Roll Call: Comrades in Arms
By Irv Pliskin
I had managed to get my stuff put away and was waiting, sitting on my assigned bunk, reading I think, when my three new comrades came in. They were Roger Rand, the pilot, William Satterfield, the co-pilot and Charles Mullins, the bombardier.
They had been flying together for several months, training and building a cohesive crew and a friendship relationship. I was the fourth of the officer compliment and I mmediately felt like an interloper.
I don’t know quite how they felt about me. I was probably not what they had been hoping for as a navigator. I was a New Yorker, and that in itself was an aberration. New Yorkers were a breed apart, according to many of the men I met in the Army.
I was a Jew, and that, too, was something of a shock to them. (I don’t think they were naive enough to look for horns, but I know some guys that that happened to, honest.) These were all God Fearing mid-western or southern boys who, by nature, regarded Jewish men with suspicion. Thirdly, and probably the most devastating part in terms of professionalism was that I was a ‘flight officer’ with a blue and white bar, not a gold one on the collar of my tropical worsted uniform.
There was the feeling among some officers in the Army Air Corps that the flight officer was something less than competent. So, to my new crew mates I may not have been a welcome addition. They may have seen me as the subtle punishment for some misdirection or mistake they may have made. This was never expressed out loud, but at times I felt that that was the way they viewed the situation. That, in my opinion, was the main thing wrong with the Flight Officer rank: it diminished the men who had it in the eyes of those who graduated as second Lieutenants. Flight Officers were looked down upon, by some colleagues, just as the flying sergeants in the Marine Corps were looked down upon by some of the commissioned flyers who may not have been anywhere as well trained or competent as they. It put an added burden on all of us...we flight officers had more to prove, and were sometimes unable to suspend any feelings of doubt.
I was accepted by my crew mates, although not necessarily welcomed and immediately included in all of their thoughts and activities. Other navigators I discovered had been warmly embraced. Some pilots had even actually cheered when the navigator joined the crew because his being there helped relieve the pilot of one of his burdens: determining where they were at all times.
I began flying training missions the next day. The first mission with the crew was my first flight in a B-17.
I am sorry to state that I don’t really remember that flight any more than I do many others we had while training in the B-17. I don’t know if my first B-17 flight was a high altitude flight or not. But I am certain that within a week we had to use oxygen, and I know that until I got to Avon Park I had never flown with an oxygen mask, although I had been trained in how to use one. From mid-July on it was pretty much necessary to be on oxygen for most of our flying training.
Avon Park is located in the center of the state of Florida, at the northern tip of Lake Okeechoobee. I don’t believe we ever went into the town of Avon Park, and it is likely that it was a typical, half horse southern town in those days. It, like the rest of the area has probably grown into a major city, by now. But I don’t remember it at all.
It was July, and it was hot as hell in Avon Park.
The airplanes were parked on open ‘hardstands’ and sat in blistering sun all day. When we had to get in them to fly, we had to do it carefully, or suffer burns. A guy could really get burned on the hot metal. However, we welcomed flying. It was cool aloft, cool, and comfortable, but incredibly noisy.
Let me describe the B-17 to you, as best I can in this work. For the time, she was a big four engine propeller-driven airplane. Her wingspan was just short of l04 feet, from tip to tip. The plane itself was almost 75 feet long. You could walk through most of it. The tail section which was about 7 feet long was too shallow to walk through. If you wanted to go there, you had to crawl on your belly, and work lying down for the most part.
If you entered the plane from the rear door, which was on the starboard side of the airplane, you could walk from there 65 or so feet to the nose compartment.
Our tail gunner, Clyde Bell, was the oldest man of our crew. He was from California, and was, I think about 26 at the time I met him. Bell worked on his stomach. He crawled into the tail section, and lay there; there was no room for him to sit up when he was at the guns.
Directly forward of the tail section, and the door, was the airplane’s waist section. This was the heavy fire area. There were two guns slung in the opening in the waist, and most of the time, in combat, the floor was littered with expended machine gun cartridges.
