I Always Wanted to Fly Read online

  “The next day the army captured Cape Bon. In the German hospital tents, they found two of the crew of the plane that had blown up in front of me the day before. I had told them that no one could have survived. The pilot’s leg had been amputated. The medical records were there. Everything the German doctors had done was perfectly recorded. The other survivor was the bombardier. I asked him how he got out. He didn’t know.

  “As the weeks passed, I worked my way up to Sicily. I was bombing on the other side of Mount Aetna when an 88mm shell went through my right wing and exploded above the aircraft, killing the gunner in the upper turret, knocking out the intercom. I finished the bomb run before returning to base. After we landed we counted over five hundred holes in the plane. The dead man got the Purple Heart. The rest of us got nothing. When I returned home, I had flown forty-two combat missions.

  “After the war was over, I was operated on for my crushed disks. I spent considerable time in the hospital. I got out in 1947 with the rank of major, but my football career was over. Instead, I opened a little fast-food restaurant in Santa Ana, California. One day an air force major came into the restaurant and asked, ‘How would you like to fly airplanes again? I can get you an airplane so you can go anywhere you want.’ The major said, ‘I can check you out over here in Long Beach. All you have to do is sign up in the reserve.’ I signed up. I was bored. This was in 1948. I had not even checked out yet when I got a letter: ‘Welcome to the air force,’ it read, ‘We need you for the Berlin Airlift.’ That’s how I got back in. I went to Montana for C-54 training. They checked us out, and then they sent us over to Germany. I ended up in the 29th Squadron at Fassberg. My first flight was on April 13, 1949, my last on August 24, 1949. I flew 205 missions in seventeen weeks. I flew more than what my records show. On Tunner’s Easter Parade I flew five missions which are not recorded in my records, but I know I flew them. I flew whenever I could.

  “Most of the flying was boring, boring, boring, with the exception of one mission. We landed at the French base of Tegel. We carried coal, and the British carried fuel. We’d sit there waiting to take off and watched the Brits land. The fuel baffles weren’t too good on the Brit airplanes. When they’d land, the fuel went one way, and they bounced. The fuel went the other way, and they bounced again. Of course we were supposed to observe radio silence, but every Yank out there said, ‘One, two, three—’ The Brits called back, ‘OK, Yanks, shut up.’ Every once in a while they’d have an accident landing. One mission I remember well was when Tegel was closed because one of the British fuel tankers had crashed. They diverted us to Tempelhof. On this mission I flew through my first really big thunderstorm. I remember going from two thousand to eight thousand feet and back down again. We put on the lights in the cockpit, and the copilot worked the throttles. All I could do was keep the airplane level. First it was solid black in the cockpit, then with the lightning around us it would turn brighter than daylight. By the time I got to my GCA run into Tempelhof, I probably lost ten pounds. Well, we were coming out of the clouds on final approach. I had never been to Tempelhof before. We were breaking out of the overcast. I looked to my left and saw that I was right in between these apartment houses. The windows were lit up. I became really frightened, because I just knew I was going to crash. I added power. I was ready to pull up and go back. Then I saw the runway. I had already added power. I was trying to get the power off. I landed so fast. I recall yelling for the copilot to help me on the brakes—we didn’t have reverse props in those days. I used up the entire runway. It was that approach in between those apartment houses that frightened me to death. That thunderstorm made me forget everything.

  Wreckage of a crashed British fuel tanker at Tegel, 1949. R. Hamill.

  “Fassberg was a good base. We never missed a mission, and I never aborted. Everything I remember was ‘Mach Schnell. Mach Schnell.’ I would get out there with the German crews and help them unload the coal from their trucks. That’s how I got my exercise. Then we’d go down to the wagon and get a coffee and a donut. All I did was fly and sleep. Three days off, ten days flying. Some days off I flew for guys who wanted time off to play poker.”

