Jack Bertram
95th BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2000 REUNION ORLANDO, FLORIDA
LOUIS WESTERBURG, HARRY HULL, JOHN KOZLOWSKI, JACK BERTRAM
(Interviewed by Karen Sayco)
KS: Could you state your name please, and the date, and where we are at.
LW: My name is Louis R. Westerburg. We are at the Grosvenor Hotel. The 95th Bombardment group is having their annual reunion here. The date is September the 16th, the year 2000.
KS: What were your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
LW: The Army/Air Corps was in 1943 and ’44.
KS: What were they with the 95th Bomb Group?
LW: Are you talking about actual combat?
KS: When were you first assigned to the 95th Bomb Group?
LW: This was in Avon Park, Florida, and do you remember that, Bert, the dates that we made up the crew?
JB: It was in the latter part of ’43.
KS: Just general will be fine. What squadron were you in with the 95th?
LW: 412
KS: And what was your job with the 95th?
LW: I was the armor gunner, ball turret gunner, and that’s it.
KS: Okay. Do you remember your first mission?
LW: I’m afraid not.
KS: Okay. Well, first of all, why don’t you tell us about the other three gentlemen that are here with you. They’re all part of your crew, correct?
LW: Yes, it’s quite an honor to me. This crew – we have four men of our 95th crew in the 412th Squadron. We have the pilot, who is Mr. Bertram, Jack C. Bertram. And we have the upper turret gunner here, which is John Kozlowski, and we have the bombardier, that is Harry Hull. Bertram is originally from Pennsylvania. He was a full pilot. Kozlowski, would you tell us where you were from?
JK: High Point, Indiana
LW: Indiana. And (Hull) I know is from California
HH: Yes. California
LW: Okay. And I am from Louisiana originally. Next question.
KS: What was your most memorable mission?
LW: The most memorable mission, without a doubt, is one that we neared the final missions, and we were sent to Munich on a strategic mission at Munich. We saw some of the heaviest flak we ever saw. The word flak is anti-aircraft fire from the ground, shooting the airplanes. That was the objective of the Germans, to get rid of us. So, we suffered a blast right close to the airplane. This blast did several things to us. It merited bailing out, really. One was, it severed the rudder cable of the B-17. We were 30,000 feet at that time. Of course, without a rudder, we could not land back in England. Something had to be done. The next thing that happened to the ship was the oxygen supply was punctured and the oxygen [inaudible]. It was in that turret. It shattered that turret completely, the Plexiglas all around. He [Raymond P. Carpenter, waist gunner] received a severe cut in his head. It knocked him out, and he had to go to the hospital after the mission.
But then we had other things happen to the ship. We had [a] crankcase punctured with the flak. This flak burst into little particles like a hand grenade breaks up. And if you fly into those things, it will puncture steel that’s a quarter of an inch thick. And so, it punctured a crankcase and it damaged the prop on the second one, so it meant that those two engines could not pull as they were supposed to.
I looked out in the ball turret, but I was able to come up out of the ball turret and assist the right waist gunner. All the cables that connect the rudder and the elevators and so forth run along the top of the door about the center of the airplane. And that burst of flak caught the cable, the rudder cable. So, screwed to the side of the airplane is a cable splicing kit, and naturally Brock and I tried to get this thing off of Hull, but we did get the door open, and got pieces of the cable spliced. So, I held the ends together while he laid the cable on top and put two clamps on it.
Now all this time, Bert was trying to keep altitude with the airplane. And he was fighting that thing and trying to make a decision as to whether or not we should bail out or whether we should stay with the ship for a while. And another problem that Bert had, and I call him Bert because his last name is Bertram, and that’s what we called him overseas. So, he was gradually keeping as much altitude as possible, but the airplane was going down. He knew that we had to cross the channel and keep enough altitude to clear the cliffs of Dover, which were about 400 feet. It was a longways off, because this happened right at Munich, and we had six hours more in the air to get back home. The oxygen was spewing out, and he was trying to make decisions whether to come down fast or whether to stay up as high as he could.
Well, we fought that all the way down until we saw the coast. Now if you can imagine the triangle, he’s calculating how fast he was coming down, he and the navigator, to make it over the channel and into the airfield. If we were coming into the cliffs of Dover, he couldn’t pull back and rise again with the airplane. That’s after we threw everything out of the airplane.
