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American Morning
Memories of World War II
Aired August 15, 2001 - 10:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: With the popularity of books about the World War II generation, we can now add another volume to the list. It is called "The Wild Blue," written by historian Stephen Ambrose. This book tells the true stories of the men and boys -- literally boys, now, who flew B-24 bombers over Germany. Among them was former Senator George McGovern, we find, and both men are with us in Washington. ` Good morning, good to see both of you. How are you?
GEORGE MCGOVERN, FMR. SENATOR AND B-24 PILOT: Good morning.
STEPHEN AMBROSE, WRITER AND HISTORIAN: Good morning.
HARRIS: Well, I'm glad to have you with us this morning. I got a chance to spend the evening with this book, Professor Ambrose, and I have to tell you, it's absolutely fascinating. I have a couple of questions, first to you since you wrote the book. Why did you pick the B-24 to write about?
Because everybody knows about the B-17, the flying fortress. It's the most famous of all the bombers of the second World War. But there were 5,000 more B-24s than there were B-17s -- 18,300 of them. And they were in the Eighth Air Force, but primarily they were in the 15th Air Force, and then they were out in the Pacific and they did a superb job. And unless the men who were pilots or crew on the plane bring it up, nobody ever has heard of the B-24.
HARRIS: Yes.
AMBROSE: So I wanted to write about it.
HARRIS: As I understand it, is it true there's only three of them left?
AMBROSE: And only one is still flying.
HARRIS: That's amazing. And you flew one them, Senator McGovern, and from what I understand, it was like flying a brick, from what I hear. Is that true?
MCGOVERN: Well, before they got the new controls on the plane -- that came in the last year and a half of the war -- it was the toughest airplane in the Air Force to fly. I mean, just in terms of shear physical energy, it makes me tired even to think about yet.
After we got the hydraulic controls the last year or so of the war, it was much easier.
HARRIS: And I read through a couple of pages in here and I got to read about the one landing that you had to make. Is it Cyraknial (ph) -- the base you were at and you had lost your hydraulics and you had to use a parachute to stop the plane. Can you tell us about that one quickly?
MCGOVERN: That's right. We were at (UNINTELLIGIBLE) over on the Adriatic side of Italy, and we came out without any hydraulic fluid at all. There was nothing to lower the landing gear, the flaps or the breaks or anything else. So what we had to do was to tie a couple of parachutes on stanchions inside the plane, and then throw them out the windows on each side just as we touched the runway. The parachutes filled up and that's all we had to stop us from rolling down that runway at 160 miles an hour.
HARRIS: You actually gave the men who were on board with you the opportunity to jump out before you landed, and they chose not to?
MCGOVERN: That's right. When we got near the field, I said, "There'll be no criticism of anybody that wants to jump out. I'll take you close to the field. All you have to do is jump out and pull the rip cord."
And the engineer said, "What are you going to do?"
I said, "I'm going to take this plane in." Everybody else agreed to ride it down, and fortunately we were able to walk away from it.
HARRIS: Boy!
MCGOVERN: During war-time conditions, they say a good landing is one that you can walk away from.
HARRIS: Well, that was a good one, then. An exciting one to read about it.
Professor Ambrose, these kinds of stories are reminiscent of the other stories that you have been able to find in your annals of World War II and achievements by men like Senator Mcgovern here, average men who go on to do impossible things. What is it about this group of men, and boys, in many cases, who were on these planes that strikes you so? And is it any different from some of the other stories you have written about before in the past?
AMBROSE: The airmen had a different kind of a war from the infantrymen. The infantry were in foxholes. They were being shot at all the time. The airmen -- you see a tent right now. They had tents to live in, they had cots to sleep on, they had hot food. And they were the envy of the ground men, until they went in the air. And then it was just a flak in front of them, just -- Senator McGovern says, like hell itself. And I've heard that from many of the other pilots. And the terror involved in flying into that flak, and then when a B-24 got shot and started to tumble or crash -- on the other planes, they had holes in them, too, from shrapnel -- but the men are looking out and they're counting the parachutes, one, two, three -- sometimes it got up as high as five. Sometimes there were no parachutes at all. These were the guys that they lived with, the guys that they ate with. These were their buddies, and they're watching them go down. And meanwhile, they're getting the hell shot out of them from German 88s down on the ground. And it was absolute terror.
HARRIS: That's phenomenal. And you know, those kind of stories are the kind of things that most men that came back from World War II did not want to talk about once they got home. We heard...
AMBROSE: They did not. That's absolutely right. And one other thing -- many others, but one other thing about the airmen -- the Army Air Forces did not are force anybody to fly. If McGovern or a member of his crew said, I'm not going on this mission, it's too dangerous, or I've got a cold or I've got a headache or what -- they didn't even need an excuse.
HARRIS: Yes.
AMBROSE: They never, ever said no. George flew a day or so after he got a cable that his father had died of a heart attack. And his commander said, "You can take the day off."
And George said, "No, I'm not going to use that excuse. I'm here to fly."
HARRIS: I've got to ask -- I've got to ask the senator this question then. Considering that, and considering how difficult it is for many veterans to talk about these things, what was this whole process of sitting down here with Professor Ambrose and digging up these memories and actually putting them down on paper? What that was like for you?
MCGOVERN: Well, we were recalling things that happened more than 50 years ago, 55 or 56 years ago. There was a certain amount of therapy about it. It was good to get these things out, things that have bothered me all these years. It was good to talk to somebody with a sympathetic mind, and who knew a lot about warfare and what we had gone through. So from that standpoint, it was a plus.
I do have to say, parts of it were painful. There were times when I had difficulty fighting back the tears when we talked about what happened over there so many years ago. It's particularly sad to recall Sam Adams, (ph) my navigator, who was killed one day flying with another crew. He had an old cap that he used to wear that he called his good luck cap. It flew out the Bombay door on the previous mission and he was worried that day flying without it -- you know the combat people are always a little bit suspicious. Anyway, he went up to fly with another crew that day and never came back. It was sad to recall that. He was a very promising, brilliant young man.
HARRIS: This book is full of recollections like that. And we all thank you, both of you, for putting this pen to paper and actually recording things for the rest of us. We really appreciate this.
Senator McGovern and Professor Ambrose, thank you very much for coming in this morning, and good luck with the book. And also, Professor Ambrose, good luck with "Band of Brothers." I know it's coming out fairly soon.
AMBROSE: Thank you.
HARRIS: All right. We hope to talk to you about that some other time. Take care.
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