Issue 13.12
After taking off in the late evening from Goose Bay, Labrador, in our B-17 on our way to
Reykjavik, Iceland to join the war, we encountered cloud coverage. A5navigator I needed to see the stars in order to get a celestial fix with my sextant. I called Joe, our pilot, on the inter-com and told him I could not see the stars. He brought the plane to 10,000 ft., but there were still clouds. Above 10,000 ft. we needed to be on oxygen, but all our oxygen masks were packed away in the bomb bay with all our overseas gear and there was no way to get to them, so Joe said, “Everyone suck on the (short) oxygen hose, we’re going up.”
He took the plane to 17,000 ft. above the clouds where I proceeded to first, suck on the hose then standing up to the navigators dome, proceeded to shoot Polaris, the North Star. It takes about one and a half minutes to get the shot and I would get woozy and would stop and suck on the oxygen hose, then go back and shoot some more!
Finally I got it and did the same on Arcturus, to get crossing lines of position to complete the fix. We then dropped down and flew on till we were a couple hours out of Reykjavik. The radio-compass, which should have read 0 degrees, was showing us 20 degrees off course to the
1eft! Joe called me and said, “Mel, have you noticed the radio compass?” I said that I had, and didn’t know why it showed us off course, but that I felt good about the fix and my dead reckoning navigation and let’s wait till the ETA is up and we will drop down and see. He said, ”OK, you’re my navigator.”
When the ETA was up we dropped down and there was the Beacon of Reykjavik off to the left! I went to the Operations Officer and said, “You better check that Radio Compass, it was
20 degrees off on the way in He said, “Oh, that’s not your radio compass, it’s a German sub broadcasting our frequency, trying to get you off course! I said, “Why didn’t you tell us that before or during our flight?” He said, “We didn’t want to break radio silence.” So much for Army Intelligence. One of these articles several weeks ago told about how three planes out of 36; (30men) with that same false reading ended up in the drink!
This account is of F/O Melvel C. Owen, Navigator, 305 Bomb Group, 366 Bomb Sqdn, 8th Air Force, WWII.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at (801) 707-2666.