[Floyd Cox] Well, after you got back
home after you got off leave from
your return from
the Doolittle mission after you got off leave,
where did they send you then Hub?
[James Macia] Oh my God, I'm fully blank.
[Floyd Cox] Well, of course, due to the fact that you had
escaped from the China area,
they would not reassign you to the Pacific.
Is that correct? Wasn't that the policy at that time?
[James Macia] They would assign me this summer.
[Floyd Cox] Back to the specific area.
Consequently, being as you had
escaped from that area intact,
when you went back to being active again,
then they assigned you to the European theater.
[James Macia] Well, yeah, it was in North Africa that we went to,
and I'm just trying to
remember where we started getting together.
[Floyd Cox] Well, did they get the same group of
fellows together that had been on the mission?
You mentioned your friend Hilgar,
were there others in the group
that were put back together in a different unit?
[James Macia] I can't remember exactly how it formed up.
The war had been going on now for several months.
Now I remember we went,
for instance, to Tucson.
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
is out there and I remember going out and being
processed by the sergeant who thought it'd be good
if I accepted a reserve commission and things like that.
There didn't seem to be
any leadership to it or anything like that.
Then in time, they started
preparing to go to North Africa,
and we didn't leave anything in Tokyo or in that area.
As far as getting together,
I can't remember anything like having
a very senior person there at Davis-Monthan
to welcome us or
something because there were guys all over the place.
We did find out that we were going into
B26 and that was a real surprise to me.
The ball started rolling then
gathering people that were
going to move on back to Europe,
that's what was happening.
Word got out that
we're going to North Africa
and they're going to be several groups.
Doolittle will be, or Hilgar would be the commander.
They actually formed units.
They still had the 17th bomb group,
which is the one that they took
the airplanes for the Doolittle raid.
But the 17th seemed to be
field existence but Jack Hilgar
was going to have a new group.
It'd be a group from
a 89th reconnaissance quaternary and it
would be the 320th bomb group.
There was going to be a 319th bomb group,
a fellow named Holzapple was the commander of that.
Not first, let's say,
first there was another squadron commander
who had taken over and he,
on our way over in England,
we were having all this problem with weather and all and
he one day flew across
the channel and a couple
of squadron commanders were flying on
his wing and they were shot down over in Germany.
Actually, they were shot down in France,
I guess because they were shot down near the channel.
That was German territory.
Hilgar, he took over the 320th group,
and those were forming up
and starting to move towards North Africa.
You're really reminding me that we
didn't do very much at getting back as an organization,
it seems to me that the first party we went on to,
we were at home
and Doolittle gathered some of us together.
He went down and others got transportation
and joined him at a hotel at the McFarlane,
there was a man named McFarlane who was
a famous hotel man in those days
in Florida and he was a friend of Doolittle.
We had a gathering
there and there were no wives or anything like that.
The guys came down there and there were
some people down in
Florida that were entertaining us just a tad there.
God, I could have gaps here in time.
I don't know I could've been doing
that a couple of years after I got back. I'm not sure.
We did just like I was saying about the banker,
people in our family and all just
went around and on that occasion,
we were in Phoenix.
My brother-in-law had done
quite a bit of business with this banker
and went to see him.
The banker came to see me and meet me about to raid.
But we're talking about what I was going to
do and I wasn't sure what I was going to do.
I could have gone into mining,
but I didn't have a plan for that.
But he was suggesting,
"Why don't you get into banking?"
And well, I had not really had that kind of experience.
Well, my brother didn't have but he made a good banker.
I was hired by the Bank
and had a job in the biggest bank downtown in Tucson.
I was there to
be trained to be a banker
and I would come down there with my father-in-law.
His business took him downtown every
morning and we lived next door to one another.
We'd go down, he dropped me off at the bank
and I would just do jobs,
learning what the tellers do and so on.
I'd be at the teller's for a while.
I wasn't worth a damn using machinery and all that,
but I was going along quite well for several months.
I got acquainted with quite
a few of the fellows in the bank.
Young fellas coming along.
Some older fellows that had seemed to be getting along
better and we made friends and so on.
[Floyd Cox] This was about 1946?
[James Macia] This would have been about that time.
