Morning Wire - Into The Cold Blue: 100 Year Old WWII Veteran Shares Story | 5.27.24

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Of the 16 million who served in WWII, fewer than one percent are still alive. We speak to decorated US Army Air Force pilot John Homan about his missions through Europe. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Night my way. Forever. I just love my job. Get tickets now. The Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters May 1st. Directed by David Frankel. 16 million Americans served in War II, our country's greatest generation willing to pay the ultimate price in history's most consequential war. Now, very few of those veterans remain to tell their tale.

In this Memorial Day episode of Morning Wire, we sit down with one of those veterans, decorated U.S. Army Air Force's pilot John F. Homan, who flew 34 combat missions over Europe during a crucial period of the Second Great War. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's May 27th, and this is a Memorial Day edition of Morning Wire. Hey guys, producer Brandon here. This Memorial Day, our thoughts turn to those who have served and sacrificed for our nation. Black Rifle Coffee wants you to honor the men and women of armed forces who have given their lives and service to something greater than themselves.

Black Rifle Coffee stays for more than just high-quality coffee. They are a veteran-founded business operated by principled men and women who honor those who protect, defend, and support our country. With every purchase you make, they get back. Visit Black Rifle Coffee.com to learn more. That's black rifle coffee.com. Joining us now to discuss his wartime experience that he's documented in his new memoir Into the Cold Blue, My World War II Journeys with the Mighty 8th Air Force, is retired Army

Air Force's pilot John F. Homan. Also joining him is his co-author for the book, Jared Frederick. Thank you both for speaking with us today. Thank you for having us. First of all, happy Memorial Day and a belated happy birthday to you, John. You turned 100 years old in January. I'm sure everyone wants to know first your secret to longevity. Thank you.

Don't get shot down. That's the lead of longevity. Well, it seems like good advice. According to the National War II Museum, there were 16 million Americans who served in the Second Great War, and now just a few thousand of them remain. How important was it to you to share your experiences in your memoir and what drove you to write it now?

I didn't do anything except I went to Rutgers and they had an oral history program and I did that years ago. That's the only thing I ever did until I retired. And when I retired to this community, they had a magazine called the Miscellany. And I talked to the woman that ran and she asked me to write a story. So I wrote one about a reunion, which I thought was great in England. And then she's why don't you write another one? So I wrote another one on, or B24 was like that. I read a series of six.

And she had a friend that was involved in the local military museum. She got him and they asked me to give a talk. I gave a talk and they went over big and gave three or four talks. And I quit. I said, I'm not in the business of making lectures. And that's, I think, what Jared found some of that stuff. And how did you get to know Jared? He inquired around town.

After I gave a talk at the History Museum here, I gave a few more talks, and he found out about it from someone who was interested in the 8th Air Force, and then he contacted me. And Jared, you've done a lot of writing about World War II and the 8th Air Force, correct? Yes, this is my fourth book. on the Second World War, and I've long had an interest in interviewing World War II veterans going back to the time that I was in middle school and grade school. And I think part of that has to do with the fact that my own grandfathers who served in World War II, both of them were

gone by the time I was eight years old. And so I thought if I could learn the stories of others that I might be able to establish a more profound connection with my own grandfathers, who I never got to question myself on their journeys during World War II. And that was one of the things that led me to John. After a mutual friend introduced us, when I sat down to interview him after about 35 minutes, I said, John, I think your story is worthy of a book. And he said, well, we better get started then. That's terrific.

Before we get into your war experience, John, I'd like to know something about your childhood. Your parents immigrated to the U.S. from Britain. You were born in upstate Maine. First, why did your parents come to the U.S.? Well, they were both born in 1900. And there were bad times in England. They found very difficult to find work. And they got married when they, what, 20 years.

old and you couldn't find any work. I think my grandmother had a relative in this country, so they just got on a ship with a baby girl and landed in New England around Boston area. And then he found various jobs and just kept moving until he found a permanent job. And your father served for the British Navy, correct? Yes. He was in a mine sweep for five years, starting at age, six. I think that's what convinced me I didn't want to join the Navy because he was in boiler room for five years. And I didn't think I wanted to sit out of war down in the boiler room of a Navy ship. Were your parents supportive of you serving in the military?

