Bruce Menin interviews Ed Metcalf, a man who served in the United States Army Air Corps as a B-17 Ball Turret Gunner. Here, Mr. Metcalf dispels some myths about World War II and the real dangers of flight in that era and how even non-combat mission could take the lives of an bombers crew...

"The View From the Belly of the Beast - Thirty Heroes of World War Two."

Portions of this article was previously published in The Newburyport Current

When I suggest to veteran Ed Metcalf that Tom Brokaw regards those men and women who fought in World War II to be ‘the greatest generation,’ he laughs. He assures me that our conversation about his experiences as a B-17 ball turret gunner won’t yield “any heroic stories.”

He quietly reconsiders that for a moment, and then says it will.

Metcalf, retired and a resident of the Sullivan Building, explains that in late 1942 he volunteered for service in the war.

“It wasn’t so much about patriotism, it was just that you knew you were going, because it was the right thing to do. You could be drafted, or you could sign up; by signing up, you could control which branch of the service you’d end up in. You know, about 12,000,000 people finally served during the war.”

“No one I knew really wanted to be in the Army Infantry. I signed up for the Army Air Force, and initially trained to be a pilot. About mid-way through my training, they told us they had enough pilots. I chose to be trained as a B-17 ball turret gunner because it would get me into the action quicker. I don’t regret the experience, but I was young. Let’s just say that it wasn’t my finest hour in terms of decision-making.”

The ball turret gunner was responsible for informing the bomber pilot about any planes attacking from the underside of the aircraft, as well as responding with the two fifty caliber machine guns mounted in the turret, which hung from the underside of the plane. While B-17 crews had a 30% mortality rate, the ball turret gunners had a 60% mortality rate, although because of the peculiar armory in the turret itself, they had the lowest wound rate on the plane. The average age of these gunners were 18; keeping in mind that the average age of a B-17 pilot when Metcalf entered the war was 22.

GETTING READY FOR WAR

“I spent late ’42 and most of 1943 training in Florida. Frankly, there wasn’t much training involved. In gunnery and bombing, the training was actually negligible. We’d get into a plane in Florida and fly up to look at the lights of Savannah, then come back. I never actually fired a single shot until I was in Europe, on a mission. So we trained together, and in January 1944, went overseas as a crew. There were ten of us. The trip over took about six days, depending on the weather.”

“They sent us over with 11 other crews. They were really gambling, because they needed the crews and planes over there as soon as possible to begin the build-up for D-Day. We picked up a new plane in Wilmington, Delaware, and flew it up to Presque Isle, Maine. From there, we flew to Goose Bay, Labrador. We flew the planes over individually, not in formation. At Presque Isle, there had been a lot of snow, and the mounds on either side of the runway had frozen in banks of ice. One of the planes skidded into the ice, and the two guys in the nose of the planes were killed.”

“On the way over from Labrador to Reykjavik, Iceland, which was a six hour flight, we hit 100% cloud cover. You needed a real good navigator to get you through something like that. Three of the planes never arrived. They just fell into the cold, cold ocean. Ever since, when I think about bravery and sacrifice, I always think of the 30 guys that fell into the cold Atlantic and disappeared. They never got into the war, no one went looking for them; they just disappeared. That is as much about sacrifice as any of what the rest of us did.”

“When we finally landed at Prestwick, Scotland, we got on a train and were immediately shipped to a replacement depot south and to the west of London. I remember some guy wandering into the dorm at six in the morning telling us we should ‘go outside and look at the weird rocks.’ So we got up, and it was a typical foggy English countryside scene, and looming out of the fog were these immense rocks. It was very eerie. We had been sleeping right next to Stonehenge! We were back on the train by seven, and headed to our ultimate destination, Great Ashfield. We were needed as a replacement crew; by this time they had a great need, between crews finishing their rotation and getting shot down.”

THE MISSIONS AND THE MEN

Each crew would name its plane.

“I named ours,” Metcalf recalled.

Our pilot was this guy from Greenville, South Carolina. He was terribly old, all of 22, and he was losing his hair. So in that tradition of calling nicknaming people the opposite of who they are, we’d started calling him ‘Curley.’ We named the plane “Curley’s Crew.”

