B-17 Navigator

By Frank Farr

During World War II, the Army Air Corps had effective formulae for turning raw recruits, only a year or two out of high school, into flying officersofficers and gentlemen. This is the story of one such recruits transformation from college freshman into B-17 navigator, second lieutenant complete with silver wings and gold bars. Loving support from a nineteen-year old bride helped bring about the transformation. His adventure started at the Presidio of Monterey in California and moved through four different stops in Texas and a final three in Iowa and Nebraska before he was ready to cross the Atlantic and attack Hitlers Festung Europa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781449006112

Frank Farr

Frank Farr was not yet 19 years old when he reported for duty in the Army Air Corps in 1943. In 1945 he returned to San Jose State University where he earned a bachelors degree with a major in Spanish and a minor in French. He also did extensive work in Russian, and he taught all three of those languages at the high school level. He had begun his work at SJSU as a journalism major, and his love of writing is evident in the letters that make up most of this work. His career in education lasted 50 years, during which he served as teacher, counselor, vice principal and principal. He worked 30 years in California and added 20 in New Mexico, where most of his students were Navajos. He lives with his wife Irma on the slopes of the Zuni Mountains about 20 miles east of Gallup, New Mexico.

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B-17 Navigator

Frank Farr

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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© 2009 Frank Farr. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/3/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-0611-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-0518-4 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009906924

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

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Dedication

My wife Irma listened patiently for nearly a year to the tap-tap-click-click of my laptop computer, either beside her in our matching recliners in the living room or beside her on the bed as she tried to nap. This book is therefore dedicated fondly and appreciatively to her.

Introduction

Much has been written about the skills and courage of the pilots of World War II—and justifiably so. They performed prodigies of skill and bravery during combat operations. Much less has been written about other combat air crew members; and it occurred to this B-17 navigator that the navigator’s tale should be told—particularly the rigorous training that prepared young men of 19 through 27 to direct the flights of American warplanes through the skies of the Pacific, North Africa and western Europe and over the hump, that prodigious range of the Himalayas between Burma and China.

I was 18 years old when I was inducted into the Army Air Corps in February 1943.

Mine was a close and loving family—my parents, two younger sisters, and one younger brother. And since, just one year before, I had been enrolled in San Jose State College as a journalism major, I loved to write and had some youthful facility for it.

That, along with my mother’s feeling for history, resulted in her accumulating a shoe box full of letters I wrote while I was in the Air Corps. She saved those letters, and 65 years later, I have them—a rich cache of information about my training at various Army posts in California, Texas, and Iowa.

A word about the language in the letters: We had always loved playing with language in my family, especially my father and I. We were interested in the English of Appalachia, especially that of the mountains of eastern Tennessee and Kentucky and of its offspring, the language of the Ozarks, where both my father and I were born. We delighted in a comic strip that borrowed from that language, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, and a radio show called Lum and Abner. Lum and Abner spoke, somewhat exaggeratedly, the language of the Ozarks, and my dad and I used to imitate them. My letters sometimes lapse into that hillbilly talk, usually in a conscious effort to make them more amusing to my family. Bear with it, please, Reader. For the most part I have left the letters just as I wrote them at ages 18-20.

As much as possible, I have let those letters tell the story. I hope that they will lend some immediacy to the narrative, perhaps help you get the feeling of being with me and sharing the tasks and adventures of my training.

Frank Farr, May 5, 2009

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In December 1941 I was a first-quarter freshman at San State College. On the seventh, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, I was enjoying a sand lot football game on the field at Campbell High School. Only minutes after I made the best block of my career, someone ran across the field, calling, The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!

The world was about to become much more confused and much more complicated. The game broke up immediately, and we gathered around the radio at the home of my girl friend, Connie Dondero, just across the street from the school, whose brother Chuck had been the victim of my perfect block in the football game.

The next day I was back in class again. Christmas came and went, a warm, happy Christmas like my family always had together.

A couple of weeks later I parked my old ’29 Model A Ford at Connie’s house, and she and I, at her father’s suggestion, took Chuck’s 1933 Ford Coupe out instead of my car.

We ran out of gas on a heavily fogged-in road about five miles later. In an indefensible example of 17-yeaar-old reasoning, I let the car roll to a stop about half on the shoulder of the road, half on the pavement. I thought it would be easier that way for someone to come along and give us a push to a gas station. I probably didn’t even leave the tail lights on.

Naturally, a car roared out of the fog and hit us hard. I was standing on the running board, from which position I planned to signal an oncoming driver for help. I wound up dazed on the pavement, and the Ford was probably 25 or 30 feet into an adjacent orchard. I stumbled through the dark to the car to see if Connie was OK. She was. Shortly afterward I was in a hospital, where examiners determined I wasn’t hurt enough to keep; and in a few minutes Mr. Dondero came to take me and Connie back to her house.

