35 Harrowing Combat Missions Over Nazi Germany | 8th Air Force | Vincent 'Bill' Purple

We had our aircraft damaged to a great degree, to such an extent that three of my ten people bailed out over Germany, and myself, the co-pilot, and my engineer, we struggled from it for a little bit of 25,000 feet. We weren't getting anywhere, we were on fire, on the right number four engine, amongst other things. I made a decision and said, well, we'll make a huge spiral to the right, going to the ground, and at that point in time, if you visualize it, unless I'm wrong, the air going over the wing, from the back of the wing to the front of the wing, where the engine was on fire, the fire would be going out into space instead of being blown into the aircraft. Well, I'm here, the fire went out at 15,000 feet down towards the ground when we were getting there, so that's where I am, 10,000 feet, we got away with it. You are about to embark upon the great crusade to meet this mounting aggression. And make no mistake about it, good will prevail. Did you have an interest in flying when you were a child? Not particularly, until after the transition, naturally, with Japan. We heard that on the radio, and that's when I made a decision, I had graduated from high school, where I made a decision that I would enlist in the Air Force, if I could. And so you did, and where did you go for training and flight school? What happened with that is because I was underage to a degree, I ended up going to pre-training in Atlantic City, exactly after that, I went to a training phase for three months in Rochester, New York, to be geared on how to go on the training missions. Then from there, went to Nashville for classification, if I still was capable of doing what the specs were. Then they said, okay, you qualify to be trained as an Army Air Corps pilot, therefore primary flight school, went from Lafayette, Louisiana for primary flight school, basic flight school went with Little Rock, Arkansas, and I graduated as I needed more later in the complete conflict, more multi-engine pilots, and that's where my future with the military was, because after that I ended up in multi-engine training. And how quickly did you adapt to the bomber? First of all, you had to qualify as a pilot. Right. So from training at Lafayette, Louisiana for two months, Little Rock for two months, and the other one for two months, I graduated from flight school in March of 1944 as a second lieutenant, age at that point was 19. Okay, and then what happened? Well, then we were then assigned specific duties, I ended up going to Gulfport, Mississippi, after the phase training in Sebring, Florida, when they appointed a bomber crew for me as their captain and their pilot, and we were trained in Gulfport, Mississippi, on multi-engines being the Flying Fortress, the B-17. I was called one day at operations and said, okay, get your crew, go to Georgia, get a brand new B-17 and go to Europe and go to combat. That's a nice way to start the day, but whatever. Successful to all expense and extremes, got to Georgia, got the brand new airplane, flew up to New Hampshire and stayed there for the night, and then flew up to a further export change, a departure point in Canada, and then we were there for three or four days, and then suspect right after that, we were told, well, all right, tomorrow you will fly to Europe. Sure, whatever. So anyway, the next day we did that, huge snowstorm in front, but we took off. Later on, in 12 hours, we landed in England, and now I'm with the 8th Air Force. Did you do a lot more training once you got to England, or did they put you in service pretty quickly? Well, I'm going to say that that answer's easy. Whenever I landed in England, as I stated, they said, you are here now, Lieutenant. You are going to be assigned to the 379th Bomb Group at Kimbolton, and so you and your co-pilot will be transferred to that base in Kimbolton with your crew, and then we were assigned within four days. Went there, and that's where I began my combat tour. What was that first mission like? Nothing. Why? Because I flew the plane, the B-17, a very talented in-pilot. He was my bodyguard, and he'd take it all, so nothing really happened. When you get up, you flew to target number one, no target, no problems, no bullets, nothing. However, that was in October about the 30th of 1944. The next three days were nothing, but on the next day, I was then assigned to the squadron and flew, and that was entirely different than being on the first mission. Tell me about the process for any mission, the preparation you did for a mission, from getting up that morning to being briefed and getting in the air. Well, I think you have to go back a day or two. In other words, if we're going to go on a mission, and let's say tomorrow or the next day, you didn't know that. The night before you went on a mission, generally, either at the Officer's Club or wherever, you were told that you were going to go to target number, by name, and therefore, prepare it. Your crew, because they're talking to me and my co-pilot, you get your troops ready, and they will all be briefed in the next day. From there, then, the enlisted personnel, of which there were ten, no, there were eight on my crew, and there were four officers, and they went out and prepared what they had to do. Make sure your guns are good, make sure the ammunition, blah, blah, blah. Made sure everything was good. We as the bombardier, as the navigator, and the pilot and co-pilot, me being the pilot, went then, and the following day, we did what we needed to do. On the morning of the particular raid, it came out that you would be, you were known the night before, that report to briefing. You would go there, generally about seven o'clock in the morning, be briefed by Colonel Lyle and Rust and what you were supposed to do, and therefore, you were scheduled, released, and everybody would instantly go to their aircraft and do everything that they were trained to do, time and time again. And that's all we did at that point. They went everywhere, you know. You know the amount, you know that you had 2,700 gallons of gas. You could know you had 10,000 pounds of 500 pounds of whatever. So that's what happened. We got briefed. Then we would, of course, go to take-off time. We generally, with the Flying Fortress B-17, took off every 30 seconds. At Kimbold, we would put three squadrons out, three squadrons of 12 each, that's 36 aircraft. 