We could see the railroad tracks all twisted, and at Cologne, the only building that had a roof on it was the cathedral. Everything else was destroyed, it seemed—all the way up the whole Rhine Valley. The ground crews had a chance to see what their bombs did. Of course a lot of them got airsick because at just 500 feet it’s pretty rough because the plane bounces all over the external draft and one thing or another. So I had given each one of them an empty ammunition can and they asked me, ’What for?’ And I told them, ‘You just keep it with you—pretty soon you won’t have to ask me, you’ll know.’ [Laughs]
*
‘I Don’t Brood About It’
I was relieved when Germany quit; I felt pretty good but that wasn’t the end for us. That was only the end for the European part of the war. We were still at war with Japan, of course. So I went from there, finally we came back to this country. We landed in New Hampshire and then they transferred us to Fort Dix, then from there we went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to continue our training, in preparation for going to Japan, to the Pacific Theater. See, in my original training, my graduating crew was split right into two and half of us went to the European theater, and the other half went to the Pacific theater. So now we were waiting then to see if we were going to be called to go to the Pacific theater but the war ended when I was in South Dakota. That was VJ Day and then it was a matter of time trying to get out because they were demobilizing so fast that they didn’t have enough bases. I went to Lincoln, Nebraska, stayed there for a while. I went to Victoria, Kansas, stayed there for a while. Finally I wound up in Maryland, and I was discharged from there. But it took quite a while even after that to get out.
I liked Truman as president. He was very direct, and very honest, which is a rare commodity today. He didn’t lie to us. Certainly what we have now lied to us for the reason for going into Iraq… Pardon me, I don’t know what your politics are, but I’m just telling you what I think.... Why would we get into something with no idea how we’re going to get out of it? We didn’t learn our lesson in Vietnam? We had no business in there, either. Those people didn’t do anything to us. Nothing! That attack on September 11th had nothing to do with Iraq. The people who did that were Arabs, they were from Saudi Arabia, and it’s one of our friends! They’re friends as long as we got the bucks to buy the oil. I don’t know. This world’s a mess right now, I don’t know where the end of it is, and you young people are the people who have to grow up in this. And I hate to think what is going to happen now.
*
It’s not a very exciting thing, not to you. It was to me at times, but I have to tell you just like it is. I’m just telling you that I don’t feel that air combat was such a personal thing. It only gets personal when you’re flying through flak or got another plane coming at you or something—then it gets a little bit personal. So, like I say—what are you going to do? So I don’t pretend to be a hero; I just did my job, and I was good at my job, too. I made it a point to be, because I wanted to learn everything about that plane that I could. [When I entered the service] I never expected to fly. I thought I’d be a mechanic at my age. Instead of that, I wound up over places, I’ll never know how, but I did. I was in pretty good condition physically I guess. Not very exciting, but that’s the way it is.
I don’t brood about it, I don’t miss it, but I can remember most of it. What is different about it so much was the attitude of the people. It isn’t like Vietnam where you had people taking to the streets protesting a war or one thing and another. These are the things that I remember. It was quite an experience. I’m glad I went, but I’m not going again. Besides I’m too old for that stuff now, I couldn’t take it.
I have my problems, physical problems naturally. I have such a high blood pressure now, I have to watch my diet; I see food and I eat it. [Laughs] That’s my diet. I figure I got this far doing what I want to do; I think I can go the rest of the way. Thank God I’m not senile, though. I lost my wife in ’82; I was married to my wife in 1936. Oh, I wrote to her every day [during the war]. Every day. Oh yes, she was a wonderful girl. She was too good for me, and I’ve been living alone here since then. You could probably tell that just by looking around. You want to know what time it is? [Motions to his collection of cuckoo clocks on the wall, laughs]
*
Do you have any questions we could answer for you?
