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Gene Koscinski Memoirs
Gene Koscinski was the bombardier on my dad's crew.
By Gene Koscinski - Bombardier - 15th Air Force, 55th Wing, 465th Group, 780th Squadron. Taken from his book, “The Long Journey Home, The Kid from St. Hyacinth’s.” Copyright 1997. Excerpts used with his permission exclusively on the website of Donna Sigle Bayes. Not to be reproduced without consent. The words are his, exclusively, although much has been abridged in order to highlight his experience in WWII as it pertained to his crew and their experiences.
“When WWII broke out, I was employed at Brigg’s Mfg. Co., first as a metal worker and then as a repairman. I felt that my proper place was to be in the Air Corps which at that time was a section of the US Army. There was no Air Force as it is known today. At the outset, I tried to enlist in the Royal Canadian air Force, referred to then as the RCAF. I inquired in Windsor and was informed that they were not accepting anyone involved in work related to the defense industry. I was called up in the draft which was known as Selective Service. The day scheduled was March 15th, 1943. All draftees were allowed a 2 week delay to get their personal matters in order.
We were issued uniforms and told to send our clothes home. In a few days, we were put on a train and headed for who knew where. I had been given a series of tests and without being informed as to the results, I could see that I was going to be sent to the Air Corps section of the Army. After a few days on the train we awoke to find our train pulling into what seemed like heaven. We had arrived in the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, Florida. We were stationed in a millionaire’s country club in a place called Clearwater. We received our basic training there. We stayed at Clearwater for a month and it was very memorable.
We shipped out to the Seymour Johnson Field in Goldboro, North Carolina to be trained as airplane mechanics. The field was made up of many tar paper buildings on one level. There was a wood burning stove in each barracks. We immediately began attending classes. The field was operated on a tight, efficient, around the clock program. There were four 6 hour shifts. Each day we would receive very rigorous physical training exercises and then be sent to work in the mess halls doing Kitchen Police work which was the most disparagingly referred to as KP.
While at Seymour Johnson Field there was a notice posted on the bulletin board at headquarters offering applications to flying status. After a few weeks I was summoned for an oral interview and asked an assortment of questions about my life and background. We shipped out after having finished about 6 phases of training where I learned how to disassemble and Allison V16 or V 12 engine, disassemble the hubs of propellers, how to use the various tools and other assorted machinery.
Just about the time that I finished my 6th phase at the school we were put on a train and headed back to Florida. This time it was Miami Beach. We were stationed in a hotel right on Collins Avenue. The training was tough, no nonsense, foreign legion type of de rigueur. We were in Miami for a month and then put on a train to another surprise destination.
After a few days we were stunningly surprised and delighted to arrive in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We attended classes right along with the civilian students and I felt as though I was in college. We left U of M and headed on a long cross country train ride to another undisclosed destination. When we arrived in LA, and disembarked at the Union Station which is located downtown across the street from Olvera Street.
After this brief pause, we were put on a very beautiful, modern, streamlined train and whisked away to the Santa Ana Army Air Base which was located not in Santa Ana but in Costa Mesa on the land on which the Orange Coast College now sets. We went through classification which is where we were tested and then advised as to whether we would be be pilots, navigators, or bombardiers.
From Santa Ana I went to Las Vegas Nevada where we cadets went through a 12 week training course and became aerial gunners. By the time we graduated, we could literally dismantle a 50 caliber machine gun blindfolded. That field is still in operation and is now called Nellis Air Force Base.
We used B-17 bombers in training. We graduated and had a very lavish ceremony a the El Rancho Vegas which as one of the only two Casinos on the strip at that time. We were given a delay en route and of course I went to Detroit. I spent about 10 days in Detroit and then headed back to camp. The next stop was Victorville, California..... to the Victorville Army Air Field, which today is renamed George Air Base.
When we arrived at Victorville, I at once could sense the seriousness in the atmosphere. This was to be the most important phase of my training. We had come about half way but here was the very important part of Bombardier training. We were billeted in barracks with rooms which were assigned to three cadets. We were kept occupied ever minute of the day. There was no time for recreation or anything as light as that. We would get up at 5:30 am and have roll call and get down to the mess hall. We flew in Lockheed Lodestars or AT 11’s as they were designated. They were fine stable ships and I put many hours in them learning Bomb dropping and Dead Reckoning Navigation which I enjoyed thoroughly.
After training on the simulator in the hangars we were allowed to start bombing with an aircraft. Well lo and behold now that the signals being sent back by me from the bombsight went directly into the Minneapolis Honeywell Automatic pilot without anyone distorting the signals, I was hitting the targets on the desert floor with great accuracy. We flew all over the Mojave desert and nowadays whenever I drive through there or hear some reference to it I visualize myself as a young man and student learning the basics of navigation. Our graduation exercises were a mixture of emotions. It was a day when a dream came true.
