Interview with Harley Meyer: World War II Veteran
Mr. Johnston and young students, first of all, I want to thank you
for letting me come here and talk to you. My name is Harley Meyer, and I
was a pilot in the 38th Bomb Group of the 71st Squadron in the Pacific
Theater. I'm seventy-five years old, and I graduated from high school in
1941. Of course, in the summer of '41 on June 22 Germany invaded Russia.
Then December 7, of course, we had Pearl Harbor, so we were looking ahead
at a very uncertain future.
The war after Pearl Harbor, of
course, changed things. Prior to that we were in the throngs of the Great
Depression. Gas was 15 cents a gallon. Hamburger was 5 cents a pound. I
finally got a job working for a painting contractor paying 20 cents an
hour, and I was damn glad to have it. Then, of course, when the war came
along things changed. Carpenters were getting - a good carpenter would get
35 cents an hour. Then to build up all the bases the government was
offering three and a quarter an hour. That was so much money that we
couldn't even comprehend it.
Well, anyhow, I'd always had it in
my mind that I sure wanted to be a pilot in Uncle Sam's Air Force, I joined
the Army in January of 1943, and to become a pilot, a navigator, or a
bombardier you entered the aviation cadet program. Your title was aviation
cadet. So anyhow, after a battery of tests, interviews, written
examinations, and physicals; I was accepted in pilot's training. The first
thing you do is go through preflight, and that's strictly classroom work.
You learn meteorology, navigation, and the hardest thing though was code -
Morse code. In our training you just had so much time, and if you didn't
get it you just washed out .That was the end of it. I mean, you were really
under the gun, but I loved it. Then, the next phase was primary flying. You
had to learn to fly. See flying was in its infancy in those days. Very few
people knew how to fly. They had to start from scratch to start an Air
Force. I think we started with maybe 500 pilots and ended up training maybe
175,000. That was quite a feat.
So I went to El Reno for
primary. That's your first phase of flying, and it's the toughest. We lost
56% of our class there that were washed out. We had four barracks, and we
wound up with less than two. Then we went to basic flying, which was more
sophisticated. You get a more high performance aircraft, and you get into
instrument flying and night flying. That was at Garden City, Kansas, and
there we lost another, I think it was another 19%. Three guys got killed in
night flying . They lost their lives, and that was the other thing. Then
after you finish that - those courses are always ten weeks long. Then you
go on to advanced, and then you step up again an aircraft. You have a
retract gear and again a lot of instrument flying. You do more acrobatics
and stuff like that. That's your last go. Then when you finish that you
graduate. That was a big day. You get your wings and your bar. You're now
an officer and a pilot. Then I had a furlough - first one - twenty months
after I went in.
Then I was assigned to instructors' school at
San Antonio, Randolph Field. I was considered a West Point of the Air, and
I went through that. Then I was sent to Vance Air Force Base to instruct.
Well, when we got there we didn't even unpack our bags, because they had an
order wanting pilots for B-25 training in Carolina. So I went to South
Carolina - Greenville and learned to fly the B-25. I've got pictures of it
over there. That's a twin engine bomber - a medium bomber.
Are you familiar with Doolittle's Raid any of you - flying off the
carrier? Well, that's what they flew. They used them extensively in the
Pacific. We didn't do any Ellis's bombing. It was strictly down on the deck
as low as we could get, and we had 850's down in the nose that sat there
like that. They spew out about 800-900 rounds a minute, and when you
concentrate a fire like that on something it comes down. There I learned,
back in Carolina, of course, I learned to fly the B-25 and trained for
combat flying. I was there I think about three months.
Then I
went to California and then went over seas. The first stop was a long
flight -Hawaii, Johnson Island, Palawan, Pelelui, then Guam, then over to
Leyte in the Philippines, then on to New Guinea. New Guinea's not too nice
a place -strictly jungle- a three tiered jungle- that means damp. If you
went down in that you was in big trouble. So anyhow, there we started our
combat flying. I only flew three missions, I think, in New Guinea with
veteran pilots that were combat veterans. Then I moved to the Philippines,
and there I joined the 38th Bomb Group, 71st Squadron. I was there about
three or four months, I think, until July in '45. We flew most of our
missions there over Formosa, which is now Taiwan. They had a lot of alcohol
plants, and we'd knock those out and we went after airfields.
We
just about got old Bud (Albright) here supporting the infantry. (Mr.
Albright commented that they went after troops.) Well anyway, I'll fill you
in on that. They were moving up in northern Luzon, and the Japanese were
following up in northern Luzon and they were pressing them further. The
Japanese general's name, if I recall, was Yumashata, and they were on their
last leg. But they don't give up, they fight to the bitter end. Well, we
were the support while they were moving up, and our orders were to fire
where the smoke was. Well, they had put the smoke down, but the winds
changed and moved it over to where they were. And of course, we were
strafing where we were supposed to, and the threat of B-25s, medium
bombers, through those mountains is not exactly easy. It's a little hairy.
I can recall it as plain as day. It was a little cloudy and so forth. But
we did what we were supposed to. I don't know. Did we kill anybody? (Bud
Albright replied that nobody was killed, but that they got them moving
fast.) Okay, we were lucky. Okay.
Then we would hit airfields.