So, we got about halfway to the [English] Channel when Bert announced, he says, “We are going to make it. We’re going to make it over the coast.” And we thought we were going to have to bail out in the Channel. That’s the thing that we were afraid of right then. Plus, enemy fighters, they always jump on, if they can locate him, a ship that is crippled and dropped out of formation. But we made it over the Channel with just a few gallons of gas.
And I think that the last putt [chuckle] that they made was just before we landed, just as the wheels touched down. The tanks were empty. Oxygen was out. And of course, the thing that saved us, we got down to 10,000 feet and then you can breathe air again. But we have him to thank for keeping us out of a German prison camp. And, he’s very modest about that. But all the crewmembers give him full credit for that. And I want to thank him right now for that. And that’s just about the story of our 27th mission and the toughest one we had.
KS: About what date was that. That would have been about ’43?
LW: I’m writing the book on that, and I’m hoping to get it published… I beg your pardon?
KS: ’44? 1944?
LW: That mission that I just described. It was our 27th mission, but I am sorry, I do not have the date with me.
??: July 11th, 1944
LW: Thank you. That’s it. July 11th, 1944.
KS: Have you ever heard any more beautiful words than “We’re going to make it?”
LW: I heard it two or three times coming in until we could see those cliffs. We cleared the cliffs, just about three or four hundred feet.
KS: How far are the White Cliffs of Dover from Horham? Were you able to land at Horham, or did you have to land at an alternate field?
LW: Oh, we landed on our own field. This was possible after the right waist gunner and I spliced that cable. You see, he couldn’t have landed the airplane. The least little crosswind, without a rudder. You see, he was flying the airplane with the elevators. Turn it up like that and turn it up like that [gesturing] and he was flying it actually with the wheels instead of the rudders, with his feet. But after we spliced that thing, it was sloppy, but he was able to have some rudder action. And with that rudder action, he was able to land the airplane without a ground looping or tearing up. But we made it in.
KS: We’re glad you did. [Transfer of microphone] Harry Hull, would you state your name please.
HH: My name is Harry Hull
KS: What were your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
HH: 1942-1945
KS: Dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
HH: April 1944 ‘til the first of September, ’44.
KS: You were also in the 412th, and what was your position?
HH: I was bombardier on Bertram’s crew.
KS: The day of the July 11th, ’44 mission that we just heard about, what was your target at Munich? Do you recall?
HH: I don’t remember. We dropped by radar, and I do not remember what the target was.
KS: As the bombardier, could you explain to us what the procedure was in dropping by radar? I understand that once you are on the initial point, that you are flying the plane?
HH: Yes. The lead bombardier of the group has the radar. And he drops with that. Everybody else drops on him.
KS: Since it was overcast, you don’t know if you hit the target or anything like that?
HH: We do not. We do not know.
KS: How did the bombardier go about taking over control of the aircraft from the pilot?
HH: Any time that we dropped by radar, the bombardier, except in the lead ship, did not ever take over control of the plane.
KS: Okay. Now on other missions, presumably you didn’t have overcast on all 30 missions, so what was the procedure on missions that you had been able to see?
HH: Almost all bombs were dropped on the lead ship.
KS: You were following directions of the lead?
HH: Correct
KS: Would you like to add anything to his story, or possibly tell us anything about. Were you using the Norden bomb site?
HH: Yes, we had the Norden bombsite. I think Lou did a very good job on explaining the mission. I would say one of the most memorable missions was dropping supplies to the Underground.
KS: Where did that occur?
HH: In the French Alps, in the lower elevations of the French Alps.
KS: And when did that take place?
HH: I would say August, does that sound about right? August of ’44?
KS: What sort of supplies were you dropping, and how did you know where to drop them.
HH: (We) dropped guns, ammunition, and food. There was a rendezvous set that, as I remember the mission. We flew over the target at very low altitude, made a circle, and if everything was okay, the Underground would light flares, smoke signals. We’d come back around and drop the supplies.
KS: This was daylight hours?
HH: Daylight hours. We were close enough that we could see people on the ground waving at us.
KS: What gave you more satisfaction – dropping on the enemy directly, or supporting the underground? You personally. Or was there any difference to you.
