Taking the Fight to Nazi Germany in a B-17 Flying Fortress | Paul "Bud" Haedike

They said if you flew 6, 10, 12 missions, you were on borrowed time. You had to earn your way. When you flew, there was a high group, a medium group, and a low group. And we got the low group. And by the time we got there, the Germans were zeroed in pretty good. And they shot out two of our engines. And a B-17 is not made to stay up on two engines. I was born and raised on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois. Tell me what that was like at that time. Well, I grew up about a mile and a half from Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play. And like one of my grandkids said, Grandpa, your backyard is like a postage stamp. We lived in a three-flat, totally different than today. But it was great. And I lived there until I went into the service in 1943. Tell me how you heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. That's amazing. You know, that question has been asked of me probably more than any other one. I was sitting in a mall shop on Sunday. I believe it was December 8th, with a buddy, having a malt after church on Sunday. And over the radio, a voice came. A state of war exists between the Empire of Japan and America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And I said to my buddy, I remember it so well. Oh, we're only 16. We'll never get in. Little did I know. That's right. So you were 16. And when did you join the service? My 18th birthday, I got my draft notice, May 30th, Memorial Day. And I was in camp July 19th. What was your training like? Well, I went to 17 different camps, if you count them all, in the service before I went overseas and back. Initially, I went to Camp Grant, Illinois, which was induction. And then they asked anybody interested in the Air Force. And, of course, some of us held our hands up. We were just kids. Wanted to be fighter pilots, you know. I mean, and there wasn't a kid that didn't want to be, you know, in the movies or what. But various positions in the service, whether it be infantry, Air Force, Navy, what have you, it was like quarters. And if that quarter was filled, they didn't need pilots. But they needed this. And in my case, they didn't need fighter pilots. They needed bomber crew members. And you took what they handed you. As a guy said, when they said, jump, you said, how high? So when did you head overseas? December, I think, of 44. Right after Christmas. Now, before you engaged in your missions, you did practice missions over Ireland and Scotland. Is that correct? Yes, very good. Yeah, we had to fly, I would think, more so for the navigator, who did a lot of celestial navigation, meaning with the stars. And we would fly at night a lot. I don't know why. But we went to Scotland and Ireland, not on the ground, up in the air. And I believe it was to get used to, you know, going to a specific target. And then the day came when we were picked to go on an actual bombing mission. Now, one thing I think it's important to clarify, when you're the bombardier, do you have some independence on when to release? Or are you just following orders when people say, time to release? Another good question. During the war, when it started way back in 42, that is in bombing Germany, they used the Norden bombsight exclusively. Every plane. But then in late 44, most people don't know this, the powers to be decided to go away with precision bombing. Now, what's precision bombing, Bud? That is a specific target, like the Empire State Building, the Arch in St. Louis. We were losing too many men, and we went to pattern bombing, or it was called many other things. What was that? We would watch the lead ship in our squadron. When he opened his bomb bay doors, we would open ours. When his first bomb came out, I would release mine. We dropped on the center of Berlin, the center of Munich, or what have you. Not nice. We killed thousands of people. But in actuality, it ended the war about a year sooner. Germany, those historians that really looked into it, was totally flattened. Totally. The only example I could give you is 9-11, when the Twin Towers were hit. I remember a guy was talking to me at an air show, and he said, Isn't that terrible? I said, Very terrible. But I said, How would you like the entire city of Chicago to look like that? And he said, Are you kidding? And then I told him about Germany. It was the knockout electricity, water, anything, and just flattening everything. War is naturally a terrible thing. We talked a little bit earlier about the number of planes that were in the air at a given time. I was told, I didn't even know this, there were times when 6, 7, 800 planes would come over a specific target, the same target, the same day. And it would take a half hour to 45 minutes for all those planes to cross over that city and drop their bombs. Can you even imagine? You know, those people bled just like we did. Can you imagine those people down there with bombs raining down for not five minutes, but nearly an hour? And we would form, first we'd take off with our own group, which consisted of about 36 planes. And that's where a lot of crashes occurred. The weather in England was very bad, very cloudy, hazy, not too many sunshine days. And planes collided. Example, one day we missed a plane. That was one of my jobs, up in the nose, to keep my eyes out for other planes. And we missed a plane by about 50 feet. And that's a bit scary. In fact, that's how I lost my hair. Joke, joke. But once we formed, then we'd continue on and meet another group and form. And another group. Took a long time. Then we crossed the North Sea, or English Channel, and went to the specific target. And that target, you didn't deviate. You were on the IP, initial point. You had to, because of the guy using the northern bomb site. Once you dropped the bombs, you headed straight home. Hopefully. Amazing. So