>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Harper Dalvin on Tuesday,
March 21st, 2017,
at the Sturgis Library at Kennesaw State University.
And Mr. Dalvin, do you agree to this interview?
>> Sure. I do.
>> Well, thank you so much. I appreciate
you sitting down with me.
So what is your full name?
>> Harper Lean Dalvin.
>> And what's your birthday?
>> 12/3/23.
>> And where were you born, Mr. Dalvin?
>> Atlanta, Georgia.
>> Tell me about Atlanta in your childhood.
>> Well, it was a city of 240,000 people,
which was very small.
I went at 10th Street, Grammar School.
I went to Hopkins Mid School.
I went to Boys High School for
senior and graduated from Boys high school,
sometime about 1944 or 45,
and I lived about 20 blocks from the school,
but I had an automobile which was a rarity in that time,
and I drove it to school every day,
and I was a banker for the school.
I went to the bank every day.
I worked in the cafeteria.
Well, I wasn't on the football team,
but I worked for the football team.
I was on a fencing team.
I was on the boxing team,
and had a job as a manager advertising for the newspaper.
And all of these things gave
me a great deal of
experience that I've used all of my life.
So it was a great time to grow up.
And Atlanta was a great city at that time.
>> And why did you have all those jobs?
>> Beg your pardon.
>> Why did you have all those jobs?
>> I just like to do them, stay busy. [LAUGHTER]
>> And how is it possible
for you to have a car at that time?
>> Well, my father was
a used car dealer and I
had full with cars all of my life,
and I was 16,
which you could drive at 16.
So I had bought a car.
I also had a business.
I ran a cracker machine that you found in
your department stores and
service entrances to a lot of office buildings,
that had crackers and things in it.
And they were National Biscuit Company of crackers,
and I had 20 of those machines all over Atlanta,
and I service them twice a week,
which gave me some extra income,
which I needed it.
[LAUGHTER] But it was great to grow up in Atlanta,
and I've always appreciated.
I graduated from Boys High School,
had a scholarship to the University of Georgia,
went down and spent about two weeks there.
And Uncle Sam already
had enlisted my hat for World War 2.
So I went into the service in 1942,
real early, and I stayed in for four years.
>> I want to step back just a second,
and ask you what were your parents' names?
>> Lean Dalvin, and Lila Dalvin.
>> And you said your father was in the used car business?
>> That's correct.
>> Did your mother work outside of the home?
>> No. Never.
>> And did you have any siblings?
>> No.
>> So can you describe your childhood home?
> We lived on McLean Avenue,
which was right off from Hallam Avenue,
between [inaudible] and near Boulevard,
and I had a very happy childhood.
We lived in a house that my father bought for $4,500.
And when he sold it,
it was about 250,000.
So the prices in Atlanta
had gone up that much in that short of time.
And my whole existence
was either in the neighborhood or in the school.
It was about six miles between Boys
High and Girls High and I
made that trip a couple of times a week. [LAUGHTER]
>> Why did you make that trip?
>> To pick up my girlfriend.
[LAUGHTER] But those were good times.
And I was drafted
into the service as most people were in that time.
And I went to Keesler Field,
Mississippi for basic training.
Then I went to Amarillo,
Texas, where I learned aircraft mechanics.
By the way, the reason I got into Air Corps,
is when I went to Fort McPherson to be inducted,
one of the people there who was interviewing and
sending people to their perspective places,
was a good friend of mine's father.
So he asked me
what branch of the service I would like to be in,
and I told the Air Corps.
So he just wrote Air Corps,
and that was the beginning.
I stayed in the Air Corps the entire time.
>> Why did you want to go in the Air Corps?
>> It was cleaner,
[LAUGHTER] it had more chance for advancement.
It was more exciting job.
So it wasn't much of a choice for me.
I didn't want to go to the Navy.
That would have been my second choice,
but I certainly didn't want to go there.
And the infantry didn't offer anything for me.
So this was a logical conclusion
just to go to the Air Force.
>> What do you mean by cleaner?
>> Well, you came home and slept at night.
You didn't sleep out under a tent,
you didn't trudge into mud.
You went off on your mission,
you flew back home and you had
a place to sleep, nice barracks.
So it was just a whole different type program.
>> So I want to talk about the years before Pearl Harbor.
Did you have any sense that
the United States would be going into that war?
Did you expect to serve?