No. My mother was dead setting against me going in because she remembers she was in World War when she was 16. The war in England was known as really trench warfare. Just ugly, brutal trench warfare. And one of our neighbors in New Jersey where we lived was gassed, and he died later after a couple years back in the state. So she had a bad taste of war. Yeah, I'm sure. Now, you served in the U.S. Army 8th Air Force out of England in 1944. First, when did you join in?

What was that process like? I was only 17 when the war started. so I was unable to join and I decided why I don't know I don't think I had any logical sense at that point I decided I wanted to be a pilot

but the pilot training required two years equivalent of college so I finally got a job at Hercules and worked steady second shift and went back to the high school cramming all the math

and algebra I could before I applied to join the Air Force. And then somebody told me the fastest way to get in the Air Force is join the Army and then ask for a transfer, which I did. I went to Fort Dix.

And they sent me over to the Air Force base, and I took some tests there and had to go back twice. And I passed those tests and wound up on casual duty in the Air Force so I could get tested. And then after that, sent to Nashville where they did all the physical tests for about two weeks, the most rigid

physical you could find, both mental and physical and acuity and reflexes. Past that and went to Maxwell Field, Alabama, free flight. So you became a pilot of the Army Air Forces and eventually are stationed in England. How many missions overall did you fly? I was in the 8th Air Force for the 9th Bomb Division and flew 34 missions. When I was over there, they changed the rules from 30 to 35 while I was flying. So I flew 34 and that group was disbanded to come back to the States, check out and B-29s and go to South Pacific. So I was asked if I wanted to go and I said, no, thank you.

Yeah. So he was in combat for four months with the 489th bomb group. So those 34 missions, you flew that many in just four months? Yeah, and less than four months. That might be a record. Yeah. Tell us about your crew. They were very young, correct?

Yeah, we were a separate crew. All crew members sent to Salt Lake City and assigned to specific crews. So we had never seen each other until then. And they put our crew together, and we went to Caspari-Omming to go through B-24 training. So I had a official designation in the Air Force as engineering officer and administrative officer. So I designated the engineering officer, and they had an administrative officer, and a bombardier, navigator, a nose gunner, a radio officer. operator, a tail gunner, a waste gunner, and a ball gunner, 10 men. And they were for all parts of

the country, from Louisiana to Connecticut. And the job was to mold that crew into a well-oiled operation, which we did in four months. And then we were, we were given her a sign of a brand new B-24 right off the wheel or run line, signed a receipt for 285. thousand dollars for new plane. Flew that for a couple of weeks, and then she went to Goose Bay Labrador and flew across the Atlantic, Scotland, overnight, 14-hour trip. And probably not the most luxurious accommodations. No, there is no heat and no facilities on a B-24.

And it has no automatic controls. You had to manually, on a mission, you had to manually fly the plane. cable connections. Wow. Now, your first mission was on July 6th, 1944. You've said that all of your missions were strategic and that you remember all of them. Can you tell us about that first mission? Yeah, I remember that. It was at Keel, which is on the southern end of Denmark, the shipyard. When we could fly north across the North Sea out of the range of our German fighters, and that was a pure, beautiful day. And I thought, This is that got to be a pushover to hold it, the whole deal, because we didn't see anything until we got to the target, and then we got some flak, and got ahead a little bit, and saw while we were on the bomb run, I saw a stick of bombs go through our formation and looked up, and there was a V-17 group bombing the same target at the same time.

Wow, and so you made that first run. About how long would that take there and back? Probably a seven, eight-hour total trip. Was the crew afraid, excited? What was the state of mind? Can't tell. The pilot who is not flying is in charge of the crew. And every so often you say crew check and then each person and the crew has to check in whether they're okay or not.

