>> So this is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Dick Bailey at
the Sturgis Library at
Kennesaw State University on Monday,
March 20th, 2017.
And Mr. Bailey, do you agree to this interview?
>> I do.
>> Can you hear me?
>> I can hear you.
>> So Mr. Bailey, could you state your full name for me?
>> Richard S. Bailey, B-A-I-L-E-Y.
>> Can you tell me what the S stands for?
>> Samuel or Sam.
>> So what's your birthday?
>> 31 July 1922.
>> And where were you born?
>> Upstate, New York,
in a small town called Johnson City,
which is part of the Triple City complex of Binghamton,
Johnson City, and Endicott.
I lived there for the first year of my life,
I'm told and then we
moved to Binghamton and that's
where I grew up and went to high school.
>> So what were your parents' names?
>> My mother's name was Louise.
You want her maiden name?
Feidler, German name,
F-E-I-D-L-E-R, and my father's name was Samuel Bailey.
Unfortunately, that's my last name also.
>> Why do you say unfortunately?
>> Because there's a lot of common ones,
including in England, the Old Bailey Prison.
>> No. That's true. And what
did your parents do for a living?
>> My mother was a housewife and my father worked
for Endicott-Johnson Shoe Manufacturer.
He'd operate a machine
for Endicott-Johnson, making women's shoes.
>> Okay.
And did you have any siblings?
>> I have four sisters, all younger than me.
What was it like to be the oldest child and the only boy?
>> It was difficult. The girls,
my sisters, we all go out along fine,
but they always accused me of being
granted more favors and privileges than they were Okay.
>> Do you think that was true?
>> I don't think so. I don't like to think so.
>> So can you tell me, Mr. Bailey,
how did the Depression
affect your life and your family's life?
>> How did what?
>> How did the Depression affect your life?
>> Have you read The Greatest Generation, the book?
>> By Brokaw?
>> Yeah. Tom Brokaw.
>> I have not.
>> I suggest that you read it.
Anyway, I am a child of the greatest generation,
a child of the depression.
In hindsight, it was difficult.
We were poor, but
everybody else in the neighborhood was poor,
also so we didn't
recognize that as being a factor in our lives.
And at age 13,
I got a paper route in which delivering papers six days a
week for which I got the generous sum.
I had my total quantity of
papers each day was just over 100,
6 days a week, no paper on Sunday.
My delivery payment was
four-fifths of a cent per paper so as a result,
I made a few dollars each week,
which I turned over to my mother
for buying groceries and so on.
Because at the time, my father was
only working two or three days a week.
And then in the morning I got
a job working on a milk truck delivering milk.
We put out 300 quarts of milk.
The driver would pick me up,
we go out to the creamery,
load up the van or the truck,
and go out and deliver.
That was when you delivered milk to people's porch
or to their door in quart bottles.
And so we put out 300 quarts of milk.
And then he'd take me home,
I'd change clothes, have breakfast,
and go to school.
On the other hand, if the weather was bad,
which can be in that part of
New York State and
we were running late because of ice and snow,
he would drop me off directly at school.
And again, I turned
the money that I got over to my mother.
So all the way through high school,
I had both a paper route and worked on the milk truck
and made $10-11 a week,
which was used for buying well,
expenses plus mainly groceries for the family with
my parents and me and my four sisters.
>> So was it necessary for you to work?
>> Well, I guess if we wanted to
eat, it probably contributed.
It helped. Then on Sunday,
since we had no paper. You want to come in here?
>> Yes. Fix your tie. There we go.
>> Okay
>> I'm here to make sure you look the best you can look.
>> Since we had no paper Sunday was,
after I delivered milk,
I went hitchhike down to the local airport.
I'd always been enthusiastic about airplanes.
In fact, Jimmy Doolittle was one of my childhood heroes.
And hanging around the airport,
one of the instructors approached me and said,
" Do you want to work for me,
wiping the planes off,
catching the planes, helping sell rides,
and just doing general handiwork around?"
Says, I can't pay any money,
but I'll give you flying instruction as payment.
So as a result,
I ended up soloing at age 17 and got my solo license.
>> So it was already something you were doing?
>> I'm sorry.
>> Before the war?
>> Yes.
>> So can you tell me what do you
remember of the election of President Roosevelt?
>> Well, after President Hoover,
he was going to help pull us out of
the depression in hindsight and reading about it,
Hoover was probably blamed for
more depression than he was actually responsible for.
But anyway,
the FDR's promises was to pull us out of the depression.
And at the end of his second term,
he felt the need for supporting
Anguin in their battle with Germany.
On the other hand, he was fighting the isolationist,
including Charles A Limburg and
other strong isolationist factors
in history and in Congress.
But they did end up with ˆ [inaudible] sending a lot of
material to Great Britain to support
them prior to our getting involved via Pearl Harbor.
>> But as a teenager,
were you aware of that information?
Did you keep up with that stuff in the news?
>> Yeah.
>> As a teenager?
>> Yes.
>> And I mean,
what was your interest in it?
Why were you interested in world events at that age?
>> Well, since I was part of the world,
a very small part,
I felt it was going to lead to war,
which obviously it did.
And I had thought that
I would like to become an army air corps pilot.
However, at the time,
the requirements for a pilot was a college graduate
and considering our economic status as a family,
there was no chance of my going to college.
After I graduated from high school,
I ended up going with
General Electric Company in Schenectady,
New York, and their toolmaker apprentice course.
And I was there at the time of Pearl Harbor.
In the meantime,
the Air Force or Army or
Corps saw the need for more pilots,
and they lowered the standard requirement from
a college graduate to two years college or equivalent.
So I took the equivalent exam
and I'm not sure what my mark was.
Apparently I passed it okay.
But after I took what
was supposedly the equivalent of two years of college,
I said, is that all they learn in college in two years?
