Lloyd Kreuger

95th BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

1999 REUNION PITTSBURGH, PA

Interviewed by Rob Cozens

RC: For the record, this is Rob Cozens. It is September 11, 1999. We are recording today Lloyd Krueger. Also present is Karen Sayko. Lloyd, will you please state your name, today’s date, and the location.

LK: My name is Lloyd O. Krueger. It’s September 11, 1999. I’m from Canyon Lake, Texas.

RC: What were your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?

LK: I volunteered into the Cadets in early 1942. And I went to England early in 1944 as a navigator. And after my ninth mission I served as a lead navigator. And I finished my tour in August of ’44, came back to the states, and I joined the Air Transport Command where I flew all over the world delivering new planes, and bringing back war warriors,primarily. And after the war was ended, I got discharged and became an instant lover.

RC: What were your dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?

LK: Basically, the first ten months of 1944, I guess.

RC: Which squadron were you in?

LK: I was in the 336th.

RC: And what were your principle duties or job position with the 95th?

LK: Well, when I went in, of course, I had a crew that I flew with from Grand Island, Nebraska, and I had assumed we were going to stay in one plane and fight the whole war together. And once I got to England and we were in the 336th Squadron of the 95th, they pulled me out and had me fly with two different crews on my first two missions before the regular crew flew any. And then I did fly the third, fourth, and fifth missions with them. And from then on, I was flying with different crews, and after my ninth mission they called me in and asked if I would become a lead navigator. And I was quite hesitant because the word of advice I got from my father, who was in World War I, said “Stay out of the Infantry, and never volunteer.” And I had to decide whether this was volunteering or not. But in any case, I liked my work, and somebody else must have, and so I flew with 19 different crews all together and I never really got to know anybody, other than one or two people on my original crew that we bunked together. But, that was my duty, and I flew quite often, and so I finished long before the other crewmembers from my original crew ever completed their duty. In one case, my best friend got wounded later on. But that was my service in the 95th out of Horham.

RC: Was that somewhat unusual? Was it a function of being a lead navigator that you were moved from crew to crew, rather than having the same fellows around you the whole time?

LK: I don’t know. I was in pilot training. I had qualified for all three - bombardier, navigator, and pilot. Being a little guy, I had desires of being a hot shot Fighter Pilot, and I finished primary, and did everything all right, and was going to go to Basic. This was in Uvaldi, Texas. They called myself and six other guys, and they informed us that during – they had a whole panel that we had to meet before – and I thought they were just congratulating that we had finished Primary and were going to go on to Basic. But they informed us that, in the early stages of the war, the losses were tremendous, you know. And because of the lack of the chin turret on the B-17B and so forth, that if planes made it back, many times the navigator or pilot would either be killed or wounded. And they could replace pilots by moving co-pilots up, but navigators were so specialized. And so they informed us we had to start over and, and they even threw out that once we finished that we could go back into pilot training. Well, I mean, none of us were stupid, but I was sent back to San Antonio and I think I cried for three days ‘cause I thought my world was over.

And I went to navigational, I had to wait for the next class coming in at San Marcos, Texas. And I got involved with navigation and I was an engineering student before that. And so I liked the scientific part of it. And ultimately I really fell in love with it. I mean the challenge of being accurate and being able to pinpoint yourself in the world. And so, I think I did really quite well at it. And I look back at it many times since then, and I might have been just an average pilot, but I thought I was a damn good navigator, and I think they pigeon-holed me where I belonged.

And so what happened on my first mission was a relative milk run, but the second one was the Brux, Czechoslovakia. And it was a very rough mission, and I had never fired a 50 caliber. And they had two worthless guns in the nose. I proceeded to ruin both of them, trying to shoot at fighters, not realizing you’re only supposed to go in little bursts. And I heated the barrels and they jammed up. I swore I’d never use them again, because they were worthless. I mean the angle of swing, and they went by so fast. And I knew, as a hunter, and, particularly for birds and so forth, you need to have a lead, and follow before you pull the trigger. Anyway, I swore I’d never touch those guns again, and I didn’t. And so I put all my efforts on my charts and information, things I heard, the notes. I had notes all over my big charts. And I think because of that it attracted attention because, I mean I think a lot of guys handled fear and this new experience of realizing somebody’s trying to kill you. Everybody handled it differently, and I got lost in my job. And I think because of that, I might have attracted attention.

