Myron Doxon
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
95TH LEGACY COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
1999 REUNION PITTSBURGH, PA
MW: I’m going to state for the record that this is Margaret Blagg Weaver from the Legacy Committee, and Karen Sayco from the Legacy Committee conducting the interview this afternoon at the 1999 Pittsburgh Reunion. The date is September the 11th. And would you please state your name for us.
MD: Myron Doxon.
MW: Okay, and could you tell us what your dates of service were with the Army/Air Corps?
MD: I was enlisted in April of 1942, about two weeks after they opened it up to married cadets. And stayed in active reserve until I was 60 years old, 1976.
MW: Fine. And what about dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
MD: From D-Day – we arrived in England on D-Day, landed in Wales. And as I recall, it was about four or five days after that, we went to Horham, to the 95th Bomb Group. And I came home probably about February 10th. Incidentally, there was never a Valentine’s Day that I missed at home.
MW: That’s quite a record (Laughter). Which squadron were you in?
MD: 412th.
MW: And what was your job?
MD: I went over as a co-pilot, and after flying 20 missions with Gene Fletcher, when Billy Bob Lael crashed, I got his crew and Lael got my job as a co-pilot with Fletcher.
MW: Okay, that’s interesting. Let’s go back to the beginning a little bit and talk about your training. But I think you actually had something to say about even prior to that.
MD: I was a Merchant Marine when I was 18 and 19 years old. And I saved enough money to go through flying school. And I was going through flying school at Boeing Field in Seattle when they rolled out the first B-17 and probably I was the only one that was there that day that got to fly a B-17 in combat. I don’t know that for a fact, but it’s highly unlikely there was anybody else, because there wasn’t much fanfare about the B-17.
MW: How did you happen to be there that day, then.
MD: I was going to school on the same field.
MW: So it was just a coincidence?
MD: Just a coincidence. Incidentally, while I was going through that flying school, the first C-47 that I ever saw – I think it was the first C-47 ever came into Seattle – flew up from California to pick up Wiley Post and Will Roger’s body from the crash in Alaska.
MW: That day that you were on the field, looking at the B-17, did you have any inkling you would ever fly that plane? My own candid opinion was it would take a superman to fly an airplane that big, and I wasn’t a superman.
MW: Let’s talk about your getting into the service. Where did you enlist, and how old were you at the time?
MD: I enlisted two weeks after they opened it up to married cadets. I was, as I said, married, and in March of ’42 they needed people enough that they opened it up to all __________ and people without a college education also. I only had a high school education and they opened it up and I went out. That’s another story. I was a conductor on the Northern Pacific Railroad. And I was working on the McCord Field switch job. When I finished flying school, about a month afterward the school went broke, and I didn’t get a job. Of course that was in the middle of the depression in 1935. And so I worked at whatever jobs I could find. Finally got a job on the Northern Pacific Railroad and worked myself up to be a conductor. And we were sitting, working on the McCord Field switch, sitting on a flat car eating lunch, watching P-38’s come in and take off and everything. And the older guys were commenting on how smart you had to be to fly airplanes and everything. And I commented that you didn’t have to be very smart. You had to have normal coordination. I went into great length to tell them what they had to do. I didn’t tell them that I’d flown before. And this one guys says, “You young guys, you think you can do everything. You don’t know anything about it,” and all this and that. And I says, “Well, I’ll show you.” I closed my lunch bucket up, and walked over and enlisted. And that was the beginning of the end. Never went back to the railroad after I got back.
MW: Did you already have a pilot’s license at that point?
MD: Yeah. I had a commercial license in ’35, but I didn’t have any airplane to fly.
MW: How do you feel, how effective was the training you received for your eventual combat?
MD: Excellent. The very best. I think that’s the real thing that the U.S. Air Force has over any other Air Force in the world, is better training. Better able to take advantage of the skills that people have.
MW: Can you tell us a little bit about your training?
