Stephen Showers: First we'll start out with some general background. Where and when were you born?

Jim Fontana: I was born in Milldale, CT on September 3rd, 1924.

SS: Great, Milldale, CT. Maybe you could tell me about your early life, about being a kid, about growing up.

JF: I lived on a farm in Milldale, and when I was a couple of months old my parents moved to the city of Meriden. We stayed there till I was 13 years old, and when my grandfather died, we moved back to the farm in Milldale. I had the responsibility of milking a cow every morning and every night.

SS: Every day? Wow!

JF: I went to Lewis High School, which was three miles away, and we had to go by bus every day. The only thing I did in high school was to take the college course, because I wanted to go to college. I played baseball, and I was the number one pitcher on the team, but unfortunately it was during the war years and there was no gas. They cut out a lot of the activities as far as sports were concerned.

SS: Do you remember what years they were that you were going to high school then?

JF: Yes, I went to high school and graduated in 1942, so I had the four years before that and one month after graduation I left CT, and I went to California to study aeronautical engineering. I went to Aero Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, Cal. and I was 17. I knew when I turned 18 the army was going to draft me. That's when I decided to enlist as a pilot, so I signed up for the Air Force.

SS: So you were already thinking about going to school after high school. Did your parents go to college? What was their education like?

JF: My mother and father, I don't think my mother graduated from high school. My father probably did, but he was a steam engineer, and he worked for General Motors. He was the maintenance foreman there. He had the millwrights, the electricians, the painters, the tinsmiths, they were all under his jurisdiction. My mother lived home. She wasn't like some of the other mothers. She stayed home and took care of the house and kids.

SS: Did you have a big family?

JF: No. I had two sisters, there was three of us. One of them is my twin sister.

SS: Oh really, you had a twin. That's great! Now you went to aeronautical school right after high school. Was that one of your childhood interests? Were you interested in flying?

JF: My hobby during my younger days was building model airplanes. I used to build one after another and I was always interested in airplanes. So when I went to high school I decided to be an aeronautical engineer. It was difficult to get in name colleges at the time so we found a school out in Glendale, California that was teaching students to be aeronautical engineers. I went there probably less than a year. One day I went to school and the whole school was filled with GI's. The Army had taken over the whole school. We had to go at night. Thirteen of us were living in this house with a woman who gave us our meals and board. We decided to go and take the test for the army air corps, aviation cadets. The test started at 8:00AM in the morning and lasted till 12:00. The Air Corps told us to come back at 4:00, and they would give us the results. We went back at 4:00, and we were told 10 out of the 13 had failed.

SS: Wow!

JF: And a week later, one more failed. And a week after that another was washed out, and I was the only one out of the 13 that made it.

SS: Wow! So you had made it, and you had qualified then?

JF: I qualified for cadet training and was told to be at the union station at 5:00 in the morning somewhere around May 1st. They put me on a train and sent me to Kearns Field, Salt Lake City, Utah, where I was inducted into the Army Air Corps.

SS: So you didn't wait to be drafted, you volunteered?

JF: If I had waited to be drafted, I would have gone into the infantry.

SS: Oh, okay. So, by this time the war had already started.

JF: This was 1943.

SS: Do you remember when the war started? Like say even before ah, 1940? Do you remember the war in Europe?

JF: We were certainly conscious of the fact that there was a war going on and on Dec 7th, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I was visiting an uncle of mine who was in the hospital. It came over the radio that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. I was 17 years old. It really didn't mean anything to me, and I didn't know what a soldier was. I didn't know what war was like. But at that age, I soon began to learn and understand that when I was 18, I was going have to go. As every able bodied person from 18 to 36 had to register for the draft. If you were physically fit and mentally able then you had to go into the service.

SS: So, you knew about it through the radio, and newspapers; did you see war posters, or war films?

JF: Yes I knew a lot about it after a while, because there was a fella from Southington that was a pilot. He used to fly down once a week to buzz the town. He was flying a P-40 Tomahawk. He used to come down below the second story level, because his father worked at Peck's Stow. He worked on the second floor, and the P-40 would come down below that and buzz. I could hear him come over, and I'd want to run out in the worst way, but all I could do was look out the window and see him when he went by.

SS: So everybody was pretty much aware of the war and knew what was going on?

JF: I think at that point a lot of people were aware and a lot of kids in high school at that time decided to quit high school and go into the service.

SS: Oh really.

JF: In fact I know one fella that quit and never got his high school diploma. He went into the navy.

SS: Do you remember, once you were conscious of the war, like you just said before, do you remember what it felt like? Were you worried, or scared, or anxious about going in?

JF: No. I didn't have any feeling about the going in, or dying, or anything like that. I just felt that it was my duty, and that I would have to go like everybody else. I just went and of course the upper most thing in my mind was to become a pilot.

SS: Did you have any feeling or thoughts or fears that we might lose the war?

JF: No. None what so ever.

SS: Really!?

JF: None at all. Either in Germany or Japan. I just had the feeling, like most people, that we were going to win, no matter how long it took.

SS: Did any other people from around the Southington area go into the war, like say before you left?

JF: Oh yeah! Because it had gotten to the point that you couldn't walk down the street without seeing military personnel. Everybody was in uniform. Once you put that uniform on you had to wear it 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. If you came home on leave, went to church, or no matter what you did, you had to wear the uniform. You could never wear civilian clothes on.

SS: Really. So there were a lot of people already, right in Southington, in uniform?

JF: Oh sure, because a lot of guys were older than me.

SS: Oh, okay. And then you got to, so actually, you saw a lot of military involvement before you even left. How was it affecting your friends in the area? Did some of them already join up?

JF: I think the feeling was that, if you didn't go, you were shirking your responsibility Most guys felt that they wanted to get in and do their part. If somebody signed up to go and they didn't get called, they were calling the army or navy to find out why they weren't being called. They all wanted to get in. I never met anybody that didn't want to go into the service.

SS: Wow! Was there any women at the time that were getting involved in the service somehow? Did you know of any?

JF: I know of no women that signed up or personally were in the service.

SS: Oh okay. Did you see, around Southington, were there factories there then? Did the war have an impact on Southington?

JF: Not too much in Southington, because the biggest factory in Southington at that time was Peck Stow's, they converted to military production. Being 17, those things didn't really enter into my mind. Like New Departure in Meriden made ball-bearings, and I didn't relate ball- bearings to the war effort. Yet that was one of the most important items used in the war. Ball-bearings were so great that the 8th Air Force bombed Shwienfurt, Germany to put out the ball-bearing works. They lost 60 B-17's on one mission in Shwienfurt.

SS: Did you happen to hear of anybody from your area or anybody that you knew that had gotten killed by that time?

JF: No. I never heard of anybody in my area that had gotten killed up to that time.

SS: And then you went out to Cal. for school. What was that like when you got there and it was all military guys?

JF: When I got to California, I lived in Glendale, and that was close to the Lockheed air terminal and the Lockheed Air Craft plant. I was so interested in aviation, that I was aware of the P-38's that were flying out of Lockheed. They were all over the place, and I worked there during Christmas as a mail man. My route was up on a high area, and I looked down over the Lockheed terminal. I watched the P-38's flying out of there all the time. But again, I'd see a lot of soldiers and sailors and Marines in town, but it didn't dawn on me that they were all going to end up someplace in the war.

SS: Right.

JF: I knew that when turned be 18, I was going have to go. When I got the papers, I had already been to Los Angeles, where I signed up for the aviation cadet training program. I was accepted, and they said when your papers come, you're in. I asked if they could rush my papers. The headquarters was in Sacramento, Cal. They said they could make a telephone call. So they called Sacramento, and they forwarded my induction papers. Within a couple of days I was on the train going to Salt Lake City, Utah.

SS: So you went right into the pilot's school from there? What was that like?

