Oral History Program John Udy Interviewed By Steven F. Crane 12 March 2013 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah John Udy Interviewed by Steven F. Crane 12 March 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: John Udy, an oral history by Steven F. Crane, 12 March 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. John Udy March 12, 2013 1 Abstract: John Udy participated in an oral history interview with Steve Crane of the Ogden Rotary Club on March 12, 2013 to talk about his experiences as a veteran of the Army Air Force. John served in the military from 1942 to 1945 as a colonel and first pilot of the B-17 aircraft. During that time he flew 35 missions over Germany as an aircraft commander and received the Distinguished Flying Cross medal for his service in combat. SC: This is the third session of the 2013 Ogden Rotary Club and Weber State University Veteran’s History Project held March 12, 2013 at the George E. Whalen Ogden Veteran’s Home. I’m Steve Crane, a member of the Ogden Rotary Club, I’ll be conducting this interview. Also present are Stacie Gallagher from Weber State University and my wife, Donna Crane. Our guest at this session is John Udy. This interview will concern John’s military service. Once again, I want to thank you for being with us today and especially thank you for your service. We really appreciate what you and your generation did. Can you tell me you date of birth? JU: It’s March 20, 1921. SC: You said you were in the Army Air Force? JU: I started out in 1942. I went into the Army Air Force at that time. The Army Air Force, was until after my wartime services and they changed it to the U.S. Air Force. I stayed in the Reserves until I retired. SC: What year did you enter the service? JU: 1942. 2 SC: What year did you leave the service? JU: 1945. SC: What was your rank at the time you left service? JU: Colonel. SC: What would be the definition of your job or your position? JU: It depends on the time. I was a first pilot on a B-17 and I flew 35 missions over Germany from August of 1944 until January 1945. What they called me there was an aircraft commander. SC: Okay. What awards or medals did you receive during your time? JU: I got the Distinguished Flying Cross, the air medal with about six oak leaf clusters, the European-African-Middle East Theater and the World War II Victory Medal. I’d have to look at my records to get them all. SC: The Distinguished Flying Cross. JU: I got that for one hazardous mission over Germany when we barely made it back. SC: How did you come to be in the service? JU: I volunteered. I was working for the government as an aircraft mechanic. I went to a movie in Salt Lake and all these airplanes were flying around. I thought, “That’s what I want to be.” So, I signed up. SC: What was your age at that time? JU: I was about 20 or 21. 3 SC: After you volunteered, where did you have your training? JU: I went to Santa Ana, California. When you go there they decide if you’re going to be a pilot, a navigator, or a bombardier. I got to be a pilot and that’s what I wanted. I went from there to Dos Palos, California for primary training. That was the first airplane we flew. It was the Ryan PD-22. SC: What characteristics did you have that made you a pilot? JU: I don’t know. I wasn’t on the committee, but I had operated farm machinery and stuff like that all my life. I knew a little bit about engines. I had been an aircraft mechanic, so I knew about the airplanes. I don’t know whether that helped me or not, but that was the background I had. SC: Where did you go for pilot training? JU: Dos Palos, California for the primary training. The BT-13 was the first airplane we flew. If you could pass that then you went on to basic training. We went to Lemoore, California for training there. At that time you had to decide if you wanted to be a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot. I really intended to make flying my career, so I went for the bomber pilot because I would get time in a four engine airplane. The four engine pilots went to Texas and that’s where we took our training in a twin engine airplane. After I graduated from there, they asked us if we wanted to be in B-24’s or B-17’s. I, like a fool, said, “I want to go to the B-24 because I liked the tricycle landing gear.” They sent me to the B-17’s and that was the best thing for me because it was a better airplane. SC: So you felt like the B-17 was superior to the B-24? 4 JU: It was a superior airplane, but I didn’t know that at the time. SC: Is that the “Flying Fortress?” JU: Yes, the “Flying Fortress.” I went from there to Roswell, New Mexico where I took the B-17 transition training. It was where I learned to fly the B-17. SC: When did you go overseas? JU: When I left Roswell, New Mexico, I went to Salt Lake City and down to Plant Park, Florida and Avon Park, Florida where I received my crew. I got my pilot and navigator, etc. We trained there in combat training and left there in about June 1944 for the European theater. We went up to Savannah, Georgia where we were supposed to pick up a new B-17 and fly it across the ocean and in combat, but they ran out of B-17’s so we had to ride the ship across. We spent 15 days on a boat going across there. SC: Instead of getting to fly a brand new bomber, you