That afternoon we were put on a troop train heading north. By evening, we ended up at Lemoore field which was located near Fresno, not exactly the coolest place to be in August. We were stationed at Lemoore while they sorted out our orders. In a few days we were put on another troop train and headed north. We wove through the great forests of Northern California and Oregon cutting our way through thousands of pines and skirting very active rushing rivers. We arrived in a place with the funny sounding name of Walla Walla, where we spent the next few weeks training for combat with most of the accent being on formation flying. It was here that our crew was organized and I met John Serpico, copilot, Dick Sigle, first pilot, and Lou Alexander, navigator, and 6 gunners which were assigned to form the completed crew. I especially became friendly with Jim Cooper who was our Ball Turret gunner and John Serpico, with whom I had a great deal in common since we both loved latin music.
After a few weeks in training, we boarded another train and headed south. We arrived in the stunning city of San Francisco and were stationed at Hamilton Field which was an impressive air drome. Here we stayed for a week or two while our orders were firmed up. We boarded a train under a very secretive procedure. We were told that the entire train with all of the military was under quarantine. This translated to a high priority movement wherein no one was allowed to disembark whenever the train stopped. We were locked in the train from the next 7 days and finally arrived at Newport News, Virginia. We remained there for 7 days and were told this was a seaport and we would be shipping out of here on a ship to an unrevealed destination. It was at this camp that that I saw my first Italian prisoners of war. While stationed here we were oriented into various procedures related to life on a transport ship. I remember that they made some of our troops climb down the side of the ship on a net like affair, the kind you see in the movies when a ship is shown sinking. They demonstrated the proper way to swim safely in water that was filled with burning fuel on its surface.
We embarked one early morning and were on our way to an unrevealed destination. It was a three week voyage and my very first. There was gunnery practice daily and a helium filled balloons were the target, which I’m embarrassed to report, they rarely hit. I did not concern myself about the German U boats attacking us because from what I was told they had been pretty well diminished in their potency. We had absolutely no idea of our intended destination. Of course we knew we were heading east so it had to be Europe or North Africa.
One morning we woke up and looked out he portholes and I saw men standing in the little double pointed boats and asking us to throw to them something to eat. A couple of guys threw some apples to them. We were in the Naples Harbor! Our ship was holding while arrangements were being made to pull us in. We moved in slowly and carefully and set up alongside an overturned ship about the size of our Liberty Ship. The gangplank was lowered and we marched off unto the land for the first time in 3 weeks. The most awesomely impressive sight were the buildings which did not have one pane of glass where glass should have been. As far as the eye could see in both directions there were thousands of pockmarks on the concrete exteriors of the buildings. The shelling during the battles must have been extremely intense.
We had all of our gear with us and had to carry everything we owned including a weapon and ammunition. We tarried a bit and were ultimately embarking on a British ship called the Union Castle. A couple of days later the ship lay anchor and we embarked unto a launch that was piloted by an Italian worker. We landed at Teranto and then were moved by truck to Bari, a fair sized city on the Adriatic coast where we spent a few nights in an encampment. We arrived at our base which consisted of a group of scattered 8 man army tents and a few permanent building built of “tufa” blocks. The Mess Hall was the largest and most permanent type of structure. Our tent, we were told had been turned in for salvage after World War 1. It was dried out, filled with holes, and patches over some of the holes. It had a strange odor but all in all we were grateful for having a decent protection from the elements which at that time were very inclement. The tent had a barrel cut in two and it was innovated to what amounted to a makeshift stove. We used 100 octane airplane fuel which was plumbed into the tent from a wing tank via 1/4 “ copper tubing. The tubing was carefully bent and ended up inside of the half steel barrel. The volume of fuel controlled the intensity of the heat. This was accomplished with a petcock that was positioned about 2 feet from the barrel. Inside the barrel we placed a sand filled pan which is where the burning took place. It worked perfectly and we never had trouble keeping warm. In fact the stove would get cherry red hot and even give of some lighting.
Up to now we had been, realistically speaking, trainees. Everything we had done up to now was learning and practicing. Now here I was ready for my first practical application of what I had learned and what was expected of me as a Bombardier. I was sad all day somewhat because of the death of that entire crew and because I felt was just a numbers game with time factor that I would be killed. I wrote to my family and told them they would be lucky if I ever got back alive. We had 35 missions to fly and that seemed like Never-Never land to me.