I started doing a lot
of things that are going out
the University of Arizona because
they had a lot of plans
for introducing me to one another or things like that.
I would go out there and be asked questions and I would
have someone come up to take a picture on me and I would
stand looking up with my cap on.
(laughing) I was looking for someone to come in.
Then the dean of man who I had known very well and he
was a very outstanding person
that everybody admired a great deal.
But he wasn't a man with a big family.
He had married a girl several years before,
but she was a kind
of person that didn't make a lot of friends,
but we were invited over his place for dinner and that
was something to have an invitation
from him, but they did.
The university really showed
an interest and are very pleased
that I was being honored and things like that.
Mary Alice, she had done
a fantastic job of selling bonds.
Several times during that period
that we're talking about,
I would come in there and there would be
a ranching family or somebody that I knew
and we'd meet downtown with them and
we'd come down there in a Jeep or
something and talk to them.
One of them was a family that
I'd been having quite a feud with,
I was having some battles
and dances with the young cow punches.
There wasn't any organized thing.
The university was organized
to the extent that they had people that were
planning a little gathering or something like that and
the (inaudible) was going out to
Fort Davis month and then becoming a little bit active
and what was going
on among the people in the military at that time.
But it wasn't any special assignment
for me or anything like that.
[Floyd Cox] Well, to get back to when you were in
North Africa, you were flying in a 826 or B26s?
[James Macia] B26.
[Floyd Cox] B26. Who was your pilot?
[James Macia] Was- (crosstalk) (inaudible) your pilot again?
Yeah. The way we
did that we had the 17th bomb groups,
the 319th and 320th.
Those are three month group and we're
in Tucson and others were
forming at Barksdale and places like
that and pretty soon we were starting
to gather to go overseas to North Africa.
We had a site. There was a airbase
in Indiana, here I say.
It's in a central say where is it?
Here's Colorado, Nebraska,
South Dakota, Milwaukee, or Minnesota?
Dakota, Wisconsin, Madison. It's right in that area.
Right in the middle of that area was a base.
But in our case,
we had gone to Florida
and one a day in Tampa Bay was peace talk.
But to try that,
we were really on leave and
there was nobody talking about it at
all and we were starting to form up as groups.
We were the only ones.
We've warmed up and as I recall now, Tucson.
Then we started flying over and we were
meeting down in Florida.
That's where I ran into held her and he had taken
over and we were having a lot of problems,
because there was saying there when I
arrived at one day in Tampa Bay,
It's not that these P256 is
we're really giving them trouble and problems.
I remember the president came down one
time to examine the problem.
Now, I knew why things were not working and
somebody would take a flight over someplace
and they would have an accident,
several wounds or tick kill or things like that.
This is again in Florida and we are operating there.
I forgot where the airbase was
but what the hell it was right there on
the Bay and Hilfiger was just running
an outfit and he put me on his staff and I
would go to meetings and all as the chief navigator.
Then we moved up here to this place just outside
of Chicago in that area and we were forming up there.
We caught up with the 17th guys and the 319th.
That's where Davy Jones was and everybody
was then just operating like they always did.
They were in an offset in the Air Force
and both the 17th and 319th,
we're ahead of us in picking up aircraft at
this base and they were heading
off to some base is up here in main.
I forgot their names.
Then they were going to go on to Greenland and out
through that area and
constantly or herring of
people having problems and all that.
Then they were going on over.
Sometimes they would stop off in Iceland,
and then they would go on into Northern Scotland.
For instance, Don Smith,
who was pilot of the 15th aircraft.
He was one of the younger pilots and more unexperienced,
but then he was a good pilot,
but he had an accident in Britain where he was killed.
[Floyd Cox] In his B26.
[James Macia] In B26, yeah.
In the 17th group was
this guy and he was a very well-known west pointer.
He was a big shot.
He was a real calmer.
He was the one that flew across the canal,
had a couple of pilots on
his quadrant commanders on his way,
and they got shot down.
In the meantime, Davy Jones
had left there in the United States,
had crossed over and the word was
that he had had an accident up in Greenland,
but it turned out that he had some problems on over.
But he had already been
assigned as a group commander or a Group Ops
Officer to fly submissions and Tunisia,
and he was shot down.
