NASA Johnson Space Center
Oral History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
John B. Lee
Interviewed by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal
Houston, Texas – 15 January 2008
This is the
text only version of this transcript, and the photo references are for
photos provided by
Mr. Lee. To view the photos in context, access the PDF
version of this interview.
Ross-Nazzal:
Today is January 15th, 2008. This oral history with John Lee is being
conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston,
Texas. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal assisted by Sandra Johnson.
Thanks again for having us in your home this morning.
Lee: You’re
very welcome.
Ross-Nazzal:
We appreciate it. I’d like to begin by asking you about your interest
in aviation and engineering as a child.
Lee: Well,
it goes back to the fact that I grew up on farms in Virginia and Texas
during the Depression. We were a family of five children: two sisters
[Beth, the oldest child, and Francis] and three brothers [Keith, my
fraternal twin, myself, and Harry, the youngest child]. Most of the
time my paternal grandfather and grandmother lived with us. I was named
after him, John Bennett Lee. The name had been handed down for generations.
When we sat down at the table to eat, there were nine of us.
My grandfather and father had a dairy farm, raised apples and peaches,
and also had beehives. It was named “Judyville,” and it
was a real show place. In the early 1930s, they sold the farm to John
Lee Pratt, so we moved down to the Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, Texas,
where they had just started irrigating from the Rio Grande River. There
they planted citrus trees for oranges and grapefruits. They planted
vegetables between the tree rows which they would sell at a market.
So while they were watering the trees, they were also watering the vegetables.
Daddy and my grandfather had two different farms. After four years,
the trees were just beginning to bear fruit.
Then the Depression hit. Daddy went to the bank to borrow money to buy
seeds to plant—as he had done every year. The bank told him that
they did not have the money to loan him that year. He asked, “Why
can’t you loan me the money? Haven’t I paid you back every
year?” They answered, “Yes you have.” My father then
said, “Well, you’re loaning money to a farmer down the road
from me.” The bank replied, “Yes, but he hasn’t paid
us back yet, so we have got to keep loaning him money in hopes that
we can get our money back from him.” Daddy always believed in
paying his bills. They closed down their business, sold the orchards,
and moved back to Virginia. What happened was that the people who stayed
became millionaires raising citrus fruit and vegetables. We didn’t.
When we got back to Virginia, my father took a job with the government
for a while. I believe it was the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps].
Then my grandfather and he became tenant farmers, and it seemed like
we were moving every year. I went to six different schools my first
seven years of grammar school. We were moving all the time.
John Lee Pratt had bought a farm south of Fredericksburg, Virginia,
on Route 3 in King George County that was on the Rappahannock River.
It was named “Farlyvale.” It had been run down. He knew
that Daddy and Granddaddy were good farmers, so he leased it to them.
He had become vice-president of General Motors. He was a dollar-a-year
man for the United States government during World War II; that is he
was a consultant for the government, and they paid him one dollar a
year. He was once offered the presidency of General Motors, but he turned
it down. That’s how good he was. He had grown up on a farm in
the area and had become an engineer. He was my idol.
In Texas, I started school when I was six years old. When I was twelve
years old and in the seventh grade, it was the first time that we had
ever lived in a house that had indoor plumbing. We stayed there until
after I graduated from high school.
This farm had about 1,000 acres. Six hundred acres of it was upland
where we raised horses, cattle, pigs, corn, wheat, hay, and we had a
vegetable garden. The fields were covered with sassafras bushes. Mr.
Pratt bought a Caterpillar tractor so that we were able to clear the
fields. I learned to drive horses and mules with plows, wagons and cultivators,
also cars, trucks, tractors, as well as the Caterpillar tractor. I was
too young to have a driver’s license, but I did not drive on the
highway.
This farm also had about 400 acres of marshland. Down along the side
of that marshland was a strip of land that was about 15 acres where
we raised corn. When I was down there cultivating those rows of corn
behind a horse and mule, I would stop them at the end of the corn rows
to let them breathe while they were sweating and brushing off the mayflies
that were all over them. The Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground at Dahlgren,
Virginia, was very close to us. I would sit there on the cultivator
and watch the Marines dogfight in the Navy’s SNJ’s [also
the Army Air Corps AT-6, built by North American], which was the advanced
trainer. I said, “I’m going to do that one of these days.”
I had no idea how I was going to get there. That was my dream from the
beginning.
I graduated from King George High School when I was seventeen years
old. It was a non-accredited high school. At that time, we had four
years of high school. I knew that I wanted to go to VPI [Virginia Polytechnic
Institute] at Blacksburg, Virginia, to study engineering so I had to
take trigonometry in summer school. I had worked some extra jobs during
the summer, and whatever I made, Mr. Pratt matched it. Two weeks before
VPI was to open in the fall, my father came into my bedroom one night
and said, “John, I think we have made enough money on the wheat
crop this year so that I can send you to your first year of college.”
That was how close it came for me to not being able to go to college.
He got in touch with Benton Gale who was superintendent of schools.
He sent a letter of recommendation to VPI for me. Two weeks later in
1941, I was in college. Can you believe that happening today?
Ross-Nazzal:
Not today.
Lee: I joined
the Infantry in the Cadet Corps, and I studied to be a mechanical engineer.
When people ask me why I decided to be an engineer, my answer always
is, “I did not want to look at the south end of a mule going north
for the rest of my life.” That was one of my grandfather’s
sayings. I dearly loved that man. He was a Christian that read the Bible
all the time. I knew there had to be something better in life.
Freshmen at VPI were known as “Rats.” Freshmen were not
allowed to have radios in their room, but the upperclassmen did. Then
on Sunday, December 7, 1941, an upper classman came bursting into my
room at about 4:00 pm and said that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl
Harbor. I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was or what it was.
My twin brother, Keith, was also at VPI with me. When we became 18 the
following summer, we both tried to get into the Naval and the Army Air
Corps. We were both turned down because we each had a deviated septum
in our noses. That is one side of the nose obstructed. I don’t
know how I got mine, but I know how Keith got his. One day he was catching
a baseball behind the batter without a mask, and a ball hit him in the
nose. Keith claimed he broke my nose, and I said, “No, you did
not!” Back when we were in Texas and we were about seven or eight
years old, my father had given us boxing gloves, and he taught us how
to box.
We weren’t able to get into the Air Corps. Since the war had broken
out the year before, VPI had put us on an accelerated program, and I
went to college during the summer. In December, I finished my sophomore
year. On December 1, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt came out
with an edict stating that a person had 15 days to join whatever service
he may want, but after that, he would be put into the service where
we want him. Being in the Cadet Corps, we couldn’t go off of campus
without permission.
