Paul Reynolds
95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2004 REUNION WASHINGTON, D.C.
(Interviewed by Karen Sayco)
KS: Will you state your name please, and the date, and where this interview is being conducted.
PR: My name is Paul J. Reynolds. The date is September the 12th, 2004.
KS: Could you first of all give us your dates of service with the Army Air Corps, as close as you recall?
PR: Well, I was drafted in the service. I was working in the steel mill in Gary, Indiana. And I received my draft notice in 1942. I reported for duty and was sent to Ft. Thomas, Kentucky for examination and classification about two weeks later.
KS: And how about your dates of service with the 95th?
PR: Well, I was sent to Miami Beach for classification back in 1942. I had my mother to write Senator Happy Chandler to let him know that I would like to get into the Air Force and become a pilot. In a matter of a few days I was called, I received a letter and also was called out of formation and for me to report to the Colonel’s office. And he told me I was transferred to San Antone, Texas to go to classification school to become a cadet in flight training. And I went to San Antone and I completed classification, and then I was sent to pilot training. I’m not sure where in Texas. It was close to Vernon down there. And I washed out of flight school because I lost altitude on my s turns. And the asked me if Id like to be a bombardier or navigator. I said either one would suit me, would be fine. And they sent me to Midland, Texas where I was taking bombardier and navigational schooling. They needed some bombardiers. They were kinda getting short on them. And they graduated me approximately two weeks earlier than I was supposed to be. And I was sent to Tampa, Florida to pick up a crew in Tampa, Florida. The crew that I flew overseas with.
KS: Okay, when did you get to Horham? Approximately the month and the year.
PR: Boy, I should have studied that. We went to Georgia, went up to Georgia and picked up our B-17. And we were told to fly to Bangor, Maine. Had to stay all night. And then go to Goose Bay, Labrador and stay all night. And then go to Iceland and spend the night. And then we flew from our end way over to England and left the plane over there. The date of that going on was in the first part, the early part of 1944.
KS: You flew a brand, spanking new airplane over.
PR: Brand new one. We just ferried it across. And we left it in Wales, England at the airfield up there.
KS: Once you got to Horham, what was your first impression of the base there?
PR: In Horham? Well, we went to Blackpool, England, from where we left the plane. And they assigned us into various, they separated the crews and sent them to various different fields. And we were sent to Horham, England, 95th Bomb Group, 412th Squadron. To me, Horham was a beautiful little small community. But on account of the distance to Horham from our field, we generally went to the pubs over in Diss, England, which was pretty close to us. Well I enjoyed all the individuals and the town community. But they were small communities, but very friendly, the people were.
KS: What do you…do you remember what your target was your first mission? And what do you recall about your thoughts of your first mission…
PR: I forget the date, but I do remember our first mission was Mainz, Germany. And I figured it would be a milk run because on our first target, generally they send you on a fairly easy target. But it so happened that we go very little flak, but the flak we got was pretty direct – had us spotted. And we received over 200 flak holes and grounded our plane on the first mission. We had to take another plane. We flew again two or three days later, and we had to use another plane instead of Roaring Bill, instead of one assigned to us.
KS: Do you remember…now, on that mission, were you the bombardier?
PR: I was bombardier on that mission…
KS: Do you remember how successful the bombing was, particularly?
PR: No ma’am, I don’t recall whether is was cloudy or not. I was so scared. We all were first mission, of course. We didn’t know what to expect. Very few planes that were damaged. I mean our plane was damaged mostly. I mean it – in other words, it had to stay down a few days to have the holes riveted up, you know. I mean the flak holes. No motor damage or nothing. Just structural damage to the plane, mostly.
KS: After you got over with your first mission, is there any one particular mission that stands out?
PR: Well, we got shot up the worst over Nurnberg. But all the Merseburg trips were bad. To me, Merseburg was about the worst target we had to bomb. They had (so much) flak that you had to fly through – they’d shot a section out so many miles this way and so many miles this way. They kept shooting it in the same spot all the time, and you had to fly through it. They didn’t aim at you, they just had the sky (blacked) out. And I would say we would lose more planes over Merseberg on a mission than any one target at that period of time when I was flying.
KS: What the major target at Merseberg?
PR: Merseberg? To my understanding, there were synthetic oil fields down there. And they protected it pretty well. I really don’t know. All I ever heard of (was the) oil field, ball bearing factory also. But Merseberg was just well protected. They might have had synthetic oil, oil storage or something down there. I don’t really know.
KS: How many total missions did you fly, and over what period of time?
PR: Well, I flew 35 missions from January, let’s see, it was September 1944 until March 4th, 1945. In that period of time, I completed 35 missions over Germany on the targets. And our first mission was January the 27th, 1944.
