My name is Al Couture. I was a second lieutenant, navigator assigned to a B-24 crew. It was late 1944, November of 1944 that our crew reported in with five others that we had trained with, with the 456th Bomb Group in Stornara, Italy. The 15th Air Force. Pilot to crew. We’ll be touching down in Greenland shortly
to get some chow and some rest. Blondie tower, Army, Two, three, three. A flight of B-17s over Bluie West One landing instructions please. it was always a, sort of a running a little side joke,
which was better. The B-17, the B-24. the B-17 to me was better constructed
and they could go higher. We were faster and could carry more. And that was essentially the difference. The B-24. Right. So I think didn't
sustain damage as well as the B-17. And although they made more B-24’s than any other aircraft, some 18,000 of them, as I recall, they um, as long as they got us up and back... Our unit was made up of four squadrons. Major Gail Cleven was the commander of the 350th. He and Major Egan were the unquestioned
leaders of our entire group. Ev Blakeley was a pilot from Seattle,
“Look who it is” and big hearted Benny DeMarco from Philly. Demarco, hell of a landing.
Same as ours. That impressed me,
and it reminded me really of our crews, our people. They were 19, 20, 21. If you look at the record
we had in our bomb group publication, and you'll see their ages, they were all that age and it was a young man's war in the air. Give us a holding pattern while we figure this out Cros. Roger, standby Turn right to 165, Over. Roger Turning right. to 165. IT was difficult, You were very limited with the tools
you had to work with as a navigator. You had your drift meter, a B-5 drift meter, airspeed indicator and a compass, basically,
and you went with that. But I always felt comfortable
when I could use pilotage, which was just go by the map and follow it
as much as I could and keep track of the movement on the map and using a dead reckoning. And with the information
just keep our track this way. But cloud coverage was a a pill because you didn't have
much else to go by initially. I asked her for credit, she answered me nay, such a custom as your I can have
any day and it's no, nay never You don’t have to do this, it’s a stupid bet.
I have to now. We had a club, if you would call it that, we could eat. We had a little bar, but it was just a
thing about us twice as wide as this. And maybe it a little longer than this. But that was our club. There was drinking. I wasn't much into drinking
or anything back then, anything like that. Not that I am now, but again, we didn't go into town. We didn't have pubs near us
or anything like this. Cerignola itself was a ten miles away from us and I think I only went in there three times. If that. There wasn't much, there was a USO there and I don't remember much about it, but there
were no women around our area at all, For a year. All Clear! easy deal Jack it up and hook it up.
I'm on it. Let's go. You know, the thing
that you didn't address or they didn't address much here,
probably. The faith you had on some 18, 19 year old kids
that were maintaining those airplanes. Even after I got out
and was flying myself as a pilot. And you stop to think of these youngsters
that were probably just working on a hot rod car
before they went in the military. Either they're taking care of these turboprop engines and tearing them apart
and putting them back together. A lot of faith
in a lot of young kids, really. And they did it and under terrible conditions, even in peacetime here where they had to work
to maintain these aircraft at the base. I keep thinking of Dover, where we had so many aircraft,
133s, 124s, 141s. and how they maintained
them, that's amazing. The target for today is Bremen. We'll be hitting the U-boat
pens on the Weser River. Now, I cannot stress enough
the importance of this target. The briefing was pretty much
like what they showed there. It was pretty much your
run in to the target. Any flak along the way, places to avoid on your route to England into Germany It was a very short distance. We had a long way to go. We'd have to go up the Adriatic
to a great extent. And go into northern Italy,
Yugoslavia. Before we got into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria
or Germany. Then we'd get over the land area up there. have you sit on my lap, till I move. Ready for the checklist. Warm 1A , check fuel transfer valves and switches. Both transfer valves are off
and switches off, the intercoolers are cold. Gyros... Oh yes, those. As a pilot checklist were important. You didn't want to forget anything. Again, I can only state that from my experience as a pilot. But I think they followed it
very closely. It was a procedure. It's the easiest thing to get things done
and not miss anything. There were always
a lot of little switches to push. You didn't want to miss any. Latitude. The tail wheel up. Okay, Foster, let's get you in the hole. I was given a very good picture of a ball turret, and so I asked an old friend and he said, Hey, his ball turret
gunner would like something like that. So I sent it down to him in Texas but he called it
the smallest church in the world. Pacer lead, this is red meat lead We’ve lost engine 1
we can’t maintain this pace. We're headed back. Copy Surface lead, red meat deputy. We have mechanical failure. I'm heading back lead is all yours. Roger. Wil-co Actually, our crew experienced it once on our second mission, really And we were going up to Odertal, which is very close
to Oswiecim in Auschwitz, The Odertal refinery was up there.
