The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume III: War in the Air—Combat, Captivity, and Reunion

by Matthew Rozell

  I get 30% disability. I'm sure if you saw my foot, I could probably get more. I worked too hard making a living while I was raising four children. The system is there to be plucked if you want to pluck it but you've got to work at it.

  To me, sometimes I think it isn't worth it, [but then] I was telling this to a friend of mine the other day, that when we entered the service back in 1942, right after Pearl Harbor, all my friends and buddies and classmates, we went in and there was no doubt about what we had to do. I've never seen that much cooperation and patriotism until the September 11th. That's the only good thing that come out of September 11th, was the country coming together like it did back in 1941. That's the closest feeling that I had to that.

  I had a friend of mine, we went into the service, we got out of school, we went on to public law, to college, did this, got out, I ran a little business, I published a paper, 39 years, I raised a family, put them through school, boom, boom—and all of a sudden I'm 80 years old. I don't feel 80, but I'm 80. You’ll find out as you get older, how fast time goes. You already realize that, right? Well, I hope I gave you a little insight.

  ‘We're all in the same boat. We all did what we had to do. I read The Greatest Generation; I read three or four chapters of that, I put the book down. Somebody said, ‘Why didn't you finish? Didn't you like it?’

  I said, ‘No I didn't finish because everything he said was true and I already knew about it.’ We all did the same thing.’

  Charlie Corea passed away at the age of 92 on August 26, 2014.

  Earl Morrow, Sam Lisica, Jerry Silverman. July 2001.

  Credit: Author.

  chapter Seven

  B-17 PoW Reunion

  Earl M. Morrow was born in 1921 and was featured in Book One of The War in the Air, detailing his early missions and all about the day that the B-17 bomber he was commanding was shot down, and his experiences that followed. In the summer of 2001, two of his World War II buddies came to his house to celebrate his 80th birthday. Earl asked me if I wanted to meet them, and I grabbed my video camera and headed over to sit with the three of them around Earl’s dining room table. I interviewed him and the others, Sam Lisica of Pennsylvania and Jerome Silverman of Long Island, all formerly of the 457th Bomb Group of the US Eighth Army Air Force during World War II.

  All of them had been taken prisoner on November 2, 1944 near Volkstedt in Germany when their planes were shot down; Earl was the pilot and Sam was the bombardier on the B-17 'Delores' #4337766; Jerry was aboard the lead plane as the lead navigator for the mission that day and was picked up on the ground by enemy forces, winding up in the same German transport vehicle as Earl, where they met for the first time. This meeting was the first time in seven years that Earl and Sam had seen each other; Sam, who had bunked with Jerry in the PoW camp, had not seen Jerry since the end of the war. We sat at the dining room table at Earl Morrow's home. I set up my video camera; Earl, the pilot, was in another room, searching for some photographs. I began the conversation by asking some questions; it would turn out to be their last time together.

  *

  Together Again

  Earl Morrow, pilot, 80

  Sam Lisica, bombardier, 80

  Jerry Silverman, navigator, 82

  Matthew Rozell, interviewer: You were in the US Army Air Force?

  Sam Lisica, bombardier: The United States Army Air Corps, [in the beginning].

  [Earl Morrow enters the room with a crew photograph]

  Earl Morrow, pilot: We got lucky; I found it.

  Sam, bombardier: That’s the one we got in 1944.

  Interviewer: You each got one?

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Jerry Silverman, navigator: Well, I don’t have it with me. I showed a picture like that [to a young girl] and I said, ‘You know when you see the parades and you see all these old people, these people marching with the flags and the hats and all? When you pass the cemetery and you see all the old people, grandmas and grandpas in the cemetery? Well, all those graves, the kids were 18, 19 and 20 years old…’ Then I [showed the photograph] and I said, ‘Next time you see a parade of old geezers, this guy here was 18, flying combat, this guy was 19, flying combat’…

  Earl, pilot: [points to picture] This man here was 18.

  Sam, bombardier: Yes, he just came out of high school. He was the waist gunner; he died the day we went down.