MD: Well, I was fortunate enough to go to a school that had Ryan in primary, which were low wing monoplanes, instead of Stearmans. I wouldn’t say it was a better airplane. It was every bit as good and a lot more fun to fly. And then, since I had Ryans, when I went to basic, I only had four weeks of PT-13’s, and I got put into twin engine school and flew UC-78’s – Cessna. Called them the Bamboo Bomber. And when I advanced, I got to fly ET-9’s, which was a, well, I think it was a whole lot harder airplane to fly than a B-17. It was twin engine, all metal airplane. It had one disadvantage. We were flying out of Douglas, Arizona, which was 4500 feet high and it had a single engine capability of 4300 feet. So when you lost an engine, you immediately started looking for a place to get down because you were going to go down. And then, went to Salt Lake City. Out of there, direct into co-pilot, into B-17’s. I had no transition, but I was very fortunate to fly with Gene Fletcher. I think he realized that someday I might have to bring him home, and we split landings and split takeoffs. He was a good teacher, as well as good instructors. Had Jim Franchowski as an instructor, who later showed up in England and became the 412th squadron commander. He was a West Pointer. And he is a – I still have a lot of admiration for him. He is one great guy.
MW: So how did you get over to England? Did you fly?
MD: Fly, we flew commercial, DC-4. We went from Kearney, Nebraska to New York City by troop train. And we were there six days. And flew over in a DC-4.
MW: How long was it before you started flying missions then?
MD: I think we got to Horham – it’s real hazy – but I think we got to Horham about June the 12th or 14th, and we flew our first mission July 6th. The second mission we flew, I think it was the second mission, was at the breakthrough at St. Lo. They pulled the ground troops back 2000 feet and we were supposed to go in and bomb. And we couldn’t bomb, except visually. We couldn’t see them. We got down – we weren’t supposed to go below 18,000 feet. We made about a half a dozen runs, and we got down to as low as 12,000 feet. And never did break out. And then the American flak started shooting at us. They put one through the bomb bay and it cut up the wiring on the airplane. I was fairly small then. They hung me by a parachute harness upside down in the bomb bay with a fire ax. It had gone through some wiring, and it was right along side of a fuel line. If it burnt through the fuel line, well we wouldn’t last long. So I went down and they hung me. Two guys had a rope and held on to me and I a fire ax and cut the wiring out of the airplane. But that was probably the only thing I ever did that was beyond normal duty.
MW: That was very dramatic. I don’t suppose they could train you for anything like that.
MD: No (chuckle).
MW: Well, what was your very first mission like?
MD: I think that we bombed a bridge in France, but I’m not sure. I should have – Fletcher wrote a book about it, and he has all the missions in there, but I didn’t bring it. Karen, you’ve got it.
KS: I have it, but I didn’t bring it with me.
MD: I didn’t either. It has every mission.
MW: I just wonder about the impression it made on you, to finally be in combat.
MD: Well, since I was so darn much older, by that time I was 28. Well, we had one waist gunner that, I think, had his 18th birthday there. Dement, the bombardier, he’s here today, Dement had his 21st birthday. Fletcher is probably, maybe he might have been 22 or 23. And we had one other guy that was, well Brown, the engineer, was a career Army man at the time, but I don’t think he was over 20. There were lots of pilots at 19.
MW: You were the old one.
MD: I was the old man. I was father advisor. Dement said that I was the father advisor that could get the young people in more trouble than anybody he ever knew. In all fairness, it was a lot of fun. There were some bad moments, but. Well, I can tell you how much fun it was. I went over there weighing 140 pounds and I came back weighing 186 (chuckling).
KS: And they say English food isn’t good.
MD: It might not be good, but it sure sticks with you.
MW: Would you like to tell us about some of the more memorable missions that you had?
