there was the Tukey episode. The Germans did for a time try to get us to drop our tanks as soon as they could. Well, by having us drop our tanks, 48 of them, they knew that we couldn’t make our rendezvous points, or if we could, we can only stay a very short time. We’d to go back home. So we had to carry those tanks. And we burnt those first, and then we burnt the internal fuel. Well, you got savvy to that. If you send up a couple little flies to fool around with you— and they really didn’t want to attack 48. They’d get clobbered. So you send a couple, four up there and engage them, occupy them. And the rest of the outfit went on. On this particular occasion, it was over Belgium, eastern Belgium, Eindhoven. I saw two of them come up, and they were reported—or I saw them. I forgot. And they were German fighters, identified. And so, “Okay. We’re going on to make our rendezvous. Tukey, you go down and take care of them.” Now, he was the group command—or the squadron commander. Sixteen airplanes. He took eight guys to be sure that he had protection against those two little stoops [unintelligible]. He had initial attack, initial speed. And they must have been pretty good fighters because they racked around a couple times, and boy, they got on a couple of our boys. And zap-zapped, and they zapped around, and everybody dropped their tanks, you know. [laughter] [unintelligible] people down—downstairs. And there was a cloud deck below, and when they got in a little difficulty, all they did was peel off and zap in. But here is a matter of a man going down with all the protection in the world doing fainthearted attacks—not pressing [unintelligible]—doing it halfheartedly with two confident pilots who would have waxed him. Well, boy, you haven’t followed discipline at all. When I say to attack, I mean to attack. Push that thing over and get in there. Don’t break yourself and take a look. [laughter/unintelligible] take another look. They’re not going to sit there. They’re going to wiggle like nobody’s business, and they’re liable to get around you. Well, it’s one of the reasons, off the record, why I later sent Tukey up to the top side. He was a real brilliant man here, but he somehow had lost his courage in the major accident before. He then became the group commander of the 356th Fighter Group. Never shot an airplane down in the entire war. And the group was never real successful. He is presently the head of the National Guard of the State of Maine, Brigadier General Phil Tukey. A real brilliant fellow mentally but didn’t meet it. What was your other question there? EAV: The 50-dollar fine you fined yourself. �39 HZ: Well, air discipline stems from a lot of other things. As you know, we were real short of pilots, and we had to take on a lot of Poles. Anybody. And there were always bomber people who really wanted to get in fighters and had been thrust into bombers, and they wanted to get in. So after their tour, which was usually 25 missions, when the going was rough, bomber tours, I asked top-side command to allow me to have some of these boys. And I selected, handpicked, seven of them. Now, every one of those guys killed themselves or were killed. A couple of them got two or three victories, and then they were unfortunate. They were killed. One of them had his tail chopped off, you know, and pull up—and break off to—landing on an airfield. But the first fellow, for instance, I warned them all, “Now, I don’t fool around with any of this razzmatazz. I want air discipline. First thing I don’t want you to do is to go over to your home base and rack that thing over and beat it up with this Thunderjug just because you’re a fighter jockey now. If you want to fight and you want to be a hero, let’s do it over on the other side.” The toughest job I had was to get the guys down below 20,000 feet. And at home, they wanted to beat up all their gals in the countryside, and you couldn’t get off to 20,000 feet, you know. Well, he went over to—this particular chap, who was a pretty cagey guy, went over to his home base. And it happened to be a B-26 organization. And boy, he beat it up on one of the passes going past. And he—[makes sound effect]. And here comes a B-26 with six crew members on it and slammed right back into that, killed those six guys and himself. So I said, “Okay. You guys don’t think I’m fooling. From now on, boy, any violations and I fine you.” I mean, here I fined 500 dollars for fooling around with that airplane [unintelligible]. Not 50 dollars. Five hundred. Well, of course, if the old man makes rules, he has to abide by the rules, too. So the episode when I went down to London and came back a day early, and here everybody is, including Gabreski [Francis S. “Gabby” Gabreski], is out beating over the field. The old man has gone and so the mice will play. And, hell, I’ll never forget the flying operations in the boy in the tower of seeing me walk in and with all these airplanes. He turned white. “Give me the numbers of those guys up in the air.” “Uh, er, um.” So I took the numbers down of all of them, and as they landed, they’d [laughing/unintelligible]. Even Gabby. So, “Okay, put down your 50 bucks.” “Oh, not me, chief.” “Well, God darn it, these are the rules of the day and I’m tired of it.” So they all paid. This was a kind of a stupid one on my part. We had an awfully long mission to go on the other side of Denmark, way over on the Kiel Canal side. So I was leading these people. And we were chugging out. And you had to be—almost fly instruments to conserve gasoline so that you weren’t making these little tail-end jockey fellows zap back and forth. And you eke up and eke up 500 feet a minute all the way across the North Sea, �40 across the Friesen Islands to the north of—all over water all the time. And we ran into a stratus of clouds. Of course, you all have to come in real close. So I said, “Okay. Close in. We’re going to penetrate through.” Forty-eight guys all hanging on, and one guy just going in one direction. [laughs] Ah, hell. I blurped a little bit on the instruments with the stick. And I was so close to stalling—we were about 20,000 feet—sure enough, I blurped up and stalled it, stalled the airplane. What did I do? I fell into a spin. I fell out of the bottom of the cloud, but it wasn’t too bad. It was a stratus layer, not too bad. Fell out of the bottom. Said, “Okay. Everybody set a course and continue on a course due east, and I’ll catch up with you.” And so I zaps up and pops up above this cloud. And here’s the whole damn group, no leader, all flying right on a due course. [laughs] I fall into position and very quietly— nobody says anything. 01:36:12 [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Note Any additional notes about the item. This recording is presented in its original, unedited form. Please note that some interviews in this collection may contain adult language, racial slurs, and/or graphic descriptions of wartime violence. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Zemke, Hub, 1914-1994 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Valencia, Eugene A. Jones, M. Biographical Text <p>Hubert “Hub” Zemke was born on March 14, 1919 in Missoula, Montana. He studied forestry at Montana State University but left school in 1936 to enlist as an Aviation Cadet with the U.S. Army Air Corps. After completing flight training in 1937, he served with the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field (Virginia). In 1940, Zemke deployed to England to serve as an air observer with the Royal Air Force. At the conclusion of that assignment, he then traveled to the Soviet Union as an assistant military attaché and served as a flight instructor to Soviet pilots, teaching them how to fly their lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks.</p> <p>Zemke returned to the United States in 1942 and was appointed group commander of the 56th Fighter Group, the first fighter group to be equipped with the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. During its service in Europe, the 56th distinguished itself as a highly successful group, consistently receiving top scores in air-in-air kills during missions. The group came to be known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack,” in reference to Zemke’s firm but fair leadership style and his emphasis on aerial discipline and tactics.</p> <p>In August 1944, Zemke took command of the 479th Fighter Group, helping the unit convert from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to the North American P-51 Mustang. A few months later, in October, he was forced to bail out over enemy territory after his P-51 sustained severe damage in a storm front. Zemke was captured by German forces and imprisoned at Stalag Luft I (Germany), a prisoner-of-war camp housing Allied airmen. As the war neared its end, German officials turned control of the camp over to Zemke and the other prisoners and fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces.</p> <p>Following the end of World War II, Zemke continued his military career with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included commanding the 36th Fighter Group during the Berlin Airlift, serving in administrative posts at the Pentagon, commanding the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the U-2 Program, and serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Madrid, Spain. Zemke retired as a colonel in 1966 and established a second career in agriculture, managing an almond ranch. He passed away in 1994.</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 [Hubert Zemke oral history interview (Part 8 of 9)] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>In this nine-part oral history, Hubert “Hub” Zemke is interviewed about his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. In part eight, he continues to discuss his wartime experiences during World War II. A sizeable portion of the interview focuses on Zemke’s time as an assistant military attaché in the Soviet Union, prior to the United States’ entry into the war. He describes his initial journey to the Soviet Union by convoy, his experiences working with Russian and British service members, and his work as a flight instructor for lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks. He also shares a number of stories related to his time with the 56th Fighter Group in England and comments on the development of fighter aircraft during World War II.</p> <p>The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia and a woman identified as Margery Jones (name spelling unverified), possibly Valencia’s secretary. Jones notes that they are at a Holiday Inn in Reno, Nevada, though the actual interview may have taken place at Stead Air Force Base, based on information on the reel’s label. Audio may be difficult to hear in some spots due to uneven volume levels and overlapping voices.</p> <p>The original order of the Zemke interviews is unclear, due to conflicting date and order information on the reel containers. The order presented here has been determined by an archivist using contextual clues within the dialogue.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) open reel audiotapes Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant England Russia Germany Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Alison, John R. (John Richardson), 1912-2011 Curtiss P-40 Warhawk Family Fighter pilots North American P-51 Mustang Family Republic P-47 (F-47) Thunderbolt Family United States. Army Air Forces United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 4th United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 56th World War, 1939-1945 Zemke, Hub, 1914-1994 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-04-28 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound reel (1 hr., 36 min., 12 sec.) : analog ; 1/4 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_210_01 2002-02-13_AV_210_01_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/56abb0684351c02ffe2f719e5331a390.jpg 159c48d71f01f243f979057705875da1 https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/514ccb76ce31bd854ece8043cb2ab1d5.mp3 a8b761b3d1cd95e048f663f82307cc4c https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/bc96e0c6dfe21175a43b0eb1e56fbe14.mp3 78e7ebe28b5df2f1945be45de10c5b1f https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/48eafa5e6714d78770f6d887647896b6.pdf 87a4a2f7214c2c932e2a3e9bdc5b25c4 PDF Text Text The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Hubert Zemke (Part 7 of 9) Interviewed by: John Florea and Eugene A. Valencia Interview Date: circa July 1965 �2 Abstract: In this nine-part oral history, Hubert “Hub” Zemke is interviewed about his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. In part seven, he continues to discuss his wartime experiences during World War II. Most of the interview focuses on topics related to his time as a group commander in Europe, such as notable combat missions, aircraft capabilities and development, fighter and bomber tactics, and logistics of the European air war. He also briefly touches on then-current trends in aircraft development and aerial warfare. The final section of the interview covers Zemke’s time as an assistant military attaché in the Soviet Union, prior to the United States’ entry into the war. The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia and by John Florea, a former war correspondent for Life Magazine, and was recorded at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada. Audio may be difficult to hear in some spots due to uneven volume levels and overlapping voices. The original order of the Zemke interviews is unclear, due to conflicting date and order information on the reel containers. The order presented here has been determined by an archivist using contextual clues within the dialogue. Biography: Hubert “Hub” Zemke was born on March 14, 1919 in Missoula, Montana. He studied forestry at Montana State University but left school in 1936 to enlist as an Aviation Cadet with the U.S. Army Air Corps. After completing flight training in 1937, he served with the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field (Virginia). In 1940, Zemke deployed to England to serve as an air observer with the Royal Air Force. At the conclusion of that assignment, he then traveled to the Soviet Union as an assistant military attaché and served as a flight instructor to Soviet pilots, teaching them how to fly their lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks. Zemke returned to the United States in 1942 and was appointed group commander of the 56th Fighter Group, the first fighter group to be equipped with the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. During its service in Europe, the 56th distinguished itself as a highly successful group, consistently receiving top scores in air-in-air kills during missions. The group came to be known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack,” in reference to Zemke’s firm but fair leadership style and his emphasis on aerial discipline and tactics. In August 1944, Zemke took command of the 479th Fighter Group, helping the unit convert from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to the North American P-51 Mustang. A few months later, in October, he was forced to bail out over enemy territory after his P-51 sustained severe damage in �3 a storm front. Zemke was captured by German forces and imprisoned at Stalag Luft I (Germany), a prisoner-of-war camp housing Allied airmen. As the war neared its end, German officials turned control of the camp over to Zemke and the other prisoners and fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces. Following the end of World War II, Zemke continued his military career with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included commanding the 36th Fighter Group during the Berlin Airlift, serving in administrative posts at the Pentagon, commanding the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the U-2 Program, and serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Madrid, Spain. Zemke retired as a colonel in 1966 and established a second career in agriculture, managing an almond ranch. He passed away in 1994. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services �4 Index: Stories about fellow servicemen ..................................................................................................... 5 Details about service medals ........................................................................................................... 9 Notable combat missions .............................................................................................................. 11 Discussion of aircraft capability, tactics, and aerial combat training ........................................... 27 Development of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter ......................................................................... 33 Further discussion of fighter and bomber tactics during World War II ........................................ 34 Thoughts on current fighter aircraft development ........................................................................ 45 More on aerial tactics and aircraft development during World War II......................................... 50 Lend-lease assignment and experiences in the Soviet Union ....................................................... 