HH: I’d say it was mutual.
KS: Thank you. [Transfer of microphone] Would you state your name and your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
JK: I’m John Kozlowski. I started with the Army/Air Force as soon as I got inducted into it. I was mechanically inclined, so they figured I’d do the best in that part of the service.
KS: What date were you inducted?
JK: March 1943, I was inducted.
KS: And what were your dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
JK: Dates, I don’t remember. It was from April to September ’44.
KS: What was your job on the Bertram crew?
JK: I was a top turret gunner/flight engineer on the airplane. I stood right behind Jack and his co-pilot – read off the airspeed at take-off and the airspeed at landing, so all he had to do was concentrate on controlling the plane. As soon as I said a hundred and ten, he knew we’d go up. Same when we came down.
KS: Is there anything you would add to…
JK: Westerburg hit it pretty good on that Munich mission. I remember it was overcast. They didn’t see us. We didn’t see them. Bombing by radar was the only way you could bomb it. I think that we just dropped them on the city. I hate to say that, but that’s what happened. The flak was terrible. We were up at 26,000 feet, and they were right in there. I looked from my turret. I saw B-17s blowing up to the left and to the right, in front of us, below us. That was a terrible mission. That day we lost 28 [sic] bombers.
KS: From the 95th?
JK: Yeah. Just the 95th.
KS: What, this might be a hard question to answer, and if you don’t feel like answering it, feel free to just not. What goes through your mind when you see a plane go down?
JK: It was them and not us, that’s what goes through your mind. But someday it could be us too, and not them. That’s what we’re there for. You just can’t help it.
KS: Are there any humorous or memorable experiences that you remember in England around the base?
JK: No, we’re a serious group, all with our own minds. We didn’t talk much to each other. We were just usually by ourselves, own thoughts.
KS: What do you remember about coming home?
JK: From a mission?
KS: No, coming back to the states.
JK: I was in pretty bad shape. I went over there 170 pounds, I come back 138 pounds. I was a sick boy. Inside, not here, but down inside. After that they tried to send me to a B-29 school, instrument training school for B-29s for Japan. But I took an altimeter in school, and I says, “What am I doing here?” and I took that altimeter and I threw it on the floor. And right away, I got out of school. So, I was charged with quarters until I was discharged. But that’s the way it was. And when I got out of the service, I ended up in a veteran’s hospital for 18 months. They called it combat fatigue, or flak happy or whatever you want to call it.
KS: Did you return to your parents’ home? How were you greeted when you got home?
JK: Yes. Oh, you can’t imagine. My parents of course greeted me like you wouldn’t believe. My mother had stars in the window, you know, like they did in World War II. And my gosh, all my friends had parties for me – a hero. You just couldn’t believe it. It was something else.
KS: Did you come back by ship or did you fly back?
JK: We came back on the Queen Elizabeth. Went over on the Queen Mary, came back on the Queen Elizabeth. That was something else too, you know. There were 17,000 troops on that big ship. No airplanes, no ships to guard us. But this big boat would go this way…it would zigzag.
KS: To avoid the U-boats.
JK: To avoid the U-boats. And it was fast. It was fast. But the thing that I remember on the Queen Mary going over. The Air Force was on there, so were the infantry boys. There were about 2,000 of the Air Force on there. We’d go up on the deck and we’d see all these infantry boys throwing up. While we were watching them, we started doing it too [laughter] and we shouldn’t have because we were used to flying around. Oh my gosh, that was something else
KS: Well as long as the sailors weren’t throwing up…
JK: Maybe they were too, I don’t know. 17,000 soldiers on that boat.
KS: What were the conditions like?
JK: On the boat?
KS: On the boat.
JK: Oh, you wouldn’t believe [chuckle] – six bunks high.
KS: Were you the one that talked about sleeping in the swimming pool once every 48 hours?
JK: No, it wasn’t me.
KS: How were the conditions coming back?
JK: Same thing. I think she only had 15,000 coming back. Yeah, had a bunch of wounded boys on there too.
KS: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
JK: All I wanted to say is the reason us four are here today is because of this man, right here, Jack Bertram, the pilot. Skill. I watched him at that wheel, boy. And I watched the engine instruments and I’d tell him if something was wrong, you know I’d let him know. He’d know when to feather a prop; he’d know when to open up the cowl flaps for more air to go through the engine. I give this man credit for being here today.
