John Walter
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
95TH LEGACY COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
1998 REUNION TUCSON, AZ
Interviewed by Nancy Mck Smith, Russell McKnight & Karen Seiko.
My name is John Walter. I’m from Columbus, Indiana. We’re in Tucson, Arizona, on September 12, 1998.
NMcKS: John, just to get the basic information on the record, what were the dates of your service in the Army Air Corps?
JW: I enlisted in August of 1942 and got out in November of 1945.
NMcKS: How about your dates of service with the 95th?
JW: I got there in August of 1944 and left in March of 1945.
NMcKS: In which Unit or Squadron were you?
JW: I was in the 412th.
NMcKS: Your principal career field with the 95th?
JW: I was a pilot.
NMcKS: Let’s go back to the beginning and tell us about your induction---
JW: I was living in Long Beach, California. I joined in Los Angeles in August of 1942. I didn’t pass the first time because I had a problem with my eyes. I went to an eye doctor who gave me some exercises and I managed to pass the second time. I didn’t pass the next medical because of a heart problem. I went to a heart doctor who gave me some pills. I passed and never had a medical hitch thereafter. I was not called up for active duty until February of 1943.
I went to Santa Ana for classification and preflight. Out of there I went to Dos Palos, California to primary flying school. After primary, went on to Lancaster, California for basic, then on to Douglas, Arizona, for twin engine advanced. Graduated January 7, 1944 as a Second Lieutenant with my wings. From there I was assigned to B-17 transition in Hobbs, NM; after that through a couple of replacement depots. I picked up my crew in Lincoln NB in May of 1944. Then went through crew training in Dyersberg, TN, finishing there in July of 44. From there we picked up our airplane in Kearny, NB flew it to the UK and I was assigned to the 95th and reported there in August of 1944.
NMcKS: Did you have any memorable moments during your training period?
JW: Oh, yes, several of them in fact. One of the first ones was in primary flight school. when I happened not to witness the actual accident, but I saw the aircraft hit the ground. It was a midair collision. It turned out that one of the pilots who was killed - a student pilot - was a friend of mine. That sort of sobered us up quite a bit at that particular point. It was sort of a wake up call - this was serious business. That was probably the biggest one that I remember.
RMcK: Was it a brand new plane that you picked up in Nebraska?
JW: Yes. Brand new. We had a bit of a problem with it. It was swinging the flips gate compass - the electric compass - so we put more time on the aircraft than most people did. It turned out to be a pretty good deal. We flew flying out of Kearny about 10 o’clock at night. They dispatched us at night so that people on the ground couldn’t see how many planes were going and in which direction they were going. We got over clouds just out of Chicago and all of a sudden the electrics went out. The question then is what do we do. We don’t dare go down through the clouds because it’s night and we can’t land. We continued on until we got to Albany, NY. By that time it was daylight so we decided to screw our way down though the clouds to see, if in fact, we were over Albany, NY. We were - but we came down sort of in a bowl with clouds sitting on top of all the mountains around us, so we screwed our way back up through the clouds and flew out over the Atlantic. We let down over the Atlantic because that way we knew we could go down pretty low; then turned around and came back in and headed for Manchester, NH. It turned out that our flying the aircraft the additional time in Kearny brought forth a problem which apparently was a sabotage of the voltage regulators. There were several other aircraft that were downed enroute to the UK. In fact, several aircraft were lost over the Atlantic. We were greeted by the FBI when we got to Valley Wales asking us what we had encountered, so it was apparently a sabotage of the voltage regulators in the aircraft. Made things a little different.
JW: I sympathize with the Swiss Air people a few days ago. We managed to make out all right.
RMcK: Sounds like cool heads.
JW: Didn’t know enough to be panicked I guess.
NMcKS: It sounds like that was your first memorable mission.
JW: (Laugh) Right.
NMcKS: Did you have any others - I’m sure you did - that you can share with us?