MD: Well, most of my, I remember when I got Billy Bob Lael’s crew, I didn’t know it until later but – they had crashed. They took off on a mission. They got to, I heard, 19,000 feet and lost an engine. So they came back in to land. And I guess Lael came in a little bit hot, a little bit fast, which would be normal. With three engines, you ought to. But maybe he did too much. Tried to go around and crashed. And they made him the co-pilot because he crashed. He should have been able to land with no incident with three good engines. But the enlisted men all drew straws to see who would go up with me first. The engineer had to go up, but the rest of them drew straws. But the first one, the one with the short straw had to go first, and then he and the next straw, and the next straw – that’s how they checked me out. But they didn’t know how inexperienced I was. The first mission, the first time we flew expecting, maybe even anticipating combat, we flew the spare. They had a spare ship that flew weather. Took off about two hours before the mission started to go up and see how far. We went to about 20,000 feet and never broke out, so we came back down. Well I hadn’t had too much instrument training, but there weren’t any other airplanes around. So we made it down all right. So the first time I landed the plane with a big load of gas and a full load of – this spare plane was all ready to go. It had a full load of bombs and nearly a full load of gas. It was the first night landing I’d ever made (laughter). I sweated it out a little bit, but they didn’t know it. And we landed to live through it, so it was all right. And then later on they found out that I hadn’t been checked out in night landings. So they called me to come up and do some night landings. I made about four or five landings using the lights. They had runway lights, and no problems. Then they told me via radio of course that they were going to have me make a blackout landing, not use the landing lights, and no runway lights. And it was a fairly dark night, probably some moon, or they wouldn’t have done it. Anyway, I came in and I must have dropped that sucker about twelve feet or so and bounced, decided I better go around. Poured on the coal, veered off, and started toward the tower (laughing) and I think everybody left the tower. Anyway, as soon as we got straightened out, coming around again, the tower said, “8281, we’ll have the runway lights on, and feel free to use your landing lights this time.” And that was my checkout for night landing. But I had a good crew. I still see them, still see what’s left of them. Two that I see are Russell and Vasquez, who’ve been to the – well, you’ve met Vasquez. He’s from San Diego, California. Russell is from Utah. The co-pilot – I might even go on record as to what caused Lael’s crash – it wasn’t Lael’s fault. The co-pilot, when they came in, they were on the final leg. The co-pilot was supposed to give the pilot low pitch, high rpm power. And he didn’t do it. I discovered that after about the third or fourth combat mission. We got back to the hard stand and I was checking things and we were still in high pitch, low power. And I said to the co-pilot, “Didn’t we go through the checklist?” And he said yes. I knew I did, but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. And I said, “Did you hear me?” Yes. I said, “Well, we’re still in high pitch.” He said, “I must have forgot.” I said, “ That’s what happened on Lael’s landing, isn’t it.” I said, “He tried to go around, and he didn’t have any power.” He said, “Yeah, but Lael told me that the first pilot is responsible and just keep my mouth shut.” Well he let a guy lose his command because of that, so I lost a lot of respect. I met Lael at a later meeting, at a reunion, and I talked to him. I said, “Lael, did you ever know what caused your crash?” He said, “Yeah, I do.” I said, “He never gave you low pitch and high rpm, did he?” He said, “No, but that really isn’t all.” He said, “I asked for him to pull up the gear, and he pulled up the flaps instead.” Well, that was certain death. But they were very fortunate that nobody got seriously injured. But if I’d have known that while I was flying, I think that I would have refused to let him fly because he could have killed another crew just as easily.
MW: I was about to ask you that.
MD: I would have tolerated it. I respect Lael for taking the punishment, but I think that he should have seen to it that the co-pilot was all through flying. But that’s another story. That was his doings. Incidentally, Lael’s widow is here today.
MW: How many missions did you have as a pilot as your own crew?
MD: Fifteen, twenty as a co-pilot. As I say, I probably had a dull a tour as anybody. I was the only one that got injured. I was in a snowball fight, fell down and smashed my knee on a piece of concrete (chuckle). That was the total injuries. Out of two crews, that was a pretty good record. And the two crews, both crews finished every mission at Horham – never landed away from home base. I can’t tell you very much more than that. I did stay in. I flew seven years in C-124’s between McCord and Tokyo and Japan, not that I had to fly there. I flew to Alaska and to El Paso, Texas and everything. The Japan trips were the fun trips. Enjoyed it.
MW: Did you continue to fly after you got out of the service?