So they're probably sent somebody to help them. But there was never any indication of excitement. Were there some operations that were particularly memorand memorable for you that would be good for the audience to hear about? Yes, that was the second mission. Yeah, July 7th, 1944. Yeah, second mission. We were hitting a, I think it was an aircraft factory,

really deep in Germany, and the German Air Command had changed their tactics for the first time that used a new method. He used to fly in a division line, and each group was one behind the other. And they sent a whole host of fighters out there, and decided they'd just come down the line, start flying wide open down straight through the formations

and hit as many as they can. And that was one of the biggest air battles in the war. I saw a German fighter plane in front of us that shot down and the potty bailed out with a suit on fire. And when Tailgun said he saw another German fighter go down, and after we came away from the target, We were on the outside formation, the plane came and flew on our wing. And we looked over, and there was a red stain all the way across the top of the plane.

And that you hit with two 20 millimeters, one in the nose and one in the top turret. Did a lot of damage that the guy's head and it bled out all the way to the end of the plane. Wow. And the next one that was the most exciting and also the close. closest I ever came by in the farm is I only dropped supplies to the paratroopers that dropped in a bridge too far. We were supposed to drop supplies at 500 feet to in a small area. And we made three passes because every time our lead plane went to go dropped, there was another group in the way. Every time we made a big circle, we actually went over Germany and there farmers out there shooting us with shotguns or got something.

something. And finally our turn came to go and drop. And we started through this drop zone. And the quadrant in the front of us, I looked and I saw two planes shot down out of their quadrant right away. And then when we got, we dropped. And everything was all right. Just as we were leaving, we got hit pretty good with machine gun fire. And number three engine was hit on the way in and couldn't get full power out of it. And it knocked number four engine out. it had the hydraulic system and the cockpit filled up with what we thought was smoke but it was atomized hydraulic fluid radio operator was standing between as he got licked in the fanny so at a low altitude that's something you have to do instantaneously without thinking i had to feather switch off on

number four and when a dead engine is rotating by forces a plane it's a drag it's the drag it's the drag and the plane may pull you down. So I had to feather that prop, shut all the switches off, and we couldn't see in the cockpit. It was so cloudy. So we had to assume the other fellow was doing the right thing. Funny.

Got that prop feathered. You had some more power on one and two. Now you couldn't put too much power on number one because it would pull a plane off to the right. We had to keep the nose down so we wouldn't stall out. But on the treetop level, we had squared away enough to work at level off and fly straight. And with more adjusting and keep adjusting, we managed to get up to 800 feet. We stayed there until we got to England.

And in England, they had an emergency field of 10,000 concrete runway with 5,000 feet overshoots and extra wide. So without hydraulics, no brakes, we had to try that field. that when we're on approach, we see a B-24 burning and halfway down the runway on the right-hand side. I had to pick the left side. When we touched down, the left tire shredded and flew off, and it went down on the carriage and just screeched down the runway and ran off the runway. Now, our top gunner and his right up said we had part of our tail shot off too. So I quest to be abandoned that ship in the harbor hurry and got away from it. And in the history book it shows it was scrapped, never flew again.

So you got a brand new plane out of it? No, an older, old one. Ham me down. Do you remember, was there any reluctance to go on the next mission after that? I mean, was anyone spooked by that near-death run? I think we had one day rest and had to go out again. The only time anybody had little reluctance is that no's going to get the Plexer shout out in his nose turk about three missions in a row. And we're all climbing in for the next mission.

And he said, I'm not getting in that thing again. No, not one of it said a word. We just all climbed in and looked back at every west coming in. That was it. So he got right back in and did his job. Peer pressure. You've been awarded the Distinguished Flying. cross, was that given to you for specific action or all your service combined?

I think it was for that mission I talked about. The one on September 18th, 1944. That's correct. That was something that was saying was flying. It really was to save your own butt. Yes. You mentioned that your crew was very young. Did you all realize the consequences of the missions, how much it was going to matter in terms of the overall course of the war? Not above the group level, because you had like 10 groups in the H-F-F-Rs B-24s.

