P-51 Pilot Ted Conlin -- WWII European Theater of Operations

welcome to Peninsula seniors out and about today we're at the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance for one of their celebrity lectures let's go see what cindy has for us today good morning everyone I'm Cindy maka the director of the Western Museum of Flight after d-day in 1944 Allied forces advanced very rapidly through the European theater a major factor in this rapid advancement against the German ground forces was the superiority of Allied air forces a significant participant in that effort is here with us today in the person of Ted Conlan and it is my privilege to introduce to you Ted so that he may share his experiences in this historical conflict ladies and gentlemen Ted Conlon probably the question asked for me most the time was why did you want to be a fighter pilot and I said well you know it goes back a long way when I was 12 13 years old I got to messing around with model airplanes and one thing led to another and I got into the real heroes of aviation at that time the Wright brothers and then the war heroes there was Eddie Rickenbacker and Billy Mitchell Billy Bishop and of course the incomparable Baron von Richtofen on the other side and then we had the second generation which were people like Charles Lindbergh who flew the Atlantic as everybody knows and Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Amelia Earhart couldn't leave her out Wiley Post Jimmy Doolittle there's just a whole slew of them and this plus the fact they got involved with the pulp paper magazines of the day one of them sticks in my mind it was called g8 and his battle aces I'm sure some of you older guys probably read some of those and that that was what really inspired me and I thought I'd like to be a become a pilot and about I was about 18 years old and I was I was looking for a job the Depression was still still there and a young friend of mine asked me if I wanted to take a ride in his airplane I said gee I sure would you had a Piper Cub and I want to tell you folks that was a really eye-opening for me first time I had been off the ground that high I remember it like it was yesterday flying around we were over a lake and I thought this flying business gives you a total different perception of space and people and everything so I decided I was going to become an aviator I had to be abscent learned to fly but money was scarce so I took a job I was glad to get the job with Republic aircraft in Detroit I was living on the outskirts of Detroit and I was gonna save my money and take flying lessons but something always you know like it comes up something happened I never got to it but then the Japanese made the sad mistake of hitting us at Pearl Harbor and that opened up World War two for us so I said buddy of mine I was in the bowling alley and I buddy a bank out got to calling me when I got home that night he says let's go down and enlist I said wait a minute I got two weeks vacation accumulated I'm gonna do that first really I meant to do that and I did and in April I went down with him and we took the entrance exams and then on July 2nd 1942 I was sworn in as a Army Air Corps reservist they said to me don't call us we'll call you go home and wait well I went back to work August came by September October the guys I was working with her asked me what is this business I thought you were in a growing in the service but finally sudden my goodbyes off I went to Chicago and I got to Chicago and they bundled us up and put us on a another train and sent us to what they called classification Center at Nashville Tennessee I haven't luckily qualified as a pilot material and they gave us a word you're going to Santa Ana California for pre-flight got out to the Santa Ana Army Air Base and it wasn't easy I'll tell you then we were finally ready to be sent out to the school and my luck was holding really great they sent me to the country club of the United States Army Air Corps it was Santa Maria California known as Hancock College the reason they called it the country club was everybody was civilians were introduced to the German biplane it was 225 horse and when we graduated from there we were sent to Chico California and at Chico we were introduced to the multivibrator 450 ours enclosed cockpit and it had a two-speed prop that flaps and we did acrobatics in the night cross country at the completion of our course up there we were privileged to ask our instructors what schools we preferred to go to for advanced and I was off to Luke field and there we were introduced to the 600 horse North American Texan and it was quite a jump you go from 450 to 600 so only 150 horsepower however you've also got a variable speed prop and retractable landing gear we did a week at gunnery school then we came back up and we got 10 hours in the Curtiss p-40 Warhawk this was our first introduction to a truly really war machine this what the culmination of our cadet program and we all graduated as flying offers on November 3rd 1943 and we were given 30 days leave and our next station was Tallahassee Florida where we were given equipment for our overseas and for all the necessary thing a pilot would use in his entire career then we were sent to Tampa Florida now this was another Lucky Strike Tampa Florida had p-51 A's they hadn't been flown yet except this was the first quarter room that I know of we got checked out and I mean we did the basics of learned how to do the acrobatics and long-range navigation and we did gunnery round strafing dive bombing and air dare now we were ready they decided they were going to send us up to 240 miles Standish in Rhode Island and they put us on a train took