took a boat? JU: Yes, that’s right. We were sent to a place where they would send you out to different squadrons. They sent me to the 401st bomb group and that was in Britain and that’s where I flew my missions out of. SC: When did you get your airplane? JU: I didn’t get a new airplane for a while. I flew other airplanes and I flew one by the name of Packawallop II and I flew that several missions. Marlene Deitrich went over there to entertain. Our group commander, Colonel Bill Sewell, took the airplane to go pick her up at the airport and bring her back for the entertainment. The next day, the crew that flew the Packawallop II was shot down. I don’t know 5 if she put a hex on it. She was German, you know. I don’t know if she put a hex on it or what, but the airplane did go down. SC: Did you then get a new airplane? JU: Yes, I got a new airplane. SC: So you were flying and bombing Germany? JU: We bombed oil refineries, ball bearing works, and airplane factories. We didn’t bomb cities. We bombed the industrial targets and mainly oil refineries. I went to Merseburg Oil Refinery four times straight. When they captured that they found 1000 aircraft guns around it. That’s what they were shooting at us. SC: Were you doing those during the daylight hours or the evening hours? JU: Daylight. SC: Okay. That was more risky I’m sure. JU: It was, the British wouldn’t fly in the daytime they flew at night. SC: Can you tell us about some of your flights and the dangers and experiences you had? JU: The first mission that I went on, they gave me an experienced co-pilot. My regular co-pilot didn’t fly with me, so we flew to Leipzig, Germany. That was a terrible target, it had a lot of aircraft guns and we got the oil system shot out on the B-17 while we were flying. It acted like it was hit in the right side on the wing or something because it went down on that side, but I managed to get it up again and flew it back to our base. I called the base and said, “I’ve got no brakes, I 6 can’t stop. Can I land?” They said, “You stay up there until we get these other airplanes down.” That’s what they did and they had the ambulance and a lot of other people out at the end of the runway to patch us up if we got hurt. I brought that airplane in and landed it with no brakes. It doesn’t stop very easily. I kept my number one and number two engines running so I could control it a little bit. We got to the end of the runway and there were all these people standing out there. I could see over the end of the runway that there was a great big ditch out there that I would hit and it would really wreck that airplane. It had a little patch of grass between me and that ditch. When I got onto that grass, I pushed the number one engine and opened it up and it turned the airplane and it caused it to ground loop. I ground looped a B-17. I don’t know if anybody had ever done that before or since. When it turned around and headed for all those people, they scattered. The airplane kept turning around and it just spun around and stopped. It didn’t hurt the airplane at all. That was my first combat mission. I had another one on Christmas Eve of 1944. We bombed Koblenz, Germany and we got hit in the number one engine oil system and it caused it to lose all the oil. Normally, it had a stand pipe in there to save enough oil to feather the engine. By feathering the engine I mean turn the prop out so it will stop. This airplane didn’t have that in it. When the pressure dropped and we tried to feather the engine it wouldn’t feather. It sat out there and wind milled after we turned the ignition, fuel and everything off. It wind milled until it broke the crank shaft on the engine. The prop was just spinning and the sparks were flying. It didn’t catch on fire, thankfully. We dropped out of formation and headed back for England and 7 called for fighter support. We didn’t get it because no fighter heard us. We went all the way back. This was at the time during the Battle of the Bulge when all that fog moved in and covered our base and we couldn’t get back to our base. We got back across the channel. Some pilots would try to pull that prop off the engine and sometimes they’d succeed, but it would come right back through the cockpit. I thought, “I’m not going to do that.” So I just left it on. We came over an airfield and I turned on my landing lights. I couldn’t contact them with my radio because I didn’t know what base they were. I went around and landed. Lucky for us, the prop didn’t fall off and get entangled in the airplane and we got out alright. They found later that a lot of the counterweights in the wing were broken loose and were just rattling around in there. They could have jammed that wing or a control anytime, but they didn’t. SC: The flight surface on the wing could have been damaged. JU: We called our base and since it was foggy they wouldn’t send anybody after us so we had to stay at that base. SC: Was that your new B-17? JU: No, it was another one. I don’t remember which one it was. SC: As you flew over and back, did you say you usually had fighter support? JU: In the latter parts of our missions we did. SC: Were they able to follow you clear to the target? JU: No, the fighter pilots are not dumb. They’re not going to fly into that flack. 