Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor
Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor
Special | 58m 33sVideo has Closed Captions
This is the story of World War II, told through the voices of those who lived to tell it.
They were ordinary men and women, called to extraordinary deeds, united by a common purpose – to defend freedom and uphold the dignity of humanity. This is the story of World War II, told through the voices of those who lived to tell it.
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Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor is a local public television program presented by KVCR
Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor
Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor
Special | 58m 33sVideo has Closed Captions
They were ordinary men and women, called to extraordinary deeds, united by a common purpose – to defend freedom and uphold the dignity of humanity. This is the story of World War II, told through the voices of those who lived to tell it.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor
Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
- They were ordinary men and women called to extraordinary deeds, united by a common purpose to defend freedom and uphold the dignity of humanity.
This is the story of World War II told through the voices of those who lived to tell it from the bombers and fighter pilots who braved freezing altitudes, the soldiers who stormed at the beaches of Normandy in the largest land invasion in history, to the African American men and women who shattered barriers on the front lines.
This is their legacy.
One told by those whose fight for victory did more than just end the war.
It cemented the foundation of a superpower laying the groundwork for the freedoms and opportunities we cherish today for Palm Springs Air Museum Productions.
I'm Joe Montia, and this is Voices of Valor, world War II Heroes.
In their own words, - I repeat that the United States can accept no result, save victory.
Final, complete - From the skies over Berlin to the deserts of North Africa.
Allied bombers and pilots played a pivotal role in securing victory during World War ii.
Their efforts in achieving air superiority and supporting ground operations were vital to the success of the allies.
It is through the stories of these extraordinary brave heroes whose courage defied the odds that we are reminded of the perilous challenges they faced and the valor with which they meant.
Roger Krakow excelled at geography in high school and would later put that to good use as a B 17 Bomber Navigator in World War ii.
- This is a flag that they gave to us.
We flew over Russia so that in case we would make a forced landing, we would show this so they wouldn't shoot us.
- I suppose the vast majority had joined the Air Force expecting to see exciting action, and it must have been indeed.
I know it was a, a pretty horrifying awakening formed to find that they were in fact destined to sit in turrets.
Very cold, very frightened sometimes for six, seven, and eight hours on end, - Roger flew a grueling 35 bombing missions before the wars end, including the massive February 3rd, 1945 bombing attack on Berlin.
- There were almost a thousand B seventeens.
Again, it was very memorable to see there.
The, there were 30 some squadrons.
The flack was the main problem, which was very, very heavy.
We were the second to last quarter to go over, and I think that the, the Germans were tired.
They were running out of ammunition, so it wasn't quite as heavy as the first group.
- The flag had several different threats.
One, of course, the damage from the flack itself.
'cause when it explodes, it throws steel particle in all directions.
And we were ver virtually flying through clouds of flying steel.
When we're over the target, the, it didn't explode near us.
We'd peel the flack, hit the airplane, and when it hit a, a wing spa or another structure, remember the aircraft go boom, and then we'd also hear the flack hitting the rest of the airplane.
Hit fuel lines, hit gas tanks.
I'd seen airplanes blow up and then trying to put on a flax suit.
The last minute.
Pilots would lose a little control.
Sometimes they'd collide with a guy next to them.
I see that happen several times.
And both those aircraft would just screw down.
- When we had a loss, a good loss.
We'd have a real good loss.
I mean, we just didn't see that there was any in between.
We had, we lost and just wiped us out, and we probably could start over.
One airplane survived.
That was me.
Now that during that time, by that time, the war, we were able to put up almost two groups.
So one group survived, but the other group, my group didn't.
And I was the only one to come back from that group.
Not a squadron, a group.
- During World War ii, under the leadership of such generals as Ira Eker and Jimmy Doolittle, the then eighth Air Force formed the greatest air armada in history.
By mid 1944, the unit had a total strength of more than 200,000 people, and it could send more than 2004 engine bombers and 1000 fighters on a single mission against enemy targets in Europe.
For this reason, eighth Air Force is commonly known as the Mighty eighth.
- It was scary and chaotic.
It was traumatic.
When you're in the heat of battle and the anti-aircraft fires coming up from the ground to knock you out of the sky, these enemy fighters are coming in and attacking you from all angles.
All hell's breaking loose.
It's, it's scary.
It's, it's just riveting.
So, so, but you're flying in close formation at high altitude, freezing, freezing to death because we were un pressurized at a high altitude at 50 to 60 degrees below zero.
