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January 7, 2025 17 mins

On this episode of Our American Stories, the late historian Stephen Ambrose tells a short story from his terrific book The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany. 

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Speaker 1 (00:13):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show
and our favorite subject American history. And by the way,
all of our American history stories are brought to us
by the great folks at Hillsdale College. Go to Hillsdale
dot edu to sign up for their terrific and free
online courses. Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers

(00:37):
and historians, and at the core of his success was
his belief that history was biography, history was about people.
Ambrose passed in the year two thousand and two, but
his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here in
our American Stories, thanks to those who run his estates.
Here's Stephen Ambrose to tell us the short story from

(00:59):
the Wild Blue the men and boys who flew the
B twenty fours. And he told this story to a
riveted audience. Here's Stephen Ambrose.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
The B twenty four.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Was built like a nineteen thirties mac truck, except that
it had an aluminum skin that could be cut with
a knife. They could carry a heavy load far and fast,
that it had no refinements. Steering the four engine airplane
was difficult and exhausting is until late nineteen forty four,

(01:35):
there was no power except the pilot's muscles.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
It had no windfield vipers, so the.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Pilot had to stick his head out the side window
to see. During a rain, breathing was possible only by
wearing an oxygen mask. Above ten thousand feet in altitude,
they were cold and.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Clammy, smelling of rubber and sweat.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
There was no heat, despite temperatures that are twenty thousand
feet higher. Got as low as forty or even fifty
degrees below zero.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
The wind blew through the.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Airplane like fury, especially from the waistgun ers windows, and
whenever the bombay doors were open. The oxygen mask often
froze to the wearer's face. If the menu at the
waste touched their machine guns would bare hands the skin
froze to the metal.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
There were no bathrooms to urinate.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
There were two small relief tubes, one forward and one aft,
which were almost impossible to use without spilling because of
the heavy layers and clothing the men wore, plus which
the tubes were often clogged with frozen urinate. Defecating could
be done only in a receptacle lined with a wax
paper bag. A man had to be desperate to use

(02:59):
it because of the difficulty of removing enough clothing and
exposing bare skin to the arctic cold. The bags were
dropped out the wate windows or through the open bombay doors, and.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Often men would ride on them take fat hit.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
There were no kitchen facilities, no way to warm up
food or coffee, but anyway, there was no food unless
a crew member had packed in a sandwich. With no pressurization,
pockets of gas, and a man's intestinal tract could swell
like balloons and cause him to double over in pain.

(03:41):
There was no aisle to walk down, only the eight
ends wide catwalk running beside the bombs and over the
bombay doors.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
That's what you used to move forward and aft. They
had to be done with.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Care, as the aluminum doors would rolled up into the
fuselage instead of swinging out on. Hinges had only a
one hundred pound capacity, so if you slipped on that
catalock and fell, you were gone. The seats were not padded,

(04:16):
could not be reclined, and were cramped into so small
a space the demand had almost no chance to stretch,
and none whatsoever to relax.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Absolutely nothing was.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Done to make it comfortable for the pilot, the copilot or.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
The eight other men and the crew.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Even though most flights lasted for eight hours, sometimes ten,
very occasionally more than ten, never less than six, the
plane existed and was flown for one purpose only, to
carry five hundred or one thousand pound bombs and drop
them accurately.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Over enemy targets.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
It was called a Liberator, solidated along with the Ford
Motor Company, Douglas Aircraft Company, and North American Aviation. Together,
the Liberator production pool made more than eighteen three hundred Liberators.
That was five thousand more than the total number of
B seventeens.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
The Liberator was not.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Operational before World War Two, and was not operational after
the war. All those B twenty fours were squished up
by bulldozers because America needed the aluminum and we were
going over to jet airplanes.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
In any event, there's one still flying today.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
The number of people involved in making it, in servicing it,
and in flying the B twenty four outnumbered those involved
with any other airplane in any country at any time.
There were more B twenty fours than any other American
airplane ever built. It would be an exaggeration to say

(06:02):
that The B twenty four won the war for the Allies,
but don't ask how they could have won.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
It without it.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
The pilots and cruise of the B twenty fours came
from every state and territory in America.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
They were young, fit, eager.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
There were sons of workers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, businessmen, educators.
A few were married, most were not. Some had an
excellent education, others were barely, if at all, out of
high school. They were all volunteers the US Army Air Corps.
After nineteen forty two, the US Army Air Force did

(06:45):
not force anyone to fly.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
They made the choice. Most of them were between the
ages of two and ten.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
In nineteen twenty seven, when Charles Lindberg flew the Spirit
of Saint Louis from Long Island to Paris, for many boys,
this was the first outside the family event to influence them.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
It fired their imagination. Like Glennberg, they wanted to fly.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
And my goodness, what a story when we come back
more of Stephen Ambrose's story of the B twenty four's
and the men who flew them. Here on our American stories.
Here are to our American stories. We bring you inspiring stories.
Of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a

(07:37):
great and beautiful country that need to be told, but
we can't do it without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love our stories in America like we do, please
go to our American Stories dot com and click the
donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us
keep the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories

(07:58):
dot Com. And we continue with Stephen Ambrose and the
story of the Boys who flew America's B twenty fours.
Let's continue where we last left off with Stephen Ambrose.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
In their teenage years, they drove Model T Fords or
perhaps Model A's if they drove it all. Many of
them were farm boys. They plowed behind mules or horses.
They walked to school one, two, sometimes even more miles.
Most of them, including the city kids, were poor. If
they were lucky enough to have jobs, they earned a

(08:41):
dollar a day, sometimes less. They seldom traveled. Many had
never been out of their home counties. Even most of
them are fortunate, had never been out of their home states.
Of those who were best off, only a handful had
ever been out of the country.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Almost None of them had ever been up in an airplane.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
A surprising number had never seen an airplane. But they
all wanted to fly. Their patriotism was beyond question. They
wanted to be a part of smashing Hitler, Toko, Mussolini
and their thugs.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
But they wanted to choose how they did it.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
They wanted to get off the ground, be like a bird,
see the country from up high, travel faster than anyone
could do while.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Attached to the earth.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
More than electric lights, more than steam engines, more than telephones,
more than automobiles, more even than the printing press, the
airplane separated past from future. It had freed mankind from
the earth and opened the skies. They were astonishingly young.

