George Hanson. Veteran's Day 1990.
George Hanson
Veterans Day 1990
Ray (Wilder) pretty well battled one theater. I was in the other one. Our group, we used to bomb with B-24’s. We started in Africa. We only missed one battle. One right down there in the middle of the desert. Otherwise, we hit every one of them all the way up through Europe. We got bombed out in Italy and had to go way back down in the heel once. We stayed in Foglia where we could get in the range of anything they had to bomb within 8 hours which could be anywhere from 400 to 1,200 miles. That was just about the limit for B-24’s - 2,700 gallons of fuel and that’s about all you could go. If they got ruptured or punctured in one of the fuel cells – which the first ship I had did. Well, they never got back.
This one we did get it, though. The pilot got after us until we run up and got it running. I and another guy from Chicago went up 400 miles in enemy territory. We went up and worked nights on that thing for three weeks. We slept in the bomb bay section of the plane near the tail section of the floor. If you tore the floor apart there’s all oxygen bottles underneath. So, we took the oxygen bottles out and threw them up in the wing cell and we stayed underneath there in the daytime for three weeks until we got that sucker ready to go and then we didn’t dare pre-flight it because time and time again the Germans would come right in the plane while we were there. They never bothered us. They never knew we were there. But, they had been watching all the activity going on and there was so much work we had to do to it. The only way we could make it go at all was from a ship way down at the other end that had been smashed. We had to drag fuel in 5-gallon cans ‘cause that one had fuel and our ship didn’t. We just by-passed the one fuel cell and patched up the nose. When we got it back working we made one radio call. The chopper brought the pilot in, he just jumped right out, jumped in the plane and had it going right out the end of the runway. We got back and the ‘old man’ was looking with field glasses like this (holding up his hands to face as if looking through binoculars) and says, “Put it on auto pilot and bail out of it.” The pilot says to us, “I’m flying co-pilot. Do you hear anything?” I replied, “No. I think the radios bad.” We landed. Of course, we were bleeding on the butt for a long while after that ‘cause the ‘old man’ was really mad ‘cause we brought it in. That was the 13th mission and it made 36 missions before it was finally shot down. Regardless of the damage, we felt it was worth going after. We did it. I got the Bronze Star for it and my buddy didn’t. He chewed me out about that for years. I lost him last summer. He was my Assistant Crew Chief.
But, Ray (Wilder) will tell about taking the ship out there and trying them. We had one that actually flew better than 500 miles on one engine. A B-24 is like a rock. Boy, you cut out 2 engines and you can’t hardly maintain any altitude at all. These boys stripped anything they could get out of it. All their clothes. Anything, and they made about 500 miles and happened to hit on a little island over there. That ship, we called it ‘3 feathers’. I’m not certain at all but I think it flew 30 some missions. There’s pictures of it in my book here. I had 17 minutes of auto pilot experience but don’t put the money on the floor ‘cause I wouldn’t try it again.
My training was at Amarillo and I had all my training on a B-17 which is completely opposite of a B-24. The B-24 was all hydraulic except the cowling flaps. They were electric. The B-17 was all electric except the cowling flaps and they were hydraulic.
We did get into contact with them. What happened, I went through a Douglass Aircraft plant where my ship was built. I had been assigned a Crew Chief. I followed that ship all the way through and I think we were up 5 or 6 times in Long Beach, California and went to a gunnery range. We tried it all out. I was supposed to go to the ship and join a group and go where that group was going – that was my ship. Well, the last time I came down they said they had no open spot for us to join. So, they yanked us out of there and sent us to Utah for small arms training which we never had. We had it then. Just biding time. While we were there they got 4 of us. They gave one to each squadron and there were 4 squadrons in a group and this group was right out in the middle of the Salt Lake Flats. We joined in with the B-24’s. We were kind of amazed at that but it didn’t take us long to get used to it. We found out what they were.
I didn’t make Crew Chief until we got overseas. We went over there on a boat and the guys brought the airplane over. There was a Crew Chief then. I don’t know what happened but I know he was court marshalled and they took him back home. I think, uh, he was from Washington and they don’t know yet what ever became of the guy. But anyway, they gave me the ship then and uh, we’re pretty proud of the record that one made along with the trouble it had. It ended up with a hole in the wing cell. It was pretty near six foot across. A rocket went right through it and it tore one whole wing cell right out. It was one of the main ones. That’s why we had to drop down with it. Fortunately, it was above base and we got bombed out and we landed onto it and we made a good landing and we got the thing back. I wouldn’t want to do that again either, but we did. They always say, “You was a bit senseless. You didn’t know much then.” You act then you think about it afterwards. Like I said, that’s what we did then, too. A lot of times it was abandoned but our group was designated.