JF: I went to Kearns Field, Utah, which was an army basic school. Most of the time we would get up at 5:00. Everything was done in formation. We'd go to breakfast, and then the rest of the day was running the obstacle course, or going out on long distance marches, anything to teach you what the military life was like. We would run every where. Our day ended at 5:00PM. After that we were free. Our scheduled stay at Kearns Field was two months. When I got there I was put in squadron 50. Also squadron 25 was there and 26, 27, 28. Before we could move, they had to move out 25 and 26. They took them in numerical order. One day I went into a different area, and I heard my name mentioned. I went up to the sergeant and said, my name is Fontana and you just called my name. I told him I was in squadron 50, and you are taking 25, 26, 27 out. He said we have to send out a full class of cadets and your name was called, because you are going to take the place of the sick and you're leaving with the next class. They pulled me out of my squadron, I don't know why and put me into that squadron, and the next day I was on my way to Logan, Utah. Logan, Utah was the home of the Utah State Agricultural College. In those days, the Air Corps had CTD, which was known as College Training Detachment. Every cadet had to go for two months to learn weather, navigation, English, trigonometry, and military discipline.

SS: Was that for people who were just going to be pilots?

JF: No. Pilots, navigators, or bombardiers. We were known as aviation students.

SS: Okay.

JF: And again, when I got there, they gave us a great big math test. We had been in a the back of a 6-by-6 all day traveling there in the hot sun, and everybody was tired, but we took the test. After a month or so, I went into the orderly room where all the students were looking at the bulletin board. I asked what was going on and they said they were taking three cadets out of the lower class and putting them in the upper class to fill the place of those that are sick. I looked and my name was on that list. To this day I don't know why except they said that those that got the best score on the math test were the ones that were moved. The next day, they sent me to the airfield for 10 hours of flying in a piper cub. I had never seen the inside of an airplane or for that matter, one on the ground. We used to see them in the air. I was assigned to an instructor pilot that I did not like. I had 9 rides with him. And he was miserable. He hollered every second I was up in the air. At the end of nine hours, he told me I would never be a pilot. He said I should wash myself out. I told him my problem was not me, but you. You are here to instruct and teach, but you've taught me nothing. He was a civilian instructor. The next day I shipped out and was went to Santa Anna, California, which was a processing center. And here, we were given all kinds of physco-motor tests. The tests lasted a full week. Everyday we were given a different test, and by those tests they could determine whether you were going to be a pilot, a navigator, a bombardier, or that you didn't qualify for training. After that was over, they called us all in and told us they had the results of the test. We're going to tell you what you qualified for. My turn came, and they called me and said: your test indicated that you qualify as a pilot, a navigator, and a bombardier, in that order, and we would like use you as a pilot. Do you accept? And of course I signed the papers, yes.

SS: That's what you wanted to be.

JF: That's what I wanted and I got it! There was other students that made bombardier, and students that made navigator, and others that didn't make anything. They were sent to gunnery school or shipped off as radio operators. When I got to Santa Anna, I was in the odd group arriving in. They said every odd group has to go out in the field for jungle survival. Our class was the one that had to go. I said now I gained all of this time by being pushed into the upper class and now I'm going lose it by going out into the field for a month. They said tomorrow morning, at 4:00, we're going get you up, you have all your stuff packed, and the trucks will be there to take you up into the woods. At 4:00AM, we got up, and we were standing outside this sergeant comes in and said: the following two cadets are moving up to the upper class, and my name was on that list!

SS: Wow!

JF: So I missed that!

SS: You were on the fast track it seems like.

JF: I was. The next thing I know I am all classified as a potential pilot. The thing that I think was worth mentioning was the fact that we had to go before a psychiatrist. Being 17 or 18, everybody was nervous. If you gave the wrong answer, you were out. I saw one of the psychiatrists come out and put his arms around one of the cadets and he asked, how's your asthma today? And the kid said, well it's not bothering me today. I never saw that kid again. When my turn came, the psychiatrist talked to me in Italian. He knew I was Italian, and that put me at ease. Right off that put me at ease. When we went in, we had to take our shoes off, and put our feet up on the desk, because they said your toes will tell them if you're nervous. I sat there, and he asked me a lot of questions. Why I wanted to be a pilot, what my hobbies were, what was I doing in Cal. when I lived in CT., and all kinds of trick questions. Then he looked at the sheet, and said: I see you are a Roman Catholic. I said yes. He said, let me ask you a question. If you were a pilot, and an officer in the Air Force, and you were given a direct order to bomb the Vatican city, what would you do? You know, I could feel the gears working up there and I knew what he was looking for. I said, well if I was under direct orders, I would have no alternative but to carry out the orders. He jumped up, almost across the desk, and said there is nothing wrong with you, you're in.

SS: [laughing]

JF: And that was it.

SS: I guess if he thought you would bomb the Vatican that you were a good candidate.

JF: Well, you know, I said to myself, what chance would I have flying that type of airplane, over in Europe, in that theater of operation. I could have gone to the Pacific, I could have been in fighters, I could have been in the training command, or anywhere else; never figuring that would happen. And you know, the airplane I flew was the one airplane that did bomb, not the Vatican, but the Monte Carlo Casino.

SS: Wow. That's right.

JF: So, it worked out to my advantage.

SS: So, you are still 18 years old, while all this is going on.

JF: Yes.

SS: Were you keeping in touch with family and friends back home?

JF: In those days, no one really used the telephone for long distance calls, so any communication I had with my family was by letter. I would write to my mother or father, maybe once a week.

SS: Did you know about or keep in contact with any friends or make any friends through this period?

JF: I didn't have any friends back he???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? bases. He said take it with you. So I took it with me, and every place I went I took the camera and took pictures. I wasn't ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? if you made a few friends, the Air Force had the unique ability to separate you. I would go to a new assignment and any friends I made would be going to other fields. We always had to make new friends every place we were assigned.

SS: So were you excited about this? It seems like you were fulfilling your dream about becoming a pilot. Do you remember how you felt?

JF: Yes. The only thing in my mind in those days was really getting through successfully. I had no fear of flying into combat, because that wasn't in our minds. The only thing in the back of my mind was getting through pilot training and getting a commission and the silver wings of an Air Force pilot.

SS: It sounds like you had a really good attitude. I know from my own experience, that having a good attitude really does help.

JF: I don't really know how to say it, but it's self-satisfying when you are in flight school and you progress as fast or faster than average. We selected Ryan Field in California, because they had the Ryan PT-22's that had a wide landing gear. Most cadets went into the Steerman, which had a narrow landing gear, and there was always the chance of ground looping in a cross-wind landing. We were the best rated squadron in Santa Anna. The one that got the best rating could pick their primary school. We picked Ryan, because of the wide landing gear. It was a hot little airplane. It was considered really too hot for beginners, and here we were 18 year old kids in an airplane that landed at 90mph! That was considered fast in those days.

SS: Really fast.

JF: The first ride we got there was called the dollar ride. They took us up in the airplane and they did all the acrobatics they could think of. They snapped rolled, they spun, they looped, they did barrel rolls, they did everything to see how much you could take. This was an open cockpit airplane where your head is out in the cold air and you know there is no chance of getting sick. You come down from that ride and boy I'll tell you feel like a king. You made the ride. Then you go up with the instructor and they were great. I had a real great instructor. He would demonstrate a maneuver and say now you do it. Most cadets soloed after like 8 hours of flying.

SS: This is at that place. After Santa Anna?

JF: Yes, this is after Santa Anna. This is at Ryan Field in Hemet, California.

SS: Ryan Field?

JF: Yes. And sure enough, I soloed in 8 hours.

SS: That's great.

JF: Each day you would go up and start practicing everything that they taught you. Everyday you learn something different. Each day you were getting closer to graduation. The next step was Basic Flying. I had graduated from Primary Flying.

SS: So after the Ryan Field you went to Basic?

JF: After Ryan Field I went to Gardner Field, in Bakersfield, California, where we flew the BT-13, which was a closed-cockpit airplane. That's where I think you really learned to fly, because you got formation flying, instrument flying, cross-country flying, night flying, and everything that you'll ever need to be a good pilot.