But in any case, I know I’ve talked to other lead navigators that were with one crew all the way through. But that wasn't my case. They just picked certain crews that were lead crews, and they put me on it. And I think in many cases, maybe the pilot wanted to be a lead crew, but his navigator didn’t want the responsibility because there was probably ten times the amount of responsibility on a lead crew. I mean rendezvousing with fighters, missing cities and flak. I mean you had a whole group of planes that you know you felt the responsibility. Now that’s the short answer to your question.

RC: Which brought another question to my mind. What were the other navigators responsible for while the lead navigator…

LK: Well, primarily if you got hit. I think that their main responsibility supposedly would be to know where you are, and go back. Well, to me that was meaningless in the sense that any pilot would know that all you had to do is head west, and you’d ultimately hit the North Sea and England. And so, I know that ultimately they got rid of navigators. And, they even got rid of bombardiers, because they were nothing but toggliers. You know you waited until the lead plane did it, all others followed the lead plane. And so they were putting enlisted men in some of these jobs that were equally trained. And I learned also, I mean I only can speak for myself, but I know from experience when I was in Air Transport Command, I had all kinds of navigators that I got to meet when we were thrown in a pool out of St. Joe, Missouri, our headquarters. And we were going to be all overseas flying.

Now you had to get back to celestial navigation. And these fellows were flying the hump in the CBI. And literally, the pilots knew how to go down these valleys, and they navigated with a bottle of whatever. You’re halfway there, you’re halfway down, and this sort of thing. They lost their skills. And they came to my house wanting me to refresh their memories. Well, I mean I found that their span of attention was so poor. I said, you know, we take off, you follow.

I learned that there were a lot of navigators that were very derelict in their training and in the whole spirit of things. And yeah, I think they could do what was required of them to have a rough idea of where they were, because they were following. But, if you didn’t, you know, we were given wind and weather conditions sometimes that was not accurate, and you had to find out where you were drifting, and so forth. And you say, well, the wind is wrong, I’ve got to go back and correct the wind, and now how would I get there at this particular point with the right wind. Now you have this to go on, which is much better than the weather we got. And then when you know that a fighter plane only has minutes to be around you, and they have to work off of a map on their knee, so the chances of them being there, they depended on your accuracy. So, if you weren’t there, and they weren’t there, you missed having fighter protection. So it was important to be accurate, and I felt, in some cases, it was not only my plane, but the whole squadron or the whole group. And I took my job very responsibly, and I ultimately liked it.

KS: How long was navigation school? Apparently, you got a lot more out of it than some others.

LK: Yeah, I did. I only had one year of college, prior to that, in the Engineering school at the University of Wisconsin. But I knew that the problem wasn’t how smart you were, but how fast you could learn. They were ramming it at you so fast, and we went to school all day, and most evenings. So it was long days. And I just knew that from some of the guys, at night they’d come around and they’d pick your brain to try and catch up on some stuff. But you know, you couldn’t fill those voids and I don’t think they could afford to wash out guys that probably should have been washed out. I mean, there was no doubt that they needed navigators very rapidly because,

I think it took a lot different training than when I was in pilot school. I mean, you fly by the seat of your pants and so forth. And a lot of things you had to learn about engines and that. But navigational school dealt with the weather, and it dealt with of course, celestial navigation, fixes, and so forth. But the school, I forget, it was probably about seven or eight months long. But we spent, you know, seven days a week sometimes 10 – 12 hours a day in class. And I thought it was adequate training. I realized that the harder you worked, the more accurate you could get. And I found that to be true when I was in Air Transport Command where I had a chance to go to Iwo Jima, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and all those islands there, plus back to Europe via South America and Africa.

I frankly showed off a lot of times where you not only pinpoint yourself, but you tell the pilot to let down. And when you get down from altitude, down to four or five thousand feet, there the island would be out in front of you. I’d give them an ETA, you know, within minutes, because over land, they didn’t always follow you very well. I said “Go where you want, I’ll follow you.” But when you were over the water, it was surprising how accurately they could fly a plane, because everything was important on that. But the thing is, I thought it was just a fascinating, challenging job. I really did.

KS: Growing up, had you had a fascination with geography and maps?

LK: Yeah, I came out of Wisconsin and went down to the University one year, but I had almost hayseeds in my hair and hadn’t been around. I came from a relatively poor family and that. But I mean from a young kid on, I was always interested in science and so forth, and I know my parents never understood me. I had a microscope I bought. I actually operated on cats and rabbits and stuff to study circulatory systems. I could have, if I’d have had a counselor, I probably could have gotten into medicine and been a surgeon, ‘cause I love it. And today I’m a woodcarver, with delicate woodcarving.

But the thing is, I’ve always liked science and math. I think navigational came as close to filling my aptitudes and capabilities. I was a stamp collector, and I spent almost all my free change that I had on stamps, which required going all over the world trying to figure out, ‘cause there wasn’t a whole lot of information then. But try to figure out where these countries were, and how they related. And I think everything I did when I was young related around design. I ultimately became an architect and so forth. But design around laying things out and being accurate. Like, we didn’t have ball diamonds, you had to make your own. And so, just laying it out, it was obviously simple if you put your brain in gear. But I knew a lot of my friends couldn’t have done it. I mean, they wouldn’t know how to make a square, a perfect square, you know. And I just felt that somehow I was lucky in that they pigeon-holed me where they could get the most out of my capabilities.

RC: Yeah, I was going to ask on that regard, how much you might relate to perhaps a lesser level of performance to other navigators, to not putting in the time that you said was necessary. But also I’m wondering how much might be because they didn’t have the instincts and the mathmatic, scientific background to take these concepts and understand how to work with them.

LK: Well, I can give you a typical example. It doesn’t do with navigation necessarily, but our bombardier. When we first met our crew in Alexandria, Louisiana, I went down and saw a list, and there were ten of us from eight different states. And I met the bombardier the first night. Well while we were there, and in Grand Island ready to fly out with our plane, we had about a month. And the bombardier had to go in a big hanger and practice dropping bombs with a Norton Bomb Site. Now I had never seen one. But, we went on a scaffold and they had a moving map down below. And you could see whatever target you wanted to pick out, like a bridge up ahead on this map. And, and you’d line it up, and I watched him, and I knew what he put in there – the weather, the altitude, and the temperature. And all these things went into the bombsite. And then, when you felt it was ready, you let the bombs go. Instantly, a lighted cross would hit on the map, and the map would come through on an angle. And when it stopped, that’s where your bombs hit. Well, technically, it should stop on the bridge. Well, he wasn’t doing it. And I said, you know, “Let me try it once” and I did infinitely better just by realizing what he was supposed to be doing.

But his mind wasn’t on it and his job, and he could care less. He wasn’t trying to do it to the best of his ability as far as I know. And so after the war, I went back and I was able to analyze a lot of things that I didn’t know when they happened. And I found out, you know, I realized he was married, he had a child, and I think he was carrying a lot of weight around. And because of that, he had to react a certain way. But at the time, I didn’t understand it. But here, that was a typical guy that was trained to do a job that he was incapable of other than looking out. And when the lead bombardier dropped his bombs, he dropped them. And the Air Corps recognized this by later having enlisted men go up in the nose and called them toggliers. They didn’t have to have a Lieutenant or whatever. I flew with Bromberg, one of the outstanding bombardiers. Everybody knew he was good, and he was good. And so, when you have somebody like that, all the other ones had really nothing to do other than work the chin turret and, and go along for the ride.

RC: Do you have any feeling or idea how the Army decided who was going to be assigned to these different tasks? Did the give you, like, ability tests, or…

LK: Well, you know, when we went through Cadets, I often said I would like to go through where there was no feeling of responsibility, because, you know, we’d fool around with triangular and round and square pegs – had to move them rapidly for eye-hand coordination. They had one that I thought was unique and that was a disk that went around, and it had a sensitive bullet or a round circle on it. But that didn’t go around the disk. It moved back and forth on an arc. And then they had like a plumb bob over it, and you had to work your right hand and left hand. You could move it any way you wanted to, and I found out later that they… I had never worked a lathe, but the guys that worked the lathe, they made it just the opposite. And that would have been even harder, almost unfair, I think.

But the point was, and if you got off of that, that little disk was not just going around in a circle, it was moving back and forth. Bells would ring, horns would go off, you’d get jumpy and you’d have to get back. Well, then they would grade you. Of course, in the back of your mind, we were led to believe that the least little thing would throw you out of Cadets. And there goes your whatever. In my case, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And so, this was a constant fear. And then, we had almost a continuous week of medicals, where most emphasis was placed on the eyes, for depth perception and so forth. I know in my case, this depth perception, they had strings where you lined up two pegs. I looked down, and I lined them up, and this guy says “Jeez, do it again.” And I had to do it like three times and I thought “Here I go.” I didn’t know what was wrong, and then he called somebody else over, and he called another guy. Well, I was able to do it very rapidly. And the reason was, I had 20/15 eyes when I went in. And I mean, you know, either you can do it, or can’t. But if you can’t do it, that was one of the main things. They would wash you out as far as pilot training was concerned.

You had to know where your wheels were when you stalled the plane out and dropped it. And technically a good landing is when you stall it out and drop, and your wheels are right there, and no bounce. And if you don’t have that, and of course, like on a B-17, you may be 20 foot from the tires. And so, if you don’t have depth perception, that was a thing that would get you out. And there were all kinds of these, but you always had the fear anything could do it. Now, I had broken a bone in football, and I never even realized it, but a Doctor found out one foot was shorter than the other. Put your heels against the wall. I had to lie, I said it was all healed. Well I never got that fixed until about ten years ago, but the metatarsal bone was broken, and my foot pulled in. But what does that got to do with, you know. But that was enough that I could have gotten washed out for that. And then, they throw a piece of paper one way or the other, and this is where you go. It’s pure chance who your instructor is. Is he a good one, or isn’t he? All these things were fate, you know. And a lot of guys who flunked out of Cadets, of course they ended up with something they didn’t want. They didn’t want being a gunner or a mechanic or whatever. And it was pure chance. And I just feel I lucked out. I think they probably got the best out of my skills.

KS: Some of us, and some of the people down the line who will be listening to this may not be familiar with the B-17. Could you describe your working area inside the plane?

LK: Yeah. Of course, I was in the nose and we had a very cramped space. The bombardier was right up in the front of the plane, and took up that portion of it. And then right behind him was the little table, and we had instruments on two walls, plus the astro hatch up above us. Yeah, we had several other places that they put instruments that you didn’t have to look at very often, but we were right below the two pilots. And I know, of course we wore chest packs because you had to stand up and bend over and I never sat down. I just stood up almost the whole mission. I always threw my chest pack somewhere where I thought I could get it. But a lot, most of the others had seat packs where they could sit on them. And the other thing was, they gave us flak suits, which came in two halves in the front, and two halves in the back. And it was impossible with that weight, ‘cause it was metal.

So they love me to fly with them because they took them and sat on them, and they put them around the nose and the glass. And so it was very cramped quarters, and of course the difficulty, particularly with the navigator, since we were somewhat mobile, was that we had headsets, we had heater cords, we had a throat mike, we had oxygen. And if turned around, if you didn’t remember which way you turned, you could pull out any one of these lines without knowing it. Now the oxygen could be very, very fatal. The headsets could be fatal in the sense that, you know, they could give a bail out or something, and you wouldn’t hear it. And a throat mike, you may want to tell somebody something, because you don’t know that it’s disconnected. And so you always had to be very careful how you moved around.

And like I said, I know I got so engrossed. I never wore gloves. I generated enough energy and heat because writing with gloves and so forth, but we did have heated suits. When I first went in, we had big fur ones, which were bulky and so forth. And we had complex, what they call British Gee, which was a navigational aid, which was just unbelievable; except it was worthless. As soon as you crossed the channel the Germans jammed it. And technically, you could make the settings when you were on the base or in your (hard stand) and before you took off, you’d note the setting. And you could have just a view of this without any view of the outside. And you could park that plane right back in that same spot. It was that accurate. Like lining up blips on a (cathode ray tube). But it was worthless as far as navigating in Europe.

And the Germans, you know, in many ways they were in the war so long, and they was, man for man, I don’t think we could hardly be expected to equal them. But, I mean, you’d know of a city that had a curving river and so forth. Well, they would camouflage the big bend with netting, and make it look like ground, and then paint an area that made it look like the river was straight. So it took common sense and my dad was only with a sixth grade education. And I’ve always considered him one of the smartest guys I ever knew because he had common sense, which you can’t buy or get a degree for. By figuring things out, using your brain and so forth, and I think that helped. But my little niche was adequate, except the guns were absolutely worthless, and whoever designed them, they should have saved the weight. I don’t know if a navigator ever shot anything down, I really don’t.

RC: Is that true of all models and configurations of the B-17?

LK: Yeah, both. I flew one or two missions, not missions, but in a B-17E. But I flew several missions in a B-17Fs. Then the G, of course, had the chin turret. And they also had the tail gunners and a little bit clearer view for some of the other people. But I think that, from my understanding and belief, I think the 95th emphasized close formation flying much better than some other groups, where we could concentrate our guns by getting as tight as we could. And because of that, I think we had an outstanding record.

RC: Let me go back a little bit and ask, after your training, what route did you take? How did you get to England?

LK: Yeah, we were in Grand Island, Nebraska, and we were there about a month. And we thought that well, in a couple of days we would go. And the people in town, they knew more about when we were going than we did. And they said, “No, you won’t be going tomorrow. You won’t be going,” because they worked on the base and that. But anyway, we finally were told to go. We were on our own. We had to fly from Grand Island, Nebraska to Bangor, Maine. And I remember our pilot was a great big six foot four Irishman whose home was in Crown Point, Indiana. And I had to give him a heading there to deviate. And we buzzed that town. And I guess we found out later that the engines were not in synchronization to make more noise. And I understand that we broke windows and everything else, buzzing the town. But his mother was out with a big bed sheet. You couldn’t miss her.

And then we went to Bangor, Maine and from there we went to Goose Bay. And later, if you like, there’s an interesting story about all this that I would tell you. But anyway, from there to Reykjavik, Iceland and then we went to Stornaway, Scotland and dropped our plane off and much to our amazement, because we thought we’re going to live with this plane, they gave it to us, it was our baby.

Anyway, in the meantime, when we were in Grand Island, my best friend and co-pilot, Dan Waddell got married to a gal from North Carolina where he was from. He had a one-day honeymoon, and he went to Omaha and they had one night in Omaha but they come back with a little napkin that he got, I suppose, in the bar, that said Lady Luck. Well, it was a very voluptuous young woman with a red hair, and a horseshoe in her hair, and two dice for earrings, a left-handed monkey wrench and a four-leaf clover. It had eight balls, which would be the brassiere, and then a bandana. And we all agreed that was going to be on our jackets. And later, I painted them on all of our jackets. It was a long job, ten of them. And we started putting it on the plane, but we named it, instead of Lady Luck, they had an expression called, the only sympathy you get was Hard Luck.

So we had Haard with a line over the two a’s: Haard Luck. And we started putting that on the plane. Well then, other people flew that plane, and they didn’t want no part of that, so we took the Haard Luck off. They just were superstitious. But yeah, I could back up later on and tell you about this trip over and our first pilot, because that’s kind of an interesting…

RC: You could do it right now.

LK: Okay. It took me some years. In ’89, I went back to England and I never talked about the war to my four children or my wife. It was there, but I didn’t talk about it. And then we went to England, and the 95th had a group that flew over. And I just couldn’t afford to spend the money for an eight-day trip. I told my wife, we did a whole month in Europe for what it cost to go for eight days, including renting a car in Germany. We spent two weeks in Germany, and two weeks in England. But we spent two days in Horham with the group. And the British people treated us so wonderfully. I didn’t have a dry eye all the time I was over there those two days. Because they were so appreciative of what the Eighth Air Force and our 95th Group did.

And anyhow, I came home. In about a couple of days after I got home, I told my wife, I woke up and I said “I just went through a whole mission from beginning to end. And then another night that happened. She said, “Why don’t you put it down on paper?” So every morning from 2 or 1 o’clock, I would work ‘til she got up at around 6:30. And then I’d type it. And, I ultimately had a book published and titled Come Fly With Me. And, anyway, my first story was about our trip over and our first pilot. I didn’t know how to interpret some of the things that were happening. But, with hindsight, I backed up from when we left the states. And when I met our first pilot, I thought, gee, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. He was six foot four, red haired Irishman. And a brazen guy. And he didn’t fit in with my co-pilot and myself who became instant friends because we drank, we played poker, we smoked like fiends. And he didn’t, he was a purist.

Anyway, as we went over, everything was fine ‘til we got to Bangor, Maine. And then when we went to Goose Bay in Labrador, they called, on the radio they said, and here's a 200-foot wide runway. They said stay to the right because on the left side, half of that runway’s flooded with water, and there’s chunks of ice in it. Well he came in right. On the right side was about a twenty some foot bank of snow. I mean it was bigger than the plane. Just oodles of snow. And it must have petrified him, so he slid over and went right through the water, tore up the wings, and we had to stay there for repairs. And when we got on the ground, I noticed that the Pitot tube wasn’t – I don’t know if you know what they are, but they fit into the wind – and the cover was laying on the ground. So I went up and climbed up a ladder, and somebody left the switch on, and I didn’t realize that was heated. And I pulled myself up, and my whole hand, it, it contracted all the chords in my hand.

Well now I had to go to the infirmary, and they had me all bandaged up, so I couldn’t use a sextant, but that was okay, because they had to work on the plane for a couple days. Anyhow, we finally took off, and we went to Reykjavik. He had a terrible landing there. We bounced all over the place. He had another bad landing in Stornaway. And then, when we got to a base, they took our airplane away. Well then, much to our amazement, my co-pilot and I were riding around, and I recognized the number and, on our base. And so we got a hold of our first pilot and we said, “Go down, and see if we can get it.” And we did. We got it assigned to him. And anyway, much to my amazement, I flew two missions before the crew. And I don’t know why they did that. I don’t know if some of my records followed me, but, why they took me away from the crew, ‘cause that was not normal.

Anyway, my first mission was a milk run, and the second one was to Brux, Czechoslovakia and it was a rough mission. And now I’m ready to go home because I realize they’re trying to kill you, and all the other things. But it didn’t work that way, of course. But, anyhow, my third mission was the first mission with my crew. So I'm back with my crew now. And we have a fairly easy target in France. And it was uneventful. The second mission was in southern France. And all at once the pilot’s saying, he’s making overtures like we ought to go to Switzerland, and sweat out the war, you know. Just go there. And I thought he was kidding. And so, I didn’t think much about it.

Before I came here, my co-pilot, like I say, we were instant friends. He lives in Hendersonville. I just spent four days with him. And we went over some of these things again. But, the thing is, we sort of laughed it off. Well the third mission, we go to Berlin. I know Colonel McKnight was on that particular one, leading it. The target was obscured and we were going to… normally you have another target, and they said a 360, and boy, you could hear the groans. And so we came around, and you know, you waste another 20 minutes doing this. And of course the flack is intense, particularly in Berlin. And so we made a pass, and we had one plane right off the bat near us, or up ahead of us. We were Tail End Charlies. He had two engines out, and he was losing altitude fast, and he headed for Sweden. And all at once, our plane is following him. And so I called Watty, my buddy, the co-pilot, and I said, “What the hell’s wrong?” You know, I could see all four engines cranking it up. Now when we got on the ground, we had about a hundred and fifty holes in our plane, little holes all over. And one on the wingtip, you could drop a basketball through it. That one shell must have went right through it.

Anyway, so we had hits, but we were flying. Nothing was wrong. And we’re following this guy. And so Watty, he says “I don’t know, there’s not a thing wrong. Cobb’s pulling out.” And then I knew. It hit me. And so, I never carried my 45 that they gave us because I figured if I got caught on the ground with that, they’d kill you. And so what could you do? You’d maybe bump off one or two, but that would be it before they got you. So I never carried mine, but the bombardier always carried his, so I went up and got that. And I put it in his back, and I said “Cobb, leave the controls alone. We’re going back.” And it took us almost a half-hour to get back into formation and catch up. And we should have reported him on that when we got in, but we didn’t.

Anyhow, a couple of days later we flew, and we were a spare. And I don’t know if we were the only spare or not, but in any case, nobody aborted that they needed us. So we had to come back. The bombardier had to put all the pins in. And now we’re going to land with a load of gas and a load of bombs. But, it’s my understanding that’s a part of their training. They had to have situations like that. And we came in so hot, he blew the tire trying to stop, ‘cause we were going to hit the VHF station out at the end of the runway. And the whole right landing gear collapsed, the wing down, tore off three of the four engines, and we were ready to think it was going to blow. And I know I dove out of hatch down back by the navigator, and normally you have to chin yourself to get in. Well, the ground was only about a foot from there, and I plowed right in the ground. And I looked. Some of our gunners were like a mile ahead of me already.

But in any case, and I always remember, this Cobb was a big guy, and he was trying to go out the window, next to his seat. And he couldn’t get out. And uh, his foot evidently was caught. Well, he said it was between the seat and the plane. And I went back to see if I could help, and all at once he pulls his foot out of the boot and he fell to the ground. And we got out of it. Well, then they busted him to a co-pilot. And then later, because of him being a pilot they had him fly in the lead plane, and how they got him in the tail gunner’s position, I’ll never know. I never sat in it, but it looked like you had to be a relatively small guy. And I lost track of him. And then, you know, at the time I thought he was a coward.

Well, years later, I tried to analyze, what’s a hero, what’s a coward, you know. And I finally figured it out that it’s, you know, either being at the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time. But, I found out that his father was a hero in World War I, and he won many, in the Battle of Aragon and so forth, French medals. And I think Cobb was trying to live in his Dad’s shoes, which is wrong. But, this is what precipitated the first story in my book, because I felt guilty. I didn’t do anything wrong, but I didn’t do anything good. And then my wife tried to remind me, you know, what do you know? You were a kid then too, just like he was, you know. Twenty-one years old, or twenty-two. You know, you probably didn’t know what to do. But, you know, I didn’t put my hand on his shoulder and sympathize with him.

And so, twice, we’ve made trips down to, on our travels, to Crown Point, trying to track him down, and I, to this day, I have never found him to apologize. But every one of us had to face fear, and the conditions on our own terms, you know. I mean we weren’t trained, I mean nobody could train you for that. And so, our bombardier, the other one I told you was married, after about four missions, he was sent home. So two of the four officers in our original crew, and I don’t know how this related to the whole Air Corps, but that’s 50%, cracked up, they couldn’t handle it. And I know the bombardier, they sent him home. And like I said, I don’t know what happened to Cobb, I never followed him up. They put him in another group, or squadron. But that had bothered me for many many years, and that was the first story that I wrote in my book. And even though it was out of chronological order, the publishers wanted to keep it there.

But in any case, I’ve done a lot of soul searching, and I wrote a chapter on, you know, what is fear, and tried to analyze it, and you know, tried to put my belief in God and so forth. And I did it my way, but as an engineer and have a scientific mind, I felt that my God was like the law of averages, the law of probability and so forth. I could relate to that. I could touch the bombardier, I could reach up and touch the pilots. They couldn’t help me. I couldn’t help them with flak and guns. And so, you were on your own. And so, if you believed in God to get you through, terrific. But that wasn’t enough for me. I had to believe that, when my number was up, I was going to get it. And so I lived accordingly. I didn’t think I was coming home. I flew five missions. It was 25 missions when I went over. I flew five missions exactly, and they raised it to 30. I flew five more, and they raised it to 35, and now I’ve flown ten missions, and I’ve still got 25 to go, and I figured I’m not coming home, you know I really did, and I lived accordingly.

I didn’t save, you know, I came home and got married. I didn’t have a penny, no feeling of responsibility. All at once I was home and I’m going to get married and so forth. And I really didn’t think I was coming home and it didn’t bother me. I mean, you know, I just figured, if you do it long enough, the law of averages will get you. And I also look back, and I had a whole box full of flack that I had picked up in my boots and pants. And all around me in my desk and that, that could have had my name on it, and never drew blood. And the only time I got wounded at all was from Plexiglas on my forehead, and that looked worse than it was. And so I flew my 35 missions without getting wounded, and then in Air Transport Command, some of these guys had never been to Europe. And they said, jeez, would you swap? I was in the Pacific and I got to go there. And I said I don’t care, I can go either place. I didn’t bother. And three different individuals said voluntarily wanted to take my trip, bought the farm. I mean, they cracked up bringing war warriors back. So you don’t know why. I just feel very grateful that, that I…I felt bad for those guys. But the thing is that you also have to feel grateful that, you know, that it could have been you. But the thing is, you know, I don’t think some of these questions are meant to be asked, answered.

RC: We’re rapidly running out of time. Karen, do you have anything specific that you want to ask, and Lloyd, do you have anything specific that you want to add that would be on the record?

KS: I have one question going back to what you had said at the very beginning that your father was in World War I. And I wondered if he had talked to you about that, and did he ever convey a sense to you that World War I was not going to end up to be the war that ended all wars.

LK: Well, my father had a unique experience. His oldest brother was with him and was killed along side of him in one of the battles in France. He never talked about the war very much until his later years when we’d go from Madison up to Wassau, about 150 miles to see him, every couple of weeks. And, by that time, you know, he’d asked me about 20 times how the trip was; he didn’t know what he had for breakfast. And, he would get on the minutest details of things that happened to him while he was in the service. But he, had been gassed, he lived in trenches, and that was why, one of his suggestions, don’t volunteer and stay out of the Infantry. And my dad was never one to throw out bouquets or compliments. And yet, in his own way, you could read between the lines, and I think he was proud of my two brothers who ended up in the Coast Guard, and myself in the Air Corps. We all volunteered. But the thing is, he never dwelled on it to the point where I could really feel his gut feelings about World War I. I think he, like so many of them, had been gassed and lived under horrible conditions and saw the carnage of guys going over the top needlessly. And so I think that made him very quiet about it. But I look back and I feel grateful that I did complete my 35 missions and I felt fortunate that I was pigeon-holed where they got the most out of me. And I think that’s more than a lot of guys can say.

RC: Parting thoughts?

LK: Well, I don’t know who all are going to hear this, and I know a lot of them are joining the military. Some of them have been given alternatives: you go to jail or you join. Others have gotten into it to earn money, to get an education. I have mixed feelings about some of the things I heard during Desert Storm, where we had a 100 hour war, and people were whining because their husbands were gone or they had go. In Kosovo, I see two young men that screwed up and got captured and got six medals in the process. These things bother me, because I know we had a lot of guys that did a lot of things and medals were the only reward you probably got, and they’re kind of meaningless. I know in Desert Storm, I wrote to Congressmen in Washington, and my capitol, and I called, probably made 20 phone calls, because I heard of the millions of medals they were handing out. And to me, it was an indication that, somehow they got a reward, some of these young people today. And yet, in San Antonio, our 95th met, and, we went through Randolph Field, and I saw some of the most beautiful young men and women, that was just a thrill to be near them. I mean their intelligence and their desire. They were more interested in what we did than in their work. And, you know, they were taking navigational stuff with astronomical stuff built into computers, and locating themselves pressing a button. But, they were just the cream of the crop. And so, I know that you can’t make blanket statements, but I am concerned, if we had to get into another mess, if we could get the necessary people with the right attitude to do the job, and then come home and forget about it. But I hope that nobody forgets, I met a German fighter pilot 49 years ago, quite by accident, he was touring the United States at agricultural schools, and he was in Madison, and I met him. And we’ve been corresponding ever since, and I’ve been, my wife and I’ve been to Germany three times, and he’s been to our home three times, but, just before we came here, his daughter, who I commute with by e-mail, ‘cause he won’t touch a computer, and two of his grandsons, who are full grown individuals, came to our house. And so, I was picking their brain, but, like one of the things I mentioned I had written for something that they could pick up, like we would call an army surplus, he said that was verboten in Germany. But, she went on to tell me that she’s concerned like she’s heard her two sons talking to other kids and they talk about the glory of war. And it’s frightening if we have to re-learn this experience the hard way again. We know this out here, there’s people that don’t believe the Holocaust ever happened. They have stupid ideas. That if we have to learn, and if you go back in history, that’s what man has done. We’ve had to learn it over and over and over and over. And you know, like World War II claimed, what is it, close to twelve million people, mostly innocent people? And so if we have to learn these things over and over, I feel sorry of mankind. As you can see, I’m kind of a windy guy, but I hope I’ve given you something that could be of benefit to somebody.

Ed. note: The following two publications were written by Mr. Krueger:

Veterans StoriesJanie McKnightMay 27, 2019