Your project, I think it’s good. [I hope] it will get people an idea of what went on in those days. I don’t think that it will make much of an impression because it’s not the way people think today. As I said, I don’t think we’ll see the level of patriotism that we had in the 1930s [and 40s]. I just don’t. When you get to be my age, you look at a lot of things and wonder, you know? Of course I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime, way back to the time of Herbert Hoover, and well before him. But I never saw anything like what we have got now. You think this invasion of Iraq was a good thing? Can you think of any reason for us being there? I mean, honestly. You’re the people who are going to have to live with this, not me… It’s not what you think. I don’t really have questions except that I hope I have I given anything you need; have I helped at all?
Yes, we appreciate it a lot. Thank you.
Well, you’re nice kids. I wasn’t going to do this, believe me.
Dick Varney passed away on April 28th, 2008, just shy of his 97th birthday.
chapter Six
The Ball Turret Gunner
I found Richard Alagna living in Saratoga Springs, New York, just to the south of ‘Hometown USA’. At 91, he was excited to hear of my interest in his story; he invited me down for a drink. ‘You ever hear of the movie actor Jimmy Stewart? He was my commander.’
Richard Gregory Alagna was born on November 16, 1925, and was attending college in Brooklyn, New York, when the news of Pearl Harbor reached him. This interview was recorded in 2002 when he was 77 years old. He served aboard the B-24 Liberator.
***
The Turret Gunner
Without the men who invented the turret, today's great bombing missions would be impossible. For without turrets, the bomber would be almost as helpless over enemy territory as an ordinary transport plane without a single gun.
The modern power turret—driven by electricity and mounted inside the bomber—was developed after many experiments in the 1930's and proved its worth in action in the second year of World War II. Its effect on air strategy was spectacular. At last the bomber—heavier and slower than the fighter plane-could really fight back. For turrets—little blisters of plexiglas or safety glass, bristling with caliber .50s, swinging around to meet enemy fighters no matter where they come from—enable the bomber to match the enemy slug for slug in an air battle.
The top turret swings in a full circle; its guns move up and down from straight out to nearly straight up; it protects the whole top of the plane. The lower ball turret swings in a full circle and points its guns anywhere from straight out to straight down; it can fight off any attacker who comes from below. The tail turret throws out a big cone of fire toward the rear, and the nose or chin turret a heavy cone of fire straight ahead.
The turrets are spun around, and the guns raised and lowered, by electric motors or by hydraulic pressure systems run by electric motors. All the gunner has to do is hold on to the control handles of his guns and move them to steer the turret; the mechanism does the rest.
Armor plate or bulletproof glass will protect you as much as possible—though your best defense, like a good boxer's, will still be the offensive power packed by those caliber .50s.
If the turret power should ever fail, you will usually have a MANUAL SYSTEM for operating it by hand cranks. Some turrets even have foot pedals which enable you to fire the guns while using both hands to crank the turret into position. This is an important emergency protection; use it to keep your guns pointed at enemy fighters even though your fire cannot possibly be so accurate as when the power is on, for a motionless turret is an invitation for fighters to attack.
&nbs
p; Even if the guns are out of order, keep tracking the enemy; if you can't hit him, you may at least scare him away. —Air Crewman’s Gunnery Manual, 1944
***
Richard G. Alagna
The Funny Things
I like to tell the funny things that happened. I got into lots of trouble. Every time we went some place, they wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do, like stay. [Laughs] But I never went AWOL in my life. I [just] didn’t like the Army, I didn’t like playing soldier.
I recall [the bombing of Pearl Harbor] was a Sunday morning; I was born in 1925 so I was I was still a kid, pretty young. Quite frankly, I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was. I think that everybody knew that we were going to go into a war and it was as simple as that; I think the government and Mr. Roosevelt prepared us for that.