??: He kept us from bailing out.
JK: Exactly. Exactly.
KS: You had a little bit to do with it. You were reading the instruments for him.
JK: Well, I told him about it, you know.
KS: You were his back-up.
JK: His engineer, between him and the co-pilot at the same time.
KS: Well, thank you.
JK: Sure. [Transfer microphone]
KS: Would you state your name and your dates of service with the Army/Air Corps?
JB: My name is Jack Bertram. I was in the Air Force from ’42 to ’45.
KS: What were your dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
JB: We arrived in the 95th Bomb Group in early April and left in early September.
KS: Where did you form up this crew?
JB: We formed up the crew in Avon Park, Florida, which is about 50 miles south of here in the center of the state.
KS: Have you been back to Avon Park?
JB: I have been back to Avon Park. Avon Park was identified to me by my CO when I left Chanute. We asked him how to identify it. He said there would be a B-25 burning at each end of the runway. B-26s, beg your pardon, and it was short runways.
KS: And your job with the 95th?
JB: I was a pilot.
KS: Is there anything you’d like to add to the Munich story?
JB: I would like to say that about these gentlemen. Lou Westerburg was the oldest and the wisest, and he’s still the oldest and the wisest. And Harry Hull was the most stable of the four officers, most reliable, a guy I had a great respect for. And big John was my right-hand man. He was behind me all the way. The Munich raid was by far our worst raid. Another thing that happened on the Munich raid that wasn’t mentioned. We lost all four turbos. They were knocked out. And that’s really why we could not stay at high altitude. We were knocked out of formation. We didn’t really know what happened to the power, we lost our power.
KS: What happens when you can’t stay in formation?
JB: In this case, we became aware that we didn’t have any power, so we had no choice. We were just out of formation; we can’t stay up with them. We started going down. As we got down near 10,000 feet, our power started to come back. That was in addition to cable, and loss of oxygen, and all those things. So that interim between getting knocked out of formation and however long it took us to get to 10,000 feet, we came within a whisper of going to Switzerland. For a minute, it looked like it was there or nothing. But as we got power and got down around 10,000 feet, we got our act together and accessed all our damage. Then we made a decision to come home.
KS: I know the Swiss internees were not exactly treated like royalty, but they did have it better [inaudible]…decision not to turn toward Switzerland. It was certainly closer than trying to make it back to England. What ran through your mind?
JB: I was briefed on Switzerland, so I knew it existed, I knew where to go. Our responsibility was to get home and fly again.
KS: So, you had responsibility above your own safety.
JB: Absolutely. I think everybody on there wanted to do that. Probably the most remarkable part of that mission was we got back. We came back all the way across Germany alone.
KS: How many miles, how many hours?
JB: I should know those things, but it was a number of hours.
KS: Did you encounter any…
JB: No, that was a miracle that we did not see a fighter. The navigator took us clear of major cities so received no flak. We were always subjected to most anything to happen in addition to that, we didn’t have any more mechanical failures. We didn’t need the oxygen. We almost ran out of gas. I wasn’t sure we could make it back.
KS: Now that was the 27th mission?
JB: Yeah
KS: Now after that, were the other missions pieces of cake?
JB: No, we didn’t have any pieces of cake [laughter]. We had no icing. We had our great fear of flak.
KS: After the 27th, did you have a feeling, well, we got through this. Nothing worse than this could happen. What were your thoughts?
JB: I don’t think we ever lingered on what comes next. We had 36 missions.
KS: You did 36?
JB: Yeah, we did 35 that we got credit for. We were on a few more. We aborted on one and we didn’t get credit.
KS: Any other unusual missions or unusual experiences…
JB: I could tell you many, I guess. I think our Leipzig mission [29 Jun 1944] was probably the most screwed up mission that we were on, of all of them.
KS: Do you want to tell us about that?
JB: Yeah, I’d like to tell you the major’s name, but I don’t know [laughter]. They brought a major in. I think my memory is fairly clear on this. I tried to determine, talking around, if anybody else knew about that, since I’ve been here. I didn’t find anybody that was on the mission. This gentleman had never flown with us before, and he was assigned to lead the 95th Bomb Group. We went over Leipzig three times. If you take two runs on the target, your chances get worse and worse, but three is pretty deadly. But the mission became in total disarray. The formation was scattered. We could not stay in formation. We were almost stalling out at times. When we came back in our briefing in Intelligence, everybody reported this. And he disappeared, he never flew again.