Metcalf retains great affection for the B-17.

“I loved that plane. The other plane available was the B-24 Liberator, which was a little faster and a little more maneuverable, but with the B-17, you could shoot it full of holes, and somehow, unless a wing was gone, it always got you home. I know that Boeing has gotten into a little financial trouble with their ethics lately, but I’ve always felt thankful to them for building such an amazing plane. It took so much abuse, and would still give its everything to get you home.”

The position of ball turret gunner was unique on the plane.

“I was responsible for anything that attacked us from below the plane,” recalls Metcalf.

In addition to placement underneath the plane itself, it was a remarkably small compartment. Too small, in fact, for the gunner to wear a full parachute.

“I did keep a chest chute on the flight deck above. There were a couple of times I made a grab for it.”

Once airborne, the gunners would literally contort themselves into the turret. The turret operated hydraulically, with controls at the feet and the head, and the two .50 caliber machine guns were mounted at either side of the head of the gunner.

“If it wasn’t for the slipstream, I’d probably gone deaf from the sounds of those guns so close to my ears. As it was, there was the constant noise of the wind, and then the guns; there wasn’t much chatter on the intercom because we needed to be able to quickly communicate about what we were seeing in each position.”

“Each gun was capable of throwing out 750 rounds a minute, which is a lot of lead. You have to remember, though, the situation we were in. We’d be heading towards the target at 150 miles per hour, and the German fighters would be approaching from the opposite direction at 300 miles per hour, they’d fire and then peel off. Still, you were throwing a lot of lead up there. And when I got into the war, their planes and pilots were as good or better than ours. They had some beautiful planes, very fast, and their pilots had been flying since they were Boy Scouts. By then end of my time, we noticed a distinct drop in the quality of their pilots, although the planes were still better than ours.”

”In the end, I think we won because for every one of us they’d knock down, we’d put two back up. We just overwhelmed them.

Although no one knew specifically when the invasion of Europe was going to happen, Metcalf and his crew were aware that they were undertaking missions designed to prepare the way for the invasion.

“You never knew when you were going to fly. They’d wake us up at 3 AM. You’d be briefed on the mission and the targets, and then you’d be isolated from the rest of the base, so as to keep the targets secret. They’d pull down a big map, and marked on it would be the route and the places we could expect anti-aircraft fire. Some places, like the Ruhr Valley, which we called ‘Happy Valley,’ was loaded with anti-aircraft the entire length of it.”

“After the briefing, we’d draw our equipment; oxygen masks, a very primitive electrically heated suit, then go off to the armory shack for the ‘guts’ of our guns and the ammunition, and load them into the plane.”

‘They’d shoot off a flare, and we’d launch before dawn. In the beginning, when we got there in January, there would be fewer crews, but as the build up for D-Day began, we’d typically send 36 crews out on a mission.”

“Once we got up to 12,000, we’d move into bomb groups, or our attack formation. By the time my crew was flying, we would typically head up to Holland, make a turn over the North Sea, and start the run.”

Metcalf wants to make sure that one of his experiences flying these missions is noted in this article.

“I’ve never seen anyone talk about it much, but I want to tell how that it got cold up there. The planes weren’t pressurized, so it would routinely get forty to sixty degrees below zero on the flight deck. Imagine trying to do anything, let alone fight and use weapons, at that temperature. Frostbite was a serious problem; I saw a number of people get it. The outfits they gave us, the furs and electrical suits worked well enough to prevent frostbite. But they didn’t keep you warm!”

Metcalf has much to say about the camaraderie of the crew.

“One of the things that brought us close, was simply the circumstances of our base. We lived close to one another in our squadron; in a real sense, we had jobs that were dependent on each other, we each had to do those jobs in a way that contributed to our overall safety. We had four officers and six enlisted men, and yet tank was never an issue for us. We knew we were in it together.”

“As a matter of fact, I did my first mission without them. As soon as we arrived, a crew going out needed a ball turret gunner, so I volunteered. I flew that one flight with them, and never got to know that crew. The next mission they went on, they were shot down.”