us up to Boston Harbor and offloaded us onto a German liner that German liner had been captured in World War one and was refitted for our troop transport purposes in World War two I remember there were about 200 of us officers of which about 60 were Army Air Corps and we have a surprise delegation of about 14 nurses newly rajin graduated nurses from the US Army it didn't take us long to get acquainted with them and their major jumped all over us all of a sudden we had guards at both ends of the gangways and the deck they were on and she sure was a party pooper we were over that we were on that chip for about five days we landed at Liverpool and we were immediately put on a train and sent to a replacement center called Glocks Hill they were flying p-47s and p38 and they just introduced the p-51 what we were there for was to orientate the system way the British system of coastal defense and radar and radio communication and I had been to a dance up at rims Beakley Thorp's which was 40 miles due east of the field and a town of about a hundred thousand and when I was at that dance we got tanked up at the local pub across the street first and then went over the dance and I met a young lady over there I thought she was really interesting for me but she was only 16 years old and I thought well just have to wait for her to grow up and so one day I they gave me an airplane said go out and do some local flying around and I thought well okay it's a good time to go up to Grimsby Clee thou'rt so I slipped on up there went over to her house and I dropped down to about a thousand feet and I ran up the prop and made a little noise and we cragit my wings and just about that time some other guy goes right by me another p-51 chase me if you can't catch me if you can he goes off and breaks to the left over to the beach and I followed him like a fool and chase him and we went down the beach and they had there was a big bridge there a landing dock and they had taken out the middle of the dock so that the German case they invaded they couldn't use that so the other p-51 I flew right through that airspace and and then he disappeared that I thought well maybe I better get back to GOx hill well i went in and landed and one of my buddies came over to me and he says hey Conlon you weren't up near Grimsby Cleethorpes were you I said no I was over in a practice area during Shondells lazy agent he says well two idiots alerted the whole British coastal defense system and heads are gonna fall I said boy I guess you know I sure don't blame him for that was very stupid I never did figure out who was the hotshot in front of me anyway after I don't by the way that incident was written up and that evenings a Grimsby night Telegraph I think they caught quite an article which didn't help matters that sixteen-year-old girl that I buzzed her house at Cleethorpes in 1944 she grew up I married her and we have a daughter a granddaughter that was here helping me and a great-granddaughter when we completed our get ready ten of us were assigned to the 357th pyre group again a lucky strike for me the ten of us you know we were replacements we were replacing mi hki AIDS or whatever happened to him finally we were ready for combat and I was scheduled for the first mission on May 13th after briefing the group was going to Berlin the briefing officer called me aside and said mr. Conlan you're going to be radio relay on this mission I said radio really what's that he says what what you do is you take up a course of zero one zero and reach an altitude of 25,000 feet and set up a parallel course equal legs on both the long side and equal short leg and you fly that course and relay messages from Colonel Graham in the group that will be over Berlin apparently the communications weren't that good stretching that prior so I did what I was told took off and flew out the earth didn't know where I was or why I was doing it but I got out there and I set up a parallel course of twenty five thousand and pretty soon I made contact with Colonel Graham they were at the Big B and he gave me a few messages which I relate to London and then all of a sudden I wasn't getting any orders anymore I thought that was kind of strained and I called for confirmation and I didn't get any answers from anybody London on my home base nobody and I thought well this is strange I found a hole whether it closed in underneath me and I found a hole and I started to let down and round it and I went into a power spin and all my senses told me that I was okay my instruments told me I was in a straight down diving spin there's where the training kicked in here on brand-new my first mission and I got myself together and I got back on the gages got the wings straightened out he's off on death row excuse me and I leveled off at about 2,000 feet in this descent from 25 I must have been pretty close to Mach 1 and I was pretty well shaken up and I couldn't raise anybody was out there all by my side so I decided to do the one thing I was trained to do I set up a course for England I was just guessing and I sell up to 700 and started a gradual climb I claimed for about 15 minutes and pretty soon I heard of slight reaction in my earphone and I thought I heard him say play that course for another 15 minutes and calls back and I did that and the second time I called him they came in very strong and it was London and they vectored me 2 to 200 and I went in and wasn't long and I made landfall I was airborne 5 hours and 5 minutes and I landed and the briefing officer said well how'd it go anything unusual out there I said no it's just routine I just set up a parallel like the guy said and had a few messages he said ok I knew if I said