8 SC: Not like bombers had to, right? JU: When you get up there and get ready to go into the flack to bomb the target, the fighters drop back. They stay outside of that flack area. They did help a lot on knocking down the fighters that attacked us. SC: Did you have quite a few German fighters attacking you as you were going and coming? JU: We didn’t have too many fighters hit us. It was mainly flack with us. We did get hit with some Focke-Wulf 190’s on one mission. I was flying along and this guy on my left wing got a direct hit in the engine and he came up right into me and I had to pull up to keep him from hitting me. It caused my airplane to slow up and the Flockwelt-190’s were sitting back there waiting and they started shooting. You could see the 12 millimeter cannons going through the right wing and the others. We managed to get back into the flack away from the fighter and saved us actually. SC: So, the German flack would scare off the German fighters? JU: Oh yeah, they wouldn’t go in it either. They knew it was dangerous. SC: What other dangerous experiences did you? JU: Those were my two most hazardous missions. One mission we came back with 250 holes in the airplane. Luckily, the crew didn’t get hit. None of us got wounded. They asked our navigator to fly with another crew. They went over to Hagenow and they got shot down. The pilot was killed getting out of the airplane, but my navigator bailed out and he was supposed to make a delayed jump where 9 you don’t open your parachute until you get to about 3000 feet above the ground. He pulled it right away and the people were standing around waiting for him with pitchforks and guns and everything. He thought they were going to kill him right then, but they didn’t kill him. The military came and took him over and he spent nine months in a prison camp. SC: Did you see him again? JU: Yes, I did. I saw him after he came out. He was very thin. He lived on bread and potatoes he said. He was really skinny. He died fairly young too. He was only 65 when he died. He was a schoolteacher in California. I thought possibly that the time in there shortened his life. I’m no doctor, I don’t know. SC: You must have become very close with your crew. Did you become close friends with those that were with you? JU: Yes, they were very close friends. We looked out for each other. SC: Did you stay close to them after you served? JU: That’s a funny thing. As soon as we finished our missions, we went our various ways. We went back home and got really split up. I didn’t see too much of them after that. My co-pilot I’ve stayed close with. We have a 401st Bomb Group that the people flew in and they made an association here after the war and a lot of people and their crews went there. My crew wouldn’t go for some reason. My engineer and I went to the reunions they had and I tried to get my navigator, my bombardier and my co-pilot to go and they wouldn’t go. They had one reunion in Omaha, Nebraska and my bombardier, who I had to make my navigator after 10 Mack got shot down, said he would go to that one, but his ears bothered him and he couldn’t fly anymore afterward. Sometimes we’d come down and his ears would bother him so bad that we’d have to go back up and let his ears clear out before we could go back down. He had to have operations on his ears after he got out. He still would not go to that reunion. SC: Can you tell me what the duties of each of your flight crew were? Since you were the flight commander you were obviously in charge of everything. What duties did the co-pilot have? JU: He was there to take over in case something happened to me. He also had duties at takeoff and would monitor the throttles and engines. He’d call it out if the engine started cutting out or something or anything else that he saw wrong. SC: The navigator, is that role pretty self-explanatory? JU: Yes. I never did use mine much because he got shot down and I had to put the bombardier up there to be a navigator and he didn’t really know too much about it. He got me lost twice. The navigator that was leading the group had to be really good and get to the target. SC: Mostly you were following the group? JU: We followed the group mostly. Due partially to the fact that I didn’t have a navigator; I didn’t get to be a lead. I led six airplanes in the formation, but I never got to lead the group. SC: How about the bombardier? 11 JU: The bombardier would sight in on the Norton Bomb Site for the target and all the other airplanes dropped when he dropped. When he saw the lead airplane dropping bombs, the rest of us drop the bombs. SC: So was there only one of those Norton Bomb Sites? JU: No, they had a deputy, a number two man doing the same thing so that if something happened to the first one, he could take over. They might have had more, but I know they had at least one deputy. SC: So your airplane wouldn’t necessarily have the Norton bomb site? JU: It had the bomb site in it. We could bomb it. SC: Did you have gunners? JU: I had gunners. SC: How many of those were on the B-17? JU: There were six and they all had other duties too. The radio operator was a gunner, and the engineer was a gunner. All the crew had a gun except the pilot and the co-pilot. The navigators had a gun and they were all gunners. SC: Wasn’t there one gunner on the very bottom of the