REMEMBERING

Metcalf never became inured to the losses.

“Some missions we wouldn’t lose any; I can remember missions where half of the planes we sent out didn’t come back. I can remember one mission when a B-17 flying just below us had part of its wing blown off, and it began to tilt up towards our plane. In that flash of a second, I saw the waist gunner, a big strapping Irishman I knew, clearly, I could see his face, and then his plane started spiraling down. And because of the centrifugal force when you go into a spin like that, you can’t get out of the plane. But you still had your job to do, and you only had time to think about that later.”

“The deep penetration bombing raids were the scariest, and most difficult. You’d spend two or three hours getting there, you’d drop the bombs, and then spend the same amount of time getting back to base. Our squadron was the first to bomb Berlin, which was as dangerous a target as there was. There, the efficacy of the anti-aircraft batteries was at their height. We’d be at 27,000 feet, and still be shot at. We bombed Leipzig, and some sites in Poland. Typically, we’d go after factories and munitions centers.”

“You know once you reached a point where the anti-aircraft batteries were firing, and the sky was filled with flak, you knew you’d just have to fly right through it. The plane had to be steady to drop the bombs. There was no pilot skill in those moments that could keep you safe, because you never really knew where the flak would be. It was all just luck, and we knew that. Just luck.”

“As the time approached for D-Day, our targets were the ‘marshalling yards’, to prevent the movement of troops and materials across Germany and France. On my 21st birthday, we had to bomb the rail center at Versailles, and we must’ve done a good job given what the Germans had available to them on D-Day.”

“D-Day itself, for us, was practically a vacation. All we had to do was skip over the Channel; once it became obvious that there would be no air opposition to us, we did two missions that day, one over Omaha Beach, the other over Utah Beach. I think we were more effective at Utah; it seemed like the guys were able to get up over the beach and out of the line of fire more quickly.”

“Each crew did 25 missions and was rotated out. We did our 25, and the need was so great that we ended up doing 32. I actually did a few more; for a week I flew on the Squadron Leader’s plane as a ball turret gunner. He was a one star general back then, Curtis LeMay. Because I was on LeMay’s plane, my crew actually did their last mission without me.”

LeMay later ran as the VP nominee in George Wallace’s independent run for President in 1968; he was known by his nickname “Bombs Away LeMay.”

“Once our tour was up, there was no celebration about finishing, no jollity. You couldn’t do that, because a lot of people around you were still having to go up very day.”

A CHANGED VIEW OF THE WORLD

That empathy for others, characteristic of Metcalf still, has helped shape his world view. He remains thoughtful about people, about war, and how it is waged, and what it does to the warriors and the community.

“A day doesn’t go by where those experiences shape my point of view. It was terribly helpful to me as I faced the realities of life, the good and the bad. As a result, I think my goals were a lot different. I cared a lot more about doing things that were helpful, rather than make a lot of money and accumulate things. I came out with a sense of values, a sense of community that I hadn’t had before.”

He is also aware of what war can do to people.

“When we went to war, in a way we had a great asset; Hitler. No one could convince me ever, then or now, that the world was safe with him doing what he did. It was a national effort, and everybody did their part. You did what was being asked, and you did it because it was the right thing.

“But there was also a terrible toll. Way back before we understood about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, we saw a lot of it. There was one guy in our squadron, a C-pilot, who would just freeze up every mission. He just couldn’t do it, though he kept going back up and trying. Finally, he was pulled from the crew, because it was a safety issue. And there was no shame in that, we all really understood, and saw how hard he had tried.”

“The flight crews, who really depended on each other, had far more tolerance for these problems than did the planners or the other people on the base. Remember, only about 10% of the people assigned to any air base actually flew—the rest were there to support the mission.”

“I got there in January, 1944; and my tour of duty was up on June 21, 1944. They took about 150 who were rotating out home on some really big ocean liner, the one that had brought President Wilson over for the Versailles Peace Conference. And you know, here we were, on this big boat, 150 guys, and the rest of the guys on the boat were all people who had suffered mental disturbances from what they had seen. Some of these guys were literally in padded cells, and we were assigned to watch them on the trip back. The Armed Forces had no idea how to prepare you for combat emotionally. It’s only now, really, that we’re beginning to understand that these experiences can put your head in a bad way.”