So I was accepted in
the aviation cadet program for pilot training.
>> So I want to go back to
the apprentice course with general electric.
>> Okay.
>> What exactly were you doing in that course?
>> Well, since I had in high school had
taken a course that included machine shop,
I did not have to go through
their familiarization or introduction to machine tools.
They put me directly into one of the tool rooms
to build production tools for the factory.
It is mainly punter's work,
forming dies, cutting dies, and so on.
That's what I was working on using
the various machine tools to create the tools.
As I said, it was a toolmaker apprentice course.
>> And was this in, like, a defense plant?
>> General Electric Company,
they were mainly defense.
They had mini division,
the turban division, transformer division.
They had 40,000 people there
in Schenectady all on defense work.
>> Did you have to wear an ID badge?
>> Yes. Were you
working with a group of people or on your own?
>> Yes. We have four or five of us apprentices.
We're working under the supervision
of a experienced toolmaker,
and we had our own projects,
but if we had
questions or once in a while he would oversee and say,
why don't you do it this way or that way, whatever.
So it was a building/learning experience.
>> How many hours did you work?
>> Various overtime.
The most hours I ever turned in
one week was 48 hours overtime.
And the standard week was
40 hours plus going to school three days a
week after work for two hours classroom work,
cutting speeds and feeds and
metallurgy and allied subjects.
And then I enlisted right after
Pearl Harbor in the Aviation cadet program
and the cadet roles were full at that time.
So they want me to go into the military unassigned.
And even at that age,
I didn't have complete confidence in
the promises that the recruiters were making.
I said, well, what I learn going in on a sign?
Well, you learn military procedures and you learn how
to march up and down and how to salute and so on.
And I said, and well,
until your turn comes up in the Aviation cadet program.
I said, I'm working in a defense industry.
I feel that that would contribute a lot more to
the country and learning how
to salute or do close order drill.
So I declined their offer,
and they finally called me into
the Aviation cadet program in November of '42.
>> So where did you have to go after that?
>> After I was called by the military?
Yes. I was sent
to Nashville, Tennessee for classification.
The cadet program had candidates
for pilots, navigators and bombers.
And on every occasion,
where I could state my preference, I put pilot.
And in Nashville, we went through classification,
physical exam, mental exam,
and additional classes, so on.
And then after that and we were issued
our first ill fitting uniforms and then sent to
Maxwell Field in Alabama for
basic training where we learn engines and
aircraft and meteorology and morse code,
which we never used and
physical heavy emphasis on
physical conditioning and training, exercise, and so on.
That was two months. You want me to keep going?
>> Absolutely.
>> After Maxwell field,
we were sent to in my case, Lakewood,
Florida, for primary where we flew
the PT 17 Stearman biplane.
And that was for two months.
It was a civilian flight school.
Civilian flight instructors.
But they had military check pilots that would do progress
checks on you or if
the instructor recommend you be washed out,
you'd get a check ride from
the army check pilots to either agree
with the recommendation or give the guy
another couple of additional hours
and see if you can pull them through.
And I never mentioned to the instructor
that I had already sold have my solo license.
I didn't want him to think he had a smart kid.
So I never mentioned it,
but I soloed the PT 17 in seven hours and
40 minutes where the recommendation
was at least eight hours of due instruction.
>> Can you explain that to me?
You say seven hours and
40 minutes where they recommended?
>> Of due instruction time.
>> So you didn't quite meet the recommendation?
>> He turned me loose. He soloed me at
seven hours and 40 minutes
rather than going through the full eight hours.
>> Was that because you were clearly skilled?
>> At least in his opinion, I was.
>> I see. Go ahead.
>> So the next two months was in Cortland,
Alabama flying the BT 13 Vultee trainer.
It was commonly called
the Vultee vibrator because when you pulled up to stall,
you get severe vibrating of
the shock mounted instrument panels.
It would really shake.
So it took on the name of the Vultee vibrator.
But it was a good airplane.
All metal, low wing fixed landing area.
And then the next one was to Stuttgart, Arkansas.
I was flying the
AT-10 twin engine Beechcraft for advanced.
That's where we got our commission as
a second lieutenant and our wings.
>> How did it make you feel to receive the wings?
>> Well, that was my whole goal.
And so now, I made it.
I felt happy.
I guess elated would be an overstatement,
but I was most happy that I
had made it through and received my wings.
>> Did you contact your family to tell them?
>> And yeah, I let them know.
>> So was there anything in
your training that you did that
scared you that seemed
like you wouldn't be able to do it?
Is there ever a time that you remember great fear?
>> No. Okay.
>> Did you see things that happen in the accidents?
>> Well, we killed a guy once in a while. Not we.
[LAUGHTER] In a training program
, there's always casualties.
>> Well, what's the reaction from
the other trainees if they see
somebody get injured or accidentally killed?
>> Basically, it was C'est la guerre,
French word, such is war.
>> So you got your wings there in Arkansas.
And where did you go from Arkansas?
>> To Barksdale Field in Louisiana
where I went through B-26 twin-engine bomber transition.
>> Can you describe the B-26 for me?
>> Well, started out with a couple
of nicknames it was given.
Was the hottest airplane in the inventory at the time.
And the original quotes were kind of
broad in which the Air Force air corps
was still the air corps at the time.
Wanted a twin-engine bomber.
They already had the B-17 four long range
strategic bomber and the B-24 strategic bomber.
They wanted a medium bomber.
So it was two engines with the specs
of carry at least 4,000 pounds of bombs,
have a range of 1,000 miles,
and as fast as
or faster than the fighter planes of the day.
So it was a broad open spec for a capable designer.
They had a young designer for
Martin aircraft in Baltimore,
Maryland, named Peyton McGruder that designed it.
Without having to meet the specs,
he designed the B-26,
which as I said, was
the hottest airplane in the inventory at the time.