airplane that was separated from everyone else in a little plastic thing? JU: Yes. That was the ball turret gunner. SC: I’ve heard you had to be kind of a small fellow to fit in those confined spaces. JU: Yes, and he had to have a lot of guts too. I had two guys when we were assembling our crew in Avon Park, Florida, they sent me one guy to be my ball 12 turret gunner. As soon as he found out he was going to be the ball turret, he said, “I’m through flying.” All he had to do to get out was say, “I don’t want to fly anymore and they put him on a ground job.” I had two guys do that. Finally, I got this little guy from West Virginia and he didn’t quit, he stayed in there. SC: You must have been very reliant upon those gunners to shoot down and ward off enemy fighters. JU: Well, I didn’t rely on them too much because if we got out by ourselves, we wouldn’t depend on the fighter support because we didn’t have it and then we’d have to rely on those gunners. We never got in that situation except that one time that we didn’t get hit. SC: So you were pretty protected as long as you were in formation with the B-17’s other than from the flack? JU: That’s right. They flew in a particular formation so that the German fighters could come in and many bombers could put their guns on them. That’s why they flew with three airplanes up here and three airplanes here and three here and three back here. That was the formation to fight off the fighter. SC: So you wouldn’t get in the way of each other’s shooting at them. JU: That’s right, and we could concentrate all of our fire power on an airplane. SC: How did this military experience affect your life? Did you feel like it was kind of a defining period in your life? JU: Well, I guess it affected me, but I didn’t realize it too much. I was going to go on and fly civilian airplanes. So, when I got through with my combat mission, I got 13 into the C-54’s which were the best transport the Air Force had. I took training in that and I would have been flying from America to Casablanca, Africa. But, I got married about a year before that when I came back from combat. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I thought, “Well, I think I better get married or something. So, I had my girlfriend waiting for me and we went and got married. Then we couldn’t find a place to live. You could only stay in a room in a private home and you’d have to go out and eat and after about a year of that, before I made any trips in the C-54, I decided to get out. I signed the paper and got out. I’d had all of that living in private bedrooms that I could stand. SC: What have you done with your life? What has been your profession? JU: I’ve been just drifting here and there. No, I wanted to get a ranch. I grew up on the farm and I wanted to get a big ranch, but the bankers weren’t too free with their money. They had the G.I. Bill, but that didn’t help so I didn’t have enough money to buy a big enough ranch. I ended up back working for the government. I started out as a laborer. I went from a first pilot on a C-54 down to being a laborer. SC: Where were you at this time? JU: I was here in Ogden. I worked my way up and I got to be a clerk, then a manager, and ended up being a supervisor buying spare parts for F-4’s and F- 16’s and distributing them. SC: Was this at the Defense Depot in Ogden? JU: That’s where I started out as a laborer. 14 SC: Do you have children? JU: Yes, I have five children. SC: Are they nearby? JU: Yes, they all live here in the Ogden and Salt Lake area. SC: Is your wife alive? JU: No, she died in 2001. She had a hysterectomy and then she found out two years later that the doctor hadn’t taken her ovaries out. We should have took her right back in and had them out, but we didn’t do it. The doctor said it might not have helped anyway, but she got ovarian cancer. She actually had to tell the doctors what she had. They assumed that she didn’t have these ovaries in there. Anyway, her stomach was swelled out a little bit and she’d been studying some literature from our daughter who is a nurse. My daughter was a teacher at Weber State in nursing for many years. She’d send her literature on. So, my wife told the doctor after they’d check and say, “I can’t find out what’s the matter with you.” She said, “Check for cancer.” They did and that’s what it was. SC: Do you have grandchildren in the area? JU: Yes. I have fourteen grandchildren and six great grandchildren. They’re not all in this area. There are some in California and some in Nevada. SC: Is there anything else that you think you ought to tell us about your service? JU: I don’t think so. SC: I want to thank you for your service. 15 JU: Well, you’re very welcome. I was glad I was able to do it. It’s just what I wanted to do at the time. SC: It’s what you wanted to do at the time? JU: Yes, it was. SC: Well, my generation certainly benefited from what you and your generation did. America has a debt of gratitude to pay to you and your associates for what you did. SC: Did you happen to know Lamar Buckner? I think he also flew B-17’s. JU: I knew him, but not until later on. SC: You didn’t know him during the time you were flying? JU: No, I didn’t know him then. SC: Well, thank you for your time today. It’s been really wonderful for us to share this with you.