We found out about eight years ago that we were the highest decorated bomb group of any bomb group in Europe. We had the most bombs dropped and most active hit targets. We thought we were goof balling all the time. But it turned out really good. I didn’t bring the records along but we had perfect records. Turner Broadcasting just finished a book on us. It was of our own group. I think there’s about 400 pages in it. I didn’t bring that along. I brought these books of our own. I haven’t read them all through yet so I don’t know what we got in there. But, it’s quite interesting.
The 2nd ship we had we finally lost the 1st one. The 1st one was called ‘Lonesome Polecat’. It’s a funny way they were named. Ships were named for some reason or another. This pilot, he was from Liberty, Indiana. He was a small guy. Really small. He would practically stick the wing right in the waste window when we’d go over the target. The minute we dropped the bomb he’d just pull right out. That’s why we’d start calling him ‘Lonesome Polecat’. So, we named the ship that.
I run into the guy the end of September out at Omaha, Nebraska when I went out there for a reunion and I ran into the guy that ditched it and I haven’t seen him since we left Italy. Seems like every reunion we go to I’ll find somebody I haven’t seen since we left Italy. He came up to me and wanted to know what my name was and talked to me. He says, “I’m the guy that didn’t bring your toy back.” It was quite interesting. Then, before the event was over, I found out the pilot of the 2nd ship I had, had flown the 99th mission on that one. It only lacked one mission of 100 missions.
Then the war was over and they took anything that had 100 hours on, they considered it wasn’t any good. It was a lucky ship. The 1st trip out it got over 1,000 holes in it. That’s why we called it ‘Patches and Pinholes Delight’. I got a picture of it right here. It took us a long time to get her back in the air. When it got 50 missions on it everyone got scared. They figured it was getting too old. After it reached 60, they figured it had some kind of halo around it and they were all fighting to fly the thing then. Every time they finished a cruise or a trip over there with 50 missions they all wanted to bring it back and (inaudible). Nobody could get away from it. It’s been quite an experience.
We started our reunions in 1980. We tried all these years to get one. We never could get the people here. There was about 9 hundred in each squadron and there were 4 squadrons and we just couldn’t get ‘em together until 1980. I think the reason for that was the people were older. You could probably take more time off and we got together the 1st year. I think there was about 500 of us. Now we get about 1,100. I think the reason we had a good turnout was ‘cause it was in the central part of the country. I think that was the last base we were on before we left for overseas. It was quite a thing to see. We enjoyed it except it was 95 degrees.
We couldn’t help but notice there was only four hangers out there. All the rest of the buildings were gone. The runways and all the taxi strips were gone. I happened to run into one of the old farmers working out there. I’m not sure, maybe he owned the property out there. I asked him, “How come they left them hangers out there? They took everything else.” “Well,” he said, “Did you ever try to dig up 36” of cement?” “It didn’t work so they use it as an old airport. There’s a few planes that do fly in there.” They made a conveyer belt strewn all the way to the top of the hangers and they fill them with corn. They must have had a few bushels of corn in there I guess.
Like I said before, I could talk all night long. Like Ray I could tell you some good experiences and some bad ones. The worst experience I had was with this ‘Lonesome Polecat’. We were flying just before we went overseas. We were flying what you call cross country. Normally the crews didn’t go with the ship. But they’re flying cross country. This same pilot says to me, “You wanna take a ride?” I said, “Well, I guess today is as good a day as any. Where you going to?” He said, “I’m going to Indianapolis.” We were at that time over in Fairmont, Nebraska. He says, “I’d like to get back to Liberty.” That’s about sixty-five miles a little east of Indianapolis. Almost to the Ohio border line. Anyhow, he says, “I’d like to get back there but I don’t know how to ground the ship.” I said, “I know how to ground a ship. You just get it in the air and we’ll ground it.” You can’t fly either daytime or night without navigational lights. So, we get almost there and I just reached over to the fuse box and pulled out the wire line by his legs so he had no navigation lights. He had to land. The worst part about landing is he called in and asked them if a B-24 had ever landed there. They said, “We refill them in transit.” We landed, but they told him the length of the runway. We knew it was quite short. So, we come over the 12-foot cyclone fence, from there he dropped it right on the ground and when we were finished we were out through the other cyclone fence right out in the middle of a 4-lane highway. The cops got around us. They pulled the thing back in with a cletrec. I don’t know if they fixed the fence or not but we proceeded to go to town and he went home. The next morning, I got up and you couldn’t see nothing. It was all fog. I called out there and they said you gotta leave this morning but we got one other thing. You gotta take off on a 500-foot shorter runway than you came in on. So, right away it spoiled our trip to