In the beginning of training we had two waist gunners. They were stationed in the waist section of the airplane, and were responsible for firing the fifty caliber machine guns out the open ports on both sides of the aircraft. Our waist gunners were George Mason who was from Arkansas and Jimmie Bynum who was from Alabama. When we got to England, Bynum was reassigned, since we were no longer flying ten man crews. The P-51 fighter plane had effectively limited the effect of the German fighters by that time, so it was not believed that we needed two gunners in the waist to handle attacks.
Next in the crew roster was our youngest member, Robert Bright who came from Georgia. Bright, the son of a general in the Quartermaster corps. was the ball turret gunner. He was just nineteen at the time we met and he made darn sure none of us knew that his father had that much military rank.
The ball turret of the B-17 hangs down below the fuselage, and a person has to be a contortionist, practically, to get into it. Generally speaking, the ball turret operator tends to be a smaller man, because the quarters are cramped, exposed, lonely and very hard to get into and out of. Although Bob Bright is a good sized man, today, about five foot seven or eight inches, I remember him as being quite small then.
Ball Turret gunners generally needed help to get in or out of the ball, and that help was provided by one of the waist gunners. Once in the ball, Bob would lie on his back and rotate 360 degrees around the plane so he could see what was happening to the rear and the front. He could move his turret so the guns would be firing straight out from the underbelly of the airplane, or directly at the ground and any area in between. The gun was virtually between his legs; he would point his tush at the target and fire away. I certainly never envied Bright the job he had. I don’t think, even then, I could have gotten in or out of the ball with any ease. Actually, I don’t think I ever tried to get in one, either in flight or on the ground.
There was a metal wall, with a door, between the waist compartment and the rest of the airplane. The wall marked off the radio compartment, and our radio equipment. Elbert Everett, the radio operator, was from Minnesota. He had a desk at which to sit, with his equipment in front of him. Headset on, he could take code at fifty words a minute, which was no mean feat, and send it equally quickly.
Everett had a single fifty caliber machine gun which was suspended in the ceiling of the plane. He could, when necessary, stand and look through a Plexiglas section of the roof, and fire his guns directly up and around the aircraft. He could not fire below the top of the plane, but he and the top turret were positioned to control enemy aircraft that came in from above.
Directly in front of the radio compartment were the bomb bays. They appeared to be cavernous, by our standards at the time. This was a large, round area, about ten feet long split down the middle by a narrow cat walk, probably no more than 6 inches wide. Bombs, up to l0,000 pounds of them, were hung on shackles on either side of the catwalk and alongside the fuselage. There was no railing along the catwalk, but a fellow could reach out and grab a strut for balance and safety.
Slip off the walk, and you would fall about l0 feet, if the bomb bay doors were closed. If they were open and you slipped and fell, it was to the ground. When bombs got hung up on the shackles, somebody in the crew had to go out there, balance in the open air, and work them loose. That was not a very welcome prospect, especially if we were at altitude. The crew member would be burdened by a portable oxygen bottle, and his parachute, which was a chest pack, clipped to the front of his uniform. Chest packs limited hand and arm movement.
Forward a foot or so of the bomb bays was the top turret. This was a narrow rotating gun turret, with twin fifty caliber machine guns mounted in it.
The gunner in the turret could fire above the airplane and to either side. He could also fire ahead and to the rear. His downward range was limited, to avoid the top turret gunner from spraying the nose of the aircraft with bullets. Our top turret gunner, E.L. Adcock was from Tennessee, and he was also the aircraft engineer. His job was to assist the pilots by watching and reporting on our instruments and engine function. He was also the man assigned to try to free hung-up bombs, if that became necessary. In flight, when he was not standing in the turret, firing guns, he stood between the pilots, and kept them abreast of things like fuel levels and engine operations. Adcock may have had some clandestine flying experience, acquired only after take off at the whim of the pilot.