>> I was in Sunday school,
on a Sunday morning when,
the war was declared,
and it was almost a sure thing
it would be going into the service.
I was in a class of boys about probably 40 people,
and at least 20 of them died in the service.
So it was a good and bad time,
because we didn't know what to expect,
but the ones I would survive had done very well, I think.
>> So how did you get word that you were drafted?
>> It came in the mail,
"Your friends and neighbors have
selected you to be in the armed services.
Report to Fort McPherson."
>> And how did you feel about that?
>> That was fine. We expected to go.
There wasn't any question about that.
If you were in good health and had the right mind,
you were expected to go into the service.
>> Well, tell me about Fort McPherson.
That was boot camp?
>> No, that was just an induction center.
>> I see. And then
you transferred from there to boot camp?
>> Yes. Keith Lafiel, Mississippi.
>> Can you describe training at boot camp?
>> Oh, boy. Well, first we got
there and they had not prepared for our coming.
We stood out in the rain
from right after breakfast which was done in
a tent with a mishold contraction that we ate out
of and we stood in the rain
all day long and finally
about four o'clock in the afternoon,
they said, "We have a place cleared off for
you," and they give you a tent.
It took about four people to carry this tent,
but six people slept in it.
We got out to the place they had
cleared off and there was
one spot up next to a paved road
that I chose for my tent.
So we set up the tent there.
We had little cots that we put in the tent.
We tied all of our clothes up on the tent pole in
the middle and we
were so tired we fell asleep right away.
Sometimes about four o'clock
in the morning, we were awakened.
All of the tents below me were below water
so we were the only dry tent in that whole place.
And we had about half of our 1,500 men;
we had half of them that went to
the hospital within a day or two so that
left only a half
of the amount that was supposed to be serving.
So we had our basic training
with only about a half of the crew.
And I came out of PFC which is
lowest rank you can get
but it was exciting because I didn't have any trouble.
>> What sort of routines did they put you through?
>> Well, first we had calisthenics
every day and they lasted about an hour,
hour and a half.
Then they would have a running time.
We started off running
and I was the last one in the pack I think.
They ran about 400,
500 yards and I wasn't quite up to that.
But within two weeks,
I was running at the front
of the line instead of at the back of
the line and we ran six miles a day every day.
That was just part of
your training and getting you in shape.
You had no time off at all.
You could not leave the base at any time.
And we hadn't been
paid so we didn't have any money either.
So you just stayed in the barracks
and wrote letters and told
the people at home you were doing
great but it was exciting time.
It lasted about three months and from there,
I left and went to Amarillo,
Texas which was a school to teach aircraft repair and I
enjoyed that very much because I had worked
on automobiles all my life
and they had the same kind
of tools and the same opportunities to work on.
And that school lasted about four months.
And for those who passed it came
out as a buck sergeant which is
a three striper so
I was one of the few that made it out in time,
but it was good training.
>> Did you have a choice about
going to this mechanics school?
>> Yes. They gave you
an aptitude test and I scored real high on it,
so they recommended that I
go and I had already decided to anyhow.
So I enjoyed the school and I enjoyed working there.
The only trouble was it served three times a day.
They had eight hours
starting at eight o'clock in the morning.
They had one that started in
the early afternoon and then
had one that started at night.
And while you were there,
you went through the school at all three of
those times and it was went from
cold weather down to 110 degrees so it was awfully hot,
but I could stand up in front
of the bench that we were working on
something and go to sleep almost.
It was trying times but good time.
>> And what did you have to learn
there to complete your training?
>> Well, you had to learn how to
assemble and disassemble engines mostly of airplanes.
They had a Wright cyclone engine
1,200 horsepower and not
only did you learned to assemble it,
you could probably do it in the dark
after you did it about 10 times.
It was a 12 cylinder engine,
had spark plugs on either side of the engine,
and it had a little thing
under the wing that pulled more air through
it that gave it more horse power.
So actually instead of the 1,200 you'd come up
to about 1,300 horse power.
When I got to flying a few B24s,
B17s and they both had four of these engines,
so I was well acquainted with them.
>> So you said you were there four months?
>> Something like that. Yes.
>> And then where did you go from there?
>> Las Vegas, Nevada.
That was aircraft gun range school.
It lasted probably at least four months, maybe five.
There you learned everything
about the aircraft sitting on the ground,
and you learned how to shoot machine guns.
You learned how to pack parachutes.
You learned how you were supposed to jump
out of a plane with a parachute.