SS: What kind of plane was that?

JF: A BT-13, we called them Vultee Vibrators.

SS: [laughter]

JF: And they were good airplanes. They spun better than any airplane that I ever flew, and that was important in those days, to and be able to spin an airplane. We lost a few cadets that didn't pull out of the spin.

SS: You mean like a downward spin?

JF: Yeah.

SS: Why was that important?

JF: Let's say you were flying in the rain or fog, or clouds, and became disoriented, the next thing you know, you would go into a spin. You had to know how to recover.

SS: Oh, okay.

JF: If your instructor said to you, I want you to give me a two and three-quarter turn spin to the left, you better pull it out in exactly a three-quarter turn. Because if you didn't, you'd be up there for hours until you learned to do it right. I learned fast because I had another good instructor. He said don't look at the ground. If you look down when you are spinning you'd get dizzy and things are going so fast you couldn't pick a point out on the ground. You would look straight out the top of the canopy and pick an object out on the horizon. Then as the airplane came around you count one, two, three-quarters, and bang, you execute recovery.

SS: Was that single engine or dual engine plane?

JF: It was a single engine airplane with a 450HP engine. Which I think was great. Here we are 18 year old kids flying an airplane that big.

SS: Was that exciting?

JF: Oh yeah. It was exciting. What's exciting is you do something and you have that feeling of accomplishment. One night, my instructor said give me a good landing tonight and you can solo. It was my first night flight. I went up and gave him a couple of good landings, and he jumped out of the airplane and said take it up to 10,000 feet and sit there till we call you down. Here you are, a young kid, and you got an airplane all by yourself and your up in the air at night. It was a little difficult because when I got to 10,000 feet, I looked around and I couldn't tell the difference between the lights on the ground and the stars. You know you are up there and wondering, do you sit up there and wait, and wait, and say gee they must have forgotten me. But they didn't. They brought me down 1000 feet at a time. The most difficult thing for me, I think and a lot of other cadets, is that we ran into something we never ran into before, and that was Morse code. The dots and dashes. We had to take 19 words a minute by ear and twelve per minute by eye. We had to learn that in two months. I spent many a night after school going back just to practice that, because we had to pass a final test to graduate.

SS: You had to use Morse code in the air?

JF: You had to use Morse Code in the air and when you were coming to an airfield. They always identified the airfield by using Morse code.

SS: Morse code. And how long were you at this place then?

JF: Two months.

SS: Two months there?

JF: Two months there.

SS: When did you get your final assignment?

JF: When I graduated from Gardner Field at Bakersfield, CA. They sent me to Douglas Arizona for advanced flying. All cadets had to go through advanced flying. Every month we had to fill out a form asking the type of airplane we wanted to fly if and when we successfully completed our pilot training. Being 18 like all the kids, I put down P-38, P-51, and P-47. When I got the orders to go to Douglas AZ., I was thrilled, because they had the AT-9's and AT-17's there. Those were trainers for the P-38's. When we got to Douglas, AZ, we went to the theater and the commanding officer said forget your fighters, we need four engine bomber pilots. You guys are going be B-17 or B-24 pilots. Of course there was a lot of moaning and groaning, because there was actually guys that wanted to wash themselves out. I said to some of my friends, that you guys are crazy! I said, lets complete our training here and then we'll fight for the airplane we want to fly. Don't do it now because you are going to end up as a gunner or you are going into the infantry. So we spent two months there, and I flew the AT-17 which was none as the Cessna Bobcat or the Bamboo Bomber. It was a two engine airplane. We did the same thing there that we did at Gardner Field. We did a lot of cross-country flying, formation flying, night flying, and instrument flying. After two months, we graduated and got the wings and commission as pilots. Again they asked what type of airplane do you want to fly? They already told us we were going fly a B-17 or B-24, so when I got that paper to fill out, I put down B-26, B-26, B-26. [laughter]

SS: [laughter]

JF: And that's how I got the Marauder.

SS: You got the B-26 Marauder.

JF: People sometimes ask how did you know about the B-26 Marauder? When I was in High School in Southington I had to take a course in wood working which was a prerequisite for going to college. We had to take printing for 6 months, and wood-working for 6 months. A navy lieutenant came in and asked if we would like to help the war effort? We all said. They gave us model airplanes to build. They were made of beautiful mahogany wood, and you had to take this square block and carve it down, and sand it, according to the instructions and to the templates included in the kits. When you finished it, you painted it black, and put the whole thing together. Then he took them back to ready rooms where they hung them from the ceilings. They were used for aircraft identifications for the flying crews. They gave me the B-26 Marauder. I learned all the characteristics and the specifications, the speeds, and what bomb load it carried, and I knew all about the airplane. So I said that's the airplane that I'm going fly. So when I graduated that's the one I put down on the paper. And when they saw it, because it was considered a killer airplane, and a dangerous airplane to fly, they called me in that day and said here's your orders. They sent me down to Laughlin Field, Del Rio, Texas for B-26 transition.

SS: So that happened pretty quick also.

JF: And you know, the funny part of it is, when I arrived at the Laughlin AFB, in Del Rio, Texas, I walked up to the main gate, and they didn't say to me, hey welcome lieutenant or how was your trip?, or how was your day? or anything. All they said to me was aren't you afraid to fly this airplane. Every place I went on the base, even in the PX, the girls behind the counter asked if we were afraid of the airplane? I didn't even know what they were talking about.

SS: Did you find out why was the plane considered dangerous?

JF: Yes, I found out. The airplane had a bad reputation when it was at McDill AFB, because they were losing so many crew-members that they dubbed it the flying coffin, the flying prostitute, the Baltimore whore, one a day in Tampa Bay. It was so bad that ferry pilots refused to fly the airplane. During the next six months, Washington had four different committees investigate the airplane at different times. All four times they said that the airplane was too dangerous to fly, too hot for pilots, and to take them out of combat, and not build anymore airplanes. But they kept them because some of the pilots said its not the airplane, its the inexperience of the crew members. They went through a lot of extra training and everything else, and it turned out to be one of the best planes in the war. The problem is that the airplane came in at 165 mph on the final approach, and it stalled out at 135 mph. It cruised at about 250, but when it had a full bomb load, it cruised at 200. When we turned off the target, we always pushed the speed to 355 mph. But if you lost an engine, you were coming down. That was one of the bad things about the airplane. Although there were cases where guys made it back to England and survived. And you could never turn into the dead engine, if you did, the airplane would flip on you. Of course the real bad thing was that if you ever lost an engine on take off then that was it.

SS: How long did you spend training on that plane?

JF: Two months.

SS: Two months!?

JF: I was at Del Rio two months. And you talk about, aren't you afraid of the airplane? And of course I just forgot what the people were saying and didn't pay any attention to them, because they really didn't know too much about the airplane. I knew about the speeds and everything else, so it didn't bother me. But one night my squadron was scheduled to fly a four hour transition mission and we took off, there was another pilot and myself, and an engineer in the airplane. I would fly for two hours in the left seat and then change to the right seat. So we had been up for about 20 minutes and one of the pilots called in and said his right engine was burning. He gave his position and we watched him come in and land. He made it all right. There was no problem. About a half hour later, another pilot called in and said that his right engine was burning and he gave his position and we looked over. He was way over on the southeast of the field and he was burning! We could see the fire, we could see him going across the dark sky. We watched him, and he crashed in the desert. We watched that airplane burn. We sat up there and circled and watched it burn. You could see the ambulance, the fire truck, and all these cars coming down the highway to go to the crash site. Not knowing whether anybody was killed or what not. About this time we finished our two hours of flying. I landed and changed seats with the other pilot. We were taxiing out to take off so I called the tower. The tower said we were number two for take-off. When number one leaves, you are cleared to take the active runway. Just about that time I leaned down to open the cowl shudders and check the cylinder head temperature, when there was a tremendous explosion. The sky lit up like broad daylight. The plane in front of us took off and was ten feet in the air when someone, we figured, lit a match. They blew up, killing everybody in the airplane and they were burning at the end of the runway. We carried 1492 gallons of 130 octane fuel. You don't light a match on take-off, you don't light a match on landing, and you don't light a match in the airplane when you are transferring fuel. They figured that somebody lit a match in there and it blew up. That's when I knew that I knew that the airplane was a little dangerous.

