Personal Stories Of WWII… Lawrence Volmer Radio Operator Gunner

Issue 6.13

This is a story from Lawrence Volmer, an old friend of mine from Idaho; we were officers in the Idaho Branch of the 8^th Air Force organization.

January 11, 1944 on the Oschersleben Germany mission, we started out as a spare but due to an abort, we filled the vacant spot and went in even though the engineer’s head set wasn’t working. By now it was too late to turn back. We were a group in the first division and as soon as the second and third divisions got their recall and turned around, the Luftwaffe started coming up through the clouds like a swarm of bees.

Soon they attacked with ferocity. They hit a B-17 in front of us and blew it up sending a separated wing toward us. Out pilot had to violently dive down to avoid hitting the wing. I was standing looking out of the radio room hatch when the wing came by and missed us going over the top of our ship. As we started the bomb run, a chunk of FLAK came through and cut one oxygen line. That left half of the crew without oxygen including me.

Earlier in the air war, bombers were equipped with 5,000 pound psi tall cylinders but found the hard way that a machine gun or FLAK hit would send the cylinder through the bottom of the plane like a rocket.

We were using the 500 psi tank that was wrapped with metal bands to solve that problem. I got down on my knees and was groping to find my walk around bottle which had fallen down into the mess of scattered machine gun ammunition and other fallen things. While down on my knees trying to connect my oxygen bottle before I passed out, an FW190 came at us at three o’clock high hitting and cutting the other oxygen line and hitting number three engine.

The pilot feathered that prop. If I had been standing at my position instead of on my hands and knees groping, I would have been cut in two by 20 mm shells. We began losing consciousness from lack of oxygen. My oxygen bottle had been hit and was useless to me. The gunners were passing out and so we were defenseless. There was a formation of B-17s some distance below us so down we went and joined them. We got down to 17,000 feet and were all conscious again. Somehow we made it back to England but the whole area was fog covered and we couldn’t see Molesworth. We were on the verge of running out of gas and the pilot told the crew to snap your chutes and prepare to bail out because we won’t get this plane down in one piece. The bomb bay doors were opened and I had disconnected my heated suit and was just stepping out on the catwalk when someone shouted over the interphone “I see a B-24 base down there through an opening in the clouds”. The pilot said “Hang on; we’re going down, so close the bomb bay doors.” No sooner than we touched down than the engines sputtered to a stop, we couldn’t move so a tow truck came and pulled us off the runway. More by Lawrence next week.