You learned to shoot at targets who
were told by another plane.
>> Okay. We may stop again to bring him back in,
but I wanted to pick up on Las Vegas.
You was talking about the school
there was to train you on hacking
parachutes and manning the guns, that thing.
>> Yeah. Airplane recognition,
which they have a little machine that
flashed a picture of the aircraft on the screen,
and you were supposed to identify it.
And they started off at about a half a second,
got down to two tenths of a second.
And you're supposed to recognize every one of
these airplanes, foreign and domestic.
The enemy planes is what you were more interested in.
And that was interesting.
The last week of gunnery school,
they had a plane that told a target,
and it flew level with the plane that you were in
and you shot the machine guns at the target.
They had bullets that had different colors on them.
And if one of your bullets,
or a lot of them hit the target,
they could tell who had shot it when they
got back to the to the base.
So this lasted for a week.
It was out of Las Vegas out at Indian Springs,
which was a air base within
itself about 30 miles out of Las Vegas.
It's still there, by the way.
And it was an exciting time
because you were actually participating in something.
You also learned to shoot on a skip range
which you had stations all around it
and you had two houses where
the little clay pigeons
would come out and you would shoot at them with a rifle.
And then also had that you could ride in the back
of a truck and you
would sit down so that your arms were
free and as you rolled down somewhere,
they'd have these birds come out,
you would try to shoot them when they came out.
You never did know where they were coming from.
So that was exciting.
But the weeks there were great.
>> So all of these times, though,
you were not in a plane,
you were still on the ground?
>> Except for the last week.
The last week in school,
you were flying every day.
>> Okay. And it was to
train to fill any position on a plane?
>> All of them. You learned to be
the the top turt operator,
the lower turt, the tail gunner,
the two side gunners,
and one of them in the nose.
So you had to learn every position.
You had to learn how to transfer fuel on the plane.
You had to learn not to hit your own plane sometimes.
But that last week was the most important.
And I probably enjoyed that more
than I did any other part of gunnery training.
>> And did you go on to Fort Myers, Florida?
>> I went to Fort Myers.
That was advanced training,
some of the same type training,
but it was a little more advanced, a little deeper.
Then I went to Laredo Texas for the same type training.
And that was even more advanced.
And then I went back to Las Vegas as an instructor.
So I had finished all of
the courses and went back to Las Vegas as
an instructor at that time
because I knew more than
about 95% of the other instructors out there.
>> Well, did you have the expectation that
you would go overseas at some point?
>> Well, we were preordained to
go overseas as soon as we had enough training.
And before going, we went to Greensboro, North Carolina,
which is a base to tell you survival tactics.
They had a big tower out in the middle of a lake
and you had to jump off of
the tower with your clothes on,
take off your clothes,
fill them up with air and float
for half an hour, at least,
which was great training in
case your boat was sunk or something.
You could you could stay afloat for a period of time.
You could stay afloat forever if you'd keep
your clothes wet so that the air would stay in it.
But that was exciting.
You had to learn
to crawl on the ground
because they had guns shooting up above your head.
So that was additional training.
You had to learn all of the smaller guns that they had.
Most of them were
automatic rifles and you had to learn how to load them.
You had to learn how to take them apart,
put them back together
in the dark and not ever looking at them.
They had a little thing that would tell
you how much space you had to
use between where the barrel was
and the hammer behind it.
And if it was too little,
the gun would hang up.
If it was too loose,
you're leveled to get some spray
back from the bullet that shot.
So I carried one of
those things for 20 years after I got out of the service.
Just a reminder.
>> So when did you ship out?
Doesn't have to be an exact date.
You remember around what time that was?
>> Yes. It was real early '42.
>> And where did you ship out from?
>> Well, I'll have to tell you about that.
Shipped out from New York.
Went on the Queen Mary across the ocean.
The Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden,
and their party had a whole floor on this plane.
And the boat was divided into half.
If you lived on the front half,
you couldn't go to the back half,
and the back half couldn't go to the front.
So every day, about 3 hours a day,
I would go out and climb
the netting up in the front of the ship.
And I would just sit there and watch.
They had patrol boats that patrolled it along the front
of the Queen Mary just to be
sure there are no submarine attacks.
And of course, it would go faster than the ship.
So they gradually lost ground
until they were so far
behind you couldn't see it anymore.
But I would sit there every day.
Nobody ever said one thing about why are you out here?