SS: Sounds it.

JF: And they stopped flying that night right then and there. And that was the only time in my career that I was happy to stay on the ground.

SS: Really! And this was all at Del Rio, Texas?

JF: Del Rio, Texas. Yes

SS: Still in training?

JF: Yes, then I had an instructor there that I think was afraid of the airplane. He said to me when we do instrument flying and you come for your final approach, I want you at 700 feet. So, I always came in at 700 feet. At the end of my two months, I had to go up for an instrument ride. I took off and I flew around, under the hood, never seeing the ground, just flying on instruments. I came in and I brought that airplane in and I split that runway right down the middle, and I was at 700 feet. All the other pilots in the airplane said that was the best ride that they'd ever seen. And I was happy, I was real thrilled with what I had accomplished. A couple days later I got the orders to leave and I was sent out as a co-pilot.

SS: Oh really?

JF: Because he busted me on that instrument check. He said why weren't you at 500 feet? I was only 18 and I wasn't smart enough to argue with him. So I went out as a co-pilot. I also think my age had a lot to do with it. I got to Barksdale Field, in Louisiana. And that's where we assembled as a crew. I was put in with an instructor pilot that had been flying the B-26 Marauders and he became my pilot, and he couldn't believe when we were assembled together as a crew that I had been through B-26 transition. I could fly the airplane almost better that he could. I figured I'm only 18 years old and here is a guy that's 26. I said, well I'm going to stick with this crew, rather than to fight for my own airplane. So I stayed with them and we stayed at Barksdale for two months. There we did all the combat training, where we dropped blue devils, those are bombs with sand in them. We practiced bombing from 10,000 feet. We practiced strafing, down over the Gulf Of Mexico, and a lot of cross-country flying. We worked together as a crew. From there we went to Hunter Field, Georgia, where we picked up our over-seas equipment. And then we went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. We stayed there, I guess for a month. Then they put us on the Queen Mary and sent us over seas.

SS: Wow. You went on the Queen Mary.

JF: Yes.

SS: So how did you feel about getting sent over-seas?

JF: I think we were all happy. It's hard to explain, but you never really figured that you were going into a danger area where you were going to get killed. I think most guys were disappointed if they didn't get to go over-seas. There were a lot of guys that were disappointed when they ended up being instructor pilot or tow target pilots, because a lot of them wanted to go over-seas. I had no idea of what we were really getting into. I knew we were going over-seas, I didn't know what it was like to fly a combat mission. We were all put on the Queen Mary. There was 12,000 troops on board the Queen Mary when we went over.

SS: Wow!

JF: And we landed in Firth Of Clyde in Scotland. We were put on a train and we were sent down to Stone, England, which is west of London. We stayed there a month, and one day they said that the airplane is here. They put us in a C-47 and sent us over to Cambrai, France, where we entered the 394th bomb group; the 586th bomb squadron.

SS: And this was about when?

JF: This was January, 1945.

SS: Oh 45' by this time. So now you are about 19, maybe 20?

JF: 19.

SS: You were 19. Just to go back for a second, you said something about flying under-the-hood. Did that mean that your head was covered when you were training?

JF: No. In a bomber like the B-26, you place a green celluloid sheet against your windscreen. [tape-change] You put this green covering over the windows of the airplane, so if you are sitting in the airplane looking out, everything is green. You as the pilot, put on a pair of glasses that are red, and when you look at that green you can see black, you can't see out. All you can see is the instruments in front of you. You are the only one with the glasses on, the co-pilot or the instructor pilot is sitting there looking out for other airplanes, but everything looks green to him.

SS: So that's how you would learn to fly instruments?

JF: Well, in the si????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????, like you just said before, do you remember what it felt like? Were you worried, or scared, or anxious about going in? JF:???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? I would have to go like everybody else. I just went and of course the upper most thing in my mind was to become a pilot.SS:e instructor would take over. And he would put the airplane in all kinds of spins or loops, or straight up or any unusual position. When he thought you were confused he'd say it's your airplane, and you would have so many seconds to get straight and level. When you were through, he'd say take me home, and you had to find the radio range and take him home. When you finished, you better be splitting that runway right down the middle and be.

SS: So that's how you knew you were instrument qualified?

JF: Yes, and you know it wasn't really that difficult. I don't remember anything being that difficult going through pilot training.

SS: It seems like you had a lot of training over the course of maybe about a year? Was that the amount of training?

JF: It took me a little less than 11 months to get my wings.

SS: Eleven months by the time you went over on the Queen Mary and to Scotland, England, and then where again from England?

JF: From England I went to Cambrai, France. All the B-26 outfits were in France at this time, because the distance from England was too great for B-26's. That was the combat outfit that I joined. The 394th bomb group. When we started flying combat, we took off, 15 minutes after take-off we were in enemy held territory. Our missions lasted anywhere from 3, to 5 hours.

SS: So in 1945 what type of missions were you doing?

JF: The first mission I went on was a drop over a town in France. It was an incendiary mission. We were dropping on a German communication center and we were dropping incendiary bombs which lit everything up and burned where ever they hit. I can remember looking down and it seemed like half of the incendiaries landed in an open field. I'm sure that the mission produced the damage they had expected it to do. You know I tell kids today you never get away from grading. You talk about going to school and you take a test and you get a grade. Well you are graded on everything you do in the military. We were graded on our targets. When we got back, they would send out a recon airplane and they would say you did good, bad, or poor, and if it was poor, you had to go back the next day and try it again. Our targets were marshaling yards, bridges, and no-ball targets. We were known as the bridge busters. No-ball targets were the V-1 and the V-2 rocket sites. But, we did other things like flying a leaflet mission. Our target was Koblenz, Germany, right in the middle of the Ruhr Valley.

SS: Oh really? [stopped to check tape, which was making a funny noise] Okay everything sounds all right. So where were we now?

JF: On a bombing mission.

SS: Yes. You were talking about your missions. What about the planning? Did you guys have briefings and be part of the planning? What was that like?

JF: At 7:00 at night, we would go to the orderly room and they would have a list of all the crews that were flying the mission the next day. The list would have the crews by name, the type bomb that you were going to carry and of course the airplane you were flying, and the position you were flying. They never mentioned the target. By 7:00 at night we knew whether we were going be on the mission or not. If you were not scheduled to fly, then you could sleep a little later, and you didn't have any other duties to do except hang around the barracks. But if you were on the mission, you knew that some time around 4:00 or 5:00, somebody would come to wake you up. You would get up, get dressed, go across the street, because the latrine and showers there. We had no fuel and it was cold in the barracks. It was winter time, and we'd have to go there to shave and clean up. I always shaved because I had to wear an oxygen mask. If I didn't shave my skin would get all irritated from the oxygen mask. We would have breakfast and they say that the Air Force had the best meal of all the services. We had the best powdered eggs, the best powdered milk and the best dehydrated potatoes.