KS: Probably a good thing?
JB: A good thing for him that he didn’t fly. [Laughter all around]
KS: It would be a good thing for you too.
JB: That’s a true story and I’d like to talk to somebody else that was on that mission. We had a lot of interesting missions. The mission that we dropped supplies on. They had quite a few planes go down, and most of them went on a diversionary bombing raid. We had twelve-foot capsules with parachutes on them. And we went right down, almost to the ground, down below Lyon, France. The BBC, British Broadcasting System, was in touch with the Free Fighting French, and at a signal from them, they lit bonfires down there, and that’s really how we found them. And we dropped these things. In our case, one of them got hung up in the bomb bay. It was swinging like a pendulum. I tried to shake it, you know, with the plane. We couldn’t get it out of there. John got in the bomb bay, and we finally kicked the thing off of there. In the process of that, it bent the screws in the bomb bay (the outdoor), so we couldn’t crank them up, and we couldn’t get them up electrically. So, we flew all the way back to England with the bomb bay doors open.
KS: What was the procedure when they heard back at the base that you were coming in with a problem?
JB: If you had wounded aboard, you advised them of such by radio. When you came in, you sent out red flares and they cleared the field and gave you a clear landing.
KS: Were there crash trucks?
JB: Yeah. There were ambulances and crash trucks out there whether anybody reported or not. They were all out there. Everybody was out there counting planes. If you weren’t flying, and there was a mission that you weren’t on, you would be out there counting planes, knowing how many took off, wondering how many were coming back.
KS: Have you been back?
JB: I’ve been to Horham, yeah.
KS: Have you been in contact with any of the Underground?
JB: No, I have not. I did have a unique experience when I went back to Horham, England. There’s a grocery store by the name of Johnson’s. I went in there, and they had started a log of people coming back, visiting the base. I think there were about 120 signatures on it at that time. This was about ten years ago. So, I signed my name and the next Christmas I got a card from a fella. And he said I know you’re alive, because I read your name on the register at Johnson’s Grocery Store in Horham.
KS: That was somebody that lived in the village?
JB: That was a fellow flyer that I went through Cadets with, and he was also at the base.
KS: Is this the first reunion that you have attended together?
JB: This is the first reunion that we’ve attended together. John and Lou and I saw each other about five years ago briefly, at lunch. And Harry Hull and I, we saw each other in about 1960. My family took a camping trip out west. My son, Bob, is here, and he was about four years old, and we had a picnic with them. And we have not been able to find anybody else. We’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to find the crew.
JK: I have a little strange thing that happened to me
KS: Okay, John Kozlowski
JK: My folks had a dairy farm. When I got out of service, I went there to help them out, you know. And finally got to where they couldn’t handle it anymore. So, they moved to Lake Worth, Florida. They bought a little tiny house and right next door to them were some German people. They were nice. They invited us for Thanksgiving dinner. And the gentleman asked me what did I do during the war? I said that I flew in a bomber, dropping bombs over Germany.
And he looked up at me startled, “You done what?”
I said, “We dropped bombs over Germany. We were bombing oil synthetic plants, manufacturing plants, and whatever.”
He says, “Were you, on this date,” I think it was sometime in August,[1] we went to Schweinfurt, “Did you drop bombs on Schweinfurt on such and such and such a date, such a time?”
I said, “Yes, I did.”
He said, “Do you know that you killed my mother and dad? They were working in a factory, making ball bearings.”
But could you imagine what a ball bearing meant? A ball bearing runs everything today. Roller bearings, ball bearings, caper bearings – it means a lot. Once you bomb ball bearings out of sight, things are held up for production. That’s all I’ve got to say. But war is war, and that’s the way it was.
KS: Thank you very much. We have been visiting with Louis Westerburg, Harry Hull, John Kozlowski, and Jack Bertram. We thank you for your time and your contributions. This is Karen Sayco for the 95th Bomb Group Association Memorials Foundation (Legacy Committee). Thank you.
[1] Actual date was 19 Jul 1944