But it was exciting just sitting there, watching them.
And I got over to Scotland.
We landed in Scotland
and we were getting ready to get off of the plane
and get onto a boat that we take you to the shore and
Winston Churchill came in
and I happened to be the first one to see him.
So I called attention and we had
about probably 75 people in
this little group getting ready to go
out and he made a short speech.
He was closer to me than you are and that was exciting
because he actually saved Great Britain.
There's no doubt about it.
He put every man, woman,
and child to work over there
and was very successful in doing so.
And he gave us his old victory sign.
And that's something I'll never
forget because he was a great man.
In fact, years later,
I went to the cemetery where he was buried.
He didn't want to be buried in
Westminster Abbey where
most important people were buried,
but he was buried in his little country cemetery.
So that was an experience.
>> So it was very safe to travel on
that ship because it had the prime minister on board.
>> That's correct.
>> So you said you landed in Scotland?
>> I landed in Scotland.
Everybody got off the plane and everybody had
a certain place to put
their luggage that were going to the same place.
I got the assignment of watching the luggage.
That was my job after I got on land
there and they had
tenders that would take us over to the shore.
And they had piles of luggage.
Everybody had at least two different bags,
just a duffel bag,
just stuff stuff in.
And then something that looked like
a suitcase, was the other one.
They had big stacks of these things out there.
And one by one,
they would come and haul off till finally,
there was two little bags
left on the dock, and that was mine.
So that took a full day to do that.
And they had given us railroad tickets
and they picked me up in a truck and my two little bags,
and we rode to the railway station and I got on the plane
and had to transfer
one time to get to the base that I was going to.
And it was a little town called
Tibenham which is South of Norwich about 45,
maybe 50 miles out in the middle of nowhere.
They had a train station and a pub.
That was a town, nothing else.
So I got there and I went
out to the base when nobody there to pick me up,
went in the way to call a vase.
So I drag these two bags till I got to the camp,
and they didn't even
know I was coming to tell you the truth.
But the CEO looked at my recommendations and said,
I see you're aircraft mechanic and I said, yes, I was.
He says, we lost four planes last night.
We had about four more that are damaged.
I'm going to give you one of them,
and all the help you need,
but we need to get it flying in about four days.
So we were off of operations.
I went out and I picked out a plane.
It had more holes in it and I sealed it,
this flack had gone through it.
And I said, how in the world,
I stop all of these holes.
Then my used car business came in.
I mixed up the same type stuff that
you would if you were fixing
a cough that had a vent place in
it and I stopped up all of these holes on the plane.
That was well and good,
except the first flight you went
on about a third of them would pop out.
So we had to learn a little bit better than that.
We had some that you could
cut a piece of metal off of the plane.
Put a screw in the middle that expanded and tighten
up on that screw and a piece of metal would hold it flat.
But you couldn't glue in the metal on it.
It would fly off the first time it got
cold and and then got warm,
it would get loose and come off.
So it took about four days to ever get the plane.
So it might even fly.
I had experience later.
When I got ready to leave England,
they assigned me to fly home on that thing.
So we changed the name of it.
It was something like the
Swedish Rose of Texas and we changed it
to patches which was a very appropriate name in it.
It had 104 holes in it.
>> Wow. So you flew
home on the same plane that you were initially repairing?
>> Yeah. That's correct.
>> Wow.
>> Didn't get home only though.
>> Didn't quite make it?
>> I'll tell you about that later.
>> So you said you were in Tibenham?
>> Yeah.
>> And what were your living conditions there?
>> Well, as I said,
they wasn't expecting me when I first moved in.
They put me in the barracks with
a bunch of bakers and cooks.
I thought that was terrible,
but it turned out to be one of
the best things that ever happened to me.
I stayed in that barracks for about a good 6-8 weeks.
A lot of the cooks and
bakers could really not read and write.
I read their letters to them,
I wrote letters from them.
So anytime I needed anything in the mess hall,
all I had to do was walk in open arms.
They were ready to give me anything I needed.
So that was a great thing that happened.
The mess hall and the barracks that
people lived in was in this part of the camp.
It was about a mile almost up to
the flight line and
I moved up to the flight line inside of
it hanger that had all of the gunnery material in
it that we taught
because still when some of them got overseas,
they still didn't know enough to take a flight.
And I flew the first flight with
every new crew that came in as long as I was over there.
>> How did they designate you to do that?