“The guys in the foxholes had it pretty bad, they were cold, and what they had to deal with was very intense. It was different for us, in some ways maybe even a little bit more stressful. We’d fly off on these insanely dangerous missions, where we could go down in a flash, and then, if we were lucky, come back to base, and go out for a night and chase the English girls in town. Then, at 3 AM, maybe the next morning, we’d brief for another mission. This constant swinging back and forth had it’s own impact on us.”

As far as the old saying, ‘there is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole,’ Metcalf, who sings in the choir at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Newburyport, begs to differ.

“That is just BS. I clearly remember an instance when a Father pulled a kid aside after a briefing, and asked him if he wanted to go to confession. And the kid turned to him and said, ‘no Father. I’m gonna go fix my gun. I believe that will be a bigger help.’ All that business about prayers before a flight, I never saw it. Maybe that was part of the problem, in a way. We kept all that stuff inside of us. We just didn’t sit around talking about it. The only service I ever saw the Chaplains on the base perform was to loan guys money when they ran out.”

At the finish of his rotation, Metcalf was still the youngest of his crew at the age of 21.

“Of course, they called me Junior,” he smiles.

AFTER THE WAR

Metcalf was born in a small town in Ohio, although his grandfather was born in Newburyport.

“After I was rotated back to the states, I spent some time training gunners in Florida, which was really great. Then, I took advantage of the greatest piece of legislation ever passed by the Congress, the GI Bill. Went to college, where I studied History, something that really interested me. Didn’t end up using it much, as I became a fundraiser, working for agencies and schools. Funny thing was, the job required a lot of traveling, I was very nervous about getting on those planes for quite some time after my discharge.”

Metcalf is thoughtful and passionate about the upcoming Veteran’s Day, and becomes increasingly animated as we speak.

“We all came out of the service in dribs and drabs, so I don’t remember a lot of parades and celebrating. There were just so many of us. And I’ve never been one to take out medals and wear them on my chest; it’s OK if others feel like they want to do that. What has always bothered me is that sometimes it is used to equate support for a particular war with patriotism. If you don’t support our war in Iraq, you aren’t a patriot. The idiocy of such an idea can only come from people who have no understanding of what it means to be in a war, to fight. That the President of the United States initiated such a war is shameful. When he had his chance, he ducked it, he never fought in a war.”

“When I read about our troops over in Baghdad my stomach aches, because of the foolishness of it. There must be guys who know it is useless. My heart goes out to them.”

After his own experience, Metcalf draws a clear distinction between wars fought for political purposes, and those fought for what he believes are genuine causes.

“I told my son, during the Viet Nam War, that if he wanted me to take him to Canada, I would. It never came to that, because his draft number was too high.”

“ I remember having a friend, a big guy, football player, and he tried to enlist and was turned down because he had severe mastoid problems. And he suffered because of that, he was ashamed he couldn’t do his part.”

“My father was in combat in WWI, in fact he was in the trenches when the Armistice was declared. He never talked about his experiences until after I got back from my service. Funny about that; I guess the thing of it is that you don’t want to convey the idea that there is something heroic about war. It’s an anathema, too important to be thought of in such superficial terms. And for at least 20 years, I didn’t talk about it with anyone except those who had similar experiences.”

“So I guess if I have a my beef with the way we celebrate Veteran’s Day it is that by and large, it is used by people who don’t know what they are talking about for their own purposes. I just don’t feel that same surge of emotion; I did what was asked of me. That isn’t heroic.”

He leans back, and after a few moments is ready to speak.

“You know, every Veteran’s Day, I think about those thirty men who went into the drink near Iceland. Nobody remembers them, nobody sees their efforts as part of the sacrifice required by war.”

“Nobody played taps for them.”


They are the heroes Ed referred to at the beginning of the story, the ones Ed celebrates each year at this time.

 

 
 

Copyright© by The Author: Bruce Menin

Graphics Copyright© The Fedora Chronicles 2007