KS: I might add that we have Paul Stoddard,
PR: Oh, that’s September 27th.
KS: Do you want to identify yourself on the tape here?
ARB: My name is Ann Reynolds Buckner.
KS: She’s sitting in on this. And if you’d like to, if you have some questions, please do. In your – so you flew your missions over quite an extended period of time. What were your favorite activities when you weren’t flying a mission?
PR: Well, I enjoyed going to the pubs and playing darts. And we got so where we could compete with the English people in the darts, and to me it was quite a fun game. But mostly just setting around and talking and discussing in general what was going on. And I enjoyed talking to the English people. They were very good natured and wonderful people to talk to. Very nice. I had one woman that washed all my clothes all the time. And I’d take her rations. I would save up what I didn’t need and take them to her. And they were sure tickled to death to get a little food, especially some of the potted meat and stuff like that. And they were lovely people. I just loved to visit them.
KS: I want to skip back a little bit. Before the war, before you were drafted, you worked in steel mills in Gary, Indiana. I wondered, were most of those jobs in the steels mills then taken over by women? Because the steel mills would have been a very essential part…
PR: Well, I was an overhead crane man – had a five control Whiting crane. And it took, I’d say, a matter of time – over a period of a month – to learn your controls. You were carrying tons of steel and moving it from one place to another, up and down your bay that you’re in, loading trucks and loading different things – flatcars I’d load big long steel rods and so forth. And it takes a – you just don’t learn it very fast because you load gets to pitching or moving. Get erratic very easy. It’s all on chains and it’s very easy to lose your load, especially you got two trolleys up here. And they’ve got chains hanging down from it that’s got your load. And it would take a person, I’d say, at least two or three months of practice to get to where he could check a swing or protect the steel. And I don’t recall a woman crane operator being present when I was there, when I left in September. Now they may have trained some after I left in 1942. But we were working, getting a dollar an hour to run this old crane - $40 a week, which is kinda small money nowadays. But it went pretty far back then.
KS: You finished your missions in March of ’44. And then did you come back to the states shortly thereafter?
PR: Well, I finished the missions on the 10th. Well, it was March 1945. Dortmunderfeld was the last mission.
KS: Did you come back to the states fairly soon after that?
PR: I can’t remember exactly when I did. We came back on a ship. And we just kinda enjoyed ourselves and took freedom. They just gave us freedom to do about whatever we wanted to do after we got our missions in. And I do recall, the ship I got loaded on was General Weigel. And as we came back in convoy – it was about 20 ships – we run into rough weather. Quite rough. And I can remember seeing ships being way up at the peak of a wave, and just disappear on the other side. We had a submarine attack while we were coming back. And we had these destroyer escorts circling our convoy. And they were dropping these depth chargers. And those depth chargers was quite an experience to go through. I mean, if you (go) down in the bottom part of the ship, it’s like hitting a gong, you know, and putting it up close to your ear. It’s a lot of noise, I mean, when those depth chargers go off. And they kinda bounce you around too. But we didn’t get any damage. None of the convoy got any damage from the submarines.
KS: How many days did that crossing take?
PR: If I remember correctly, it was about 18 days coming across from…we could have come faster if we hadn’t been in convoy.
KS: You came to New York?
PR: Well we came to Newark, New Jersey.
KS: What was your greeting like when you got there?
PR: To me the most beautiful sight that I ever saw was the Statue of Liberty. When we was coming in about daybreak, I heard somebody say, “I can see the Statue of Liberty.” And of course we all come from, on board, you know and see the Statue of Liberty. And then we go into New Jersey, Camp Kilmer I guess it is for food and milk and stuff, which we hadn’t – milk especially – which we hadn’t drank any for about a year or two.
KS: That’s what I was going to ask. What was the thing you missed most overseas?
PR: To me, milk was one of the main. We had good food overseas. Of course I imagine it was different in the Infantry or something, than in the Air Force. They had the rations, but we had fresh food every morning, I mean, when we get up to go out to fly. And very good cooks, very good meals, and very good food. I was very well satisfied, the cooking part of my experience.
KS: Is there any incident that stands out in your mind while you were either flying or off time?