And he brought about a number of
innovations that later got adopted in general.
Instead of construction by overlapping aluminum,
instead of overlapping them,
he butted them together,
developed a flush rivet to minimize drag.
He went to the automobile industry to
learn about stretch and forming of metal.
And most of the fuselage
was complete wrap around based on what he had picked up
from the automobile industry rather than being built of
a series of smaller pieces
in a patchwork type of construction.
And he picked probably
the best rotary engine at the time.
The Pratt & Whitney R-2800,
2000 horsepower with four bladed propellers on it.
And the top turret
was the original one they had
was made by Spuri it was unsatisfactory.
So he went to General Electric Company in
Schenectady and laid out
what they wanted and worked with them.
I'm interrupting for a minute.
You want me to keep going
and then you can
edit it later, or what do you want to do?
>> Yes, this is fine.
I'm interested in the detail.
>> So he Peyton McGruder,
got on an airplane in Baltimore,
Maryland, to go to Schenectady,
New York, to have an interview to
check on the progress for
the top turret that they were building.
And so he got on the old DC-3,
which is what the airlines were flying at the time.
He sat next to a guy and the guy says,
hey, I'm Charlie.
And at that time,
people on airlines were a lot
more friendly than they are today.
And he says, I'm Peyton.
And so they got
talking and Charlie says, where are you going?
He says, going to fly up to Albany and
then go over to Schenectady and
find out how GE is doing
on the top turret for my B-26 bomber.
And Charlie says, I got to go. I'm going there too.
And I'm having my car meet me,
so you can ride if you want.
So they went to the gate to
go into GE and the guard at the gate says,
good afternoon, Mr. Wilson.
He says, Charlie Wilson.
That's the name of the president of GE.
[LAUGHTER] And so Charlie says come on up to my office.
So they went up and secretary says,
good afternoon, Mr. Wilson.
And Charlie says, Come on in.
And he went in and he told his secretary,
get my engineering staff in here immediately.
And then came in and he says,
this is Peyton McGruder a modern aircraft.
I understand that you're
designing a top gun turret for his airplane.
The guy says, yeah. And he said,
what's your promise due date?
He says, six months.
And he turned to Peyton and he says,
when are you going to have a model plane ready to
accept the top turret?
He says six weeks.
He turns to the engineer and says, you heard him.
You've got six weeks.
The guy said, but, but.
He said, you heard me, six weeks.
Get out of here and get going.
[LAUGHTER] So that was one of the things.
Peyton McGruder also worked with
the designer of the nose,
which was talking now about
the start of
the plastic molding industry in this country.
And he won the plastic bullet nose on the thing.
He was told, we can't do that.
He said, yes, we can.
And so he worked with them and it
was a breakthrough for designing
a bullet nose plastic
to give full streamlining to the nose on the B-26.
And at the same time,
he also developed self sealing gasoline tanks that
would reseal themselves from small punctures of flack.
So anyway, it turned out to be a good aircraft,
had a high accident rate.
It was known early in the game as a flying prostitute.
>> Why is that?
>> The wings were so small.
They said it had no visible means of support.
[LAUGHTER]
I went overseas and was assigned to
the original B-26 group of the Ninth Air Force.
So I went in and later on as
a substitute or a replacement.
But the original group trained
Andrew and Rainfield field in Florida, near Tampa.
And they had runaway propeller problems.
They were using the Curtiss electric propeller and said
they couldn't get the Hydromatic because
they're being used on so many other airplanes.
So they had to use the Curtiss electric.
And unless the batteries were up to full charge as
a result of starting airplane on the batteries.
They get a flattening at the pitch with
a century amount yet a runaway propeller with no thrust.
So out of that, develop the "A plane a day in Tampa
Bay" because you get up in the air
and the props flatten out and you don't get any thrust,
there's only one direction you're going to go.
>> Well, tell me how many crew members on the B-26?
>> Lead planes would carry seven.
A bombardier and a navigator,
then pilot and copilot in there but
the rest of us carried six: pilot and copilot,
bombardier, top turret gunner,
who is also the flight engineer,
waist gunner, who is also the radio man,
and tail gunner, which was the armor.
So ordinarily, six people,
except for lead planes who carried
the extra guy who was also the navigator.
>> So as the captain, you were in charge. As the pilot.
>> Yeah.
>> And do you remember some of the guys in your crew?
>> Yes,
although unlike the eighth,
that apparently had a more closed group, they would vary.
We always had somebody in the spot,
but because of sick leave or
a three day pass for
the weekend or something, it would vary.
Chuck Freeman was my copilot for
most of the time, but not always.
And the same way with some of the other guys.
>> Where was Chuck from?
>> Can't remember.
>> Was he a good co pilot?
>> He was a copilot, yeah.
>> Was he a good one?
>> I guess I was too selfish.
I didn't give him that much chance to fly.
>> You like to be in control?
>> Yeah.
>> Go ahead.
>> We flew on small targets like bridges, crossroads.
We flew a very tight formation,
and I had a reputation for
being one of the better formation pilots.
The operations officer told me he says,
I always like that our six ship formation
is: lead ship number two,
number three, four, five and six.
And so operation either would put me number one or
number two or number three.
And he says, "I'd like to have you up there
because you're a good example
to the rest of the flights to pack it in."
Because on a bridge, or highway intersection,
you want a compact bomb strike.
And so all six planes
in tight will give you a tight bomb pattern.
So I flew since I like to fly
and I enjoyed the challenge
of flying a real tight formation.
>> So where were you posted in England?
>> Well, the small town of Great Saling,
but the nearest city of
any size was Braintree about 30 miles north of London.
>> Did you ever get into London?
What did you do when you went on leave?
>> We'd only get a two and three day weekend pass.
And so we go in London,
go to some of the entertainment.
I remember going into the theater and
seeing Bing Crosby in the,
Bells of Saint Mary's,
which is where he introduced the,
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.