MD: I fly once in a while. I’ve got a friend that has a Bonanza and I go out and fly with him. But not too much. I was used to good airplanes and free gasoline and it’s kind of hard to accept private flying after that. And it’s kind of, it isn’t as much fun to fly civilian or small airplanes as it was to fly nice big airplanes. I was a T-6 and C-45 instructor in reserve for about four or five years. That was a lot of fun. That was a good airplane. I go to fly, when I came back from combat. When I came back from combat at that time, after a year flying in England in all that lousy weather, the wisdom of the Air Force sent us to Lubbock, Texas to go through an instrument flying course (chuckle). And then went to ATC, and got to fly B-26’s, B-25’s, P-61’s. Made one trip in a B-24. I don’t know what they were punishing me for by doing that (chuckle). What else. B-17’s. Oh, incidentally, at McCord, when I was in reserve too, at one time I was in air-sea rescue, the one that had the pilot boat on the bottom that you dropped. And I was flying pilot one day and the engineer hit the wrong switch, and we launched the lifeboat on the runway, which destroyed the lifeboat. (Laughing) It didn’t bother us, because when it dropped, we ___________ about 20 feet in the air. It sure made a mess on the runway – all that plywood.
KS: What was your wife doing while you were away?
MD: Raising two children. Oh, while I was away, we just had one.
KS: While you were in Europe.
MD: Yeah, one. We had Kimmy. And that was the name of our airplane: Kimmy Car – the one that I was first pilot on. It was a brand new B-17G; named it Kimmy Car, which is probably the only B-17 ever named after a one-year-old child. Most of them were a little older and a little more voluptuous (chuckling).
KS: What was your homecoming like?
MD: From England?
KS: From England.
MD: Do you really want to know (laughing)?
KS: One of them, his folks had moved and his brother missed him at the airport (laughing). Had you seen your son, or Kim? Was that a son or a daughter?
MD: Daughter.
KS: Had she been born before you got home?
MD: Oh yeah. She was a year old when I left. Actually, that might have been part of the reason. When Margaret became pregnant after I had enlisted, I went out to McCord and told them that I had full intentions of honoring my enlistment. That my wife was pregnant and would it be possible to wait until the child was born before I went in. And they said, “Well, actually, no. But” they said, “at this time, we’ve got more enlistees than we have airplanes. So you probably won’t be called.” Well, Kim was born December 21st, and I was called up February 12th. Like I said, I never missed a Valentine’s Day. I graduated February 8th, and the next year was home on ten days leave – delay en route. And went to England, and got home on February 12th again I think.
KS: Now did you come home fairly soon after completing your missions? Because Fletcher stayed. He deliberately stayed over just to get his head a little bit in order. Because his son had been born while he was over there.
MD: While he was over there, yeah. Actually, I had the, like I said, Jim Franchowski was our squadron commander. He was our instructor in Ardmore. And Jim and I were always pretty close. So an assignment had come up to go to France. They wanted somebody to get a crew together – another pilot, might have even been three more pilots, two engineers, flight engineers, and then a crew of, as I recall, six people – three aircraft airframe people, and three engine people. And we would go over there and work together and get the airplanes that landed in France, get them all set up and fly them back England. And then go back and get another one. Well, I got the crew together and did all the legwork and everything else. I took a week to go down to London and play around a little bit before I came back and went back to work. When I came back to the base, Franchowski said, “Well, I hate to tell you this, Doc, but,” he says, “there’s a Major found out about this and also found that you had the whole crew picked out and everything.” He said, “The Major has more rank.” He said, “You don’t get the job, but the guys that you picked and found out about will.” And I said, “Well, I’d like to fly P-51’s.” And he said, “Well, I’ll see what I can do. Why don’t you go back to London for a few days.” And while I was down there in London, a V-2 hit a building about two blocks from the hotel room that I was staying in, and I said, “A guy could get hurt over here after all this. I think I’ll just go home and see Margaret and just forget about trying to stay over here any longer.” Yeah, Fletch, he took a job in the division, not flying. And Dement stayed for, I think Dement stayed for another month or two. Werk stayed. He stayed – Werk was the navigator – he stayed with the group. I don’t really know what he was doing, but none of them flew anymore.
MW: Did your crew and your original crew finish up about the same time?
MD: No, they finished, I think, December 27th, and I didn’t finish until late in January. Well, not too late. Probably around the 20th of January. Well, it wasn’t too far away. I was delayed getting checked out. I don’t remember exactly when Lael crashed. I think, well I know the airplane was laying scattered all over the ground at our 200th mission party, which I think was in September. So I didn’t fly any in September. I flew, but just checking out, practice missions and such.
MW: Had you had aspirations to have your own crew?