I didn’t get the chewing-out I deserved for stupidity. Perhaps Mr. Dondero felt partly to blame for giving me a car that was out of gas. Anyway, the Donderos were very kind and kept me at their home for several days. Maxine Dondero was very impressed at my running to the car despite my (minor) wounds to check on Connie.

You must be very fond of Connie to have thought first of her, she said. Then she made an unnecessary apology: You understand that I can’t fix your bed in Connie’s room.

Sure, I said. I know.

Besides an abrasion on the back of my head, I had painfully strained muscles in my chest. Continuing with the three part-time jobs that supported me at San Jose State was impossible. I was forced to go to the home of my parents in Oakland to recuperate.

In Oakland there was much more consciousness of the war than I had felt in San Jose. Even so, I enrolled in San Francisco City College for the spring semester of 1942, took the A-Train from Oakland, and finished my first year of higher education.

My father was working in the Kaiser shipyards in Oakland, which helped make the war more real for me. All around, young men were enrolling in one of the services or getting drafted into the Army. Jobs were suddenly plentiful, and I worked at several of them as 1942 wore on. I finally landed a good job at the great Montgomery Ward mail order house in Oakland—a job open because employees were going into the service. When fall came, I didn’t feel like going back to school.

Blackouts were real by then, and some time late in 1942 I became an air raid warden. This required that during blackouts I go to the roof of a high building in the neighborhood and scan the city for unauthorized lights. In the feared event of a Japanese bombing, I would report on the locations of fires. My immediate supervisor was a World War I veteran. I thought him very old. He may have been about 40.

Rationing became a harsh reality in 1942. Most cars had an A sticker on their windshields, which indicated that they were limited to four gallons of gasoline per week. If you used your car on your job, you could qualify for a C sticker, which allowed you more gas. I had purchased a 1934 Chevrolet, which I used to deliver Western Union telegrams, so I had a C sticker. My driving was not very limited.

My old ’29 Ford had been given to the scrap metal collectors. We hoped they would make bombs and bullets of it to deliver to the Japanese.

Tires were a tougher proposition. It was not unusual to see an old tire from which the bead had been cut stretched over another worn tire—in effect, two worn tires on the wheel. The wartime speed limit was 35 miles per hour, so it was possible to extend the use of your tires in this way, especially in the city, where the speed limit was often 25 miles per hour.

Rationing was instituted to save essential items for the military effort, including the men in the services. Sugar and meat were strictly rationed. Shoes were rationed, as were coffee, cooking oils, some cheese, and many other foods.

At Montgomery Ward, I met a nice girl who worked in the Billing Department and started dating her. Her name was Lois Bickell, and she was to become my wife (my first wife) some time later.

On the commuter trains and city buses, big posters on the inside walls had been capturing my attention for some time: Men of seventeen, you too can be an Aviation Cadet. At some time during the second half of 1942 I saw a movie, Air Force, one of whose heroes, naturally, was a B-17 navigator. The B-17 was one of two principal United States Army Air Corps heavy bombers. The other was the B-24. Both were four engined planes, massive for their day. At age nine I had started collecting maps and pasting them in scrapbooks. I pored over maps in my geography books in school. I drew maps. Navigation was a natural course for me to take. Another minor (perhaps not so minor) factor was impelling me toward the Air Corps. Back at San Jose State, when I was with Connie and some of her friends, they were talking about the service. One boy said he was thinking about the Air Corps. Then one of the girls said, Oh, Kenny tried, and he couldn’t make it. You wouldn’t have a chance. Kenny was a tall good-looking boy who was on the football team and who had a new—or nearly new—car and no personality that I could discern. This had been rankling in my mind for a year.

Late in 1942, probably a few weeks before Christmas, I made up my mind to enlist in the Army Air Corps and become a navigator. Men were being taken into the services faster than they could really be processed at that time, and a new rule had gone into effect: You could sign up for the service of your choice, but you had to wait till your draft number came up to report for duty. I was called up in February 1943 a month before my 19th birthday.

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Often, In February when most of the rest of the United States is battling snow and cold, the weather in the San Francisco Bay can be beautiful. On a bright, sunny day early in February, I took the A Train across the Bay and reported to 49 Fourth Street in San Francisco along with dozens of other young men for a cursory physical examination and induction. Years later the same building would house the San Francisco office of the Internal Revenue Service.

I stood naked in a long line of other naked young men of all sizes and shapes for what I recall as a very brief examination. We moved along one at a time until we were told to get dressed. A brief, perfunctory induction ceremony followed, and we were soldiers in the Army of the United States. (Some of us conjectured that our walking into the building proved us physically fit enough for the Army.)