54 �5 Hubert Zemke (Part 7 of 9) [START OF INTERVIEW] [Begin Side A] 00:00:00 [Stories about fellow servicemen] [faint audio] HUBERT ZEMKE: —Special Service [unintelligible] who might anything—anytime—here’s the drunk. Here’s the drunk. JOHN FLOREA: HZ: A James McGarrigle. Yeah. Public relations. Yeah. Boy, he looks pretty sober in that picture for once. EUGENE A. VALENCIA: HZ: Where’s that? This guy here. He was about 47, 48. A knowledgeable writer. [audio break] [unintelligible dialogue] HZ: Try to influence him to— JF: Tell me about the Jesuits—what? HZ: Well, he tried to get into personnel affairs, the transfer of people back and forth and who goes on leave and who takes this and stuff like that. Boy, geez. JF: Where’d you say he was from? HZ: From the United States. JF: But he was, what? He was down in the Congo? HZ: Yes. Had been on a mission. Had gone back to [unintelligible]— JF: [unintelligible] was a missionary down in the Congo. HZ: A real intelligent, responsible type. But he just got himself involved in so much of the inner circles of policy and stuff like that, outside of the religious fare, and so much faction’s going on, goddamn relief. Yeah. �6 JF: This is like the church against the state? HZ: No. Oh, no. He—no, no. Church against the state, no. [laughter] This guy’s job was to keep us all pure and safely and to do the benedictions and take the confessions and all of that stuff, but he is not to get into the transfer of people and tactics and who repairs the airplanes and how we do it and how long we work and what the shifts are and all that. The guy had been more active than this down there, and here he now got a little job, something like the doctors. As you know, every squadron had a doctor, and I had fine doctors. Well, what the hell could they do? About the best thing I could—they were flight surgeons. Just pass a pill out. Jesus. You’re overstaffed with docs. They should be back chopping at people in the hospitals. They had no responsibility. We had a little dispensary. Whenever a guy had appendicitis or something, he went to the hospital. What could the docs do? They could go down and see whether you were taking enough— JF: Aspirin and— HZ: Aspirin or you got enough vegetable oil or you were regularly relieved. Your exercise was doing good. God, we were overstaffed with doctors. The service group had one they brought in. Every one of my squadrons had a doc. One hundred twenty-five guys and a full-time doc with—beside a couple sanitators, clerks, and whatnot to assist them. You’ve got too many. The service kind of overstaffs at times. I don’t know. Maybe they expected an awful lot of causalities among our people. If there was a causality among ours, he usually wound up in a heap on the other side and never got back. A few guys came back with a couple little wounds that you got tooting back. Zap. But if you got a hold on the other side in a single-engine fighter, you usually didn’t come back. And so they didn’t have much to do. There were a few guys that [unintelligible]— JF: Did you keep the doctors around? You didn’t send them back? HZ: They were always—yeah. They were on the TO&E, the Table of Organization and Equipment. Same way with this. There were a couple other people. And, of course, in this case here. JF: [unintelligible] just father. Jesuit father. HZ: This guy just got himself—overstepped his line as to his duties and his functions and got himself wrapped up and [makes sound effect] JF: Bang. HZ: Get out and but fast. I don’t want him around. JF: Specifically— �7 HZ: Not because he wasn’t true to us. He was thinking he was doing right. But he got—I got into arguments with him. EAV: [unintelligible] I’m going to check this out again. HZ: Got in first class sergeants. [audio break] EAV: Okay. JF: Now— HZ: He became involved in functions that weren’t his. And I had to tell him that— JF: Can you name any specifics? Like you said first he got involved with the service supplies and all that. What would be the— HZ: As to promotions. JF: To promotions? HZ: As to promotions. JF: You mean, he’d come up and say, “I think Joe Blow ought to get promoted”? HZ: That’s correct. Well, he got to know people, and he associated with them. And it’s normal that with any—I use and treat the words of the chaplain as quite confidential. And they’re pretty savvy little guys, as a general rule. But when they start recommending people to be promoted and pushed aside and those things like that, I kind of look at aghast. And especially after you start to get into arguments with the fellow. JF: Oh, he started arguing [unintelligible]? HZ: Oh, sure, sure, sure. JF: Well, you— HZ: I told him several times, “You stay in your chosen field.” And— JF: He didn’t like that? HZ: He didn’t think that—well—the guy had—he didn’t have enough to do. JF: He didn’t have enough to do, so he— HZ: No. For his stature and— �8 JF: Can you name any other any other instances? HZ: Chaplains always kind of wander by themselves. And, okay, this is well and good. But once I get down on a guy, I kind of get down and want to check him left and right. He felt as though he wasn’t—if he wanted to take off and go—and he did official work, go over to the command chaplain or over to another field, well, he’d go himself. And I said, “Oh, geez, you’re only a staff officer. You take care of your religious stuff around here when you want to take off here, there, and yon.” He didn’t like to be restricted. The guy had had the free liberty, free hand. He was a very confident, capable man. He could talk on any subject that you want. He could think on any subject. He had had responsibilities on this mission in Africa. He volunteered for the service. Okay. If you want to be, you can be the command chaplain of the VIII Fighter Command. But as long as you’re here, you’re on my staff and you do what I say. Zapzap-zap-zap. JF: You said a moment ago, he even got involved in tactics. HZ: Yeah. In tactics down in the flight line. JF: What—like what? You mean you were— HZ: Strafing fields and how you’re supposed to. And since when are you, who knows [unintelligible] much about this [unintelligible]. JF: So, what, you would give—and what would he suggest? HZ: Why don’t you do this, and why don’t you do that? Well, okay. We’ll listen to this. But I can’t listen to everybody. I have enough even with my people. And since when are you telling me how tactics should be done? It wasn’t because this—we talked a lot of times over the bar. But he drank. He was—everything he did was within—very much calm but insistent. Insistent. And I had a tough time getting rid of him. I just didn’t want him around. JF: Well, when you said to him, where did—you know, “Where did you learn your tactics,” what did he say? HZ: “What’s the difference? I have an opinion.” JF: Oh. He had an opinion. HZ: Well, express your opinion some other place. [audio distortion/unintelligible] And this happens every so often, various people who just never click. �9 JF: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. HZ: You know what I mean? JF: Yeah. HZ: You have favorites, and you have enemies, and you have people you like, and people that you take one look at and you kind of drift away [unintelligible]— JF: How do you know Blakeslee [Donald Blakeslee] didn’t send him up? [laughs] HZ: Oh, well, he came with the service group that came from the United States— JF: [laughs] I’m only kidding you, Hub. It sounds like a Blakeslee job. HZ: [laughs] An inside [unintelligible]. Well, I don’t— JF: Huh? HZ: Blakes never— EAV: This machine is speeding up and slowing down. JF: Yeah. HZ: It is? EAV Yeah. HZ: Well, turn it off and let’s get a cup of coffee. Slow it down a little bit. EAV: [laughs] Maybe it’s— [audio break] 00:07:47 [Details about service medals] JF: It says here—this is the day of the invasion—that Sicily—over here it says, “First DFC award to Hub Zemke.” HZ: On the 19th of July. JF: This is like—yeah. Now, evidently, this award was given to you for something that happened either in July—sometime in July or what? June? �10 HZ: The way the DFC was awarded in our theater was, first of all, the Air Medal is—was given after five missions or one victory. No, as you were. Was given five missions along the line. Or—yes. Or one victory. When you got 25 missions, you were eligible for a DFC. You were eligible for a DFC. Or if you’ve got five aircraft shot down. You know, there was five Air Medals. We in the Eighth Air Force recognized you could only get three Air Medals. That’s all they would award you. In some of the other air forces and—they were awarded right along the line, five missions or one victory, you’ve got—[unintelligible] guys got Silver Stars, plomp—I mean, silver awards on top of oak leafs on top till you couldn’t see straight. But at any rate, by that time I think I had one or two victories and had 25 missions, being eligible for the DFC. JF: I see. HZ: And I had a—word had gotten up to my requirement to receive the first one of them. So it was just, okay, a recognition of a point [unintelligible]. JF: Hmm. Now, want to go down to this. In October 1943, Zemke receives the British Distinguished Flying Cross. HZ: Oh, by that time, I was an ace. I was one of the few aces that the Americans had. In the same respect, the top-leading guy was Johnnie Johnson, a Canadian. And he had shot quite a few down, and the Americans wanted to give him an award. Johnnie had a lot to do with [unintelligible] relations— JF: Yeah, it says here— HZ: —so that we were—two of us were called down to our headquarters. JF: In October of—in fact, October 4th of 1943, on a ramrod to Emden, you had three planes shot down, and it says, “Zemke becomes the second group ace.” So, evidently, that’s what finally led to you getting the DFC from the British on the 17th of October. HZ: That’s correct. The second—Gerry Johnson was the first. JF: Hmm? Yeah. HZ: Gerald Johnson was the first. And so then in recognition of all of this stuff, they— 00:11:05 �11 [Notable combat missions] JF: Have we recorded, do you know, the ramrod to Emden? That flight and how you got the planes? HZ: How we’d shot them down? JF: Yeah. How you shot them down. HZ: I don’t know whether we have or not. Have we? JF: I don’t think so. Let’s go into it anyway. Let’s say you’re on your way. What was it? A— HZ: A ramrod is an escort— JF: I know what a ramrod is. What was it the—what, the return? HZ: No. It was prior to the target and penetration around—over the [unintelligible]. But prior to the target, about the coast of Holland, we were to pick them up and escort them through— JF: Through the target. HZ: —the target area and returning back home. JF: What do you call that? HZ: Close escort. JF: Close escort. What’s the—what’s escorting you across the Channel called? The first part? HZ: Withdrawal. JF: Oh, the withdrawal is on the way back. HZ: That’s correct. But penetration— JF: Well, isn’t there a three—if one fighter group escorts them, what, across the Channel? HZ: A certain distance— JF: A certain distance. HZ: —[unintelligible] penetration. JF: What’s that called? �12 HZ: This is—what, it was—no. Gene, it was—I see what you mean. You want to know one of the— JF: The three steps. The first step is going across the Channel with one group, and that group comes by and is relieved by— HZ: Relief. Relief is what it is. JF: The relief. HZ: This is correct. It’s relieving the initial escort group. JF: The initial escort group. Now, you come back— HZ: We were to relieve the initial escort group that was to pick the bombers up and carry them from over the Channel and to the Holland border. We were to pick them up at the Holland border, continue the escort around through the targeted area on the withdrawal over the North Sea, to be picked up by another group—which, I think, as I recall, was the 4th Group—back and back home. On this particular day, it was a fine day for flying. We did pick them up at our appointed rendezvous point on the Holland Coast. The two organizations—my tactics was the two squadrons were given positions on each side of the bomber formation to continue their close escort while I took the roaming squadron. The roaming squadron was the one that— JF: Oh, this is when you sent up that roaming squadron. Is this the first time you did that? HZ: No. No. JF: This is— HZ: No. By October, Jimmy Doolittle and all the rest, we had over 100 victories. And as you know, Sadie Hawkins Day had come and past, and met our obligations and all the rest. JF: Now, what were you leading? The 63rd, no? HZ: I’ve forgotten which organization it is right at the moment. JF: Well, you were leading one of the groups. HZ: One of the squadrons. JF: One of the squadrons. Pardon me. �13 HZ: I took this outfit, and we roamed a bit further to the east and to the south, whereupon high contrails were seen approaching from due south and in back of us toward the bomber area. The first section—that’s eight aircraft—were alerted that we’d have engagement— we were about to have engagement—and that the top section, the second section of the squadron, eight airplanes, were to follow and give us close cover, where we did a wide swing maneuver diving down into the area of about 20,000 feet—we had been about 28,000 to 30,000 feet—joining up in the back of about 20 Fw 190s that were approaching the bombers getting into position. And in the ensuing combat, first shot, first pass at the first guy, one man was knocked down right away. JF: Did they know you were coming up behind them? HZ: No. This was a surprise attack again. JF: And what formation were the Germans flying? HZ: They were in an open combat formation, [unintelligible] looking toward the bomber area. I think they were— JF: [unintelligible] HZ: The foreship—they’d already gotten into knowing what this fingertip formation was. JF: The fingertip formation. HZ: The fingertip form— JF: They knew that. And you came up behind them. HZ: Coming up and plucked off a rear man on the first pass. Just, bam. Of course, I was screaming through. I’ve forgotten whether or not my wingman—my wingman didn’t pass off and didn’t shoot any of them down, or the other people shot any down. Where about—whereupon we’re upon a high chandelle recovery was made, cocking over and taking a look, and I noticed that they’d split and broke. And the second man was seen down below scattering off toward the clouds by himself, and a pass was made on him. This fellow just kept diving, diving, diving, diving, diving in a sort of a shallow dive. And it was a matter of the older Thunderbolt just racking up this good speed. Anyway, it went downhill faster than it did anything else, overtaking this fellow in a long, long dive, knocking him down. The man never tried to recover. He just continued on down, down. He never tried to wiggle in evasive maneuvers. I think he felt as though he could out-dive everybody. This man was probably a junior sprog, inexperienced to the cause. Well, that’s two down and hardly anything shot at yet. �14 JF: Was there any dialogue going on, Hub? I mean— HZ: Oh, sure there were. JF: —were you talking back and forth? HZ: Oh, sure there was. JF: Do you remember what was being said? HZ: Yes. There were other engagements of other people. By that time, my first section was completely engaged. And, of course, the top— JF: Well, you left one squadron with the bombers. HZ: Two squadrons were with the bombers. JF: Two. And you took the one squadron with you. HZ: Roaming. JF: Roaming. HZ: Yes. JF: Now, you took the—and the other two squadrons are still protecting the bombers. HZ: That’s correct. JF: Right. HZ: And we went to the southwest—southeast, picked up a German formation coming toward the bombers. JF: Yeah. HZ: We must have been 20 or 30 miles away from the bomber formation. You could still see them over there. JF: Yeah. In the contrail. HZ: That’s correct. On the little black dots way over there, you knew them charging along [unintelligible]. JF: Well, they must have known they were floating contrails, didn’t they? �15 HZ: Oh yeah. Well, you can’t help it. If you throw contrails, you throw contrails. There they are, and you can see them hundreds of miles away. [laughs] JF: [unintelligible] divulges their position. HZ: That’s correct. That’s correct. We can’t help that. Anyway, what we did was come around with our section repeating. At a higher altitude, at a higher altitude, I took eight airplanes, as you—eight airplanes. Four and eight. And had the other boys giving as high cover for protection. And if we set anything up for them that they’d take it. On the first pass, joining up with these boys who were coming out, German boys, a Tail-End Charlie would just, whap. JF: Whap. Then you followed this— HZ: [unintelligible] out of the circle. And then they broke. JF: And then they broke. And then you followed the second guy down. HZ: Whereupon I did a big, big turnover. Looking down, chandelle, in a turn looking down, and here is a man going by himself like crazy, trying to dive away. Well, all I did was just join up in back of him. This P-47 just out-dove him. JF: Did your wingman follow you? HZ: Oh, sure. JF: He’s always with you? HZ: Oh, right—holding on like dear life. JF: Do you know— HZ: He was just barely holding on. JF: Do you know who he was? HZ: At that—I never had one man that I took as a wingman. I would take a man for a couple, three flights, and then I’d trade off. I never had a man that I developed as a wingman. Why? It is because I felt as though every man that—who had gone through our little school, transition school, should be capable of flying. Otherwise, we wash people out. There were a few people we did wash out. And he should, by the time he got to my little state, be able to hold on. Some of these guys had to fly the thing wide open or cut her all the way back trying to hold on just—and all they did was look back over their shoulders to see to it that I wasn’t being attacked by—had a hell of a time holding on, I know. But �16 you didn’t need a talent of one man who did nothing but lead his life and cover the colonel. The other thing is, as you know, the wingman’s job is a