  But all was not work for the airlift flyers. The spring and summer of 1949 were beautiful. Off-duty American airmen strolled through the streets of Fassberg, a town untouched by war, looking for something to do. They crowded the few bars, sitting outside on sunny days, drinking German beer, smoking, and whistling at German girls passing by. Master Sergeant Chester J. “Jim” Vaughn is probably representative of many of the young single men who served in Germany at the time. Jim was an Indiana boy, born in 1927, growing up in the depression years. “Those were tough times for us,” Jim recalled. “I learned firsthand what sacrifice was all about, so when I arrived in Germany in 1948 I could empathize with the plight of the German people. As a twenty-one-year-old airman, I did the job I was required to do as an aircraft mechanic.” Jim was stationed at RAF Fassberg with Moe Hamill: Moe flew the planes Jim fixed. According to Jim, “When I was not on the job, I took the time to explore the local sights, keeping on the lookout for beautiful German girls. I found one, a lovely young lady, Ursula, who lived in the town of Lüneburg. After a fast and furious courtship, we were married in the Fassberg base chapel on August 17, 1949, and then spent a short honeymoon on the island of Sylt in the North Sea. In late September 1949 I brought my new German bride to the United States.”

  Jim and Ursula’s marriage must have been one of the first airlift weddings, but many more airmen were to marry German girls in the weeks to follow. Other relationships were more casual. “Easy girls” drifted to American military bases, and the associated problems were a headache for squadron commanders. The commander of the 29th Troop Carrier Squadron, Lieutenant Colonel Elmer E. McTaggart, was faced with the age-old problem of what to do about it. He finally wrote a letter to his men, appealing to them to mend their ways:

  Again during the month of June, the 29th Squadron proved it was the best unit on the station. As we did in May, we carried more coal to Berlin in the greatest number of flights. We had the greatest number of aircraft in commission and the least amount of turn-around maintenance. As a matter of interest, let me enumerate what the 29th Squadron was leading in for the month of June:

  a. Greatest number of flights to Berlin.

  b. Greatest amount of coal to Berlin.

  c. Largest number of aircraft in commission.

  d. Greatest number of discrepancy reports.

  e. Greatest number of VD cases.

  There can be no doubt from the above that we are the workingest, fightingest . . . outfit on the field. It is nice to deal in superlatives when speaking of our squadron. However, I wonder if it is possible to eliminate discrepancy reports and VD from our list? Each one of you is certainly entitled to a “well done.” Let’s keep up the good work.

  I have no idea how successful Colonel McTaggart was in his appeal, but three months later the airlift ended, and RAF Fassberg reverted to its former quiet self.

  After the Berlin Airlift, Moe Hamill piloted Boeing KC-97 tankers and commanded a KC-97 squadron before transferring to SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. He retired after thirty years of air force service to pursue a successful career as a financial securities broker in Newport Beach, California. Master Sergeant Jim Vaughn retired from the air force in 1966 and went to work for United Airlines as an aircraft mechanic. Today Jim lives near Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Chapter 2

  The Bomber Boys

  On Monday, June 28, Truman ordered a full-scale airlift. The same day he sent two squadrons of B-29s to Germany, the giant planes known to the world as the kind that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. But in fact, these had not been modified to carry atomic bombs, a detail the Russians were not to know.

  David McCullough, Truman

  R. J. made a recording for the BBC. It was broadcast every thirty minutes, I believe, on the BBC for the rest of the day, announcing “The Yanks are back!”

&n
bsp; Joe Gyulavics, B-29 navigator

  Although the Berlin Airlift was fought by air crews flying unarmed C-47 and C-54 transports, behind them towered a big stick, the B-29s of the newly created Strategic Air Command, better known as SAC. Little has been said about the men who manned these bombers and their contribution to the airlift’s success, but without their presence, no American or British combat capability in Europe could have checked the territorial ambitions of Marshal Joseph Stalin. In late June 1948, one B-29 squadron of the 301st Bomb Group was on rotational training at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich. With the Soviet implementation of the Berlin blockade on June 26, General George C. Kenney, the first commander of the still-forming Strategic Air Command, ordered the other two B-29 squadrons of the 301st Bomb Group to deploy to Goose Bay, Labrador, and then proceed to Fürstenfeldbruck, where they arrived in early July. The 307th Bomb Wing at MacDill AFB, near Tampa, Florida, was put on three-hour notice for deployment, and the 28th Bomb Wing at Rapid City AFB, South Dakota, was tasked to be ready to deploy on twelve hours notice. Later that July, both wings arrived in the United Kingdom. All other SAC bomber units were put on twenty-four-hour alert. None of the deployed or deploying B-29s had nuclear capabilities.