Kent City. We were gonna come here and buzz this town. I had to go back in and pump all the fuel out and leave just enough to get us back to Nebraska. When we left, the cops came back again. We took the fence down and already went into the highway. I turned up the turbos and it tore holes right in the tarmac. When we took off, he was watching all the time. He said, “Now when I clear the fence over there I’m gonna have to tip it up ‘cause we’re right in town. There’s houses and big trees out there. So, He flipped it right up on the side like that and the leaves and the branches hit the plane and the #1 engine lost flight. Everybody was looking at that. We get up and circle around Indianapolis and right away the tower calls and says, “How’s your #4 engine?” We said, “We’re not looking at #4, we’re looking at #1. That cut down a tree.” They said, “Ya, but #4 took down all the rest of the telephone wires down here.” When we got back to Nebraska the prop was ruined. If anybody had ever found out about that….. I don’t remember what we turned in on the reason the prop was bad. Anything that had an inch gouge in it you had to change. It had a lot of them. I guess that was the scariest trip I ever took. The roughest one was right off the isles of Portugal. Remember when Patten went beyond his own supplies? He blew up his own bridge. We stripped our ships of everything we could. We took our K-rations and set the bombs and 50 gallon barrels of fuel in there and we pulled into Lans, France. Germany had half of it and we had half of it. We’d fly in there and leave supplies for them guys. So, the four of us decided that we were gonna stay overnight and tour Lans. So, we took our parachutes and went in to Lans. The next day when the ship was out there we’d be in to get it. Well the next day we went out there and the ship didn’t come and it didn’t come. Finally, there was one plane way down in the corner of the runway at the airport so we went down there. There were two guys down there changing engines. It was one of our ships but a different squadron. I said, “Where you out of?” They said, “We’re changing these engines. The ships quit flying yesterday.” We’re pretty near 1,000 miles from home with no pass no nothing. We had hardly any money ‘cause the French didn’t want our Italian money. So, we started out hitch hiking. We finally made it to Marseilles, France. There we caught a cargo ship that had all the mail on it. We bummed a ride with them. When we hit Rome, it rammed. We grounded four times. It was going to Naples and I guess we were pretty close. So, we started hitch hiking again. After we got out of Rome we caught a convoy that was going to Naples. Of course, it was the middle of the night before we got down there. I don’t know where we even stayed that night. But we got up the next morning and sure enough, the airport had one of our planes. There was one in our squadron and we took it back. We were practically right across from the country they were in. So, we flew back across. We got home and we walked in and of course any guy knows when pay roll comes out you gotta sign that sucker or you don’t get paid. We were gone the first time around. So, we stumbled forward and was handed a (inaudible) and we said to the (inaudible) “How about signing the payroll?” Oh boy! He said, “Where have you been?” Oh, he really read it off to us. After telling us off he says, “How come you guys are back?” “Back,” we said, “We don’t have a pass.” He says, “We put you on a week leave of absence.” Well, we didn’t know it. We headed back ‘cause we were broke then. We had Lira’s from France and Italy but we didn’t have nothing for francs. So that was quite an experience. I’m like Ray (Wilder). I’ll tell you the good experiences. But we had quite a record and we were proud of that record. We had a lot of missions.
We did have one guy that I thought was quite a superior pilot. In fact, he was from Grand Rapids. His name was Linski. After he finished his 50 missions he went in to what you call operations. He was an Operations Officer. When a new crew would come in they would always take them out and fly them around just to get them familiar with the area. Every time that he took them out and got them ready for flight we knew what they were gonna look like when they come back. When he’d come back they’d have a grey color around their face and you knew they had been somewhere. Well, they have. We had a railroad trestle over there and he would go under it. I’ll never forget, he pretty much killed this guy. They had a fighter ship under that bridge. This was a big B-24. He’d go right down the river and he’d go right under the rail road trestle. Those guys knew he wasn’t gonna make it. That’s where he would get them every time. He would come back with wheat in the bottom bomb bay.
He always said he was gonna tether all four engines and buzz our thin area. Well, our runway was short but we had a valley that was seven miles across and fifteen to one hundred foot deep. So, these bombers, when they wanted to take off they’d just hit that and they’d just go down out of sight and they’d still be on the ground and we’d stand there and wait for that seven-mile run to come up on the other side. They all did but one. We had one that lost an engine and that guy, there again, just like you say was a ‘fallen pilot’. He lost an outboard engine. Instead of picking that wing up and going out he picked the other wing up and went down. He never did come up. Anyway, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time here. Maybe somebody else wants to share.