JW: Well, the first one was a mission to Merseburg, Germany. On the approach to the target - on the bomb run - there was a burst of flak in front of us and to our right. A piece of the flak shrapnel came through the top of the cockpit, hit the copilot in the carotid artery and he was killed almost instantaneously. At the same time, it knocked out the #2 engine. I was a bit busy at the time so I asked the engineer if he would give a hand with the copilot and perhaps get him down in the front of the aircraft to see what he could do to help him. I had my hands full with other things. Unfortunately, the engineer froze and he just sat down on the turret. I shouldn’t have done it but I back handed him to try to get his attention but all he did was sit there and not move. Fortunately we did have an experienced radio operator flying with us by the name of Pat Murphy. Our regular radio operator had broken his finger shortly after we got over so he was off flying status. Pat Murphy was our substitute. Pat came forward and helped get Tom Segal, the copilot, out of the seat and down in front but there was nothing that could be done for him then. When we got back to the base the flight surgeon for, I’ve forgotten which Squadron, Dr.
Jack McKitrick, (who was from my home town so I knew him from years back) so he was out and greeted the aircraft. He said that if he’d been on board there would not have been anything that he could have done for Tom. Our first mission was pretty bad. In fact, it knocked us out of formation and we came back by ourselves. After I got my head out of the cockpit there were no other airplanes around. I just put the nose down and headed for home; obviously, we made it.
RMcK: Without the use of the engine that you lost---
JW: Yes. On three engines. Pushed the others a little bit harder than I should have, but they held together.
NMcKS: Can you tell us a little bit more about your crew?
JW: Crew - yes - my bombardier was a fellow by the name of John Engelman from Rantoul, Illinois . Very nice fellow; very enjoyable; and quite competent.
Nelson Kerrs was my navigator. He was from the Bronx, NY. Nelson had a little bit of a problem finding his way around. In fact, he achieved the nickname of Columbus for not too subtle reasons. Unfortunately, on our 10th mission, we lost Nelson, not by enemy action but by a failure of the aircraft. The best we were able to determine was that he had pulled his oxygen hose loose from the regulator while we were around 29,000 feet. Again a mission to Merseburg - which turned out to be a real Jonah. We gave an oxygen check about every 10 minutes and he had answered several. Looking at his log after we got back, you could see his writing had gradually deteriorated to just a squiggle. That’s a true indication of anoxia. You’re happy as a clam and you think your writing up a real story but, in fact, you’re scribbling. I’ve always regretted that because it was something that should not have happened. It wasn’t due to enemy action, it was due to somebody’s carelessness.
NMcKS: Any other crew members with the.....
JW: Well, the first engineer - I won’t mention. As soon as we got back after the mission I told the CO, “If he flies, I don’t”. He didn’t. When they cut our crew from ten to nine, we had cut the assistant engineer, James Purdy. I called him up to the crew and Jim became our engineer on through our tour. The radio operator was a fellow by the name of Robert George Hasselbacky. He went by the name of George before the war and during the war, but Robert after the war. He was from Michigan. Very enjoyable individual. He passed away a few years ago. Jim Purdy is still alive. John Engleman died in the early 70s. Sort of close that loop. The ball turret gunner was Jack Sheets. To the best of my knowledge, he’s still alive. He was from Oklahoma - living in Florida the last contact I had with him. The waist gunner was Larry Franchachina from San Francisco. He lives up in the Napa Valley now. He farms grapes. He’s a retired professor of architecture from the USFF.The tail gunner was Charlie Dye. He was from Ohio and was married. Charlie was quite an adventurer. Caused me a few problems every now and then. He was a good tail gunner. I remember one day he came to me and said, “Lieutenant, sir, you know that every time the nose of the airplane moves a foot - the tail moves 12 feet”. (laughter). Obviously, I’d been doing a tap dance on the rudders and he was back there being shaken up pretty badly. I watched it a bit better after that. We lost Charlie a few years ago. So, that’s the crew.