SS: [laughter]

JF: The good thing about it was you could have seconds. After that we would get in a truck, because the airfield was about two miles away from where we were living. We got into trucks, and we would go to briefing, which was in a farmer's barn. The barn still smelled of horses and cows and there was bales of hay. Some of us sat on the bales of hay during the briefing. The commanding officer would come in first and he would tell you what the target was, how important it was to hit the target, and what you had to do really, to survive. One time he said you are going on a mission, and I'm going to tell you right now you don't have enough fuel to get home. After he finished, then the intelligence officer would get up, and he would tell you what you were going to hit, why you were going to hit the target, how important it was to hit the target, everything known about the target. He would tell you where you were going to get hit by flak, where the heaviest concentration of fighters would be, what kind of enemy airplanes you could expect. He would tell you if you got shot down today, whether or not it would be worth trying to get back or whether you should hide out. If you feel that you can't hide out, then you have to give yourself up, then look for somebody with a green uniform on. Because that was the people's army, they were sympathetic to the American forces. Of course if you could find somebody with a blue uniform on, which was the German Luftwaffe, then you give yourself up to them, because they were real sympathetic to the American Air Force or the British. Never give yourself up to anybody in a black uniform because that was the Gestapo or the SS, and under no circumstances did you give yourself up to women. The women were known to pitch-fork and stone any downed airman, because they blamed the air force for all the problems and destruction they were going through. When he finished, the weather man would get up and tell you what the weather was like over the field and over the target area, what you could expect on the way home, and what you could expect when you got back. When we finished the briefing we had to turn in all of our personal belongings. If you had a ring on that showed where you went to school or college, you had to turn all of that in. You couldn't wear anything that could help identify your state-side connection.

SS: Right.

JF: Because the Germans had information on every single airman over seas. I know guys that got captured and they said they mentioned my sister, the school I went to and other personal information. They were smart, every time you turned the radio on in your airplane for a mission, even if you were in England, they could pick up the sound, and they knew how many airplanes were coming over. When we finished turning all our personal items in, we would go out to the airplane, but before we went to the plane, they had three tents. The Jewish, Protestant, and the Catholic faith, so you could stop in and pay your respects. We would go into the parachute building and pick up our parachutes, and survival kit that we carried. It wasn't anymore than a kit that contained pills for purifying water, some little biscuits in there -so when you ate them they swelled up to make you feel like you had a big meal- a sewing kit, compass, razor blades, and stuff like that. It was very small, you could put it in the pocket in the bottom of your flying suit. They would give you two candy bars and a pack of gum on every mission. Then we would go to the airplane.

SS: Did you guys carry side-arms?

JF: Yes. We carried a .45 and a knife. I used to carry it in the front here [points to upper chest] so if a piece of flak came in it was going to hit the gun first.

SS: [laughter]

JF: I don't know if I would ever use it or not. But yes, we carried them.

SS: What was it like with the people on the base? Who were you serving with basically?

JF: All the personnel on our base were Air Force guys that had something to do with B-26's. We had the ground personnel, the engineering officers, the cooks, and the mechanics. It was like a close-nit family, we were all in it together. There was four squadrons to a group. We were in the 394th bomb group. There was the 584th, the 585th, 586th, and the 587th. We were in Cambrai and all the others squadrons were like 10 miles in different directions. I can't even tell you where they were. We never saw them, we never got together, the only time we would see them is at briefing and when we were up in the air. Maybe they were flying next to you in a group. But we were always together yet never got to see those other groups. And the ground personnel that we were closest to of course were the mechanics that serviced the planes that we were flying. We would talk to them as soon as we got to the airplane to see if there was anything wrong with the airplane or how the airplane flew. Because sometimes one airplane might fly with a heavy left wing or the engine would run hot. We'd talk to the mechanics and they would give us all the information that we needed. We never flew the same airplane. We always flew a different airplane and I know there were a lot of airplanes that were named by pilots that were still there. They also flew a different airplane on each mission.

SS: Why did they do that, did you know?

JF: Well, I think that was typical at the end of the war. It was hard because here's a guy that named an airplane and he's not flying it today. So somebody would have to fly his airplane. So if he was flying the next day, maybe he'd get his own plane, or maybe he'd get a different one.

SS: So this was already in 1945. How was the moral overall, between the pilots and the ground troops?

JF: The moral was great! The infantry was moving up to the front lines all the time. They were coming through Cambrai and you could talk to the soldiers if they were in town. We'd talk to the guys coming back from the front lines, and they were always calling us fly-boys and glamour-boys. I can remember being in town and meeting some infantry guys. They would ask for a ride in the airplane. I said sure, we're going up tomorrow for a local flight, why don't you come in about 9:00 and we'll take you up. And at 9:00 we'd be in the airplane and we'd see them walking up toward the airplane and the minute they saw it was a B-26, they'd turn and walk the other way. We never took anybody up unless they were scheduled to fly.

SS: It still had a bad reputation?

JF: Yes. And the moral amongst the pilots and everybody else was great. We had a swimming pool in back of our barracks. It was built by the Germans when they occupied the barracks at Cambrai. When we got there it was all full of tin cans and stones and debris. We cleaned it out, scrubbed it down, filled it with water, the doctor put chlorine in there, and we used it for swimming. So if we weren't on a mission, we were out in the pool, swimming around and having a great time. I think everyone got along great. I don't recall anybody ever fighting with anybody. And you never figured that you were going to get killed or shot down. I never had that feeling. I just knew that I was going on a mission and that was it. We went over seas with another crew, the pilot's name was Turner, he was the first pilot, and before you could fly as a first pilot, you had to fly a half a dozen or ten missions with an experienced pilot. He was on his second mission as a co-pilot, when they received a direct hit. The three officers got killed and the three enlisted men bailed out. People say, how did you feel if you saw another airplane go down, you almost feel happy because it is not you. And I never felt that I was going to get hit. You'd see the flak all around you and the fighters, but you just felt it wasn't you. I only flew 15 missions and then the war ended.

SS: Fifteen combat missions?

JF: Yes. Then we got to the point that they knew that I could fly the airplane, and hollered for my own crew. I got my own crew and the war ended. So I never flew in combat with my own crew.

SS: So you were always the co-pilot then, on all those 15 missions?

JF: Yes. But when you say co-pilot, there were times that I flew the airplane as much as the pilot. Because when I went through transition, I flew as much as the First Pilot.

SS: How long did some of the missions last?

JF: Our missions averaged maybe three and a half to four hours. I think the longest one we flew was over five hours. That one I told you about in the beginning, when the commanding officer said, many of you will not have enough fuel to return to base today. They did give us an alternate airfield. They were not sure who occupied the airfield. Whether the Americans had it or the Germans had it, they knew there was a big storage tank there, they knew that you could get into the storage tank to get gas, and we had to land there because we ran short of fuel. We would have never made it back to the base. We landed there, the runway was pierce-planking. That's a metal runway that was laid down by the engineers. It had been a fighter base. We got out of the airplane, I remember looking around and nobody, no Germans, no Americans, nothing was there. We think it was in a no-man's land. We went into the woods, and found these old rusty cans, then we went into this huge storage tank. There was a valve there and we had to go down the concrete steps, and we were able to get the gas. We brought it back up, and didn't fill up the tank, we put in what was enough to get home on, and we got home after dark. They told us that in another half hour, your mother would have gotten a telegram that you were missing in action. I didn't know until I met some of the enlisted men on the crew, a couple years ago down in Florida, and they said that when they got back to the barracks, all their personnel belongings were gone. They had folded up their beds and everything, just like they were missing in action.

SS: And that almost happened to you?

JF: Yes. On that mission, we got hit over the target and a piece of flak came through the wind-screen, and it shattered some of the instruments, it bounced around in the cockpit, and ended up in my flak suit. I picked it up, which was a mistake, because it was red-hot and I burned my fingers. Our Radio Man sat on five flak suits. He was afraid flak would come up and hit him. On this day, flak penetrated four suits and stopped at the fifth. He was lucky! So when we got back to the base, we counted 219 holes in the airplane.

SS: But you made it back!

JF: We made it back, and we were nick-named the flak-magnets. Because it seemed like every time we went up, we got hit by flak. And you know, people say that it was the end of the war and there wasn't much there. There was a lot there, because the Germans kept moving closer to home and while they were moving, they were bringing all the flak guns closer to home. They had a bigger concentration of guns in the cities.

SS: Did it seem like they fought harder as the war was coming to an end?

JF: Well, I don't know what harder is, because every time we went up the sky filled with flak. I saw a couple of 109's one time and we used to get hit by the 262, the jets.

SS: Really, so you saw the jets.