>> Well, in the gunnery school,
I was the only one who had done any flying at all.
The rest of them, all
of their training had been on the ground,
but mine had been in the air a lot of times.
So I was an automatic person to do these things.
And I got to know every new crew,
every new officer for the whole time I was there.
In fact, when I moved up to the hangar, the CQ,
charge of quarters, I would be the first one he'd wake
up every morning and I went
to the briefing every morning.
Learn where they were going,
how they were going to get there,
and the time expected to make the trip.
So I was one of the most informed people on
the airbase just because of the position I was in.
>> Did you ever go off of the base,
go into a town?
>> No. There wasn't any town close
by that pub outside wasn't any use going now.
And I never did leave the base as long as I was there.
>> What was the distance to London?
>> For another town?
>> Or to Norwich or to London,
a bigger town, a town of size?
>> Norwich was a big town.
It was as I said,
35, 40 miles to it.
London was about 80-90 miles South.
So you couldn't get any time off anyhow.
You were either flying or do something every day.
We set up skip range else.
We did training for
the crews and this kept them occupied,
more than anything else,
but they got better as time went on.
>> And how frequently were new soldiers coming there?
>> As Tunis we needed a new crew.
They were required to fly 25 missions,
and then they could go
be transferred back if they wanted to.
Some of them stayed longer than that.
I was in a position that
if one of the crew had something wrong,
appendicitis, tonsillitis, somewhere they couldn't fly,
I would fly in their place for that one mission.
And funny thing happened.
When they got back from a flight,
you had a debriefing.
They would ask you questions and you
answered them about what you saw and did on the flight.
As I was taking off my fur lined boot,
I noted blood was dripping out of it,
and there was a piece of flag in it.
Well, they said you're going to get a purple heart.
The only trouble is you're not here.
You were flying for somebody else today.
So about 10 days later,
I saw somebody get
a purple heart that I was supposed to get.
[LAUGHTER] So that was exciting too,
but nobody cared about it.
It was just a joke almost.
>> So how many missions did you fly?
>> Officially 13 or 14,
unofficially about 30, probably.
>> And what were you doing on these missions?
Where were you flying?
>> Well, I started out
the CEO of the field would have to
fly to get his flight time in.
And I would fly with him.
And then when I did that,
I flew as an engineer which stands
between the pilot and the copilot and I'll take off.
But in the regular mission,
I could shoot any gun on the ship.
So I went along
just to watch the others do more than anything else.
In fact, by the time that the war was over,
coming down to nothing,
they changed my MOOS from
a gun instructor to a flight observer,
which is 938 was
a number that was given to a flight observer.
And then we started making pictures
through a camera that was in the bottom of the plane,
showing where the bombs had dropped.
You could see where they
hit and how much damage they did.
So every mission you went on, you got back,
you tell him what you saw,
what you did, what plane went down in your group.
If you hit an enemy plane.
When enemy plane was shot down,
you'd have nine people claiming they hit it.
[LAUGHTER] That was always exciting.
>> And what were your targets?
>> Cologne, Koblenz, Dusseldorf, Berlin,
Scandinavian countries,
whatever needed to be hit that day.
>> Was it rail lines or factories?
>> Most of the time,
we were trying to keep them from moving stuff from
a factory to somewhere else.
So they would be marshalling yards
where trains were filling
up with supplies to take somewhere.
That was our target.
We went back to some target five or
six or seven times days in a row.
And the reason for that is we didn't get
it all cleared out and they came
in and they build it back in
one day and start moving stuff again.
So we'd bomb it again.
And this was just keeping
them from moving stuff from one place to another.
And also the flag,
they were shooting anti-aircraft guns at us
and we could report where we saw anti-aircraft fly,
and then we could bomb that place,
which we did a lot of times.
>> Well, you said you had
gotten a piece of flag in your boot.
>> Yeah.
>> How often did you face the anti-aircraft fire?
And did you ever encounter enemy planes?
>> Well, we had one plane coming back from
a mission that we
have one outboard motor
that was still running and one inboard.
They won't fly very good like that.
So the pilot said, keep watch.
We want to know when we get over the English channel,
we were coming back.
So as soon as we got over the English channel,
I saw sticking through the clouds a church depot.
I told him we were already too low.
So they pushed the Indians
up as fast as they would go and he said,
we're going to lose altitude anyhow.
So he goes down and goes out over the channel again.
And as he looked over to the bank,
I was up in the front,
then I could see it too.
