When I decided to give up my deferment (I was a machinist in a government arsenal), I intended to enlist in the navy.  Then I thought of all those newsreels I had seen of sinking ships and men floating in the ocean and opted for the AAF instead.  Ironically, my crew was forced to ditch in the North Sea, so I wound up in the drink after all.
 
Dale

I flew my first missiion on Dec. 24, 1943, and my last one on April 29, 1944, when my careet as a tail gunner was ended by injuries sustained in a ditching.  According to records that I kept, we never enjoyed temperatures above 30 degrees below zero, and on two missions the needle on the thermometer hit the pin marking 60 below and could go no lower.
 
Because of the wind that came through the waist windows back to the tail turret, I was never really warm.  However, the electric suit beneath my heavy sheepskin-lined jacket, pants and boots made the cold bearable.  I never ran into a problem with the heated suit shorting out, as it sometimes did.
 
My one experience with frostbite occurred on one of the missions in which the temperatlure hit 60 degrees below zero.  It was a very mild case of frostbite on the toes of one foot and happened because my sock was damp.  While waiting to board the plane prior to the mission, I walked to the edge of the hardstand to eliminate some of my breakfast coffee.  In the dark, I took one step too far and stepped into a puddle of water that went over the top of my shoe.  There wasn't time to return to my hut for dry socks, so I discarded the two thin socks that I normally wore under the wool one, wrung out the wool sock, and hoped that the electric shoe and the sheepskin-lined boot would suffice.  It didn't.  As we gained altitude, my foot got colder and colder.  Fortunately for me, our plane developed mechanical problems and we had to abort about 40 miles short of our target, Kiel.  My pilot then descended to a few hundred feet over the sea, and my foot began to feel better. 
 
Dale

On one of our missions, one of our waist gunners passed out as a result of ice in his oxygen mask.  He was just about to fall out the waist window when the other waist gunner turned around just in time to grab him.  Pete was very careful about checking his mask for ice after that.
 
Dale

April 29, 2007

Sixty-four years ago today I completed my missions.  Unfortunately, it was the result of injuries sustained  in our crew's ditching on the return trip from leading a group to Berlin. 
 
This was a ditching that should not have happened.  Our crew included an engineer who had completed his missions but who was drafted to replace the engineer we had lost to bronchitis.  After we had flown a short distance over the North Sea on our way to Berlin, he remembered that he had forgot to use up the gas in the wing tip tanks while the group was assembling and started to climb down from his top turret to switch to them.  However, the command pilot, the operations officer of the group we were leading, ordered him back into the turret, even though it would have taken him very little time to switch to the wing tip tanks and then to reverse the procedure when the wing tip tanks were about empty. 
 
We had begun having generator problems before leaving England but didn't abort because the assistant lead had not taken off because of mechanical problems. Shortly after leaving Berlin, our generators went completely out; consequently, when our main tanks began running low as a result of gas leaking from a flak-damaged engine, it was impossible to switch to the wing-tip tanks.  Since we were only about thirty miles from Yarmouth when we ditched, it wouldn't have taken much to get us back to Hethel.  If the command pilot had let our engineer use gas in the wing-tip tanks while we were over the North Sea on our way to Berlin, we'd have had ample gas left in the main tanks to get home. 
 
Since we were highly unlikely to encounter German fighters before reaching to continent, there was no good reason why the command pilot ordered our engineer to remain in his turret.
 
Dale

Dale    
 
That was a real bummer!!   I can't think of anything worse than getting dunked in that cold cold North Sea.  You had to put up an awful good fight to survive.  If I remember correctly, that command pilot did not.  He sure spoke out of turn.  He is in command of getting the group to & from the target, but not the lead crew.  Too bad your pilot didn't keep him in his place.
Today is an anniversary for me too. Probably the happiest day of my life. And NO, it was not my wedding day.   It was liberation day at Mooseburg Germany.  Somebody wrote a book about it, "I Saw 10,000 Men Cry"  and that's the way it was.  Patton's 14th Armored Division finally caught up with us at this God forsaken camp where 65,000 were penned up.  And when these armored vehicles drove down  the outside of the fence, 10,000 of us were hanging on the inside, waving, laughing & crying. I will never forget that scene.  
 
Bill

Dale,

From what I’ve read ditching in the North Sea was high risk.  I think you were very fortunate.

Fred Lipper

That I was.  Five of twelve (as a PFF led crew we had two extra navigators) did not survive.  When I recovered consciousness on the ASR launch (I had passed out from hypothermia) my pilot told me I had been floating in the water for about an hour.  Surviving that much time in the North Sea was probably a bit of a miracle.
 
Dale

I wasn't fortunate enough to complete my missions and earn an official citation, but I felt like an LB after surviving an hour floating in the North Sea when we ditchied on 4/29/44 and then surviving spinal meningitis brought on by the exposure.
 
Dale

Another example of CS of a different type:  Because I was grounded for physical reasons after we ditched, I came up five points short of the minimum required for the first round of discharges after the end of the war.  Thinking that perhaps another battle star had been authorized for the time I was overseas, I went to my squadron headquarters and asked the clerk to check.  None had been, he said.  After finally being discharged, I discovered that the data on the back of my discharge showed TWO additional battle stars.  I'm convinced that the clerk didn't want to bother to check the records.  He knew there was no way I could know that he hadn't. 
 
Dale

On returning to the States from England, my morale took a big hit.  In fact, in August, 1945, it hit rock bottom.  As I exited a restaurant, an MP stopped me for not having my cap on even though I had it in my hands and was about to put it on.  He confiscated my pass and sent me back to base.  I was restricted for a week, during which VE day occurred.  I went to my CO and pleaded for permission to go into Denver to celebrate with everyone else, but he refused.  I thought my Purple Heart ribbon might motivate him to exercise a little mercy.  Having never been out of the States, he may not have known what one looked like.
 
Dale

Looking Back - A Tail Gunner's View of WWII - by Dale VanBlair

A hardback copy of my book, includiing shipping, is $26 (if you live in Illinois, I have to add $2 sales tax).  You can send a check to:

Dale VanBlair
2505 Oak Park Drive
Belleville, IL 62221-4615

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