Claude Hollyfield
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
95TH LEGACY COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
1999 REUNION PITTSBURGH, PENNSLVANIA
Interviewed by Margaret Blagg Weaver
MBW: Okay, I’d just like to put on the record that this is Margaret Blagg Weaver conducting the interview for the Legacy Committee and Gerald Grove from the Legacy Committee is also in the room with us today. We’re doing this at the 1999 Pittsburgh Reunion. The date is September the 11th. And would you please state your name for the record, sir.
CH: My name is Claude M. Hollyfield.
MBW: Okay, and could you tell me what your dates of service were with the Army/Air Corps?
CH: The dates of service were from 7 August 1942 until December 1945.
MBW: And what about with the 95th Bomb Group?
CH: The service with the 95th Bomb Group was from August 1944 until April 1945.
MBW: Okay, and which squadron were you in?
CH: I was in the 412th squadron.
MBW: And what was your principle job?
CH: I was a co-pilot on the crew – on Lieutenant Joe Wilson’s crew.
MBW: Thank you. I want to go back to the beginning and talk about how your got into the service – where you enlisted, how old you were, where you were living at the time – a little bit about the circumstances.
CH: I was, in 1942, I was a sophomore at Royal College, going into my sophomore year, and I was 20 years old. And I got a draft notice in the spring and rather than be drafted, I signed up for the aviation cadet program, passed my written and physical, and was signed in on the 7th of August 1942. And I went back to school that fall. A lot of other potential cadets had been deferred up until we got our telegrams around the 21st of February 1943. Our fall term was over in school, and we were told to report to Richmond, Virginia to be inducted. And I guess I was inducted into the service in Richmond. And from there I went to Miami Beach, and it was February and it wasn’t too bad an assignment. And we trained on the golf courses and lived in the plush hotels, except that they had taken all the curtains and all the rugs and carpeting and everything out of them and had GI beds. Other than that, it was like a vacation. And we trained on the golf courses, and we got our noses sunburned, and we put zinc oxide on them and they still burnt. We had two uniforms. We didn’t train in fatigues. They gave us khaki uniforms. One of them was on us and the other one was in the laundry. And every Saturday morning we changed. We put on clean uniforms and we went out in a parade. And invariably, we got rained on two or three times before we got back. And by the following next Saturday, we had sweat marks on those shirts, all the way down to our waists almost.
MBW: Well, tell us a little bit more about your training. Did you have any memorable experiences during your training?
CH: Not really, it was rather routine. The most memorable thing about it was, when we got ready to leave, we had all our orders and we packed our duffel bag and everything. We went to the train station in Miami. There were probably several hundred of us, maybe four or five hundred of us. And they kept calling names and calling names and calling names. They never did call my name and about forty other guys there. And so we were left at the station.
The train pulled out, and I found out there was a new word in the dictionary. It was called a supernumerary on a shipping list. So these were people that, in case for emergency leaves or sickness, the people couldn’t go, you’d fill in for them. So forty of us were left back at Miami Beach. It wasn’t too bad though. It was in late March, you know, and the weather was still pretty nice there. We didn’t have anything to do for about a week and a half until we shipped out.
So, we finally got on a train – there was about forty of us – and no one knew where we were going. There was a Corporal in charge of us, and we didn’t know where we were going. We left Miami. We went through I think Atlanta. We went through Cincinnati. I think we went through St. Louis, and we still didn’t know where we were going. And the Corporal didn’t know where we were going – at least he wouldn’t tell us. We finally ended up at Sioux City, Iowa. And we got off the train. We were bussed out to a little place called Wayne, Nebraska, and there was a state teacher’s college at Wayne. And they had set up a college training detachment at Wayne State Teacher’s College.
Before we’d gotten there, they had about 260 aviation students that had come in from Fresno, California. And they were all from Utah and Idaho. And I’d say that 90% of them were Mormons. Our group commander was Stanley Smith and he was a Mormon and a good friend of mine. But the sixty[1] of us were integrated into that 260 or so that were there, bring that thing up to about 300 students. I had two roommates there who were both Mormons. And I got indoctrinated into the Mormon Church – Joseph Smith – and I knew a lot about the Mormons by the time I left there.