you could be a 10-hour flight, but the actual bombings are a couple of minutes. Yeah, I kept a log. I'm just one of those kooks. I kept a log on how many hours, what type of bombs, how many holes in the plane. From German, 88 millimeter. And a couple guys on my crew, this is the truth, said, What are you doing that for, Haruki? We're not going to make it. Well, they said if you flew 6, 10, 12 missions, you were on borrowed time. And back to our first mission, you had to earn your way. When you flew, there was a high group, a medium group, and a low group. And we got the low group. And by the time we got there, the Germans were zeroed in pretty good. And they shot out two of our engines. And a B-17 is not made to stay up on two engines. We didn't go like that, but we went like that. In fact, we were going to bail out, meaning parachute, but the pilot, thank God, said, Maybe we can make it and not be POWs, prisoners of war. We weren't sure where the German lines were, but they were right near the Rhine River, and we made it across the Rhine, outside of a town called St. Troyden, Belgium. When we crashed, and we used up a fighter field, a fighter field like is this long. Pardon me, a bomber field is much longer. So we went out into a field and nosed over. I opened a window, and this guy came out, which was an American. And if I may, I remember this. He said, What are you doing here with that big-ass bird? And I said, What are all those German signs? And he said, We left them up for sentimental reasons. The Krauts had left there probably six, seven months before. Now that might sound like a long time, but it really isn't. We got out of the plane, and they had a truck there, and this truck took us to a schoolhouse for shot-down crews. We weren't the only one through the war that got shot down. And we stayed there four days, and then a C-47, that's a transport plane, was sent from England to Belgium to pick us up, and they took us back, and then I flew 22 more combat missions. Wow. What was it like getting on that next one, knowing what had happened the last time? Again, too long ago to exactly remember, but I'm sure with some hesitation and fear. This week's episode featuring a hero of the battle for Europe is sponsored by Hillsdale College. One thing all of us watching have in common, we love history, and we love to learn. For us history nuts, Hillsdale College is now offering more than 40 online courses, all completely free. Hillsdale's course on the Second World Wars has been a fantastic complement to so many of the stories we share here on the channel. Taught by Hillsdale President Larry Arnn and acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson, the course digs deep into the wider picture of the war in which so many of our heroes fought. And there's so much more even beyond World War II. Learn about the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, the history of the ancient Christian church, economics, the great works of literature. It's all available for free from Hillsdale College. Courses are self-paced, so you can start whenever and wherever. Go right now to hillsdale.edu slash AmericanVeterans to enroll. There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That's hillsdale.edu slash AmericanVeterans to enroll for free. If you ever meet anybody, I don't care who, whether it be in the infantry, air force, or what, and they tell you they weren't scared, they're full of prunes. I was scared every mission. Every mission. And think about it. If somebody shoots at you right here on the street, wouldn't you be scared? The Germans fired 88 millimeter cannons. That was their gun. And they could fire up to 25,000 feet. Five miles. And at first maybe when you saw the black puffs of smoke, that's after their shell explodes. But the shell explodes into 100 pieces, 150, no exact number. I dug flak out of our plane. I've got it at home. And, of course, if it hits you here, you're gone. But many guys lost arms, legs, what have you. I said a prayer of God every mission. I happened to be a Christian man. I prayed. I had a small prayer book with me my grandma gave me. In fact, I gave it to my son when he went to Vietnam. But it was scary, of course. What was the impact like when the plane hit the ground? I could give you a story I don't remember. It was only 79 years ago. I mean, I don't remember where I was last month. But it had to be scary but thankful that we made it. Now, as the bombardier, let's talk about what you did on a regular basis. What would you be doing as the bombardier before the flight took off? Well, we all kind of did the same thing. We had nothing to do with the bombs. The ground crew loaded the bombs, did all that. But we picked up the .50 caliber machine guns. I remember that. And brought them out to the plane and put them in the, whatever, receptacle. We would check our oxygen to make sure it worked. I don't know if you know this or not, but every position had its own oxygen tank. And if an oxygen tank got hit, which it did many times, a guy wouldn't even know it. But what would happen? He'd go to sleep. And he'd be dead in about five minutes from anoxia. So one of my jobs was to check for oxygen to make sure they had it. If they didn't, my position would unplug our line, put a portable bottle, and go to that position and administer oxygen. But we had, I'm sure, I can't remember all of them, little responsibilities. I mean, you didn't just get on the plane and suck your thumb. You had to do something. And I had to put, that's a good point, every bomb had a fuse in the back, if you've seen. And when you hear in a movie the, the bomb's going down, that's that fuse spinning out counterclockwise. Once it's out, now the bomb is armed. And when it hits, detonation, it explodes. And on two missions, where we got lost, I had to go back in the bomb bay, which is about that wide, and put the cotter pins