One of the things that happened to me at VPI was when we were sent on
a field trip. A plane flew over us, and they dropped sacks of flour
on us, which were simulated bombs. We were lying on the ground firing
blanks back at them with our rifles. Once again, I knew that I didn’t
want to be on the ground in the infantry. I wanted to be the one in
the airplane dropping the bombs. Those were some of the things that
really helped me to decide exactly what I wanted to do.
VPI was at least six hours away from home. Blacksburg, Virginia, is
in the western part of the state, with an elevation around 2,000 feet
and cold as hell during the winter, the high winds blowing with snow,
and the sleet on the ground. We would have to stand in formation at
seven o’clock in the morning before going to breakfast in the
cafeteria. One morning it was below zero with snow and sleet on the
ground. The wind was blowing from the North across that drill field
into our faces. There was “A” company, “B” company,
“C” company, and the band in formation. The adjutant called,
“Report!” The companies saluted and said:
“‘A’ company all present and accounted for, sir!”
“‘B’ company all present and accounted for, sir!”
“‘C’ company all present and accounted for, sir!”
The band said, “What the hell are we standing here for?!”
Everybody just broke up laughing.
At that time we had three choices: 1) Daddy could get us a deferment
to work on the farm; 2) we could stay in college and get a commission
in two more years in the infantry, which I definitely did not want;
or 3) we could go AWOL [absent without leave] and get our noses operated
on to get in the Air Corps. So we went AWOL from the Cadet Corps. We
went home so that we could get our noses operated on in order to be
able to join the Air Corps. My twin brother and I hitchhiked home. We
could hitchhike in those days.
We got all the way to Fredericksburg, Virginia. We lived about twelve
miles south of there on Route 3. We walked across the Rappahannock River
Bridge in Fredericksburg at midnight, but there were no cars coming.
So we had to go back into town and rent a cab to take us to the farm.
Route 3 went by [George] Washington’s boyhood home, where he had
not chopped down the cherry tree and he had thrown a “silver dollar”
across the Rappahannock River, not the Potomac River. It is a very famous
part of Virginia.
So anyway, when we got home and we started going up the steps to our
bedroom—those steps would go creak, creak, and creak, so we couldn’t
be very quiet—there was Daddy standing at the top of the steps.
He asked in a deep voice, “What are you boys doing here?”
We told him that we had come home to get our noses operated on. “We
want to get in the Air Corps.” Daddy said, “I can get you
deferments and keep you here on the farm.” He had already gotten
deferments for two boys, Ben and James, who he had working for him that
we had gone to school with. We told him “No, we don’t want
to do that. We want to get in the Air Corps.” We told him that
Ben and James could help him more on the farm and that we could do more
good in the war as pilots.
Daddy understood because on the first day that World War I had broken
out, he had signed up in the cavalry. Daddy was 21 years old. He was
a great horseman. He could run and jump on the back of a running horse.
He was in France delivering ammunition to the front when the war ended.
He survived the flu epidemic that killed so many American soldiers.
When a doctor visited him one day, he told my father that he would do
what he could for him. He told the doctor, “You think I am going
to die but I am not.” So he understood.
He took us down to the University of Virginia’s Hospital in Richmond,
Virginia. Our mother’s cousin, Bick Caldwell, was the chief of
staff of that hospital so he got us into the hospital right away. He
assigned a doctor to us who was one of the best nose specialists around.
We both went through our operations. What they did was give us local
anesthetic, and we had to sit up in a chair. The doctor used a hammer
and a chisel and kept chipping on the inside of my nose. It felt like
he was knocking off the back of my head. I said that I would never go
through that again. Keith and I left the hospital on the 15th of December
with our noses still swollen and bandaged up. Keith went down to Norfolk,
Virginia, and joined the Naval Air Corps, and I went to Roanoke, Virginia,
and joined the Army Air Corps. I didn’t want any part of landing
on an aircraft carrier, but Keith liked it.
I took after my father’s side of the family, and he took after
my mother’s side of the family; that is why we were named after
our respective grandfathers. When people ask me, “Are you identical
twins?” I tell them, “No, we are fraternal twins.”
Believe it or not, I had red hair, a freckled faced, and sunburned easily.
He was shorter than me with black hair, brown eyes, suntanned, was very
good looking, and he got all of the girls. That is why I had to leave
home. I couldn’t stand the competition. I played sports. He chased
girls, and the girls chased him. I can tell you an anecdote that proves
my point but I won’t do that now.
When we went back to see the doctor, Keith’s nose was all right.
When the doctor looked at mine, he said, “Oh no, I didn’t
get it all; I’ve got to do it again.” Whenever you have
a dream and you set a goal and you want it bad enough, you’ll
do whatever it takes. I wanted to be a pilot, so that is what I had
to do. I went through the operation a second time. I told the doctor
that this time I didn’t want to sit up. He said okay. They laid
me down, and he redid the operation. He did not explain to me that they
performed the operation sitting up so that the blood would flow out
of my nose. By lying down I was swallowing the blood. When I woke up
after the operation, mother was sitting there beside the bed. I don’t
know if I should tell this story or not. All of a sudden I got very
sick of the stomach, and I upchucked blood all over her dress. That
was a horrible mess. I felt so sorry for mother. She was an angel on
this Earth. I was then able to stay in the Air Corps and go through
my training and so forth. That’s how I got into the Air Corps,
but it wasn’t easy.
Ross-Nazzal:
It doesn’t sound easy at all.
Lee: When
you want something bad enough you’ll do whatever it takes. I’ve
always believed in that.
Ross-Nazzal:
You ended up coming back out to Texas for training. Will you tell us
about that?
Lee: Yes,
that is an interesting part of it. The Air Force would send the new
recruits to another part of the country from where their home was. On
February 28, 1943, Daddy took me and Billy Potts to the train in Richmond,
Virginia. Billy had graduated from high school with me, and we both
had signed up in the Air Corps at the same time. We boarded the train
in Richmond and were sent to Miami, Florida, for a month of basic training.
We would march on some beautiful golf courses. We were billeted in a
hotel. The Air Corps’ Headquarters was in the beautiful Cadillac
Hotel. Then after that I was sent to a college training detachment [CTD]
at the Butler University field house in Indianapolis, Indiana. We were
put in their field house that was used for sports. At that time it was
the biggest field house in the U.S. The Navy was already there. The
Navy was put in one half of it, and we were put in the other half at
the other end of the basketball court. They were training to send messages
by semaphores.
