Issue 2.12
During World War 2, keeping the public at home informed was important to the war effort.
I am sure that what news and the way it was presented was tailored to meet the needs of the war effort. I guess you could call it propaganda. There were many reporters and photographers in the war zones. Some of these people lost their lives. All photos and copy had to be censored. One thing that was prohibited was to show the face of a dead soldier.
We see on the History channel and many other channels, footage of battle action taken on land on water and in the air. Clark Gable and his moving picture taking crew made a movie of the air war over Europe. This was taken of my group, the 351st bomb group. Clark actually flew some combat missions to get results. The movie was entitled “Combat America”.
The B-17’s that I flew in and the B-24’s each had a camera well built into the bomber to take still photos and each bomber had a gun camera in both the top gun turret and the lower ball turret so that when the trigger buttons were depressed, a moving picture was taken of what ever he was shooting at. In addition, there was a separate switch to work the cameras without firing the machine guns.
Normally after “bombs away” each group of thirty-six bombers would bank sharply to get out of the flak barrage as soon as possible however occasionally we would fly straight over the target. When that happened, I the ball turret gunner would take pictures of the bombs hitting the target. Once in movie news I saw pictures that I am pretty sure I took. We were encouraged to take pictures of interesting things.
On one mission, I had my guns pointing to six o’clock when the lead plane in the group behind us pulled up and collided with his wing-man. Both were tangled and twisting together. This twisting jumble struck another bomber and then struck a fourth bomber. All four bombers with their 36 crewmen all went down in a tangled exploding mess. I did not see anyone get out of their doomed planes. If I had been thinking, I should have been taking pictures of that catastrophe as it happened. If that had been caught on film, it could have been one of the most dramatic happenings of the war.
Sam may be contacted on 801-707-2666.