But we took about 10 hours of flying – CTD – a little weather, a little physics, and navigation, mapping and so forth. Finally in June we got a train out of Sioux City to Santa Ana, California. Some of us stayed there one month. And I was in the second group that shipped out, and the others within about five months. I arrived at Santa Ana in June of 1943 and I went through classification and pre-flight and went to Victorville, California for primary flight school as a pilot in September of 1943. And I soloed about in the normal time – I think it was about eight hours. I finished my training. I had a little bit of difficulty with one of my check pilots. I forget his name, but it was a Polish name I think. But he gave me a bad time. But I got through it anyway, and I went to Merced, California for basic training.
I didn’t have any real difficulty in basic, except for night flying. When I checked out at night, you know you plan your approach and what’s going to happen and so forth. So, coming in on my final, I said, “I’m going to level it off just a little bit and drop it in.” About that time the thought went through my mind, my wheels hit the runway (laughing) and I had to go – I had to put the power on and go around and try again. But anyway, that plan didn’t turn out too well. What had happened, this Lieutenant Horn who was my instructor, we went out there and shot about three landings right at dusk. And by the time it got dark – he said pull over and park here – he got out. And just left me there and it was good and dark then. I hadn’t shot a single landing in the dark.
But then one thing that happened, we rushed our training. And we were given about a week’s leave out of basic flight training at Merced. I couldn’t go back to Virginia on leave, so I hitchhiked with a guy by the name of Cleat Holtzclaw who’s from New Mexico, down to Los Angeles. He had family there. Over to San Pedro, down to San Diego to see his sister that was in the WAVES, then we hitchhiked back up to Merced. And then we were shipped down to Marfa, Texas for twin engine advanced. I finished that course without any great difficulty. But I was commissioned on the 12th of March 1944 after finishing that phase of my training. And I was assigned to a co-pilot’s training at Kingman, Arizona.
I went back home to Roanoke for about a week, then back to Kingman. And from there to Lincoln, Nebraska where they had crew assignment. That’s where I met Joe Wilson, who was the pilot. We had a navigator; I can’t remember his name. We ended up with another navigator, which I’ll go into a little bit later. Mahlon Long was our bombardier, and we got the rest of our crew there – Jim Archard. Jim was a real find, because he had flown a tour with Elliot Roosevelt’s reconnaissance group in North Africa and had finished that tour. He had gotten an appointment to West Point and had gone to West Point preparatory school in New Jersey and decided that wasn’t his bag. So he signed up for another tour, and we got him. And he was a young Tech Sergeant, and had had the crew, so Joe wanted him on the crew. He kind of handpicked everybody. Mahlon Long was our bombardier. Mahlon had been an instructor bombardier at San Angelo, Texas for about two years. He was the oldest officer and grade on board. He had been a 2nd Lieutenant for about two years, and was still a 2ndLieutenant when we got him. We were all 2nd Lieutenants, and Jack Wilbourne was assigned a little bit later – he was our navigator. I had gone to grade school and high school with Jack Wilbourne in Roanoke County schools in Virginia. And we just happened – Jack was a good student in school, he was smart – the whole Wilbourne family was smart – so I had to swear to Joe Wilson that he was the best man for the job. And he believed me. And our other people were assigned. We had Bill Kalfa who was our ball turret gunner, and Martin Reinis, our radio operator, and Oscar Deese, our tail gunner, he was from Georgia, Martin was from the Bronx, and Bill was from Brooklyn. And we had a Tech Sergeant McCullen who was a little bit older – he was about the oldest man on the crew – that was assigned as a waist gunner and as an assistant engineer. I believe that covers the crew.
We went from there to Sioux City, did our combat crew training from April into I guess it was July that we finished our training there. We were there, just about finished training, when D-Day was. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know whether it would be better to be there before D-Day or after D-Day, so we just – we didn’t know whether we were going to the CBI or England. But we ended up being assigned to England. We picked up a new aircraft, a B-17 at Grand Island, Nebraska. And we all were really excited about that new airplane. The Boeing girls had left little notes around in it at every position, like the Internet is now you know. But anyway, we took off from Grand Island and went to Manchester, New Hampshire and refueled there and went on to Goose Bay. We had good weather. When we go up there, a little snow blowing in the air. But the weather was bad and we had to stay over two or three days before we left for Reykjavik[2]. I guess we flew about 10,000 feet from there to Reykjavik. We couldn’t see much.