If you take your gloves off, your fingers can self amputate to the nearest knuckle, and you don't see any blood, you don't feel any pain, you're not even aware.
You just see your fingers lying on the floor.
- Very few people know this.
A b 17 was equipped with a norden bomb site.
Why for precision bombing?
The only way I can tell you this is like the arch in St. Louis.
That would be the specific target.
Well, Eisenhower and Churchill and so forth decided to go away from precision bombing and go to pattern bombing.
What's pattern bombing?
What it is, is the lead ship in a squadron has the norden bomb site.
When he opens his Bombay doors, I opened mine as well as all the others.
When you see the first bomb come out, you release yours.
And what we did was dropped on the center of Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and unfortunately it killed many thousands of civilians.
But it is known that because of this, the World War II ended.
About a year earlier, Germany was leveled.
Can you imagine the entire city of Chicago or St. Louis looking like that?
- July 31st, 1944 we're 27,000 feet over Munich.
And about 10 seconds after I dropped the bombs, a burst of flack hit right under us, knocked out two engines, one on each side, and a piece of flack came through the bottom of the plane.
The pilots in our armor seats, maybe a quarter inch thick, went through there, went through the co-pilot's, left thigh way up here, left hole about the size of a baseball and out the roof.
Well, I was medical officer of the group, so I went up and gave him a shot of morphine, was still in flack so I could leave my guns and gave him a shot of morphine, sprinkled sulf on his wounds.
And on two engines, we, you can't keep up with the formation and you're sitting duck.
And we were attacked by fighter, so I had to go back to my guns again.
But a group, a squadron, P 50 ones came and drove them off, but the only thing that saved them was 40 degrees below zero.
The blood froze as it came out.
So while it was back by guns that he was not bleeding, we tried to go in Switzerland, it was just 70 miles away from Munich, and it was fogged in so we could not, so we threw everything overboard that we could for the last three and a half hours, I just, I gave him another shot of morphine and kept pressure on his wound with the gauze and managed trying to keep the bleeding from being too much.
So he survived.
In fact, I got a note from him, oh, a year later and thought he'd be in the hospital another two years.
He had a cast from his chest to his toes, but he was wrong as there were four years and 22 operations later.
And he did so survive though - The B 17 Memphis Bell is one of the most famous American bombers from World War ii, known for being the first US Army Air Force's heavy bomber to complete 25 combat missions over Europe without losing a crew member.
A Boeing B 17 flying Fortress.
The Memphis Bell was part of the 91st bomb group and was named after pilot Robert k Morgan's girlfriend Margaret Polk, who was from Memphis, Tennessee.
The aircraft flew dangerous bombing raids over Nazi occupied territories, targeting factories, military installations, and other strategic points.
Completing 25 missions was a significant achievement as losses among bomber crews were high.
After its service, the Memphis Bell and its crew were brought back to the United States to help raise war bonds and boost morale.
This B 17 is the Memphis Bell from the 1990 movie of the same name.
Lieutenant Colin s Bell joined the Royal Air Force at a very young age of just 19.
His flying training was actually conducted here in the United States under a plan devised by General Henry Hap Arnold.
- I have no hesitation in saying that my survival during World War II owed quite a bit in part to that fantastic training and experience I gained while I was in America.
- After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Colin was transferred back to the UK where he transitioned to the De Haviland mosquito, known for its speed and agility.
- There were mosquitoes engaged in photo reconnaissance.
They were used as night fighters.
They were used in coastal command for attacking submarines.
They were used as bombers, high level, low level.
He could do anything that a single engine fighter could do.
But of course, it had two spit farm engines.
So as my American cousins would say, no contest - During World War ii, Lieutenant Bell undertook 50 dangerous bombing raid missions in the mosquito over Germany, 13 over heavily armored Berlin.
- The whole purpose of bomber command was to destroy the German manufacturing capacity to, to attack us.
We attacked the Penman base caused so much damage there that when the commandant, who was dining with Hitler heard about it, he came down and when he saw the damage, it caused him such alarm.
He had a seizure and fell down dead, which I thought was deeply satisfying.
- So Colin, here we are next to the nose of our mosquito, B 35, the, the bomber version.
- That's right.
- And of course you would've been sitting up there on my left hand side.
- That's right.
And your seat - Just there.
That's right.
And I believe that your, your navigator, Doug Redmond, would've had to lean forward here into the nose to, to aim the bombs.
Is that correct?
- That's absolutely.
As bomber aimer, he would sort of move forward to connect up with the Mark nine a bomb site.