  Earl, pilot: These three were killed the day we went down. This one retired in the 1980s as a brigadier general.

  Interviewer: Which one are you?

  Earl, pilot: [pointing] This is me, this is Sam, Bob; George is gone, Bill is gone, he was shot up real bad, but we got him out and he survived and he died in about 1978 or 1979—he was playing golf and he had a heart attack. George, the one next to him, he just passed away two years ago.

  Crew photograph. Front row far left-Earl Morrow. Far right-Sam Lisica.

  Courtesy Earl Morrow.

  Jerry, navigator, to interviewer: See that picture? Every crew had a picture like that; the army did that. The four in the front were generally the pilot, the copilot, the bombardier, and the navigator, or vice versa. These would be the enlisted men here [pointing to top row in crew photo]. See these are the enlisted men [and in the front], these are the officers.

  Earl, pilot: [pointing] Radioman, waist gunner, top turret gunner, waist gunner, ball turret gunner; these two switched off and on and they were both killed. This other guy was qualified as an engineer also, but he didn’t go with us that day. This is the tail gunner...

  Sam, bombardier: We had ten men, but only nine flew, so every mission, someone would [sit it out]. Did you just have ten men in your crew?

  Jerry, navigator: Oh yes.

  Earl, pilot: In our group, they always pulled one waist gunner and left him home. One crew member stayed home.

  Jerry, navigator: Never with us; we always had ten. I never flew a mission with nine people. Back when I was leading, we had two or three navigators [aboard one plane].

  Earl, pilot: Well, they probably needed them, with you. [Laughter]

  Jerry, navigator: If you’re leading a group, it’s one thing, but if you’re leading a division or a wing, that’s another one.[43] One was the lead navigator, one was the DR navigator and one would just read our radar. [44]

  Earl, pilot: You see, when we got over there, we always left one guy home, because we pulled the gunner off the radio, so if you get under attack, he goes back to the waist…

  Jerry, navigator: You always have two waist guns, always.

  Sam, bombardier: We had one.

  Earl, pilot: [pointing] See, that’s why Bellinger wasn’t with us the day we were shot down.

  Jerry, navigator: I was amazed at how many rounds I could shoot off. We went onto the back of the ship; you could kill yourself on all the shells all over the place—they’re like marbles all over the place! You have to remember at this point I was the lead navigator and I didn’t have any clue who I flew with; I didn’t know any of these guys.

  Earl, pilot: Yes, well you flew in lead crews, it didn’t pertain to you, what happened to us.

  Jerry, navigator: My original crew had long since went home; the co-pilot and I came back for second tour but he and I didn’t fly together because he was on a new lead crew, and he was on a crew that flew together.

  Interviewer, referring to Jerry: You were the navigator, right?

  Sam, bombardier: Group navigator.

  Jerry, navigator: No, I was not a group navigator.

  Earl, pilot: Squadron navigator.

  Jerry, navigator: And I wasn’t a squadron navigator.

  Sam, bombardier: Lead navigator?

  Jerry, navigator: No, not at that time.

  Earl, pilot: What was your title then?

  Jerry, navigator: I was a specialist navigator, but I navigated as a lead navigator. He’s got more experience. They put you more forward—to lead the pack—because we always went in groups. There was the lead navigator, and the lead bombardier
. We had to fly the target and help the bombardier fly close to the target.

  Earl, pilot, to interviewer: And all we really needed to do was to follow the lead ship.

  Jerry, navigator: We had to look at the [reconnaissance] pictures and see what the Germans were doing. A river would be like this [mimics bends in a ‘river’ by snaking his hand across the tabletop] and the target would be here [gestures to a point on his ‘river’]. Many times we would have problems with clouds under us because we flew 20,000 to 25,000 feet. There would be a hole in the clouds, and [the Germans] would set up a whole city, a dummy [decoy].

  [Interviewer looks at him with incredulous expression]

  Really! If you see a hole in the clouds and you see this, you think this is it, that this is the target. It’s a bend in the river the same as this; they’d duplicate it! There was a movie, ‘Command Decision’ with Walter Pigeon, and it’s exactly what happened to the navigator! They thought they hit the target and they got all excited, and then the navigator says that it’s ‘gross error’. He says, ‘that was a dummy I hit’. It’s in the movie.