kind of a secondary job, and unless the leader misses something, he doesn’t get a chance. And for the most part, he’s just holding on, looking, looking, and giving cover. And except in the case of Godfrey [John T. Godfrey] and Gentile [Dominic S. “Don” Gentile]—And I don’t know how they worked that. They must not have given cover to each other at all. But maybe they did. You just can’t break up if you want to use the two-team system—method [unintelligible] give coverage. There’s not much glory in being a wingman. JF: What was being said over the radio while you— HZ: Well— JF: —did the squadron broke up into a melee then? HZ: That’s correct. And, of course, the second echelon then had to go to the rescue of a couple, three guys and did take the opportunity when the Germans broke that set the second section up of knocking off a couple more, too. It was a real fine attack. Real fine attack. Oh, I pulled up from the— JF: Second guy you got. HZ: Second guy. Started climbing up, and here is another guy running off by himself out of one of this melee, getting the hell out of the circumstance. They had been hit all— through only by eight people had broken, split up—and there must have been about 20 of them—but then had been hit by the second echelon of eight in a concerted attack. And this is what you want to do. And when they got hit by the second and they had split up again, they’d wrapped around—no doubt their wingman and everything else were going for any direction they could and had lost some fighters. Then there wasn’t a real concerted attack left in them. And they got hit by the first section again, you see. Just pulling up and coming all the way down [unintelligible]. By that time, every man for himself. They must have lost five or six by that time, five or six fighters. And if you can understand air-to-air combat, everything is over in about five minutes usually. JF: Yeah. HZ: You’re hundreds of miles apart. Well, here slips out the third guy. And as I recall, I only got two and a damaged. I didn’t get three. I got— EAV: It says three here. �17 HZ: Well, the real— JF: It says three in the book. It says you were— HZ: The real truth is two and a damaged. Two and a damaged— JF: Triple victories, Frankfurt, going in ramrod. HZ: Well, at any rate, here was the third fellow. I remember the third fellow. Swung around on him and fired, made hits on him right away. And as I—I don’t know. One of the other people in my outfit shot him down completely. Well, from that concerted attack and breaking up those 20 and zap, thereupon I still had ammunition, though my section was pretty well broken up—the squadron was pretty well broken up and spread all over. We went back, and by that time they turned north to cover and joined up, did some front-end cover. And it was uneventful the rest of the flight. JF: That’s the day you became an ace. Second group ace. Yeah. Later on in this month is when you left. It says Colonel— HZ: Yes. JF: —Landry [Robert Landry] took over. Zemke leaves for ZI. HZ: Yes. JF: Which is—what is ZI? HZ: Zone of Interior. JF: Zone of Interior. HZ: The United States. JF: That was towards the end of the month. Now, there must have been some more actions between then and the end of the month because you did go back up— HZ: Got one more. JF: —the day of leaving, didn’t you? Didn’t you get one more plane that day? HZ: Two. JF: Two planes that day. HZ: Yeah. Right at the Zuiderzee. That’s when I kicked Schilling [David Schilling] off of the— �18 JF: Yeah. You kicked Schilling off the thing. What was that action? HZ: Well, that was near Münster. It was an escort to—it should be on there. JF: Yeah. It says, “B-26 X, ramrod on the 24th.” Doesn’t say. Düren, Düren. There’s a ramrod to Düren. HZ: [unintelligible]. [unintelligible]? HZ: [unintelligible]. Well, it was very soon before I left. JF: Here’s Münster here. HZ: Yeah. JF: Schilling got his fifth victory. HZ: Must have been right about here. I don’t recall the exact time, but it was— JF: A ramrod to, what, Düren? HZ: Düren. Düren is up north—in north [unintelligible]— JF: I know. I’ve been to Düren. It’s right on the river right across from the Roer. Got a big statue of Bismarck, sits in the square of it, faces the west. And during all of the shelling, he slowly turned around on this statue—[laughing/unintelligible]—facing east. Did you ever hear this? HZ: No. JF: Yeah. I got there, and I shot a picture of it. My God, [unintelligible] HZ: As he was turning. JF: No. He’s facing the wrong way. HZ: Yeah. JF: I looked at my Baedeker guide, and I said, “Something’s wrong.” [laughs] HZ: Check-check. Okay. Well— [crosstalk] JF: Tell me the action there on the— �19 HZ: I’d have to look over actually how this worked. But I got two on that mission, and it was in the area of the German border where this engagement was, escorting B-24s, though the—of the 2nd Air Division on the particular day. Another beautiful day. Of course, I had to boot Schilling off, as I told you, who objected greatly and wanted to—he would have gone as my wingman. And I said, “Hell no. We never do this.” Of course, he— when I did—he did find out that I had gotten a few victories, a couple victories, he complained to the high heavens of coercion, subservience, and all the rest of that. The exact details of those victories I’d have to look up to refresh my mind, though, John. JF: Here’s what happened, according to the book. It says you—you’re going to Düren. The 61st Squadron assumed this position to the left, the 62nd to the right, and the 63rd above. HZ: Well, that was Schilling’s unit, the 63rd, as you recall. JF: Yeah. Ahead to prevent initial frontal attack. No attacks were made on the bomber formation during the period of the escort. However, as the group was ordered to break off the escort, members of the 61st Squadron sighted 20-plus enemy aircraft heading north towards the Air Task Force approximately 20 to 25 miles up to the north. They were out of range and—they were out of range and were not attacked. Then they came back. [unintelligible] the 61st [unintelligible] another 100-degree diving and turned. Then they came in line astern of the enemy aircraft. Three bandits were destroyed before we were detected. HZ: Well, here is, again, a surprise hit/run attack. First guys— JF: Do you remember this action? HZ: I don’t. JF: You don’t remember this. HZ: No, I don’t—the details of it. I’d have to refresh myself on my own stuff. JF: Yeah. Well, let’s see now. Now you come back. This is along about November. HZ: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. November, I wasn’t back. JF: You weren’t back in November. [pauses] Yeah, this is when Landry took over. When did you come back? Do you remember the— HZ: About 2 or 3 January, something like that. Right after New Year’s. JF: Right after New Year’s. Here we are. January. HZ: Whether down [unintelligible]— �20 JF: January 19th, Colonel Zemke takes command of the group on return from the ZI. HZ: Well, I was a week up in the north. JF: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. You were a week up in Scotland. Can you think of any action after that, Hub, that you got in some kills? I think the only way we’re going to be able to do this— HZ: I have to cross-check that—of the exact—cross-check the exact date and the exact victories and where they were, you know. JF: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. HZ: And now I’ve got that locked up in the safe here. JF: Well, here’s a big week during—this is the—the group’s activities during the Big Week, the mission of February 11th, 1944. HZ: Every time we went out, we got engaged. Geez. JF: It was on this date that the first claims antiaircraft—[skimming text]—making the claims that [unintelligible]—while the group was escorting four combat wings to—of B-17s to Frankfurt, four Me 109s were sighted near Liège, Belgium. Sending the 63rd Squadron on with the bombers, Colonel Zemke led the 61st and 62nd Squadrons against the enemy planes. After dispersing the Me 109s, as well as destroying one and damaging one, the two squadrons then successfully attempted to rejoin the bombers. HZ: Well, we had to go forward piecemeal, fours and fives, back and forth. JF: Do you remember anything about the Big Week? The fight over the Zuiderzee? HZ: No. I’d have to refresh my memory. JF: You have any more you want to ask him? EAV: Yeah. I got lots, too. JF: Go ahead. EAV: I don’t mean a lot. I don’t— [audio break] JF: Indoctrination of fire. �21 EAV: Hub, what was your group’s indoctrination of fire, particularly with the Abbeville Boys, I believe? HZ: Well, the one that I recall in particular was—occurred sometime in July of 1963 [sic – likely meant 1943] when we were to be on withdrawal escort for the B-17s that were to plaster, I believe, Le Bourget on the side of Paris—the airfield on the side of Paris, besides a couple plants that were there. Escorting that day was the 4th Group, 78th Group—whether they were to escort in or to participate in the withdrawal, I don’t recall at this moment. At any rate, we were to pick them up after—pick the bombers up after they had penetrated over the target and were beginning to go home and to withdraw over France, out into the North Sea, out into the [unintelligible] and home. Colonel McCollom [Loren G. McCollom] was leading. He was the flight commander that day. They proceeded from Horsham St. Faith down along the coastline and penetrated about the mouth of the Seine. And soon after entering the mouth of the Seine, before rendezvous had been made, they were hit from high and all sides by an aggressive, determined echelon of German fighters and had hardly broken and recovered before they were hit again by more. And these were Yellow-Nose people. I could tell from the radio broadcast that we had set up in our hangars, listening to the conversation, that everybody was engaged along the entire line, and that they were fighting for dear life. Well, you can’t do anything but kind of sympathize under those occasions. People were asking for help. And channels were blocked at times. More than one man talking on the party line. And as it turned out—I gave you the other stories—of Bob Johnson was—who was a young neophyte but a tough boy, at that time barely staggered home, crash landing at Manston. My top aces—or top boys were Wetherbee [Robert H. Wetherbee] and Dyar [Robert B. Dyar]. And Dyar, who had been an outstanding test pilot, had set the world record with a P-47 in speed and never returned, missing in action. Wetherbee and Ralph Johnson came back, shot up, several other people, and moved back and—to the good old Horsham St. Faith with bullet holes from one end to the other. McCollom came back completely shaken up, having been chased out of the country. This was in—our real indoctrination to fire and real first encounter with the fabulous Abbeville Boys. Needless to say, we had complete respect for their capabilities from there on out. EAV: Hub, I understand Bob Johnson actually had the wristwatch shot off his wrist. HZ: Bob had—this is correct. Bob—it’s a long story in itself—or quite an interesting story in itself. Bob had been engaged by several people, had been hit by a German pilot that had hit his supercharger. As you know, this was a gas-driven supercharger. It was in back of the pilot underneath. And being hit, he had lost his compression, the power of the engine, and had fallen maybe 10,000 feet till his airplane—his engine had stopped. His airplane �22 got into the heavier air and his engine started again, but he had no supercharger. Therefore, he couldn’t get much power out of it. Was hit with heavy cannon fire. He recovered at about 15,000 feet, as I recall from Bob’s story, and was turning around and saw that he was engaged again by the same German who was pounding at him with heavy cannons. It seemed as though the German ran out of the cannon ammunition. He must have been engaged before with somebody else and only had this small—smaller .30 caliber or 8-millimeter or whatever they had in machine guns. Bob was tempted at that time, as I recall, to try to get out of the airplane, but his canopy was also jammed. So he dove a bit more. He had 15,000 feet. Dove a bit more. But the German was after him. And in pushing the throttle forward and diving toward the coastline, this fellow let loose—the German let loose again. And his arm, as you know, is way up here on the side. Shot the wristwatch. It came that close to his arm. Shot the wristwatch off of the—off Bob’s left arm. He saw the watchband fall on the floor, gulped, and, of course, turned his head to the left to see what was in back of him. And the German, who still had a little bit of ammunition left, let another burst go, clipped the bridge of Bob’s nose just enough to bring a little blood out. [laughs] Needless to say, he ducked in back of this— JF: Did it knock his glasses off? Or did he have his glasses on? HZ: His flight glasses. Yeah. Knocked— JF: Knocked his flight glasses off. HZ: Completely off. Needless to say, he shrugged underneath the—this armor plate, which was—there was a rat-tat-tat on the armor plate and along the wings. As I recall, it looked like—from Bob, it looked like rain perforating along the wings. About that time, that airplane was just about ready to give up. And he was down to about 5,000 feet, chugging along with the engine just limping over. Zomp-zomp. The German was still in back. The German must have run out of—must have run out of ammunition because he was a sitting duck and he was over the Channel headed toward England, just with a gasp of breath and a prayer. Flew up next to him, looked at him, shook his head awhile, [unintelligible]— EAV: Just nodded his head? HZ: Nodded his head. EAV: In his amazement. HZ: And turned and went on home. Now, Bob struggled and struggled and struggled across the Channel. He did a crash landing at Manston. It’s on the southern tip. And as I recall, that airplane was washed out, needless to say. Had over 120 holes in it. One hundred twenty holes in it. �23 EAV: How did he get out of the cockpit, Hub? HZ: Well, they had to— EAV: I mean, did they actually have to pry it up? HZ: Yeah, you have to ask Bob that. But they had to use a tin can [unintelligible] to get it out. It—the complete—he would have bailed out if he could have bailed out. But he couldn’t get the canopy open. He was stuck in the airplane. There wasn’t a chance. He’d either— either had to fly the goddamn thing or give up and crash. JF: Wasn’t this the case many times? The fellows, by sticking with the airplanes, that—that P-47 took a terrible beating, and most of the time when they— HZ: [unintelligible] JF: [unintelligible] the plane, they got home all right. Like the big hole in your wing. HZ: In many, many cases. That’s right. Well, on 12 occasions, I’ve had two cylinders completely shot out and over—around the territory, and this thing’s still [makes sound effect]. JF: How big was that hole? Four feet in diameter, wasn’t it, in your right wing? HZ: Well, you could step through it and not—without even— JF: What did you say when you had to keep your— HZ: Well, the complete aileron on that side was—the effect of that thing was completely destroyed. And therefore, you had to fly with—there wasn’t any wing to support you. JF: You had to keep the air—you had to keep the stick over on the right side, huh? HZ: The aileron [unintelligible] to fly that thing back. EAV: But on Bob’s situation, you have to give him a lot of credit because if his gear didn’t come down or if he had to ditch, that enclosed canopy that he couldn’t get out of, he’d have had [unintelligible]. HZ: That’s correct. This was a known fact. Sure, this was a desperate situation. “I have to get home.” That’s [unintelligible]— EAV: And you were on the beach all this time listening to the tragedy of McCollom and the group? HZ: I was at Horsham St. Faith on the ground. �24 EAV: With a loudspeaker picking up— HZ: Listening to this whole damn thing. JF: There isn’t anything you can do. You can’t give them any instructions or nothing, huh? HZ: No. Nothing. JF: Just hang on to your— HZ: Well, we didn’t have two-way communication. And anyway, radar isn’t going to help you any. [laughs] Anything up there—once the chips are down, it’s up to you, as you know. EAV: How about the ground crews? HZ: Well, the grounds crews were not very happy about this. JF: Well, they— HZ: You could sense— EAV: Were they in groups and— JF: Listening? HZ: Sure. And real concerned. Oh, sure. JF: They were all listening in the hangar— HZ: As it turned out, too, our outfit, in this particular occasion—there was great concern on this—landed all over South England, Southeast England. And it took quite a while to find out where the hell everybody was as they came in. See, they were running out of fuel and everything else, getting back to—from the engagements that they had up there. EAV: And what— HZ: They had a real chonk-chonk. JF: Were there many— HZ: As I recall, we didn’t even get one victory. It was a— JF: No, there wasn’t. �25 HZ: It was just fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, blomp, zomp. Try to just keep yourself going. Now, we were a little green. But that indoctrinization [sic] of fire made us think about a few things along the line. EAV: In what respect, Hub? HZ: Well, how do we win this thing? What tactics have to be changed? How did we get blundered into this mess? And how do you prevent it in the future [unintelligible]? Actually, I think we should have been at higher altitude going in. They were at lower altitude, still staggering along up there to the rendezvous point. JF: And you were following this escort in what type of a formation? HZ: They had—they never got to the rendezvous point. They were engaged before they