He had a new commander
or his group was with them and he got shot
and he was in the airplane who was to take the shot down.
[Floyd Cox] They captured here and there?
[James Macia] Yeah, they captured them and then they went
to German prisoner camp up in Germany.
They just pull them back there.
This was the same for quite a while though.
Here we're talking about the year having expired.
You know that we're
over in the middle of the summer, I believe.
[Floyd Cox] It's probably the 1943 then?
[James Macia] Yeah. So we are
going into combat and we're in
this airplane that had lost a lot of airplanes.
In our case, they finally decided they were going at
Northern Rock and Hilbert decided to
go a central route across the Atlantic.
It took us down to Brazil and then you load it
up in Brazil and went across through Ascension Island.
I was the navigator for that.
I also persuaded,
and there was another guy who had
been in the command before,
but he didn't go into Doolittle Raid,
but he was a deputy commander,
but an older person than most of the other fellows.
He had come pretty active in
the 320th bomb throw as a deputy commander.
Then he joined our particular squadron,
our plane that was going.
The meantime, Hilgar,
I think he was relieved of his command because
they felt he was taking too much time to get off.
I remember (noise) when I went in there,
the word was that they had come
in to this particular base in Indiana,
that was there for doing some work
on new ideas on equipment, things like that.
That was taking some time,
but the feeling was at the meantime,
the 17th outfits kept pouring our way,
the 17th, and the 319th.
We were stuck there.
There was modification being done
on the aircraft and things like that.
But finally, it was
announced that we're going out the South ride.
The big guy, Hilgar,
had been transferred,
and another guy took his place.
What the hell is the name?
I can't think of it at the moment,
but he was quite a well-known fellow,
perhaps a little more senior to Hilgar.
He was going to come over,
and I remember we were still there.
We'd go down to this club,
and the standing around the bar,
and the evening talking.
In the meantime, the fellow that I would say,
as I mentioned earlier,
who was a Lieutenant Colonel Assistant,
an older fellow turned out that we
celebrated his birthday on our way over.
I remember he invited us over to the birthday,
and he was 39 years old. (laughing)
[Floyd Cox] Oh, man.
[James Macia] We're still going over,
and he had a very bad reputation
for a pilot because he had been
a National Guard Officer from Denver, Colorado.
He wasn't a very good pilot,
and he was flying our aircraft.
Because he was a smart like guy,
I can't think of his name but had
taken command of the group.
We were at the bar there one night,
and it had always been known that I was going to be
flying with Hilgar because I'm the navigator,
and would be working with him.
But Hilgar is not going there.
This guy made the announcement that
I'm bringing up the rare, says,
I'm tired of hearing his stories about airplane getting
stuck and they're scattered
over there as you're going over, and all that.
This is over the Northern route.
He says, "I'm going to bring up the rare,
I'm not going to lead you guys.
I'm going to bring up the rare,
and Macia you're going to still be my navigator,
and we're going to go in there,
and I will clean up the place,
(noise) and make sure we all got off."
What he was saying, that's the big problem,
and I'll bring up the rare so that we cleaned it out,
and we're out there, and so on.
We got ready,
and we took a flight and we flew down.
Well, first of all,
I got them to name our aircraft,
Herbie the third just for luck,
and it was a new aircraft that we just gotten,
so we put Herbie the third on it.
Off we went, and we went down into the North or
the West Pacific islands down there on Florida,
and places like that.
We left Miami,
and then we went through a few of those down the islands.
Then we finally went into South America, Brazil.
Then we made our flight from Brazil.
We had to wait for some time there,
it was a very shaky time,
and I wasn't sure we're going to be able to make it.
But we waited awhile,
but then we led
the group going over to Ascension Island,
and that was an island sitting out there by itself.
Luckily, we got in.
We lost one aircraft there.
After we went in,
and stayed a few days,
and we ran into some other guys that had been
in the 17th Bomb Group,
and we knew them quite well.
The next morning we took off to go up to the Ivory Coast.
I think it was referred to as
the Gold Coast or something because since then,
I have had a nephew who's
been operating gold mines down there.
But here it says Ivory Coast.