  And I’ll tell you one thing, and this is documented. The Eighth Air Force, I don’t know about the others, but I imagine the same thing—we would never turn back from a raid.

  Interviewer: Why not?

  Sam, bombardier: If we were told to go, we just went.

  Jerry, navigator: The only time we turned back was because of really bad weather. That was the only thing. We had a recall for weather.

  Earl, pilot: We couldn’t see the ground unless we had the new radar, which they were just coming in with. There was no way to hit the target.

  Jerry, navigator: Well, we still bombed; we just bombed through the clouds. On those days there was never really bad opposition from flak or fighters. We in the Air Command would say, ‘We can’t backup’. In the Air Command, it’s not like the infantry, you can’t say, ‘Let’s backup and regroup’.

  8th AF B-17 Flying Fortresses, 396th Bomb Group, 1943.

  Credit: USAF. Library of Congress, public domain.

  Missions

  When we were in the air, we never turned back. They would put up so much flak and we would never go around it before we hit another target. We went through the flak, straight for that target—we never dodged it. Each time we went through, we lost 50, 60, 70 bombers at a time, each carrying 10 men, and at the end of 1943 and three raids, if we had two more raids like that, we would have had no more air force. We would have been completely wiped out. So they just stood down.

  Sam, bombardier: The RAF thought we were crazy; we thought they were crazy. Always doing it at night…

  Jerry, navigator: They had a whole different conception; they bombed at night, but they weren’t as heavily armed as we were. They carried heavier bomb loads—we would never fly at night, it is dangerous as hell! They would never fly in the daytime; they would say you’d get killed doing that.

  I copied [our high casualty rate] out of the book about the Eighth Air Force. The author said the air force had the highest casualties of any branch of service! I was stunned to read this in another book too, that the Eighth Air Force had more casualties then all of the Marine landings in the Pacific! And that really shook me up—the author states ‘You guys are heroes’, and we’re not heroes, but when I read this I decided, ‘I am a damn hero’.

  Interviewer: You must have lost a lot of friends. How did you deal with that?

  Jerry, navigator: The way it was dealt with in many cases with the officers and the enlisted men—they were together, and then these guys finished up [gestures to Sam and Earl], and my guys finished up. And I went home after so many missions, ‘rest and recuperation’, ‘R&R’, which we called ‘return and regret’—but anyway, we got through the thing. What happened when a crew went down, and replacements came through, was that word started getting around— ‘Don’t get friendly with these guys because it breaks your heart’, you know, so no one talked to anybody. But anyway, we got through the thing.

  *

  Interviewer: When you went over to England, who flew with Earl before you all got shot down?

  Sam, bombardier [points to Earl, pilot]: We were the crew men on that plane.

  Interviewer: Clarification—you two guys were on the same crew, that’s why I have you in this photograph, and you had 17 missions before you got shot down.

  Sam, bombardier: He had 17; I had 23.

  Earl, pilot: There was a little period there where I got grounded.

  Sam, bombardier: They were going to shoot him. [Laughter]

  Earl, pilot: I tore up two airplanes one morning—wrecked them while we were taking off. It’s simple, I just caught the tail section of the airplane in front of me with the wing tip because we came up this taxiway and there was a portable tower sitting there, and we got into our right turn behind the next airplane, and we had no brakes—everything was gone! The tail wheel was turned, to keep us turned to the right. Well, we don’t want to really tear up that tower there and the airplane’s in front of me and the tail’s wrong so at the last second, just to save everything we could, I had to gun the hell out of the two right engines and swing her around and my wing tip caught the tail of the one of the planes front of me.

  Sam, bombardier: Took the rudder off.

