“Our Worst Mission” WW2 Bomber Gunner | Memoirs Of WWII #24

i found out way after the mission we're going up fat and happy by ourselves and then by that time the germans got us spotted so every plane in southwest germany got the word to get up there [Music] at the height of the second world war military service was an almost certainty whether by draft or enlistment for any young american man recent high school graduate leon waldman had determined early on that if he was to serve it would be with the united states army air forces i don't know i thought it'd be nice to fly how does an 18 year old kid make decisions everybody's either drafted or joined so i figure i'll join and get what i want my house for the air force and i got what i wanted shipped us to fort dix new jersey you got inducted so they cut your hair and teach you how to salute and give you a uniform and they put me on a troop train of course you don't know where you're going and where do i wind up in the middle of november miami beach how good with uncle sambita you're right had about i think six or eight weeks of basic training and then i was on the train to uh long beach california and it was gunnery school so i finished that then they sent us up to to salt lake small arms training i don't know what we needed that for because i never used the small arms and then we went to las vegas and you had to learn the airplane recognition how to shoot the correct people down and not shoot our own people down which happened and then the last two weeks we went up to indian springs and the first week we flew in 86 they called it the texan trainer but the first day was the first time i was ever in an airplane and the plane's bouncing and i got air sick so i stick my head out but i face forward and i throw up all of it that's how smarter we were 19 and then the last week we flew in b-17s and you'd fly in all the various gun positions so you could be trained in all of them and then they they give you your wings and that's where they form the cruise and i got the waste gun clark gable was a right waist gunner too you know so it was good enough for me we lucked out they gave us 72 brand-new planes these were the b-17g there was first one ahead of chin turret and there was silver that was first silver planes i think that went to italy oh and they said you better take good care of these planes they cost 250 000 and we said wow that much equipped with brand new b-17 flying fortresses leon and the 43rd bomb group were on their way to italy to join the rest of the 15th air force as they fought to stop the spread of german forces throughout europe but when the 43rd arrived they were met with a rude awakening so they sent us up to double up with another bomb group that had been there a long time the 99th and those dirty guys took shiny bombers away we thought they were ours they took 72 new planes away from us and gave us this beat up old bad penny up there with 100 missions on it when we got a 100 missions so flew down first mission april 12th but uh it was a like a milk run it was an easy mission we were just bombing a cement factory not a very important target and i think just a couple of puffs of smoke came up and i was looking out the window it was a beautiful day and i thought boy this is fun you know well the next mission the guy i knew pretty well he was on another uh crew boom they hit him in the wing they hit him with the 88 in the wing which blows up the gas tanks and the plane just disintegrates nobody lives through through that so i thought boy that could get hurt on this job that's pretty pretty tough you know so then i flew a lot of missions after that mostly we bombed aircraft factories on the torpino factory once in france marshalling yards i went to vienna two or three times they were making fighter planes we had to bomb those factories blue esteem because that's where the germans were getting most of their fuel uh munich was a very bad mission flying at times more than three missions a week leon was well on his way to completing the required fifty but in a moment of frustration and flared tempers leon threatened a superior officer resulting in being grounded from one of the most significant missions in the war my co-pilot i didn't like the co-pilot i was stupid and i told him don't go near the bombay on the next mission so he reported me and i guess it went up to the squadron commander so instead of court-martialing me he took me off that mission that was my punishment turned out to be june 2nd to june 11th nine days well what is june 2nd did june 11th tell you it was d-day the allied invasion of the french coast was the first step in bringing the war to germany in an unprecedented way but for the largest seaborne invasion in history to be a success it would require a multitude of diversions to keep the german full strength from defending the coast the bombing missions of the 43rd would do just that they flew this mission to romania bombed it and then went on to russia and they sat down for a day or two then they flew another mission but that took the pressure off the western front somewhat you see but that was my contribution to d-day but we didn't have newspapers or magazines or radios you know indeed they meant nothing to us oh yeah i heard about that they landed normally well good when do we go home the d-day invasion was a success and the tide began to turn in the allies favor but the skies over europe were no less dangerous for the 15th air force we lost 79 planes in the time were over there most of the time the planes were shot down so everybody was lost except those that could jump out you know [Music] the worst mission was a place called memingen germany they thought it was a milk run you know some airfield in germany what the hell is that all about i'm flying along and i don't know what's going on you know i thought we're with going up to a target with a bunch of other bombers the tuskegee airmen were supposed to fly escort on that mission i found out way after the mission we're going up fat and happy by ourselves two of the groups didn't like the weather over the adriatic and turned around and went home and two other groups went to an alternate target and the fighters didn't go with us and then by that time the germans got us spotted hey a group of 26 dumb happy b-17s all by themselves so every plane in southwest germany got the word to get up there i look out there and i see wow a flock of birds coming closer and you can see their airplanes the next thing i hear everybody's shooting and planes have gone down the first squadron of seven planes went down in about two or three minutes all of them and then they started on the other two they got 14 out of 26 of us so 14 planes went down with 143 guys we were fighting the western wolf the whole battle was about 10 minutes when we got over the target we were able to bomb it successfully they say we destroyed a lot of planes on the ground [Music] but this was the worst mission for my bomb group and probably for most any bomb to lose it was basically 60 of the planes in a few minutes [Music] we got back and landed and i could see a 20 millimeter shell lodged in the back of the wing and it was unexploded because if it exploded it would have blown up the tank near it and we would have all been dead that's why i called july 18th my second birthday was july 1844 that mission [Music] just a few weeks later leon would finally complete his quota having survived 50 bombing missions and german patrolled skies he was being sent back to the united states when i got home got to new jersey just behind the statue of liberty and then they sent me to kingman arizona and they trained me to be an instructor so i was training gunners the minute the war ended in europe they knew they didn't need a lot of gunners in the pacific because the b-29s had just a couple gunners with a lot of remote guns you know so they didn't need a lot of gunners and just like that leon's service in the war came to an end 75 years later leon's memories of the second world war are clear as ever the missions he flew and the crew he served with but the other guys never all disappeared i'm supposed to the pilot the radio man until he died and waste gunner until he died and shorty when he died most of us were but we were 19 20 21 mostly that's who fought the war [Music] hi everyone i'm josh from memoirs of world war ii and i just want to say thank you so much for watching this episode our goal is to capture as many world war ii veteran stories as we can from all over the world but we can't do it alone if you'd like to help us in this mission consider supporting us through patreon and check out our website in the links below for more information if you haven't already please consider subscribing to our youtube channel and click the notification bell so you don't miss a single episode we want to say thank you for your support and thanks for watching

Channel: Memoirs of WWII

Views: 1,139,357

Keywords: war, wwii veterans, ww2, world war, world war ii, world war 2, world war two, second world war, greatest generation, ww2 veteran, wwii veteran, memoirs of wwii, vets, dday, d-day, battle of the bulge, history, pearl harbor, story, b17, b-17, b17 bomber

Id: Gs82YgHYwNM

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020