back in the bomb. Why? Because when we landed, if the bomb was live and we had an accident, it'd explode. But by putting the cotter pin back in, the bomb was safe. And if you could go down on the bottom of the North Sea, or the English Channel, you would see many B-17s that didn't make it. They thought they could, and they ran out of gas. We would carry 2,400 gallons of gas, compared to your car that carries 15 to 20. We would burn 50 gallons of gas per hour, per engine. Four engines, we'd burn 200 gallons of gas per hour, under good conditions. Now, if you're hit and there's trouble, just like your car, you don't get the mileage. But 200 into, what did I say, 1,800 miles? Berlin was about 1,600 miles. So under good conditions, you'd come back with a little gas. But there were times when you were leaking gas. Most of the gas is in the wings. That's where they kept it. And if you were losing gas, the guys all of a sudden run out, and down they go. They had a fuel gauge. But there were a number of guys, so I heard, that were gung-ho. They were going to make it home, and they didn't. We landed in Brussels once, and Paris, to refuel. Because we knew we wouldn't make it home. But was there always one target per mission, or were there multiple targets? No, we would have a secondary. Another very good question. Why? You've got to remember, radar was in its infancy at that time. And if it was a total overcast, you're guessing. So I don't remember how many, but we hit secondary targets. Meaning, you couldn't see the first one. So you hit something else. I bombed Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, Cologne, Kiel, and there's others. But the rest were smaller towns. But why smaller, Bud? Because they probably had a factory there, or oil refinery, or what have you. Sure. Major infrastructure that helps the German war machine. Right. We didn't choose them. They told us where to go. In my log, it says marshalling yards. That's railroad yards. If you could cripple the railroads, they couldn't transport anything, as you said, to slow down the Germans. And once the bombs were away, what was your job the rest of the mission? Home. Let's go home. No, really. I mean, if you can visualize, bombs away, and then the planes would... And going to a target, you would go to throw the Germans off. If you went direct, they would be, you know, kind of know, but it was amazing. They knew anyway. They had their spies, just like we did. But coming home, we went, what do you call it, as the crow flies, straight. Yeah. So you're in these large formations, so is every plane doing that zigzag? Yeah. The group would follow one another. And then if you had wounded on board, which many, many did, they would shoot a red flare off, and they got priority to land first. Why? To take the guy into a hospital. And then, of course, coming home, I remember they used smoke pods because the weather was so... You couldn't see. So if the smoke or fire were... We came in once where we didn't even use the runway. We just used grass. You couldn't see. Planes were zigzagging across from one another. Pretty dangerous. But coming home was the exciting part because you knew you were home. When you saw, and you know Hollywood, but when you saw the White Cliffs of Dover, you knew you were home. Now, were all of your crew members uninjured? Everyone was never hurt. They're all gone now. I'm the last of the Mohicans. But we were a blessed crew. We really were. My last mission was somewhere in the latter part of April, and then the war ended two weeks later. So you were a couple of missions... Pardon? You were a couple of missions away from being done anyway then, right? No, they increased it to 35 from 25, and we were all real happy about that. And when I went home, I was told I needed 12 more missions. And after my leave, I would go to the Pacific. And I remember telling my dad about that. And boy, he really got it. Well, I mean, he's a kid, you know. And when I was home on leave, they surrendered. And I was one happy guy. Because, you know, like you say, how far can you push your luck? What are you most proud of from your time in service? Making it. Being able. You know, as you got older, I'm 98 1⁄2 now. When I was 25 or 30, I didn't even think about it. I mean, I'll be retired 40 years February 12th. And I have still four of my salesmen call me, which is really sweet. But we didn't talk about it. Like this event here, we are being so honored, and it makes you feel good. When we were on a plane coming from Boston to here, my son and I sat right up in the first seat in regular, right behind first class. And this guy comes, wanted to shake my hand. And he said, I just admire you. And he said, I want you to take my seat. I said, no, no, you stay where you're at. But the honor of these events, the honor of being taken back to Europe last March, I'm very thankful for that, that people remember. But you know who really remembers? The people in Europe. Everybody there, kids, they weren't even born. Thank you for our freedom. Not for yours. And I said, how would you know? You weren't even born. Yeah, but I got a mom and dad and grandparents, and they told me about it. Those people have not forgot. And I suppose we wouldn't either if we were attacked, you know. We are a very blessed country. And this is what I wish and hope and pray whoever sees this realizes how blessed we are. And I end my talks every time the 8th Air Force, we lost a little bit over 26,000 guys, 19 to 28. Think about this. They gave their lives. They never became husbands or dads. They never came home. And I tell these young people, when you go home tonight, you say a prayer of thanks to God for those men that fought for you and gave their lives. We could be talking a different language. I'm not saying we were, but we could have. And now that's what I'm proud of, that I was able to do something for my country.