When I got in the service, my training in the Cadet Corps at VPI really
paid off. At CTD, I was pulled out of the ranks and became a flight
commander. I was teaching the other guys how to march instead of having
to learn. While there, one Sunday I went to church. I was invited by
a very nice family to their home for lunch. They had a very pretty daughter
who could play the piano very well. Before I left there, I had fallen
in love with her. We ended up corresponding during the war. In combat,
I named my airplane “Suzanne” after her.
I stayed in Indiana for three months and then we were sent to San Antonio,
Texas, to preflight school, which had the reputation as one of the toughest
in the services in World War II. Once again, I was pulled out of the
ranks and became a drill instructor. That also gave me certain privileges,
such as a private room and I could sleep later. The other guys in the
barracks didn’t like that very much so I got harassed a few times,
pulled out of bed and so forth, but that was all part of the job.
When we were at preflight school, they asked us to list in order whether
we would rather be a pilot, a navigator, or bombardier. I put down pilot,
navigator, then bombardier in that order. My goal was always to be a
pilot. Sure enough, I got assigned as a pilot. I was sent out west for
primary flight training to a little airfield at Fort Stockton, Texas.
When we got there, we were told to look at the person on the right and
left of us. We were told that only one of us would make it through pilot
school. I felt sorry for the other two guys. Our instructors were civilian
instructors, but the Air Corps was in charge of the field and the training.
In primary flight school, we flew the Ryan PT-19 which had a low laminar
flow wing. I did not know what that meant but I enjoyed flying it. The
wing had been designed by the NACA [National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics] at Langley Field, Virginia. The airplane had fixed landing
gears, an open cockpit with a needle, ball, airspeed, and a horizontal
indicator, but no radio. The instructor was in the back seat, and we
could communicate with a tube going to each of the pilots’ helmets.
We had white scarves around our necks, flapping in the breeze. We were
hot stuff.
One of the things that they had us do was land without using power and
try to land as close to a line across the runway as we could. The pilots
were graded on how close they came to the line. I came in without any
power and straddled the line on landing. My instructor said that they
had never seen anyone do that before.
Over the Christmas holidays, my father came down to see me while I was
in Preflight School. He was sitting there on the flight line with some
of the pilots watching the planes take off. When I took off, one of
the pilots asked, “Who was that who made such a smooth takeoff?”
One of the pilots responded, “That was John Lee.” The other
pilot said, “Well, it’s no wonder, if it’s John Lee.”
My father was really proud when he told me that. I must have been recognized
by my fellow pilots as a good pilot. I came out of that school with
a very high flying rating.
I’m bragging a little bit now, but I loved flying. Here we had
our first tragedy. One plane came into the traffic pattern and hit the
airplane under him. One of the pilots was killed. Naturally we were
all upset about it. The Air Corps captain, who was a West Point graduate,
called us in and gave us a pep talk. He explained that in our profession
some of us were going to get killed. We were going to have to get used
to it. He was very impressive.
Then we moved on to basic training at Goodfellow Field in San Angelo,
Texas, where we trained in the Grumman BT-13. It had a closed cockpit
with fixed landing gears, but we had a radio. We learned to fly on instruments,
to fly under the hood, to use the beam for cross-country flying, to
fly at night, and things like that. At basic training they asked us
to list in order if we wanted to be a single-engine, twin-engine, or
a multi-engine pilot. By this time I was getting cocky, so I put down
single engine, single engine, and single engine—in that order.
I got single engine. Talk about being cocky!
I was then sent to advanced training at Foster Field in Victoria, Texas.
Here we trained in the North American AT-6, an advanced trainer. On
April 15, 1944, in the class of 44D at the age of 19, I graduated and
received my wings as a single-engine pilot. After two weeks of leave,
I was sent back to Foster Field and over to Matagorda Island, Texas,
for gunnery school. We flew AT-6s there as well as the P-40s for gunnery
in ground strafing.
After that, I was shipped to Perry, Florida. That was way out in the
country. In fact, the town is not even there anymore. What was there
was built because of the airbase. It was that isolated. We trained in
the P-40s. This was the airplane that General Chenault used with the
Flying Tigers in China. There we had formation flying, dog fighting,
strafing, and aerial gunnery. We would shoot at a sleeve behind another
airplane and do ground strafing of a wooden target. Ray Larson, my best
friend, and I had the highest gunnery scores there. Our instructor had
won top gunner in the Air Corps. He showed us how to make a pass at
the flying target to be the most effective. The word got around that
they were going to keep the two of us as instructors. I said, “I
do not want to be an instructor. I want to go overseas to get into combat.”
It ended up that I was not assigned the job. I don’t know how
the word got around, but I made it very plain that I didn’t want
that.
Ross-Nazzal:
You wanted to fly.
Lee: Yes,
my goal was to fly in combat. Flying the P-40 was quite interesting.
When you took off, there was this long nose up in front of you and you
could not see the runway in front of you. But you could tell if you
varied off of a straight line. On takeoff, I felt like I had a “tiger
by the tail.” On one landing, I had a blowout of my right tire.
I was able to get it off of the runway without cart wheeling or flipping
the airplane.
Once on takeoff with the canopy open and my goggles on, oil started
covering my face. I immediately cut my power, keeping the plane under
control. I lifted my goggles and taxied to the flight line. When I taxied
in, some of the ground crew saw me with my face covered with oil and
the area around my eyes where my goggles had been, which was white,
they started laughing. I did not think that it was so funny. I bet it
was comical. I wish they had taken a picture of me. It turned out that
when the ground crew had put oil in the plane they had forgotten to
put the oil cap back on. I imagine they got in trouble.
We were told not to try to do a loop. One day on a training flight,
I got bored. I took the plane up higher, went into a dive to pick up
speed, and pulled up into a loop. When I was on my back, I tried to
help it through the loop instead of flying through it. My plane went
into a snap role and went into an inverted spin. I heard that if you
got into an inverted spin in the Bell Airacobra P-39, that a pilot could
not get out of it. That flashed through my mind. I cut the engine power
and that big heavy nose fell through. The plane went into a very fast
spin, higher than anything I had ever trained for. I was able to recover
from that. When I looked around to see if anyone had seen me, I saw
a plane a ways behind me coming after me. If it was an instructor, I
did not want him to catch me. I already had a high rate of speed so
I firewalled it and left him behind me.
When we finished our training at Perry, Florida, we were sent to a staging
area at Tallahassee, Florida. It was very nice there. This is a very
interesting story. One day before we were going to be shipped out, Ray
Larson came running into the barracks and said, “Hey John, John,
they have more than enough pilots to be shipped out. They asked for
ten pilots to volunteer to stay behind who could go home on leave. I
was the tenth one that signed up.” I asked him if he saw my name
on that list, and he said, “No.” “I thought we were
going to go overseas together.” He said, “But I have a chance
to go home.” Then a few days later he came running into the barracks
again. He said, “John, John, they have some more openings, come
on and sign up.” I said, “No. I’ve trained with this
group, and I want to go overseas with them. I don’t want to do
that.”