  Colonel Joseph J. Gyulavics

  Distinguished Flying Cross (3), Air Medal (5)

  “My father immigrated from a small village in Hungary, Taliandorogd, in 1912,” Joe Gyulavics recalled. “He came alone to the United States to get rich. His plan was to eventually return to Hungary, buy a farm with the money he made in America, and live comfortably ever after. After years of working in coal mines in Pennsylvania, he saved enough money to buy a farm, but it was outside Buffalo, New York, not in Hungary. He sent for my mother and older brother. For several years my parents tried desperately to make the farm pay, but eventually they lost it. My father then went to work in a steel mill in Buffalo, which had a close-knit Hungarian community nearby. I was born in 1925. Everything in my life was Hungarian, including the language I spoke, until we moved to a house across from a public school and I got to play with other kids. By the time I was in the first grade, I could speak English well.

  “I always wanted to fly. As a little boy, when I heard the roar of airplanes, I ran outside to watch them fly over our house. I built models out of balsa wood but could never afford to buy paint for them. There was a little airport about five miles out of town. I peddled out there on my bicycle to watch the small Taylor Cubs land and take off. I went around the back side of the field, near the runway, and hid in the tall grass so I could see the planes close-up. Once one pilot saw me hiding in the grass and taxied over and chewed me out. Eventually I got a ride in an open-cockpit plane. It was a dream come true. My older brother paid the pilot three or four dollars to take me up, which was a lot of money at the time. In 1941, at age sixteen, I graduated from high school. When the war broke out in 1941, I wanted to join the army and fly. Many of my older classmates were joining the services and going to war, but I was still too young. I went to Syracuse University for a year, but I had little money, and it was a constant struggle. As soon as I turned seventeen I tried to join the navy. They flunked me on my physical. They said I had a heart murmur. ‘I’m a healthy kid,’ I thought. ‘I don’t have a heart murmur.’ I went home, and my family physician examined me. He found no heart murmur. I asked him to put it in writing. I intended to go back to the navy examiner with the letter in hand, but then I got a job as a draftsman at the Curtis-Wright Aircraft Company, where they built P-40s and C-46s, and I was making good money. So I waited until I turned eighteen and then tried to join the Army Air Force before the draft board got to me. The army also flunked me on my physical, but this time it was a deviated septum. ‘You can’t fly with that obstruction in your nose,’ the doctor said to me, ‘but you can be a ground crewman.’ ‘What do I have to do to fly?’ I asked him. ‘Get an operation,’ he said.

  “I found a doctor who operated on my nose. He took out a couple of bones, and I paid him twenty-five dollars. The Army Air Force accepted me in the aviation cadet program. I spent the next two years from 1943 to 1945 being bounced around as a buck private waiting for a flying-school slot to open up. None ever did. For those two years I served as assistant crew chief on a P-40 at Aloe Field in Texas; as a butcher in a mess hall in Smyrna, Tennessee; drove a fuel truck on the flight line in Stuttgart, Arkansas; and did every odd job you can think of. When the war ended, I was sitting there as a buck private and hadn’t done one damn thing. ‘If you want out, you can get out,’ I was told. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t achieved anything yet.’

  “ ‘If you want to stay, you can go to navigator school at Ellington Field, near Houston,’ the army personnel people told me. So I went to navigator school. Talk about being snakebit. On graduation from Ellington my entire class went up on the stage in the base theater and received their commissions as second lieutenants—everyone except me. Personnel lost my physical somewhere, misspelled my name on the records, and now couldn’t find them. I graduated as a navigator but not as a lieutenant. My classmates went overseas while I sat at Ellington waiting for the paperwork to come through. Ten days later I got my commission, went home, and got married. I was sent to Las Vegas Army Air Field as a celestial-navigation instructor. We had a nice honeymoon in the early days of Vegas. In November 1946 I was discharged. They gave me three hundred dollars mustering-out pay, and I was on my own. When I finally got back to Buffalo, it was too late to get into school. My wife was due with our first child in a few months, and I didn’t have a job. Things looked bleak. I went to see the army recruiter and he told me I could enlist as a master sergeant for eighteen months, but I couldn’t choose my branch of service. They put me in the signal corps—sent me to New Rochelle, New York, and put me in charge of a platoon of telephone-pole climbers. I knew nothing about the telephone business, but I was the senior NCO in charge. I wrote a letter to the adjutant general of the Army Air Force and asked him, ‘What am I doing here? I am a qualified navigator, and I should be in the air force.’