And they were on rationing,
so they had very limited beer
available and or mixed drinks.
But we could get a drink or
two in the bar of the hotel in London.
And then went to some of
the other sites in England or in London.
London Bridge and I can't think of
the name of the Castle where
Henry the eighth had there in England and so on.
>> Was the German Air Force
still bombing London at that time?
>> Most of it was over,
but they were still bombing it.
I remember one night,
they were bombing and we were in the hotel.
And I went outside was watching
all the shells bursting up overhead,
almost like fireworks where they were shooting it
the Germans and I was outside looking
at and an air raid warden come up and he says,
"You crazy yank, get inside.
All that stuff is coming
back down. It's going to kill you."
>> So was there a blackout at the time?
>> Yeah.
>> So you said your initial duties
were in these formation
flying missions to attack intersections and bridges.
And that was mostly in Germany or occupied France?
>> France. Yeah,
we were tactical as opposed to the Air Force,
which was strategic being
the German factories in
towns and within Germany,
long range, we were preparing.
Our overall assignment was to isolate the battlefield.
So we had many facets to it,
but isolate the battlefield
meant we had to take out every bridge.
The length of the Seine River from Paris to
La Havre to separate North France from South France,
to basically disrupt the German transportation system.
And then we had Churchill,
it was early '44,
the Germans started sending over their V1 buzz bombs,
and a little bit later on
their V2 rockets against England, particularly London.
And so Churchill got ahold
of Eisenhower and asked him if we couldn't
bomb the launch sites for the V1 buzz bombs.
And so they would PR, Photo Recon,
would spot the launch sites
and give us a target position,
which would be a couple
of crossroads out in their country,
or the corner of a woods and so on.
Kind of in a very ambiguous ill-defined target,
and we would bomb it.
But since the launch vehicles were mobile,
the Germans would launch from what we heard make two,
three, four launches, and then they'd
move some other location.
So I suspected by the time we got around to bombing them,
they had already moved.
But anyway, if nothing else,
we kept them moving because I'm not sure
whether we ever hit any of the launch sites or not.
>> So tell me about an average mission, would you?
From getting up in the morning and figuring out what
you're going to do to bring the plane.
>> I'm going to back up just to tell you the structure.
Each group had four squadrons.
And we would fly for the average mission,
three of the four squadrons.
So one of the squadrons, they take turn,
but one of them would be stood
down for a particular mission,
and the other three would be on the alert list.
And as a result,
for the average mission,
we put up 36 airplanes,
12 per squadron from
the three flying squadrons and
the other one would be non flying.
And they play rotation so
that next time would be
the next one and the other three and so on.
And the alert list would be published at the ready room,
and we check it
late afternoon of the day before and see if
our crew was listed because
every crew in the squadron did not fly every mission.
So yeah, I'm on the alert list.
So then it was a meeting depending on weather and so on.
Ordinarily, you'd meet anywhere from seven,
eight or nine o'clock in the morning for briefing.
And then again depending they said,
"Well, the weather is bad.
It'll be clear by eleven o'clock."
So you would aim at
takeoff time with the weather
clear enough so that you could see.
>> What'd you have for breakfast?
>> Well, Number 1 was square eggs,
powdered eggs, and
toast with the British were great with marmalade.
So no butter,
they just put marmalade on toast,
coffee, and square eggs.
>> On these missions,
was there anti-aircraft fire?
Were there German planes that you came into contact with?
>> When I got there, most of
our defense against us wasFlak.
I can't remember the German words
for but the British and the
Americans abbreviated the long German title
to F-L-A-K, Flak.
And there's a piece that
went through the side of my plane and landed
between my feet laying on the floorboard smoking.
>> Before we leave,
we want to get closer to that.
>> Could you hold that up?
>> We'll get a close-up after
[OVERLAPPING] our angles right now.
>> If this hits you,
it would probably take more than band-aid to take it.
>> I would say so.
>> But it was almost spent
when it came through the side of
the plane and it
rolled around a bit and dropped on the floorboards.
>> So it cooled and then you saved it?
>> I'm sorry.
>> So it cooled off and then you saved it?
>> Yes.
>> So you said Flak was your biggest enemy?
>> The whole French coast was quite heavily defended
by German anti-aircraft flight guns.
Basically, their 88 millimeter,
which was an excellent gun.
The German radar was not all that great.
If we were flying over
the clouds and dropping on Pathfinder,
and our Pathfinder was not all that great either,
accurate as compared with the GPU today.
But we would bomb through the clouds on Pathfinder,
and we never really got feedback
about whether how effective we were.
But as I said,
the German radar was not all
that accurate and once in a while one would puff,
not really that near,
not near enough to be effective.
But then what was visual for
them and visual obviously for us also in the bombing.
They were very good with
their aiming and timing on the things.
Under visual conditions,
the lead deer in the lead ship would be
looking down and he could see
the flashes flat guns firing.
And he knew that
the projectiles were coming up about 1,000 feet a second.
So let's say we were at 12,000 feet,
he would stop watch and he'd see
flashes and at 10 seconds,
he would say to the pilot of the lead plane, turn.
And a number of times,
I remember we would turn
and right down the track that we would have been flying.
There was poof, poof,
poof of the Flak.
And then take it back again until we hit the IP,
the initial point,
at which he would block the Norden bombsight
onto the target and how our PDI to the pilot.
And at that point, the control of
the plane was taken over by the
bombardier via the Norden bombsight.
The pilot responsibility was to
maintain steady plane attitude,
constant speed, and flying straight straight line.
And we have found good lead pilots.
Could from the IP in 15,
20 seconds at the most to bomb release.
We would, in flying tight formation,
when he opened his bomb bay doors,
we'd do the same thing.
When he dropped our bombardier would drop also.
So we'd get all six airplanes dropping at the same time.