got there. EAV: They were en route. JF: Oh— [crosstalk] HZ: They were getting real close to it, but— JF: Well, what type of formation was the other escort in? Were they doing the old formation of boxing the bombers or— EAV: No. The bombers weren’t reached. HZ: The bombers were never reached. They— JF: No. But they had another group ahead. HZ: That’s correct. The withdrawal. As I recall, that outfit was just shot to hell, too. As I recall, the 4th Group was run right out of the country also. It was a debacle. JF: It was a debacle for all of the three groups, huh? HZ: Yeah. Hm-hmm [affirmative]. JF: Did any of the 4th Group get anything? Did anybody get any victories that day? HZ: Well, you can take a look on that particular—I think it was a dull day for the Americans around the Horn. JF: So the 4th and the 78th and everybody got the hell kicked out of them. �26 HZ: Yes. In real concerted style. We stuck our nose into the Abbeville lair and— JF: Got the Yellow Nose punched at you. [laughs] HZ: And the bombers were screaming like bloody murder. Yeah. JF: Now, in your briefing and everything, if they were to have reached the bomber group— HZ: Yes. JF: —what type of formation would they had to have fly— HZ: It would have been the original. It’s before we really changed formation. JF: Before you had the roving thing? HZ: Yeah. It would have been before— JF: And this is before they had the head-on thing. So what was that— HZ: We would have still been in that string formation. We wouldn’t have been that close escort, close, close escort. We wouldn’t have had a superior altitude. We would have been on the same altitude, which was a mistake. JF: With the bombers. HZ: As the bombers. EAV: This was your initial [unintelligible]— HZ: That’s right. And we would have been sticking close, pretty close to the bombers. As it turned out, we never got to the rendezvous. JF: Yeah. HZ: We were engaged completely, which the Germans should have done all the time before and that they— EAV: Forced you to drop your tanks before reaching your rendezvous. HZ: Well, I don’t know whether—I’ve forgotten it right now. But undoubtedly, they did. I wasn’t on the mission. They forced you to—the thing that the Germans forgot to do in the later years. But even with that forcing to drop tanks, we had worked out our tactics. And it happened lots of occasions that they began to heckle us a bit, and so you’d just peel off somebody to engage them a little. A fast pass through to disconcert their effort and continue on with the main force. �27 I do recall where the 4th Group were hit up over in Holland, ignoring, ignoring, ignoring the fact that the Germans were no longer coming out. And all the Germans did was come up with about four people, took a pass at their group, knocked down a couple, three with four airplanes, and made them drop all of their tanks, which, well, broke up the effort. Why this wasn’t practiced more, I don’t know. But things like that were tried against us several times in small effort. Never in a big effort anymore. Small effort. And you should keep levelheaded if you watch them. Zap. You send up four to take care of four. Even if they didn’t engage and shoot each other down, you continued on with the big effort and they pulled off. Zap. All right. 00:42:55 [Discussion of aircraft capability, tactics, and aerial combat training] EAV: Hub, I’m going back to a question I asked back in Hamilton Field at—prior to your expeditious departure. As an observer, where were you cognizant that the German had pressurized cockpits, fuel injection, pilot armor, and in some cases, twin transitional fighter trainers, weren’t you a little dismayed at the equipments that we were forced into World War II with? As an example, I believe I mentioned that way later in June of 1942, the Marines at Midway didn’t have self-sealing tanks, didn’t have armament, and it was rather a stagnant situation that was possibly forced upon us by the bomber theory that a bomber could defeat by its speed any possible fighter that we could turn out in America. HZ: Well, you’re right in this case. Being an observer—and you’re talking about the first time I went— JF: Yes, sir. HZ: —to Europe right after the Battle of Britain. The invincibility of the Flying Fortress, which had not been put into combat, was a point that had been systematically given to the Air Force pilot. And if you flew our aircraft of that day, which was the P-36, the P-40— or let me call it the F-40—the performance of these secondary fighters, which I call “secondary,” though they were first-line at the time, were such that they were inferior to the bomber speed. The bombers could get at higher altitude, the bombers were faster at that high altitude, and it looked like they’re invulnerable with all the machine guns that bristled out, as compared with the two .50 calibers that the P-36 carried and the— eventually they put four in the P-40. And we would stagger up there trying to intercept them on maneuvers, and I couldn’t hardly believe that the Spitfire could be better and the Spitfire could do all this performing with all of this jargon we were getting from the bomber forces. �28 As you also know, the bomber people had made terrific long distance flights to South America and across the coast, from coast to coast. And my God, we could stay up about an hour and 15 minutes, couldn’t get any place, and you felt like here the old secondarytype again. However, when you did get over there—and the British were given some B17s, as you recall, and I was over there with American boys who were flying those B-17s. And the British concern about sending those over to any territory where the Germans might linger around, it didn’t take us very long to all—to think, well, something’s a little amiss here. When you looked at the British Spitfires that had two cannons in each wing of 20-millimeter and see what their firepower was that [whistles] this wasn’t a bad kite. And it was a simple airplane to fly. We got to fly it at Foxhill [possibly meant Goxhill] and the British command bases. Boy, it jumped into the air. It was up in the air, and it had speed. You knew immediately that you had a tiger by the tail and that some of this jargon that had been passed out, America had the best of the best of the best, that the foreign countries had something, too. That then made you think, well, if they’re about equal, the Spitfire and this Me 109, it seems like the Germans have got something pretty good, too. So then you begin to check into it. And what really clinched the event was—I’ve forgotten what the name of the lieutenant that was a friend of mine who was in B-17s that flew in one of the three B-17s that made an attack on Oslo, Norway. This was to be against a kind of a non-defended area. It was to be a kind of a high-altitude indoctrinization [sic] place, flight, to see whether they could take a few photo reconnaissance missions. The three B-17s took off from Eastern Anglia and hadn’t been heard of— JF: Since, huh? [laughs] To this day? HZ: So you found out through the German radio that some Me 109s had gone up and engaged these and shot them down. How the hell does Me 109s get way up to 30,000 feet and do this this easy? Whereupon we all begin to think—and all begin to think about firepower, tanks, performance, and all the rest of that. EAV: But this unfortunate situation that had existed did permit the ascendency of the Bomber Command to actually dictate air policy. HZ: For a long, long time. That’s correct. EAV: Which you had to combat— HZ: That’s correct. EAV: —when you brought your group to England. �29 HZ: That is correct. That is correct. That is correct. Well, in the same respect, it wasn’t felt that a—though, in the American annals, that a fighter airplane was an offensive weapon. The P-47, as you know, was designed as a high-altitude strategic escort aircraft. And I’ll be darned, it was only expected to do that. The best range they could get was about a radius of action of 175 miles. Just barely took you over to Holland and back. They didn’t even improve on it. It had a turbo supercharger that was intended to give you effectiveness of 20,000 feet. And it did. It was right in the ballpark. It took you, because of its weight, a terrific while to get up to altitude to perform and get the maximum performance out of it. At low altitude, it was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. Known to be. EAV: Well, because of your valuable background, which actually you and Johnny Alison were two of the only people that had such wide experience with Allied fighter aircraft, when you finally did return to the States and flew the P-47 for the first time, were you delighted that it was that much better than the P-40 or was it on a par with the Allied aircraft that you knew existed? And, again, you knew would have to fight the 109? What was your— HZ: Well, as you probably—I don’t know whether you’re aware or not, but I didn’t know that we had a—I knew that we had new fighters coming along when I left the United States. I didn’t know the type and what the performance and all of that. When I did get back, I heard of this P-47. We still didn’t have it. And then there was, of course, glowing, glowing terms of what the performance of this was and the 2,000-horsepower engine and four machine guns. And every fighter pilot looks to the new airplane that’s to be come out—to come out. When I actually got a chance to fly it, it was not very elated—I wasn’t very elated over this. EAV: This is where you got your first [unintelligible]? HZ: Dragging this thing off of the ground [unintelligible]— JF: After you’d flown a Spit, too, huh? HZ: Yeah. This is correct. EAV: And knew what you had to combat in the 109 when you got back over. HZ: That’s correct. I wasn’t very happy over this circumstance. But by that time, we also had the P-38s, which seems to have a lot better performance. I got to fly the P-38. I didn’t know of the restrictions, but I learned of these. And I heard of the A-20—you’re always being built up with something new and different—the A-26, which turned out to the P-51. And Dutch Kindelberger [James H. “Dutch” Kindelberger] at North American and all of �30 those types. So you’re looking forward to things. Actually, I was disillusioned in the P47, really. JF: Talking about this overall— HZ: So you had to—you have to then take that advantage of what you—what is best advantage and see what you can do with it. This is why we got into the tactics. The first ones that I employed was, don’t go below 15,000 feet and use this as a hit-and-run attack plane. EAV: This is why you were credited with designing these tactics. HZ: [unintelligible] potential speed. That’s correct. And, of course, I lived a little too long with this 15,000-foot limitation. It’s recognized that you had to get down below that. They did come up with 800 more horsepower out of the 2,000, which helped some. And the paddle blade prop, which helped some. And water injection, which helped some. Boy, that didn’t come in a day. That really didn’t come in a day. JF: But the overall thing that I think is very interesting for a fighter group commander—and being one of the first over there, too—is this problem of not only fighting the 4th, as I’ve always been hitting on the head, but this problem of continually fighting an old Bomber Command theory. HZ: That’s correct. EAV: This is tough. HZ: Overcoming the— JF: Now, this— HZ: Well, actually, I don’t know, John—we didn’t have fights with the 4th Group. You know what I mean? JF: Well, I meant the rivalry. HZ: We didn’t— JF: I meant the rivalry [unintelligible]. HZ: We had a beautiful rivalry and a beautiful competition that they stuck their tongue out and we thumbed our nose at them all the time and we’re trying to beat hell—and this was good. JF: Yeah. [unintelligible]. �31 HZ: It stemmed both sides on for competitive purpose to exert themselves much more than they did. And it—just to try to get a victory in, for instance, we would fly 10 miles, drag these things back a little, fly 10 miles deeper in to try to get a victory over the 4th. And they’d do the same thing. Fly five miles more deeper, you know. The first flights we took when we—which we thought was really down the alley, following the fighter sweeps of the 4th Group, who took fighter sweeps from the British—was to get up at 27,000 feet, have it cocked open about three-quarters horse— three-quarters of the horsepower, [unintelligible] horsepower, [makes sound effect]. Around the loop like nobody—and you’d burn fuel. Boy, those Germans, to catch up with you, would have to be full horsepower all the time. And they did meet us every so often, but they said, “Eh.” They’re not doing anything. Pretty soon you learned that, well, I can—I’m still alive. I can pull the throttle back a little, and I can go a little farther until—and when the competitive end comes in, there was an, okay, 175 miles. [unintelligible] I bet we can do 180 tomorrow and beat that 4th or the 78th or somebody. Jiminy, I recall Mahurin [Walker M. Mahurin] getting in there, and on this particular day when he said, “There’s plenty for everybody. Come on in. Help me.” [laughter] But he was about 225 miles in just about the German border, and Jesus Christ, you’ll never get home. Adios, amigo. EAV: That good feeling was built up because of the competitive spirit. But the decay that existed [unintelligible] for the bombers— HZ: We had some real things to overcome. And bombers are—this is what they’ve been taught and learned. You do in peacetime what you do in war. The training you get in peacetime is what you do in war. And as I say, if you make pink tea-drinkers continually, continually, continually in peacetime, these guys will go into a war drinking pink tea. Right? JF: Yeah. HZ: So you’ve got to have a few losses. You’ve got to have losses. The training in the Marines down there with live fire, right down the alley. You’ve got to have air-to-air combat. We haven’t got it in the program now. You got to. Zap. You see what happens to a couple little guys over in Korea that get jumped— JF: Vietnam. HZ: —where’s the high—Vietnam. Where’s the high cover? What are they doing? EAV: Well, Hub, Johnny Alison told us that actually he had to go up at night and practice acrobatics because it was—had been eliminated. �32 HZ: Sure. Well, and we were told—that’s correct. We were told, for instance, because of fighter losses—and all-due respect to valiant guys like Hap Arnold and their problems with Congress and whatnot—he put a direct order out from his office—and, of course, he was influenced by his staff—no fighter will be—in 1939—will be flown unless you have 1,500 feet and three miles, 1,500 feet of ceiling and three miles visibility. And where did our instrument training goes—go? Well, we were sent to Europe. We believed this. Pretty soon, we’re—your philosophy gets along this way. You work out your cross-countries and all the rest. You get over to Europe and what is it? You can measure it in feet across—inches, British weather. And they say, “Go.” You say, “Oh no. Hap Arnold says 1,500, three miles.” And they say, “Need I repeat? Go.” [laughter] And we had to. It shook you to try to assemble—we had problems trying to assemble 48 aircraft and get them up through. Real problems trying to develop tactics. Well, Christ, one guy didn’t even go up through. Yeah. Suddenly, one day, you find you’re a fair-weather pilot, and the next day, you’re all-weather and keep going. So there were losses. There were some losses, too. EAV: Which was certainly false economy. HZ: Well, [unintelligible]— EAV: If life could be measured in economy. HZ: That’s correct. The dive bombing. Well, Christ, we had to learn what dive bombing was all about over there from our own outfit. And they had to send people over there to us, tell us what this was and the angles and all of that stuff. JF: Did they do—they don’t do that training today in the Air Force? HZ: Yes, they do dive bombing. They do. But they—because of— JF: Not acrobatics, though. HZ: Well, these combat formations and all of that stuff, they don’t do that in aerial combat, no. And let me say, you have got 2,000-mile-an-hour aircraft, 2,000-mile [unintelligible] aircraft will come together and they’ll do a circle and how fast will they go around the circle? EAV: Well, didn’t you— HZ: They will really drop their speed. Will they engage each other and shoot at each other? I am certain they will. Will a rocket go off on one guy and a rocket go off on the other? I am certain they will. Yeah. �33 00:57:26 [Development of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter] EAV: Didn’t you tell John that you had a rough time—was it four years—convincing the staff of the need of the 104 aircraft, which they disbelieved because of its excessive speed? HZ: Not four years. On a golf course during the Korean War, General Vandenberg, who was our Chief of Staff, was sold that we should have a follow-on—immediately, a follow-on fighter for the Sabrejet, F-86, that had, over the MiG, superior climb, superior performance, and superior firepower. So one day, he wrote down a piece—on a piece of paper, “Get into the inventory, write up the operational concept for such a fighter aircraft,” and sent this down to Director of Operations, who sends it over to the Operational Plans Division, which I headed at the time, of the Pentagon. So we sat down, got the industry back and forth in, now what does this take to get such an aircraft, and wrote up the operational concept for this. Whereupon to buy airplanes, as you probably know, goes to a council known as the Air Force Council. It is made up of the Vice Chief of Staff, the Vice Chief of Staff, the Director of Personnel, Comptroller, and Operations, Requirements, and all the rest, that sit on—in a big panel three days a week on various problems and is passed and then goes to Chief of Staff for final approval. Well, these are an assembled group of generals. Now, I had to present this, this proposal. And actually, I think I did a fairly good job. I’m not a very good talker. But it was done with—I memorized this thing and all the facets that I thought was important. I went into those people and was in about an hour, and I was shot down in flames. And the biggest thing that I was shot down in flames is I couldn’t convince certain people—and one of them is my commanding general right now, Lieutenant Colonel Thatcher—Lieutenant General Thatcher—that a 2,000-mile-an-hour single-engine fighter could engage another 2,000-mile-an-hour single-engine fighter in a combat. It’s impossible. Radar only reaches a little ways. You’ll never get these two guys together for a combat. It took me six months, and I’ve—to get back in again—not to get my courage up, but to get back in again and convince these people for another shot at that there was a requirement for that thing. Guys like Johnson [Clarence “Kelly” Johnson], the designer of the— EAV: Lockheed 12? HZ: Yeah. Well, the designer of the F-104 was brought in. We had to get all of these top-types in to get these things [unintelligible] to shoot the—shoot at them. And as you know, �34 the—well, the F-104 is the result. But it was fighting out of the goddamn closet to get that thing in there, for these basic reasons. 