One Small Town Boy: A B-17 Top Turret Gunner’S Wwii Odyssey

By Gerald A Meehl and Jack Goetz

This first-person account describes the vivid and compelling World War II experiences of Jack Goetz, who flew twenty-five missions with the 544th Squadron, 384th Bomb Group based at Grafton Underwood, England, in the early stages of the air war over Europe from mid-1943 to early 1944. During his combat tour, he flew on B-17 bombers over German-occupied Europe as a gunner. These were hazardous missions that resulted in high casualty rates among B-17 flight crews. Jack had his share of close calls, including a crash landing in a crippled bomber and a ditching in the English Channel, which resulted in the death of a close friend and crewmate. After completing his combat tour, he volunteered to be a member of the flight crew that took a group of combat correspondents to the Pacific to cover the end of the war in that theater. His B-17 was the second American aircraft to land in Japan just as the war ended, and he was among the first Americans to visit the atomic bomb-blasted city of Hiroshima.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504957199

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© 2015 Jack Goetz and Gerald A. Meehl. 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.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/22/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5718-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5719-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015917508

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Part 1: Early years and into the Army Air Corps, 1920-1943

Part 2: Air Combat over Nazi-occupied Europe, 1943-1944

Part 3: Back in the States Between Assignments, 1944-1945

Part 4: Around the World with the War Correspondents, 1945

Part 5: Epilog: Post-war, 1945-present

Foreword

The big B-17 bomber was careening out of control in a screaming, spiraling dive. The outboard right engine was running rough and smoking and the outboard left propeller had run away, rotating rapidly with its blades flat to the oncoming wind. This had pulled the plane violently to the left and started it in a dizzying spin. The centrifugal force pinned the crew members inside the plane. Jack Goetz, the top turret gunner, was trying to attach his parachute but could only get it agonizingly close to the clips on his parachute harness as he was immobilized by the force of the plane’s spin. In front of him the two pilots were fighting the controls. He could see the hands of the altimeter on the instrument panel winding down the altitude. Unless the pilots could get the plane under control, they would crash headlong into the ground and there certainly would be no survivors.

The whole day had been out of sorts. For some reason none of the crew had performed their good luck pre-flight rituals. Jack didn’t stick his gum to the side of the plane outside the back door. The tail gunner, Compton, didn’t write, To hell with Hitler on one of the bombs in the bomb bay. Pilot Randy Jake Jacobs didn’t pull himself up through the hatch near the front of the plane. Instead, he entered the plane from the back door, and made his way through the length of the plane to his position on the flight deck. Though it seemed inconsequential that morning, after this day they swore they would never again fail to perform those rituals before a flight.

Then when the engines were started, the outboard right engine began vibrating and running rough and shaking in its mount on the wing. While still parked, they tried a few things to get it to run more smoothly. None worked, and the engine was a serious problem. Jack was the flight engineer in addition to his duties as top turret gunner, and he knew the engine could not attain full power if it was running that badly. That meant it would be difficult keeping up with the formation, and even taking off with a full bomb and fuel load would be dicey. The German fighters were always on the lookout for a straggling B-17. The minute a plane dropped back from the formation, the enemy fighters would pounce and there was little chance of survival. In Jack’s mind there was no other choice: they would have to abort the mission.

But the commanding officer of the 384th, Colonel Dale O. Smith, had been critical of Jake’s decisions to abort on some of their previous missions. The thinly veiled implication was that Jake was a coward and looking for excuses not to fly missions. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but the Colonel’s criticisms had gotten to Jake, and he didn’t want to abort the mission if he didn’t have to. He overruled Jack, and said they’d go as far as the English Channel and see if the troublesome engine started running more smoothly. At that point they would make the decision whether or not to abort.

On the takeoff run, the bomber struggled to pull itself up off the runway as it wallowed into the sky. The #4 engine was still running rough and was only putting out a fraction of its normal horsepower. Jack was sure they would abort when they reached the English coast. But when they got there, Jake signaled over the interphone to test fire the guns. This was only done if they were continuing on to the target. Jack protested, noting the #4 engine was still underpowered, running very rough with smoke coughing out of the exhaust stacks. There was no way they should fly this plane into enemy territory.

An argument broke out over the interphone. Finally Jake took a vote—6 crew members voted to keep going, and 4 voted to abort, including Jack. The majority ruled, and on they went with the formation across the Channel.

As they struggled to keep up after they crossed the enemy coast, Jack glanced away from the troublesome #4 engine and noticed oil coming out of the top of the left outboard #1 engine. It was streaming back along the wing in a long black slick, and as it congealed, more oil came out of the engine and piled up on top of what was already there. Either a piece of flak had damaged the engine (they had just gone through some light flak), or there was a mechanical failure. Jack yelled to Jake that #1 was throwing oil, and he’d better feather it, meaning the engine would need to be shut down and the prop blades rotated edge-on to the wind to provide minimal resistance. But by then too much oil had already leaked out, and there wasn’t enough left to provide pressure for the feathering mechanism to work. Just then the prop started to run away, and the plane was yanked into a steep spiraling dive to the left.

Jack was still pinned motionless as he helplessly watched the pilots in front of him trying to get control of the plane. Jake yelled to Jackson, the copilot, to put his feet on the rudder bar, and when he said to pull, they would both pull together on the control yoke. By sheer physical power they would try to bring the plane out of the dive. This would be their only chance to regain control of the plane. If this maneuver failed, they were all dead men.