And he had, he had the unenviable task of looking ahead of the exploding shells and the aircraft shells.
- The flying tigers were American volunteer pilots known as the A VG American Volunteer Group flying under the command of retired US Army Air Corps Officer Claire l Schnat in the Pacific Theater in the early stages of World War ii.
They were the first to bring fame to the P 40 Warhawk arriving in China in April, 1941 with their first combat action on December 20th, 1941, just 13 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor Flying Tigers pilot, Whitey Johnson was one of those men.
- They apparently were concerned about American invasion, so had brought in over a hundred fighters, and they were all staged at that field, and they were lined up in beautiful roles because they didn't think we could have enough range to get there and back.
And we came in at about 50 or 60 miles out, which would be beyond their radar.
And then we dove down to treetop level.
They got to the field to the airport that we were going to be strafing.
There were soldiers standing out in the fields waving at us, apparently thinking that we were Japanese coming in from Formosa until we start shooting, of course.
And that first raid, we destroyed, I think it was 94 Japanese planes on the ground, and I believe three in the air that was just taking off.
So it was probably the most successful read of the war.
- The P 40 was in production from 1939 to 1944, approximately 14,000 of various models were built.
The famous shark, PP 40 aircraft and their pilots destroyed a record 286 enemy aircraft at a loss of 23 pilots.
It was a capable, rugged aircraft and kept us in the Air War, but it was not the aircraft which could control the skies for the US Army.
Air Corps control of the ski began when the P 40 was replaced by the faster higher performance.
P 38, P 47, and P 51 fighters known for its agility, speed, and impressive range.
The P 51 Mustang became a game changer in the Air War over Europe, equipped with long range fuel tanks.
It could escort heavy bombers deep into enemy territory, providing essential protection against German fighters.
The Tuskegee airmen most associated with flying Mustangs, marked by their distinctive Red Tails, became highly respected for their skill in bravery.
This P 51, affectionately named Bunny, was owned by Tuskegee Airmen, Bob friend, Tuskegee Airmen.
Bob Friend was a distinguished fighter pilot and one of the original members of the all Black 332nd Fighter Group during World War ii.
It was also a dear friend, the man who gave me this jacket.
Bob flew 142 combat missions protecting bombers on vital missions across Europe without losing a single one to enemy aircraft, A record that helped to earn the group, their legendary reputation.
- When the war started, if anybody had asked me, why are you fighting this war?
I said, because I'm, I'm as much a part of this country as you, some people just don't know how to accept changes.
And this did represent changes for a lot of people.
I believe that in.
And everybody that flew over there in Tuskegee really and truthfully felt equal to the job.
And that's a big, big, big part of survival.
You gotta go out and prove yourself not for race.
I go out, I prove myself.
For me, - Tens of thousands of African Americans served as soldiers, sailors and marines, usually in segregated units.
Their accounts reveal not only the precision and skill required, but the camaraderie and resolve that defied history in the army.
Air Corps's 99th Fighter Squadron and 332nd Fighter Group, now better known as the Tuskegee Airmen, African American pilots distinguished themselves over North Africa, Sicily, and Italy.
The Tuskegee Airmen flew over 3000 missions in Europe and destroyed almost 300 enemy planes for their service.
Tuskegee Airmen were awarded 150 distinguished flying crosses, 744 air medals, eight purple hearts and 14 bronze stars.
Tuskegee Airman, Lieutenant Colonel Ted Lumpkin Jr. Is one of those famous men that wrote history.
He served as an air intelligence officer during his overseas combat tour to Italy in the Western Europe Theater from 1944 to 1945.
- I like that business of courage of your heart because that means everybody is starting from the same place.
And I think it's important to always be trying to do the best that you can in that way you don't have regrets.
The Tuskegee Airmen experience illustrates that.
It demonstrates that and illustrates that in a very positive way.
- The Tuskegee Airmen, it was a, a unique group.
Prior to World War ii, African Americans were not given the opportunity to train as pilot or air crew members.
And it wasn't until World War Two that this opportunity was afforded these pilots, but only under the condition that they train and serve as segregated units.
The effort at the time was to prove ourselves that we were on par with any other conscripts that were brought in to train as pilots.
I think we did succeed, and I think we did prove ourselves - When we got out of the service, we came back to a country that we had left.
All the freedoms we accomplished or, or, or, or supported away from this country were not available to us when we came back.
So we were quite often asked why we did it.
And the answer pretty much is the same for all of us.
We did it because this is our country.