I found out after the war that when he rode the train to his home in
Ohio, there was a telegram telling him to return to the base immediately,
which he did. He was shipped to the West Coast by train where they were
loaded on a tanker and shipped to the South Pacific. On board were their
P-40s in crates. They had to take them out of those crates and put them
together, with many parts still packed in grease. He was assigned to
the “Mahurin Raiders” who were very famous. They lived in
tents and were hopping from island to island. When he finished combat
he was a nervous wreck. The flight surgeon told him that he would never
fly again. I was so grateful that I had not volunteered to stay behind.
We were shipped out of New York past the Statue of Liberty by convoy
to Liverpool, England.
Ross-Nazzal:
I wanted to go back and ask you a question. When you were learning to
fly, before you actually got in the cockpit, how did you know what to
do? How were you trained before that point?
Lee: You
had to study a manual of the plane. You had to learn all of the controls
and the instruments on the panel. The instructor would go over all of
the controls and the gauges with you and explained what they had to
do. Then, when you were in the cockpit, they would blindfold you and
you had to reach for the controls and point to every gauge on the panel.
Of course, the more advanced the airplane, the more controls and gauges
that you had. In the beginning, the instructor took the plane off and
landed it. He also showed you how to fly certain maneuvers, check the
winds, and how to pick out a place to make an emergency landing. It
had better be upwind. You had to follow him. After so many flights,
like ten or twelve, depending on how far advanced he thought you were,
he would get out of the airplane and shock you by saying, “OK,
take it up by yourself.” You would be elated but scared as hell.
In the PT-19, you only had a few instruments.
You always started off in primary, then basic, and on to advanced training
with the instructor flying with you and showing you how to fly. Then
you would solo. When we got to the P-40, there was just a single seat.
You were told what the different gauges were for, and what you had to
do with the mixture control, the flaps, pull up the landing, and so
forth. You were shown step by step.
Ross-Nazzal:
I was curious about that, knowing that there probably weren’t
simulators back then.
Lee: Well,
we did have simulators. Where did I run into my first simulators? I
don’t remember exactly. I think that we did when we started flying
under the hood on instruments and flying the beam for cross country.
We may have had simulators in both basic and advanced training, but
I am not sure. At night, you would fly a beacon, and you had to learn
the Morse Code, dit dah dah, dah dit dit dit, dit dah, for the 36 letters
of the alphabet. That was one of the things that you had to pass in
order to graduate. The first 15 words you had to get exactly right.
I went through the Morse Code test and when I got through the first
15 words, I stopped and put my pencil down. That was it. That’s
all I had to do, and I had them all right. If you didn’t pass
that, you’d be held over to the next class, and I didn’t
want that to happen.
Yes, we flew simulators, and what we were doing was learning to fly
blind. In flight, with you under the hood, the instructor would have
you fly toward the beacon. He might set up the plane off the beacon
and to fly away from the beacon. You would have to use the beacon signals
to find your way back. You would know by the sound, whether it’s
getting louder or weaker, whether you were going toward the beacon or
away from the beacon and/or what side of it you were on. If it was getting
weaker, you knew you had to make a 180 degree turn and go the other
way.
They would try tricks on you in aerobatics. One day during aerobatics
as I was doing a roll, and when I was on my back, I happened to look
up and I saw that the fuel gauge was turned to off. As I rolled out,
I turned the fuel gauge back on and just kept right on flying. The instructor
said, “Very good, John, very good.” If I had not seen it,
the engine would have quit on me and I would have been looking for a
field to make a forced landing. Of course you always had to be able
to pick a field in order to land in case your airplane engine stopped.
They pulled all kind of tricks like that on you. Of course I know they
pull a lot more on pilots today than they did in those days, but that
was just a single engine and it did not have as many instruments as
they do today.
In September of 1944, we were shipped in a convoy on the French cruise
ship the Mauritania to Liverpool, England. We were then sent to a field
at Peterborough, England, to train for a month there in the P-51 Mustang
with the Caged Canopy, which was the first version built. There I was
taught flying formation and aerobatics. In October of 1944, I was assigned
to the 20th Fighter Group [FG] in the Eighth Air Force. Each fighter
group consisted of three squadrons, so in the 20th FG there were the
55th, the 77th, and the 79th Fighter Squadron—which I was assigned
to. My squadron commander was Jack Ilfrey from Houston, Texas.
He was on his second tour of duty after becoming the first ace in North
Africa in P-38s. He is standing left of the propeller. I am on the right
wing, hidden behind the man sitting on the propeller with a dog in his
lap.
The group had changed from the P-38 to the P-51 in August so I did not
get to fly the P-38. The P-51D had the tear drop canopy, and it was
the best prop plane ever built. I arrived in England in September of
1944. After a month training in the P-51 at Peterborough, England, I
was assigned to the 20th Fighter Group in the 79th Fighter Squadron.
I got to the group in October. I flew my first mission on November 9th
of 1944. After a few missions, I received a brand new P-51D airplane.
To the right is a photo of me returning from a combat mission.
In combat we had to fly high altitude escort missions of bombers, which
were at 24,000–25,000 feet. To the left is a photo of me in my
flight gear. To the right is a photo of me taxiing out for takeoff on
a mission. We would escort from as high as 30,000 feet. I had never
been up that high. Things are much different at those altitudes because
you didn’t have the atmospheric pressures that you have here on
the ground and the drag was less on your airplane. If you fell behind
your leader and tried to catch up, you had to use a lot more power.
When you caught up, and you cut back on your power you would glide a
lot further. There I was, on the first day, going like a yo-yo. I’d
go past my leader and then fall back and then go forward. It was very
humiliating.
Now you have it in my report about how the British really bought the
P-51 from North American before the Air Force did. They developed the
P-51, really. I won’t go into those details here. I don’t
think it’s that necessary. They made that plane what it was. There
wasn’t a German plane that could touch that airplane.
Before I flew my first combat mission, the group engaged the German
fighters several times. Above is the Messerschmitt Me-109 on the left
and the Focke Wulf FW 190 on the right. The Germans didn’t fly
in formation like we did. On one mission the Germans came up in gaggles,
some estimated as many as 200-300 airplanes. The group destroyed 28
airplanes and damaged 5 without the loss of a man in aerial combat.
While I was there, there were at least 3 missions where our men destroyed
24, 26, and 28 airplanes. While I was there, we didn’t lose a
man in air-to-air combat with the German airplanes.