(09:56):
Many joined the Army Air Forces as teens. Never got
to be twenty years old. Before the war ended. Anyone
over twenty five was considered to be and was called
an old man. In the twenty first century, adults would
hardly give sick youngsters the key to the family car,

(10:17):
but in the first half of the nineteen forties, the
adults sent them out to play a critical role in
saving the world. Most wanted to be fighter pilots, but
only a relatively few attained that goal. Many became pilots
or co pilots on two or four engine bombers. The
majority became crew members, serving as gunners or radio men,

(10:40):
or bombardiers or flight engineers or navigators. Never mind, they
all wanted to fly, and they did. On the fiftieth
anniversary of V Day, I was with Joe Heller, who
was a bombardier with the twelfth Air Force, flying out

(11:00):
of Italy, and Heller said to me and the cars
of the conversation, I never had a bad officer. Astonished,
I said, kill, You're the man who created Major Major,
Major Colonel Cathcart, General Dridle, Lieutenant minder Bender, and so
many others. Everybody in the world knows these people. How

(11:23):
can you tell me you never had a bad officer.
They were all invention, he replied, Every single officer, from
when I went into the service, to going over to Italy,
to flying the missions to when I got this charge,
every one of them was good. In the course of
interview in George mcgovernor for this book, I told them

(11:43):
what Heller had said to me.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Mcgovernor agreed immediately. That's my experience, he said.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
I was impressed by the pilots, the bombardiers, the navigators
right across the board, and with the operations officers and
our group commander. I thought they were a superior a
bunch of men, and I can honestly say I don't
recall a bad officer.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
All through combat.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
I had confidence that our officers were doing the very
best they knew. How if they made mistakes, they weren't
foolish mistakes. Our officers were superb. Obviously, there were some weak,
some poor, some inefficient or ignorant, and some absolutely terrible
officers in.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
The US Armed Services in World War Two.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
But as SI men ever got into combat positions, the AAF,
the Army, the Navy, or the Marines got them out.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
At once. Men's lives depended on them.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
After all, the combat officers knew it and acted accordingly.
Asked the Germans who opposed them how good they were,
or the Japanese. The American officers were superb. And that
is the way it was in the seven forty first Squadron,
four fifty fifth bomb Group in Shared Nola, Italy. Now,

(13:08):
when men arrived in Shared Nolan in September of nineteen
forty four, they saw it tacked up.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
In the briefing room words.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
To the song as Time Goes By, written by anonymous.
Now I'm not a singer, but I can't resist this one.
You must remember this. The flak can't always miss. Somebody's
got to die. The odds are always too damned high

(13:44):
as flak goes by. It's still the same old story.
The eighth gets all the glory. Well, we're the ones
who die. The odds are always.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Too damned high as flack goes by.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
I want to talk for just a minute about the
strategic bombing campaign.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Critics have said that all.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Of that productive power that went into it, eighteen three
hundred of those planes, all.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Of the AAF's.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Teaching effort, would have been much better spent if they
had trained these guys as infantryment or as says, and
we could have won the more soon. Because they never
hit what they were what they were dropping at, ever,
and it was just a waste.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
That's not true.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
They did hit what they were aiming at far more
often than not, and they paralyzed the German army.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Hitting rail yard, marshaling yards, railroad.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Bridges, brought the German train traffic to a halt, Bombing
the refineries Flosti and the others. Was so successful that
in April nineteen forty four, when the Germans had all
the gasoline they needed.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Less than a year later, the late.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Winter of nineteen forty four forty five, they were down
to one percent. That meant they couldn't train tank crews.
They couldn't even drive tanks on the battlefield. They had
to dig their tanks in make them into fixed field fortifications.
This is Germans, the home of Mercedes and so many

(15:47):
other manufacturers of automobiles and trucks.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
They had no gasoline.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
They were reduced to being a horse drawn army trying
to fight a twentieth century war, and that was thanks
to the strategic bombing campaign.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
At the end of my interview with McGovern.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
That had lasted four weeks, and I asked him to
solve his war experience. With his answer, he spoke for
every every gi every sailor, every marine, every.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Coastguard man of World War Two.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Piloting a B twenty four in combat with nine other
guys took every ounce of physical energy I had, every
bit of mineral abilities I had, and literally every shred
of spiritual resource that I had. I can't recall any
other stage in my life, unless it was the closing
days of the seventy two presidential camp. Paying It's so

(17:00):
demanded everything I had. I gave that World War two effort,
everything except my life itself, and I was ready to
give my life. It literally exhausted every resource of mind
and body and spirit that I had. I replied, thanks

(17:23):
for what you did to help win the victory and
thus save the world. I always say something like that
at the end of every interview with the veteran of
the war, because it is the truth.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
And a special thanks to Stephen Ambrose as a state,
and a special thanks to Hillsdale College where you can
go to study all the things that are beautiful in life,
all the things that matter in life. Go to Hillsdale
dot edu to sign up for their free and terrific
online courses. Stephen Ambrose telling it like no one else
can here on our American Stories
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Lee Habeeb

Lee Habeeb

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