01:00:49 [Further discussion of fighter and bomber tactics during World War II] JF: Go back to— HZ: [unintelligible] didn’t realize that. JF: Go back to the battle you had with the bomber boys. HZ: Over in Europe? JF: Yeah. Over in Europe. I mean, you had to fight these guys continually. When did they suddenly start seeing the light? Do you remember what year? Was it ‘44 when they started feeling that— HZ: Yeah. By the light—by the time the first indoctrinizations [sic] of the fighter groups had been overcome, by the time we had a few—our first few losses, we dipped first of all, and then we got our confidence, and we began to have a few results toward the end of June and July. And when we started to roam and get our two-ship scissor—this is hit-and-run, hit-and-run—two-ship team thing, the leader and the wingman, leader and the wingman, and then in a flight, a two-ship element followed up and being protected by another twoship element. And that philosophy back and forth, radio discipline and control, cover of one squadron covering another. While one was down, the other was up, giving top protection or withdraw cover. By the time this had evolved in July—and we had saved several bombers coming home— then the big friends, boy, whenever you went to a bomber base and zapped on the base, the junior crews, the pilots, copilots, gunners, they welcomed you with open arms. That happened quite a bit because, you know, we’re coming back, you zap down on any field that you found when you were low on fuel, and then you got to refuel and went home. Jesus, they’d open you with open arms, mess and everything else. Pretty soon, this began to perpetrate through to the generals and [unintelligible] guys. And also, by that time, the first three groups had—a couple more groups had come over, a little more support, and they begin to see us. Man, it was thin up there. With three groups trying to cover 100 miles of bombers, boy, you can run all over the sky. You’d see a flight, and, well, what protection is that? And even if we were engaged, then they also saw—and they reported at times—fighters engaging fighters. And they saw guys getting shot down. And Jesus, yep, they begin to see the results of some of the fighter stuff. And �35 they also saw 20 or 30 Germans being engaged and broken up. That they knew helped— prevented 20 guys going right through the head end. They began to see this. So you begin to be a real welcome guys with bombers. And after the fall of— EAV: ‘43. HZ: ‘43. Even when I went back with General LeMay—I had some long, long talks with this guy and played much—many hours of cribbage and took his nickels away from him—he began to think we weren’t bad guys at all. Even General LeMay. But he never—he always had that goddamn bomb load, bomb load. You can’t carry a bomb load over there. Well, I agree. The airplane wasn’t built to carry racks and racks of bombs [unintelligible]. But the flexibility, the versatility, change from this and that and the other, you don’t have to go through hours and hours of backline planning and loading and all that stuff. And you took one guy and zapped him in and said, “Go,” as against the—a bunch of other types who had to go to various echelons and be picked up and carry Norden bombsights and tables and navigation charts and all of this other stuff, you begin to see that there was flexibility. And it was apparent that even on—later on, that the flexibility of the fighter in support, this fast support required to support the Army—you know, close support, knocking out this and the tank and zap up there and take this pigeonhole out of a foxhole and—and in my case, where—I think it was overdid it—just shooting out an 88 on one road with a whole goddamn—stopping a whole column. The versatality of fighters began to be recognized. JF: But didn’t you—isn’t it true that during the entire Second World War that the Bomber Command always called the turns for every single turn? HZ: Yeah. Well, I— JF: [unintelligible] in Europe? HZ: Yeah. JF: So you were continually fighting this old Bomber Command bit. HZ: That’s true. That’s way up to the higher echelons. Yeah. JF: Yeah. HZ: The strategy of war is not built on fighters. It was—the strategy of German Air Force was on fighters, but this was defensive. The strategy— 01:05:30 �36 [End Side A] [Begin Side B] 00:00:00 HZ: —strategy-wise. EAV: What did you say, John, about the— JF: I was just saying, going back to what he said about the Billy Mitchell strategy. HZ: Well, Billy Mitchell’s strategy of airpower, I believed in. Sure, this is the third dimension— JF: What was his original— HZ: This was a third dimension—that—well, that you can win wars by victory through the air. This is basically what it is. JF: Was he—did he state specifically bombers or was this misconstrued by the Bomber Command? HZ: I think—no. I don’t know exactly right now. I’d have to review it. But I think, basically, the bombers that they visualized, it was basically thought it was bombers and their weight and load. Because the fighter was always figured as not carrying anything at all. And as you’ve—if you recall, the fighter of 1928, in those days, even though they visualized something in the future, why, it could carry only two little putt-putt guns. Recall that? EAV: Yeah. Two little .30s, synchronized. HZ: And the dropping from—what was it—a B-4. It was a biplane of 2,000-pound bombs that sunk—what was it—the Prinz Eugen? JF: Yeah. HZ: The German battleship out in Chesapeake Bay? EAV: Chesapeake. HZ: It could only be carried by those big, old, lumbering bombers, and so they didn’t think that a fighter would be worth a hoot. Nobody really visualized radar at that time either. They visualized an Observer Corps. So the emphasis being where it is—people make mistakes. I make mistakes, too. �37 JF: But then— HZ: You can’t put all your dogs on all of these things. The other thing that hurt me very much is in the training of personnel and the number of personnel, many of our fighter boys— and real fine, trained boys—as soon as they got a few hours and a little experience, were drug off to the bomber wings to ride as copilots. EAV: Is that right? HZ: Oh, sure. Remember when the first B-17 came out? You had to have about 2,000 hours to touch the right-hand stick on it. Two thousand hours. Why, a fighter type would have to shine an apple for a long time to get 500, 600. I was— [audio briefly drops] HZ: —going to—thinking of Pan-American. If I ever get 1,000 hours, I’ll be really up in there. What’d I get? Fifty-five minutes in a P-6, a PB-2, a P-12. Zat-zat-zat-zat. You flew around the countryside. Fifty—forty-five, fifty minutes. My God, it takes many, many flights jumping in the air to get really up there. An hour and 35 minutes. A long flight in a fighter, right? Yeah. JF: So Billy Mitchell’s theory kind of backfired in a way. I mean, they took it— HZ: Airpower in principle, I don’t think backfired— JF: No. HZ: —because—but as to the type of tool to be used was misinterpreted by a lot of people. EAV: That tunnel-vision approach, actually. HZ: Yeah. JF: Was LeMay and a lot of those Bomber Command pilots disciples of Billy Mitchell? HZ: Oh, sure they were. JF: They all were. HZ: [unintelligible], LeMay, Spaatz. Right down [unintelligible]. JF: They all were. HZ: Oh yeah. JF: And they were all— �38 HZ: Yeah. I don’t think they were— JF: They were all strictly—it’s the bomber because it’s going to go high. It’ll get there— HZ: Higher and faster. JF: —to carry a bomb load and higher and faster than ever. HZ: Dump a bigger load. JF: What did LeMay say when you met him on that tour and he found out how vulnerable the bombers were? HZ: On the tour? JF: [unintelligible], yeah. HZ: Well, General LeMay was trying to improve everybody’s tactics along the line. Get down low. In fact, he led a raid against Lorient at 15,000 feet, leading it himself, telling his boys, “You’ve got to get down there.” EAV: Submarine pens. HZ: Yeah. The submarine pens. It shook them to the quick. They put them on there. But he figured, well, there’s something wrong with our tactics, something wrong with our systems. [telephone rings] HZ: And the secondary— JF: Somebody’s phone? [audio break] HZ: If you put enough bombs all over Europe, you will stop it. Well, I agree. Stop the war. True, they didn’t want at first to—and precision bombing—they didn’t want to kill populous as such. This wasn’t the objective. This was a byproduct of it. And they had— you’ll have to look up in the various books that there—were written up—different target systems that were to be knocked out, first of all. First of all, I think it was the opposing war production, fighters, bombers. It went into railroad systems, marshalling yards, went into one of the biggest things that they tried to follow and that they didn’t follow through was ball bearings. JF: They never got the ball bearing factory at Frankfurt? �39 HZ: Oh, they hit the ball bearing factory, but they’d build them up right away and they imported them from Sweden. JF: Oh, that’s right. [unintelligible]— HZ: They didn’t follow up fast enough. Six week [unintelligible] after the goddamn thing was all built up. And they forgot about shadow factories and underground factories. And they— JF: What are shadow factories? EAV: The sites away from the big buildings. They’re like little adjacent— JF: Oh. Oh yeah. Like they had in Japan— EAV: Satellite. HZ: Yeah. JF: Satellite [unintelligible]. HZ: And they finally got into the basics of fuel and [unintelligible]. JF: Did you say yesterday or sometime while we were talking, that the bombing survey showed that they only had about five percent? HZ: Of targets put on—of bombs put on targets, as against this bombing load going over, five percent of the bombs, five percent of the bombs that were dropped from the strategic effort, fell within 500 feet of the target. You know what I mean? JF: It’s a pretty, pretty piss-poor record. HZ: No. That isn’t a very good record of precision bombing with [unintelligible] bombsight. No. That’s [unintelligible]. You can get those [unintelligible]— JF: [unintelligible] blame it on the bombsight or— HZ: Well, there was a lot of reasons and causes for this thing. Pattern bombing was carried out at times. Until they developed what is known as Eagle radar bombing, which came later in the war, they were bombing off of— EAV: Off-set. HZ: —offset bombings and whatnot like that. In many areas, the first bomb loads that went down so—threw so much smoke and dust up that any combat wing after that was just guessing where the hell the target was. �40 JF: Yeah. HZ: You saw that thing. JF: Yeah. HZ: And then after that—bombings [unintelligible] overcast, they’d have pathfinder people that came over to drop a flare arrangement down as best he thought where the target was that left this great big chain down. And so you—I mean, smoke trail down. So you came over, tooting over with your bombsight and aimed at where this flare arrangement and smoke trail had gone down, and you bombed in that basic area. So this whole precision bombing was not the case in many, many cases. You were really pattern bombing and hoping that you were going to hit. And when you got down to the real value, they had an analyst over there checking each bomb score and how good the results were and followed up after each raid with photo reconnaissance, the results, to see to it where they have to—had to go again. People weren’t really impressed in all respect to what was going on, you know. And it was a great concern. It was a concern of the bomber commanders that, goddamn, we’ve got to go back and take that target out again. Yeah. And again. And we still missed it again. I have to go again. Yeah. Really so. JF: All this time, figuring, well, the fighters can’t keep up and they—that must have been a startling revelation that— HZ: Oh, sure. JF: —to LeMay and the boys. HZ: Well, the other thing is, I can’t figure out how all of these bombers got over. They had a hell of a [unintelligible]. They had over 700 bombers over there, and they only had started to push us guys over, fighters. Who was going to escort them? It took an awful time to get this fighter effort generated. JF: How did the Bomber Command—or did the—how did the— HZ: Well, in the meantime, they had all these people over here, and you have to go. The bombers had to be utilized. You can’t have these people standing around there. Somebody’s going to start to really complain up top side. The American public is—we’re losing the war, and you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of bombers over there. So they had to be utilized. And they went out without escorts. You know that. JF: Sure. HZ: Boy, and did they get chewed up. �41 JF: Yes. HZ: Yeah. Chewed up. It got to a point at one time, as you know, that the British were also saying, “They’re—we can’t live with these losses. Therefore, you will have to go to night bombing, too.” And it got to the—and the British were always pushing us and pushing us and pushing us. The Americans almost go to the point of saying, “Well, maybe you are right.” But with the building—build up, build up that came along—and when they did have proper proportions, when we could get 1,000 fighters in the air, then it was a tough proposition for a German fighter to get any place close, even if nobody was shot down, either German or American. JF: What was the theory of the daylight bombing? HZ: That it was done with better precision. And I agree that you can do things in daylight better than you can at night. EAV: The bombardier can see the target. HZ: Yeah. JF: Yeah, but then he couldn’t after the first bomb went off anyway. EAV: Well, he could see it better than he could at night, let’s say. HZ: Yeah. Yeah. JF: Well, should have gone pattern bombing at the time. JF: Well, Hub, getting back to—the other gap we have is your initial assignment as an observer to Europe prior to World War II. We went— HZ: Our entry to World War II. EAV: Yes, sir. The bombing your first night at the hotel. JF: May I disturb just a minute? I wanted to finish this thing. It’s an overall theory that’ll run time and time again. When—if you don’t mind. EAV: Sure. JF: When did the big command suddenly realize that they had to start—I asked you this question before—what time of the war was this, latter part of ‘43, beginning of ’44, that they had to start doing something with the fighters that they had kind of pushed in the background? �42 HZ: The emphasis of really putting fighters into Europe and the real role of putting them in there started about the fall of ‘43. And there was a great concern of whether they’d get enough. And then the programs were developed to push these things farther and faster and push more of them—perhaps to the detriment of the Pacific or China Theater or maybe the North African—push more of these to that area up there in the—in England. I think long before that, the determination of the exact strength of the VIII Fighter Command of 15 fighter wings, that’s—well, if there’s 75 in a wing, that’d be 750— [calculating numbers to himself]—is over—about 1,100, 1,200 fighters. EAV: 375 plus [unintelligible]. HZ: Besides 18 wings in the Ninth Air Force, just the Ninth Air Force, which is another 2,000 or 3,000 fighters, had been made a long time, but nobody ever thought they’d really grind it up. The emphasis really began to push in, and they began to really roam. There’s long lead-time back, as you know. Contracts for fighters of the various types had been made a long, long time. I think it was kind of open-ended depending on how the attritions would come on. The attritions weren’t as great as they expected. I don’t know what the hell they expected for attritions. But I know from—now that attritions are fighters—the attrition of aircraft were not as great. The bombers were. And therefore things begin to catch up. The big thing, the utilization of fighters that I wanted to bring out to you, in particular, certain facets that we overcame, was the close escort as required and insisted upon by the Bomber Command was broken down in the summer, summer and early fall of 1943, that we could give them better escort, better protection if we weren’t just pinned to escort. JF: What amazes me is— HZ: The next big