At first, all we did was escort bombers. On the left is the Boeing Flying
Fortress. On the right is the Lockheed Liberator. When General “Jimmy”
[James H.] Doolittle became the head of the Eighth Air Force, he cut
us loose and let us hit “targets of opportunity.” That is,
we would go down on the deck and strafe airports, trains, train marshalling
yards, tanks, and anything that moved. That’s where we destroyed
a lot more airplanes, but we also lost some men to flak. I also had
some experiences with some pretty heavy flak installations.
The Germans were ahead of us in many areas of technology. They had developed
the first Operational Rocket Airplane—the Messerschmitt Me-163
on the left. This plane did not play a very significant part of the
war because of its limited range of about 45 minutes. I didn’t
get to see the rocket airplane. This is the first Operational Jet Fighter
Airplane—the Messerschmitt Me-262—on the right. I had several
encounters with it.
Wernher von Braun and his staff were on a rock island in the North Sea
called Peenemünde. It had one of the heaviest flak insulations
in Europe. The flak was so thick that it looked like you could get out
and walk on it. He had developed the V-1 buzz bomb, which was nothing
more than a gyroscope guided missile. Its engine sounded like a washing
machine motor. I did not see it but I heard it many times flying over
at night. If the engine quit, you had better duck, because you knew
it was coming down. One of them hit the King’s Cross Train Station
in London, England, one hour after I had left there going back to my
base. On missions over Germany, I saw the V-II Rockets being launched
out of Germany on the way to London. They were also developed by Wernher
von Braun. Some twenty years later, I found myself in staff meetings
and standing on the Saturn booster rocket test stands at the Marshall
Space Flight Center [MSFC] in Huntsville, Alabama, with Wernher von
Braun and his staff. I still had mixed emotions.
That is some of the continuity between WWII and some of the things we
followed up on in the development of the space program. That is the
main purpose for me talking to you about WWII and how it affected me,
the USA in the future, and for the NACA that later became NASA.
So let me see where was I? I arrived in England in September of 1944.
I was in the Battle of France, the Battle of Ardennes [known as the
Battle of the Bulge], and the Battle of Europe. I was there until the
end of the war. Now in the Battle of the Bulge, we tried for seven straight
days to get down through that weather to support our troops on the ground,
but the weather was so bad that we couldn’t do it.
A good friend of mine, Colonel Gene Smith, was with the Ninth Air Force.
They flew the Grumman P-47 Thunderbolt (left). They were in tents, and
they were moving every so often as the Germans retreated. They kept
moving their bases farther and farther forward. During the Battle of
the Bulge, Gene Smith’s group commander picked Gene to fly with
him, because he was such a good navigator. They took off in the fog
and stayed right on the deck. They found the German tanks, which were
moving out in the open, under the fog, in the Battle of the Bulge. Gene
Smith and his CO [commanding officer] found the tanks, and he said that
they got a couple of passes at them. When they got back to the base
they reported where they were to General George S. Patton, so when the
fog rose, General Patton knew where the German tanks were, out in the
open. General Patton gave credit to them; they were one of the reasons
we won the Battle of the Bulge.
Like I said, for seven days we had tried to get down through the weather
at the Battle of the Bulge, and we could not. On Christmas Eve the weather
broke. The Ninth Air Force, which had the P-47s, was given the job of
supporting the Battle of the Bulge. The P-47 could sustain a lot of
hits from flak and bullets from the ground. You could knock a piston
out of the P-47 and it could still fly. In the P-51, if you got one
bullet hole in the glycol coolant loop that cooled the engine, you’d
lose the airplane. They took over the task of saving the Battle of the
Bulge. We, the Eighth Air Force, were sent on high altitude missions
escorting bombers over Germany.
The weather was so bad that when we took off and I reached down to pull
up my landing gear, it would be the last time that I would see the ground
until we landed. When we left our Air Force base in England, the weather
had closed in, and we couldn’t get back to our home base. We had
to land at other U.S. or British Air Force bases on the eastern coast
of England. The group sent our mechanics down to these airfields and
they took care of our airplanes at night so that we could fly the next
day. This is my crew chief Gerosanti in the middle (nicknamed Geronimo,
but I never knew why). The man on the left was his gunner mate.
Above is a photo of the bombers
flying through flak over a target. The bases did not have enough beds
for everyone. We would cuddle up together on a cement floor, as close
to a pot-bellied stove as we could get, trying to keep warm. I was glad
to be able to fly the next morning so that I could get warm again. We
flew on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New
Year’s Day. During the Christmas holidays we were away from our
base for three days and four nights. We had to live, eat, and sleep
in our same clothes, but that did not compare with what those poor soldiers
were going through on the ground, in their frozen fox holes, without
proper clothing and shoes, on those cold winter nights. There was no
comparison. That was horrible. During that period of time I had flown
13 straight missions. When we got back to the base, we had a great big
party.
On New Year’s Day, the Germans put up a very large force in hopes
of breaking our back. They knew that Americans would have a big party
on New Year’s Eve, so they figured that they could hit us because
our pilots would have a big hangover. A funny story is that one of the
pilots in my Squadron named “Shaky” Skinner did have a big
hangover. He was named “Shaky” because when we played cards
with him, his hands would always shake. We asked him how was he able
to pass his physical. He said that he told them, “I have a big
hangover from last night,” and they passed him! On New Year’s
Day, he got into the airplane and put on his seat belt and his oxygen
mask. He started taking very deep breaths through his oxygen mask. He
took off his oxygen mask, and he turned to the crew chief and said,
“Man that oxygen sure does help!” The crew chief picked
up the end of his oxygen hose and said, “But sir, you do not have
your oxygen hose connected.” I think he felt a whole lot better
after he connected the hose. Our group did not run into the Germans
that day. Christmas and New Years mean a lot to me because of those
experiences.
After I had flown 26 out of 27 missions, I went to the flight surgeon
and told him that I was very tired, and I needed a rest. He sent me
on leave. When I got to Peterborough, England, on January 15th, I turned
on the radio and learned that the Air Force had one of the biggest air
battles that day. Our group had destroyed 20 Germans and had damaged
several others without the loss of a man. The pilot that took my place
as element lead destroyed one airplane. He ended up becoming an ace
with five victories before the war was over. One thing that really hurts
a pilot was for him to miss an air battle. That’s why you were
there, and I had missed it. It turned out that I missed three air battles
including that one. The next one I missed was in February when I was
sent to Farnborough on the southern coast of England to a rest home.
I thought that I did not need to nor did I want to go. I told them when
I came back, “I’m more flak-happy now than I was before
I went in there!” There was a bunch of bomber pilots there, and
they really needed it. They had a lot of horror stories to tell. Fighter
pilots did not have it near as bad as the bomber crews did.