You know, we may have been treated as second class citizens, but this was our country.
- You might say that as you look back on the whole thing.
Once given the opportunity, we just dispelled the biases and generalization and thought race some racist thoughts that because of happenstance of birth, we were less than the full citizen in those physically qualified, but mentally and morally inferior to the white man.
We dispelled those things once given the opportunity - In 2007, more than 60 years after their combat in World War ii, president George W. Bush awarded the Congressional gold medal to surviving Tuskegee Airmen in a ceremony in the capitol rotunda.
- And I would like to offer a gesture to help Aone for all the unreturned salutes and unforgivable indignities and so on by behalf, on behalf of the office I hold and a country that honors you, I salute you for the service to the United States of America.
- The valor of World War II heroes extends to those who didn't carry a gun or fly a fighter like medics, translators, engineers, postal workers and code breakers who shown through their courage, saving lives and enduring victory through skill, ingenuity, and selfless service.
In their words, we hear the echoes of resilience and hope that sustained nations through war, their voices tell a story of quiet dedication, proving that heroism isn't confined to the battlefield.
Elizabeth Bernice Barker Johnson served with a six triple eighth central postal directory battalion, the only all black, all female unit deployed overseas in World War ii, working tirelessly to clear a massive backlog of male and boost morale for troops on the front lines.
- Well, I just decided I wanted to do something to help out.
I wasn't working.
My parents were aged, and I just decided I wanted to do something to help out.
We had a rural Mary area.
I went to the mailbox and got the mail, came back and sat down and was looking through it.
And there was one paper that had a picture of a man on it saying, uncle Sam wants you.
And I just threw it to the floor, looked through the rest of the mail.
Then I looked down at the picture again and I said, I looked, kept looking at it.
I said, well, maybe just maybe Uncle Sam's got you.
And from that point on, I proceeded to do the process of trying to get in.
I worked with a male once I got to France and we had mails stacked almost to the ceiling, and we just worked not, we didn't have a set number of hours.
You just worked until you were too tired to, to do anything more.
We had a list of the new addresses of the people to whom we were supposed to send the mail if they old address was on it.
We had to change it to the new address and put it in the post office.
- There was supposed to have been two to three years of mail backed up as servicemen when I getting.
And so of course she created the slogan, no male low morale because, you know, they had no way of getting in touch, keeping in touch with their families.
Didn't know what was happening.
They didn't know what was happening from home.
- They said that we got it out in record time.
It took about, we did it in about three months and they didn't expect it to be done for at least six months.
But we did it because we were working three shifts a day.
You know, - When we ran across the list, we found that some of the people were dead, and it was our responsibility to look at a specialist and get the, the, the gifts back to the whoever sent them to them.
So that was quite a job.
- Lydia Van Vot was born in 1927 in the Ukrainian Peninsula of Crimea.
She escaped along with her family following the Russian Civil War, living in Romania, Poland, and finally in Munich, Germany.
Lydia lived in Munich during much of World War ii.
The bombings and friends dying around her became part of daily life and her own survival.
- Oh, it was bombing.
We were running to shelter and the bombs was falling, but I was very fast runner, so I got to the shelter.
Some people were killed, yeah, somewhere, but they running.
The bomb was falling and they were killed.
I cry.
- When the war finally came to an end, Lydia was hired by then General Eisenhower as a translator, because she spoke five languages.
- We went to camps and they didn't speak, you know, English, none of them.
We went to work in camps, you know, all I translate for him, he didn't speak German.
So, and in those camps, they had Russians, Polish, Germans, French, they had all nationalities.
So I translate there.
They were bad people were just on the, some on the floor.
Some were sweeping places.
It was bad situation there.
Even Eisenhower, he, he kind of had a little tears in his eyes.
So to see that, so me too scary.
- Marcella Lebo, a Native American nurse from the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, bravely served on the front lines during D-Day in the Battle of the Bulge, providing critical care to wounded soldiers under harrowing conditions.
- Every day on the radio there was a call for nurses in the military.
They needed nurses.
So we listened to that for a while, and then we decided that yes, we would join the army.
So Marie and I, we went to the Red Cross, filled out an application, and Marie put my name down to go with, I put her name down to go with, we were like a couple of weeks at Wales, and then they sent us to a little Minister England at Leo Ster England.
We had a barracks type hospital and we prepared for D-Day.
And so we were preparing for D-Day and for the fact that I was a psychiatric nurse in the United States, they assigned me again to the psychiatric wards.