And you were quartered in squadron areas out in the woods separated from everybody else. Your knowledge was really based on your briefing each mission. And then you watch, after the mission you debriefed, and they may even have the photographs there for you. the P-38 went out to take pictures of the bomb damage where they hit or missed, and they might already be back there to look at. So really, the focus was on just what you're trying to accomplish with your individual mission, keeping your head down, narrowly focused on your particular role in each mission. That's right.

Every plane had a position in the formation, and your job was to stay in that formation. and do you want to order to have a tight formation when you're going on in a bomb run because you want a small pattern that was a bomb pattern but that left you more vulnerable to flack because the flack then could zero in. Right. Now we reviewed your interview

with Rutgers' oral history archives and you said you never spoke of the dangers of these missions your fears or worries with your crew. each crew member just completed each mission quietly, professionally. Was that just the way that your generation was raised, or what do you attribute to this willingness to face danger without complaint? I can't answer that, really, because maybe every crew was different. But I never heard any crew member in my earshot complain about anything.

Remarkable. And you were just 20 years old when you came back to the States. What happened then? I came back by convoy in some very rough seas and got back to the States on Christmas Eve. And there I went to Georgia to become an instructor pilot on B-25s. And I was instructing West Point grads get their primary and basic at West Point and then get their advanced training to get their wings in Florida. So I was instructing for them for a while.

And perhaps you could tell them about what you saw in New York when you got back. Oh, we were coming past it into New York Harbor, and it was a cloudy, misty morning. And we just saw almost like gliding through the water or the low power. And we're gliding past the Statue of Liberty. And everyone was up on a decade, complete silence. It's just awesome. Just incredible. Now, you also got married to your high school sweetheart, is that correct?

Yes. When I got back from the States, you know, I'd never even been stationed in a civilized town. I won't go over them. But she was a straight-age student, got a scholarship to university. And she was a freshman, you know, just out of high school. And we were going steady since her about 14, 15. And when I come back from overseas, she was in the middle of her junior year, and she was a very sophisticated, educated young lady.

And I was just a dumb, dumb, crap pilot that didn't learn anything but how to drop bombs. So we didn't get along at all then, so we broke up. And then I realized months later, maybe four or five months later, it's not her problem. I'm a dummy. It's my problem. So I got back together with it. And we were married six months after I got out of the service. I love that so much.

Now, you've waited a long time to write your account of the war 80 years. Why do you think it took so long to really give your account of the war? I really don't know. I didn't waste any time. We got married and I got a job. And then I went to school with Rutgers on the GI Bill, raising a family. Just never had time to do that. And then when I retired, I was asked to do it by the person here in charge of miscellany.

So when I started doing, I had found out that I had saved a lot of good material. And one of our officers and staff was stationed in Washington after he came back to the States. And he wrote a detailed history of our group. So I bought two of those. I bought one of them just write everything in there that I can remember and wrote down. So I had a pretty good record of what happened. And a terrific memory, obviously. I can't remember what happened last week.

I'm amazed by the details you remember. You know, stepping back, looking back at your experience, what are the important life lessons you feel like you learned from your time in military training and the missions that you feel like you wanted to share through your memoir? What are you hoping to convey? I was not a military person. I did it, and I did the best job I could. When the war was over, I wanted out.

Now, I was one of millions probably that did that. And when it came time to get this charge, they asked me for one to join the active reserve. He had two choices, active or inactive. And I said, you put me inactive as he can. And that was a smart move because when I went to college, the Korean War came out. And those people who said active reserve went back in the service. My children, they were back in the service.

So if needed, I'd come back, but I wouldn't if it wasn't needed. Well, John and Jared, thank you both so much for talking with us. John, thank you for your service and for sharing your story with the rest of us. Thank you for having it. We appreciate it. That was John Homan and Jared Frederick, authors of Into the Cold Blue, My World War II Journeys with the Mighty 8th Air Force. And this has been a Memorial Day edition of Morning Wire.