Ross-Nazzal:
So many men did suffer during World War II. Were there other hardships
that you had to endure in terms of food rations for instance?
Lee: There
is no good way to fight a war, but if you did, flying the P-51 Mustang
with the Eighth Air Force out of England had to be the best duty of
all. Being in the Air Corps as officers, we were pretty well fed. Of
course, we got very tired of canned green eggs and Spam. They did have
some pretty severe rationing in England. When you would go into town
and you ordered meat, it would be some kind of a burger or meat loaf,
or something like that, and half of it was bread. We did not get fresh
eggs in the mess hall. There was one enlisted man in our squadron that
was dating an English girl so he was able to bring us fresh eggs from
the farm. We would cook them in our squadron’s waiting room. It
was a delicacy to get fresh eggs, but we didn’t have it too hard
as far as those kinds of things.
Ross-Nazzal:
What was it like being an American in England?
Lee: They
welcomed us with open arms over there. They really did. They were very
nice to us. When I took my first leave, of course, Vince Rudnick and
I went to London and we went to Piccadilly Circus which was packed with
all of the servicemen. That is where all the nightclubs were and the
streetwalkers (left).
We took a guided tour of the bombed areas in England. They had a great
underground subway that was far superior to what I saw in New York City
after the war. When the air raid sirens would go off, they would go
into these underground subways. When the air raids were over, they would
come out and continue on as best that they could.
I have to draw a parallel to 9/11 [2001] in this country as I saw it.
Four bombs in the form of airplanes were sent to bomb us. Three of the
bombs hit their targets, with two hitting the Twin Towers [World Trade
Center] in New York, and one hitting the Pentagon in Washington DC.
One mission that was scheduled to hit the [US] Capitol was stopped by
some very brave men in which they all lost their lives. This brought
our country to almost a complete stop. All airline flights were canceled,
the stock markets were closed down, and many other things. I thought
how unprepared we were to meet an emergency. We had a lot to learn from
the British.
When I went to London on my second leave, after the first night I said,
“What the hell am I doing here?” So I got on a train, went
right on back north, past my base up to Peterborough, England. After
that I would go to visit different cities. They opened their homes to
us. They let us spend the night in their homes and fed us. We would
take them rations of cigarettes, women’s hose, soap, and things
that were hard for them to get. I just loved England. Flying over England
and Scotland with their white fences and livestock in their rolling
green pastures, it looked just like I was back in Virginia. It was absolutely
gorgeous. The people were really very nice to us. It was like the state
of Virginia.
I flew 52 combat missions. When I got over there, the number of hours
required for a tour of duty steadily increased from 225, to 250, and
up to 275 hours. When the war ended in May 1945, I had flown 275 hours.
This averaged about 5½ hours a mission. My longest mission was
6 hours and 40 minutes. When the war ended, I had finished a tour of
duty, and I had been put in for the rank of captain before I was 21
years old. In those days we had to grow up fast.
Here I am on the front row, sixth from the left under the prop tip,
where I can now be seen.
We then started training to go to the South Pacific. I could have gone
home, but I wasn’t about to go home and let my buddies go to the
South Pacific without me. Of course we always tell the guys that were
in the South Pacific that that’s why they ended the war in the
South Pacific because the Japanese heard that we were coming. But the
atom bombs were what stopped the war in Japan, not us. When the atom
bomb was dropped, we were very thankful that that had happened. It was
the right thing to do in spite of the people who are trying to rewrite
history and say how horrible it was. The Japanese started the war. It
not only saved American lives but Japanese lives as well. It was very
necessary.
Ross-Nazzal:
When you weren’t flying a mission, what were your duties and assignments?
Lee: We
flew enough that we didn’t need any other additional assignments.
We did go to a number of classes after the war. Some of the older or
more experienced pilots took on additional jobs like operations and
were responsible for following the status of all airplanes. I was given
the job of training the new recruits in formation flying, aerobatics,
and gunnery.
When you flew as a flight, you flew in a “V” formation with
four men in a flight. [Demonstrates] The flight leader had a wingman
on his left. This was his wingman. The element leader was on the right
hand side of the flight leader with his wingman on his right. This is
an element leader with his wingman. When you would go into combat, the
flight leader would have a wingman, and the element leader would have
a wingman. The wingman’s responsibility was to protect their respective
leader. That was the wingman’s job. So I went from being a wingman,
to an element leader, to becoming a flight leader.
When the squadron took off on a mission it could have three or four
flights, which would be 12 or 16 planes. A maximum effort could be 6
flights of 24 airplanes. When you had six flights, you would have two
squadron commanders, one being the head of the A group, and another
commander being the head of the B group. I had a couple of missions
when the group commander or deputy commander led our group. One of the
stories I have to tell is one where the group commander was leading
our particular group, and we ran into a gaggle of 10 to 15 ME-262 jet
airplanes. But first let me describe some of the missions we flew. Like
I said, we escorted bombers, which were B-17s and the B-24s. We also
conducted strafing missions of airports, train marshaling yards, trucks,
and other targets of opportunity. We also escorted British Mosquitoes
(above). The British Mosquito was made out of plywood, believe it or
not. I escorted them a couple of times on photo reconnaissance missions
all the way to Prague and Brux in Czechoslovakia.
On my first encounter that I had with a jet, I don’t know how
it happened, but I was flying alone on my squadron commander’s
wing. We were trying to catch up with the bombers. Here came this jet
gliding in on a right turn like this [demonstrates] in front of us looking
at the bombers. We were coming in behind him like this [demonstrates],
and he didn’t see us. We were right on top of him when my squadron
commander and I dropped our wing tanks. When you do that you have to
switch from your external wing tanks to your internal tanks. We were
right up on top of him when all of a sudden the German leveled out.
I can still see him today, looking right at me. All I had to do was
pull the trigger, and I could have shot him down. But at that time,
my Squadron Commander’s engine quit, “boom!” just
like that. It was just like he’d hit a brick wall. We were trained
that you had to stay with your leader so I instinctively cut my engine.
I stayed with my squadron commander, which is what I was supposed to
do, because if I had shot at the German, I might have lost my squadron
deputy commander. I don’t think that I would have. Anytime a pilot
shot down a German jet, he automatically received a DFC [Distinguished
Flying Cross] for it. I still wonder to this day whether I would have
gotten a DFC or whether I would have gotten court-martialed for leaving
my leader. In combat, things happen in split seconds.