I enlisted [soon after]. I always wanted to fly; that was my goal in life. I wanted to be a bird, just fly in an airplane. I read all about the exploits of the World War I aces, and that’s what I wanted to do. I was seventeen and a half when I graduated from high school, and I wanted to fly in naval aviation—the Navy flyers, Marine flyers were the best. They had to be very good because you had to be able to land a plane on nothing, on a boat that is going up and down. [Makes wavelike motion with hand] Then I found out that I had 20/20 vision in one eye and 20/30 in the other eye and none of the flying units—Army, Navy, or Marine—would take me. I was real depressed about that.
Then they came around with an exam called the ‘A-12 exam’ and if you passed this examination you were qualified to be an officer; you had the mental ability to be an officer, which was minimal, as I would learn. They would send you to college, and this is where I have the big bone of contention with the government—which doesn’t always tell you the truth, and everybody knows that—but I didn’t know that at seventeen and a half years old, because I played it straight. They said they would send me to college, and I distinctly remember being given a choice of [studying about] political affairs, government, you know, what’s going to happen when we take over a country, what are we going to do there, and so on. I had a great liking not just for flying but also for history and political science, and later I became a lawyer.
So I took the [officer] test and I passed. I managed to convince my mother that this was the thing to do, and she signed for me. I graduated high school and took another exam and was admitted to day session at Brooklyn College, which was a bit of an honor. I was only there a month or so [when the Army] papers finally came through, and I was to be sent to Alfred University. I did not know where Alfred University was, but I knew they had bells up there; they would wake you up and put you to sleep with bells.
When I got up there [to upstate New York] with all these other 17-year old kids, they handed me some books and they handed me a very strange instrument, which turned out to be a slide rule. Now I don’t understand mathematics, or whatever it is called. ‘Two plus two’ I get, [but other than that, you lose me]. They told me I was to be an engineer. I said, ‘This is not what you told me.’ They said, ‘You’re going to be an engineer.’
This was a reserve program. I was not sworn into the Army at the time, but I took the oath of allegiance. We plodded along and I did not want to be an engineer, I didn’t understand it, just hated it. I should have had prerequisites for some of the courses that they gave me and I played catch-up like you wouldn’t believe. It was very trying, even though I have a little grey matter. So we grumbled and mumbled our way through and then we got good news—the Army Air Corps was lowering their eye requirements, so that if one eye was 20/30 they would take you into their flying program. I was in seventh heaven and there were approximately twenty other kids with me who were in seventh heaven! You would think that the commander of this unit, who was a major, would be delighted to think that twenty young kids are willing to go out and fly. He was furious! We had gotten this information from a second lieutenant who had crashed and was on limited service. He had told us about this deal and that we were all pretty smart boys and that if we wanted to, we could take the air cadet test. Twenty of us went to the major and said we wanted out, he was furious. One boy who said he wasn’t going to go to classes anymore, so the major had him marching up and down, up and down. We all took an oath among us that we’d all fail, which was very easy for me because I hated what I was doing. I didn’t have to study any more, right?
We went to Fort Dix and we went en masse. Everybody who was in our unit went down there. The kids up there who had already passed their courses were razzing us—they said we were foolish, this and that, ‘stay in the program’. Well, did they ever make a mistake because the program they were in dropped dead right about then and there. They did not go back to Alfred University, they went into the infantry!