In a couple of days we were scheduled for our fist mission. I felt confident with our crew and was anticipating everything and anything. This first mission was a long one taking us to Blechhammer, Germany, which was located on the Polish-German border. Everything went smooth and of course we were subjected to flak but it did not come too close and I merely observed it with no panic. The name of the ship was “The Gulf Queen” and it’s insignia was a large orange ball like the one used on the Gulf Gasoline advertisement. The oxygen mask hose was very short so I had to fly the entire mission crouched over in order to receive oxygen. I told the crew chief about the hose and asked him to install a longer hose. We flew the same ship a couple of days later and the hose was still short. Fortunately, we did not use that aircraft again.
Well everything was smooth for the next three missions. On about the 6th mission which was on Feb. 7 we were scheduled to fly to Munich. We hit some very bad weather and we lost the other 3 squadrons. After groping a bit we ran into another group and flew with them, unbeknownst to us that they were heading for Vienna to bomb the Kalgran Vacuum Oil Refinery. When we got to Vienna the flak was so thick and intense you could walk on it. It was all around and upon us. It was coming in everywhere and pieces of fuselage metal were being torn here and there. We scattered and almost got smashed into by our wing man who just rolled over into an extreme tight turn and I could see his face as clear as though it was the hand in front of my face. We heard calls coming over the intercom “Let’s get the hell outa here!!!” We flew back all alone and crippled up but managed not to lose any of the engines. We made it to the base and brought her in for the approach. I was sitting in crash landing position when I noticed that the left tire was not spinning as it normally would when the gear was let down. Well I found out soon enough that it was shattered. We landed on one wheel and the plane skidded around on the metal runway and came to a stop in a heap. Dick told us to get the hell out as fast as we could. I climbed to the top hatch and jumped down to the ground, not caring whether I would break a leg. We ran from the plane. It was a brand new craft just brought over a week ago. It was a shiny alclad type and had not yet any art work done on the nose except for the black number that identified it. The crew chief who was assigned to it was more upset than we were. There were over 100 holes plus damage due to the one wheel landing. The next day we were scheduled to fly another mission. When we got down to briefing I was frightened to learn that we were going back to Vienna! Well the mission was not as bad as it was the day before and I just resigned myself to accepting the fact that there was nothing I could do.
We flew to an assortment of targets. Some in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Northern Italy, and Yugoslavia. One day I was assigned to fly with another crew and we flew support for an invasion. It was a Sunday and there were hundreds of planes in the air. We flew to the front line which were entrenched on the Bologna River. They were preparing to launch an invasion and break out of their long held positions. We finally got into position and hit the lines with thousands of “daisy clutter” bombs which were small bombs that were mounted on kind of a long broom handle pipe. It was meant to explode about three feet off the ground and knock out the enemy soldiers.
There is one other interesting mission that resulted in a disaster caused by our own friendly fire. As we finished our fun, the plane in front of ours was clearing out the bomb bays and apparently had on bomb that had not been dropped. The bombardier toggled out a 100 pound bomb and dropped it right on another plane right in front of us. The bomb blew the empennage right off the craft and down they went. I watched the craft cartwheel its way down as one plume of white cloth after another indicated that the crew managed to bail out.
On another mission, we were loaded up with five 2000 lb bombs., and on our way to bomb submarine shelters. About half way across the Adriatic we were told to jettison all the bombs and to standby by to bail out. I dropped each bomb allowing a pause between each drop since it was very important not to change the weight of our load too suddenly as this could have severely changed the altitude of the craft and cause an erratic movement. We were flying at only 6000 feet or so and we could clearly watch the bombs hit the water and make a huge, almost beautiful, perfectly round formation of sea foam. We had the doors open and were ready to jump. We waited for the signal. Looking down at the water, I hoped that I remembered what I as supposed to from all the repeated instructions and training films on survival that I sat through in OTU. I was not frightened since I knew there were no enemy boats in that zone and besides we had excellent air rescue squadrons that I felt were most reliable in their ability to locate us, since we had called back to the base. Dick decided to try to land the craft on an island in the Adriatic. the elevator was flapping away in the breeze since one of the clevis pins had either been left off or fell out. he could not control the elevator and the plane would lurch up and down on its own. The base was an emergency strip that was normally used by British fighter (Spitfires) planes so the runway was short since that aircraft does not need much for landing and takeoff. Dick and John had to fly over a hill and then make a sharp drop to line up with the runway. There just wasn’t room for the long approach required of a 4 engine aircraft. He just let down as soon as he could after passing the hill. We had very little runway distance for our landing and consequently went through a vineyard and a bunch of fences and walls. Those propellers chewed everything in their path. I saw a couple of field workers run for their lives.