anything different I'd still be answering questions about where I was May 21st was when we were briefed to go on a rhubarb over in the Berlin area shoot up targets of opportunity and the weather was so bad they didn't send the bombers anyway on this mission that we were briefed there was weather was too bad for the heavies so they sent us out and we were flying along merrily on our way we were somewhere over near Hanover to our best guess and we had a complete cloud cover underneath and all of a sudden a tremendous amount of flak so I guess that was Hanover and we scattered like a bunch of geese and I was confused I didn't know where I was like finally I saw two of our birds up in front of me and I went up and joined with two of the more experienced pilots lieutenant Ankeny and Starkey so Ankeny took us on up north of Berlin we found a peninsula up there and Ankeny decided we're going to strafe that airfield they had a pretty good-sized airfield so we let down around 10 miles outside of the of the to east of the airfield and set up a course coming in and I got everything all ready my gun sight was on and gun camera switching re and all of a sudden I noticed ankeny and Starkey were pulled away from me I looked down and I was doing about about 45 inches and they were probably doing 60 inches so I have to bring up the boost immediately and I looked up and there was a hanger right in front of me and I was airplane parked in front of it so I let go for what little time I had because my rate of closure was so fast and I got off about 80 rounds into the airplane and a hanger and I did a sharp right turn and wouldn't you know I pivoted right over a 88 millimeter gun emplacement I looked down I saw him they were winding on that big thing trying to get it down on me and I thought no thank you and I saw Ankeny and Starkey and the water was about a half a mile off of the field and I hightailed it for that and I was doing the zigzag and they were shooting at me when I got to the water then they were trying to splash me down which was pretty clever you know 88 normally makes a big splash so we I just got out of that and I and I went up and joined Ankeny in Starkey and here comes a if I remember correctly it was a yellow nose p-51 looking for a mother and father he joined up with us Ankeny brought him in tucked them in under his wing and wouldn't you know right away we wandered into another flak trap and it was heavy stuff and we made it back okay and Ankeny I saw Ankeny about well let's see it was 1998 at the Air Force Academy and he was still apology for taking us over that airfield I said Harry we were paid to do that that was our job the next big event was d-day now we knew it was gonna happen because I think Great Britain was actually tilting we had so much stuff over there we had armor and trucks and people and it was just total chaos and it was going on all night they were moving people around and so on the 4th of June we were coming back from a mission to France and one of our guys looked down just as we neared our home base there at least in and he said gee look at all those ships down there we landed and all of a sudden we were hit with a storm because General Eisenhower heard about it and he was upset because these were ships that were being moved down from the Scotland area to get in place down in Southampton but the jump over to France on June 6 we didn't know what the day was there anything but on June 5th which was the next day we were grounded everything was shut down nobody could get in or out and they started painting the invasion stripes on our aircraft so we knew it was on and that night we had a big meeting of everyone on the base and the President Roosevelt spoke to us and General Eisenhower and HAP Arnold and so then we knew that it was for sure the next day and and we had a squadron meeting right after that all of that which was around 10 o'clock at night and it got our assignments and my assignment was to fly wing for a squadron commander major brought it so I don't have to tell you guys and look girls we didn't get much sleep that night we're trying to figure out whether the Luftwaffe was going to come up in force or they were going to stand that we didn't know our assignment was for the 357 we are assigning the area off of the jersey and guernsey islands and we were to set up a patrol there the whole squadron and maintain that squadron LT we got down there at H minus five minutes that would be 555 hours and we didn't leave there until about twelve hundred and five hours so we were on station for that long now before we took off I should have used the restroom and I thought oh what the hell we got a relief to run his North American p-51 so major Brad and I took off on instrument and we flew on a course down to France northern France and I figured well once we got up on the station I could take care of my problem and we got up there and I we just got organized the entire squadron got set up on a on a patrol and I started undo all my stuff and major broadheads called me and said dollar sick sick this is dollar leader let's go down and take a look at the beachhead I like good god five miles down on instrument and five miles back up but orders are orders and that's what we did so a major brought it and I broke out at about 2,000 feet because the weather was pretty bad and we just missed one of the leading German aces and his adjutant in two me-109 s they swept the beach from cape to hawk all the way down through the Canadians and the British and never made a return path we just missed him Joe and I came down and knowing broadhead we'd have mixed it up with him his name was pray Lord maybe some of you are familiar with