About 110 miles south of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast is the Monterey Bay urban area of Seaside, Monterey, Del Rey Oaks, and Pacific Grove. When the Spanish established the town of Monterey in 1770, they built a fort to protect their little community. It came to be called the Presidio of Monterey and served as a fort for Spain and Mexico until the United States took over in 1846. Since then it has been a United States Army post, and during World War II, it served principally as a reception center for new recruits. Beautifully situated, it overlooks Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay. On the other side, the post stretches up the hill into the woods.

I reported there, along with maybe 200 other new soldiers, on February 12, 1943.

From the beginning, we stood in formations, and we marched in formation. It was, Fall in, forward march, column left, march, about face, etc, It was never march, though. Sometimes it was harch, sometimes simply har, and frequently it became just hah! I used to wonder sometimes why the military directors of all nations have always been so obsessed with marching. I think it probably serves a greater purpose than simply looking good in dressed ranks. It forces young men to see themselves as part of a close-knit organization and to conform to the restrictions of that group. And we learned early that failure to conform brought quick and unpleasant consequences, often for the entire group—usually, in the Army, a platoon.

I got a liberal taste of standing and marching on my very first day as a soldier at Monterey. I mailed a letter to my family at the end of the day. It imparted these bits of information:

Here I am in Barracks 51, worn down fine because I’ve either been marching or standing all day long…I have neither been assigned uniforms nor G.I. haircut as yet. Tomorrow, however, we will be assigned uniforms, concurrently with taking of tests and interviews…If you’re interested in routine, lights out at 9:00—you gotta be quiet, although you don’t have to be in bed until eleven. You can go to a show—on the post only. Most of us will only be here for a maximum of six days. However, since I’m in the Air Corps, I might be here a month, although chances are I’ll be shipped out after about two weeks. Until we have been here two weeks, we are not permitted off the post without a special pass. A special pass is, of course, only issued under very special circumstances, so I’ll see lots of the Presidio for two weeks.

Two weeks, as it turned out, was wishful thinking for us Air Corps recruits. We were to spend five weeks at the Presidio of Monterey before being transferred to a new post. And every time we moved, we formed up and marched. As you might imagine, raw recruits don’t know much about marching. In one of my first letters home, I described our early marching experience:

This morning they gave us a bad time. We turned out in fatigues and raincoat this morning. Their clothes are fine, I concede. We marched, stood, and drilled for several minutes in a driving rain without even getting damp, except for the bottom of our pants (and that because we didn’t put on the puttees.)

We are not so hot yet. About face! Well, we did. He looked at us, enraged. Jesus Christ! he said. (The first leader we liked better. He just shook his head at us sadly and said, "O.K., fall out.!

We had a rugged little redhead to drill us today, though, and he really laid it on.

(Censored)! he said, Don’t you (censored) (censored) know your left from your right? If you don’t I’ll get some rocks for you to carry in one hand.

Some lesser officers in front of the barracks guffawed heartily. The little guy bristled and roared, What are you laughin’ at? It ain’t funny. It’s pitiful!

A word about language: My brother, my sisters, and I were absolutely forbidden to use profane language. My father could swear like a trooper and often did. My mother had a couple of favorite strong expressions; but a simple darn on the lips of one of us kids could draw a look of disapproval. When I was in the seventh grade, we lived at 64 Lupa Street near the outskirts of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. My father and I often walked together in the morning, he to work and I to school. One morning I tried out a gentle expletive I had learned from a friend, Sam Sturm. Dad- gummit, I said. My dad looked at me sternly. Getting’ a little closer to cussin’ all the time, ain’t you? I don’t remember, but I suspect he had to turn his head so I wouldn’t see him grin. When I reported for duty at the Presidio of Monterey, I was only a few weeks away from home; and the Army had not had time to alter my language. Even a few months later when a somewhat self-conscious hell or damn became part of my vocabulary, I didn’t color my letters with those expressions. Hence censored.

Most of the new soldiers were gone within the first couple of weeks, bound for assorted Army posts for specific training, depending partly upon their talents as indicated by testing but perhaps mostly on where they were needed. Five of us prospective Aviation Cadets became fast friends over the five weeks we spent at Monterey, waiting for assignment somewhere—we didn’t know where. Since we weren’t going to be shipping out very soon, we were moved up the hill to share quarters with some of the permanent party personnel on the base.

They were Jim Whitaker, Leonard Orr, Lauren Russell, and Clair Gibbany. I had known Jim the longest, since he had ridden back to Oakland with me on the A-train after we had enlisted in San Francisco. He had flaming red hair, so, of course, we called him Red. The others were Lenny, Russ and Gib. We spent most of our spare time together, playing pool or ping pong. I noted in a letter to my parents that I was not really much of a pool player, but I was the champ at ping pong. The champ got his comeuppance one night, though. I played six games and won four. I observed that I should have won one of those I lost, but in the other I came up against a Chinese—and everybody knows the Chinese are born with a ping pong paddle in their hands. He toyed with me, winning 21-7.

Russ taught