JF: The German jets. We used to watch them, and every mission we flew was at 12,500 feet. They used to be up at 20 or 25 thousand feet and we watched the vapor trail. The minute the trail turned, we knew that they were coming at us. They would make one pass through the formation and that's all. I read once, where the 262 pilots were told if there were any B-26 Marauders in the area, stop doing what you doing, and go after the Marauders. I believe the reason was that we were hitting the V1 and V2 rockets that they were sending over to London or England. I think that's why they went after us.

SS: Did you ever see any of those jets shoot down any of your fellow planes?

JF: No. I never saw an airplane get shot down.

SS: How big was a formation of B-26's?

JF: We flew in what was known as a box. There was 6 airplanes at 13,000 feet, then 6 more at 12,500, and 6 more at 12,000 and that was to be considered the box. There was 36 airplanes in a group. But you have to remember there were many B-26 groups over there. They would all be on the same mission. A typical 8th Air Force mission was 1400 airplanes. Those were B-17's and B-24's, and now we're talking B-26's that were over there. There was generally 500 fighter airplanes in the air. One of the most important things flying in combat is timing. When we took off, they said fighter rendezvous would be at say 10:00AM or 10:02AM. You'd see our fighters coming in. At that precise time, you could set your clock. That's how punctual they were. And when they said to be on the target at 10:25, you better be there at 10:25. Because if you not there, and you get on the target late, then there is a group above you, they are going to drop their bombs regardless of what's below. We were told forget what's below you, drop your bombs anyway. If your coming in and you have a tail wind, and you are early, then you better pull off the bomb-run and make a 360 degree turn. Because at a standard rate it takes two minutes, and we knew how to get rid of time. Of course everybody would be moaning and groaning because the navigator got us there too early. Or you would get over the target and it would be obscured by maybe smoke or a cloud. So we'd say, we have to make a second run. Then everybody would moan! We used to go in at 195 to 200 mph with a full bomb load of 4000lbs. The same load as the heavies. We would turn left after we dropped the bombs, and we would lose 1000 feet, and we would push the airplane up to 355mph. That's the maximum speed. We would say on the way in, we are working for the government, on the way home we are working for ourselves.

SS: You just wanted to get home.

JF: We would come out, and they would give us a designated route to come out. They always tried to get around the flak areas, so that you would go between two cities, through the middle opening through the flak region. If you were disabled like we were once, you can't keep up with the formation. You are all by yourself. Then we would contact what was called sweep-stakes. We'd tell them that we are in Germany and that we are alone and that we need help. They would say, do you want to come straight out or do you want us to divert you around the flak areas? If you had two good engines, you would want to go around the flak areas. They'd tell you what course to follow and take you back to friendly territory. If you wanted to go straight out, then they'd take you straight out through Germany.

SS: Did it help to have the fighters around?

JF: Oh yes. Like I said, this one day, I saw the two 109's come at us, and they came right close underneath, I could almost see the pilots. I looked out and I saw our fighters turn and go after them. They never bothered us.

SS: What fighters were they?

JF: P-38's. Most of the time, we had P-47's. They didn't like to fly cover for us, because we had the R-2800 Pratt and Whitney engine. We had two engines on the B-26, and they had the same engine. They weren't efficient at our altitude, 12,000 feet. They were efficient up at 25 and 30,000 feet. One thing the people don't realize is that when you are flying formation, and you have a bomber formation going in, if an American fighter ever [emphasis] turned his nose toward an American group, they'd shoot him down. Even though they would see the American markers, they would shoot him down.

SS: Why would they do that?

JF: Because they were told, you don't point your nose at an American formation. The real thing is that the Germans would pick up a fighter that had crash landed, and they would fix it up and then it would be flown by a German pilot. He'd come into the formation and try to shoot some of the airplanes down.

SS: Oh yeah. Was there ever any friendly fire? Would a pilot not recognize his own planes? Did something like that ever happen?

JF: We were flying B-26 Marauders and every group had its own identification. The 394th bomb group had a white diagonal down the tail, that meant the 394th bomb group. The 322nd had a yellow triangle, the 397th had a yellow diagonal. So if you were flying formation, and a B-26 Marauder is lost and he wants protection, and he comes into your formation for protection, if he didn't show the colors of the day, by firing his berry pistol, say today it's green, red, yellow, if he didn't fire those colors, then you'd see every gun in the formation aimed toward that guy, and they'd shoot him down. Of course once they'd start shooting at him, he'd get out of there.

SS: How big was a crew?

JF: Six. We had six on the crew. Three officers and three enlisted men.

SS: The enlisted guys handled the machine guns?

JF: The pilot and the co-pilot had four .50 caliber machine guns firing forward. We had the bombardier/navigator, that was one person. He had a .50 caliber machine gun in the front of the airplane. The engineer gunner manned the upper turret. He had two .50 caliber machine guns. The radio gunner had the waist gun, with two .50 calibers, and we had the armament gunner had two .50 calibers in the tail of the airplane. We had 11 .50 caliber machine guns on the airplane.

SS: That's a lot of armament.

JF: All of us were 19 to 20 years old at that time. The pilot was 26 years old. We called him "Pappy."

SS: Now were you aware of the Germans shooting the V1's and V2's at London and different parts of England?

JF: The only thing that we were aware of was the V1's, because we were in France. If we were out in the yard or in the area, you could hear the pup, pup, pup. That was the V1 going over. The other one was up super-sonic, you couldn't hear or see it. We would hear one going over and you might see a fighter going after it. What the fighter would do is get up as close as he could and get his wing underneath the V1 wing and flip it over. Once he turned it over the missile would crash. But no, we had no knowledge of the concentration camps, we didn't know any of that was going on, we didn't know that they were working on jet airplanes until we saw them in the air.

SS: Did you know what was going on at home? Did people keep in contact with you?

JF: I got letters from my mother and father. They told me that everything was normal, but they told us of the gasoline rationing and sugar and meat rationing. But it didn't really affect us too much because we were eating our powdered eggs, powdered milk. We weren't doing any better than anybody else. They said to me, we have no sugar, or gasoline, so what!

SS: You didn't think much of it?

JF: No.

SS: So actually those were fairly good conditions that you were working under?

JF: When you compare the conditions that we fought under to the army, we had it good. We lived in German barracks, we had three guys to a room, we had our own mess hall. When we came back at night from a mission or in the afternoon from a mission, we had our own beds to go to. Of course we had sleeping bags. When we got to the point that the bomb line was so far away from the Marauders that it took us now an hour to get to the bomb line, we moved from Cambrai, France to Venlo, Holland. There, we lived in tents. It was beautiful living. It was in forest area, surrounded by pine trees. Our tent was located so you couldn't see any of the airplanes. We had like a little street of tents, all belonging to the 586th Bomb Squadron.

SS: Do you remember what date that was?

JF: Yes. That was in May, of 1945. I remember flying May 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and 4th, and then I skipped 5 and 6, and on the 7th, we flew into France. We landed at an airfield and went into town and were sitting at a bar getting something to eat. Then it came over the radio that the war had ended. VE day.

SS: How'd that make you feel?

JF: Well ... happy, but there was nobody to celebrate with. We got into the airplane and went back to the base. There were guys shooting the .50 caliber machine guns out of the airplanes and doing stuff like that, but the CO stopped that fast. Everybody was happy and jumping around, but it didn't' last very long. So the war was over. Everybody was thinking of going home. Everybody was counting their points. You got so many points for the Purple Heart, so many points for the DFC, so many points for an air medal. You had to have 85 points, if you did then you were going to go home. Well, I didn't have 85 points. Our outfit was selected then for army of occupation. So we stayed in Venlo, and we flew nurses to different hospitals, we flew crews to England, and if we flew other crews to England for a rest leave, we could stay there for three days ourselves. We flew a lot of army personnel to Paris that were being shipped back home. At this time there was a lot that flew combat that had the 85 points that were moving back to the states. But we didn't have, or I didn't have the points. So I had to stay there. We got orders that we were moving to Kitzinger, Germany. That was where we were going to spend the army of occupation time. That was a nice field although it had been bombed, we lived in some beautiful barracks. One day, we all got together, all the pilots, navigators, and airman. We said when we get our orders to go back to the states, we'll have a big party in the New York. A couple of weeks later, the orders came out. Everybody was on the orders but me. I went to the CO, and said: why am I not on the orders? At that time I had as many points as the rest had. He said I want you to stay and fly a C-47. I said but I don't know how to fly a C-47. He said you are going to learn. So I stayed. I checked out in the C-47, and my job from that day on was to fly all over Europe to pick up parts for the A-26 Invaders that were going to fly back to the United States and go over to Japan. This other pilot and I were the only two pilots that qualified to fly the airplane. We got up in the morning and flew at our own leisure.

SS: [laughter]

JF: We'd fly only in clear weather. We'd go to Frankfurt, to Munich, to Erding, just to pick up parts for the A-26 Invaders. I must have stayed there 6 months. Then my orders came in and I came home.

SS: Were you angry when you had to stay and everyone else got to leave?

JF: Yes. I was at first. But after I flew the C-47 I was happy. That was the nicest airplane that I ever flew. Boy, that was a good airplane. I really enjoyed flying it. I told you before that if you lost an engine in the Marauder, you were coming down, if you lost an engine on take-off it would flip and if you didn't catch it, that would end your flight. But the C-47, I remember one day, we had an aircraft engine in the back of the airplane. A big aircraft engine, in the crate. It took up so much room that we couldn't get into the pilot's compartment. We had to jump up onto the stabilizer, crawl across the top of the airplane, and then drop down into the escape hatch to the pilot seat. We got in and I was flying. I got up to 7,000 feet, and I said: Hey, let's see what this thing will do on one engine. I feathered one engine, and that airplane just kept flying, we could even gain altitude and. It kept going and going. It was a great airplane to fly, I loved it. Then during all this time, people say to me, what did you do when you were over in Europe? Well, I say, I've been to London, we used to go back and forth to London, we used to go back and forth to Paris, and they sent me on a rest leave in Neris, France. I went to the French Riviera for two weeks. I got back form there and they said: have you ever been to Switzerland? I said: no. They said: well, you are going. I said, I can't, I don't have any money. They said here is your orders, you're going. I didn't even unpack my bag. They sent me to Switzerland for a couple of weeks. I was all over the place. I used to go to Munich. I made a big mistake. I could have gotten tickets to go to the Nuremberg Trials. But I turned them down and I didn't go. Now I wish I had.

SS: So you didn't go. Do you regret that now?

JF: Yes.

SS: But you did wined up seeing a lot of stuff, like at the concentration camps?

JF: I used to go to Munich to pick up clothing for the officers. We had to buy our own clothing. There would be a depot store at certain areas where you could go and pick up shirts and pants and underwear. I would get a list from the officers and I would go down to Munich with a Jeep and a driver. One day we happened to get off the road and we went by the Dachow Concentration Camp. We stopped there, and we went through the whole camp. At that time the people that ran the camp were the ones that were behind the barb wire. We got to see quite a bit and understand what really happened.

SS: What was that like it? Can you describe it?

JF: Well ... by that time we had read a lot, and we had seen a lot. We saw pictures of Eisenhower going in and seeing all the dead bodies. We didn't see any of that. But I went into a room with a white ceiling and white walls and you could see blood stains on the wall and ceilings where they packed the dead bodies. Then I went into the room where they had the ovens and cremated the victims. I really didn't have much feeling at all, I just couldn't understand how anybody could do this. Or how they could get anybody like they did to run these places. I cannot understand how a person could go in and do this without putting up some kind of an argument. I guess you have to know the German philosophy and the way the army ran, especially the SS.

SS: What did you think about them, as an enemy, or did you think of them as an enemy?

JF: Not really. I wasn't mad at anybody. They weren't mad at me. We were over there flying and they were shooting at us, but I was never really mad at anybody. I knew we had a job to do, and we did the job. That was it.

SS: Did you have a sense of what you were fighting for, like freedom versus totalitarianism?

JF: We knew that freedom was a big issue, once in a while we'd mention that if the Japanese ever won the war, and we had to live under their occupation, it would be murder. But the German people, really, they were nice people. When the war ended, we used to talk to them. We had maids in the barracks that cleaned up and we talked to the cooks. They were very interesting people to talk to. I remember one time when we were in Venlo, Holland the guys wanted some bicycles. We went into Dusseldorf, with a few enlisted men, and they stopped a couple of Germans when they saw some nice bicycles and said; we're taking your bicycles for safety inspection. When you come back, your bicycles will be here. The poor guy, one guy was a German soldier and he was wounded, but they took the bike in the back of the truck and brought it back to the base for somebody to use. I always thought of that and said the guy was a nice guy. He told us about his experiences in the German Army fighting the Russians. I had nothing against them. We were given a job to do, and we did the job and that was it.

SS: Now you were in Germany 6 months after VE Day. You must have been in Germany during VJ Day.

JF: Yes.

SS: Do you remember that going on?

JF: No.

SS: You didn't get news of that?

JF: I remember getting the Stars and Stripes, the GI's newspaper. It said something about an atomic bomb. Then it explained what it was and what it did. But not having any knowledge of nuclear physics, I said how could they get anything that was that big? I just took it as another bomb. Then the war ended and that was it. Of course, when we were over there, there was not much celebration like there was here in the states. When we came to the states, it was like nothing happened. We got off the boat and that was it.

SS: The major celebrations had already occurred.

JF: Yes.

SS: What was it like coming back?

JF: We came back on the Zaneville Victory Boat. We got off the boat, and they sent us to Fort Dix. There was thousands of GI's there. They said we have too many people here. Go home for a week and decide what you want to do with your life. Do you want to be a full-time military or do you want to be a civilian? I came home and didn't sleep one wink for a week. I finally made the decision that I was going to stay in.

SS: Really?

JF: I wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force. I went back to Fort Dix and they said: all those who want to stay in get in this line and all those who want to get out get in this line. I got in the line to stay in. I got up to the Captain and he looked and said: you're a pilot aren't you? I said yes and he said: we have too many pilots, get in the other line.

SS: [laughter]

JF: He made up my mind for me. I was dickering between going to college or staying in. I said okay, I went in the other line and got out. But I stayed in the reserve. I went to college and stayed in reserve. I was able to fly in the reserve. I flew out of Hartford, Brainard Field. I was flying AT-6's. I then transferred to Boston, where I was flying single engine jets. I was just checking out the jets. When I couldn't keep up my time, I finally got into an engineering outfit. I was stationed at Griffits AFB, in New York. I stayed in for 30 years and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.

SS: I didn't know that, congratulations.

JF: So that ended my career as an Air Force officer. I'll tell you, it's paid off. I can go to any military base in the country. I could spend the night there. Of course, you have to pay. I can use the PX, the commissary and all the military facilities. I can fly anyplace in the world on space available aircraft. That's not as easy as you think. You may get over in Germany and then you can't find an airplane coming home. Or when you come home, you think you'll land up here at Westover AFB, and he lands in California.

SS: [laughter]

JF: Then your stuck anyway.

[tape change]

SS: Now we are pretty much towards the end. I thought I'd ask, even though you mentioned that you were in the reserves, if you had taken advantage of the GI Bill at all?

