Issue 17.12
I enjoy writing these short articles about my and others experiences of World War II and one of my benefits are the phone calls received from all over this nation.
I received a phone call from Paul Robson who lives at Broken Bow, Nebraska. His cousin who lives in Cedar City clipped an article and sent it to him. Paul told me how he enlisted in the Air Corp and was trained as a B-25 mechanic and was working on the flight line on those medium bombers while stationed in the U.S. He saw the flyers walking around in their handsome A-2 leather jackets, their gabardine flying suits and their neat sun glasses. Paul said to his buddy “That’s the life for me. I’m going to volunteer to be on a combat crew.” Paul’s buddy told him “You have it good here and if you do that, you’ll be sorry”. Well Paul volunteered for combat training and was sent to Ariel gunnery school and then was assigned to a B-17 crew and went into phase training. His crew flew to Europe by the northern route through Goose Bay, Labrador, Iceland and Scotland. We could always tell which crews flew to Europe on the Southern route because each man sported a new pair of handsome boots. The pilot, Stephen Buttler, and his crew were assigned to the 331at Squadron, 94th Bomb Group stationed at Bury St. Edmonds which was located north of London. This crew had several missions completed by January, 1944 and were briefed for a mission to Berlin, also known as Big “B”. Luckily that mission was scrubbed because two months later the first daylight bombing mission to Big “B” was flown by the Eighth Air Force.
Before that mission was scrubbed, some of the guys said “We think they are trying to get rid of us.” On January 11th, 1944 three squadrons of the 94th Bomb Group was briefed for a mission to
Brunswick, Germany. Their 331st Squadron was able to put up eight planes. They fought their way to the target without fighter escort. Their group was the lead group and for some reason they were unable to drop their bombs. The group commander decided to do what every combat flyer dreaded. That was to do a 360; that is they circled around and flew through all that flak and bandits a second time. This time Paul’s plane took a bad flak hit and was disabled. The pilot gave the bail out signal and seven members of the crew bailed out. That left the pilot, the co-pilot and the top turret gunner. The pilot then said, “We may be able to get our ship back home if I can keep up with the formation.” At that time a secondary explosion took place.
The Co-pilot then said to Paul, “Let’s get out of here”. The three remaining crewmembers then went out the hatch and left the stricken B-17. Paul and eight of his crewmembers made it to the ground but the pilot was killed. Paul did not know if his pilot was killed before or after he hit the ground. For some reason the German people were angry about something and many a bomber crewman met his end by pitchforks. Out of the eight planes sent out by his squadron that morning, seven were shot down. The 94th bomb group received the presidential unit citation for that mission. Paul and his surviving crew members were P.O.W.’s at Stalag Luft 17D which was located near Vienna, Austria. When the war was winding down, all of the prisoners of
Stalag 17D were herded west and walked 287 miles before they were finally liberated by Patton’s Third Army. Paul is the only member of his crew that is still living and is in contact with members of his old pilot’s family.