Prince perler I think they come and he was quite a renowned Luftwaffe haze so anyway we got back to the base at about just after noon and they had lunch rested for an hour and we went out on another sort a that afternoon over to Paris friends and so we put in a full day in the Army Air Corps got their money's worth while we were flying over there we're over labra J airfield and some wisenheimer on the ground with that 88 millimeter caught me right in his sight and I got hit him both wings in the tail these were fragments but had he been another 50 feet up he died had B rights back on I brought back the airplane and had a few holes in and my wingman and my crew chief gave me a piece of timing ring that he pulled out of one of my tail empanadas so that was a d-day we had a mission on the 25th of July and I was flying captain Carson's wing he was our leading producer at the time and we were split into two halves quadroons two flights each eight aircraft each and which one down we went in over the beachhead it's one down the the French coastline down near st. Nazaire where the big submarine pens were then we did a Big Easy swinging up to the left and we were coming back at about 25,000 feet and the visibility had to be a hundred miles it was just one of those gorgeous days in June you could July you couldn't believe and just ahead of us we saw big gaggle of the enemy 109s of 190 and why we were we looked down and there was some p38 guys having all kinds of fun some marshalling yards down on the outside of Paris so the Germans never size their eyes were on that those victims down below and so Carson and I latched on to a focke-wulf 190 and in retrospect I think the guy was probably a not a very experienced pilot because first thing he started to do when Carson started getting hit on him started doing barrel rolls which doesn't fool anybody character was hitting him all the way around on the rolls I'm trying to play Carson's wing and I'm watching the altimeter and I figure if these boys that carries the Sun beyond 7,000 it's audio extent York see you later and the German obviously was pretty well shot up I flew up alongside of him by this time we're down to 200 feet and he's the engine his engines all shot up smoking he's the leans bird in the cockpit he's gone and I'm thinking where's Carson and I see everybody on the ground shooting at me I thought well this isn't very night I swing over to the Seine River drop down on the got as close to the right bank as I could because they couldn't deflect on me that way and somebody get stood on the shore I stood on the bank of the river shot at me with his handgun I I gave him an unfriendly gesture as we as I went by I got down to the Bois de Boulogne Park and it looked like you know if they got any aircraft in the park they got too many guns to begin with so I decided to go out the park agree and it's a huge public park beautiful place and I was right there were no guns in the park and I got out and now I started planning for my eventual I have to leave the continent sooner or later I'd try to pick a place where there's very little flak and I was lucky again I hit a spot I was climbing I'm heading for least in our own base and and I went in and landed and confirmed Carson's victory and told him that I thought that there must have been 10,000 machine guns mounted on the buildings because they were all shooting as and Carson finished his tour he finished his tour about the end of July and I went to him after his final mission because I was his second-in-command but nothing's sure in the army as everybody knows so I said to Carson I'm the new flight commander right Kosovo sure why not hey I took over his flight commander and I got his airplane and his crew chief and his armor and the rest of his on to rise and I was very lucky again john warner my crew chief and I are still the closest a friend I had him as crew chief from August until I finished in October and Carson had come back and he wanted to go back with cars and I didn't blame him for that I was in London on leave in August and I was having a leisure cup of tea and a sandwich in the in the Ipswich Red Cross Club and one of our my flight guys came in and he came running over to me was on a Saturday he said where you been I said I've been in London he says well you're scheduled to go on a flight to Russia I said ratchet he says yeah he says now everybody wants to go and if you're not there you're gonna lose your place so needless to say I hardly finished the tea I was out of there I got on a train I got back up to to Cle thorpes I mean to least in' and I searched out to my old buddy the commanding officer its Bryton leader major Joe brought in I knew where to find them he and the medical officer were at the bar strange as it may seem and I went in and I said major am I scheduled to go on that Russian trip tomorrow he said yeah you were I said well I'm here he said yeah but he says you got to talk to the doc you got three shots in each arm and they are no picnic before he'll let you go so doc Sneddon said to me you want to take three shots and he tried I said you bet I do he says okay come on he took me down to his office he sent out your arms are gonna be pretty sore I said just go ahead so he shot me up and you know when we took off the next morning my arms were so sore I could hardly lift them in 15 minutes I didn't feel a thing it's all gone so we got we rendezvous with the wing of b-17 we had a group which you'd have to call a super group because a group was 48 aircraft 16 in each squadron and we had 72 for this Russian trip so we must add every airplane that was flyable off the base and we went over and after they did some pro functor