PR: Well, two experiences that I haven’t got the dates (for). But James Garvey, who was our top turret gunner, he was talking about a funny shaped airplane that – he was in the top turret. And he said, “I see a peculiar shaped airplane that’s approaching us from the rear.” And the pilot told all of us to keep our eye on it. And it looked like a bat to me. And it came straight over the top of our plane – a few thousand feet above the plane. And James Garvey, top turret gunner, he just started shooting at it. And none of us could recognize it – didn’t know what it was. And the pilot told us to shoot it down. And it was a ME-262. So I’ve got the papers right there – secret papers – that prove our plane shot down the first Messerschmitt ME-262 in the second World War. The date may be on those papers and everything. But I was just – we were over Nuremberg when they moved the capitol from Berlin. And I think Hitler moved down to Nuremberg, or some place in that area, from Berlin. We were bombing Nuremberg this day, and we were flying number three lead. They were very accurate with their anti-aircraft guns, and they shot down number one lead, and number two lead pretty fast. That left us as number three lead. And of course, I have to get on the bomb site and try to pick up the target. And then we get hit. So, automatically, we’re shot out of formation. Well, when Dave Doran was wounded pretty bad, he was the togglier. He’d come up, and I was navigating. And he started holding his leg, and I told him, I said, “Dave, I’ll help you as quickly as I can.” And I went – the intercoms were shot out and different – well, you couldn’t talk to each other. And I had to go to the back of the plane to see what was going on back there. And the electricity had all been shot out, and Harry Aslagson, who is our side waist gunner, he was cranking the ball turret up. We had Dick Weircloch in it. He can operate his turret underneath the plane. He can operate without electricity, so we had to crank him up, and we thought he was dead anyhow. But he wasn’t; he was lively. We tried to – I got back up front and tried to get it fixed where I was, and I couldn’t. So I just took a navigational heading into Brussels, Belgium. I gave the pilot a heading and also gave him the ETA. We tried to get down into Brussels, because Dave was wounded so bad, I thought he was going to bleed to death before we got in. His leg was nearly shot off. And I did put a tourniquet on it and give him a shred of morphine, and just knocked him out. We couldn’t get down because the fog was so thick – it was right on the ground. And I crawled back up to Greg L’Ecuyer, who was the first pilot. I told him, I said “Let’s go to ____________, France and see if we can get down and get Dave to the hospital. And we tried to get down in ___________, France. Same thing. It wasn’t – invisibility. And I said, I went back up and started talking to Greg again, who is the first pilot. And Greg said, “Paul, we’re running short of gas.” He called me “KY” instead of Paul. And I said, “Well, we better start back across the channel and see if we can make it back to England.” And we asked all the boys, went around and asked them if they wanted us to get up to 10,000-foot altitude and let them jump out, you know, of the airplane. Well, none of them really wanted to take the chance. They said, we’d rather ride the plane down. So the pilot told me to give him ETA and a heading. And I give him heading and the estimated time of arrival. And he got on it. I made a note to check before what my position is the sky was. And I changed the heading a little bit and give him ETA. They followed it as close as they could. We was right on the ground, as far as I’m concerned. I thought we were under the ground. And the clouds broke just once. And we were right over the top of trees. And he just pulled up just a little bit, and then he dropped back down to look again, and our runway was right in front of us. So, I got into this thing with ____________, and I was trying to save myself (laughing). Dave got the Purple Heart for crippled. They took him – we shot red flares and they came out and took him to the hospital. We went over to see him. And then they sent him back to California to the specialist. And they did save his leg. Later on, I saw him up in Chicago. He got along pretty good.
KS: Did you stay in touch with your crew after the war?
PR: I would say yes, as close as most crews probably did. We would write letters, birthdays we knew, and different ones of us would always call each other every once in a while. Yes, I would say we stayed very close together.
KS: What do you get out of coming to these reunions?
PR: Well, you’re family. I mean, you’re not just a bunch of soldiers. You just learn to love each other. You’re part of each other. And the wives become a part of it. And any sickness in their family, I mean they let you know. You have a feeling for them, just like, you know, your own child or your own family or something. I think our crew is very close. I found out that most of the crews are very close. I mean, it’s just like kinship, or brothers, or something like that. To me, enlisted men and officers, I mean, I was an officer, that was never brought up. When you was told to do something, we all did it. I mean, we all worked together. And we all had certain jobs to do, and we did our best to do the best we could.
KS: On a typical mission day,(you got up) about what time, and what would be the process.