12, 12, and 12. I'm a young kid, 19 years old. I got a $250,000 airplane. Today, it would cost you $25 million, but that's not the issue. You know what you're doing, do you? I'm 19. All right, so as you approached the target on a bombing mission, explain what happened. Well, okay. Take the 379th Bomb Group. We put three squadrons up, that's 36 aircraft, 12, 12, 12. When we got to the target area, this is Squadron 1, not by name, it's just this conversation, 1, 2, 3. This one would assume it's necessarily started a bomb run, and it could be X number of feet, miles, or whatever. Generally, it was miles. And this one would be behind it, and this one would be behind it. When you got there, the actual pilot and co-pilot sit there and listen to Glenn Miller or something, because there's nothing more they can do. Because you have now, as the head lead pilot, me specifically and whatnot, and everyone, turn the aircraft over to the bombardier, because he is now flying the plane. The northern bomb site tells it what to do. So I'm sitting here talking like I'm talking to you, you know, and whatnot. Oh yeah, that's Glenn, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And therefore, and the bombardier was, that was his job, and the navigator, he was also in the nose of the B-17 and telling them where to go. Bombing range went from a minute to 30 minutes to 40 minutes, depending what, depending how they took and traversed the sky for competitive weaponry against them and all that. So that's how it went. You have said, sir, that your first 10 missions, and I'm quoting, weren't bad, and that the worst you faced was anti-aircraft fire from German 88mm guns, which sounds pretty bad. But what's it like flying through flak? Flying through flak, the 88mm or the 155mm, nothing. You're on the target. You were petrified, you terribly thought, whatnot, there wasn't a damn thing you could do. My job was to take and go point A to point B to point C, drop the bombs, get out of there and try to get back as soon as you could, still maintaining the complete structure of the aircraft equipment and whatnot, to protect yourself against fighter attacks, Stukas and whatnot, Messerschmitts from Germany. Let's talk about a couple different missions here that were pretty intense. Starting with November 5th, 1944, when you say that you were almost blown out of the sky after an engine caught fire, what can you tell me about that day? Well, basically, November 5th, that was in Frankfurt, Germany. In respect to that, we had our aircraft damaged to a great degree, to such an extent that three of my 10 people bailed out over Germany, and myself, the co-pilot, and my engineer, we struggled from it for a little bit at 25,000 feet. Leaving that, after a little bit, because we weren't getting anywhere, we were on fire on the right number four engine, amongst all those things, we ended up and made a decision and said, well, we'll make a huge spiral to the right, go into the ground, and at that point in time, if you visualize it, unless I'm wrong, the air going over the wing, from the back of the wing to the front of the wing, where the engine was on fire, the fire would be going out into space instead of being blown into the aircraft. Well, I'm here, the fire went out at 15,000 feet down towards the ground, and we were getting there, so that's where I am, 10,000 feet, we got away with it. Did you ever find out what happened to the three who bailed out? Several of them, or more than several, but specifically, they were captured by the Germans, to what extent, and I believe I've seen it written, but I can't remember this exact point of the statistic, but some of them survived, some died. Let's discuss now Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1944, you're ordered to take off in the fog, and you were very lucky to survive. Tell me what happened that day. December 24th, 1944, we were targeted to go to Atarga, and everything was there, and as it progressed, when the morning came, 24, being one day before Christmas, when the target got there, what it was, we were all parked in our parking spaces on the peripheral parts of the airport, because of the intense fog that was there, heavy, heavy, heavy fog, and then eventually, nothing was going on, we constantly had red flares blowing in the sky, and maybe you could see it, it says, don't take off yet, type of thing, and then eventually, we did get a clearance, well, the clearance, can you believe, you couldn't see much more than from me to you, that's slight exaggeration, but it was extremely, extremely bad, but we were number eight, I think, of my squadron, from my base at Kimbolton, from the first dismission, and seven of them ended up getting properly taken off into spots of fog and whatnot. Extreme beyond that, it took, while we were going down, we were number eight, we were airborne in a proper location and whatnot, for this day, I'm your pilot, you're my co-pilot, not you, I'll put you over here, you're my co-pilot, but you took and reached on your holding stick, and pulled this way, which made the aircraft shove, while that was done, I was comfortable in our altitude of that flight, this one went this way, and suddenly, the tail end, the front end number two engine and propeller took a telephone pole off six feet off the ground, telephone pole was about eight inches in diameter, nobody in the world should still be here talking to you as a result of that, we got away with it, we flew back, the colonel who was releasing the flight equipment and whatnot says, well, put a hold on, because the last one crashed, well, it did crash, but we kept flying, so we kept flying, now we're loaded with gasoline, we're loaded with bombs, we've got everything, and we can't get back on the ground, because the fog is that bad, so we spent considerable hours in the sky, burning up gasoline on three engines, to finish beyond that, then we made a decision that we should take it, take the bombs and drop them in the North Sea, because if we can't, what are we going to do with them, we did that, and eventually, as we came back about four or five in the afternoon, we spotted an airfield that was open, we landed there, and that was on a Saturday morning, I believe, yeah, and everything was good, we left the aircraft there, they were very nice to us, they set us up to sleep on the floor in the hangars, and on Monday, we flew back to my base. What target was so important that they sent you off in those conditions? You're asking the question I don't remember today, but there's another part of that story, to this day, my only remaining crew member is in Minnesota, and I call him up at ten o'clock in the morning, and he's there, and I say, get the wine out, we will have a drink, and I do still do that every year, he and I are the only two of my crew are still there. How fortunate do you feel to have survived 35 missions? Well, our first troop survived 25, and they had nothing to work with, to speak of, don't quote me that way, but minuscule compared to what the total resources were for the 8th Air Force, or the particular world in general, so it was okay. What are you most proud of from your service? What am I proud of? My answer to that is, I did my job, and everything that I did was not in a negative viewpoint. I look at it, I'm glad I did this, I'm glad I could help, and I, personally, if you know some of my history beyond, then you're doing good there, that's the way I look at it, I'm happy to be here, just to be able to say this, because that's what our world was like at that point in time, how do we say it different, what are you proud of? I'm here.