  Earl, pilot: The problem was, the night before, someone came in and landed and took a building off its foundation! And the colonel said, ‘Next time there is an incident, it’ll be pilot error, one hundred percent’ and it was me. I fall into those things…

  Jerry, navigator: The commanding officer of any unit is responsible, no matter what, and the pilot is responsible. Now if the mechanic does something wrong and the pilot, he’s sleeping, and the mechanic is working at two o’clock in the morning, working on that airplane to get it ready, if something goes wrong, the end result in all commanding officers’ opinions is that he’s the pilot [points to Earl], he’s responsible. In other words, Harry Truman later said, ‘The buck stops here’, and that’s what happened. Unfortunately, he had something mechanically wrong, but even though he didn’t know anything, [in the colonel’s eyes], it’s going to be pilot error; otherwise some general’s going to say, ‘Colonel, what’s going on’? He would then ‘pass the buck’.

  Earl, pilot: The co-pilot makes a mistake and it’s my fault for letting him make it. So you know when you get up there, you take the guff. So that’s why we didn’t come up with the same number of missions.

  Jerry, navigator, agreeing: That’s why you didn’t have the same number of missions.

  Earl, pilot: Another reason is when I first got there, when I went on my first mission I went out as a co-pilot with an experienced crew. The next day I went out as pilot and I got all my crew, except my co-pilot; I got an experienced co-pilot. On the third mission; the crew was on its own.

  Jerry, navigator: I came over before he did. When a group came over originally, you came over in one group. As you lost people, you got replacements. They [Earl and Sam] came over as another crew, as a replacement crew.

  Interviewer: Where you at the same base?

  Jerry, navigator: Same base, same squadron, same everything. So a whole crew got shot down, they put another crew in their beds.

  Interviewer: Did you know them at all before?

  Jerry, navigator: No, I never knew them. I had been there a while; I had never set eyes on them. Anyway I came home, I’ve completed one tour, came home on what they call ‘rest and recuperation’.

  After 25 missions I could go home on leave. I could fly five more and stay home for good, or I could fly 25, go on leave, and come back again. If I chose to fly to thirty, I figured I could get killed on number 26, 27, 28, et cetera. I figured ‘take what you got’, you know, ‘take your winnings and get off the table’. So I went home, and then I came back. Now I didn’t come back [to my original] crew, I came back as a lead navigator and I was put on as a lead crew navigator. They have crews who were trained to lead, they have other guys that co
me in to navigate. On the lead plane they had two guys navigating, one guy looking out the window, another guy doing the paper work, the third guy was on the radio to make it as good as we possibly could get it.

  I came back onto my second tour and each time I flew, I flew with different people. I didn’t even know the people I was on the plane with that day, but that’s just the way it works. You know, when you fly you have specialists; you have a special bombardier; the best bombardier in a crew, that sort of thing. What happened was here we are in a group of 36 aircraft in our combat box. We had twelve and twelve and twelve, so we were in the same unit. It was called a ‘low box’, they called it a box because twelve [points up] twelve [points middle] and twelve [points low], high box, lead box and low box, when the Germans came, they came from behind and they hit the low box and they took out seven planes, plus two more from our squadron.

  *

  Shot Down

  Interviewer: And what was the target when you were shot down? It was November of ’44, right?

  Earl, pilot: It was November 2nd, 1944.

  Jerry, navigator: Merseberg.

  Earl, pilot: Merseberg synthetic oil field.

  Interviewer: You were brought down by fighter planes?

  Jerry, navigator: Fighters, yes. We got hit from behind—I never saw them. I heard the crew yelling, then the shooting; everything going on back there—I’m up at the front of the plane, this is going on in the tail. The Germans, at this point—previously they used to come in and attack individually—but at this point in the war they didn’t have the gas to train their pilots, number one; number two, they didn’t have a safe place to train them because our fighters were ranging all over, so they had inexperienced pilots. So they would take a few good pilots and tell the rest of the guys to ‘String out and stick with us’, so they just hit us in waves. And the first thing I knew, I see little ‘cotton balls’ in the air, which is 40mm cannons exploding, which I haven’t seen before, and then an airplane hit ours, or one of their fighters hit our wing. I didn’t see it happen, but I felt the whole airplane shake and I said, ‘What happened?’, and something hit our wing—the plane was on fire, and we bailed out.