Personal Stories Of WWII… B-17 Tail Gunner

Issue 12.13

I recently talked with Donald Henderson about his brother-in law, Lewis Haas. Lewis enlisted May 1943 into the U.S. Army Air Force and took his basic training after which he went to Armament school at Lowery field, Denver, Colorado where he learned to disassemble and assemble a heavy machine gun while blind folded. He also learned about

Bombs, bomb fuses and even how to time machine guns to fire through a fighter planes propellers without hitting the props. After graduation from gunnery school, Lewis was given the choice of being an Arial combat crewman or to be a ground armorer. Lewis saw the flyers walk around with their neat gabardine flying suits with the pockets on the front of each leg below the knee. Lewis decided to go for being a gunner and fly combat missions. He was one who boarded a troop train that took him to Laredo, Texas for gunnery school. After gunnery school, Lewis was assigned as one of a ten man crew and trained together. The crew then boarded another troop train which took them to Lincoln, Nebraska where they made out their wills, got up to date on shots and flew a new B-17 to England. They were now part of the Eighth Air Force and would be flying bombing missions into Germany. They were assigned to the 730th Squadron of the 452^nd Group located at Beopham which was near to the city of Norwich. Lewis was the tail gunner of the crew and they flew most of their missions in a bomber which they named “Bad Check” because a bad check was sure to come back.

After flying a number of successful missions, Lewis’s plane was shot up by FLAK and then caught it by German Bandits. That B-17 was then hard to fly especially in a tight defensive box formation.

The Group was on their way home, when there was a mid air collision with another B-17. Bad

Check was cut in two with the tail section completely severed from the rest of the plane.

Lewis’s parachute was close by so he snapped it onto his harness and fell out of the plane and was on its way down to somewhere in Germany. Lewis was taken prisoner by a bunch of angry farmers who turned Lewis over to the military. Lewis was fortunate because many downed flyers were pitch-forked to death by civilians. Lewis was turned over to some nearby soldiers who after spending some days in a lock up, was then taken by truck to the Doulog Luft where he was intensely interrogated. Lewis was then taken Stalag Luft #4 which was located near the city of Stettin. This was north of Berlin and near the sea coast. Prisoners of war were treated very harshly and not much like the TV series called “Hogan’s Heroes.” The prisoners were not allowed out doors where they could mingle with the rest of the 7,000 prisoners. On Christmas Eve the men were allowed out so they could sing Christmas songs. It could have been worse except that one of the guards had the same last name, Haas. During mid winter of 1944-45 all of the prisoners were taken on a forced march of 276 miles. These men were near starvation and with scant clothing for the winter temperatures. Many prisoners died along the way and some too weak to continue were shot. Lewis survived the march. On V E day Lewis was in Brussels and on his way by troop ship to a hospital near Santa Anna, Ca. Lewis wrote many letters home and they are now part of a book about his war experiences. Lewis’s brother, Cene who was in the infantry was killed. Lewis was discharged from the Air Force in October, 1945.