I guess we had one radio fix, I guess going by Greenland. And Jack had to shoot sun lines most of the way in, but he had the ETA right on the head, you know. That’s what I learned in 1995 when the crew got together again. But, anyway, from Reykjavik, we went into Nutt’s Corner, Ireland. And they took our airplane. We thought we were going to keep it, but it was left there for modifications and we caught a C-47 over to Glasgow. And then we started riding the trains, and we went down to Stone, I think, in the outskirts of London to get the orientation briefings mainly, and communications and procedures, emergency procedures and air-sea rescues and things like that.
And at that time, the buzz bombs were pretty common every day. And they had all these shelters you could get into. Well the first time I was there and I was in the barracks there and the siren went off. I jumped up and run to the shelter. And I fell down about five or six times because every one of those little walkways had a wire about nine inches above on either side and I stumbled over every one of them. And I was safer in bed than I was running to the shelter. So, I didn’t bother with the shelter anymore after that.
MBW: How long was it before you started flying on your missions?
CH: Well we were shipped, after our training, we got to the Bomb Group in August, about mid August. And we flew practice missions. And we flew the first mission on the 22nd[3] of September 1944.
MBW: Can you tell me about the first mission?
CH: Well, we went to Mainz, Germany. I’m not too sure it was a mission yet. I have it as my first mission, and I think we got credit for it. But it was what you’d call a milk run. It wasn’t exciting at all. But then, on the 28th, we went to Merseburg, Germany. That’s where their oil refineries were and we got shot up – I mean the whole group – shot up pretty bad. We normally brought some holes back with us. We didn’t get any great damage that day, but it was scary as it could be. And I went back there a few other times, and it was just as bad. So, that was our real indoctrination. So that was in September, and on the 30th we flew to Bielefeld, and it was about a six-hour mission. The one to Merseburg was about eight. And it wasn’t too bad. We flew through October. I guess there were six missions that we flew in October.
We went into lead crew training at the end of October. And the whole month of November we learned to drop bombs and do procedures. We got a mickey operator and all. And I became a lead crew co-pilot, which is not a very glamorous job. When the commander, the group commander flew with us, Colonel Shuck flew with us a number of times and Major Frankosky flew with us a number of times. Whenever they flew, I was in the tail gunner’s position. And I was called the formation controller, and I had to monitor all the groups back of us that were in our wing to see what position they were, if they were a little late or a little early and kind of control those things – report it back up front as to what was going on back there. If anybody aborted, I’d have to report that and so forth. When we were like in a squadron lead, if we didn’t have a, like we were flying deputy lead, I would get to set up in the front seat. But I’d have to be briefed with all the call signs and all the regular stuff that the commander would do up there in case. In one mission, our lead ship was shot down off our left wing, you know. And here we were left, I was left up there as a 2nd Lieutenant doing the job and trying to keep things in order, you know.
But flying the ten missions in the tail of the aircraft, it’s a little bit different than flying up there where you’ve got some rudders and a stick and you can do something. And I didn’t know too much about the, I wasn’t a gunner. I’d taken a little bit of training, just an orientation. And on one mission, it wasn’t too long, maybe the 3rd or 4th time I’d flown back, I ended up with a FW-190 setting right there in front of my guns. And I didn’t pull the triggers. There were so many B-17’s around, I was afraid to. If figured if I missed I’d get a 17. And he peeled off and left. I don’t know whether I scared him or what, but I was scared. I didn’t get the guns off, and I was sent to 50-caliber training for about a week to learn how to shoot the thing and how to lead and so forth. They weren’t too happy with me. But I’m here to tell about it, so that’s the main thing.
MBW: And you didn’t shoot another B-17?