step was to allow us to go down and chew up the countryside in a war effort that was going down right below us that we could see. That came in the early winter, the early winter, long before D-Day. You’ve got to utilize this. Why, Christ, there’s certain times we’d go over there and back and don’t do a thing. Yet we see stuff and we report it continually to you, and you don’t allow us to about it. [unintelligible] broke down. And then, “Katy, bar the gate,” there was some strength coming along, and they began to recognize, well, there’s a talent and results. And when you’ve got strings of locomotives, cars, airdromes, aircraft being struck, then, boy, we were real jolly fellows and back in the [unintelligible]. JF: It’s amazing to me that the bomber boys dictated how fighters should be used, and they never really were involved much with the fighters. Why didn’t they let the fighter boys figure it out? HZ: Well, [unintelligible]— �43 JF: [unintelligible] fighter pilot generals at the time? HZ: There’s one thing about it that you have to look to— JF: Was Tooey Spaatz a fighter [unintelligible]— HZ: Beg your pardon? JF: Was Tooey Spaatz a fighter-type general? HZ: Yes. And so was General LeMay. JF: And he was an ex-pursuit pilot? HZ: General LeMay— EAV: But before the advent of the Flying Fortress-type bomber— JF: Oh, I see. EAV: —that outmoded the fighter. Ah? JF: Oh. Oh, I see. Didn’t—aren’t these—aren’t they still making the same—they made the same mistake with the B-20. Didn’t they think that would go higher and faster? HZ: Yeah. JF: And then they ran into the same problem in the Pacific, didn’t they? The B-20 was never used over—I remember the B-20 of the Pacific. Again, they said, “Well, we’ve got a big Flying Fortress, and it’s bigger and better and faster and goes higher.” And they ran into the same problems, didn’t they? EAV: Look at the 29s. JF: The 29s. HZ: And Korea. They sent those guys in the B-29s up against the Yalu. Ba-looch. JF: Again. HZ: Did you know that— JF: Yeah. And is this again LeMay and the bomber boys? They just didn’t give up. HZ: No. JF: Now today the same thing prevails. �44 EAV: But they thought they had a [unintelligible]— HZ: Well, I don’t— JF: Strategic Air Command? HZ: It’s being changed. Yeah, this is true. But SAC now is going missiles. JF: Yeah. HZ: They still have the— JF: But prior to going missiles— HZ: Yes. JF: —didn’t they have these—what are these—[G-52s?] without fighter escorts? HZ: Yup. EAV: Yeah, they don’t have fighter escort. JF: No fighter escort. EAV: No. JF: Just zap in. HZ: Yup. EAV: That’s right. JF: Drop the atom bomb. [unintelligible]. HZ: Well, how they intend to overcome that is by— [knocking on door] HZ: Come in. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Sir, I have a long-distance call from Major [Wagman?], Salt Lake, and we don’t know the number of the extension here. [audio break] 00:15:19 �45 [Thoughts on current fighter aircraft development] HZ: [unintelligible]. The Ritterkreuz. EAV: Come on. HZ: The Ritterkreuz. JF: The Ritterkreuz? HZ: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. The Ritterkreuz with Eichenlaub and Schwertern. JF: Eichenlaub and Schwertern? [unintelligible]. HZ: Yeah. The oak leaves and the crossed swords. He doesn’t know this? EAV: No, [unintelligible]. HZ: Well, you haven’t exposed him to anything. Let me— EAV: Let’s— HZ: All right, [unintelligible]. JF: Well, how’d you pronounce that in German? [attempting to pronounce German words]. HZ: [laughs] Der Ritterkreuz mit [unintelligible]—Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern, und Brillanten. Brillanten is when you really throw it in. That’s the diamonds. EAV: Diamonds. JF: Oh. EAV: The Knight’s Cross with the diamonds [unintelligible]— HZ: It’s [unintelligible] up all the way through that thing if you— JF: Oh, it’s in the [unintelligible]— HZ: Well, you have to know— EAV: How are you in the bomber situation? HZ: Well, now let me say, people aren’t complete idiots all the way along the line. All I say is you can’t put all your eggs in one basket and expect them to come through, you know. JF: Yeah. �46 HZ: And that goes for future things. We just can’t have one type of satellite going around. There’s got to be a defensive satellite and an offensive satellite and something built specially for this and that. The same way, I don’t think you can have one type of fighter airplane. You can’t have an all-weather aircraft—all-weather fighter aircraft and expect that guy to do everything. Follow me? JF: Yeah. HZ: Because you can design a little aircraft that can knock that all-weather guy right [unintelligible] hoop. JF: Hm-hmm [affirmative] EAV: Put two planes against an all-weather, you’ll saturate his system. Like Hub was saying, you can saturate our defensive system. HZ: So you have to have—okay, you should have a daylight fighter. What I was thinking, a daylight fighter. You should have an all-weather fighter. And you’ve got to have something that runs aground—air-ground thing. Now, that all-weather job, he isn’t going to do that. [unintelligible]— JF: How do they keep making this mistake all the time? HZ: Well, they’re hotshots. The buzz boys, you know? JF: Yeah. EAV: Computers. HZ: And—yes. And people get invested interest. Maybe they have only an ear to Boeing. JF: Now, was the TFX supposed to be the plane that’s supposed to go along with the B-70? Or was the TFX supposed to be designed to be an all-weather type? HZ: Well, it was supposed to be a real hotshot. This got into another main—there could have been a better airplane designed for a cheaper price, except somebody sold somebody that this was the dog to buy. [laughs] JF: Yeah. HZ: And buy it in a big sum. EAV: And have it built in Texas. HZ: Beside—yeah. And beside this thing— �47 JF: And have it built in Texas. [laughs] EAV: It’s being built. JF: Yeah. HZ: Yeah. [unintelligible]. This is real vested interest where— JF: Is this [Tom Lanphier’s?] doing? EAV: No. JF: What did Tom advocate? HZ: I don’t know what he— JF: He quit and— EAV: He quit. And he was for missiles, you know. JF: He was for missiles. HZ: Well, I don’t think he— EAV: But he also said— HZ: As long as I— JF: —[unintelligible] might be a good plane the other day. HZ: You mean—Mr. McNamara [Robert McNamara] is against bombers. I mean, is against an airplane or whatever you might—airplanes, let me say. EAV: Yes. HZ: I don’t—I think the guy is off-base when he says, “From now on into eternity—” If this is what he said, in the way I interpret it, there’s going to be something that goes through the air with a man being carried in. And I call it an airplane. EAV: It’s a man— HZ: Why to hang all your stuff on missiles—I think when you get a—you’re going to have a guy that maybe rides flat and maybe he’s just got a little kind of—[makes sound effect]— couple things, and he goes around and zaps them. But I think you’re going to bring—take a guy from point A to B, and that guy’s going to go back again and not just a missile that goes around here. I like missiles, too. Have them in [unintelligible]. But I don’t think �48 you’re going to wash out the airplane, let me say, whether it’s air-breathing and whether it’s rocket— EAV: Well, Hub, look what’s happening today. Look at what is happening today. HZ: Sure, they’re just— EAV: Not tomorrow or last year. HZ: [unintelligible] off the—stroked off in the inventory. For Christ’s sake, the world isn’t dead yet. You mean to say, in 2000 AD, that there isn’t going to be an airplane that’s something like a fighter? Huh? There isn’t going to be an airplane? Or maybe—what do we do? All fly Taylor Cubs about then on certain things? What about this jungle warfare? You already find out that you need something cheap. JF: And slower. HZ: And slower. Zap. And that that missile goes clonk. It doesn’t go down that pickle barrel, the old pickle barrel, if you got [unintelligible]. JF: Yeah. HZ: You can put [unintelligible]— EAV: [unintelligible]. HZ: Yeah. How many pickle barrels are you going to put on the ground? But you’ve got to have somebody that guides—puts that thing in there. But nothing—no substitute to this thing here. And you will have to, if you go—sure, we’ll probably go up to Mars, but someday you’ll have to have a guy up there to do the things you want to do up there. You got to. You just have to. In war, you might have some missiles go back and forth. Eventually, if you go far enough and do it enough in detail, you’ve got to have a guy being propelled there somehow. EAV: There’s an interesting project at your place down at— HZ: Edwards? EAV: —Edwards the other day, where one, say, four-million-dollar fighter, all-weather fighter, could be shot down by two one-million-dollar fighters. By one, this two-place man is being locked on, as we discussed, for the missile run or a decoy. While he’s out here, this number-one man comes in and shoots this two-man platform down. So now what has happened to this 2.7-million-dollar plane? They’re going back to a gun package. So in the �49 event they have to eyeball and look around and use this vehicle, they can do it. So as Hub was saying, this isn’t the day of a one-package deal. HZ: No. EAV: Or a one-area deal. HZ: Nor a one-fighter deal. I don’t think—boy, I hate to see the Army and Navy—and all due—the Navy has come up with some real good stuff. In fact, they came up with the F4A. JF: F-5A, isn’t it? F-4A? HZ: Which is that group’s new real fast job, you know. And is that an airplane? Well, the Air Force had the accept it, too. EAV: The Phantom. HZ: Yeah. The Air Force has accept it. It’s expensive. Sure, war is expensive. JF: Who makes [unintelligible] plane? EAV: McDonnell. HZ: And— EAV: McDonnell. St. Louis. HZ: And if you—we’re being told right now, this is a second-rate airplane, TFX. It’s a Navy—Navy-designed after a fashion, wasn’t it? EAV: [unintelligible] HZ: [unintelligible]—well, either way. You accept that as the aircraft, zap, both sides. EAV: Universal aircraft. Everything. HZ: There isn’t. EAV: The panacea. HZ: What the hell would have happened—P-51, P-38. P-38s got shot out of the sky. P-47. If everybody had to—Lockheed will succeed—I don’t think we would have gotten anyplace. JF: Well, the P-38 worked great in the South Pacific, and then [unintelligible]. �50 HZ: Yeah. It takes two engines to go there and back again. 00:22:42 [More on aerial tactics and aircraft development during World War II] JF: Did you—these theories that we’re talking about now, Hub— HZ: Well, now, I wanted to answer one thing that you asked me. Why didn’t the fighters have more success in winning their point and getting their way? All of the fighters were junior sprogs. And it’s like you talking to your son or my son and say, “Okay, we’ll do it like this.” I don’t know. JF: This is like—this is— HZ: Chesley Peterson was the youngest colonel I ever met. He was 22 years old when he became a colonel. And sure, he was a real fine guy, but the guys 35, 40, 60, [unintelligible]. That guy’s a good little combat guy, but he ain’t got any moxie. Well, perhaps we didn’t have any moxie and didn’t have any—but you’re not going to—it’s just human nature. You aren’t going to take the word with a bunch of kids, especially a bunch of guys that go down and beat up the local bistros. [laughter] EAV: But yet, Hub, in retrospect, that 35-year-older— HZ: Yeah. EAV: —old gent is not going to do the job the 22-year-olds is doing either. HZ: That’s correct. Yeah. So it’s pretty hard to—unless the point is proven right in front of— and they accept this. And they wouldn’t accept it from the kids. They wouldn’t accept it from the kids. JF: Well, when you got there and you were fighting the Bomber Command and coming up with various tactics and everything, was this based on your experience in Russia, plus your experience when you first flew the Spit? HZ: Sure it is. JF: I mean, you had to base it on something. HZ: The thing that wasn’t recognized, that would look down the nose quite a ways, was the experience of the RAF. It was written right there. Goddamn, those few handfuls of Spitfires and defensive things that they had wreaked havocs on the German Air Force. Counter to that was, well, for Christ’s sake, a Heinkel 11 K—and true, it wasn’t a very good aircraft to defend itself—and the Dornier—the long pencil bombers—the Dornier �51 211, I think they were—all of those things are second-rate tactical aircraft for controlling the tactical field. And really, aren’t our Superfortresses, you know—oh, okay. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to accept anything. You can pass by yourself. But there were knowledgeable old-time British generals—I mean, air marshals—man, they were savvy that you can’t put all your eggs in your—one basket and tried to convince the Americans. And I think they did a pretty good job. In fact, do you know who really put the operational concept on the P-51, the best air-to-air combat in the war, and who really developed it and got it up? EAV: The British. HZ: The British. And where was it done? It was done sitting in the Dorchester Hotel on a visit of Dutch Kindelberger, who was then the president, sitting with them Air Ministry types. And they wrote down the specifications and said, “Dutch, can you turn out such-and-such an aircraft in your factory?” Whereupon Dutch says, “Sure. Zap-zap-zap. We’ll do this.” And they—I’ll be goddamned. What was the name of the Northrop designer that worked for him that was the German? JF: Heinemann. HZ: No, it wasn’t Heinemann. He— EAV No. That was Douglas. JF: It was something like Heinemann. I shot a picture of him at North American. It was— HZ: Well, anyway, he designed— JF: —tall, skinny guy. EAV: Ed Heinemann was— JF: Heiney? HZ: We might have had— JF: Hinkman? HZ: He might have— JF: I know the guy. HZ: Well, I can get it. I can get it through Johnny Alison. JF: He had a German name. You’re right. He did have a German name. �52 HZ: From Johnny Allison. Anyway— JF: [unintelligible] picture. HZ: —that thing was—turned out—and when they got a couple copies of this at Wright Field to give her a try, Jesus, it had such performance over and above anything that we turned out that our people jumped on it. It was the British that laid down the operational requirement for the P-51. That’s right. JF: Yeah. HZ: And thanks to them little guys. JF: Well, actually, I also think that some of your roving-around background of what you ran up against when you were there and then you came back with a fighter command. HZ: Well, a lot of people were sent over in observation. This is how you gain information. Why do you think the Germans sent down Galland [Adolf Galland] and a lot of other people down to Spain? Gain experience, operational knowhow, and overcome some of their problems. What are we doing in—well, if we have a war and we don’t have observers who sends stuff back to send out the back the best of the stuff, what do you think we’re doing around the place? We’re [unintelligible]. EAV: Well, Hub, if— HZ: Why should we send guys over to Vietnam? The same reason for any big job that comes along. And as many as you can. Now, why should I go over there? I can’t learn anything about Vietnam and tactics in this goddamn paneled building, huh? JF: Yeah. HZ: This isn’t where you learn war. Well— EAV: If you remember, though, it was Adolf Galland himself who said the prime loss of the Battle of Britain was due to the fact that German fighters had to stay in close to the German bombers and lost their initiative. HZ: Yep. EAV: Christ, that was in 1941, Germans saying that. Do you have anything, John? JF: No, I don’t have anything else. I’ve got all of the points out. But I want to follow along with this long, long battle with the Bomber Command. And amazingly enough, it’s—you know, it still exists, for Christ’s sake. �53 HZ: You talk to the evolution of this thing to Jimmy Doolittle. Here was a guy that really supported us, was [unintelligible] down the line, had a lot of things, too. But he was a pursuit man to begin with, remember? And he was a speed racer. EAV: Stuntman. HZ: Remember that? Well, I don’t know whether he was a stuntman— EAV: Yeah. Hell, he—don’t you remember the famous story of having two legs broken? Two ankles broken? He got himself taped into the the plane in a Curtiss Hawk? Had won the meet, Buenos Aires? Hell of a story. He was flying against Udet. And Udet got out, personally walked over and shaked his hand and held the— HZ: Was it stunt [unintelligible] or air racing? EAV: No. It wasn’t air racing. HZ: I thought he was just air racing. EAV: It was a demonstration. In fact, they were demonstrating two aircraft. One German, which Udet was flying, and one American, which Doolittle was flying, for the South American government. HZ: Oh. EAV: They [unintelligible] Doolittle’s plane for air demonstration. Hell of a story. Beautiful. JF: Any problems that Jimmy Doolittle had—well, he was kind of for the fighters, wasn’t he? HZ: Oh, sure. Sure. Jimmy Doolittle was way up on the policy level of [unintelligible]. I only recall him—he really didn’t get out—there were a lot of problems getting out here. He only got out to us about once. But when you’re way, way up on that side, you just don’t roam around in the lower levels here, there, and yon. JF: Well, I was thinking— HZ: He was sympathetic to our cause. JF: Well, I was thinking about that little strike he made off of that— HZ: Carrier? JF: Carrier. HZ: Sure. �54 JF: That’s for—when did he do that? Before he came to the ETO, didn’t he? HZ: Right. Ross Greening was his executive officer, the guy that was in the prison camp that had the picture of my wife on board and the radio drawn on the side of the wall so I could tune into her. Christ, [unintelligible]. He was one of the Tokyo boys, Ross. And