And so we were seeing patients there in the psych wards, and there were soldiers who couldn't see, some, couldn't hear.
And so they gave them sodium maal ssis, and then they could see, or they could hear, we were preparing our ward getting all ready.
And we had time, our hands waiting.
And during the time that we were waiting, there were times when you'd look up in the sky and you could see the, the sky absolutely filled with silver plains as far as you could see every direction.
What a beautiful sight and so much power.
- It was those serving on the front lines of World War ii, who endured some of the harshest conditions soldiers could ever face in combat among the allied forces, whether dropping from the skies or storming the beaches.
The courage and determination of these soldiers were unmatched.
Paratroopers were elite troops who were dropped behind enemy lines to disrupt operations and seize key objectives, often facing intense combat.
Upon landing machine gunners provided essential support delivering suppressive fire to protect advancing infantry and counter enemy assaults, frontline infantry soldiers engaged directly with enemy forces, enduring the harshest combat conditions in trenches and open fields.
Electricians were vital in maintaining communication systems, often working under fire dive bombers performed precision attacks on enemy targets contributing to both ground and naval warfare by destroying key installations and armor.
Each of these roles was integral to the overall war effort, operating in dangerous conditions to push the front lines toward victory.
- I got into shore and there was a, just a little berm.
I had two mg 42 machine guns shooting at me from o opposite ends of the cliff.
And they had me under fire.
But that little berms, six, eight inches tall was like a godsend for me.
It was my protector that that's when I got got a a, a cigarette outta my pack that didn't get wet.
I, I sensed someone to my left.
So I says, buddy, have, have you got a match?
And I got no answer.
So, so I turned, there was his helmet, but there was no head under the helmet.
- One of my friends described what it's like to go from being a loader to being a gunner in a tank.
He and I had done the same thing.
When you're loading, you don't know what you're shooting at, no idea what you're shooting at.
All you do is just keep slamming shells in and putting the, the 30 caliber machine gun bullets in the machine gun.
But then when you move from that seat over into the Gunnar seat, you got the crosshairs.
And the first time you had to pull that trigger or step on the trigger in a Sherman, you knew you were gonna kill somebody and it wasn't easy.
But after you've done that a few times and they shot back and I lost the tank, then it was a different story altogether.
- But we really didn't have time to think much.
It was just stay alive, get up in the morning, go all day, stand guard an hour, sleep an hour at night, same thing.
The next day, town after town, after town - That morning, the fog was all the way down to the ground.
You couldn't see anything.
As daylight comes, the fog starts to lift a little bit.
And the, the, the, the more time went on, the more the fog lifted.
But it lifted in, in like a bank a whole, as it lifted, you could see underneath it all the way through that what was in front of us was a sort of tapering open field with the heavy woods on both sides.
And the noise we heard, it looked like the Germans were gonna attack across an open field.
We said, boy, they must be cocky.
You know, they, but they were cocky.
They had just smashed four American divisions and they expected to do the same thing.
They didn't know it was the hundred first airborne division there.
And that's on.
So they, the, the as as the fog lifted higher and higher, then you hear the tanks wind up and you could, you could see across that still open snow field, the, the grinding of the 80 eights as they swing around.
And then the whole world sounded like it exploded.
Everything you could imagine that there rockets, artillery later on.
The TRO came in and bonded mortars all around it.
And you, you, you can't do anything except stick your nose down to the bottom of the, of the foxhole and, and that you curse yourself and not dig it deeper.
And the, the ground shakes and, and, and sometimes the concussion makes you feel like your helmet's gonna come up.
That's when they, they told us right away, don't fasten your, your helmet buckle, because if you get a near concussion, it's gonna pull your head right off at, at any rate, we, we could do nothing but wait till the artillery barrage lifted.
And when it did, and we looked across the field, here comes a roll of tanks.
And behind them a German infantry.
When they got to the 400 yard mark, the lieutenant said, now, now, and we opened up with everything we had, and it, it was a slaughter.
The the snow turned red.
They, they were falling by the numbers and so on.
And, and we hit them so bad that they weren't expecting that they had to turn around and go back.
What was left of them, the tanks.
Now, when the infantry's not behind them, they gotta turn around and go back.
The, the tanks turned around to go back.
Our artillery opened up.
- I was assigned to dive bomber training.
So I went to a, to school to learn to be a dive bomber where you go into a dive at, you know, 15,000 feet and release at 2000 feet and you pull out your, your gray out, you can't see, but you're conscious and you pull out and then gradually your psych returns again.