We had an interesting day to say the least. There were people who were non-uniformed fighters called Partisans. They were armed with all types of oddball guns and grenades. Some were women. The fighters kept coming in and reloading quickly with 5 gallon containers that were merely tied with rope around their fuselage. They would fly into the hills and drop these cans which contained food and ammunition, and return within a few minutes to reload. Our aircraft was pulled aside and repaired while we spent the day with the commander who drove us down to the waterfront there the main portion of the town was located. Getting the plane into the air was no problem and we made it back to the base that evening. Surprisingly they thought we had been shot down.
The war ended and we were glad that we came out of it alive. They lined us up and had us throw our 45s into a large barrel along with any ammo we may have had. There was no paper work or any list to be checked against. It was over, just like that.
We were assigned to an old war worn ship called “Hamtramck Mama”. Ironically, I lived about 8 city blocks from the borderline of the town of Hamtramck. No one knew or cared. To most of the men it was just another humorous kind of name assigned to that plane. We packed our duffle bags and were tucked down to the flight line, and with almost no dramatic ceremony we took her off and headed for Lecce, a town which was located about a hundred miles south of our base. This base reminded me of a refugee camp. We lived again in tents and were introduced to two pilots who were to ride along with us as passengers back to the States. Lecce was interesting even though we had spent only about 14 days there. It was a jump off point for the crews returning to the states.
We finally were given clearance to take off for our flight home to the good old USA. We flew over the Mediterranean sea and headed towards Marrakech Algiers. For the first time ever flying in a B24 at 3000 feet, I felt discomfort of heat in the cabin. I could not understand where it was coming from. We were coming in to the landing pattern of the field where we were to land. I could see a line of camels along a road. It was like our freeways filled with camels instead of automobiles. Up to now I had only touched upon this in geography class. We were in Africa and it was HOT!!. We brought her down as smooth as glass. It was here that I first saw the C46 workhorses of the ATC or Air transport command. We were ushered to a big tent where we had a cool and refreshing meal. The natives wore multilayered clothing to protect them from the furnace like heat and I believe they spoke Arabic and French. We slept in a room located in a permanent structure.
The next day we took off for the Azores which is a group of Portuguese Islands. We ran into stormy weather here and our takeoff for the next morning was postponed. I received a very warm blanket from on of the British Airmen stationed there. We managed to take off the next morning and it was then that I began the most nightmarish event of my overseas service. About 45 minutes after takeoff we ran into a thunderhead. We were in violent turbulence and precipitation. The aerial picked up ice that soon enlarged its diameter by 1 1/2 inches. After about 6 seconds it snapped off. We had now lost all radio contact. The rime began to form on the leading edges of the wings and I began to sweat and wonder how cold the water would be if we had to ditch. Dick and John both had to hold on to the control wheel as they battled with the lurching of the craft as a result of the monstrous turbulence rendered by the thunderhead. It was very frightening. Visibility was zero. Dick and John flew the remainder of he journey on instruments. We were instructed to stay at 8000 feet and not change altitude. John and I suggested to Dick that we try to get above the weather but Dick was a by the book soldier and he followed instructions accordingly. All the while we were flying I kept hearing and seeing the training films we had sat through with the explanations of how the aerodynamicism of the winds changes once they have become coated with ice. Actually we were told anything above 1/4 of an inch was very dangerous. We had well over an inch of the stuff hanging on. None of it ever fell off and I kept wondering why in the world they had removed de-icer boots from the original manufacture of the wing. I was told later that they were a handicap to the speed of the craft. About 14 hours after leaving the Azores we came right on exactly as we navigated to the shores of St. Johns, Newfoundland. What a wonderful sight to behold. It was sunny and clear even though it was past ten o’clock in the evening. The next morning we took off for Massachusetts, where upon landing the craft, we were told to unload. A crew was waiting and began to torch the plane into a pile of aluminum scrap. That was the funeral of “HAMTRAMCK MAMA”. I was awed by the casualness. These ships had been our home and they almost had a soul if you cared to study them long enough.
We transferred to a train and were carried across Canada to the states and then to Rockford Illinois for processing. I got to go home for about 8 days, then returned back to Rockford and from there by motor car to South Carolina for a couple of weeks. From there we traveled by cattle car to Midland Texas, and rather forlorn town in you can describe a town that way. Midland Army Air Field was dull and boring. We were all back from combat and this place was by contrast rather stultifying. All we did was eat three meals a day and play cards. We could not determine what was awaiting us. We flew to keep our flying status up to regulation.
One day we were shocked when on of the men ran into the barracks practically screaming that our forces had invented some kind of super bomb that they had dropped on the Japanese army and were making arrangements with the Japanese to sign a surrender pact. In a couple of days, we were told that the war was over and we would not be shipping out to China as we now learned was what they had in mind. From then on it was waiting and checking the bulletin board to see whose name was up for orders to proceed to a separation center.