he was shot down in China, took about six weeks to get out of there, then he went back and picked up an outfit, went to North Africa on his second mission, was shot down and fell—damn near fell into the Soviets. Broke his leg, was captured, was in prison camp, escaped from prison camp, lived in north Italy, was [unintelligible] and stuck in the mines in Czechoslovakia, was found to be an American pilot, wound up in prison camp. The guy’s stories were all on the reverse side. He was escaping and/or evading. God, what stories. A wonderful painter. I’ve got [unintelligible] his paintings. Well, I have one in this house here. And died because—as an attaché in the Philippines after the war from a peculiar bug that got in to his aortic— JF: Aortic. HZ: Aortic systems and chewed out the valve. EAV: Hmm. HZ: Yeah. C’est le guerre. JF: C’est la vie. HZ: C’est la vie. 00:32:02 [Lend-lease assignment and experiences in the Soviet Union] EAV: Hub, when you arrived in Russia— HZ: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Soviet Union. EAV: On a convoy. HZ: Yeah. EAV: What was your first impression? Was John at the docks to meet you? HZ: No. What was my first impression? No. That’s— JF: Did you have your long johns? [laughs] �55 HZ: Well, the answer was, yes, I had his long johns. I had his fur coats. I had boots for us. It was in [unintelligible] August. As you know, the pact between the Nazis and the Russians occurred about the 22rd or 23rd of June. It took me about five days or so to get the long johns for little John—[laughter]—and the boots. We didn’t need much. Hell, yeah. A parachute bag full of stuff. The technical orders and to select these five British crew chiefs that were to help us get up to Glasgow and get checked on board the boat. Jesus, the British didn’t trust me. They had to orders, blomp. Here again— EAV: Another investigation. HZ: From the time that I found out that I was going to the Soviet Union until the time I got on the—which was about a week later—on that boat, I was under escort at all time by the British types with the bolo hats. When I went down to Selfridges to get the goddamn clothes where I bought down there, I went down there—I think they would have—if need be, they would have checked the pounds that I passed over to the gal to pay for the damn clothes. But they had strict orders: don’t let that guy out of your sight. I didn’t go to a nightclub after that. I couldn’t go. EAV: That close to you. HZ: No. They slept in the room opposite of me over in the Dorchester Hotel. They went to all of the—Christ, when I went down the hall, they went down the hall with me. [laughs] When I got on the train, they got on the train. And they even signed me off to the captain of the boat. Zap-zap-zap. From now on, it’s your responsibility. Give me the receipt. Well, getting up to the Soviet Union was a—it took about a month to get there with this convoy. And Archangel is a town of about 100,000 people. It’s way up in the north. It’s a lumbering town on the Dvina River. The type of lumber they have, pulpwood lumber, Sitka spruce and aspen and whatnot like that, and they were just rows and rows and rows of piles of lumber on the Dvina River. Half of the lumberjacks were women. Jesus. It was a muddy, filthy, goddamn town. No paved streets, log cabins, sewage that—not piped but these outhouse [unintelligible] that, God, you can smell it. You can smell it. Damn town ten miles from where you are. And the docks were rough, wooden docks. Well, everybody is dressed in rough, coarse clothes with very little color, usually dark black or gray. What else can I say about the town? I was surprised at certain things, that, geez, you’d walk around the corner and here come a great cart with two wheels with a dromedary pulling it. Zap. What is he doing up here? But they had him up there. JF: Camels? �56 HZ: Yeah. Camels. Mongolian-type of camel pulling a—I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. [laughter] All of the sidewalks were board ones and half of them had holes broke in, Russian style, you know. The other thing that really got me is trying to keep clean is a real problem in Russia. And they got bed bugs till you can’t see—I’ve never been chewed up by bed bugs so much in my life. The only other time I really ran into them was a mountain cabin up in Montana when I was goldmining. And I know them, boy. [laughter] The net result is I shaved off my head like they did. It’s zap-zap, all underneath here. Down your crotch. You took steam baths, you know, Finnish steam baths as relief, you know, to get away from those damn things that chewed—chew you out. You soak out and perspiration runs off. Food was rough and harsh. Basic potatoes, kraut, cabbage stewed up. We had plenty to eat. Boy, they really laid it on. But it’s rough [unintelligible] stuff. They didn’t get that stuff. A lot of hleb. Black bread. Jesus. They ate that like mad. And whenever you crapped after eating that black bread, it smelled, boy. [laughter] There’s a smell in Russia you can—that you can smell as far as you— JF: [laughs] That’s the black bread, you [unintelligible]— HZ: Well, it’s that sour— you know, it’s sourdough stuff. Haven’t you ever smelled people that ate— JF: Had it when I met the Ukrainian army. They had that salt [unintelligible]— HZ: It starts to come out through your pores after a while. JF: What happened when you peeled off some Russian girls’ drawers, I imagine. HZ: Well, they’re clean enough. JF: Yeah. HZ: They’re clean enough. But the—well, they like perfume, believe it or not. And they like to manicure their fingernails, and they like to wave their hair. In fact, the beauty parlor institutes in the Soviet Union in Moscow amazed me. They’re kind of crude and whatnot. JF: Up at Archangel, they had it? HZ: They didn’t have them up there. No. Christ. [laughter] EAV: How long were you there, Hub, at Archangel? HZ: In Archangel, we were there until the snow started going. This is up around the Arctic Circle. �57 EAV: It is. HZ: It’s south of Murmansk. You go around a kind of a looping head. Murmansk and Petsamo is here, and the White Sea is down here, and it goes up in Novaya Zemlya. This is Norway. Bay of Finland. Archangel is here. Right about here. And the Dvina River runs down here. Murmansk is here. And you had to go all the way down around and into this big bay and in here. Well, we were there until the snow began to form. These aircraft—we wanted to go to the front, so we were the only guys—the first guys that lived with—capitalistic-type to live with the Russians in ages. But they wouldn’t allow that. So we test flew aircraft here and checked guys out and— EAV: What caliber—or what was the caliber of the pilot that you checked out? HZ: Excellent. EAV: Transition easy? HZ: We didn’t have any trouble. Excellent. He was an individualist. He didn’t have any background knowledge of big formations and things like that. They were flying Ratas and Chaikas. Do you know what the Rata is? EAV: [unintelligible] HZ: It’s a little—it was like the P-12. EAV: P-12. HZ: And the Rata was a single engine. It looked like the P-26. EAV: [unintelligible]. Yes, hm-hmm [affirmative]. HZ: Well, that’s what they were flying up there until they got P-40s. Well, the P-40 had a hell of a lot better performance than— EAV: P-26 was a low-wing—was the first low-wing [unintelligible]. HZ: And they had a few of them up there that had zapped in the air with—Germans would come over and make reconnaissance tours every so often with their stuff. I damn near got a chance to shoot one down once but didn’t know it. Flew past him, and Jesus. It was a low ceiling, and he pulled up into the clouds before I—we got around and got all in position. What I wouldn’t— EAV: What type of plane was it? �58 HZ: It was a Dornier 201, the long pencil, thin thing that came from the Finnish front, came over there, zapped out of the clouds. I saw it right up ahead, another airplane. Zap passed it. Jesus Christ, it’s got swastikas on it. Charged the guns, zapped around. And he had been alerted, and so he—we had about 3,000-foot of ceiling overcast that day. JF: Did you ever sneak a ride when you were in England on one of the Spits to go for a little action? HZ: No, that was—oh, Christ. The British are so [unintelligible] that you can’t see straight. JF: Wouldn’t let you, huh? HZ: No. They pretty well knew that—we were observers. We fought against those guys, acrobatics and everything else. And it was kind of a dull days anyway. They weren’t really doing anything. They’d do a fighter sweep and go back. And then we wanted to give it a try at least or something. And they knew what the observers were doing around there. EAV: In Russia, were you in civilian clothes? HZ: No. No. I wasn’t in civilian clothes in Britain either. Where’d you get the idea of the civilian clothes? EAV: Johnny. He said he was flying— HZ: Johnny was in civilian clothes when he went over there the first time, but— EAV: Because he was flying a P-40 in civilian clothes, and he jumped out, and he was surrounded by the countryside people. HZ: Well, I had both, and I wore both. In fact, I had one uniform. And the clothes that I picked up—the flying clothes was strictly military-type clothes. What do you mean? We did change it a little. I wore a karakul hat, and I put the United States insignia on the front of it. Christ, that’s the same thing we did down south. EAV: Another reason I asked, John was in civilian clothes when he crashed when he bailed out of that P-40. HZ: Well, I had—let’s see. What’d I have? I had two pairs of pants and one blouse. I had one civilian suit. I had three or four white shirts and about two or three others. I wore whatever was practical at the time. Yeah. JF: Did you—when you did the acrobatics with the Russians there, [unintelligible] Johnny? HZ: We never did combat with him. See, we were checking out— �59 EAV: No, that was in England they were— HZ: In England. JF: Oh, [unintelligible] in England you were just doing that. HZ: We checked them out and everything, but we didn’t do any combat. That wasn’t really our job. EAV: No. HZ: They came up there. We were test flying these things so that, okay, this thing is running all right, the flaps come up and down, the prop works all right, RPM is all right, the guns work all right. All right, we’ll turn this thing over to you. And we had Russian crews working for—Russian ground crews, mechanics, working for the British boys and us ourselves, turning these things out. As soon as that airplane was ready and we’d go on the test flight, it was taken over to Tenth Kilometer, Yagodnik. And when they got about 15, they would bring up a bunch of Russian fighters—fighter pilots. They’d grab ahold of them, and zap, they’d go up to—go someplace to the front. So I never had much of a chance. They had a couple pilots around with us. I never had much of a chance to get an opportunity to even fight with them, you know, aerial combat. The other thing is, Jesus Christ, we couldn’t afford the gasoline, that fooling around. EAV: Did you have a chance to talk with them much? HZ: Oh, Christ. EAV: Their experiences? HZ: Oh, sure. But the war had not been going very long. Had been going a month. They got the shit kicked out of them, I’ll tell you, the first four or five days. It was a coup de grâce. They lost about 2,000, 3,000 airplanes, most of them strafed on the ground. They really did. And they admitted this. They admitted this. My big concern is—you learned all sorts of things. They would run those airplane engines, zap, right up to the hilt, you know. And you’d say, “Hey, take it easy on this. Boy, these things got to last.” And they say, “What do you mean, it’s got to last? If this airplane lasts six hours in combat, it’ll be lucky.” “What do you mean? Six hours and you’re going to have another airplane? I don’t believe it.” Well, really, the truth, when you’re really out there, you aren’t saving many airplanes or materiel parts. EAV: Just about every fighter of theirs was a combat. �60 HZ: Yeah. They zapped right into a combat and got either waxed or maybe had two or three other things. EAV: Now, what kind of quarters did you have, Hub? HZ: They didn’t allow us to live with the Russian troops. We lived in a separate spur that they run off of their railroad track. And they had one dining car and two sleeping cars that were covered with fir trees and branches. They had expected about 20 to 25 technicians, engineers, everything else. And when I reported on the—reported there with the first convoy, there were only six transports, and there were about 15 or 20 P-40s. There were a few Centurion tanks, British tanks. And there was only one lieutenant with five enlisted men. And that lieutenant was a stupid lieutenant. They say, “What the hell is this war effort,” you know. This is a kind of downgraded affair. They had expected engineers, technicians, everything, had set this whole thing up for them. But they didn’t allow us to live with them. And they had this guarded, of course, and they took us back every night. And they had a little gramophone for us. And this is where they’d put the couple extra gals in there so that we could take care of. And they even asked—the commandant, this guy [Borisov?], even asked Smirnov [possibly referring to Aleksey Smirnov], “Well, don’t you guys like girls?” [laughter] Did Johnny tell you that? JF: No. Go ahead. HZ: And I said, “Well, sure I like girls.” And he said, “Well, we’ve got reports that you haven’t even taken a pass at Panya.” What was her name? Panya. Panya and— EAV: John was just leaving when he got to this. HZ: Panya and Alehandria. Alehandria. Alehandria was the kind of the half-Finnish— Finnish/Russian gal that was a blonde that wasn’t too bad looking except straight hair. Panya was the one with the steel teeth and the [unintelligible]. JF: Steel teeth? [laughs] HZ: Oh yeah. Oh, it looked like a bumper on a Ford every time she—they were chrome. JF: Chrome? HZ: Oh yeah. Haven’t you seen the teeth that they have over there? JF: No. HZ: Steel. [laughter] JF: Looks like a Ford bumper. [laughs] �61 HZ: Oh, mother. JF: This was your bunkmates? HZ: Johnny used to joke to Panya all the time. And she was a peasant gal, and she’d— [imitates laughing]—that, “Kid, some of these days, when this war is over, I’m going to take you and your steel teeth back, and boy, we are going to sell those things. And you and I are going to really live.” And she’d go—[imitates laughing]. She didn’t know what the hell was going on. JF: She didn’t [unintelligible]. He was talking to her in English, and she didn’t understand, huh? HZ: No. Well, at any rate, I was asked about, “Well, don’t you like women?” And I said, “Well, sure, I guess we do. What about it?” And he said, “Well, we put two of them in there for you, and you never even take advantage of them.” And I said, “Jesus Christ. It must be tough on these two.” But— JF: It must be tough on them? HZ: Tough on us to accept those. Oh, mother. [unintelligible] What have we got here? Somebody’s [unintelligible]. [sound of door opening] HZ: Oh, you’re just checking? Okay. Got you. [door closes] JF: [unintelligible]. I thought you said Panya, the blonde, was pretty good looking. HZ: Not too bad, but Jesus. [whistles] Well, when you got real stinked up at one of these Russian parties— JF They looked better. HZ: Yeah. Then you could take advantage of this situation like that. EAV: How was the Russian drinking bouts go? John said they were terrific. HZ: Well— EAV: If you could stand up— HZ: They asked us to have had the parties. And we didn’t understand what this was about. This is all state-owned stuff, this—everything that was in there. The caviar and the �62 canned Alaskan crab. And they had champagne. They set it up and set it up for this thing. And they had Madeira wine and they had vodka. They asked us several times, “How about having a party? Let’s have a party. And let’s have a party.” Christ, we haven’t anything to have a party with. “Well, let’s have a party.” Okay. We’ll have a party. So it usually started after work in the evening. And believe it or not, they worked six days and then they had a day off that isn’t a religious day. But they believe in work hours in [unintelligible]. Had to start out usually with a pretty good-sized meal of, oh, cutlasses— cutlets of some type and panned-browned potatoes and some kraut zapped up. And then started the toast. And they had a little gramaphone back there. There would maybe be 20 Russians would come to this thing. And they’d sit down, and everybody’d eat like pigs did till you can’t see straight. And then zap, a toast. That started off with this whole [unintelligible] going around. Toast about two or three times. And all you need is about two shots of vodka [unintelligible] about that size and I’m about half looped right then and there. But with these guys, they’re zapping back and forth. Then the men started dancing with the men, you know. Men do this over there. Lack of women. And so, zappity-zap-zap-zap-zap, and oop, tilt. [laughs] I haven’t danced with a man in a long time. [laughter] And so another [unintelligible]— JF: One of the boys asked you, huh? [laughs] HZ: Yeah. Well, they looked like a bunch of lumberjacks. JF: Yeah. HZ: You know. They didn’t have enough shave—enough razorblades to really keep the chin shaven off, and about once every three days you’d get around to shaving this. And then you’d shave your head while you were at it, too. [laughs] And zap that down. So you’d toast back and forth. And the two gals would be dancing all the time, back and forth. And either you went out and got rid of this stuff or you passed out right passed. And you’d come to maybe a little later on, and somebody’d be zomping around and another