There was one of these amphibious bases
where they would keep
the amphibious craft in
the hanger and they'd come out
and roll them in the water and they could take off.
They had the skis
on the bottom of the plane so they could take off.
So he turns this plane,
this big 24 and hits a runway there,
and only trouble is
a runway don't last for about 150 yards.
And then we went out through
the woods with the rest of the plane.
[LAUGHTER] And that was
the only plane that I didn't get back on,
but all of the rest of the flights
were pretty well routine.
>> And that was a B-24?
>> B-24.
>> What all types of planes did you fly?
>> Well, my earliest training was on B-17s.
And the B-24 were
the only ones I flew in the service time.
>> So were you stationed in England
throughout your entire time in Europe?
>> Yes.
>> And if you could just give me
a typical day when you would be
flying on one of these missions from when you got up,
how did you hear what you were going to do?
How were you anticipating it?
What did you have for breakfast? That thing.
>> Well, as I said to CQ,
who was a person who
woke everybody up that was going to fly.
He would come in and he'd wake up
these people because he knew exactly where they slept.
The rest of the barracks
didn't have to even know anything was
going on and they'd get
up and dress and go to the mess hall.
And I would be one too.
They'd wake me up early and I'd go to
the mess hall and come back up and they had a briefing.
They would tell you where you were going.
Or what your target was,
what you were expected to accomplish,
how long it would take,
how much ground fire you'd have.
If you would have any fighter planes
that might be up to chase you,
they would give you all of the particulars that they had.
And so if you knew where you were going,
this would be before daylight.
Then you would go and if you were a gunner,
you'd get your gun out which had been
taken out of the plane the night before,
all of the bullets were taken out.
They were in a case about like
this and you'd go out to the plane,
you'd place the gun on its mount.
You would put it together,
make sure it was together correctly.
You would insert your cartridges,
you'd make sure everything was working correctly.
There you stayed until you got
your briefing over and everybody else was ready to go.
Then there'd be planes taking off.
Each group had about 24 planes that flew in a formation,
and there'd be 10 groups of other airfields close by.
So that would be 250 planes in the air at one time,
and they'd have to get up and get in formation.
And then you could start
across the English channel and go to your target.
A lot of new crews,
and this is the reason I flew new crews a lot of time.
You'd get up in the air and
the suction of the plane would siphon
the gas out of the top of the tank,
and it would catch on fire
because the engine was right up in front of it.
So it would catch on fire and burn.
The pilot want to turn
around and go back because he said,
hey, we can't fly like this.
Don't worry about it.
It'll go out in about five minutes.
They didn't believe you, but they sit there and watch it.
About five minutes later, no fire.
But every new crew had to go through that experience,
and that was exciting.
And when you were on a mission,
if a plane got shot down,
you'd tell them what plane it was?
Why it was shot down?
Did you see any parachutes come out?
If you did, how many?
This was a debriefing that you
got at the end of every mission,
and it kept people informed on what was going on.
A lot of times they had people on the ground who
could save some of these people that bailed out.
Otherwise, it'd be captured and put into prison.
But they had undercover people
who would bring them back to shore.
I never did see any of them come back to our base,
but there were plenty of them that were saved that way.
>> Were you ever fearful?
>> Scared. Let's see.
Maybe once or twice a little bit.
You know what these planes
could take and what they couldn't.
And if one number
was doing more than they were supposed to,
you became a little fearful of that.
Just like when I was talking about landing on
that over the channel and
going into the little short runway.
That was fearful.
You didn't know whether you're going to make it or not.
You don't know how many trees
are out there in the back of it.
But it was a better than trying to land in the water.
These planes don't float.
If you landed into the English channel,
that ship would sink in a hurry.
So your chances of getting out were very poor.
>> What did it sound like on board?
>> Noisy. You you wore earphones.
You had a oxygen mask that went around your face.
You could tell everybody that flew every day
by the markings on a place where
they were blistered they
gave you some K rations or something to eat,
which was better than nothing,
but not a whole lot better.
But it was just part of the routine.
You got used to it.
It didn't bother anymore.
>> I know most of the people were new crews,
but were there people that you grew to be friends
with that you were working with for a long time ever?
>> Well, the crews lived in a place by their self.
Everybody else lived somewhere else.
I was more friendly with the cooks and
the bakers and my little group in
the ground gunnery school
and there was anybody else there.