NMcKS: Have you been to reunions with any of them in the past?
JW: Yes, Jack Sheets was the last one who was at a reunion and that was in Spokane. Jim Purdy was at the reunion in Fort Lauderdale. I send him Christmas cards and notes but I get no response. Knowing Jim, I can understand that.
NMcKS: Can you tell us a little bit about what your life was like when you weren’t flying?
JW: I managed to establish a friendship with another pilot, Herbert Olsen. He and I pretty much engaged in various activities between the Officers Club and London. We generally had a good time when we weren’t working. I don’t need to go into specific details.
NMcKS: We wanted to know if there were any particularly funny things that happened during that time?
JW: There was one - Herbert Olsen and I had been out one evening quite late. The next day’s mission didn’t come up until rather late at night. We’d been up at the bar at the Officer’s Club. We took off the next morning on what was classified “a milk run”. No real problem. It was to assist the troops. In this case it was a mission that you could go up, put the aircraft into a steep bank and lob the bombs over the front lines. It was an easy one. We took off and when I got things all squared away, I decided I’d take a nap. Let the copilot fly. I woke from the nap about the time we were coming to the target. Having slept a little while, I needed to have some relief. We used the hydraulic can for that purpose. I asked that the hydraulic can be passed up. The bombardier said, “No. Can you wait, we’ll do that after we get off the IP” - the target. I said, “Oh, yeah, I can do that”. We were on the target, going down, and there was probably the only burst of anti-aircraft in Europe that day - slight exaggeration - but it was right down below us. A piece of flak came up through the aircraft bottom between the navigator and the pilot stations. As it came through the floor of the aircraft, it severed the brake line on the rudder pedals right in front of me. Well, I was immediately squirted in the face with hydraulic fluid. Knowing that you shouldn’t mix hydraulic fluid and oxygen, I was trying to wipe my glasses and get the hydraulic fluid out. For some reason or other that amused the copilot and he doubled over laughing. The bombardier turned around and when he saw this fluid running around he said, “John, did you piss in the airplane?” (Pardon me.) Nelson, sitting a little closer to me, turned around, saw this red hydraulic fluid and he said “Oh, my God, John’s been hit.” I don’t know whether he thought my blood was that thin or what. We got things straightened around - got things back to normal - only now we had a real problem.
On the ground you use brakes to steer the airplane. We didn’t have any brakes. I called Purdy and asked him if he would come forward and see if he could do something to patch the line up with the stuff we had on board. There was nothing he could do, so this meant that when we landed we were not going to have any brakes. We headed back to the UK and as we crossed the Channel a fleet blink came on the horn and said we were being diverted because of fog at Horham. We were diverted to the south of England. We came to the field and I looked down and said, “Oh my God,” because it was a troop carrier field. Fifty feet from one edge of the runway CG4 gliders were lined up, wingtip to wingtip, the BIG gliders. On the other side of the runway C47s were lined up. I could see what the possibilities were. If I land there and not be able to steer the airplane I was going to buy either more gliders or more airplanes than I could ever pay for in my lifetime. There was nothing to do, so I told the lead that we would stay up until the rest of the group got onboard. We were going to make a mess on the field and I didn’t want to leave the rest of them up in the air. I asked the radio operator and the waist gunner, Bob and Larry, to take a parachute and rig it up with the cords that come with the handrail and the bombay and see if they could pop that out the radio room hatch when we landed to help brake the airplane. So they said, yeah, they’d do that. We came in, lined everything up and set the aircraft on the ground. The copilot cut everything off - turned the engines off - otherwise they’d keep running We hit the ground - not too bad a landing - and I told the fellows to pop the parachute out the back. I was a bit premature because it tore away. The airplane was on the ground and we were bouncing along. It was awful quiet. You never realize how quiet it is except when it sounds like you’re riding with a truckload of tin cans. We rolled down the runway and I kept watching one side and then the other. The airplane began to veer to the left. There was nothing we could do about that. So when it finally stopped the left main was about two feet from the edge of the runway, but we did not hit anything. We got out of that pretty easy.