Flak was more of our threat than German fighters,
because at that time,
they had pulled most of the fighters back to fly against
the Asia Air Force which was bombing
the homeland rather than France.
>> Well, I want to transition to
the D-Day invasion and your participation in that.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
>> We took off
at 5:30 in the morning.
The weather was absolutely terrible.
And headed out through rain and
that we were supposed to bomb on Pathfinder.
And so we got up above
the clouds and we dropped on Pathfinder.
Because they were dropping through clouds,
we didn't know how effective we were.
Supposedly the Pathfinder,
as I said previously,
it was not all that accurate.
It consisted of from England sending out
a beam here and another beam here.
And and we would fly one beam,
and where they crossed the other beam,
that would be the drop point.
And they were coming
and dropping through the cloud and we
never really knew how effective they were.
In the first two missions of the day,
I flew three missions that day.
The first two, we were dropping on Pathfinder,
so we don't really know how much good that we did.
But then the third mission in the late afternoon,
the weather had started to break and
we got word that Germans had
a Panzer tank division and flat cars
a few miles south of the Invasion Beach in Normandy.
So we were assigned to bomb it and take it out.
Well, we went in at around 10,000 feet,
couldn't see a thing.
So we circled back out over the ocean,
come back around 5,000 feet,
still couldn't see anything
because it had to be a visual.
Came back once more
around 2000 feet, couldn't see anything.
We went back once more,
came around skimming just
underneath the bottom of the clouds
at 500 feet and we went across the railyard and dropped.
The Flackard train with
the tanks on either had not made it into
the rail yard or as they call it
the marshalling yard or they had backed it out.
We never did find out,
but we did not get the train with the tanks on.
We tore up the rail yard pretty good by
dropping bombs from 500 feet.
In fact, number of
our planes came back with holes in it from our own bombs.
And so lead plane notified we didn't get the target.
He's about three miles south of the rail yard.
And so they suggested
to send in the fighters with bombs and rockets.
What that happened that we never did here.
But all I can say,
our third mission on D-Day
was to tear up the rail yard pretty good.
>> So how long after the D-Day did
you move over to Beauvais, France?
>> September.
>> So that was several months later?
>> Yeah.
>> And what were you doing in the meantime?
>> So we continued to bomb bridges,
rail yards, ammo dumps and so on.
>> So once you transition to Beauvais,
you said you were in support of
Patton's troops at that point?
>> I would say maybe 50% of our missions.
After we were in Beauvais that allowed us to be close
to Patton and his guided tour through Europe.
And we could get into Germany
a short wage with our range and so on.
So we continued to,
well, more of our missions were in
support of the troops so on.
Just as a side comment,
one of the missions was after our troops worked their way
in Normandy through the hedgerows
and they were able to start to break free.
And to facilitate the breakout,
they called down the Air Force,
both 8th and 9th Air Force to
bomb to let the troops go ahead,
particularly at the town of St.
Lo, which was the breakout where
Patton started after we bombed St.
Lo. That was when Patton had been moved from
England over and headed up the 3rd Army.
But the highest-ranking officer
that was killed was General Leslie McNair.
Initially, they blamed
the 9th Air Force for killing him by bombing early
and dropping on American troops
and I'm not sure how they resolved it,
but they later found out that it
was really the 8th Air Force
that bombed at a much higher altitude than we did.
We would bomb typically 8, 10,
and 12000 feet,
where the 8th Air Force would be bombing from
anywhere from 24 up to 30,000 feet.
And so their accuracy was not
nearly as great as ours was.
But anyway, General Leslie McNair got killed.
>> Right.
>> I guess when they drop bombs on you,
you get seriously killed.
>> [LAUGHTER] So tell me about
the base there in Beauvais,
what were your quarters like there?
>> Initially when we got there,
we were given the so-called pup tents.
A little thing where each guy
had a half of a tent and you put them
together and slept in them,
and then they came in with a bunch of pyramidal tents.
The big and then with side curtains on them.
And in exploring the area,
we found up in the woods some German barracks.
And so we said,
boy, if we can get these down there,
we take them apart and set them up,
they make good sidewalls,
and then we'll just use
the canvas with the center pole for the roof.
But then also give us a wooden floor and that thing.
So our flight surgeon Doc Wheeler says,
"Ordinarily, you get four guys per tent",
he says, "You can use
the ambulance if I can live with you."
Okay. So we went up in the woods
and tore these things down and brought them all down.
And really we had the best tent on the whole line.
And we felt that did we
make it so good that the CEO was going to take it
away from us. But he didn't.
But he said, "Where did you guys get all this?"
Up in the woods in the German barack.
Well, how did you get it down here?
We said we used the ambulance.
He turned to the guy, you let them use your ambulance?
No, they must have stole it.
[LAUGHTER] But that was the end of it.
>> Did you have any special privileges as a pilot?
>> No. As an officer,
we were allowed to use a officer latrine set
up in inside a tent
with three or four holes in the boards.
>> That's your privilege.
>> You like GI humor?
>> Yes, please.
>> Ted Bunn was a bombardier and real character.
And he waited until it was after dark and when he knew
that some guys were in the latrine
and he would go in and he'd have
a rock about yay big and it was complete blackout.
He'd go inside give all the necessary sound effects,
and then drop it down.
Splash.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Did you have any interactions with
the French civilians at that time?
>> We had on our base was
a destroyed French castle or house.
And so we converted part of it to a officer club.
But it was tumbled down and he was kind of the caretaker.
So I'm not sure whether he was just
doing it because he
didn't have anything else to do or what.
But he would be around taking care of things.
But we got along with him,
but we didn't have too much contact with
the civilians in the area.
>> Did you have any communication with
your family at home at this time?
>> Well, we would via
letter writing and they would write too
so the mail delivery.