I followed him from about 25,000 feet down to about 10,000 feet before
he ever got the engine started. He says that he had a vapor lock. I
had never heard of anybody else having a vapor lock when he switched
tanks. I think that he was so excited that he just forgot to switch
his tanks. Well to this day, it is hard for me to believe that. That’s
my opinion. I stuck with him, and we got home all right.
On my second encounter with an ME-262 jet, I was leading a flight, and
this jet came tooling in behind the bombers. I turned around toward
him.
When he took off, I realized that I was now out of position escorting
the bombers. The bombers had gotten way ahead of us so I had to firewall
it to get back to the bombers. The jet didn’t return.
The other time that I was referring to earlier was when we had an encounter
with the jets. Colonel Montgomery, our group commander, was leading
the group as the head of our squadron. The bombers would fly at approximately
24,000 to 25,000 feet. We would escort the bombers from 28,000 to 30,000
feet. The German jets would come gliding in at about 35,000 feet with
their engines off, and we could not see them. When they would start
their dive, they would start their engines, and you could see their
contrails. You would start your dives to intercept them before they
could hit the bombers. In the P-51, you could keep up with a jet in
a dive, and you could turn inside of them. We got most of our kills
when they would pull out on the deck. The group must have known something.
Colonel Montgomery was leading our squadron below, in front of the bombers
in spread formation at about 20,000 feet.
I was the flight commander of his second flight on his left with the
third and fourth flights over here on his right. [Demonstrates] I had
excellent eyesight. I could see better than most people, and I had excellent
peripheral vision. When hunting, I could see a squirrel in the woods
out of the corner of my eye, on a limb, shaking a leaf or dropping an
acorn. In combat things happen in seconds or split seconds. I was the
first to spot these 15 to 20 jets climbing up at 9 o’clock. The
picture [on the next page] shows the actual group of jets that we ran
into on that mission.
I called them out, dropped my wing tanks, and I led my flight into them
head on. The closure rate was so fast and was something I had not ever
experienced before. Neither we nor the Germans got a shot off. It became
a game of “chicken,” and they broke first and we didn’t.
That happened in seconds. I made a quick left turn. I expected them
to engage, but they didn’t. Their mission was to attack the bombers.
Captain Hollings who was head of the third flight and flying on the
right of the group commander rolled over in a “Split S”
behind this jet that had broken down. A pilot could withstand about
three to four Gs [gravity] before he would black out. We had G suits,
and with them you could withstand eight to ten Gs without blacking out.
Captain Hollins pulled such high Gs behind the jet that he broke the
bolts in his seat and the seat dropped down. He could hardly get his
head up high enough to see through his gun site, and there was this
German jet. He pulled the trigger, and he knocked him down. That was
in a split second. He got the DFC for that.
Well, our other two squadrons were up escorting the bombers at about
28,000 feet. Like I said earlier, the German jets would glide in at
about 35,000 feet with their engines off, and you could not see them.
The P-51 could keep up with a jet in a dive, and they could turn inside
of it. When the jet would start their dive you could see their jet trail
and start your dive to intercept them before they hit the bombers. We
got most of our kills when they pulled out on the deck. Our pilots intercepted
them, and they claimed six destroyed. They ended up getting credit for
five destroyed and one damaged.
Lieutenant Peterburs followed a jet all the way to the deck, hit him,
and then followed him over to his airbase, which was about 125 miles
northwest of Berlin. He started strafing the airbase and called the
group commander and told him where he was. Colonel Montgomery led us
over to the Airfield. Lieutenant Peterburs claimed that he’d destroyed
five airplanes on the ground. Before we got there, he had been hit by
flak. He had to bail out and was captured by the Germans. When we got
there we started strafing the airfield. I led the second flight across
the field, and the field was full of burning airplanes. I had spotted
some airplanes parked over in the woods, so I went after them. When
I was going around for the third pass, Colonel Montgomery called and
said, “One more pass boys and then we’ll go home.”
Well if he hadn’t said anything I think I would have been all
right. On that last pass it was like time stood still. My plane did
take a hit on that last strafing pass. It turned out that it was likely
small-arms fire.
When I got home, the crew chief showed me where it had come right through
the bottom of the engine’s nacelle and was headed right straight
for my fuel pump when it hit a brace. If it had hit that fuel pump,
I would have lost the airplane right there. I forget the exact amount
of planes destroyed and damaged that day. It was the group’s highest
victories for airplanes destroyed on one mission in one day. It set
the record for the most airplanes destroyed on one mission in the Eighth
Air Force. The number of the airplanes destroyed or damaged by our squadron
on that day was: 1 jet, 27 airplanes destroyed, and 9 damaged. The other
two squadrons that were with the bombers went down and strafed airfields
in Berlin and Fossberg. That day the group destroyed 5 jets in the air
with 1 damaged, and 52 planes on the ground with 23 damaged. That was
the biggest mission that I was on.
I took my wingman all the way to the east coast of England where we
landed at an Air Force base. His plane was shot up so badly that his
plane never flew again. I had to refuel. Our Air Force base was at King’s
Cliffe, near Peterborough, England, which was the farthest fighter base
inland in the Northwest. I flew back to the base after dark, so I had
to make a night landing, which I had never done before in a P-51. I
was not worried about it because I thought that if I had trained for
it I would have gone up by myself anyway. When you land you are in a
left turn and looking out of the left side. I found out later that at
night you never looked out of the right side of the airplane because
the exhaust flames could blind you. I landed okay. Talk about “blind
luck!”
I was told that Colonel Montgomery and I were the only two pilots in
the squadron that got back to base that night. Some had to crash land,
some landed on bases in France, and I think everyone else had to stop
and get gas. The three pilots that were shot down were captured by the
Germans. They were released at the end of the war. No one was killed.
There was plenty of flak. Like I say, I don’t know how we got
through it. I guess God was my copilot. That was one of my most interesting
missions, and that was one of the missions for which I got the DFC.
What else went along with that mission? The group commander’s
wingman was F/O [First Officer] Fred Jurgens, and they were the first
flight that went across the field. I was leading the second flight.
I think it was on his second pass when Jurgens was right on the deck
and flak hit his tail and it knocked him over completely on his back.
The gun camera keeps running after you have stopped firing your guns,
so that you can see what damage that you may have been sustained. It
showed him turning completely over on his back. He had gotten the airplane
about three quarters of the way back over when the camera stopped. I
know this because I saw the film. He was able to get back across enemy
lines and brought his gun tape back.
I asked him, “How in the hell did you do that?” He said,
“Well, when I flipped over on my back like that, I threw the stick
hard up into the left front corner and just kicked hard left rudder.”
To this day I wonder if I would have been able to do what he did. Since
I’m still thinking about it, I probably would not have done so.
