Issue 6.14
I still think of things that happened to me seventy years ago. I think about the days and evenings that we didn’t fly a mission. We were always happy when the weather at winter time at Europe was so terrible that we couldn’t get off the ground. We gunners could go to the skeet range and shoot off a few boxes of shotgun shells. Skeet shooting was the best non combat practice an Ariel gunner could do. Besides it was good relaxation. Sometimes we got extra briefings from intelligence. Sometimes we hung out at the Church Army Canteen where we could get a coke or tea and a crumpet and talk to the pretty English lasses that waited on us. This was also a good time to catch up on much needed sleep.
Also there was the inevitable card game at the barracks. In the evenings we could take in a movie or go to the Sergeant’s club and listen to a small volunteer country and western band while we had a beer. The singer and leader of the band sounded just like Ernest Tubbs, and I often wondered if That could have been Ernest Tubbs before he became famous.
Because our base at Polebrook was taken over by the 8th Air Force from the Royal Air Force, we had nice wooden barracks rather that the steel Quonset huts that other basses had. We had our bull sessions and at one we heard about the time the two RAF very hot wooden Mosquito bombers buzzed our field in formation and they both crashed. There were no survivors. It seemed that any fighters or fast light bombers that visited our field, the pilots had to show off and show us what we were missing. We also talked about an amazing and miraculous happening. At a different field, a B-17Fortressgot home but was severely shot up. As all too often happens, the mechanism of the lower ball turret was jammed so the gunner couldn’t get out into the plane. The Landing gear was also shot up and couldn’t be lowered. That meant sure death for the ball turret gunner when they landed. He said his prayers and waited for his plastic and metal home to be ground into powder and him also. The pilot came in to make a wheels-up landing on the grass next to the runway. What happened in the next few seconds could best be described as a miracle. The bomber hit the ground at the ball turret and then bounced just a bit. The ground tore the ball turret loose from the rest of the plane and it shot out from under the plane at one hundred miles per hour and bounced ahead and to the side of the bomber. They both came to rest. The meat wagons raced to both the bomber and to the separated ball turret. There were some wounded in the plane but the gunner in the ball turret was alive but unconscious. No one could believe that that gunner was alive and did not have massive bleeding wounds. He had some broken bones and he was black and blue from his head to his toes. Anyone who flew 25 or 35 bombing missions during World War Two can remember of unusual occurrences. The lower ball turret position was not a fun place to be. Even in training, some found that claustrophobic place to be untenable and after being left in one for a half an hour some came out screaming. I flew my 35 missions as a ball turret gunner and although I was not trained for that position, and I hated the place I volunteered for it just so I wouldn’t be separated from my crew.
Sam Wyrouck may be contacted at 801-707-2666.