Jake yelled, Pull!, and both strained to pull the yokes back toward their chests. The physical intensity was so extreme that Jack could see the veins standing out on their necks. The plane violently shuddered and shook as the pilots started to get it to respond. Jack could hear the bomb racks in the bomb bay behind him rattling and clattering. The violence of the spin and the action of the pilots to get the plane to level out were putting the B-17 under tremendous stresses, and the strain of groaning metal was added to the overwhelming noise of the shrieking wind and the roar of the engines.

After what seemed like an eternity, the plane leveled out, and Jack could see the altimeter was reading 6000 feet. They had started their spin at 26,000 feet. They had lost 20,000 feet of altitude in just a minute or two. The plane was out of its dive, but their problems were nowhere near over. The runaway prop on the #1 engine was still rotating out of control, and the #4 engine was still shaking and vibrating with substandard power. The pilots were having to actively fight the controls just to keep the plane in the air. Then Jack looked out at the #1 engine and noticed it had burst into flames. Long bright-orange jets of burning oil and fuel streaked back across the wing. The violent motion of the rotating propeller was now shaking the engine, and pieces of cowling, the coverings over the engine, started to fly off in all directions. Loud bangs could be heard as some of the pieces hit the side of the ship. One put a basketball-size hole near the radio room.

Jack yelled to Jake asking if they should bail out. Jake shouted back that they would try to get to England. He told Jack to go back through the plane and tell the crew to stay put. Jack climbed down the rest of the way out of the top turret, and made his way back through the bomb bay to the radio room. He told the radio operator to stay where he was, and then he went back to the waist where he saw that one of the waist gunners, his good friend Aldo Gregori, had already kicked out the waist door in preparation for bailing out. The other three gunners were expectantly lined up next to him. He was standing at the open door with his parachute on, and expected to hear Jack tell him to jump. But instead Jack yelled to stay with the ship and they were going to try and make England. Gregori and the other gunners nodded, and Jack made his way back to the flight deck.

When he got there, he looked past the struggling pilots through the windshield and up ahead to the French coastline and the English Channel beyond. In a few minutes they were over the water, and Jake had the bombardier salvo the bombs to lighten the ship. But they were still losing altitude. Jake told Jack to go back and tell Doy Cloud, the radio operator, to make sure he was signaling SOS over the radio. When Jack returned to the flight deck from that errand, he looked up and saw a British Spitfire fighter flying slightly above them and to one side. The British pilot had heard their SOS and was radioing a rescue ship stationed out in the channel to keep an eye out for a B-17 that may be coming their way. The message sent by that Spitfire pilot probably saved the lives of nine of the crew.

The bomber was getting closer to the water, and it was clear that there was no way they were going to make England. The only alternative was to ditch in the Channel. Jake shouted to Jack to get the crew into ditching positions. All the crew except for the two pilots assembled in the radio room midway back in the B-17. They positioned themselves as they had been taught in training. All were facing the rear of the airplane, two with their backs against the wall and wooden door to the bomb bay, then two, including Jack, with their backs against the drawn-up knees of the other two, and so on until they were all braced against each other and the plane in preparation for impact.

After they got into position, Jack could look out the large hole in the side of the ship that had been made by a piece of cowling from the disintegrating #1 engine. The water was getting very close, and he knew it wouldn’t be long now. The big plane was lurching and wallowing as the pilots fought to keep it level with the water. Suddenly there was a tremendous impact as the plane hit the side of a wave…

Jack was assigned to the 544th Squadron of the 384th Bomb Group based at Grafton Underwood near Cambridge, England. My father, Paul Meehl, was a crew chief in the 547th Squadron of the 384th, and I grew up hearing his stories about B-17s, battle damage, and collecting pieces of shrapnel inside the planes from exploding flak shells that peppered the bombers over their targets in German-occupied Europe. He spent two years in England and only flew over Germany after the war ended. The 384th instituted low altitude flights over former enemy territory, showing the ground crews what the planes they had kept flying had done to the German cities. As far as anyone knows, my father and Jack never met, but they were fellow members of the 384th in the air war against Germany.

This book is dedicated to all the crew members Jack flew with in the 384th, and to his family: his wives Peg and Ceil, his daughter Pat, grandsons and their families Clancy and Cortnie, Travis and Karen. He thanks them for their support over the years, and for making sure he keeps attending the 384th Bomb Group reunions. The book is also dedicated to my father, Paul Meehl, crew chief, 547th Squadron, 384th Bomb Group, for inspiring Jerry’s interest in WWII history, B-17s, and the 384th Bomb Group reunions where Jerry met Jack. Jerry also thanks his wife Marla for her editorial advice and interest in all things WWII. Without her support, Jerry’s various other WWII history projects in general, and this book in particular, would not have been possible.

This oral history is based on a series of taped interviews conducted from 2012 to 2015. The text is meant to give the reader a sense of what it is like to sit across the table from Jack, and listen to him tell vivid, animated stories describing his experiences. These are his memories of what happened, told in his own words.

Part 1

Early years and into the Army Air Corps, 1920-1943

Growing up in Pennsylvania

I was born October 6, 1919, in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania. My dad was a mechanic in the Fayetteville Garage. I started school in a one-room schoolhouse. Then the guy my father worked for committed suicide, so my dad took over his garage. It was pretty good size, and this was in 1927. Then we moved into