PR: I’ll say close to 3:30 and 4:00 in the morning the door would open and somebody would holler “Black, _____, Painter, Reynolds, Johnson”. That’s all they had to say. We knew that we was going on a mission. The night before we would know it because it would be posted on the door, who was on alert. We would get up and go eat breakfast. And then they would drive us out to the airfield and we would go for interrogation. And they had a, wherever we was going, they had a big curtain covering a big map of the whole country. And they would have a yarn string from our base whatever direction we was going to go in, to the target. Of course we’d always look at the opposite end, to see where we was going to bomb. Whether it was going to be Berlin, Merseburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig, or where. And sometimes we breathed a little easier, you know, if the target wasn’t too bad. It was Merseburg, we’d all groan. But, everything went pretty smooth. Interrogation and everything else, they really had it down pretty good. I give them credit, of course, over a period of time, they got where they were better, but they knew exactly what to ask you: Where did you hit? Where did you first get your flak? Did you see any planes shot down? Did you see any railroad cars moving? What direction were they moving in? Different things like that, especially when General Patton was pinned down in Bastog,ne, we had to fly a mission on December 24th, 1944. And shoot anything. Well, we was told, when we crossed the front lines, to shoot anything that was moving – trains, truck convoys, or anything else – bomb them or shoot them. General Patton had run out of gas. He’d moved too fast, or something. Well, if I remember correctly, I said to the interrogators briefing us, I said, “How are we going to know where the front lines are?” He said, “One thing I want to tell you is to fly 20,000 feet when you bomb whatever you bomb, because,” he said, “we’re going to put red flak, red powder into the 75 mm flak guns – that’s American. And we’re going to cut the fuse to explode at 10,000 feet.” And he said, “When they explode, they’ll be a red puff of smoke instead of black puff of smoke.” Well, I mean, yes, that’s fine. That’s wonderful. And anything past that red puff of smoke, I mean we could bomb it because General Patton was out of gas. It was a matter of two or three days to get more gas trucks up there and get him on the move again. And then they moved right straight on to the Rhine River. Brussels, I remember they told us to bomb the bridge only after General Patton got there.
KS: Is there anything else you’d like to add to this record?
PR: Well, the only thing I would like to say is add – they always had you command pilot. And some of those – I remember we were supposed to bomb Merseburg, which was a rough target. And the command pilot we had that day, he turned and shorted the IP –that’s the Initial Position in they sky you’re supposed to go to. And of course, when he turned, I mean we turned with him, I mean the crew. He dropped his bombs, and of course we all dropped our bombs on him. I mean, did a lot of damage, no doubt, but it wasn’t down on the heart of the target. Later on, we came back later on that evening, that night we were having a party and the 100th Bomb Group came over – some of the individuals out of the 100th Bomb Group came over and we were playing poker and drinking, of course. And one of them asked me, he says, “How come ya’ll cut short today and not go down the initial, the regular route?” I said well, I said “the command pilot turned, and” I said, “He was the leader we all were supposed to follow.” Well, to make a long story short, it was – I don’t know how much damage our bunch of bombs did, but we did follow the command pilot. And I think it was a bad mistake because I could see the main line of bombers over here. We knew that 12 or 15 hundred bombers up, you know. And then you got one group over here. But I think our command pilot really kind of got scared or something. I don’t know what. Because it was (a lot of flak) over Merseburg. It was pretty dense. You know, they blocked out certain sections of the sky and shoot in it. But that’s the only mistake that I can really see. Just our squadron was the only one that did it. I mean, that followed the…
KS: There’s something that I almost forgot to ask you. Could you tell us about your experience of what was supposed to be a very festive occasion, celebrating the 300th mission of the 95th?
PR: Well that’s when Glenn Miller got killed. You see, Glenn was coming to our field with his band. Well his band was, of course, on another plane, coming from France. And the band came on. One of the big hangers, we’d have the dance in there. And they’d have a lot of food and cokes and soft drinks for the women from Ipswich and Norwich and various types of sandwiches and things. They really loved to come and get something to eat and drink pop and dance. And some of them were good dancers. But, how was it, you stated that now? The question?
KS: Well, you said the preparations were all made for the 300th party and then it was announced that his plane was missing? Or how did that go?
PR: Yeah, Glenn’s band came on over and we had a, we went ahead and had the dance – had a beautiful time and beautiful music. I love “No Name Jive” and “In the Mood” and “Sentimental Journey” and all those songs that they played. We didn’t know until the next day that – it come over the radio that Glenn, the plane was missing in action. They figured it was shot down in the North Sea. They don’t know if it was an accidental bomb release that English – they fly at night, you know, do bombing at night. And I heard it was accidental release from some English bombers that bombs fell from planes and hit Glen’s plane. Then I heard that Focke-Wulfers sneaked in, which happened pretty often, and intercepted Glenn and shot the plane down. So I really don’t know which one is correct. It was two different tales about it. But on the 200th bomb mission Glenn was there, because I dance right up close to where he was playing, where the band was. And I enjoyed it very much.
KS: Well thank you very much. We have been visiting with Paul Reynolds, bombardier with the 95th Bomb Group. On behalf of the 95th Bomb Group Legacy Committee Memorials Foundation, this is Karen Sayco. We thank you for sharing your memories and taking this time this afternoon. We’re in the Hilton, Tyson’s Corners, Washington,
DC. Thank you.