It's one of the famous places that go clear back
to the early explorers and there was mining,
gold pile, and things like that.
Then from there we set up
the problem of going from there up to North Africa.
The first thing we had to do
is takeoff from here and fly up to the West Coast.
There was getting to be quite a bit of traffic across
the South Pacific at
that time because there was
quite a few things going on over here,
and people were coming over a different way.
Some of them come in and
take off of a carrier or something like that,
and come in but we stayed there quite awhile.
Finally we took off,
we come up quite a ways here on
the West Coast where there was a pretty good runway.
It was one of these that they laid
down with steel planking.
[Floyd Cox] Yes and mapping.
[James Macia] We came in landing,
I remember was right before Christmas,
a couple of days before Christmas,
and we landed there at night,
and after we landed,
I could see a little sparks we were making,
we were bouncing and our tips of
our props were clipping off.
But anyway, we guys weren't too
qualified as far as B26 fly appeared,
and we were with this guy from Denver.
I can't think of his name doesn't matter.
He was still a pretty poor pilot.
A couple of times we had one of
the guys on our unlisted guys come to me,
and ask me if we shouldn't
demand that he not take anymore of the flights.
Because he was sitting up there,
and he'd come down very nervous,
and all he'd start sweating.
I remember one we had a pretty senior NCO that was there.
He came back to me,
and Charlie says captain or whatever the hell I was.
He said I'm afraid
that he not going to be able to make it.
He just turned now the spring,
he's sweating like mad.
I looked at him, and God,
he was just shaking, and all that.
But we kept making it and the aircraft came in,
they came flipping down
this runway that we had. (background)
[Floyd Cox] We came out here near the coast.
The car was out here.
There was a river that's running up here that comes
down from here but it's really in Timbuktu,
is up here, where it comes up.
There wasn't much water coming down,
this is the Niger River I guess.
We passed this Timbuktu and it comes on
down and finally Gambia,
I think comes out at the coast of Gambia.
We're still up against the problems are
crossing over the Sahara desert and then over
the mountains there on the northern coast.
We were able to do it.
We came up, got over the Sahara,
and we came into a place, Marrakesh.
I don't know why I don't remember that,
but Marrakesh was quite a place.
We we got over the mountains.
Actually, the mountains
weren't as serious as those right
above Tucson and it was an identical as the Tucson one.
You just come down and we could see Marrakesh.
We went in there and it was a popular place.
That's where the Presidents had
their gathering at one time.
When they were deciding right after this,
some very serious problems,
but it was a place very much like Tucson.
We stopped at a hotel there and we went
in to have a dinner and they had a bar.
We had to squadron commanders,
come from West Point
and cars going into their first combat and all.
One of them had been a baseball Captain
at West Point and he
was a little tough looking little guy.
He would have been able
to really be tough if he wanted to.
One other thing that happened that evening,
there was quite a few American people there,
state department people and all that,
and they were coming
talking to us and things like that a bit.
Not about the Tokyo,
but just two we were because there was
an airfield right on up here that we later landed,
and planned to land, and therefore,
this was just an overnight stay
at our cash because we happen to land here at the base.
This guy went in,
damn, I can't think of his name.
This tough looking little guy is starting to
ball and he sang.
He had a very good voice.
In several places,
he really got us into problem because he'd get
drunk and this is before this.
He'd get in there and get the singing
and people who were there,
more senior officers with braids,
how about quieting in down?
But he'd sing a song.
(music playing) These natives, many of them in uniform,
would come up to me and other people.
I want to be on that guy's troop.
I want to be in his outfit.
He looked like he just out
there that nobody could work there.
He'd sing this song.
(laughing) We stayed there a couple of days and then
we started moving up to an area close to or around,
which is right along the northern coast of North Africa.
Where we're, here it is, here (inaudible).
They were going into Casablanca
when they were coming out of
England and coming down to Casablanca in that area.
The French had gone in and somebody had sunk,
I guess the Germans did it against the French.
The French lost much of their navy.
They were there at Orion,
Algiers, (inaudible), those are
the cities along the top there.
Much of the traffic had come in,
but it did pretty much what had come to
North Africa was there and it come through Casablanca.
We were coming through the back door and we went up
to a place called Tapanui.