A foot in front of the top turret was the pilot’s seats. The first pilot or the captain sat in the left, the co-pilot in the right. Roger Rand--whom we then called Randy--was the first pilot. He was from Wisconsin and was exactly six months older than I--given a week or so. Our co-pilot was William Satterfield. He was from Georgia and was to some extent an angry young man. He had been an instructor in single engine aircraft and had decided he wanted to get into the fighting war. He expected to be sent to a fighter squadron, but was instead assigned to become a B-17 co-pilot, a job which he professed to hate. I don’t know if he was even trained in multiengine flying, except for the training he got flying with us. It was not unusual for the Army to take a man with only single engine experience and plop him into the second seat of a bomber. It was all for the good of the Army, even though it might have been better to give such a man training before assigning him to combat aircraft just because he knew how to fly. Flying a four engine bomber is a lot different from flying a single engine trainer or even a hot-shot single engine fighter plane. Physical responses are different, skills needed are different and no doubt, attitudes are different, too.
Some of the instrumentation is the same, of course. Altimeters, air speed meters, compasses, fuel indicators are the same in each airplane. But the B-17 has all of the other, operating instruments in the panel in front of the pilot. Each of the four Pratt and Whitney engines has instruments of its own, and they are all there, in front of the pilot to be watched and monitored all the time.
The flying yoke is different too. The bombers used a yoke and a steering wheel, much as today’s airliners do. But, single engine aircraft used the “joy” stick, which was a movable stick that was used to control the movements of the plane. Some of them still do today.
There is a pretty good sized step down from the B-l7 pilot’s compartment to the passageway that leads to the bulkhead that separates the pilot’s seats from the nose compartment.
Step down into the space between he pilot’s area and the nose compartment and there is a small space in which a person can stand. Facing the front of the plane, on the port side, is another door. This is the door that the people working the front end of the plane usually use to get in. The door opened out, and the entrance was about l0 feet off the ground since the B-17 sat on its wheels and its tail section. On the ground, one walked uphill from the rear to the front. To get into our elevated aircraft section, we put our hands up above the open door, grabbed the top of the door frame and pulled ourselves up into the aircraft by swinging our behinds onto the walkway.
We would then scramble up and go to our positions. Turns left and bend and you could get into the nose compartment where the navigator and the bombardier worked.
I was the navigator. Irv Pliskin from New York. Charles Mullins was the bombardier. He was from Ohio.
Mullins was a couple of years older than I. He was notable because he had gotten married, as a lot of fellows did, when he graduated from his advanced Bombardier training school and just before he joined the crew.
Mullins sat on a small stool at the very front of the aircraft just behind the large Plexiglas nose of the ship. When he had a bombsight, which was not the case in every mission, he sat there and waited for whatever action would occur. When we had a bombsight, as we flew to and over the target he was in complete charge, determining with his instruments airspeed, our direction and our heading.
When we did not have a bombsight, which was most of the time, he sat in the front of the aircraft and controlled the two fifty caliber machine guns in the front turret: the chin turret. He had a bicycle type control handles, which were set on an eccentric handle that could be locked to one side when the bomb sight was in use. When there was no bombsight the bombardier functioned as toggleer. He opened the bomb bays, and toggled switches to drop bombs as soon as possible after the flight leader dropped his.
The navigator section was directly behind the bombardier. There was a small desk on the port side of the airplane, and a stool, which was rarely used. Navigators worked standing up. There was a complete set of flight instruments, air speed indicator, altimeter, compass, bank and turn indicators, driftmeter-an instrument that let the navigator look at the ground and measure wind drift- and the ‘G’ box, a very early version of a radar device that helped a navigator determine position. There was also a Plexiglas covered hole in the aircraft’s roof that could be used for celestial navigation with a sextant and other instruments. The navigator was charged with keeping an ongoing, written log of the flight in terms of airspeed, direction, and other observations.
Eight of these men and I were to share a unique adventure, in an airplane that was a miracle of engineering. The Fabulours, legendary B-17 Flying Fortress, is now a subject of many stories and legends. Furable, sturdy and resistant, I shall always remember her: the Boeing B-17, my flying foxhole.