We were the boys that didn’t know what to do with, we couldn’t take orders. We were all very rebellious, bright boys, it was hard to push us around. The twenty of us passed the exam, not one of us failed, and they gave us a little card that said, ‘Welcome to the Air Corps.’ We went to our little barracks in Fort Dix. I have to digress for a second because this is kind of important. I was bitten by a dog when I was very young, and I had the rabies injections with a big hypodermic needle. It was not a shot in the arm but a needle that would go into the wall of your stomach. Men would hold my arms and it was very painful. I don’t like pain. So we’re at Fort Dix and we get our [first set of] injections and I don’t like injections because I keep thinking about needles and I get very upset. Anyway, we fall out into the street and some of the guys who had passed the test were sent to Greensboro or someplace, and some guys were sent to some other place, and I’m waiting for my name to be called and it hadn’t been called, about five or six of us still milling around. If you were there for a quarantine period you could get a pass. I got a pass and where did I go? I went home naturally. I got home and my mother said to me, ‘You don’t look good.’ My mother had been in training as a nurse. I said, ‘I don’t feel very good.’ I was perspiring. She called the family doctor and he came and he said, ‘He has the measles.’ He said, ‘I can’t treat him, he’s in the Army.’ He made a phone call and they sent an ambulance. I went down in the ambulance. I don’t think they let me sit up, they made me lie down; I got the chills and all kinds of nonsense, and they took me to Staten Island. They put me in a dark room and they told me I had the German measles, I think the quarantine period was fourteen days. So there I am, in the hospital. They promised that they would send a message to Fort Dix. They said I was cured, I asked, ‘Can I go back home?’, they said, ‘Absolutely not, private, you must go back to Fort Dix immediately.’ I went back to Fort Dix. Now when you get back on an Army post, the first thing you do is show them your papers, which I did, and then you sign a book that indicated that you got in and the date, this is very important. Signed the book, went to where I was sleeping, naturally all my gear was gone now, so I had to get more stuff, blankets or whatever. All the fellas who I had been with had left, they’re gone, they’re on their way, flying planes, they were killing Germans, I don’t know. [Laughs] The weeks dragged on, they never called my name. Every day I would go out and stand in the street.
By the way I was now a barracks chief. When I was in Alfred University, it was a cadet program. We had military procedure, how to write communiques, how to read the book. We knew the Army regs, we were officer material, and we were going to be officers of some sort. I knew how to march, how to do all the fancy nonsense. So when the new guys would come in, I’d teach them how to make beds and all kinds of things, where to go and all that. Come the weekend, I go home, got a pass, come back, comes the weekend, I would get a pass, go home, come back. I’m in Fort Dix, nobody’s bothering me, I’m a king. Except the problem was, if you miss the [scheduled sequence] of injections, you have to go through them again. There was no way that I was going to have anybody stick a needle in me. I finally decided that this is ridiculous and I began to ask, ‘How about me? When am I going out?’ They said to re
lax. I wandered down to the medical unit and I said, ‘I think it’s time for me to get the second series of shots.’ They said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m Richard Gregory Alagna, 12228219.’ The serial number is exceptionally important because if you don’t know it you can’t get off the base. I have forgotten everything else, I sometimes have to look up my own zip code, my telephone number, but I will never forget ‘12228219’ because you can’t get a drink, you can’t go play with the girls. Well, all hell broke loose! This officer came over and he started to scream at me, he said I was ‘absent without leave’. I was not AWOL, I said, ‘I was in the hospital, they sent you a telegram. I was in an Army hospital, [and when I returned] I signed the book.’ He was real nasty and he said to me, ‘You’re going out on the first shipment.’ I said, ‘Where?’ He said, ‘What did you say?’ I said, ‘Where?’ Understand, I had had three months of being a cadet, I realized that nobody tells you the truth, they knock you around, and you have to grow up awful fast. He said, ‘You’re going into the infantry. You don’t have any service records, we have no record of your passing the exam, we have no record of you. When your service records catch up with you, they’ll transfer you to the Air Corps.’ I said to him, ‘May I talk to you man to man?’ I was all of eighteen years old. ‘You know in your heart that once the infantry gets me, they’re not going to let me go. They’re not going to transfer me after they teach me what to do in the infantry. I have this booklet.’ I had this booklet that said I was an air cadet. He said, ‘Anybody can get one of those.’ I said, ‘It’s typewritten and I don’t know how to type. Give me the [air cadet] test, I can take the test blindfolded.’ He looked at me and said, ‘You really did pass that exam, didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir, I did and all I want to do is fly. I got a shot at it; you have to let me do it.’
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