ii by bombing up in northern germany then they we cut down into Russia and they we had a fighter base at pure Otton and the bomber base was at Poltava and so we were directed to puritan after two days the group was scheduled to leave for Italy so we all took off for Italy and I noticed that I was having trouble keeping up everytime I advanced those trials I'd have a backfire and I finally I was losing them so I called the colonel Colonel Graham and said I couldn't keep up and I was going to have to abort he gave me ok and I turned around and went back to Russia went back to the Russian base after Aden and I have a heck of a time finding it the Russians or whatever else they did they were very good at camouflage I I flew around there for 10 minutes till I finally figured out what we do Lana and we were there about three more days and I was a ranking officer there that had to come back five of us had to come back because of bad engine problems we found out when we landed my crew chief my American crew chief said well sir the Russian crew chief put 80 acting in your tanks as oh that was what it was and just about that time they had a rank called third officer Russian rank and this guy comes over this third officer and he talks to the Russian crew chief for about two seconds and he reaches her and pulls out the biggest revolver I ever saw in my life he's going to shoot the guy right then and there and so my crew chief my American proof chief and I jumped in between them and I outrank the guy so I could tell him yep yep that's all I could think of his Russian it and so my crew chief and the other crew chief convinced the guy that it wasn't really nice to shoot somebody over something like that and we avoided a slaughter we were gone exactly one week on that shuttle run from England to Puritan to San Severo and back to England and we covered three war zones and had five confirmed shoot down no losses to bombers or fighters and we were later on we were received a decoration of the patriotic I think they called the medal of the Great Patriotic War for our efforts now Market Garden had all the elements of a huge conflagration we were alerted that this was a big show and it was Field Marshal Montgomery's show and he had devised a plan where we were to bring the 82nd and 101st airborne up to Nijmegen and Arnhem and dropped them and they would consolidate that area and thus they would close off any access of the Germans to get out of hon they'd have him trapped well like a lot of things certain things didn't go to plan number one we didn't know it but I think it was a 6th Panzer Corps was relieved of their frontline duties in in the frontline found in Holland Belgium just about a week before and sent up to the Arnhem area for rest this is a very area where the 82nd and 101st is gonna drop and when we went in on the 17th we took the British I think it was the 8th airborne army and they they used c-47 they call them Dakota's and they towed horses trailer horses gliders and I don't know how many men probably a a platoon of men in each one of these ports the gliders and we took them up to Holland they sent us up there about two hours early and we prowl around at about 200 feet and we're going around everywhere trying to find out what was going on with the enemy and I saw something tanks and I thought gee that our armor is really moving fast they're already up here so this should be pretty good well you guessed it they weren't ours when when the air drop came up at Arnhem it was unbelievable our job was to take the gliders in there and then go around on the other side and escort the Dakota c-47s back to the coast so they could get back to England well most of them didn't make it true because they had the most vicious anti-aircraft setup and it looked like they already knew where we were gonna drop the drop zone if I remember was about 10 miles west of Arnhem which is a pretty big town in Holland and it was it was a bloody show and then on the 9th I stood down on the 18th I had a a bunch of eager beavers of a flight and they were all complaining that I was flying too much and they weren't getting any time and I said listen you guys if I start giving you time and I sit down my classmates are finishing up and they'll be out of here and back to the zone of the interior now still be with you guys so I gotta try to keep up with him but I stood down on the 18th and it was part of this Market Garden operation and they went over and they got into a pretty good mix and my wingman James Blanchard he scored one 109 and my friend was a golf with he got a victory with a 109 and so I said well I got to go on the 19th and I went on the 19th and in a way as sorry I did because we were divided up into two half squadron and Calv Williams captain Williams was leading the the first half squadron and I was his deputy that date so I was flying just off his wing and we were cruising on up Hollen and we were headed for the zuiderzee and nothing was happening and we're cruising at our altitude around 26,000 feet and all of a sudden we heard a lot of activity on our radios so we knew something was happening and what happens in a fight as the veterans here I'll tell you everybody gets excited you hold the mic button down and you can hear all the customers the old mirror and we can hear all this going on we did a 180 Cal says to execute a 180 until we turn around and we headed back down towards Arnhem and I Meegan and Carson I mean Williams said drop tanks and just what he said drop tanks we all dropped them but just then right across my nose went 109 p-51 and a1 and I did a hard bank left and latched on to the 109 and I have my K 14 site on and I was drawing those diamonds