In the beginning it was a little hairy, but after a while, you, it was, it was routine.
Eye bombing was a piece of cake.
I had so many - Holes in my airplane and they found, they shot a wing off one, not wing, a wing tip.
And they knocked out my monitors up here where the ignitions were.
So I couldn't turn the engines off.
So I said, well, I'm gonna starve 'em with gasoline.
So I stopped, turned the gas off, filled out a novel in the form one error, what I thought was wrong with the airplane, all the little holes, bullet holes from a, a machine pistol.
So we were, we were low.
And my crew chief said, we've got the measles.
I looked at my airplane the next day with the new little pieces of aluminum, and until they painted him, it looked like hell.
But when they painted him all that disappeared plane looked back normal, including the wing kit.
- Immediately after graduating from Georgia Tech in 1942, Floyd Blair enlisted in the US Army and eventually served as a P 47 fighter pilot in the 404th fighter group.
Blair flew support missions for ground troops on Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day, and had a bird's eye view of the carnage taking place on the beaches below.
- We were flying and we were down below 10,000 feet.
And they had told us about these tanks and I could see 'em, and I rolled over and my wingman went with me.
And there were a lot of, a lot of us in the air that day.
And I got, I rolled the airplane to get aim more the tanks and pulled out.
Literally, I was under a hundred feet.
I was going almost 500 miles an hour, and I just barely made it.
My wingman flew straight in the ground.
And that still bothers me to this day.
If you read the official record, they, everybody said he got by flack, but I know better than that.
I shouldn't tell you that, but I do.
- The Thunderbolt was the most famous of all the republic aircraft in World War ii.
First flown on May 6th, 1941.
The P 47 was designed as a then large high performance fighter bomber, utilizing the large Pratt and Whitney R 2,800 double wasp engine to give it excellent performance and a large load carrying capability.
The first deliveries of the P 47 took place in June, 1942 when the US Army Air Corps began flying it in the European Theater.
The P 47 performed missions of four to five hours escorting B 17 and B 24 bombers directly to the target over Germany on D-Day.
The P 47 was the predominant fighter chosen for this difficult and critical operation.
Arthur Mc Dawson was just shy of his 11th birthday in September, 1939 when Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.
- This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland.
A state of war would exist between us.
I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
- And when the broadcast ended, they all filed out of the house and said, goodbye Harry.
Thank you.
And the first other word I, noise I heard was my mother.
She had her face in her hands crying.
Oh no, not again.
- By 1942, at only 14 years old, his education came to an abrupt end as the country focused on the war effort with an airfield being built in his village, Mick found work as a trainee electrician, a job he held until 1946 when he was called to serve in the British Army.
- The master sergeant of the catering squadron driving down the road in his jeep, saw me with my bicycle and some cable on the handlebars, and he stopped, Hey guy, come here.
I need you.
I need some cable.
I need some lamp holders to put Christmas tree lights in the, in the mess hall.
So I had to go back to our office and I was rather naughty.
I found the key for the store room, got the cable we needed and the lamp folders took them back to the mess hall and I wired up about 12 lights and put them on the, on the tree.
He had the bulbs.
And when he switched them on, there must have been about three or 400 guys eating cho.
The whole crowd stood up and applauded and shouted and sang carols.
It was wonderful.
- Norman Lawrence Soda, A glider pilot survived a horrific crash on the eve of the Normandy invasion.
These silent wing glider planes were used in eight of the largest assaults during World War ii.
- I think Glider pilots were unique in character.
Their o only mission was just to serve their country.
They flew these planes without engines.
There were no second chances once they went up, that was it.
They were on their mission and it was just to serve their country.
And I think that took a certain type of constitution to, to fly and the bravery that was, that was needed for those missions.
And I think that's very much how my father was as, as an individual, as a, as a man.
He, he wasn't in it for the glory.
It was the sense of duty.
And he wanted to serve his country.
- He was extraordinary mathematician.
His, the numbers were everything for him.
He could figure out any problem, any place, anywhere.
We used to call him Einstein.
He was really talented that he was really extraordinary human being.
- So my father was, he had completed training.
He was ready to actually ship out to Europe.
And this was actually the day before he shipped out to go to Europe.
And he had been a great pilot, and he was often asked sometimes to volunteer and take other pilots up who needed to log more hours.
- It was late evening and he flew the first time he went up and then the captain said, you gotta try one more time.
So then they went one more time.
I don't know what happened.
Even he doesn't know what happened.
The only thing Norma remember, say we're going down, we're going down.