toast. Well, that fast toasting catches up with you. EAV: Hmm. HZ: Catches up with you. And the objective of Russian drinking is to drink hard and fast and furious. Maybe it’s the cold. I don’t know. But it goes on and on. And you know damn well everybody’s going to have a head the next day like nobody’s business. Then you rest for a while, and then you eat some more caviar. And the food is on the table, you know. Maybe it’s half-pushed off of the table or half on the floor. Just piles of damn food. Well, �63 after one experience of this goddamn thing, we’re—I got—oh, boy, I was sick. But, you know, Johnny didn’t drink at that time. JF: I know. HZ: Boy, they just forced—well, he wasn’t a complete teetotaler, but he really didn’t care for it. But they forced and forced and forced this stuff. And, boy, he’d hold off and force and force and force, and finally he’d stand there, drain it, push it down his throat. I did. It was embarrassing. Well, it turned out that the way you worked this thing was, okay, you had a couple of toasts with these guys, and you helped them wind the gramophone, and you danced with the gals. You had no trouble dancing with the gals and stepped all over them, and they stepped all over you. And then you took spells. And I’d go down the hallway and lean out the railroad car. I’d stick my thumb—my fingers down my throat and just heave and heave until I remember—Jesus, even so, you can’t heave everything out. And you do become intoxicated. I fell off of one of the steps one day and landed in the slop down below. [laughter] Really. Yeah. We had maybe eight parties with those guys. The same kind every damn time. And then you go back in there and zap around that. You’d put some more—take some more hleb and put butter on it and throw caviar about that deep, zap-zap this to get your stomach lined again. And, okay, toast. Zappo. [laughter] Jesus, it just burned. They were absolutely burned. Try to hold that for a while, and he’d go down, and out came the caviar and the hleb and butter again. EAV: What did you toast to? Anything? HZ: Anything. Any goddamn thing. Jesus. JF: Forty-eight states. HZ: Yeah. Trees that grow in the forest and— JF: Were the British technicians along with you on this? HZ: Yeah. JF: How’d they make out? HZ: Well, we had the—except for Jacques. And Jacques and one other guy. Jacques was a Scotsman. They were the lowest caliber—Jesus, how I got them, I don’t know—lowest caliber of peacetime enlisted Hong Kong British servant, you know. Geez, they were poor. And all they thought of was a piece of ass or—and these other types. �64 JF: They made out pretty good with Panya and the girl with the steel teeth? HZ: Well, they got jealous. You know, one of them tried to shoot me on occasion. He got jealous of me. I chewed his ass out. They didn’t think we had command over them. And he was a kind of a sergeant first class. And I chewed his ass out of boiling over one of the engines one morning soon after we were there, in running it up—a P-40. And he didn’t think he took orders. Well, he was a little jealous of, sure, the gals took a little better flavor—favor to the officers—and we all ate together—than to the enlisted types. But there wasn’t a great big deal of partiality. All of these guys had British pistols along with them, and they carried them all the time. Well, one evening, as we were sitting in the dining car—and they were those kind of tables that just kind of folded over, you know, in the dining car that you can remove, and four people could sit, two on each side. Johnny was sitting in—and I’ve forgotten this fellow’s name—I can find it out, if you want to—sitting opposite from me. And Jacques was over here, and I was sitting here. He had ground all day long on my racking him through boiling this engine over. Reached underneath and said, “I got enough of you.” [laughter] We were about this far apart [unintelligible]. Looked down at this barrel [unintelligible]. JF: A Webley? HZ: Yeah. Webley pistol barrel. And I said, “Well, now, goddamn, what’s going on?” And he—“Goddamn, you’ve been zop-zop-zop-zop. You’ve been taking our gals.” And this is when it came up. Oh, we’ve been taking your gals. And he’d always been nipping. He’d come in and have a little shot of cognac before he sat down to supper. And they left the cognac—not the cognac—the vodka and the cognac right on the tables. And John and I seldom—I seldom drink during the day. Anyway, that goddamn vodka is like—it just burns the inside out of you. Why should you take this? Cognac, I’m not partial to it anyway. So he’d always had a couple before he came in. And he’d taken a couple, and so he was just trying to take it out. This got heated back and forth. “Well, now, settle down. Goddamn it, you’re going to regret it.” And John jumped over on top of him. I jumped on top of him. We took that away from him. Well, now, there were two or three Russians always with us, and they heard this argument about the gals. And Panya—Christ, everybody was scared—and Alehandria— like nobody’s business. Whereupon the Russians [unintelligible] this is the problem. So I got them to take the pistol, put it in my custody, and then I turned them over to Smirnov. “You keep the goddamn pistols. We don’t need any. I can beat the hell out of this guy with my bare hands if need be.” They removed all of the gals out of the place. And I said, “This is no problem. I am wiring to the south—” And we got permission to do this. “—to �65 the British Embassy of this incident and that I want to have it totally understood that I have direct control—” Johnny was the commander [unintelligible]. “—over all of the people here under this project.” And they sent a group captain all the way up from down in the south to investigate this, get this thing straight. That guy was giving me the idiot treatment. And [unintelligible] said, “Well, put the gals back in here.” And, Christ, not if it causes incidents like this, whereupon they did. But we had to jump on that son of a bitch and take his pistol away from him right there. If John hadn’t had jumped over him, I might have had a hole right through my head right today. Just a drunken stupid bum. JF: They ever change the women for you? HZ: No, they brought the same women back. Nope. The same ones. Oh, Christ. [laughter] EAV: Did you get down to Moscow? HZ: Oh, sure. Between convoys. This is what I told you. We’d get into a DC-3 and were sent down there—or went down to the place, went to—in particular, this is where I told you we saw Smirnov in the Bolshoi Theater, the great theater. JF: Yeah. And he wouldn’t talk to you. HZ: Lost one leg, and Lepeshinskaya, who was Beria’s, Beria’s [different pronuncians], the NKVD top-type that was killed? JF: Oh yeah. Beria. Lavrentiy Beria. HZ: Yeah. Lepeshinskaya was the top ballerina of that day. It was her—she was his wife, Beria’s wife. Saw her three times in Swan Lake, front row, sitting up there. [unintelligible] mean? I had a turtleneck brown—brown sweater. I had an A-4 jacket, A-4 flight jacket, brown pants, karakul hat with the American insignia on it. Sat in the front row. This was my outfit, and, Christ, I was one of the better dressed guys in the place, looking at Swan Lake. We didn’t wear our uniform. Sure, we wore anything we wanted. Christ. Anything that was practical then. I’ll tell you, anything that kept you warm. EAV: Was there any activity in Moscow besides the— HZ: Well, the only thing is, we stayed in the Metro Hotel. And it was pretty goddamn austere. Anything that was there. We went to the Bolshoi Theater. Steinhardt [Laurence A. Steinhardt], Ambassador Steinhart was the ambassador, American ambassador. And he had a couple parties. But all the women had been sent home. There were about 40 men there. Reinhardt, who was presently, I guess, the ambassador to—Freddy Reinhardt, present ambassador to Italy, was first counsel. What was the one—what was the name— �66 what was the name of the ambassador that we had for several years? Thompson. That became quite famous. Did quite well with Khrushchev. Tommy Thompson was over there. Oh, we got around. And I met Schapiro, and this is where I met Clinton— JF: Reynolds. HZ: Reynolds. And these guys, Christ, they’d come over—and none of them could get to the front at that time—asking how it was going up in the north and stuff. But we were kind of a source [unintelligible]. And Jesus, All the attachés were [unintelligible]. We only stayed there about a week and then we went back up the north. Then after the snow began to fall, they move— JF: Did you get any good-looking women, Russian women? HZ: No. JF: No? HZ: Christ. Oh, Jesus. You didn’t get a chance at anything. JF: No— HZ: You can’t—no. Even [unintelligible] hotel, you can’t—there’s no prostitution over there. But, of course, up till that time, if you wanted to get married to somebody, you went to the city clerk, and both of you signed in, and you were married. And the first guy who got tired said— JF: [unintelligible] HZ: Quits. But the attitude of the Russian and the fear that was thrown in by the NKVD and the police is, they were so goddamn scared of us. Anybody associated, even talking to you on the street—[whistles]—blomp—[whistles]—blomp, you know. And it was war going on, you know. Spies around and all of that stuff. How you—well, the ambassador was getting the idiot treatment himself. You can’t ring up to the foreign outfit and say, “How about having a party of Mrs. Moltov and somebody else,” or even the [unintelligible]. That transition from being enemies, which we were, ardent enemies, to galliant [sic] allies as— EAV: Mr. Roosevelt. HZ: Roosevelt and—said, just doesn’t come about in a day. I’ll tell you, we had real fine times with the lumberjack troops way up in the north, but when we got into that atmosphere at Moscow—and later, you know, we were evacuated to Kuybyshev, the �67 [unintelligible] on the Volga River way, way in the back here. All the Diplomatic Corps went six days on the train. Zap-zap. And we did, too. When you got into that atmosphere of diplomatics [unintelligible], boy, you were cleaved off like you have never seen in your life. As long as we lived with the troops, even with their political officers—they had political officers that reported right to the Pentagon—or Kremlin right straight from the field—we had a wonderful time. Boy, you got outside of that, you couldn’t get access to anybody, a woman, a man, or anything else. And the first thing you knew, for insistence, there was a little—we didn’t have too much to do on the second occasion when we went down. So there was a Captain Park. We had, by that time, the second time we went down, we were in the area of Kuybyshev. And he had—Captain Park was an infantry officer, and he had certain things to pick up, information, as attachés are. And there were a lot of Mongolian troops coming forward and wanted to find out what the score was. So I went along with Park. And Jesus, he had more guts than I ever saw. We walked right into the camp where they had barricaded and looked at all their goddamn rifles and all their equipment and everything. Geez, in Russian, “What are you doing here?” Just looking around. “Who are you?” [unintelligible]. The next thing we knew, we were shaking the [unintelligible] and trying to get the ambassador [unintelligible]. That guy had more steam and guts than I have ever seen in my life. But they had—oh, they wouldn’t trust us at all. Oh, not at all. EAV: You never had a chance to fly their aircraft? HZ: We tried to. Yes. The only thing I flew was what—the only Russian airplane I flew was—what did they call it? [unintelligible]. No. What was the little putt-putt airplane? EAV: The IL? HZ: Well, it’s the Su-2. It’s a two—little two-seated biplane job. And I got to fly that up in the north. But the airplanes—the airfield there were—where we were stationed, there were no Russian fighters. They were just those brought in for us to assemble. And at another airfield where the Ratas and the— 01:05:03 [End Side B] [END OF INTERVIEW] � 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 Subseries A - Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Description An account of the resource Individual interviews, circa 1960s-1990s Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13.OralHist, Subseries A Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Note Any additional notes about the item. This recording is presented in its original, unedited form. Please note that some interviews in this collection may contain adult language, racial slurs, and/or graphic descriptions of wartime violence. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Zemke, Hub, 1914-1994 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Valencia, Eugene A. Florea, John Biographical Text <p>Hubert “Hub” Zemke was born on March 14, 1919 in Missoula, Montana. He studied forestry at Montana State University but left school in 1936 to enlist as an Aviation Cadet with the U.S. Army Air Corps. After completing flight training in 1937, he served with the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field (Virginia). In 1940, Zemke deployed to England to serve as an air observer with the Royal Air Force. At the conclusion of that assignment, he then traveled to the Soviet Union as an assistant military attaché and served as a flight instructor to Soviet pilots, teaching them how to fly their lend-lease Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks.</p> <p>Zemke returned to the United States in 1942 and was appointed group commander of the 56th Fighter Group, the first fighter group to be equipped with the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. During its service in Europe, the 56th distinguished itself as a highly successful group, consistently receiving top scores in air-in-air kills during missions. The group came to be known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack,” in reference to Zemke’s firm but fair leadership style and his emphasis on aerial discipline and tactics.</p> <p>In August 1944, Zemke took command of the 479th Fighter Group, helping the unit convert from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to the North American P-51 Mustang. A few months later, in October, he was forced to bail out over enemy territory after his P-51 sustained severe damage in a storm front. Zemke was captured by German forces and imprisoned at Stalag Luft I (Germany), a prisoner-of-war camp housing Allied airmen. As the war neared its end, German officials turned control of the camp over to Zemke and the other prisoners and fled to avoid the advancing Soviet forces.</p> <p>Following the end of World War II, Zemke continued his military career with the U.S. Air Force. His assignments included commanding the 36th Fighter Group during the Berlin Airlift, serving in administrative posts at the Pentagon, commanding the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the U-2 Program, and serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Madrid, Spain. Zemke retired as a colonel in 1966 and established a second career in agriculture, managing an almond ranch. He passed away in 1994.</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 [Hubert Zemke oral history interview (Part 7 of 9)] 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 American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews/The Museum of Flight Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource American Fighter Aces Association Description An account of the resource <p>In this nine-part oral history, Hubert “Hub” Zemke is interviewed about his military service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force. In part seven, he continues to discuss his wartime experiences during World War II. Most of the interview focuses on topics related to his time as a group commander in Europe, such as notable combat missions, aircraft capabilities and development, fighter and bomber tactics, and logistics of the European air war. He also briefly touches on then-current trends in aircraft development and aerial warfare. The final section of the interview covers Zemke’s time as an assistant military attaché in the Soviet Union, prior to the United States’ entry into the war.</p> <p>The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia and by John Florea, a former war correspondent for Life Magazine, and was recorded at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada. Audio may be difficult to hear in some spots due to uneven volume levels and overlapping voices.</p> <p>The original order of the Zemke interviews is unclear, due to conflicting date and order information on the reel containers. The order presented here has been determined by an archivist using contextual clues within the dialogue.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource oral histories (literary works) open reel audiotapes Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant England Germany Russia Subject The topic of the resource Aces (Fighter pilots) Air pilots, Military Alison, John R. (John Richardson), 1912-2011 Doolittle, James Harold, 1896-1993 Fighter pilots United States. Army Air Forces United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 4th United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 56th World War, 1939-1945 Zemke, Hub, 1914-1994 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-07 circa Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews (2012-02-13.OralHist) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1 sound reel (2 hr., 10 min., 33 sec.) : analog ; 1/4 in Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2002-02-13_AV_209_01c 2002-02-13_AV_209_02 2002-02-13_AV_209_transcription Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright