Travels of Jackie and Randy: The Mighty 8th

We went to the Mighty 8th Museum in Pooler, Georiga, just west of Savannah, and I was so impressed. They have several complete planes on display

and interesting parts, like this great big 9 cylinder Wright Cyclone engine, which produced up to 1,200 horsepower.

I never really understand how uncomfortable gun turrets were. I knew they were tucked under the belly of the plane, but I never thought about fitting into them.

But gee, what a bad way to spend a battle!

And in this day of technology, it's easy to forget what they had to work with back then . . .

But what I was interested in were the personal stories, and this museum was very good with those. For example, there is a room with information about people who saved Allied airmen who ended up in Axis-controlled lands. And because of downed flights (see technology note, above), there seemed to be a lot of downed airmen. Not everyone who helped them ended up being executed but several were, and everyone knew it was a possibility; they did it anyway. I learned about Johanna Folmer, who helped over 100 people into Belgium. She spent time in a concentration camp for it but survived to be “liberated” by Russians; eventually she got back to the Netherlands as part of a prisoner exchange.

Andree de Jongh organized the Comete Line, hiding airmen, providing them with clothes, food, passports, ID cards, and getting them on trains to other safe houses in the line, which ended when they crossed the Pyrenees mountains into Spain. She helped over 100 airmen before she was arrested; then her family and friends continued to run the line, getting 600 more out.

Fernand Dumoulin smuggled several US Airmen to freedom in his truck before he was arrested and executed.

Anne Brusselman was instrumental in saving up to 130 downed airmen.

Martinus Antonius Lelivelt built false walls in his house to hide airmen, then taught them to blend in with the locals in case they were seen; eat with the knife in your right hand and fork in your left; don't place food on the back of the fork (a British trait), sip gin instead of gulping it . . . there were so many ways to give yourself away. All of the guys he helped got out safely, but Martinus was eventually arrested and executed.

In the "Prisoner of War" section I learned that POWs would have starved without Red Cross packages. #10 was the most popular package because it included cheese, chocolate, sugar, corned beef, powered milk, jam, canned meat, prunes and, of course, cigarettes.

And there was a small story about POWs being killed by civilians. I wanted to find out more about that, but there weren't any specific details. It took some research but eventually I decided this referred to the Russelsheim massacre, when a mob killed 6 POWs who they (mistakenly) thought were the guys who had bombed their town the day before. Here is a site with some of the facts, plus info about the Memorial that the town recently built to honor the dead pilots.

Best story: Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler found a badly-damanged B17 that was managing to stay air-borne. He was ready to blow it up when he saw the occupants - some guys trying to save the life of their buddy. And he just couldn’t pull the trigger. He signaled to them to surrender but when they refused, he let them go. Of course, he would have been court marshaled if that got out so he didn’t tell anyone. In 1990 one of the guys from the B17 finally discovered who he was. According to Franz’s statement, “The B17 was like a sieve and there was blood everywhere; I could see the crew was having a terrible time dealing with their wounded and struggling to stay in the air. I was amazed that the aircraft could fly. I thought to myself, how can I shoot something like that? I cannot kill these half dead people. I saw badly wounded and defenseless MEN on board, rather than just the AIRPLANE, which was our normal target. It was one thing to shoot at an airplane, but in this case I saw the men. I just couldn’t do it.” Franz eventually met the B17 airman who had searched for him and they became good friends. And - no kidding - the B17 airman's name was Charlie Brown. Wouldn’t Snoopy be happy?

Second best story: Over the Netherlands Sergeant Tyre Weaver Jr. was terribly wounded when a shell severed his arm. His buddies dressed the wound the best they could, but it was clear he would not live without medical help, nor would he survive the long trip home. He pointed to the airplane hatchway with his remaining arm. They knew what he meant and knew he was right. They checked his parachute, put the cord in his good hand, and he pushed out through the hatch. The plane made it home but everyone wondered what happened to Weaver.

When Weaver hit the ground, a little girl ran up to him and helped him out of his parachute. She gave him a drink of water, then called for her family, who made a stretcher from his parachute and carried him to their house. Very soon a German officer showed up and got him to a hospital. He spent some time as a prisoner, but he lived. 25 years later he searched for that little girl, who was now a Dutch housewife named Hetty Weistenhoff. It's a great story because it was illegal to help downed pilots, but everyone in this story prioritized the man before the politics.

Odd story: Ben Kuroki was the only Japanese-American in the Air Force to serve in the Pacific in WWII. He did a great job and was awarded a lot of medals, including three Distinguished Flying Crosses. The odd part is that while he was in the U.S. recovering from an injury, he was sent to some Japanese-American internment camps to encourage guys there to enlist. Not sure how those conversations went.

The museum has a couple of rooms filled with beautiful paintings by amateur artists, and some of those paintings told stories, too. Like Forrest Vosler, who was almost blinded from blood in his eyes but still managed to send radio distress signals as his B17 went down. When it ditched in the North Sea, he held the wounded gunner out of the water until he could be put into a dinghy.

And there’s a famous photo of a B17 in the 414th Squadron which was struck by an enemy plane. Not shot - struck. The other plane crashed into the fuselage of the B17 and split the heck out of the tail section. It looked like someone sliced through it longways, but oddly enough it not only stayed on, it held together in basically the right shape. The crew worked like crazy to keep what was left of the plane together while the pilot flew to friendly territory. After it landed the all experts looked at it and said “A plane hit like that can’t fly!” And then the whole tail section fell off onto the pavement.

The museum has added a section for WASPs. The government didn't come up with the WASP idea, of course; they didn't believe women could do the job. But women pilots campaigned hard, saying they could “free a man to fight”. And they really wanted in; once they got the OK, over 25,000 women applied. 1,830 were accepted for a 6 month training course. After they graduated, since they were not allowed to fly combat missions, they delivered supplies and planes where needed and flew as target pilots, which meant towing a target behind them for anti-aircraft and gunners to shoot at.

It turns out that WASPs were technically civilians. They didn't have real uniforms at the start so they used too-large Army surplus; they just rolled up the cuffs, belted the waist and called them "Zoot Suit" uniforms. That’s funny, but what’s not funny is the fact that when 38 WASPs died in the the line of duty, the government would not pay to ship their "civillian" coffins home. And Janet Bragg, the first African American woman with a commercial pilot license, wasn’t allowed to be a WASP because of her race. Gosh, people were stupid then.

But for those who became WASPs, this was what they lived for. The group flew over 60 million miles and did much more than expected.