MD: Always. You shouldn’t be there if you weren’t ambitious. I have a funny story to tell you. It doesn’t have to do with flying. But one missions to go – has anyone ever mentioned Merseburg? Merseburg was about the roughest ______________. I went there seven times – normal was twice. I went there seven times. Well, one of the last ones, it was really rough. Ishkabibble was our engineer. I don’t even know what his name was. But that was the only name I ever knew him was Ishkabibble. Ish was the engineer – little guy – good engineer. But after briefing, we went out to the airplane and I got off the truck and Ish went over under the wing. And I looked at him and he was just green. I said, “Ish, what’s the problem?” He says, “Quite frankly, I’m scared to death.” And I said, “Well, you’re not scared. You’re sick.” I said, “I’ll get a spare engineer.” So I told the co-pilot to get the airplane ready. We had spares that were alerted and dressed and everything, but they hadn’t been up for breakfast. I don’t know what we did about briefing. I guess we just briefed them ourselves after we go on the airplane. Anyway, I got a truck on the radio and told them to come out and get me. We went down and got the engineer and I told the truck driver to wait for me. And he said, “Sir, I can’t wait for you. I’m not supposed to be any place more than five minutes.” And I said, “In this case, drive around behind the mess hall and we’ll go in through the back door, and they’ll think you’re delivering something. They won’t even know you’re a combat truck.” And I said to him, just to make sure that he stayed there, I said, “You come in with us.” And I said, “You can have breakfast here if you want to.” So we went in and he walked in the door, and he looked and he said, “Fresh eggs?” And I said, “Yeah, we get fresh eggs before every mission.” I said, “How many do you want?” He said, “You mean I can have some?” His eyes like this and I said, “Yes, you can.” I said, “Tell the cook how many you want.” He said to the cook, “Could I have four?” The cook said, “You sure can.” The cook didn’t know who he was, and he wouldn’t care anyway. And that kid sat there while the engineer was eating a couple of eggs and some toast, and ate 16 eggs. I didn’t think anybody could ever do that (chuckling). And man, he couldn’t thank me enough. He said, “Wait ‘til I tell the guys down at the barracks.” Four eggs four times.
MW: That’s hilarious. So how was the mission after that?
MD: If I’m not mistaken, we came back with over 250 holes in the airplane. About the only other real exciting mission, we got a piece of flak through a push rod tube and lost all the engine oil, and couldn’t feather #3 engine. You could sit there and watch the gears come through the front of the engine, and finally the prop flew off and fortunately, sometimes they come through the fuselage, but this one didn’t. And after we got back, I went down the next day for the engine change, and said I’d like to find out what happened. And they said, well you could see the hole in the push rod tube. And I said, “Did you find anything?” And they said, “Yeah, we found the piece of flak that went through it and it’s down in the bottom of the tube.” And I said, “Could I have it?” And they gave it to me. When I got back, Margaret had her charm bracelet from the word go – cadets - and this piece of flak is still on her charm bracelet. You can see the riflings on it, just a little chunk about so big.
MW: I’ve never heard of that. I would love to see that.
MD: She’s got it. Do you want to see it?
MW: Yeah.
KS: Tell her to wear it tonight.
MD: I’ll go up and get it right now. She’s got it with her.
MW: We should get a photograph of that.
MD: Okay.
KS: How long have you been coming to these reunions?
MD: The first reunion we went to was the 8th Air Force Reunion I think in ’84 in Washington, D.C. And it was so big. There were 4,000 people there - General Dolittle. But the 95th Bomb Group, Art Frankle had a hospitality room. That was where it started. They decided they’d have their own. The next year they met in Las Vegas, but I didn’t even hear about it. And then the next one was – where was it? I don’t know, you’d have to look in ’86. But we’ve been coming to them. The only ones we’ve missed has been when Margaret – since we’ve been coming to these reunions she’s had two broken hips, a broken ankle, an ulcer, and a broken shoulder. Fortunately, someone’s been a witness that I wasn’t hitting on her (laughing). But she’s had a lot of problems. We missed Cincinnati. She had an ulcer, what do you call it, broke or whatever they do. Two other times. Both hips – oh Tucson, last year. We were down at the Ocean Shores in Washington, and she fell down in the bathroom and broke a hip, about a week before. We had tickets and everything. In fact, both times, Cincinnati and Tucson we had tickets. I like Tucson for a reunion city, don’t you? Where did they stay? Did you go to the last one?
