Today is October the 9th, year 2001.
My name is Floyd Cox.
I'm a volunteer at the National Museum of the
Pacific War.
And we're here today as part of the oral history
program in conjunction with the oral history
program of the museum.
And we're here in Wincrest, Texas,
interviewing Mr. Tom Krauska regarding his
experiences during World War II.
To start out with Tom, I want to express my
appreciation for you taking the time to participate
in our program.
And I'd like to start out by asking you some
basic questions of when you were born, where
you were born, your parents' names, where you
went to school, and we'll just take it
Well, somewhere along the line, God saw fit to
let me come to life on December 15, 1919.
I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of humble surroundings.
I was the last of three children born to my parents.
My parents were Tom Krauska, Thomas I. Krauska,
Thomas Ignatius Krauska, and my mother was
Mary Ann Krauska, and they were of Polish
descent, both of them, and they spoke Polish
around the house all the time, and I guess up
until the age of six or seven they tried
to get me to speak Polish, but they gave up on
me because I liked to yell and play.
I couldn't remember those Polish words, but
anyhow, we lived at 3417 Itasca Street in
St. Louis, in South St. Louis, primarily a
Dutch and Polish neighborhood, and we stayed
in that neighborhood several times, we moved
several times, but we stayed in that neighborhood
until I was called into the service many years
after that.
I was trained and educated by Catholic nuns in
St. Louis, the St. Lucille's Church, and
best education I think I could have gotten anywhere.
They were great and we came out all smelling
like a rose because they were such fine teachers.
They were also loving teachers and I'll never
forget them.
I remember them in my prayers many times
because the way they treated me and my family, it
was just wonderful.
And I'm sure they had a lot to do with me still
living today because they taught me
how to live and have fun and how to get
educated and stay educated and not just
quit on the education. I was in Catholic school
for eight years, played a lot of
sports. I was pretty good at soccer and that
was my main sport in
grade school and high school, but I went to a
public school after grade school
though, and with a different atmosphere. It was
a good high school, education-wise,
religion-wise, there wasn't any religion, you
might say, in a public school, but it
It was a big, big school.
We had about 600, 700 in our class, something
like that.
And after four years, during that time,
I became a pretty good gymnast, what
I thought put on a lot of muscle in places
that people would like to see it.
But I did.
I really enjoyed working in gymnastics
and putting on good shows as a gymnast.
and participated in gymnastic tournaments,
not only in high school,
but throughout the city and throughout Missouri.
I did fair, never was an excellent,
I wasn't at the top all the time,
but I came pretty close to the top.
But you know, I still think in my gymnastic days,
And over the years I've tried to convince my
kids, and I'll tell you about that later
on, because I had a girl that turned out to be
a state champion in gymnastics.
Anyhow, from high school, my dad was one of the
old-timers who believed that the man of
the house, should be educated, and the women,
they're down below there somewhere.
But my dad didn't give my sisters, who were
older than I, an opportunity to go
to college. And I'll never forget, one sister
of mine was, boy, she was as
smart as a whip. She, he would not let her go
to college, they wouldn't give her
money and if she didn't have any education
she'd have to do it on her own and go out
and find yourself a job that was that was the
attitude and not just with him
and a lot of other people in those days. The
breadwinner was the boy of the band
coming in and he wants to go to school. My
sister got a job my older sister got
a job for and I had two older sisters Betty was
the oldest and Florence was
next and I was there. We were all about 18
months apart. We were very close. Over
the years we stayed very close. The older
sister was, she was a brain, she was a
brain, but she didn't, she couldn't go to
college. Let me ask you this, Tom, what
What was your dad's occupation, your father's occupation?
Well, when he started out, during the war,
World War I,
he was a machinist, a very good machinist.
He was very good with his hands and tools of
all sorts,
lathe work, metal lathe work.
And during the first war, he was not drafted
because he had skills in the mechanics.
And they kept him in a ammunition plant
that they had in St. Louis.
And he worked many hours more
than the people worked in military, I'm sure.
But he was working for the government making munitions.
And he stayed in that job for the rest of the war.
He had a brother that went to France and he got
shot up and he then died.
What was his name?
His name was Frank.
In fact, Frank is my godfather.
My father had three, there were three boys,
three boys, he only had boys, no, there were
four boys.
Four boys in that family, my grandmother's family.
And my grandfather, I never did know him, he
died real early.
My father said he was about 11 years old when
my father died.
And he became the run winner.
He remembers his dad working for ¢5 an hour.
I'll never forget it, just amazing the way they lived.
They came over from Poland.
They came over, like hundreds of people on
ships were crowded as could be, just to get
out of Europe, just to get out of Europe.
For some reason, during that time, the
oppressions were really bad over there in
Europe, and
they couldn't get out of Poland fast enough.
I later had an opportunity to revisit where my
folks, my dad's folks, lived, where they
were raised and everything. It's another story,
but I had the opportunity about
two years ago to go to Poland and walk the
streets where they lived and just
unbelievable. So I had that opportunity and I
thank the good Lord for that one
boy. But anyhow, they had a rough life when
they were growing up. I know
I know my grandmother, my dad's mother,
came to the United States to follow her
husband, who
had come over earlier.
He got a job.
Some friend of his who was in the United States
got him a job and said, Ignatius, come on over.
I got a job for you.
And they saved like $15, $20, as little
as they could save to get passage
to come over on a boat.
I don't know how they do it.
My grandmother claimed that the ship was just
crowded with people, if it ever sank, they'd be dead.
But anyhow, they lived through it.
When they got to the United States, my dad
worked for ¢5 an hour, my grandfather worked
for ¢5 an hour.
Unbelievable, unbelievable.
But it was better than what they had in Poland. Right.
More opportunities here.
That's right, yeah, the opportunities were
there and he never did make a lot of money.
He just barely existed really, and then, but my
grandmother, she was a seamstress and she
took in work and she wrote, she had a business
of her own making dresses for people, yeah,
and sewing up pants for men, I mean she did it
all, quite a seamstress.
And my grandmother lived till she was 86 years old.
I never did see my grandfather because he died
early before I was born.
And I never had the opportunity.
Okay, now fast forward to your getting out of
high school.
Where did you go from there?
Okay, getting out of high school, my dad,
I was going to say, he wanted Boyd to go to college.
Getting out of high school, I was going to go
to Missouri University, but it came down
to the matter of dollars and cents with him too.
So I checked at St. Louis University, which was
about five miles up the road from where
we lived, and it was in the midtown part of St.
Louis, midtown.
We had a campus of about four big theaters for
one, not a real campus at all, got a couple
of Catholic churches right close by, and of
course the St. Louis University had a big
Catholic church there, and being Catholic to
begin with, it made it a lot easier going
there because I knew my way around the Catholic
Church and I was a server and altar boy and
all that stuff.
But I went into college right out of high
school and being a gymnast, another friend
of mine went to St. Louis U at the same time
who was also a gymnast, well due to our gymnastic
meets that we had, I had met the gymnastic
teacher, the gym teacher, I guess you call
them, gym teacher, at St. Louis University.
And he said, well, we need cheerleaders.
Did you ever do any cheerleading?
I said, no, but another guy that came from
Cleveland High School with me, he was a cheerleader
And he said, well, I can teach him.
I can teach him.
So this same man got us in as cheerleaders.
So three of us who were gymnasts in Cleveland
High School
became tumblers and jumpers all over the Damn
football field.
And I had never led a cheer in my life.
But anyhow, I did.
And I was a cheerleader at St. Louis University
for five years,
four and a half years before I graduated.
And the others, they finished their school too,
so they all did well up there and we
all - and I worked in a gymnasium as well as
being a cheerleader, I worked there.
I got all my tuition paid.
After the first semester, I had paid tuitions
at St. Louis University working in a gymnasium,
in the basket room I think they called it,
basket room.
And I worked there, and I was slow sometimes,
and I'd take my law books over there, or my
books over there, and study till 9:00 at night,
and then go on home.
And I'd have my studying done for the most part.
But it was a great opportunity for me, only
because I was a gymnast, I knew the teacher,
and he had control of the jobs, you might say.
And he wanted us to be cheerleaders because we
could tumble, say, and tumble up and down
the field.
Oh my God.
Well, anyhow, we did it.
We did it.
Put on hand-balancing shows as well.
Oh yeah, we were good.
I must say, we were good.
We were good.
And the people really enjoyed it.
And everybody knew me and the cheerleaders.
Everybody knew Tom.
They did.
by Newtown. And it was through that that I got
to know people. And thank God for
that. If I'd been a stick in the mud, I
wouldn't have known anybody.
Anyhow, it really loosened me up in meeting
people, in dealing with people,
and I think that had a lot to do with my
further development on later on in years.
I did fairly well, and when I went to law
school, you could get into law school
with two years of academics in an undergraduate school.
They don't have that now, you've got to have a
degree to get into law school now.
But at that time, two years of education was
all you needed.
College education was all you needed.
And it was fine with me.
And I don't know how I picked law because my dad,
he didn't encourage me one damn bit, and I know that.
But he was happy that I was getting my tuition
paid, too.
And I had a place to live and
speaking of that, I'll tell you about while I
was going to college, my sisters both were
working and
they had a room, we had a
four family, two family flat as we call them in
St. Louis.
We had four rooms, a kitchen,
which was also our dining room, a small
kitchen, all the utensils there, we had a
bathroom, one bathroom with a tub, and my
father and mother had a room, the two
sisters had a room, and two girls could sleep
together, and where was I? I was in
the so-called living room and we had a couch we
used to pull out. Well at the
time I was needing a couch when we got that
house all I had was a roll-away bed
and I had to take that roll-away bed out of a
closet and pull it out every night
and take it in that room and that's where I
slept with a roll-away bed. I was
sleeping on a rollaway bed even when I was in
college. I'm not kidding. And again,
we were not a wealthy neighborhood to begin
with, but it wasn't a poor
neighborhood, but it wasn't wealthy by any
means. And my dad never thought of
even once thinking going by and getting a
bigger house. I don't know, Tom could
sleep on that couch, see? You can sleep there
on the couch or pull the roadway bed up.
And really I did it all through college. And
anyway, it brought me up the right way, I'll
tell you.
It helps develop character, doesn't it?
Oh, it builds character real fast. And I'll
tell you what really got me, my law class, I
must have been the
the poorest guy in the law class. I'm convinced
I was. Although some of them
had jobs that they're filling, they had a
background with their families. Their
families were picking up all the other stuff. I
mean, I say
they were rich kids and I know that. But
anyhow, I didn't have that and again I
think it made me a much better man in the end
and I learned to appreciate the
dollars you make. So you were probably what, a
senior at the time of Pearl Harbor
occurred? Oh, when Pearl Harbor came on, I was
41, wasn't I? Yeah. I was still in law
school. I was in my senior year in law school,
yeah, senior year. And that's when
the draft board tried to get me. So you got
your draft notice? Oh, I got my draft
noticed and I thought I was gonna go. Well what
happened? Well every time they
met, my number would come up and they'd call me
and come on down and I'd plead
with them because I was in my last year of law
school, last year. Well things got
so hot that we combined one full semester in
the summer's program. Now
that was a summer I'll never forget. I
hitchhiked to school every day. I didn't
ride the streetcar. We had big streetcars in
those days, or buses. I hitchhiked
every day. I walked about a half a block to the
corner where we have a Grand
Avenue which went all the way up north to St. Louis
University. Right from my house all the way
north. I was in the south end of town.
Now why did you hitchhike? To save money? Save
money? Yeah I didn't have any money.
Thirteen cents I think you get on a streetcar.
Thirteen cents. I didn't even have
¢13. Thank God I had that job at school because
I don't know, I'd find, I
hate to tell you what I did. There was a place
called Chili Joint, I can't think of the name
of that place, I'll never forget it.
That's where I ate lunch, ¢15 for lunch is what
I had. Chili, I had chili
almost every day. Almost every day. I'm not
kidding. And the gang at school, I got
them to learn chili, too. Some of those wealthy
guys, they joined me. We ate
chili for ¢15. Yeah, ¢15. All the crackers you
wanted, all the chili.
Really, and that was my meal almost every day.
Maybe a hot dog thrown in once in a while, you
know, but oh my god.
Anyhow, nobody seemed to give a damn, so I
lived that way, and I worked.
In addition to that, on certain notes, a friend
of mine who was a manager at the municipal auditorium,
and he was in control of the shows that came
out of town.
And when they came to town, he needed people to
stand behind the bar and sell cokes and beer
and whatever they had.
And I wasn't even 21 when they did it, but I
did it.
I made drinks and passed them out and collected
money for them.
And I got $3 a night for that when I did it, $3
a night.
I worked about four hours, three hours.
But that was money that I didn't have before.
before. And during the show I could even pull
out my book and read a book
whatever I had the school for the next day. So
the draft board is trying to get
you but what happened there? Did they get you?
Well I managed to get out of law
school. When I got out of law school they were
after me. They gave me then a
a reprieve you might say, and I said, well, I
need to take the bar exam. I got to get that
out of the way.
They didn't want to even let me graduate.
There's one guy, especially, he didn't want me
to graduate.
You can always come back to school, you can
always come back. I said, hell, I want to do it
now, get it over with.
And the bar came up a month later,
and I said, let me take that bar exam.
I take the bar exam, I flunk it, fine, if I
pass it, that's even great.
Well, most of the bar people were grieving for
it, the examining people.
But this one guy, boy, he wanted me to go.
So they let me go.
I finished, I took the bar.
They had some bar courses you could study for.
You ought to pay about $500 just to go to
school and learn how the exams are going to be.
Well, hell, I didn't have $500.
So I took the exam anyhow, and I'll be damned.
We had 17 in my class take the bar,
and the richest guys in my class, Bert's parents,
two of them flunked the damn bar.
And there I was.
Nobody ever gave me any money to take.
I had to rake up the money just to take the bar
exam. You have to pay to take the bar exam. Anyhow,
word came in, and after I took the bar exam, I
said, well, I can't do anything now,
I'll be drafted. And sure enough, it wasn't
long after that, they drafted me. They knew I
finished the, I'd taken the bar,
that's all I asked for, and
Lo and behold, I passed the bar.
And I made a statement this, that I've been
quoted many times to say,
what was the most
Well, the best thing that ever happened to you
at any one given time, I said, the day
I picked up the St. Louis Post Dispatch, I ran
out to the corner to pick it up because
it had a listing of all the people that passed
the bar.
They didn't write a letter to you, they put it
in the newspaper, see, I'm not kidding,
they put it in the newspaper.
And somewhere I have that newspaper article,
somewhere, and it showed that I passed the bar.
I came home, I was the ruler of the world,
bring on the draft board, I didn't kill
her, but I had passed the bar.
Now let me ask you this Tom, during this time
have you taken any examinations for possibly
pilot training?
I did, I took some exams while I was in law
school, I took some exams for pilot training
the Navy. And they were going to call me one
time and send me to somewhere in
Illinois. I forgot where in Illinois. Somewhere
out of Chicago. There was a
naval training school up there. But they
weren't going to put me in pilot
training. They were going to just make me a
naval officer. And I wasn't too happy
about that I wanted to fly. So I had always I'd
also taken the aviation
cadet program with the Army and took the exam
for that and I passed it. I said
well I'm gonna wait to hear from the Army and I
didn't hear from the Army but
I heard from the draft board and before the
Army could call me for flying the
Blackboard called me for the infantry, and I
went to the infantry at Jefferson Barracks,
Missouri, I think on the 17th of May, as I
remember, 17th of May, 1941.
I was drafted into the United States Army at
Jefferson Barracks as a private, and I mean a
private is the lowest thing you can get.
He was a law degree.
With the Loyalty, that didn't mean a thing.
I walked through there and I said, one good
guy, he passed me a bunch of shoes, I said,
he said, how did you happen to get in here with
a law degree?
I said, well, I asked the draft board, didn't I?
Oh my God, really?
I was embarrassed.
Why aren't you an OCS?
I said, well, you ask them, ask them.
There I was, and that, my first day being drafted.
Never forget, Jefferson Barracks. I had worn a
size 8.5 shoe for many years and I knew my size
shoe, 8.5 D, A, B, C, D.
So I walked through there and the guy looked at
me and said, oh, 9.5, 10:00. And he threw me a
pair of shoes, 9.5 D or even a bit wider than
what I needed.
I said, that's not my size, he said, brother,
take the dime shoes
and get out of here.
And I was, I had to take them, there wasn't
anybody that could help me, hell no, you talk
to a sergeant, a buck sergeant, that's tough,
boy, that's tough.
I'm not kidding you, boy.
I was drafted, got my uniforms, I was ashamed
to even wear the damn shoes.
They were floppers, they were just flopping all
over the place.
you're laughing but I'm telling you it's the
God's truth. I got down to Camp Shelby,
Mississippi. We got on a troop train and that
was an experience too. I didn't even
say, I didn't even tell anybody I was a lawyer.
I was ashamed to tell them I was a lawyer.
But you know some of those guys that got on
that train, they had about third or
fourth grade education. They couldn't even
write their name, some of them could
They might even write their name.
They were drafted though, they were drafted.
And we all came down together at Camp Shelby, Mississippi,
Company B, 339th Infantry, I'll never forget it.
It made me, it really made me a man though.
I learned to appreciate
how bad things were around the world,
around me, right next to me,
in the same room with me, same room.
We had a hut, we had tents for a long time, and
I learned to help people, because they
needed help.
They needed help.
One guy couldn't, I had to write his name, and
I worked with him to write his name, and
he finally got around to being able to write
his name, but you know, you had to sign the payroll.
You had to sign the payroll.
He could almost just barely sign his name.
Speak well, they couldn't put ten words
together in a sentence, they couldn't put, it's unbelievable.
Anyhow, being an educated man at that point, I
became flight leader real quick and then
platoon leader.
They were giving stripes to kids, guys, not
even eighth grade education, giving them stripes.
And here I am with a college degree and they
wouldn't give me one stripe.
I am like, I'd complain about that, and they'd
say, well, we need those stripes, we can't
give those stripes away, they belong to us here
in this outfit.
That was their attitude.
And maybe they did, I don't know, I had lived
in them.
Yeah, I transferred off four months after I was
in the infantry, but I had four months
of training that I will never forget, never forget.
In fact, President Roosevelt drove by me and I
saluted President Roosevelt, I am not kidding.
We had to get out there, we watched the parade
come by, Camp Shelby, Mississippi, President Roosevelt.
Quite a thrill, wasn't it? Huh?
Quite a thrill, wasn't it?
I had never seen the President before, in
flesh, that's right, right in front of me, in a
big car, big open sedan, you know, waving to
people like he knew what the hell he was doing,
see, see, I'll tell you, I'll never forget, I
said, hey, I'm in trouble, he didn't help me
though, he didn't help me, but anyhow, that was
my experience though, it was leveling me, it
leveled me for the rest of my life and I'll
never forget it.
I didn't like it at the time but you got to
look back and say it made me a much
better man I'll tell you. I appreciate around
me people that were around me. I
helped more people as a result of that helping
others learn and get together
and I used to sit down with these guys and they
couldn't remember the orders of
the day. They couldn't remember. I got them to
learn that damn orders of the day.
Yeah. This is the end of side one. I'm just
ashamed to talk about it though. Well so you're
in the
infantry now. How did you get out of the
infantry? Well, I told these people at
the at the induction center when they drafted
me that I had taken these exams
and I was waiting to be called to go into
aviation cadet training.
They said, well when that happens, we'll take a
look at you and see whether we're gonna let you
go or not.
That was their attitude.
So anyhow,
four months later,
they caught up with me and
said, we got a letter from the aviation cadet
people saying that they want you for training,
for flying training.
Well, they got to get you out of here first
before they tell you, I mean that was their attitude.
I'm here, you try and get out, that was their
attitude, really, it's up to me to get out.
Well, there was an aviation cadet man on Camp
Shelby, I'll never forget, he was up in the
headquarters building, I know that, and hell,
as a private you didn't go in the headquarters
building for anything, so anyhow, I went up
there and found that guy.
and he found my name. He said, well we'll get
you out of here. So about a week or
ten days I was on my way to Nashville,
Tennessee. Ticket now, Nashville,
Tennessee, going to the Aviation Cadet Center
in Nashville, Tennessee. I didn't
even know there was one in Nashville, Tennessee.
I thought it was down in Texas
Well, I went to Nashville.
And then it became a waiting room, a waiting time.
I spent about two and a half, three months in
Nashville, pulling KP, pulling guard duty,
doing anything just to keep us out of trouble,
and we'd sleep and eat and that's about it.
anything of any kind. And then one day after
about three months, the word came
down that they called off a reel of names and I
was one of them. They're all
being transferred to what was then the Aviation
Cadet Center at Lackland,
it was now Lackland Air Force Base. And we had,
we had barracks buildings up
up here in Nashville. It was warm, it was warm.
We get to Texas, we were in Tent
City over there, Tent City, and I mean they had
about six or eight of us to a
big tent. All we did was eat and play guard
duty, eat and
Guard duty, really, and KP. That was worse than
the infantry I had, see,
really. Seemed like every other day we had
guard duty or KP, we always had
something to do. They kept you busy. Then we
had a march in the meantime and you
march to this, you march to that, even march to
church believe it or not and
all the Catholics got together and we marched
to church, the Catholic Church.
Oh God. Anyhow I learned to march real good in
the infantry so I knew how to
march. That was something else. I was a platoon
leader for some reason. I used to make a
30-inch step. It came naturally, I guess, to me.
And that sergeant and my sergeant,
I don't know, sergeant, oh my god, I thought
I'd never forget his name, but he was a great
one, he
really took a liking to me because I could walk
his 30-inch length. I became
the guy lead man with 30 inches and everybody
had to walk that 30-inch step,
see. Just happened that way. But he thought I
was pretty damn good, I could make that
30-inch step every time, see. And he actually
got down and he marked the
things on the ground, on the street. 30 inches,
that's it. And I did. You're it.
That's how I got picked as the platoon leader.
Oh my god. That 30 inches helped me.
So you're in Lackland now and you're doing... I
was in Lackland doing nothing but KPDD
and yard duty. That went on for almost four
months. I finally got called to go
to, where was it, oh gee, right out of Fort
Worth, flying school. It was a civilian
flying school and they had about a hundred
cadets there learning to fly.
Oh, gee, I can't remember the name of the place.
I've gone by there many times, but I can't remember.
There was a flying school, a civilian flying school.
They had a bunch of cadets there learning how
to fly.
And I did pretty well.
I went through primary school there.
Now, what does primary school involve, Tom?
Well, you had to take a lot of classes to begin with,
basic classes on what flying's all about, meteorology,
how to study meteorology, and Mars code.
You learn all the basics of flying
and what you needed in the air.
They had miniature mock-up stuff, too,
where you could learn to maneuver the pedals
down below
and the stick that you had to work with, all
the free-flying education, you might say.
I did pretty well on that, in fact.
We were assigned then to a man who could be our
instructor, a civilian, and there were
four of us assigned to this one man.
And the man was maybe 30 years old or something
like that.
He had done a lot of flying on the civilian airports.
And I learned to fly pretty well.
In fact, I didn't have any problem in primary
school at all.
I was a breeze right through you, you might say.
All four of us did.
Do you remember what kind of plane you were flying?
A PT.
PT, PT.
I'll say PT-13. Yeah.
And at the lower wing down there, yeah.
I really liked it.
Anyhow, we finished that, that phase of training,
I think it was three months in there,
there we go, three months.
And then we were all transferred to Greenville,
Greenville, Mississippi.
Oh my God, Greenville, Mississippi.
No, no, no, Greenville, Texas.
Greenville, Texas, right outside of Dallas.
I'll never forget that, coming from the south,
I was considered south down here, there was
a huge sign, I mean a huge sign, right through
the middle of town, big, on the main street,
right across the main street, and the sign
read, I'll never forget, the Blackest Land
and the whitest people. That's what it said.
The blackest land and the whitest people.
And you never saw so many black people in your
life in that town. I'm not kidding you.
I couldn't believe it. The blackest land and
the whitest people.
Well, I went by there many times for many years
and it was still there. I went by there
about a year ago, I guess, maybe a year and a
half ago. That sign is gone. They don't
that sign up anymore. Somebody got smart and
took that damn thing down, or burned it.
Anyhow, I told my kids, I said, boy you're
going into the land of the
blackest people in the world, blackest land and
the whitest people. They said,
well I don't see any black land around here.
Kids were smart too. So anyhow, that was my
experience than I. In basic school, four of us
had the same teacher and instructor
in primary. The same four had the same
instructor in basic. In basic you got an
airplane that had a variable prop Spritz Prop
and that was a problem with me and
not with me only, but a lot of other people.
But this guy had been a civilian instructor somewhere.
He came in as a second lieutenant of the
commission and teaching us how to fly that
BT-13, not
the PT-13, the B, it's V something.
I got pictures of it somewhere, I'll tell you.
He took me up one day, I guess I had about
seven or eight hours and I hadn't soloed yet.
And he took me up and he said, we're going to
solo you today.
I said, well, I'd like to.
And he says, you've got to learn how to fly.
I said, you weren't taught very well.
I said, well, the other guys you're teaching
and passing them, they learned by the same
instructor I had.
And it was, all four of us had the same guy in
front of us.
This guy got me and I'm telling you, he was
something else.
From the time he met us on the flight line, all
four of us, we had to stand up for attention
when we meet him.
This was the second lieutenant came in and I
think he's God, oh my God, never again.
We cussed him, oh we cussed him, I'm a
Catholic, I cussed him so many more times, oh
God, oh
I'll tell you, I'll make a long story short.
He took me up that day and he put me in a spin.
He put me in a spin, see, and I said, get
yourself out.
I said, well, I know how to get out of a spin,
but you put me in something.
I'm going round, round, round and I can't even
get out.
And there I was going down, down, down as he
was saying this, see.
me. We were going straight for the ground, I'm
looking at you. And he kept yelling at
me, yelling at me. I can still hear him yelling
at me. And he yelled so damn
much I couldn't concentrate on what the hell I
was doing. And finally he grabbed ahold
of that stick and boy he took it away from me.
Get your damn hands off there. And I took
it off and he straightened it out somehow. I
was so damn scared myself I thought I was
them die. And he zoomed the thing out and got
off the ground or got it away from
the ground. We were headed for the ground, we
were headed for the ground. I thought I was
going to die. I did, I did.
Well the other guys had the same experience
with that. After I was the
first one, he stood all four of us up the next
day. He said, Kraska, you're going to
meet the board and you're gonna be out of here
before you know it. You better go
back to the infantry." So the other guy said,
and take a look at the other
three or four of us, look at the other three. A
week from now
another one of you is gonna be gone. He said
after a week from that another one
is gonna be gone and said one of you people is
gonna is going to make the
job, you're gonna make the grade. One out of
four, one out of four.
Hell, they needed every damn one of us, they
needed to give some time with it, not for
him but for them.
I said, I want an audience with the commander,
I was a lawyer, I was an audience, I want
an audience with the commander, I'm going to
let him know what the hell is going on.
And I told this guy, and when he told me, when
he took that stick away from me that
day and we were flying around, he was heading
back to the field, he said, we're going to
I said, I'd like to talk to you, because you're
not much older than I am, if you're
older than me, I'm not sure you were.
And I said, who the hell taught you to learn
how to fly and teach people, teach anybody?
And I said, you got another thing going, buddy.
Now you're going to clean, you're going to wash
out everybody except one, and all
four of us are good pilots, all four of us are
good pilots, but you got to have the right
kind of training.
And I told him how the hell I trained firemen.
That really set him off, boy, I'll tell you.
At any rate, he came back, we landed,
and he said, you're gonna meet the board.
Well, I didn't meet the board, boy,
they sent me straight to the old man.
I said, I want an appointment with the general.
They went, he might have been a,
yeah, I think he was a general.
I said, I want an appointment with the general.
And they gave me an appointment with the general.
And I told the general what the hell I thought
this whole damn operation and having a guy like
that as an instructor, he's going to
kill people out there.
He's going to kill people out there.
If that's the way to teach pilots to fly, I
told him, I said, you're in the wrong business, General.
You're going to kill people.
You're not going to kill them.
You're not going to teach them.
And they did kill a few people later on.
Anyhow, he went along with the instructor,
though, and he says, well, too bad, you're
going back to the infantry, I guess.
Well, I wasn't in the infantry.
Well, I wasn't in the infantry then, I was in
the Air Corps, so they shipped me back
to Lackland, or the training center back in
Lackland again, only it wasn't Lackland then,
something else.
And I got back there, lived in that same damn
tent city, awaiting my transfer to the, to
the bombardier school.
I was qualified as a bombardier as well.
So then I had to wait around for three months
to get into bombardier school.
Unbelievable, trembling.
They needed people as bombardiers too so I
waited my turn. Went off to eventually
got the team. In the meantime I had good time
in town. I mean I did my guard duty
during the week you know like I did before.
Guard duty and KP, oh man I was
pretty good at KP, peeling potatoes. You had to
peel the potatoes in those days. They didn't have
I didn't have any more automatic peelers, I was
just getting that peel of damn potatoes.
I did that so many times.
Anyhow, uh, hey, uh.
You got your orders for the bombardier school?
For bombardier school, yeah, but in the
meantime, we got into town and that's where I
got to
know San Antonio.
And I got to know it real well because I was
there for another three months, see.
I spent a total of about six months just being
able to get downtown on the weekend, you know,
and see the town, the river.
Hell, I remember the river when there wasn't
almost nothing down there, nothing.
My kids can't believe that I was down in this
river a long time before they were born, see.
But anyway, I enjoyed it.
I didn't enjoy waiting around, though, because
the war was going on and here I am playing
around with school, not getting anywhere. My
friends and some of my law classmates,
man, they went through school just fine colors
and didn't have any problems.
And me, boy, I had a lot of problems. Maybe it
wasn't me, I don't know, whatever it is.
Whatever it is, eventually they shipped me out
to Midland, Texas for
bombardier training.
And I graduated in, I want to say, September 16th.
Well, when you were going through bombardier
school, can you give us a little
bit of what you did as far as learning how to
be a bombardier?
Oh, yeah.
We spent a lot of hours on what they call a
bomb trainer.
was on wheels but you could you could direct
that motion of that trainer you
were up on you're up about 8-10 feet in the
high about 10 feet high and the
bombardier was there, the bombardier site was
there, the Norton
bombsite. Oh yeah we knew that Norton Bombsite
inside and out.
It was good training. It was a good school.
Well we'd have to sit on
top of that trainer and erect it over the
target and they'd have a moving
target, they'd have a moving target down there
on the ground and sort of a
little mouse that would run around the box and
that was your target and you
had to get it in the sight and then move the
thing around till you drop your bomb.
When you got it in there, drop your bomb. And
that's how we learned to work the
an ordnance bomb site in the trainer. And then
they had them instructed it
would take you up and you do the same thing in
the air only you'd be picking
up a target, a stationary target, somewhere
down the road and you pick it
up. And they had a regular bombing range and
eventually they had the targets out
there, some were moving, some were still, and
you could, you actually, the pilot
put you on the run, bomb run, he says, you got it.
And when he did, he turned over the control of
the plane
to you with that bombsight.
And with that bombsight, you're going at a slow speed,
so you're going in there, and you're
directing that plane right over the target with
the knobs
that you had.
And the knobs that were something like this,
you had to work them out.
They controlled the ailerons on the plane?
Of the whole plane.
You had to control the whole plane
with that northern bombsight.
It's a fantastic instrument.
We learned it well and I graduated, got my
wings and by that time I had met a young lady
in town at a dance.
We were there for a month before they let you
get off base.
One month we were sticking around in that damn
hot weather in September in the middle
in Texas, I'm telling you, and the wind
blowing, the sand blowing, it was unbelievable.
The only good thought about it was I graduated
and I met my wife out there.
What was her name, Tom?
Her name was Mary Marion Kaufman, C-O-F-F-M-A-N.
And she was a college graduate from Lubbock,
Texas, Texas Tech, and she was a school teacher.
She was working at that time in Midland as a
secretary to the president of an oil company.
She had a big job and that's how I got - I
didn't meet her.
I met her at the dance.
The first week we were out we had a dance there
and that was something at the Scarborough Hotel.
I never really - Scarborough Hotel where I met her.
The cadets walked in there and boy there was a
bevy of women standing across the dance
floor and said, here we are guys, let's go.
Everybody took off for somebody they saw on the
other side and three or four of the same
gal left.
Did I pick?
I don't know but she came with me and said, oh
I got, and she had never seen me dance
I never saw her dance, that's how I met her,
and following that, she came out on Wednesday,
on Wednesday evening, they could come out to
the base and we'd have an ice cream or
something, no beer, ice cream, sit around the
barracks, on the outside of the barracks,
not in the barracks, and sit in the shade and
just talk.
and she'd come out every Wednesday and Sunday.
When I could get off on Sunday, we'd go into town
and we'd spend the afternoon in town dancing at
the hotel.
And that's how we got to know each other.
And Lo and behold, she did real well.
She learned to like me and I learned to love her
and it was a great, great relationship.
When I left there, I was transferred to combat
crew training in Salt
Lake City.
I remember Salt Lake City was from there.
In Salt Lake City, they paired up the pilots
and the
bombardiers and the navigators into crews.
And I don't know how they did the pairing up,
but somebody did it.
And our names were called out, Tosca, you, you,
you, Hodges, and whoever they
were, going to, oh, where the hell is that
name, oh, gee, God, there's God forsaken
place up around, oh, my God, Casper, Wyoming,
oh, my God, that is the, yeah.
You thought Midland was bad, huh?
Oh, my God, yeah, I'm telling you.
Casper, Wyoming, and in the wintertime, cold as
it could be.
Snow higher than the sheds that we lived in.
I mean, higher than the shed we lived in.
It was just stacked up from the ground up.
They had to take shovels and shoveled away into
the house, into the shack.
Tar paper shacks.
Oh, there we go.
We had a little cold stove, had a cold stove
right in the middle, and a hot
stove, and that was it. That was it. Well,
everybody sort of pushed their bed
closer to that stove. It was cold. Oh, we had
this heavy gear, too, that heavy
gear. I mean, it was heavy. Big old sheep line
stuff. Very, very too heavy.
Well, yeah, that's all they had, that's what we wore.
We flew with that damn stuff, too.
It was hard enough just walking around in it,
much less flying it, oh, my God.
But, yeah, we did it.
And uh...
And what kind of aircraft were you?
In B-24.
You were in B-24s now?
I was in B-24s then, yeah, B-24s.
That's a Liberator.
That's a Liberator, yeah.
And that was the training planes.
And I guess we were there three months, just
about every place we went to, we were three
months later and three months later and they
determined when you were ready to go.
Did you practice bombing runs? Oh yeah. Did you
get your full combat crew at this
time or just the pilot? Yeah, we got the full
combat crew here,
Casper, Wyoming. The gunners and? Gunners and
everything. And we went out on the
gunnery range and we did everything they were
supposed to do and I learned how to
to shoot. Thank God I didn't have to shoot
those things. It will tell you joint support.
Did you have a gun position on the B-24 that
you were supposed to man during combat?
After I dropped the bombs. Up until I dropped
the bombs, no, I didn't have a position. I
had a guy, well the first planes we had, I had
a set of guns up in the front.
In the nose.
But then later on we got the newer planes and
they had a turret up there then, but this
was before the turret. Right.
And so there was a gunner up there, a gun with
me, when I did go into the target I could
use it or shoot it, whatever I had to do.
And we practiced with that thing, boy, shake
your damn parts.
It did, no, it did tear you apart, I'll tell you.
So, one, it didn't tear the airplane apart,
but anyhow, we learned how to shoot that way,
and then later on, we got the newer airplane,
and well, we didn't get the newer airplane
until I was about halfway through my missions,
but I didn't have any position at all then.
I dropped the bombs and that's it.
Get the hell out of there, let's go.
Do you remember the name of your crewman
that were on that B-24 with you?
I know it's been a long time ago.
I remember the first crew we had, Ben Webb was
a young man who had about two years of
college, but he had a temper on him that was
something else, and I guess I have a temper
too, and we sort of clashed once in a while,
but Ben and I had a difference of opinion.
We were doing some combat-let's see, our crew
stayed together, I think.
I was flying out of Guam when that happened.
The crew stayed together for a long time.
We went through combat crew training together.
And then we went to California, and we waited
around there to get an airplane, and we
actually ferried a new airplane over.
was part of the job going to combat, at least
with us it was.
We had to take a new airplane over.
And we took that airplane over to Hickam Field.
I never forget, from March Field, I think it
was, well, March.
That's California.
In California.
And we got the airplane.
We thought it was going to be ours.
We landed over there at Hickam Field, and I'd
heard of Hickam Field, you know, I can't
help but know where Hickam Field is after what
the bomb saw. Hawaii.
Yeah, Hawaii, oh yeah, and when we got there,
the people in the headquarter didn't
even know we were coming.
I don't get it.
They didn't even know we were coming.
I said, what are you doing here?
We didn't ask for new crews to come out here.
Oh, you got radar training.
Oh, that was something else.
That was something else.
Phelan, that's important too.
Oh, you got radar training, oh, that was
something else, I
failed though, that's important too.
While we were in Casper, Wyoming, we finished
our training there, combat troop
training, they shipped us to Langley Field,
Virginia, from Casper to Langley Field,
way across the town, across the country.
we got there, nobody knew we were coming.
I'm not kidding.
Nobody knew we were coming.
They had at Langley what they call a LAB
training, low-altitude
bombing, so we waited around there and nobody
knew what we were doing, so they
put us in this LAB training, and we learned, or
I learned, how to low-altitude
bomb, I tell you, and I mean right off the water.
We flew on the Atlantic coast missions out
there, and eventually we did searches for
airplanes at night at that L.A.B. on the water,
because the submarines were coming out at
night at water, and we searched for submarines,
German submarines, on the East coast.
We did that for six months, I guess, at least
six months.
We saw some at one time, we saw several of
them, but they told us not to drop anything.
And the radio back and they tell us they were
more interested in finding out where they
were than getting to them.
They wanted the Navy to get to them.
The Navy couldn't find them, but we could find
them by radar from the air, when they surfaced.
When they didn't surface, well, we couldn't see
anything below them.
Now, did you have a radar operator on board, on
your ship?
We picked up another man.
On the plane?
We picked up another man.
We had ten men on the clear now, ten men,
including a radar operator.
And I could work the radar from the bomb site,
not the bomb site, but there was another unit
that we had for radar bombing.
And I learned how to radar bomb with that thing.
So that was a good assignment though, in Langley.
They treated us like kings over there.
We were lieutenants too, boy, I'll tell you.
By that time I was a king.
What difference did it make being a private and
a lieutenant?
Second lieutenant too, boy.
Oh my gosh.
Anyhow, to make a long story short, we finished
up at Langley and we got orders then to go
to California.
We didn't know where the hell we were going,
but we went to California to pick up a new
airplane, pick up a new airplane and take it overseas.
We got out there and somebody delivered an
airplane to March, I guess it was in March,
it might have been March, some airfield out
there, no, it wasn't March, it was some other airfield.
It was a crew training outfit.
And everybody was headed for the Far East.
I had this radar training.
We had the radar works on the plane that we
got, because we were radar trained.
That's what we were set up for.
So we'd take off, I remember, eventually we'd
take off from California and head for Hawaii.
I had never been to Hawaii, and here we come, girls.
We were looking for a good time.
We get to Hawaii, and for the second time,
we checked in over there, land the airplane.
The flight crew said, well, what are you guys
doing here?
What are you doing here with this airplane?
We are radar bombardiers.
Have an airplane here, drop bombs, low altitude.
We were told when we left Langley
that we were coming out there because they
were going to use it.
This is side one, tape two.
We got over there to Hickam Field,
and we landed, and the people at the flight line,
we never saw an airplane like this.
What kind of bomber is this?
They didn't have any idea what it was.
I said, well, this is a low-altitude bomber.
We fly right off the damn water and put bombs in.
We were told at Langley that we were to go to
some headquarters and we would be reassigned
to an outfit that was headed for China, and
mainly to get Japanese shipping coming
out of China going to Japan.
we were to blow up these ships coming out.
That's what we were told. Well, Hell,
the people at Hickam Field, the wheels at
Hickam Field, apparently didn't know any
damn thing of what the, of all it's all about.
I'm not kidding. Nobody knew what
the hell to do with us. We had this low
altitude stuff and nobody knew anything
about it. I'm not kidding. It's the God's truth.
Nobody knew how to handle it. What are you
going to do with this gang?
And there were about six or eight crews like that.
We're trained the same way, same way, all of it.
We all went together.
But I said, in the meantime, we're
going to put you out here at Kahuka Airbase.
And have you ever been to Hawaii?
Yes, Sir.
Well, you know where Kahuka is.
They put us out to Kahuka.
There was a flying outfit out there.
They said, if you'll be out there flying,
You'll have time off to come in the town and
all that,
just grab on a bus and come on in the town, see Hawaii.
And so we did, we joined the squadron up there.
And again, nobody knew we were coming.
Nobody knew we were coming.
But anyhow, we fitted in the picture
and what are we gonna do with all this radar
we got on this place?
I said, well, we know how to use it.
You know how to train people with it?
Well, the radar man for that outfit up there,
I've forgotten the name of the outfit now,
just, he became a great friend of mine
because I helped him and he helped me.
He was the radar man for that unit,
that squadron, the com,
it wasn't the com, the wing,
for that wing it was up there.
And he says,
you see guys think you could teach people
how to do this stuff?
I said, sure, we learned how to do it the same way.
I said, well, we got some more of this stuff
coming in.
We don't know why it's coming in, but we're
going to put it on an airplane, and you guys
can train somebody else to do this kind of
radar training, radar bombing.
So we did.
We did radar bombing training for four months,
training crews to use this equipment.
You trained other bombardiers that had regular training?
Yeah, regular training, but not radar training. Right.
But most of it was low altitude.
At any rate, that's what we did.
We trained other crews how to use the radar bombardier.
That was something else, really something.
Did you enjoy training these guys?
Oh, yeah.
And they really enjoyed it, too.
Can you imagine flying off the water and
picking up targets?
It's exciting.
It's exciting, it's exciting.
Young people, boy, that's the way they wanted
to fly.
That's the way they wanted to fly.
We also learned how to use it at higher
altitude, too.
Not that you couldn't do it much at higher altitude,
but you could use it, in a way you could use it.
But you really knew what the,
you had to know what you were dealing with
if you're going up, but you went up above 5,000 feet,
you didn't know, you had to use it.
You got to use something else.
It wasn't getting much good after 5,000 feet.
So anyhow, we trained the crews, and we brought
those crews.
We were then shipped - I don't know if I've got
the date, but I'll have to think
twice about the date, what time it was.
We were told we were going to Guam.
Now, were you, at this point in time, were you
a fixed, were you assigned to any particular
squadron and bomb group or anything, or did
that happen when you got the call?
Yeah, we were.
I don't remember what it was.
Eleventh bomb group.
I was in the 42nd Bomb Squadron, and Jesse Stay
was the commander.
He was a captain.
Jesse Stay.
Jesse Spade, just a tremendous guy, and
eventually, I can't remember the dates now, but eventually
we heard about the invasion of Guam, and the
Marines went in there, and the engineers went
in there.
We were told that they have no airstrips there,
but by the time we got there, there was
be an airship to land. We didn't know what kind
of airship it was, but we knew they were
going to have an airship there somewhere where
we could land. So we left Kahuka. In the meantime,
they transferred us to the western part of the
island, Hawaii, of Oahu. At the northwest
end of the island there was another strip. It
was a fighter strip, but they were
looking for places to keep this unit together.