on him and he was history in a matter of a few second and all of a sudden I got some company I was getting a lot of 20-millimeter over my left wing route and I thought who the hell is this and I cut to the right and pulled up I didn't think anybody would climb with me he got up to 10,000 went into a loft berry and there was nobody absolutely nobody now I'm excited I'm scared I'm mad so the only thing I can think of is I gotta shoot somebody and I mean it I put that bird into down position and I drove down to the to the area we had just left and when I got down there I saw nine burning wrecks over a period of about 25 miles some of them are ours some were theirs and nobody not a soul not a shot fired I thought well this is kind of strange I called for Williams I called for my wing man I didn't know who was in that p-51 that I tried to rescue and I figure well I got to go back to base so I went back by myself and when I got back and landed I gave intelligence my debriefing and they said that that they were missing too - that they knew of one was my wingman James Blanchard and the other was the total group leader for the day major hero and as fate would have it was a major hero's last mission he was finished his tour when that was done as a after note to this story in 1992 I got a email from a pilot in Holland his name was John emerald and he was a pilot for KLM and he's also remember the Dutch air force and of flying off for centering the Dutch air force and what their job was was to go around and dig up facts and figures on old wrecks from World War two and he said in his email he said he thought I'd be interested in the fact that they had recovered my wingman's body in one of the canals right near where we were and he was still strapped in and it was positive identification with him and major hero the group leader that day when another 20 miles further east he was the one in the middle and he crashed and they buried him over there in one of the German cemeteries and then I think after they cleared up some kind of a mix-up they finally brought him back to the United States but that was a that was a bridge too far that's what the movie was about getting back to that Holland episode in September 19th when the Hollander told me about who my enemies were and identify them by names and so it winds up that I was pursuing lieutenant Richard Franz he was the third man in that daisy chain and I was on him and I was within several seconds of really destroying him he wouldn't have lived through it and he had he had been in the Luftwaffe since the middle of 1943 he was accomplished leader and he had 17 victories the other man that attacked me was happened to be a friend of his in a different squadron and they were down strafing the Canadians when they saw us coming down and his name was oberleutnant wróblewski and he apparently was shooting at me and naturally like shooting at ducks you never hit the lead duck you get the the female following the male leads and the female gets hit with the shot and so Jim Jim Blanchard was my wingman when I saw those 20s going over my left wing root Jim was already shot down probably dead and in the very next few seconds both Richard friends and Wroblewski were shot down we don't know to this day we did it I didn't do it because I never got a chance to fire and Wroblewski wound up in the german air force as did Richard friends and wróblewski wound up making Brigadier General he was sent to Washington DC as air at the Shea in the 70s and he died of a heart attack about eight years ago Richard friends is still alive to this day every year we sending each other birthday cards I send one to Richard and I also send one to the other man and they send me a birthday card and Christmas cards and Richard Franz does not operate a computer it's gone past him but the other guy does and he's good at it and in fact he just retired and I just had a email from about three weeks ago and we compare different things you know how's the weather so forth but it's a just strange world isn't it we wind up being friends after such violent circumstances now I was telling you about my last mission we flew a couple more missions as a flight commander and then my final mission was very unusual they the briefing officer said I want you to take your flight ofor go down to the emergency base Atlanta Manston and pick up a mothership down there and I don't remember whether there was a b-17 or what I don't remember it but he said the mothership will have control of a b-17 the b-24 that we refer to as Aphrodite and they're stripped of everything and they're wired was 20,000 pounds of TNT each and they're gonna make a big bang when they go down and he he said what do we want you to do your flight is to take the mothership in the to Aphrodite up to Heligoland and bring the mothership back this was about as great a milk run that anybody could ever get because we're over water all the way up the English Channel we make a right turn and he'll over the lands an island off of northern Germany we take the the mothership in the to Aphrodite and there was a big mushroom of activity of anti-aircraft at the heligoland they sense that we were coming but the minute that the mothership cut the to Aphrodite loosed all the firing stop those Germans hit the air raid shelter and I watched the thing go off and I've seen the Hiroshima explosion and this was an absolute duplicate 40,000 pounds of TNT concentrated in one area like that and it was a thing of beauty so I did a 180 with the mothership and brought her back to England and said goodbye and came into the to the air base by air base and the custom was when you finish you do a few rolls no I've happened hi