CH: I didn’t shoot down a B-17. I would have been in worse trouble if I’d shot down the B-17, I figured. I mean I don’t know whether that went through my mind at the time. But anyway, that’s what happened. And I flew with other crews on several occasions to get the missions in because when the lead crew wasn’t flying, they didn’t need me. I wanted to get this thing behind me, so I flew with Lieutenant Squyres’ crew one mission. I flew with Sacowski[4] one mission. I flew with Lieutenant Pierce[5], I remember.
This, well let me back up just a little bit, on Christmas Eve – what happened on Christmas Eve. Or maybe I should go back to the Stuttgart raid. When we went to Stuttgart, I have it on my log as the 16th of December. It was in the middle of December and the days were short, and tops of the clouds were high. Coming back from the target, normally you could let down to a lower altitude, but we were stuck over 20,000 feet. And they had very little ceiling in England and the daylight was running out on us. So we were instructed to peel off our aircraft one at a time from the element of the low squadron and to head back generally in the direction of England, 270 degrees, and to let down 500 feet a minute, 150 miles and hour until we broke out. All the aircraft followed that procedure. I’d call them and tell them, at least in the squadron, I can’t remember exactly what position, but I was in the right seat talking to them. I remember I told Coffman’s crew to peel off, and I’d see them on the ground. So we let down when it was our turn and we broke out about 200 feet, right at the shoreline. The navigator picked up a generating plant at Norwich and we vectored us into the airfield. We got in all right. Coffman’s crew never did show up. They were people that we had gone through training with and knew better than anybody else there. I never did know exactly what happened to them, but we assumed that they had gone into the Channel.
I found out in, last year in ’98 I was over and I went to the Madingley American Cemetery[6] there at Cambridge. I found Coffman’s name on the wall and I found Medina’s name on the wall and Gaughgin who had been a gunner for us at one time and he’d transferred to Coffman’s crew was on there. But Leonard Beadle, the co-pilot’s name, wasn’t on the wall. And I went back to inquire at the cemetery why. We assumed that all these people were lost. He said the only thing, and their records didn’t show it, but his body must have been found and had been shipped back to the states for burial, because the only ones that are listed there are ones that are missing in action or those that are buried there. And those that had been returned to the states were not listed there. So I assume that he had gone back then.
But then on Christmas Eve, we flew weather ship for the 8th Air Force so went out ahead of time – about an hour ahead of the bomber string to report the target weather. We came on back in, but when we got in, you could see a fog bank over in the midlands, about 50 or 60 miles away. And we came back and then we flew on Christmas Day. But I think on Christmas Eve another group from the first division had landed a whole group of B-17’s at our field because the fields in the midlands were closed because of the fog. And so we had airplanes setting all over the field except the main runway. And so when we flew on Christmas Day, we got back and it was just as pretty a day as you’d ever want to know. You’d get back to our field and the fog was setting right off the west end of our field. I think the low squadron landed all right. We were in the lead squadron, so we started our, and I guess we were the last in the lead squadron since we were in the lead. They changed the direction of the runway on us. And the fog was covering part of it then, and we made one pass and these airplanes were on our right and on the left, the ones that you cross the runway. And Joe was coming down. I couldn’t tell exactly where the center of the runway was or how far we were right. So we elected to go around and ended up going to Woodbridge and landed at Woodbridge and getting a six by back to Horham, the 95th that night. Got home about 10 o’clock. Missed our Christmas dinner.
We got up the next morning and it was the most beautiful day you ever saw, there was hoary frost, about two inches – every little twig or wire or on the trees and bushes were just covered. It looked like fantasyland almost. And we had to get in a six-by truck and go back to Woodbridge and bring our airplane back and so forth. But I continued on, and I finished my missions. Well in between Christmas flight, I flew with Lieutenant Pierce[7]. Our target was somewhere; we had to fly through France mostly. We hadn’t even gotten to Paris I guess. And we lost two engines on our starboard side for mechanical reasons. And then we still had our bombs. So we were told to fly back to the Channel to salvo our bombs, and we were running low on fuel. Laon was a German base that was open now. They had some fighters there and a lot of airplanes, junk airplanes there that had landed there in an emergency. We landed in Laon with all our bombs on board. As it turned out, on our first pass we overshot the field a little bit. We had to use all our skills and power that we had to limp around the pattern to get it down. The second time was a success. I was over there for a couple of days and caught a patched up B-24 back into England.