I'm not sure. I guess the same was true,
the letters we sent home,
but they'd be kind of intermittent that
we get mail call maybe once
every couple of weeks or so and you get
three or four letters altogether at the same time.
So that was our communication.
There was no phone like today,
no phone communication, and so on.
It was just a letter exchange type of thing.
>> Had they been through the sensor?
>> Not the incoming,
but the ones that we would send would go through sensor.
>> Yes.
>> He wants to add
something and I want to fix this mic cord.
>> Okay, go ahead.
>> There's one thing I want him to talk about.
>> What happened?
>> You're springing loose.
>> Regarding the Normandy invasion.
>> There you go.
>> Dick, you talked
about getting back to the Normandy invasion.
>> I'm sorry.
>> Getting back to the Normandy invasion,
you flew in perpendicular to the beaches.
Your bombs were supposed to drop on the beach.
>> Yes.
>> For craters for the incoming GIs to get in as
protection and if you dropped
your bombs a second later than you should,
they went over the beach in 100 yards.
Can you ask him about that?
>> Could you elaborate on that a bit?
>> Okay.
Part of what I'm going to tell
you is based on talking to
guys that were in
the landing parties when I
went over on the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
So there was a bunch of, at that time,
guys who had gone ashore in the Higgins boats
and were in the first and second wave hitting the beach.
And the couple I turned to,
they said we were told that
the Air Force was going to bomb ahead of us.
We were scheduled to bomb at 6:30.
They were scheduled to hit the beach at 7:30.
And so we bombed on as I had said previously,
on pathfinder hopefully, they knew where it was going,
but they were not very accurate.
And if this is the beach here,
we came in this way across instead of
going length way because the weather was so bad.
It was right down on the beach.
In order to bomb visually,
we had to be under the weather and
so the ceiling was very low,
probably down to 300 feet.
So we flew across the beach
and the ocean was very choppy at the time.
The Higgins boat was supposed to take waves
up to six feet high and they were
running 10 and 12 feet high and
coming over the side of the Higgins boat.
This is now talking to
the guys on the 50th anniversary that went ashore.
Most of them were up chuck
from Cesic because the Higgins boat
they said it was terrible rolling.
And they were told that when you go ashore,
the Air Force will have cratered the beach and so
you'll have lots of places to dive into and so on.
And the guy says, what a bunch of BS that was.
Because when we went in I
suspect that the guy Lean,
the pathfinder, knew that we were
flying over all the invasion of Higgins.
There was 4,000 of them going in with 22,
24 guys per boat.
And if we dropped early,
we'd be dropping among all the boats going ashore.
Our speed is about 100 yards a second.
So they probably delayed the drop.
I'm not sure of this, but the results are,
we did not bomb the beach,
we bomb anywhere from 150-200 yards inland.
And one of the guys that was my host there and
normally hired a light plane and we were flying over.
You could see all the old bomb craters,
all now grass covered,
but they were inland from the landing beach
anywhere from couple hundred yards
to a quarter of a mile.
Real heavily bomb crater,
which supposedly should have been on
the beach. They weren't.
So the guys I talked to said,
boy, that was a crash.
The other thing is
the waves were so bad and coming over the side.
They had the boxes with the rope and the grappling hook.
They was going to fire up the cliff at Omaha Beach.
And the rangers were supposed to climb the rope
and the rope was so wet that it only would fire halfway.
The guys would get up there,
now they're on their own to climb up.
The Germans are shooting down from the top of the cliffs.
And one guy says,
I really thank the Navy.
The couple of Navy destroyers
or cruisers against the orders, he came in.
One of them ran aground and later had to
be pulled back off and the other that.
And they said they were firing.
They saw what was happening with the Germans firing up
from the crest of their cliffs and they said,
with their five inch guns were firing over to us.
So that's a real thrill,
climbing up the side of
a cliff and having five inch guns,
five inch projectors go over a few yards over your head.
[LAUGHTER] But he says,
we're really grateful that they took out many of
the German firing positions on the crest of the cliff.
>> So, do you remember about how many missions you flew?
>> Excuse me. I flew a total of 65.
>> And I want to ask you
about completing a single mission.
When you got back and you'd
finished and you've gotten through it.
What feeling did you have?
What emotions were running
through your head at that point?
>> At the completion of a mission?
Of course, the first thing you
do is go through debriefing.
And they have a whole bunch of questions.
Did you hit the target?
[LAUGHTER] What was the defense? Any fighters?
How was the flag?
And so on.
It would take anywhere depending
on the length of the dissertation that you
wanted to give or the information that you
had anywhere from half hour to 45 minutes.
And then if you were not
going to fly another mission that day,
they would give you a shot of whiskey to relax you.
If you're going to schedule to fly another mission,
you had to wait until after the next mission to get it.
So just went through debriefing
and went to the Chow Hall
and got something to eat and said,
made it through another one.
>> And you said 65 missions.
So did they have a minimum number for you
to complete before you could go home?
>> Earlier had been lower numbers.
When I got there as a replacement,
it was down to 25.
By the time I got 15,18 was up to 30 or 35.
And by the time I got to 25,
it was up to 40 and I kept chasing it.
Finally, it settled down at 65,
and that's where I caught it.
>> And you were involved in
the Battle of the Bulge as well?
And tell me about that.
>> Well, if you've read the history,
you know that the Bulge started on 16th of December.
And the German's broke through and the Battle of
the Bulge was a journalist name
for it was really the battle of the Ardennes Forest.
And the Germans maintained
radio silence came through the Ardennes Forest in force,
through the impassible Ardennes Forest
with their armor and troops
and hit the American lines
and the lines had been spread
up to 200 miles South with Patton,
his troops, the third army being
spread for up to 200 miles South.
His intelligence officer warned him.
This is a mistake.
The Germans they know that
we are very weak and
thinly defended along most of the line,
and they're going to come through the Ardennes.