It was spread out and they put
them all together. It was on the northwest end
of the island of
Oahu. There was a fighter strip there as well
as a longer strip that we
could use. Anyhow, we lived in tarp paper
shacks up there on top of the hills. I
mean, unbelievable. Almost primitive, almost
primitive. That's where we lived.
And we had pretty much the way of the land and
we'd fly our missions and train
other people and at least every third day or
fourth day where we'd have a day
off and go to Hawaii. We'd hitchhike to Hawaii.
And somebody always picked you up. You're
in uniform. Somebody always picked us up going
into Hawaii, going into Oahu. Oh, gee. And
really, as far as that goes, it was a great
tour. I enjoyed it. I really did. Got to know
the island real well. Bombed the hell out of
all the other islands. And, you know, it
There was something, low altitude bombing,
high altitude bombing, just did it all.
Now, during any of this training you had
regarding the use of radar, Tom,
did you ever have any casualties
in any of your flight crews crashing
or anything like that that you recall?
We lost some crews when we got over to combat,
yeah, we did, yeah, and I'll tell you about that.
In training? Yeah.
That you don't recall any in training then?
Not in training, no, no, no.
We had some good pilots in training, we did.
And luckily, even though we had a bunch of
wrecks to fly in,
but at least we thought they were wrecks,
they stayed together.
It's amazing, it's amazing.
We were just lucky, I'll tell you, we were lucky.
We had some people killed that the airplane
happened to,
something happened to the airplane and they
went down.
We didn't lose many crews though, we didn't
lose anything.
The B-24 was a sturdy airplane. It looked like
hell, but it was sturdy.
You wouldn't think the thing would fly. You
wouldn't think it would fly. Look at that.
You wouldn't think that was going to fly.
What Tom's looking at is a model that he has in
his home here of a B-24
that's a replica of the plane that he flew
while he was over in Guam.
So you got to Guam and what transpired there?
And we got to Guam and we thought it was the
strip there.
Well, we didn't see any strip.
We flew over that part of the island.
It was sort of a, if you're familiar with the
Gamma Bay, the big bay coming in there.
And the airstrip was sort of what I would call
to the north and east of
Agana Bay.
And that's where we had to come in and land.
We'd go over Agana Bay every time and come back
this way to land.
And when we landed, I looked out the back end
of the front end of the airplane.
Where the hell is the strip?
You know what the strip was?
They had metal pieces. I'd say the metal pieces were
about two and a half, three foot long.
And they had clamps, and they would clamp
these, they were about that wide.
And they clamped these things together and put
them on top of what they thought was sturdy ground.
It's Marsden-Madding, right? What's that?
Marsden-Madding is what they called that.
Oh, some kind of Madding. I don't know what the
hell was Madding. I know that when we got
there, we landed on the strip and I said,
what the hell kind of strip is this? We
couldn't believe it. We'd never seen one like
that. Never seen one.
So anyhow, we finally landed there and that
strip was there the whole time we were on Guam.
the whole time I was there. That was our ship.
That's where they kept the airplanes
and little coves that they cut off in there,
where they had the bays that
they cut around and put the airplanes in there
and had some
protection for the airplanes if the attack came
in there. But anyhow, so we
had our own airplane. We took care of it and
kept it going. Do you remember the
number of your airplane at that time, the
serial number?
Well, I was in the 42nd Bomb Squadron.
We had four flights, four flights of fours, I
remember, four flights of four.
Did you have a - was there a name of the plane?
Did your crew name your plane?
Well, I was on three different crews.
Three different crews.
Depends on how they collected their missions
that they flew.
So when one guy was killed,
I had to replace another guy when he was killed,
and I became the bombardier on that school.
I was the number two bombardier
for the whole office at the helm.
and I had to try and fill spaces.
And it wasn't easy.
And some guys never did really adjust to the
bomb bay,
the load men that filled the bomb bay.
And I'll tell you more about the mines that we
did later on.
But I flew 40 missions in that B-24.
24. I guess I had two different, three
different airplanes during that time, though.
I flew four of the missions. And in that time,
I had one, two, three, four different pilots.
Can you remember the name of the best pilot you
flew with?
The best one? Oh, yeah. I got him by the name
of Phil Crow, K-R-O-H.
Where was he from?
He was from Illinois, Southern Illinois.
He was a hell of a pilot, boy.
He'd get in that B-24 and fly like a damn fighter.
I mean, boy, he'd rock that thing around.
It was unbelievable.
And he'd go up every once in a while by himself
and another guy, another pilot.
And he would come over and zoom all over the
damn island
and really put on a show.
He was the best pilot I ever flew with, I'll
tell you.
He was good, he was good.
He flew by the seat of his pants, too.
But the whole crew had a lot of confidence in
his abilities.
Oh, yeah, you bet, yeah.
And he, I flew with him, oh, I guess two-thirds
of my missions I flew with him, yeah.
He was good, he was really good.
I flew about five missions with one guy that
didn't follow the navigator's instructions
and I got pissed off at him, and we had to get
off his crew.
And I knew the guy in primary school over here
at Lachlan.
I knew the pilot real well.
But he was something else.
He thought he was also the navigator, too.
Damn, he wasn't a navigator.
I know that.
We got lost in this out of a storm one night. Nothing.
And actually, that guy caused us to drop bombs
what we thought was a target on radar and a
navigator had taken a fix or he
didn't have a fix. We had the radar man working
and he said the target's
straight ahead. I couldn't believe it. We
didn't go far enough to put the target
in. At least that was my opinion. Anyhow, the
pilot said let's get the hell out of here and get
those bombs, get them out of here, yes, and he
did, he told us to get out of here.
Anyhow, we climbed up to altitude on the ridge
later on after the bombs were dropped.
We could see down below, this happened about
the time they were trying to invade
Iwo Jima. This was south of Iwo Jima, the
targets we were after were north of Iwo Jima.
And when we figured out where the hell we were,
the navigator said, well, we wouldn't
have dropped those bombs on our target because
we were far from the target.
If we had been in this rain and then in this
storm that we had, it must have been a typhoon
or something close to it because I remember we
were at 20,000 feet and we dropped like
that, just like that, just up, zoom.
It was 5,000 feet when we set it on, 5,000 feet.
15,000 foot drop.
That's right.
Just zoom, just like that.
I couldn't believe it.
The pilot couldn't believe it.
Well, I said, let's get up and get out of here
and get up to altitude again and stay
up in altitude.
And we got up there.
We got a clear sky way on top.
The navigator took a fix with stars, the best
fix he ever took in his life, just the smallest
triangle he ever saw.
We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Oh my God, the mines were dropping in what was
then the path of the invasion force going
from Guam, north, to Iwo Jima.
We were south of Iwo Jima when those things
were flown.
In the path of our own invasion fleet.
Man, we gotta tell them about this one.
We may be in the court martial here,
dropping bombs in the wrong place.
Well, I don't know.
We just lucked out.
We told the damn truth when we got home and got
back to Guam.
We told them the truth of what happened.
And boy, they put out the word real quick.
And we had to fix it.
We knew the fix was.
Navigator had a good fix.
They got the word to the navigator people in
the crusade
going up there, the combat crew.
And they avoided it.
Nothing ever happened.
It could have been disastrous, it could have
been disastrous, they could have court-martialed us.
I tell you, really, I didn't have anything to
do with that guy, the navigator made the
fix and he's the one that's trialed us really,
oh boy, it was something else though.
Now, when you were flying out of Guam, Tom,
were all your missions involving the laying
in mines or did you do some bombing also?
Did some radar bombing and other bombs?
But did you, you laid mines. Yeah.
Did you also do some bombing with bombs?
Oh yeah, we did a lot of that.
I really, when I laid mines, I'll tell you
about that, we only had about ten missions
with mines and that was a separate project that
we went on.
I flew about 30 missions regular, I had 40
altogether, so I flew at least 30 regular
missions, some low altitude, some high
altitude, and yeah, I flew 25,000 feet,
dropping bombs.
Now, what was-describe for me, if you will, a
typical mission that you had, one that you
can really remember, in particular, all the
details, if you can, of a particular bombing mission.
I remember all the details on two or three of them.
The first one that I really remember was we
were flying at high altitude.
I'm trying to think of the name of that island,
it was Chichijima, Chichijima, Chichijima,
I don't remember what, oh Ewo, it was when we
first started bombing Ewo and we were some
of the first that started bombing Iwo at high
altitude. They had anti-aircraft guns,
it's unbelievable. They had radar, I mean
flashlight radars. They'd pick you up,
they'd wait till you get close to the island
and zoom, and there you were, right in the
middle of the radar, right in the middle of the
flashlight. Searchlight?
Searchlight. They had great searchlights on
Iwo, unbelievable.
We radioed back and said, we've got to get that
damn radar and get the flashlights out of
there, get them out of there.
Because you can't even see what the hell you're
doing when that hits you.
So anyhow, I remember those real well.