JF: Yes. I took advantage of the GI Bill. I went college. I went to General Motors Institute, a five year course in engineering. I got a BS Degree in Engineering and while I was in the reserve I flew out of Bishop Airport in Flint, Michigan. When I came home I'd fly out of Brainard Field in Hartford. I used to fly every Tuesday night in the T-6 from 8:00 till midnight. Then I'd fly on the weekends or any time that I had free time. Then I heard about a jet outfit up in Hanscom Field in Boston. I applied for that and because of my experience as a 26 pilot they accepted me. I flew a T-28 and was just checking out on the F-80, when they said you have to get 100 hours a year or we are going to wash you out of the reserve. General Motors was saying that I better make up my mind if this was my job or the Air Force was my job, which I think was crazy. Because I never missed one second of work because of the Air Force. I think I had bosses that were a little jealous of what was going on. There was a bunch of guys down in Stanford that had started an organization that was stationed at Griffits AFB, Rome New York, and they special projects for the Air Force. They called me and said we could use your talents since you are working for General Motors, so I transferred into their outfit. We were the only reserve unit that was allowed to take secret material off a military base. We could keep it at Barnes Engineering in Stanford. One of the projects was that if you were on a reconnaissance mission and you came upon a big river, too wide to cross, and on the other side there were storage tanks, these huge storage tanks over there, how could you tell what was in the tanks? And how full was the tank? We had guys in there that worked for different organizations. One of them worked for Barnes Engineering, which was an infra-red organization. By using infra-red you could tell what was in there and how full the tanks were. We got a write-up by MacNamara showing that we solved the problem. We got a lot of problems like that.

SS: Now, you were in for 30 years, did you have any involvement with Korea?

JF: It took a long time to realize what really went on with Korea and Vietnam. I found out that during these two periods, the government took only inactive reservists. The active reservists, like us, were not touched. They knew that they had us, and they knew what slot we were in, so that any time they really needed us, they could have grabbed us. And they didn't touch any of us.

SS: I remember that about Vietnam that it was a point of contention about calling in the reserves.

JF: Yes.

SS: So when exactly did you get out?

JF: I got out in 1973.

SS: 73' Right towards the end of Vietnam. But long before that you wound up getting married. When did you get married?

JF: I got married in 1950. I had graduated from GMI and was working for New Departure, a division of General Motors. I was a foreman from the day I started school, and I worked in the assembly and the grind department. My fifth year thesis was 3203 integration, so they sent me to the lay-out department to fabricate a line for taking the raw material from one end of the building and sending the finished product out the other. We, in Plant Layout, designed the line to do this. We built the line, and it became the 3203 line and from the day it was started till the day it was stopped it. It produced 50,000 bearings a day. I was promoted to assistant superintendent, and I had the whole assembly area. Later, I moved to the maintenance department. I had different jobs during my career. It was a good career. All the time I was working there, I would fly, or when I got into the unit up at Griffits AFB, I'd go to Stanford, CT every Saturday. We'd have a meeting there and, then every two weeks, a year, we would go to Griffits Air Base in Rome, NY.

SS: So you did your two week reserve slot there. How did you feel about the treatment, with the GI Bill and medical benefits?

JF: As far as I was concerned, everything was great. I got all my books and tuition paid for and if I had any problems medically, I could go up to the VA hospital. I had no problem. They treated me well, like I said, retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and even to this day, I think they treat me well. As a matter of fact, one time my wife and I were on our way to Florida and we were in Baltimore and she fell. That night, her wrist swelled up and it was turning black and her ankle hurt. We were staying at Quantic Marine Corp Base in Virginia. I called the sergeant. He said that they used the Navy Hospital. So I took my wife there and they took her in and when they saw Lieutenant Colonel, Air Force retired, they took her in and x-rayed her wrist and ankle. It didn't cost me a penny.

SS: That's great.

JF: I like military life. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad for one thing, that the Captain told me that he had too many pilots. I found out that after the war with Japan and Germany was over, they took all the pilots, navigators, and bombardiers that were in, that didn't have a college education, and they busted them down to sergeants.

SS: Really!

JF: In order to get a commission again, you had to go to school and get a college education. But when the Korean War came on, they promoted them all back to their regular status.

SS: They probably had to retrain, since they lost all those hours flying.

JF: When I was in the reserve, I was getting more flying time than the Reserve pilots that were in the regular service. They had an 8 hour a day job to do, and they couldn't go fly as often as I could.

SS: How did you wined up getting involved with the group?

JF: Well, Bill Clark and I were always interested in the military. He was a gunner in B-24's and we used to talk about the airplanes. Anybody we met we'd always talk about airplanes. We heard that there was a group in Cheshire called the Army Air Force Round Table. It was just a bunch of guys that were interested in the military. We went to Cheshire one night and I think there was maybe 12 of us that started it. We found out what they did and what they were looking for. Russ [the founder] figured it wasn't going to last that long, there was only 12 of us there. They asked me to show my slides, I've got 300 pictures that I took during my training and during the war. I showed them. The next thing you know, we were getting more people in there. It got to the point that we had more people than there were seats over at the Cheshire Library, so that's when we moved to the Masonic Home in Cheshire. Every week we were getting more and more people. We got over 100 people in the group now. Every meeting we have there is at least 60 or 70 guys that show up. It's amazing, because Russ didn't think that the meeting would last a year. It's been 10 years now.

SS: That long, 10 years! And you guys have the school program, where you go around and talk to schools?

JF: One of the features is that Art Fichette started calling schools and writing to the principles. He said that we were available and we'd like to keep this alive. We were willing to come into the schools and talk to the kids about WWII, about Veteran's Day, and if you'd like us, we'd come in. He's gotten quite a few responses, like last week we talked to the 5th graders in Montowese Middle School. Last year, we talked to 8 classes in Southington High School.

SS: So how do you feel about, or what do you think about how WWII is portrayed?

JF: The only thing that bothers me about WWII is that there are a lot of people that believe the Holocaust never happened. There are people that actually think that the government has made it all up. But I think as far as WWII goes, everybody looks up to the WWII Veteran.

SS: So you think that it's portrayed okay or taught, or do you think that its taught okay?

JF: Yes. I think it's portrayed okay. For a while there when MASH was on, I used to get irritated. Because it didn't happen that way. Remember, what's that other one?

SS: From WWII?

JF: The one in the prison camp.

SS: Hogan's Heroes?

JF: Yes. They made it sound like it was a pleasure to be a prisoner of war. I used to say that it's not right. But now, I think it's portrayed as a good.

SS: There is an issue that I've read about recently about how some veteran's groups have been trying to get a WWII monument in Washington. Have you heard about that?

JF: I have some literature about it. Yes, there is no monument in Washington for WWII Veterans. They are looking for donations. Yes, I think that's a good thing.

SS: You think there should be a monument?

JF: Yes.

SS: Yes. I do too. I've been there, to the Vietnam Memorial.

JF: I have been there too, and to Arlington Cemetery.

SS: We talked for a long time, and I think you have a great story. I'm really glad to hear you tell it.

JF: Well, you know my whole history now.

SS: [laughter] And it's a very important part of history too. The last thing I would add, is there anything else that you want to say or add to the story?

JF: No. But, I'm glad that there are groups like the Army Air Force Round-Table and there is a group in Meriden. They call themselves the Antique Veterans. These guys are all willing to go out and talk about their experiences, and I think that today a lot of the veterans that were silent before are coming out and talking more and more about their experiences. During my military career I took about 350 pictures using black and white film. I had them converted into slides. For about 40 years I never showed them. If somebody came to my house I would show them. Then somebody asked me to show them to the Boy Scouts, and I was amazed at how the kids responded. I thought they would be put-out and irritable, but they sat there and I went through the whole program. When I got through, they came up to me and shook my hand. They said thanks for showing them. It made me feel good.

SS: Some of your photos even got published in a book?

JF: That booklet that Nancy [his daughter] has, some of my pictures are in there. It was written by Jack Havner, a B-26 pilot, and it tells the complete story of the B-26 Marauder.

SS: Yes, there are some great pictures in there. How did you ever wined up taking pictures?

JF: When I went to Kearns, Utah, I had to turn in all my civilian clothes and, I had a camera with me. The sergeant said that's your camera, take it with you. But from what I understand you are not allowed to take photos on any of the military bases. He said take it with you. So I took it with me, and every place I went I took the camera and took pictures. I wasn't out in the open snapping pictures where everybody could see me. I took them on a few combat missions. But I took a few pictures like that and when the war ended, I took a few pictures of the bombed out cities from the air. I did it all through the whole war.