I'm not sure who he told but he was
ordered to spread out for our defense
for South of the Bulge for up to 200 miles.
And the guys that were directly affected by the bulge
was basically new troops,
new replacements and very few of them.
And so they just were no defense for the Germans.
On 23rd of December,
the weather started to break,
and we got some fighters up and were able to
drop with the C-47 supplies.
What was the main town?
>> Bastogne.
>> Bastogne, yeah.
To the hundred and first Airborne.
And I'm sure you've heard a story
of the CO was asked to surrender and he said, nuts?
>> Yes. So were you piloting a plane to take supplies?
>> No. And then our target
for 24 December was to take out the bridge at
Uskirken which the chairmans were
using to bring up more armor and troops and so on.
And so we were to take that bridge out.
We were told that it's going to be heavily
defended and they're going to have
fighters in the air as well as Flak.
Ordinarily, the Germans air
to ground communication was pretty good.
And so at the time that the Flak stopped,
that was a time to look out because
that's when their fighters will be coming in.
But in this case,
the Flak was coming up.
My tail gunner says, here they come.
And the Germans, I found out
later they had 20-25 attacking.
Not just us, there was a couple of other groups in
the area they were also bombing.
So they had a total of
20-25 German fighters in the air attacking.
When the tail gunner says, here they come,
I was flying Number 3 position,
one and three over here.
And in looking out,
I saw German MA109.
Why he was in that close?
I don't know. But he was in close enough.
He couldn't have been more than 30 feet away.
My top turret gunner opened up
and I could see
his bullets puncturing the side of the plane,
went up along the engine and it coughed orange flame,
black smoke, and it came back across
the cockpit and he hung there and then shooting was gone.
>> There we go. We got it.
>> That's what it is. Pilots have
a problem of talking with their hands [LAUGHTER].
>> That's good timing, I like that.
>> So he took him out. Your gunner took him out.
>> And the tailgunner says he just blew up behind us.
And then the tailguner opened up and the guy disappeared.
And about that time
an MA109 pulled up between me and the lead plane,
and we were flying pretty tight formation.
And nobody, intelligence could never explain why.
But he pulled up between me
and you can see his face
just as clear as I'm looking at Dave there.
He had square goggles and he
looked at me and back and forth.
And my copilot in hindsight.
And I don't even know if he had his 45 with him,
but it would have been interesting if he
slid back window and shot at him with his 45.
But that's hindsight.
But just a few seconds,
apparently, and scrutiny is gone.
And then very shortly after that,
I saw MA109 crossing
from left to right out in front of us,
250, maybe 300 yards.
And I said to myself,
if he turns into us,
our forward defense is not all that great.
So I slid out of formation just
a bit and hit my gun triggers.
Now, the B-26 has four forward firing,
52 cal, two either side
of the fuselage that we call package guns.
And the firing rate of
the 50 cal is around 12 rounds a second.
So I hit the trigger just to get
some tracer out there so the guy could see them,
the German pilot could see them.
So I probably two seconds at the most,
which meant there was at least 100 rounds in the air.
And he all of a sudden a puff off black smoke and he
started down and disappeared in the undercast.
So I was given credit for being
the only bomber pilot in
Europe to shoot down a German fighter.
And we don't know whether
he was able to nurse his plane back to his base,
whether it blew up,
or whether he had to bailout
because he disappeared in the undercast.
So they would give me is MA109 damaged.
>> So you never knew what happened to him?
>> I'm sorry.
>> You never knew what happened to him?
>> No.
>> So you said you completed
65 missions and how
did you get the news that you would
be able to return home?
>> At 65, the ops officer said,
I'm going to back up just a minute.
At 64, he said,
I've had requests from the inventory for
a guy to act as liaison with the ground troops,
so do you want to go up
front and spend a few days with the ground troops?
And he says,
you need one more to qualify to be sent home.
And at 64 mission.
And I didn't know. The weather was still spotty bad.
I wasn't sure when I get
the 65th mission and I said, no, Lou.
My thinking was, I'm not
sure that I want to get up front and have
some German sniper blow a hole
through my head after 64 missions.
The thought didn't really appeal to me.
With no defense against German snipers.
So he sent somebody else up.
Some of the guy accepted and went.
And the weather was bad enough so
that I didn't get my 65th mission.
The guy went up for a few days and come
back and brought back some souvenirs and so on,
which he handed to us.
And it was probably a day or two after that,
I finally got my final mission, my 65th.
And he said, pack your stuff, you're going home.
>> How did it feel to be going home?
>> Well, the events that you had to put all together.
It was just about as bad as
another mission of putting everything all
together and going over to England and
then getting transportation up to Scotland.
And once we got there,
they put us on the old Queen Mary
and I came home on the Queen Mary.
>> How was that trip?
>> The war was still going on.
In Germany, Hitler had offered any U-boat commander a
$1 million or the equivalent
thereof if he had sunk the Queen Mary.
So we were taking evasive action from the time that we
left Firth of Forth up in Scotland.
And we had a British destroyer
on either side of us for a day and a half.
And they were going flank speed.
I was told just over 30 knots
doing evasive action until you got used to it.
It was rather abrupt and it would throw you
until you got used
to it and near a railing or something to hang on to it.
And the British destroyers,
about a mile and a half off on either side,
the sailor says the old story of over one and under two.
That North Atlantic is rough, can be rough.
And so they would disappear.
You wouldn't see them. Then they come up again.
But going at that speed,
they had to turn back after a day and a half
because they were getting low on fuel.
And then we were for a day and a half,
on our own, continuing to do evasive action.
And on the next day and a half,
we were picking up over flights of
Navy patrol bombers out of New England or Labrador.
And they were circling overhead
until we came up through Hell's Gate in New York City,
past Statue of Liberty
and Dr. Pieretti in Manhattan.
>> So how did it feel to be home?