We had several like that where the radar would
just hit you.
The flashlights, the radar bombsight.
The searchlights. Searchlights.
And there were a number like that.
Not many of them, but a number like that.
Now, would you have any fighter-
We had no fighter protection at all.
We didn't have any fighters up there to protect us.
Really, we didn't.
Did you have any Japanese fighter planes? No.
It was strictly anti-aircraft fire.
They had been pretty much in there, and we
ripped up all the airfields with the bombs
that we were dropping.
Every day they'd come back and fill in the damn
holes, and then we'd come back and blow
them up again.
It was a daily affair.
We'd take pictures and take them back to the
squadron and reproduce.
We would hit that out at the same point the
other day, yesterday, Tuesday, and here it is.
They keep filling them up.
But, anyhow, they wanted to get to the shipping coming
out of Kahajima and Iwo Jima, going to Iwo Jima.
Iwo Jima did not have any ports at all.
They were driving where motorboats would go in,
but that's about all.
And so I'm trying to think of the alphabets.
There's Chichajima and Iwo Jima.
That's the southern.
The one that we laid the mines in, say, Big Harbor.
Oh, I'll think of it when I check it.
I can't remember where I brought it.
I'll forget it for the rest of my life, I'll
tell you.
This is where, this is where we laid the mines
in the harbors of that,
it's the one just north of that. There was a
small fighter ship on that
island, too, and we bombed the hell out of that
fighter ship. They couldn't keep a
fighter on that damn, they couldn't keep a
fighter on that. We really bombed them up.
But it was the main port for receiving goods
from Japan, and then from Japan
In Japan, in this island, they would ship the
stuff down to Iwo Jima.
And it was about two hundred miles down to Iwo
Jima from this island up there.
And anyhow, we got the job.
We did our Navy job.
The thing we learned at Langley Air Force Base.
finally got around and letting us use this
equipment to lay mines. And I never
heard of it. I never saw a 2,£000 mine in my
life, but I saw them, I'll tell you.
And I helped crank them up into the bomb bay.
It was a specially built bomb bay for
a B-24. We had our B-24 cut up a little bit
where they could put the big thing, put
them in there. And uh... How many would you
carry on any particular flight? Well, at one
point we
carried four, but that was a big load. And then
they got around just
putting two in, one on each side. But they had
to have special billing for that too
because it was so big. It was huge. What did
they look like, Tom? Can you kind of
describe? Were they about six foot long? They
were longer, they were a
little bit longer from that wall to this one
window over here, a little bit
longer than that. By 12 foot long. They were
huge things. I couldn't put my arms around them.
So it was more than probably 48 inches in
diameter. No, it wasn't 48 inches. Maybe in
diameter it could be, they were big.
And we had to have a special crank to crank
them up and blow it out with something.
We'd have to take turns cranking them up, but
we did get them up and, uh...
Now, did these mines float on the surface or
did they...
No, they were real heavy, 2,000-pound mines,
went straight to the bottom.
And the idea of the mines and what they told
us, what we were carrying,
these mines would go down to the bottom and as
ships passed over them, they would blow up.
That's what they're claiming.
We were told then when I left over there,
we had been credited with 17 ships that
had been sunk with those mines.
On the other hand, after the war,
I had a classmate of mine from law school
who was a lieutenant commander on a small ship that
went into the same island and walked into the
island and they got there and the beach,
the beach had a bunch of these big mines still
on the beach, but they didn't explode, apparently
nobody went over them, but they must have
floated or the tide was just so great it just
washed them up, not all of them, we were
credited with 17 ships, I don't know how the hell
they did that, but that's what we were told.
And we got the D.F.s.
We got shot up the hell over there at one time.
Tell me a little bit about that one mission you had.
Oh boy, that one mission was something else.
Were you at low altitude when you went in and
got shot up?
Low altitude, really low.
We were right off the water.
Right off the water.
What was that, a hundred feet?
Fifty to a hundred feet off the water.
Fifty to a hundred feet.
The water used to splash up in the mouth in the
front there.
Oh my God.
You were right in the nose, too.
No, no, no, no.
up in the front there, oh, my God.
You were right in the nose, too.
I was right in the nose.
And then, as you approach the island, I could see
where the center was, I could see, you didn't see
anything beneath the water, so you didn't know,
all you
saw was water.
And we learned this in Langley when I was
over there.
We saw the water, so we knew we were headed in there,
and I would really guide the ship right on in
over the
we were over the harbor there, right over the harbor.
And I would drop the mines in that damn harbor.
And the water splashing up off the bottom there,
hitting the plane.
It's unbelievable.
It's amazing what the hell you can
do when you think you've got to do it.
And I flew some real rough missions up there.
And one of them, especially, on a low altitude
like that.
We had a B-24 like this, not this one, had a
B-24 that had a hole in the wing, in the right
wing, this wing right here, had a hole out
here, and of course the tanks were in there,
the gas tanks were in there, had a hole in
there that was about like that.
They said a 20mm gun went through there, a
shell went through there, that's what they said.
We not only had that one go through, we had one
come back here and knock off part of the tail
and knock off part of this right on through here.
It didn't hit there, it went through here.
What you're showing me is right through the
fuselage near the tail.
It still flew, it still flew, I couldn't
believe it.
They counted 50 shots, 50 holes in our plane,
50 holes.
Did they happen to take a picture of it?
They did, but I didn't get one, I wanted one,
but they didn't give me one.
We counted them though, we counted them.
50 holes.
A reporter came by, they have reporters out
there too, you'd think they were, oh my God,
So it teed me off, but they wanted us to talk
to these people who came back alive.
And you imagine there were ten of us in that
airplane and not one of us had another shot
go through on anyone.
No one got hit.
None was hit or injured by a flight.
And they counted fifty holes in this Oakland,
plus these two big things.
That was a rough mission, wasn't it?
It was rough.
The roughest one in the whole squadron.
And you might know it, we had it.
No, we did.
We had some other people get some shots, but
nothing that big like we did.
The plane was a wreck.
They were junked.
They couldn't repair it.
They took the engines off and that's about it.
But, yeah, it was still laying on the side.
When people saw that, they came in all shot up.
And we were it.
Everybody walked away from that airplane.
God must have been with us that day or something.
And I think I was the only, there was one other Catholic,
a mayorman was a Catholic, a sergeant.
Sergeant myself was the only Catholic on that plane.
That's how I got into this game later on.
But that was quite a day when we had that happen.
We were just lucky to get here.
I don't know how we did it.
We must have lost a lot of gas.
We had one of the struts, the tire, underneath
the wing.
The tires came down from about here.
It was almost shot off.
it was just hanging out there. And when we
landed, this thing drugged here, the other
one had what was partially shot up oil,
partially, it went flat too, but this one
dragged as
we landed and out in the back where you could
see what the hell was happening. And that
was dragging and dragging and dragged us off
the tarmac, dragged us off to that side, the
right side, and drove us around this way.
And we were headed right for a marine
encampment right off the tarp.
Oh my God, oh my God, everybody was scared to death.
The sparks that were coming up, and it's a
wonder that thing didn't blow up.
Nobody could figure out why it didn't blow up.
Well, gasoline all over the place, it's just
the governor law.
If it had been a concrete thing, it might have sparked.
But we were lucky, some were lucky.
And the whole crew came out with not one hurt.
Now, you said this particular bomber, B-24, was scrapped.
Did they assign your whole crew to another
plane, or did they split you up?
They mixed us up, put us on different crews, yeah.
We were lucky in our squadron.
We only had a few planes that were shot up,
only had a few.
We lost one crew.
We lost two crews along the way, crews that I
knew, and
We got some new crews in who didn't know
anything about radar, they just got shot up by
any aircraft.
I think the squadron, my squadron,
while I was with the squadron, I know we lost
three ships, three ships.
Ships meaning aircraft?
Yeah, aircraft, yeah. And they never did come back.
Good friends of mine, good friends of mine.
Well, after you had this rough mission and they
assigned you to another aircraft,
when you were getting ready to go on yet
another mission,
did you think about what you'd just been
through or did you just kind of pass it off?
You can't help but think about it.
But you don't worry about it?
You don't worry about it. You just got another
job to do. That's what it amounts to.
Luckily, I guess I was a little older than some
of the people.
My crewmen, they were 17, 18-year-old kids.
Well, while you were in the Air Force, Tom, is
there any particular thing that you remember
in particular that was what you'd call
humorous, any humorous incidents that almost everybody
has a funny story that they recall?
Well, we had a few jokers in our outfit that
were, they were always joking around.
And they really made, because of them it was a
lot easier for us I think.
They came back and we had a few beers and I'll
say this, we had a gang down there that
really worked together.
I guess we were at Guam, we lived in a tent
area, and I got to find those pictures because
I had pictures of the tent area and everything.
I built myself a pair of parallel bars, little
parallel bars, and I had pictures of it all.