Our second mission, the first few missions The first few missions, you flew
with an experienced co-pilot And as we got up just about the initial point,
I guess it was IP, they reported the number four engine was failing and we fell out
and we flew back on our own. We joined up with another group, one
that was on its way back, as I recall. I don't know which group it was Here we go. Flak incoming , hold on boys. Ball to crew, Flak,
eleven o’clock low. By the time I got there, we didn't have to contend
with the fighters like they did. They had fighters and flak. Ours,
at least from my personal experience,
it was flack, that's all. And there wasn't much discussion about it,
you're going to see flack and that was it. And you, I guess, you see it
when you see it, and that was it. And our tail gunner. I always got a kick out of Vic, Clayton Vicory was our tail gunner,
and you'd be on the run and Old Vic would be in the back in the tail
yelling flack! and, and the tail. he'd see it. And as it got closer,
his voice would get a little higher. And uh good old Vic, a Massachusetts boy, The Heavenly Host and the evil spirts, Holy [bleep] Will wander through the earth
for the ruin of souls, amen. I was standing up there when the flak hit the Astrodome,
and I dropped down real quick and our copilot told [inaudible]
Yeah, it was fun. We saw you drop down, and when you came back, you had a big grin
on your face. I was telling him, Whitaker, We were at 25,000 feet. I had an oxygen mask on my face. How did you see that? They got Adams. Oh, no, no They got to bail!
Adams! Bail out! Anyone see chutes? Tail to pilot,
I don't see any chutes. Roger. Keep calling out the fighters. Going into the target. You had a flak...you could put on like
you see they have now. And it was many
years later I realized that our shoots were pack chest packs that hooked on to clips. We didn't have a chute
that we wore during the whole mission, This was just a parachute pack
and I realizes that a lot of the difficulty was when the aircraft went down,
reported, was centrifugal force. They got in it and they have trouble getting out. And I can't imagine, I was thinking, well, I have that flak vest on. How was I going to get that off
and put a chute on to get out? Tail report, Dicky. ah! ah! Tail to [inaudible]
Fighters are gone. I only see two left,
from the 349th sir. Three forts are gone. The first time I had to release the bombs and whatnot, and I was up there doing that. I took my glove off
and all I had was a little it was a nylon glove or something. And my hand really froze. I say froze, It got really cold and I was kind of yipping because of that. But I can see if you touch the metal that. and I was
I was pounding on the turret of the for what reason, I don't know
what to do, the nose turret gunner because he couldn't do anything. But my hand was really cold
and it defrosted naturally. Didn't get any freezer burn
or anything like that. But the thing you would notice though, after coming down from a mission,
you would have a white line around your oxygen mask
where it kind of froze up a little moisture or something,
something like that. in and I don't know how those gunners
in the waist, I guess until they got a plastic covering over that window
back in the waist, must have been cold as all get out. Yeah. I need to get you to interrogation,
Buck, common. I didn't drop a single bomb. I had to [inaudible] them over the channel. I know. Yeah. I was wondering in that section, I missed the part
where he said they didn't drop. I didn't hear that part. But they did drop bombs in the channel. And I imagine on occasion
some of our bombs were dropped in the Adriatic, also. Again, there was always a concern of landing with a bunch of 500 pound bombs in there. And you just see
they're just on that shackle and but, Yeah, I can appreciate that
they would could have done that. Get rid of them. Why didn't you tell me What?
You've been up. Two missions. You didn't tell me it was like that. I didn't know what to say. You’ve seen it now. Yes. I didn't have I think our training before
going overseas, where we trained as a crew, as a group flying in Boise, Idaho. We were there for two months,
I guess, and we were flying. There were a lot of beach 24 hours,
and we'd go up and bomb group formation. We'd be attacked, so to speak, by either the Army Air Force or the Navy. They had some Navy fighters up around
Klamath Falls, Washington, and they would come into
some of our routes and attack us. And so from that point of view, I think we were as prepared
as we could get, And you know, until the shooting starts... Seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Our crew was one of six had trained together in Idaho and we reported into our squadron the 456th on six by trucks
at night, together. We were six crews, three of those six went down. The forth crew lost their bombardier, Gabby Hartnett,
their bombardier was one of the first few missions, flew with another crew,
and he went down and became a P.O.W. So again, our crew was very fortunate. I got pretty engrossed in it. And sort of as, I was there listening, and I recognized the briefing
and the rest of this stuff. So that was good in that respect. Yeah. The thing is, the say, you got in there,
you felt a responsibility to one another. It’s really what it was. We had a very good crew, good, good groups. And it was amazing how,
after we came back into the States with the B-24 in 45’ and landed in Connecticut, it just dispersed like a burst of flak. We landed and, poof,
everybody disappeared and went, and never saw a lot of them again. After that, the crew members, at least on our crew.