MW: It was a Hilton.
MD: They stayed the first one at Doubletree. We made that. You were there too, weren’t you?
KS: No, just last year.
MD: Well where did I first meet you?
KS: Probably ’91 in Reno.
MD: Oh yeah, yeah. That’s where it was. Right. Did you get out to Rathskallion’s Restaurant in Reno?
KS: No.
MD: Oh, that’s a good restaurant. Oh, incidentally, have you been to this Piccolo Mondo, right up above? Just go out that end, and right up to the top? Beautiful restaurant. Excellent food. We went up there last night – eight of us. Just a great place.
MW: That’s good to know. I thought we were isolated here. Well, we’re just about at the end of our time, but I don’t want to cut you short for anything you’d particularly like to put on record.
MD: No, I was, I was hesitant to even come up. I never have before because I didn’t think I had much to – I had kind of a dull tour – you know, nobody injured, no big heroics. I did do an interview with Shelton High School in Washington. They have a history group that they’re putting together to make a war memorial to be at the capital for World War II. They are of the opinion at Shelton High School that the kids don’t know enough about World War II. So they called me and wanted to know if I’d come down - It’s about 45 miles from our place – and give an interview. They had about eight, I think they’re seventh, eighth and ninth graders. And the first thing they did was, wanted to know about heroes. And I think I impressed them. I said, “There are no intentional heroes. You can say all you want to, and tell about how brave people are, but being a hero is a reaction.” And I firmly believe that. You do what you have to do at the time.
MW: Well that leads into the last question I was going to ask. When you just a moment ago said you had a very dull tour with no heroics, and I thought, I would think hanging upside down from a parachute harness trying to hack away with the fire ax would be a pretty dramatic, if not heroic type of thing. But I just wondered what was going through your mind when you were…
MD: I can tell you to this day what was going through my mind. I better get this damn wiring cut, or we’re going to blow up.
KS: And please don’t drop me.
MD: Well, I didn’t think they would. They were two big guys Dement and the engineer each had a rope on me. And ___________fastened the harness, which you’re pretty secure in, as long as you don’t hit the quick release button (laughing). No, I wasn’t picked to do that because I was brave. I was asked to do it because I was smaller, and there wouldn’t be any sense in a little guy holding a big guy out there, would there?
MW: Did you have a moment after it was all over to think, “Oh my gosh, what did I do?”
MD: No, we still had bombs in the airplane. Probably my first thought was “Let’s get this sucker back on the ground.” All of our missions after I got to be a first pilot, we carried LDF’s – long________fused bombs. Went off from, after they dropped, we dropped them on a factory we hoped, and they went off from six hours to six days after they were there, which must have been quite a surprise to people _________________ and another 500 pounds went off. So this bomb could not be diffused. The fuse went in, had a ball bearing in the threads, in the groove. When you turned it, the groove ended and it would break the outside of the fuse and immediately caused it to blow up. So we had to drop them and lots of times, well, I didn’t have the bravest bombardier in the world. After you got in the air, the bombardier had to go back in the bomb bay. The bomb fuse had a propeller on it and it had a pin it. And these bombs were check dropped from 8,000 feet, and if that propeller wasn’t out of there, if you dropped it with that pin in there, it would not go off. Most people thought a bomb went off when it hit. A bomb has to have a fuse and a detonator. And the bombardier had to go out and take the pins out of all the bombs. Well theoretically, before we could drop these LDF’s in the North Sea, the bombardier had to go out and put the pins back in so they would just go down and hit. My bombardier wasn’t that brave or that ambitious (chuckle). So I think some of those fishermen out there had the best fishing they ever had when those bombs went off. After they were out there, the fish probably came belly up, and they just had to scoop them up (laughing). But I often thought what the fishermen thought when this 500 pounder went off. Of course the North Sea is deep. I’m sure it didn’t hurt them any, but it must have been quite a sensation. Are you going to be here for a few minutes?
MW: We are.
MD: Okay, I’ll go up and get the charm bracelet. I’ll even bring my wife down.
MW: Oh, please do! Well, thank you so much for doing this for us.