It was a fantastic piece of flying. He had destroyed eight airplanes
and set a record for the most planes destroyed on one mission in the
Eighth Air Force. For this mission he was awarded the Silver Star. We
nicknamed him “Ace Jurgens.”
The other one was on a strafing mission on which I was flying element
lead for Lieutenant Colonel Gustke, the group’s deputy CO. We
were strafing this marshaling yard. They had to be able to keep those
trains running because that was the German’s bread and butter.
Generally, when you hit a marshalling yard, you would make one pass
and keep on going because it had such heavy flak installations. Lieutenant
Colonel Gustke turned around and went back a second time. He then turned
around and went back a third time. On the third time around, I was walking
on flak, and so I went for the flak tower instead of going for a train.
Then when we were flying further on, Lieutenant Colonel Gustke saw a
German ME-410 bomber. He flipped over real fast and went after the bomber.
He lost the bomber in the haze, and it upset him. He had also lost his
wingman on his quick turn into the haze. He looked around and asked
his wingman, “Where in the hell are you? If you don’t get
the hell back up on my wing, I’m going to shoot your ass down.”
Somebody came on the mike and said, “We’ve got you covered
colonel.” As a result of that mission, he was grounded. Colonel
Montgomery, along with his staff and the flight surgeon, told him that
he was going to have to send him back to the States.
My flight surgeon, Captain Roberts, told me that he stood there with
his back to the wall with clinched fists and said that he was going
to fight them all. He was on his third tour of duty so he’d really
become “flak happy.” That was what we called it when a pilot
had a break down. Nobody liked flying with him. A few years ago I talked
to my ex-flight commander, Cliffe Keys, about him. He was my flight
commander before he got his kneecap shot off by flak. How he was able
to fly his airplane back and land on an emergency field close to our
base is an amazing story. I became the flight commander after he was
sent back to the States. We both had the same feelings about that guy.
A few years ago, I saw him at our 20th Fighter Group Association’s
Reunion. He had become a general and he was the commander for a while
at the Ellington Air Force Base here in Houston, Texas. He gave a talk
to us and he had a good sense of humor and everything. I was so glad
to find out that he was all right again, and that he seemed to have
all of his faculties. I had wondered if a person that had gotten that
bad would ever recover. He did, but I still remember how bad he was
as a leader in combat.
There was another mission that I was on as a flight commander. All of
a sudden, I spotted a train almost directly below us. I rolled over
almost into a split S. The last time I looked at my airspeed indicator,
I was doing 650 miles an hour. At that time we didn’t know anything
about compressibility. It turned out that some pilots did reach compressibility,
and they didn’t know how to get out of it, so they crashed and
were killed. You could reach compressibility at about 715 miles per
hour. That’s how close I came to exceeding the limits of that
airplane. It still scares me that I had almost led my flight into compressibility.
When we pulled out of the dive to strafe the train, the sides of a boxcar
opened up, and their anti-aircraft guns opened up. Even at those speeds
my wingman was hit, and he had to crash-land on the continent. He survived.
When you hit a train’s engine it was quite spectacular with all
of the steam coming out of the engine. The Germans would take it back
in and weld patches back over the holes, and they would have it back
in operation again in a very short period of time.
Let me see if I have any more stories to tell you. One of the best missions
that I was on was a photo recon [reconnaissance] mission escorting the
British Mosquitoes over Brux and Prague in Czechoslovakia. We were a
flight of four escorting two British Mosquitoes. I was on three raids
over Berlin, Germany, and each one was bigger than the one before. On
this particular mission to Berlin there were over 2,000 airplanes in
the air. That’s a lot of airplanes in the air at one time. This
was one of the largest air raids over Europe.
We took off after the bombers had taken off, and their fighter escorts
were already in the air. We picked them up on the end of the bomber
stream on the European coast over Holland. We were flying faster than
the bombers, and we caught up with the lead bombers as they reached
Berlin. There was a complete overcast over the continent. I was monitoring
the bomber frequency. The observer for the weather called in and said,
“Come and get her boys, she’s wide open!” It looked
like somebody had taken a big knife and cut out the clouds, and there
was Berlin below, wide open.
As we went past Berlin, I watched the first group of bombers drop their
bombs on Berlin. The bombers have to fly straight and level through
the flak on their bomb runs over the target. The German fighters were
waiting for them to come through the other side of the flak. About the
time the first bombers broke out of the flak, we made our turn south
to go to Czechoslovakia. Here came some German fighters after us, but
we were told not to engage because our job was to escort the British
to Czechoslovakia. Sure enough, the fighters finally turned around and
went back to the bombers. The diversionary tactics that they had planned
for the mission with us flying with the bombers had worked. We went
on to Czechoslovakia for a successful photo recon mission.
Those were some of the kinds of missions that we flew. After the war
had ended, I was assigned to lead the 79th Fighter Squadron of four
flights for a “Fly By” over London, England. This was to
be a demonstration by the Eighth Air Force for General [Dwight D.] Eisenhower
and his staff, the English and their staff, and a Russian general and
his staff. I do not know if the French were included or not. After we
were in the air, the mission was scrubbed because of bad weather over
London. I will have to say that my squadron looked very good in formation
that day. They were WWII Veterans! I was very proud of them.
When the bombers would fly over their targets, as I said, the bombers
would have to fly straight and level. The German anti-aircraft were
good, very good! In fact, I have a German friend today, Ed Pokora, who
was an anti-aircraft gunner for the Germans. He was conscripted into
the German’s army when he was 16 years old. He was sent to Russia
when the Germans invaded it. That’s where he was when I was flying
over Europe. His outfit was captured by the Russians, and the Russians
killed everybody in that group except him. The reason he was saved was
because the officer that was head of the group found out that Ed knew
how to play the accordion, and he wanted Ed to teach him to play the
accordion. He survived there, but then the Russians sent him to an internment
camp in Yugoslavia. The Russians were going to kill all of the German
POWs [Prisoners of War] in that camp. On a stormy winter cold night,
he snuck out of camp, dived into a cold river, and escaped. We kid about
how we were shooting at each other in the war, which we never did. He’s
a good friend of mine today. Isn’t that an interesting story?
I told you that the bombers had to fly straight and level over the target.
The German anti-aircraft were very good. We would sit there and watch
them being hit, and spinning down on fire. We would sit there and try
to count the parachutes coming out of the airplane and praying and hoping
that everybody would get out safely. It was not a pretty sight.
Ross-Nazzal:
I imagine that was very difficult being where you were and watching
all of your friends.
Lee: Yes,
now that was 66 and 67 years ago, and I still have a hard time when
I think or talk about it.
[End of interview]
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