But I knew everybody because
I saw him at briefing every day.
I saw him when we ate breakfast,
I saw him when we ate dinner.
So I knew most everybody there.
It was rare to find somebody I didn't know.
And every new crew that came
in had to go through gunnerny school before they
went on the first mission and usually had to
go through school again after
they got back from the first mission
because we found out what they didn't
know and we could
we could teach them again how to
do something that they were doing wrong.
So that was exciting time.
>> And how did you keep up with news of the war?
>> British broadcasting system
was operating all the time.
We had a scrawny little radio that we kept in
our barracks hanger and we could listen to that.
Long about this time,
they had a lot of buzz bombs coming loose.
The Germans had perfected
these bombs that would run for a certain distance.
And when they ran out of gas, they would crash.
And if they happened to be somewhere important,
they would crash and do some damage,
but most of them fell
where didn't make a bit of difference.
But it was easy to keep up.
And in your briefing,
you got briefings on what was going
on which happened every morning before flight.
>> Well, I know you saw Churchill,
did you see any other famous people at that point?
>> Anthony Eden was there.
Churchill just outshine so many people.
You could pick him out in the crowd
and he actually saved Great Britain.
There's no question about that.
His famous speech will fight on the land on the sea,
but we won't give up.
>> Inspiring.
>> Yeah. Very much so.
And I went into
a theater on the only trip I made into London.
And in this theater when Churchill came on,
a lot of people booed him.
And I couldn't understand that.
And I found out that he had sent women into the service.
They were for the Navy.
They did the cooking and the
serving in cafeterias and things.
They did the book work,
they they did the laundry work,
they did anything and the men did all of the fighting.
And the trip I made to
London I was actually going up to
the northern part of England,
up to Blackpool and I
got to fly on a mission up there and Lancaster,
which they flew at night.
And that was the first time I found out that
the Lancaster wasn't made out of metal.
The wings and all made out of
stuff that they used to make
planes out of many years ago.
Just a real thick tar polian type thing
that was varnished so many times.
But that thing would go out there
and I'd go down the runway it
looked like a bird jump up in the air and fly.
But it would carry twice the bomb load
that the American planes would
carry and they bombed at
night and they bombed Pacific targets,
but they didn't have any way of
knowing whether they hit them or not.
So a lot of the bombs
didn't hit anything that amounted to anything.
But that was exciting time.
>> So did you have contact with
your family and friends back in the United States?
>> Just by mail.
We got free mail during that time
and kept up with
pretty good correspondence back and forth.
Of course, a letter might
be two weeks old when they got it,
but that was better than not getting it at all
but you didn't have time too much to worry about things.
You stayed busy all the time.
>> So let's talk about when you
got word that you would be going home.
>> Well, in the first place,
we were planning on going to the Pacific and they
wanted everything packed up
and ready to go in a big hurry.
So the group got busy
doing all of these things
and putting everything together.
And as a plane would get loaded, so to speak,
they would put so many crews on
there and take off and they would
fly to Edinburgh or Scotland,
just to see if the plane was going
to fly like it supposed to.
Well, when they got down to the last two planes,
all of our pilots and copilots had gone.
So we got pilot and
a copilot from another group and it came over.
And I walked out.
I was supposed to be one of the last ones to leave.
I crawled up in the plane and looked at him.
I didn't know either one of them.
And I went back in the back and I walked
back to the front and I said,
captain, this thing is not going to fly.
He said, what do you mean it's not going to fly?
I said, it's not loaded right.
It's not going to fly.
He says, you have anything to do
with loading this plane? I said, no, sir.
He says, well, I suggest that you get back
there and sit down and we'll worry about that.
I said, yes, sir,
but it ain't going to fly.
And I walked on back.
He said to the copilot,
get that smart ass sergeant's name.
I'll put him on report when we get to Shannon.
So I went back and sat down.
So we cranked up,
got on the runway and started off.
A B-24 has the wheels here,
nose wheel up in front.
This thing starts to take off and as it
goes down and drags on the runway for about 100 yards,
sparks just flying everywhere,
just making an all solid racket.
And the copilot comes
back and says the captain wants to see you.
I go up and he said,
can you make this plane fly?
And I said, yes, sir.
I reach over and push
the full throttles all the way forward.
He says, you're going to burn up an engine.
I said, and you're going to fall out of the sky.