I know I flew on New Year’s Eve day, according to my logs. Yeah, I went to Hamburg on the 31st of December in 1944. And I continued flying until mid March of 1945 – finished my 30 missions. They gave me credit. I had flown 10 missions or more as the formation controller in the seat. And they gave me a little certificate for it and so forth. I offered to fly with the crew. They needed two or three more missions. But they wouldn’t let me. People were a little bit superstitious in wartime. They figured they didn’t want to give those guys one more chance to get me. I finished my missions and I guess I left the group sometime in the end of March. I was still there when Roosevelt died. I went on a convoy out of Southampton back to Brooklyn Navy Yard – took 11 days to go across the Atlantic in one of those ships that had been built. You know they weren’t exactly cruise ships. So I got back home in the spring of 1945.
MBW: What was your homecoming like?
CH: Well, I had three brothers that were in the service. I had one that was in Italy at Anzio at the time. He was a Lieutenant in an Infantry group. And I had a brother that was an artillery officer out in the Pacific. He’d been a reserve officer before the war, but was called in when he was a Captain in July ’41. He went to Pearl Harbor a week after they bombed it with anti-aircraft. They were on high priority. He came through a plane on Roanoke from Norfolk on his way. And I had a sister who was a Lieutenant in the WAC’s – Women’s Air Corps. And then I had a younger brother who joined the Navy about the time he turned 17 and he ended up out in the Pacific. There was five of us in during the war. Four of us were commissioned.
MBW: How did your parents bear all that?
CH: I have a little log that my mother wrote. I got a copy of it. She kind of kept a diary and she had gone down to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to see my second oldest brother. He’d gotten drafted. He’d been down in the medical group down there because he’d worked for DuPont and knew a little bit about chemistry. And then he went to OCS. When Pearl Harbor came in 1941, my mother made a little note in this little spiral notebook. It said, “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. What will happen to my boys?” That was her first thought, was her boys you know.
MBW: Did they all come home?
CH: They all came home, yeah. We all survived the war. I don’t think anybody got a Purple Heart (chuckle). I’m the only one left, though. My sisters’ around – I’ve got three sisters. All the others are gone. My younger brother got killed in an automobile accident in 1955, so he was the first one.
MBW: Well, I’m sorry to say Mr. Hollyfield, we’re reaching the end of our time. I just wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to put anything else on the record that you could tell us about.
CH: Well, I have stayed in contact with the crewmembers, at least a few of them. And in recent years, Joe Wilson is a retired Lieutenant General, and he lives down in Florida near Fort Walton Beach. Mahlon Long is deceased. I think he stayed in the Air Force and got recalled and I think he retired from the Air Force some time in the 70’s. I saw him at Andrews Air Force Base when I was stationed there later. Jack Wilbourne is still around in Richmond, Virginia. And Bill Kalfa, our ball turret gunner, is in North Fork, New York and we have gotten together once or twice. Martin Reinis is in Los Angeles, California. I tried to call him about this reunion. I called Bill Kalfa and he was going to a wedding and Jack had had a knee operation. Joe isn’t a member, and he doesn’t associate with us people that close. Anyway, I keep in touch with him and Helen. I will see them in October when I go down for a 47th Bomb Wing reunion at Fort Walton Beach. But I’m glad to be here (chuckle).
MBW: We’re glad you’re here, too. And we really appreciate your taking the time out of your reunion to speak to us and put your recollections on the record for us.
CH: Well, I’m glad to do it. I’m glad to have the opportunity.
[1] Correct number is 40, not 60
[2] U.S. airbase in Keflavik, Iceland
[3] First mission was on 27 September 1944
[4] Hollyfield was co-pilot on the J.G. Wilson crew, but also flew with T.G. Beck, H.D. Olson, J.C. Walter, and R.E. Squyres
[5] Ibid
[6] Cambridge American Cemetery near Madingley
[7] Records show that Hollyfield flew with J.G. Wilson and H.D. Olson between Christmas and New Year’s 1944.