Adele Hughes Chandler Adele was an Air Corps WAC for about a year and a half at the end of the war. She took her basic training in Des Moines, Iowa, and then went to statistical control school in Orlando, Florida. She later transferred to Gravelly Point Air Base in Virginia, which was her staging base for overseas duty in North Africa. She served in Casa Blanca, Morocco. After the war, Adele went to the University of Utah and married Calvin Chandler who was also a WWII veteran. She came to Weber State University many years after her military discharge in the 1980s. Robert E. Christofferson I attended Weber College (the old campus) in the fall of 1939 through the spring of 1940. My schooling interest was electrical and electronics (chasing electrons). I was chasing electrons about the same time I was chasing girls only to find that both were elusive. In 1941, I was working as an electrician in Salt Lake City and attending the University of Utah, chasing both of the elusives. In late 1941 and most of 1942, I was working at Hill Army Air Force Base as a flight line electrician and going to night school at Weber College. I was about to be drafted (no more deferments). I acquired a letter of recommendation from Weber College plus a letter from a Hill Field flight line supervisor and enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Fort Douglas 29 September 1942. The letters from Hill Field and Weber College worked to the good for the next three years, one month, 21 days, six hours and 38 seconds (approximately). I believe I made a little difference to the outcome of WWII, not much, but a little difference. After short procedures at Fort Douglas, my first assignment was Las Vegas Aircraft Gunnery Base and School. I never completed the recruit phase. I went to work as a flight line electrician and electronics at a huge drop in pay of 50 dollars a month. Oh well, the Army furnished clothing, lodging, food, poor tools and lots of work. After a few months in Las Vegas and establishing a shop in Roswell, New Mexico, on B-25s, I was assigned to the North Atlantic wing of the Army Air Force North Africa sector, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia. I had meters, tools, a little knowledge, and was a sergeant in charge of flight line electrical. In the North African campaigns, other than working under adverse conditions, I was shot at, bombed and strafed. I was lucky, and they were poor shots. We lost a lot of good soldiers. The electrons were more interesting than the girls. They did not like the GIs in their land. Then, as now, we were not looked at as liberators. After the North Africa Mediterranean Campaign, I was assigned to North Atlantic Air Transport and Ferrying Command, working the flight line at Prestwick, Scotland, and Gander, Newfoundland. I also served, at times, as part of the flight crew to bring back aircraft from England for service in the Pacific area. In November of 1945, with lots of service discharge points, I stood in flight clothes and helped to close the Atlantic Command. Then, I flew to Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho, for an honorable discharge from service. After WWII and marriage to a Weber College graduate, Ruth Rhees, I attended Weber College night school to increase my knowledge of (avionics) electronics. The knowledge gained was very useful and fruitful. 14 We lost a lot of good soldiers in the North African Mediterranean Campaign, but we don't talk about that. The newsreels gave a good picture of the horrible events. Someday humankind will use their heads and not their butts. Robert B. Clay - POW I was trained as a bomber pilot on the B-17 Flying Fortress; and in early October 1943, we received orders to transfer to the 401st Bomb Group in England. When we first arrived at Scott Field, we traded our B-17F for a brand new B-17G (with the nose turret). My seventeenth - and final - mission was on the 23rd of May 1944. Nothing unusual happened as we assembled and headed east over the North Sea on a course that would minimize the time we would be over enemy territory. About three minutes from bombs away, the oil pressure on my #2 (left inboard) engine started down, so I feathered the prop. After clearing the Berlin area, I settled into a 110 mph gas-saving slow descent. Suddenly, the #4 engine (right outboard) started to run away and pushing the feathering button had no effect. Now, the situation was serious. With the 100-mph headwind, we were almost standing still with respect to the coastline far below. Months before, the crew had voted to never ditch in the North Sea, if there was any possible alternative. With that in mind, I turned parallel to the coastline, hoping we could make it to Holland or France before going down. My mind was racing to figure out some options when I recalled that even though Sweden was officially neutral, some bombers that had made it to Sweden somehow were flown back to England. Without a word, I made a 180-degree turn and asked my navigator for the heading to Sweden. Now we had a 100-mph tailwind, and I felt better. A few minutes later, at about 13,000 feet, in a straight ahead slow letdown, the plane was surrounded and racked with black balls of flak. We were out of it in a few seconds with no apparent direct hits. Later, I determined that we had flown over Flensburg, a German city near the Danish border. Within two or three minutes, the #3 engine (right inboard), damaged from the flak, started losing oil pressure, so I feathered it. There we were at 12,000 feet, on instruments, with both inboards feathered and the right outboard windmilling. The situation was now critical. When a plane starts to dive, the natural instinct is to pull back on the wheel; but if you are in a turn, the plane rapidly rolls over and goes into a vertical dive. Overcoming my instincts, I held the wheel, as nearly as I could, to a straight-ahead wings level position. The airspeed crawled up to 200 . . . 240 . . . 260 (the red line). I had never pushed a B-17 to that limit. Meantime, as the airspeed had gone up, the noise increased in intensity and pitch. The controls became tighter and tighter. I strained my eyes into the white void ahead hoping we would break out of the clouds in time to avoid a crash. The full view came in a flashocean straight ahead. I rolled out and zoomed back up to the cloud base. Ahead was water and behind was land. I had no choice but to make the 180-degree turn back to the land. Passing over the seashore, I gave the order to bail out. Everyone but my copilot had successfully exited the aircraft. By that time we were at about 2,000 feet, I struggled to keep the aircraft from rolling, I told my copilot to hurry and bail out and that I was going to crash land because I couldn't cut the engine without stalling out and crashing. He answered, 'If it's all right with you, I would rather crash land than bail out.' I said, 'Okay, buckle up.' With my side window open, I circled left for a half turn looking for a suitable spot; but there was none, and we kept losing altitude. We were soon flying in a wooded gully between two wooded hills, when straight ahead was a dirt road between the hills on either side. I aimed for the top of the road and, just as we passed over, the right wing stalled out and struck the road. I dimly recall grinding and banging noises and streaks of light as we were jerked around. Suddenly all was quiet. I could hear birds chirping and the gentle hiss of escaping oxygen. Somehow 15