Oh, we're going down.
And they crashed.
- Fortunately or unfortunately, he never made it to Europe.
He woke up in an army hospital two weeks later with some pretty bad injuries, and he was honorably discharged.
I think it was his biggest regret that he didn't get to go and fight in his last mission and do what he was supposed to do.
He always said it was a huge regret of his.
And I think it's common among a lot of men who serve.
They have something called survivor's guilt.
And I, and I think it haunted him for the rest of his life.
He really wanted to do that.
And he felt that he was meant to do that.
And he didn't get a chance.
But I think that he was given a second chance at life because most of the men on his mission did not return.
- He lived his entire life with the guilt of his guys going behind the lines.
And he knew that 50% of them, by average would be killed.
And he tried to find them - If they used to change family names, family addresses, and they say, when you come back, you search for us.
We search from you, then we're going to talk about good stories.
But unfortunately, many of that did not come back.
Many of that did not.
- In the skies above World War ii, a select group of pilots emerged as legendary fighter races dominating the dog fights and shaping the course of aerial warfare.
These men from all sides of the conflict, honed their skills in the most dangerous of arenas, outmaneuvering enemies pushing their planes to the limits and relying on sheer courage.
Their victories counted in downed enemy planes masked the peril they faced in every sorting among these brave pilots was Joe Peter Burs, a skilled aviator from the 20th fighter group who flew 49 missions and logged 269 combat hours.
- My 49th mission was on the 10th of April, 19 45, 5.
And we were escorting some 450 B seventeens to target in the Iranian burg area of Germany.
I was flying high cover.
The bombers dropped their loads and just after they dropped their loads, we were hit by a swarm of MB two 60 twos.
I latched onto one my eyeballs, and he was coming in after the B seventeens.
I had about 7,000 foot altitude advantage on him, so I knew I'd be able to catch him.
So I rolled over and started down after him with throttles wide open.
And I was able to pull in, I was doing well over 500 knots, but I pulled into his six o'clock position and there fired several bursts that got some hits in his left wing.
He rolled over and started down to the deck.
He disappeared into some clouds.
So I saw this airfield, it, it was just loaded with aircraft.
And so I started making some passes and destroyed five aircraft on ground and set a hanger on fire.
And on the last one I was coming in on the FW 200, which is a condor, a four engine aircraft.
And as I was coming into it, I felt the thud and I blew the, the condor.
It blew up.
And I was pulling off and I felt another thought.
And I started getting oil over the windscreen and I made it up to 10,000 feet.
So I had to make the decision whether to go east towards these, the Russians or west towards the allied forces that were fighting in Magnum burg.
Magdeburg was about 80 miles away, but I I, I decided to go and I thought I could make it.
I was falling short.
I got to a little town called Berg that was probably 20 miles away from Magne burg.
And I was down to five, up to a thousand feet.
And I thought, well, I'm not gonna make it.
I'm gonna have to bail out.
So I unstrap and I get ready to bail out.
And then I then I see in my three o'clock position, an FW one 90 coming at me.
And so I turned into him and as he fired his rockets and he missed, and my aircraft was burning already because of the engine, the overheating.
By this time I'm down to 500 feet and I think, heck, I'm too low to bail out.
I'm gonna have to belly this thing in.
And then I thought, all this is milliseconds going on in your head.
I can't belly it in because I unt strapped and I don't have enough time to strap up.
I'll kill myself.
But I get in that 150 dots, you know, so and so I decided I had to go out.
I couldn't go out to the right side, which you're supposed to go out to, so the torque would throw you away from the aircraft.
So I had to go out to the left side, and I was, by the time I got out on the wing and let go, I was about 350 feet.
I let go and dragged, I hit the knee on right my right knee on horizontal stabilizer, and then pulled the rip cord and the chute opened and I hit, I swung once and hit the ground hard.
- PJ doll, a P 38 lightning ace survived numerous dog fights, harrowing, bailouts, and two days adrift in a life raft, earning a reputation as a pilot with nine lives and exemplifying extraordinary resilience during World War ii.
- I'm five foot, five inches tall.
And when I strapped on that P 38, which had almost 400 horsepower, but total four 50 caliber machine guns and a cannon in front of you, I felt like the other guys didn't have a chance.
And it, it is a little, it is a funny thing in that business.
You, you know, good and well when you are on you, you jump on one of the, the enemy airplanes.
That gentleman knows you're there.
And he normally calls out to his wingman or somebody says, Hey, there's P three eight on me.