So I went back and I got everybody's duffel bag,
put it into Bombay,
sent people up to the nose,
sent people to the radio room,
sent people up to the bowl walk right on the back where
the bomb load is.
Got everybody off the back,
went up and said, it'll fly now.
Well, we flew to Iceland.
I knew when that thing hit Iceland
I wasn't going to fly anymore.
They grounded it when it got there.
So as soon as I got to Iceland,
I caught up with another plane.
I said, you got room for one more passenger?
They said, sure.
So I changed plane.
That was Patches.
That was a plane that I
had started with when I first got there.
>> So this was three or four years later by that time?
>> Yes. Right.
>> Our group had over 200 missions.
I was there for the 100th mission that they flew.
They had something they put on you,
air metal or something,
or star or something.
I don't know what it was.
But I was there for the 200th mission.
I think they finally ended up with about 218 missions,
which were one of the longest ones
of any group over there.
>> And you were part of the eighth Airforce?
>> Yes, 445th bomb group.
>> So I want to backtrack just for a second.
Do you have memories of VE Day?
>> What's that?
>> Do you have memories of VE Day?
>> Yeah. I was on the way over there.
You mean the Victory Day?
>> Yes.
>> Yes, I have a lot of it.
[LAUGHTER] We were all
set for mission that day and it was scrubbed, of course.
But there were a lot of places in Europe that
didn't know that VE Day had taken place.
And honestly, there was probably a lot of people killed
on that day before the message got to everybody.
But I remember it well.
>> You said you flew to Iceland?
>> Yes.
>> And then you flew back to the United States?
>> Yeah. On a different plane.
>> And where did you land there?
>> In Iceland?
>> No. Back in the United States.
>> Boston. [LAUGHTER] We went to Iceland a few years ago.
The only town in Iceland really is Reykjavik,
and the air base was up on
the plateau and the ocean was way down here.
When you got off of the plane,
they had a coach you had to put on it.
You had only about this much vision
because it was 30 degrees below zero.
And that's what it was 30,000 feet was 30 below zero.
So you didn't want to breathe that air.
It could hurt your lungs.
>> Well, back in the United States,
how much longer were you in the service?
>> Seven, eight months.
>> And where did you spend that time?
>> Charleston, South Carolina.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Doing what?
>> They assigned me to a air cargo base.
And they put me
in a place that gave
tools to new mechanics that were coming in.
I was a tech sergeant then and I lived off of the base.
I would just drive in every morning,
go to the mess hall,
eat breakfast, go up to
the place there wasn't anybody coming to get tools.
I'd get in my car, go back home.
[LAUGHTER] Did nothing for the last month at least.
>> And when were you discharged?
>> '46, probably early February.
>> Well, how did it feel to be out of
the military after all that time?
>> I was ready. [LAUGHTER]
>> And what were your plans?
>> I was going into used cars business.
>> So tell me about getting into that business,
that your father was in.
>> Well, I had bought and sold cars before I went in.
In fact, when I went in the military,
I had three or four cars that he sold for me.
So I even bought a house trailer down
in South Carolina and
towed it back to Atlanta to make an office.
So I was determined to be in the used car business,
but I was also determined not to
be in the used car business with my daddy,
because I wouldn't want to ride his co-tail in.
So I went into used car business and I stayed
there for 44 years.
>> And where was your business in Atlanta?
>> I was at 28 Alexander Street,
which is right behind the Medical Arts Building.
And then I bought a piece of property on Bankhead Avenue,
a block from Marietta Street,
and I bought this property and over time,
I bought the whole block that it was on.
>> So you found success in this business clearly?
>> Yes.
>> And could you tell me about your family?
>> I had one boy and one girl.
The girl is the oldest,
and they still live in the area.
I'm close to my daughter,
not quite as close to my son.
He has one son who
is graduating from high school this year.
So he's almost grown.
My daughter has a son,
and he's close to 50 years old now.
>> Really?
>> And he has two children.
So that's about my immediate family.
My wife and I together,
she has three daughters and they have children.
So we're pretty good sized family
when you get down to it.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Well, Mr. Dalvin,
I just want to finish up by asking you what it means to
you to share your experiences in World War II.
>> Well, I'm lucky that
I'm still here and can recall most of them.
Those were exciting times and not being hurt seriously.
They were good times.
I wouldn't take anything for the experience,
but I wouldn't want to do it again.
[LAUGHTER] But it was good to be here and share with you.
>> Thank you very much.
And we will end there.
>> Thank you.