I just flew over we drag my wings a little bit and went down and very docile II landed my airplane and that was it I did 71 mission 270 combat hours and I had one EA destroyed on the ground there's a story on that I was looking over my 201 file and then Mike John BAP report I notice they'd given me an EA destroyed on May 21st and I never claimed any aircraft destroyed so I turned it over to our historian who checked his record and he says well they must have given a team because and I remember that it was a particular interest to the intelligence guys when they called me back down for the for the re-interview because they asked me a lot of questions about the airplane I said well I didn't see much of it the airplane was parked in front of the hangar and I only got off 80 rounds and I got out of there and I heard him talking about a route of 234 which at the time was highly secret it was our first German medium bomber of jet engine construction and apparently in May it was was still not a war machine it was in the experimental stage and they gave me credit for destroying that okay I did crash when I was squadron leader first and only time that I got to fly the squadron I was instructed to take him over and cruise the fighter belt line and see if I could tease anybody up to fight which we did we flew over Munster and Bo filled all other places where we knew there they were stationed and nobody came up and so I took the squadron around and did a big Yui and 1-80 back to England and I was up around dummer Lake and I thought I was going to give him the order to drop tanks because we had plenty of fuel and only about 40 minutes staying and normally almost without exception I would drop my tanks and forget the switch and the engines was cut off they'd have to reach down and young back going again well at this time because I was describing the leader I guess I told him to drop tanks and I reached down to switch mine so I didn't run out and I couldn't move the switch was frozen and later on we figured that what had happened was that the there were little rubber got Gossett's when you match up the holes the these rubber things match up together and allow the fuel to flow what happened was that the the gossips were okay but the Meuse llege that held him to the metal thing had eaten away due to this high-octane fuel were using so they the engineers figured that they swelled up and locked the selector switch now I'm on my drops I've been on my drops by the watch for about two hours I don't know how much time I got left so I had a major gia reso flying my wing that day and I turned the flight over to the my deputy a major and I started looking for a place to sit down I I didn't I knew I didn't have enough fuel to go back across the channel and I got a vector from London the major got it for me and they said Amsterdam so we went over to Amsterdam Holland and I I looked down and I dropped down on the field and I could see they were fighting the North and South were fighting the bad guys were on the north and the good guide on the south and that didn't look too promising and then they had pipes put into the runway made them not usable so I asked a major to get me another fix and he got me Brussels and Brussels had just been captured by our forces a two days before so I hightailed it over to Brussels and I made one pass and I was wigged wagging my wing to let them know I was in trouble and they were bringing in gasoline for the armored division they were bring them in on c-47s and those guys were coming in one after the other and so finally I just had to wedge in between two of them and I I just got in between them and I got caught in the prop rush and I was on the ground now I got a full load of fuel in those wings and my drop tanks are papers thank God I'm sliding on them like I didn't have time to put down the year I'm sliding on like like a sled and I turned off everything that I a jetted the canopy because I wasn't going to burn up in that thing I was going to roll out and take my chances on hitting the runway I finished up my tour and I was sent back to the zone of the interior I went through the Air Force instructors school at Randolph field I had three classes to teach at Moran Arizona finish that and I was sent to Goldsboro North Carolina I was supposed to instruct in p-47 and I thought oh that bird is enormous fifteen thousand pound and a track that you could run around in the thing I never did thoroughly be honest about master the techniques I did a split s with three trainee officers and when I split ass about 11,000 I figured you know I pull out about 9,000 it didn't happen I had both feet on the instrument panel pulling back on that thing and wine in trim tab and I I just barely got out of it so that was my last time to split ass so that was about it for my military career well with that I want to thank you all for being so patient yeah thank you for watching Peninsula seniors out and about here at the Western Museum of Flight and Torrance I'm Betty Wheaton I'll see you next time you

Channel: PeninsulaSrsVideos

Views: 124,128

Rating: 4.8366852 out of 5

Keywords: World War II (Military Conflict), North American P-51 Mustang (Aircraft Model), Betty Wheaton, Peninsula Seniors Videos, WWII, Nazi Germa, Messerschmitt Bf 109 (Aircraft Model), Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (Aircraft Model), Arado Ar 234 (Aircraft Model), 82nd Airborne Division (Military Unit), U.S. 101st Airborne Division (Military Unit), England (Country), Holland (City/Town/Village), Belgium (Country), Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (Aircraft Model)

Id: M1R2l2EuhNs

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2015