And I can't find the damn thing. I know I got
them. I know I didn't burn them or anything.
But they're around somewhere. And you can have
them when you find them, and I'll give them to them.
But I have no use for them. I only have one
grandchild that may be interested in these things.
He's the only one of them. My kids don't care.
My kids don't care.
And, of course, a couple of those went through
enough as it is,
and they don't want to remember it.
I got one boy who shot up in Vietnam, too, and
he was in bad shape.
But he doesn't even talk about it. Doesn't even
talk about it.
It'll probably take a few years.
Oh, yeah.
Like it did people your generation. Yeah.
He may get around to talking, but he never has
talked to me about it.
He lost some buddies over there, close buddies.
Now you were flying off of Guam, you said you
flew forty missions off of Guam?
Yeah, forty missions.
Actually it was forty-one.
We didn't get credit for that one that we
dropped the mines in Guadalupe.
We didn't get credit for that one.
Wrong area, yeah, you didn't get credit.
We'd have been court-martialed if we hadn't.
If that thing had hit somebody, we would have
been court-martialed.
Anyhow, we did 40 missions, and every one was a
good mission.
We were just lucky.
We only got shot up once, so that was enough.
That will make you a believer.
So you get religion fast.
Oh, you damn right.
Now this model you have right here, for the
benefit of the reader here, Tom has a model
of a B-24 and the name of it there is Wild Ass
Ride and it has a picture of a scantily
dressed lady riding a bull. And was this the
serial number of the plane, right here, was
this the actual serial number you call?
No, not the serial number on this plane.
It's 210-945.
615 was the number of the plane in the squadron. Right.
So, that's a fine model.
Well, my son that was in the Navy, he ran into
a guy, a Japanese out in the Philippines,
and he saw one of these made up.
So he asked me to send him the information I
needed, or he needed, and he had this one
made up, and he had a picture of this that I
had sent him, and they used that picture
to repaint this thing.
But that, we printed that on it.
Was that the last plane that you flew off of Guam?
Yeah, that was the last plane.
What was your pilot's name on this particular aircraft?
Well, that fellow died later after he got home.
He had set up a flying school, and he died,
and some kid froze it to control and took him in.
I don't know, Phil Crow would have had that,
Phil Crow.
He was a pilot for this one.
best pilot you ever flew with. Yeah, we flew
about 20 missions with him. I flew with about
six different pilots, and all of them were good
pilots. Good formation flyers. They could put
an airplane right up like this.
Now, speaking of formations, when you would go
out on a mission flying off of Guam, say
over Iwo Jima or landing, dropping some mines,
how many planes were usually in your flight
when you took off?
Just one.
Just the individual mission?
One at a time.
We were all headed for maybe the same area at
different times.
So actually you wouldn't come anywhere?
Maybe that's where they made a mistake because
about every fifteen, twenty minutes
the plane would be coming in, see?
They were ready for us, they were ready for us,
instead of spacing them out better, see?
Yeah, they'd have your altitude,
and your speed, and everything.
Oh, unbelievable, unbelievable.
But, on some of these, we did,
for the radar bombing like this,
we'd go in on an angle, and then drop that way.
We didn't use, well, we used the radar,
going in.
They probably knew where our loader was going
to get.
But then, the mountains right ahead of us, as
we went through the harbor, a big mountain
on the other side.
We had to get out of there like this and get
out of there.
You really had to pull on the gas, didn't you?
Oh, yeah.
You betcha on.
Well, you flew these missions, were they all
off of Guam?
Is that where you-
All of them were.
We were stationed on Guam, but we had to go to
the Navy on Saipan to get the mines.
Then we flew off of Saipan with those mines,
and those mines were so heavy, I can't believe them.
There was a runway at Saipan, I forgot what, I
can't remember, but it must have been west,
West East, West, I can't remember.
get my direction. Oh, I've forgotten them now.
But anyhow, there was one runway where you get
way in the back
and you rev up and rev up as much as you can go
and then give it a gun
and hope you get off down there. Well, at the
end there was a big drop-off
like that. Big drop-off just like that.
You flew off a cliff in other words. You flew
off a cliff and you go down like this and first you
whoa, you're headed for the water and then you
pick up the speed and get the hell out of there.
It was scary, it was really scary.
But nobody, nobody went in the war.
They all had the same experience.
You couldn't get enough speed going down.
And then the weight of the plane was something else.
Hit somebody, and while the Navy didn't do it,
they had B-24s out there in the Navy.
I don't know why they didn't use their own Navy planes.
They didn't though.
We got the job, at least the Air Force got the job.
Now you, when you, were you still at Guam when
the war was over with? Surrender?
No, I left before that.
Oh, did you?
Yeah, I left, let me see, again I got all up in
the damn thing.
Were you rotated because of points that you had?
See when I went over there, twenty-five
missions was enough to get you back to the States.
And when I was over there, it went to thirty,
and then to thirty-five, and then to forty.
And I went through all the cycles.
I hit the top of the cycle.
In fact, our whole squadron hit the top of the cycle.
And we seemed like we were flying all the time,
but you know, it all came out all right
We only lost three crews, and I remember three crews.
But that's enough.
So you rotated, did you rotate back to the
States at that time?
At that time, I came back,
and I had so damn many points.
They said, well, you don't want to do any more
flying, do you?
I said, no, not if I can get away.
They said, well, we're going to put you in a
desk job of some kind then,
being a lawyer.
He said, we're going to send you to a school,
this was people in California.
I don't know where these guys get this magic stuff.
We're going to send you to a school in New York City.
And being a lawyer, you won't have any problems.
It won't be a school, it's a school that
we are getting to the point now where people
are going to be getting out of the service.
And the war is almost over.
And we're going to have to counsel and guide people
who are not graduates like you, to be in the
right way
and go back to school or get the feet on again
because they're gonna have a hard time
getting a job for one thing.
The jobs are gonna be scarce.
Everybody's coming back the same time
and they said, we're concerned.
I said, well, I'd be concerned too,
but I'm gonna be concerned too.
I need a job too when I get back.
So anyhow, that's what they had me in.
And I was, they sent me up to New York City,
put me up in a hotel on VJ Day.
And I checked into that hotel on VJ Day,
and I'm telling you, New York City,
it was just crazy that night, crazy.
And there I was, I was in San Francisco the day before.
And they got the word that it was gonna happen.
And it went crazy out there even before that, see?
I saw it up there, I didn't think I was going
to be able to get off the airport, but I did.
Headed for New York, and in those days there
was a puddle jumper in a small place, you know,
C-45, it took about six hops to get you to New York.
So anyhow, I got to New York, luckily I got a
taxi cab and went straight to the hotel,
and by nightfall, New York City was crazy.
I'd never been to New York City, where the hell
I am, where the hell I was, but I saw
it and my wife who was just a, she was a high
schooler at that time, I think when that happened,
she remembers it well, and let me make a long
story short, my mother got real sick and she
she was dying, and I got an emergency leave to
go back to St. Louis.
When I got back to St. Louis, again, I had to
fly one of these, they had, like,
I forget the name of the airplane, but they had
square puddle jumpers that went for two
hours and three hours and then landed and make
another, you jump from here to there
and go on a home trip.
I got to St. Louis, and my mother was in real
bad shape, and they told me she was going
to die.
It was a question of when.
She had brain cancer.
She had brain cancer of the liver as well,
cancer of the colon, she had cancer all over,
just in bad shape, and there wasn't any hope in
those days.
So while I was home, a guy, a friend of mine,
that I went to grade school with, he was a
star pitcher in grade school, he was one step
ahead of me, and he stayed in Jefferson Barracks
to hold cotton, pick, and water.
He was then a chief master, he was a master
sergeant, I mean it was a high he could go
in there, a master.
He was a master sergeant down there, he was
running the whole
damn show. And I said, he was playing ball. He
played ball. He was a star pitcher on
Notre Dame and that's how he got the job down
there. They wanted him to play on the
baseball team. Pitcher. He pitched the whole
damn war right down there. I'm not
kidding you. Marvel Hunthausen's his name, my guy.
What was it? Marvel Hunthausen. I knew him well.
And he helped me. He was in every, in the,
where the discharge people were, he was under
the discharge office there somewhere.
Processing office.
And I didn't know where the hell he was, but I
found him down there, and I told him
all the points I had.
I had more points than you could shake a stick
at with all the awards I had, and I didn't
realize for a DFC, you get this or this, the
Airbus, you get this, this, and this, and
you know, I don't know, about 140 points or
something like that, or it was around that
And whatever, I went to him, told him my
problem, my mother's dying, they want to send
me back
to that school back in New York and when the
hell I get out of the service, he says we'll
get you out of the service right here.
You got enough points to get out, you don't
have to go back to that school, so they did.
They canceled the order and put me on in
Jefferson Barracks and I was discharged in Jefferson
Barracks, Missouri.
What was your rank at this time, Tom?
Uh, second to ten. No, I was the first to ten.
First to ten.