>> It was good. So I said,
so what's changed? It was good.
>> And that was still January of '45?
>> Yes.
>> So about a few months later,
President Roosevelt would be dead.
>> He died when I was in Atlantic City for reassignment.
>> How did you hear the news?
>> Two or three guys in the elevator
in the hotel where we were
staying said you hear that Roosevelt died?
So that's what I heard. It was in
an elevator in a hotel in Atlantic City.
>> What did you know about Truman?
>> Nothing, except that I had doubts because he had been
a member of
the Democratic machine in Kansas City.
And that I just had reservations about,
okay, he was
the vice president and now he's the president.
In hindsight, he did a much better job
than he was initially going to be given credit for.
>> Why did you say that?
>> His willingness to oppose
the Russians and support the military.
He was an unknown quantity at the time.
As we really knew,
what most of us knew he was
a member of the Kansas political machine,
but it turned out he was his own man,
didn't listen to the machine.
In hindsight, I think that he really did
what was best for the country at the time.
>> So what are your memories of
the end of the war in Europe?
>> Of course, I wasn't there.
>> Did you participate in any celebrations?
>> No.
>> Had you been discharged by that time?
>> No. I half decided to go to stay in the service.
And my operations officer from overseas
ended up being also assigned to where I was.
My next assignment was Orlando, Florida.
And I walked in
the first day and
Major Sabille [phonetic] was sitting there.
Lou, what are you doing here?
He says, I completed and
bummed a ride back on air transport command,
so I flew back.
And so he was there, assigned to Orlando.
And we had been friends previously,
but got to be
better friends since we are signed together there.
And he said if we're going to stick in this man's army,
we ought to get a little more education.
So we both applied for
command general staff school in Leavenworth, Kansas.
And the fact that he was a major and I'm guessing,
he was picked ahead of me to go.
So then I was picked to
take staff school the class after him.
And so when I got to Leavenworth,
I found that he had already left.
He'd gone back to Florida.
So when I got back to Florida,
I went to his apartment because his wife was with him.
I went to his apartment
in Orlando and his landlady said,
Major Sabille got out of service,
and he's now flying with American airlines.
That dog, but they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima,
and of course,
Nagasaki two days later when I was in staff school.
So they came around with a piece of paper and
said the war was pretty much inevitable,
that it was going to be over.
And so they were going to have major cutbacks.
So they said sign that you're going
to get out or you're going to stay in,
but if you stay in,
you might get demoted
to a rank of sergeant and with no flying.
Most pilots love to fly.
So as a result,
I debated it and I said,
that, I don't want.
So I signed to get out.
And when I got back,
the adjutant met me and says,
your captains papers are in,
but I don't think they'll come through
before you get processed to leave.
And it did not happen.
So I got out and I flew on
the reserve up through 1947,
when the Air Force became a separate service
by flying at Stewart Field at West Point.
They would send up a 47 weekends and take a number of
us pilots from school
down for the weekend to fly on the reserve.
And so I flew on the reserve up until '47.
At that point, when they became a separate service,
they closed Stewart Field down to reserve flying,
moved it also to Long Island,
or as Long Islanders says Long Island.
And there was no way
to get there and they wanted us to
buy the Air Force blue uniforms.
So many of us,
including myself, got out.
>> And what school did you attend?
>> I'm sorry.
>> And you went to school after
that? You went back to school.
>> So I continued to go to school
and ended up getting my engineering degree.
>> And you used the GI Bill?
>> Yes.
>> So you lived most of your career in California?
>> I wouldn't say most, not my working career,
but I ended up there after I retired.
My last job was in California and I ended
up in a automobile accident in 1996,
and that pretty much established my retirement.
>> So how did you end up in Georgia?
>> A little over five years ago when,
of course, in California,
I had a heart attack and the doctor I went through,
they put in stents in the veins leading into the heart.
And the doctor said,
you really should not be living alone in your condition.
And in the meantime,
my son had went to work for
the Skunk Works of Lockheed in Burbank, California.
And when they got the F22 contract,
he moved to Lockheed in Marietta.
And he had been bugging me to
come and live with him because
his two kids had grown up and left.
So I called him and said,
Don is that opening still there?
So it's at that point that I
moved to Georgia to live with him, he and his wife.
>> Well, Mr. Bailey, can you tell
me why it's important to you
to share your World War II service story?
>> I'm sorry.
>> Can you tell me why it's important to you to
share your story of service in World War II?
>> Well, along with Dave,
we've talked at many of
the schools and organizations in the area.
And particularly talking to the schools,
it varies with the school,
but I am shocked,
disappointed in the lack of knowledge of most of
the students that we're finding in high school.
And so I feel that it's important that
they understand what the background is,
what it means to
read and understand the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution,
the importance of them to our form of government.
And I have told
them a number of times that our generation,
the so-called greatest generation,
we did our part.
If we hadn't done it,
the chances are,
if that we hadn't helped England,
you'd be speaking German today.
And so we did our part,
but the future belongs to you kids.
You've got to understand
the background and what brought us where we are
and the total importance of supporting
the government and the Constitution.
And a couple of funny stories.
I say funny, tragic.
There was one of our guys from
the American Legion was giving a talk to a high school.
And they had a young teacher introduce him,
we are very proud today to have so and so here to
talk to us and relate his experiences in World War 11.
I had another one got through and I said, any questions?
And a girl says,
well, how did we get involved in the war?
And I says, well,
there was a little incident called
Pearl Harbor where we were attacked by
the Japanese and that
precipitated us getting involved
in the war because shortly after that,
the Germans declared war on us
as part of the German pact with the Japanese.
She said, oh, did we fight the Japanese?
And I said, yeah.
She said, well, who won?
So like I say,
it's tragic that the lack of understanding
and knowledge of history by many of the today's students.
Well, thank you very much,
Mr. Bailey, and we'll end the interview there.