It was quite a level place
where some pretty good runways
had been built and you can operate off of there.
We found that it was raining practically every day.
Here we were in Tapanui,
having a hell of a time with the rain and all that.
We didn't get into any combat.
Our group was still scattered
around and we hadn't moved up there.
Together always.
I was in the plane and we
got up there and found these other people coming
in and we had some people already
moved in and put out there at Tapanui.
We started getting the airplanes in good shape.
One day there was one of
our guys would have been on the (inaudible) raid
with us and another fellow,
always a very good friend of ours now,
enlisted man of Senior one.
Suddenly I realize that.
[James Macia] Harvey, the third had just crashed,
and the damn thing had really crashed and it blown up.
Got people are running from it and everything, my God.
But no one was killed at this,
somehow, they all got out of it.
[Floyd Cox] Another crew was flying near the plane at your names?
[James Macia] Yeah. Then we were here at this place and we
would fly up your missions
out looking for submarines off from top ROI.
It would rain. It was a miserable place.
Everybody who was in cans
and rain with drowned people out and the tough one.
We stay there for a while,
then we move forward past AAA.
Not over as far as Cairo and all that,
but then we were moved well
ahead out into Libya and things like that.
The meantime, we had a couple of changes,
that guy who had taken
a command and he's going to bring up the rear.
He got into some trouble.
He was a typical Irish man
that did things like he's saying there in the bar.
I'm going to bring up the rears.
One of the things he did is he got down town and
bond and they had a date with a nurse or something,
and as they came out of a bar,
he spoke to a list of man,
and the guy didn't salute him or something.
God, he gave the guy hell.
In the meantime, he assumed the command of a 320th.
He go along everybody thinks he's doing all right.
But he really was chastised for
this because he stopped the guy and he gave him hell,
and you're talking to a Colonel and I
think he had a date with
a nurse or something and she was an officer,
just did some stupid things.
Finally, he was in trouble.
This system one that had a birthday,
he was still hanging in there, nice guy.
He took over,
and then we started having replacements,
come in for several people including the top band,
and there is a map over here.
[Floyd Cox] (noise) At this time
flying out of Africa,
you were just doing strictly sub hunting
or were you doing any?
[James Macia] Yeah. We were out there
hunting because I am doing quite well.
We weren't in any combat or anything like that.
We were getting ready to be moved up.
The meantime, they're
the Germans who was the famous general.
[Floyd Cox] Rommel.
[James Macia] Yes, Rommel.
His troops had been pulled
back from Cairo and all of that,
and he had moved across North Africa,
and he is on his way into the western part there,
a part that we were very vulnerable and we
moved units both Air Force
and airborne in there to stop them,
and they had a hell of a time.
I think they finally won the contest.
Another man who would come in to take over,
and it happens that he was a fellow from Arkansas.
He's very proud of that,
and his name was Fordyce.
He was a real fine man.
This was one of the big breaks I had,
even though Hilda has treated me well,
Fordyce really treated much better because I
was intelligence officer and stuff like that.
He took over and he had a national guard outfit with him.
He was using that part-time,
but he was working into taking over our B-26 so no,
and everybody thought the world
of him and how we went on every mission.
I mean, we were after fighting,
and we're getting along fine,
but one day word came in,
actually we had already started having mission to fly
across the Mediterranean and
drop bombs and things like that, a few of those.
He was going to fly
every mission and he was really a warrior.
He's a big guy and a firefly looking fella,
and the town was named
Fordyce after his family in Arkansas.
One day, I brought in somebody else,
another person came in and they
were moving some aircraft forward,
and somehow the weather
was bad and they didn't play it right,
and he crashed and killed himself.
That was one of the best commanders
I ever saw and did well.
Well, that's like kept going on,
but we were then pretty much in more
and we had units were starting
to apply their first missions up into Sardinia,
places like that and Sicily and build up,
we're getting more people in,
and we're getting more missions that build up to.
I think just a lot of long talk except that
one where Jack and I finally got down
to where Jack was a group officer.
[Floyd Cox] He came back over to your group?
[James Macia] Yeah.
[Floyd Cox] Held it in?
[James Macia] No, not yet.