A sequel to that story - after service I went to USC and a group of us were retelling war stories at a lunch. I told that story that I just told you. A friend of mine across the table said, “I remember that. I was stationed on that field and I saw you land.” Small world.
NMcKS: Is there anything else in the way of your war experiences - acts of courage - anything that you would like to share?
JW: There were a number of other things. We did some memorable and some not so memorable. Nothing that I did really leaps out and grabs you. I think Margaret has a copy of what I did a couple of years ago. I sat down and wrote a book on the experiences. It covers from the time I went into service until the time I got out. The stories you’ve heard here are all in there
NMcKS: What’s the title of your book?
JW: “My War.” That was before Andy Rooney put out his book with the same title. I had it printed. I’d started writing it quite a number of years ago on a typewriter. It hadn’t gone very far, so I broke down and got a word processor which made life much simpler. I showed a rough draft of it to my wife and daughter-in-law and they said, “You’ve got to finish that”. I did and I had a few copies of it printed.
NMcKS: We do have one in the archives?
JW: Yes. I sent one to Margaret. She has one. If you’re interested in more, I do have a few copies left which I will be glad to pass around.
NMcKS: Would you like to tell us about what it was like to come home?
JW: To come home - you mean to Horham? It was always a great relief as soon as you got to the Channel. Finally got near home base. Of course, there were a few occasions when things didn’t go quite right. On one occasion, I know that one of the aircraft had hung a bomb in the bombay. When he landed at Horham the bomb let go, came out through the bomb bay and spun around on the runway, leaving a few of us up in the air. This was not too bad except that there were snow squalls up through the place at the time. Every once in a while the field would disappear and you’d also wonder where the other planes were in the clouds. Finally the bomb disposal people got the bomb off the runway and we landed without incident. We were a little unhappy that the guy went ahead and landed ahead of us rather than wait.
The other return was our last mission. We had two sacks of flares on board; one up in the cockpit and one in back with the tail gunner. We came back firing pistol flares. However we got down below 500 feet and I called the tail gunner and told him, “Don’t shoot any more.” We were low enough to the ground that they’d hit the ground burning. Either he didn’t hear me or he chose not to hear me, I don’t know which. He tossed one out and the flare landed right in the gas dump. Fortunately there was someone there who threw a sand bag on top of it. I could have killed him. That was a nice homecoming.
NMcKS: How about coming home then to the United States?
JW: Well, we had the enjoyable pleasure of coming home on a troop ship. Fourteen days on a troop ship. We had not only Air Force people on board but we also had infantry and artillery people. Surprisingly enough, with all the rough weather we encountered, everybody got seasick except the Air Force people. Even the sailors got sick. However, we did hear just a day or two before we docked that President Roosevelt had died. We did hear that out at sea. Occasionally we heard there were submarines around and you know we thought that would be the ultimate chagrin of all - to be blown up by a submarine on the way home - but nothing came of that. We came home and reported into Fort Dix NJ; went home for home leave and then our assignment back in the States which was C54s at that point in time through the Air Transport Command.
NMcKS: How did your family and your home town react?
JW: They dragged me out and had me go to a bond rally at the local railroad shops. Had me at various service clubs to give them my war experiences. That was a lot of fun.
RMcK: That’s a great story, John. Thanks for sharing with us.
KS: I may have missed this, but what happened to the engineer who froze?
JW: He was never placed back on flying status. Frankly, I never saw him again. I was not real magnanimous about it because it put me in a pretty big bind at the time. I should have been probably more forgiving than I was, but I wasn’t, and that was it. I don’t know what became of him after that first mission. I’m narrow minded
NMcKS: I’m going to add for the record, this has been Nancy McKnight Smith, Russell McKnight and Karen Seiko from the Legacy Committee talking with John Walter. Thank you very much.
JW: You’re entirely welcome.