So you had to be very careful you to kinda shoot and get the hell outta there.
I hit 'em and I rode 'em.
And then I got out out of Dodge.
I got away and I did that twice.
The only reason I know that the airplanes were destroyed was somebody else was in my flight behind me.
And they confirmed that they were, that they, that they crashed.
I i, I never was a big promoter of running up a, a score or anything like that, but I, it doesn't surprise me.
The guys that we had, we had 40 ACEs in our group - As a fighter pilot with over 7,500 hours logged in over 130 types of aircraft.
Clarence Bud Anderson loved to fly.
Anderson would go on to score 16 in one half aerial victories in World War ii, making him one of the war's, few American Triple AEs.
- We destroyed the lwa primarily by engaging them in aerial combat.
Dog fights are like, well, like a card game, you know, each, each hand you gotta play the hand you got right?
They might be attacking you rather than you attacking them.
We're we're coming back from this one mission.
We'd been all broken up, you know, and I was leading a flight of three or four and another flight of, from a different squadron.
Our group joined up and I'm leading them home.
I'm looking up ahead and down.
I say, oh, Jesus, there's a parole B 17 way up there and engines smoking and kind of staggering along.
I says, but hey, come on guys, let's go over there and go down and take him out to the water.
So just as we're he's going this way, here comes three Emmy one oh nines over here, belied up towards us.
They couldn't see us.
They were going after the B 17, I'm sure they didn't see us because there was seven of us.
And, and I says, okay guys, I'm leading this whole pack.
I said, one of those is mine.
And I'm in this turning dog fight with this guy.
And it, it's, we hadn't got into a concentric circle.
You know, around, around, around, when you shoot a guy down, you want to get him right here, what we call six o'clock right here, back here.
Drive up there with 300 yards and fire.
And when you, when you have an enemy airplane, you've gotta pull your nose through him, point ahead of him and fire like that.
You have to lead him.
It's like shooting birds.
You, you go through him, lead him, pow and move your, keep your move.
You don't stop your gun.
You know what I'm gonna do the next time, next time I get come into this guy and I'm a steep angle.
I'm trying to pull him a lot of g to get, get in there then, but I can't get behind him, you know, and it, I'm gonna pull my nose through him.
I'll be belied up to him now and after here I can't see him.
I'm gonna pull through, estimate that lead.
I'm back here, of course I'm gonna, and then I'm gonna fire and hopefully get him so that next circle comes.
I pull him through, pull right, right smoothly through him.
So I didn't get, you know, didn't want him to get out here, pull him there, fire the burst.
And he comes out.
When he comes out here and I can see him, he's streaming.
Cool it.
I have a hot dog.
I got him.
- World War II veterans made profound sacrifices, enduring, unimaginable hardships and risking their lives to secure freedom and peace.
Had they not done so the world today might be a very different place.
Their voices remind us that the cost of liberty is steep, but its rewards are enduring.
- I think we've got to get people to remember the sacrifices that everybody made for their freedom because they did.
I mean, for instance, in the eighth Air Force, 26,000 lives were lost.
28,000 were injured on our base alone, 845 guys died for our freedom.
Had we not have been able to resist the Germans at that time, we would not be speaking English.
Just now, - How many World War I stories does anyone know?
If we don't continue with the museum and with the stories that we have today, the World War II will be long gone and forgotten.
- I've been here 20 years and I ask people, do they know about Iwo Jima?
They never heard of it or they heard about anyone in the Philippine battle and I haven't heard about it.
And like, so I think they should know and give them a chance to know what it was like in World War II and everything like that.
- Well, I don't think any of us would regard ourselves as the greatest generation.
I think the majority of us just saw the, the battle against the Germans as a war that had to be won.
So I think really we just devoted our energy to destroying the Germans.
And, and of course in the event we we won and a very good thing we did.
- My main objective in what I do is for children and youth to understand how important it is to know what has gone before and what what has been tried and not work.
That's what my objectives are.
What I'm a hundred years old and I hope to, to keep as, as long as I can and do it.
I will do it - A toast to all the good people of the world.
- As we honor these heroes, we owe them a debt that can never truly be repaid, but we can carry their spirit forward by striving for a world where peace prevails because of their stories.
We pledge to ensure their sacrifices are never forgotten.
The proceeding has been a Palm Springs Air Museum production, an association with the American Veterans Center and Jones Agency.
Support for PBS provided by:
Palm Springs Air Museum Presents Voices of Valor is a local public television program presented by KVCR