  “Lo and behold, I soon got orders to go to Rapid City Army Airfield in South Dakota as a celestial-navigation instructor. When I got there, they were still sweeping the wheat out of the hangars the farmers had used for storage while the base was closed. The base was being reopened for a B-29 bomber outfit coming in from Alaska. As soon as the planes hit the ramp, most of the crews said, ‘We’ve had enough. We want out.’ They got out, and the 28th Bombardment Group didn’t have enough crews to fly all of its airplanes. I saw an opportunity and approached my squadron operations officer. ‘Hey, I’m available,’ I said to him. ‘I’m a navigator. I know you’re short. I’ll be happy to fly.’ ‘But you’re a master sergeant,’ he said. His facial expression told me to get lost and leave him alone. I didn’t. ‘I can fly,’ I said to him firmly. ‘I was commissioned a second lieutenant. I have my navigator wings.’ I showed him my orders. After taking a look at my orders, he said, ‘OK, you’re back on flying status, but only for one month at a time.’ I said reluctantly, ‘I’ve never flown in a B-29 before.’

  “He looked at me, exasperation showing in his eyes. Then he turned to a navigator sitting at a desk nearby and said, ‘Lieutenant Curtis, go and check the master sergeant out.’

  “ ‘Come along,’ Lieutenant Curtis said to me in a friendly voice. We went to a B-29 parked out on the ramp and climbed in. ‘This is where you sit,’ he said. ‘This is the airspeed indicator,’ and he pointed to it, ‘and this is the altimeter. There is the compass. The drift meter is over here.’ That was it. A week later I was heading across the Atlantic for Germany navigating a 77th Bombardment Squadron B-29 of the 28th Bombardment Group. I was a last-minute replacement for a crew which didn’t have a navigator. On the way out to the airplane, the operations officer told me, ‘Oh, by the way, on your way down to MacDill, air swing the fluxgate compass.’ Air swing the fluxgate compass? My God! How do I do that? I looked into my old aviation cadet textbook, which I carried wi
th me in my navigator bag. Sure enough, there was a chapter on how to swing a fluxgate compass. It was supposed to be done on the ground on a surveyed compass rose, but we didn’t have time to do that. Prior to takeoff, one of the other navigators suggested to me, ‘Why don’t you fly over Tallahassee. There’s a good radio beacon there. Have the pilot take up a cardinal heading into the beacon while you take a sun shot with your astro compass, compare them, and then interpolate. You can work it out.’

  “I said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ like I knew what he was talking about. I was stunned. The rest of the squadron landed at MacDill while I had my pilot flying headings into Tallahassee radio. Even over the roar of the engines I heard the pilot, Lieutenant Gale Cummings, yell to the copilot, ‘Go see what that navigator is doing back there. He’s only a master sergeant. I don’t even know him. I have never seen him before.’ I didn’t know any of them either. We landed at about six o’clock that evening. Everybody went to the chow hall and ate and then went to the transient barracks for crew rest. I hadn’t finished compensating the compass yet, and I was afraid to admit that to anybody. That night I went out to the airplane. I had a hard time finding it in the dark, parked on a strange airfield on a remote hardstand. When I finally found the plane, I climbed aboard. Of course, there was no power. I used my flashlight. It was a lot hotter in Florida than in South Dakota, and I was sweating, tired, and starting to panic. I was in my winter flying suit. I got out my old cadet manual and followed the instructions. It’s a bezel ring you adjust on the fluxgate compass. I didn’t have a screwdriver to make the adjustments, so I used my pocketknife. I was not too confident that the adjustments I made were correct. We took off the next afternoon for Germany via the Azores.