That was one of our primary objectives. We would use parafrags, and we
carried 72 parafrag bombs. They strang out and they had a little parachute
on them that slows them up, and then they'd drop down. Then the minute they
hit the ground, of course, they'd detonate; then whoomp off to the side and
wipes everything out. After we were there then they secured Okinawa, and
then we moved up to Okinawa. That was a hell of a place. And the Okinawans
were kind of Mickey Mouse people. And they would have these extensive tombs
where they buried their dead in the hills where we lived, and they were
infested with rats. So, we'd have to put up a double mosquito bar and set
our bunks up on gallon cans that we swiped from the mess hall, and that
would give us a little protection against the rats. There were no lights or
anything there. We just lived in tents and then stuff would come out at
night. And I'd lay there, and I was deathly afraid of mice and rats. I'd
sooner take any land of a reptile. But I'd lie real still in the morning to
see if anything was in bed with me. And if there wasn't, then I'd manage to
get out. Some guys, rats did get in bed with them, and it wasn't good. And
you'd walk down a path with your flashlight, and they just scurried through
there.
Well, then the big typhoon hit there in August. Every
man for himself - at 4:00 our tent left. I think the winds got up to around
150 miles an hour and just wiped out our entire living area. Of course,
then the Army flew in tents and put them up again. The next morning it blew
itself out, but that night you had to get out of the way and get into a
swale or something like this to keep the flying debris from hitting you. It
was pitch dark and raining like crazy. When we got in that first swale,
well, we had waterproof clothes on, because my navigator and co-pilot - we
managed to go over to the Seabees and steal some good waterproof clothes.
The Seabees always had everything. They looked out for themselves first,
and then they built the roadways and that's all right. Well, at least we
were dry, by the time my legs got on the bottom nothing could crawl up it.
Well, that darn swale was full of rats, they liked it too. So, we finally
got out of it and found another one and finally found one without any rats.
We went through the night and like I say, the next morning it blew itself
out and calmed real nicely. It beached a lot of ships and caused an awful
lot of damage.
From there we were flying to Japan. That was like
a three hour or four hour flight up there and went on to various things.
Then the night flights we would leave at one o'clock in the morning. Three
airplanes flying a separate route, then we would rendezvous at daylight at
geographical coordinates and go after shipping along the China coast. They
would be going along the coast and sneak into a harbor just at daylight. We
liked to catch them there, and we'd catch them there and raise hell with
them and sink them. Then it was a long pull back to Okinawa, and we had ten
and a half hours of fuel, but those flights sometimes landed flat at ten
hours. If your navigation was off a little, it wasn't so good. But our
navigators were very good. Now when you'd leave at one o'clock at night and
fly in darkness, you'd have to use celestial navigation. And they were
pretty good to hit that geographical coordinate where the other two
airplanes were. Then we'd go in formation and go after what we were
supposed to hit.
Let's see.. .then we went over Japan, and my
last mission was at Oita in northern Kyushu after some railroad bridges.
That was the same day, I think it was on the sixth, it was the same day
that they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Well, they had told us on our
briefing the night before to stay away from Nagasaki and not to get within
50 miles of it. Okay, we'll stay away, and we did. Well, we saw the big
smoke of it. I didn't see the big mushroom. The bomb had gone off. We just
thought it was a big B-29 raid, and then that night when we got back to
Okinawa we was listening to the radio from Guam. Then they told us about
it, and of course, that's the last time we flew a flight. What made that
mission kind of hairy was we went after these bridges, and I was about the
third guy through right down the deck. The guy that dropped a bomb ahead of
me it delayed a little and didn't go off right away. Then it went off too
late right ahead of me, and I flew through the smoke and dust and dirt and
everything and looked up and there was a chimney. Well, I thought this is
it, we've had it. We cranked that old wheel to the right and just got the
wing up in time. The chimney was here like this and whoosh not like that,
blah. That was the last mission, and it would have been curtains if we'd
have hit that. It would have disintegrated the airplane.
Then we
went to Japan on back to Okinawa, and when we landed after a mission the
intelligence officer would come out and brief you while it was clear in
your mind. And guess what he brought along - whiskey - all you wanted. It
would calm your nerves, and then your mind was fresh. It was quite an
experience, and I was only 21 years old. Now
your title - my
title was - Combat Crew Commander, and you're in charge of your crew. Our
crew was six guys - pilot, co-pilot, navigator, engineer, radio operator,
and the armorer, who was the tail person. Three enlisted men and three
officers. At our briefing we would go to supper, then we'd go through the
briefing about the next day's mission. They'd fill you in on everything -
what you was supposed to do right down to the finest detail. We'd walk
back. I wish to hell I was watching this in a movie, and I'd know how it
turned out. Well, anyway, that's about the size of it. Our commanding
officer was a West Pointer, very nice. His name was Colonel Hollis. He was
from Texas. Three days before the war ended they went after a carrier that
was hiding in the cove there in Japan. And they were waiting on him, and
they shot him down and killed him. It was land of a bad deal. That's about
it. Got any questions?
Student: About what was your range on
your B-25?
Harley Meyer: The range was about 10 hours at 170
miles an hour. We flew at Thompson air speed, and that would make the
navigation a little easier. See a B-17 flew about 155 or 150. Ours was a
twin engine and 1700 horse in each engine. Like I said, a ten hour range.
We carried a Tokyo tank up in the bowel. We could carry less bombs, and it
carried an extra hundred gallons of fuel and extended our range. The
Pacific was a different deal. You didn't have those big 1,000 plane bombing
raids like you did in Europe. Our maximum effort was 24 airplanes in a
group.
Mr. Johnston: Why was that? What was the difference?
Because it was so spread out? Why did they not go in those big clusters?
Harley Meyer: Well, in Germany you had the country, and it was
compact. You had a whole bunch of targets, and we were all scattered out
all over a whole half acre with primarily air fields and stuff like that,
shipping, and so on; and then some grounds, of course. But in the Pacific,
it was entirely different than Europe. If you got shot down over in Europe
you'd be taken prisoner by the Germans, and you'd survive. It wouldn't be
the Hilton or anything, but if you didn't try to escape or anything, like I
say, you'd survive. In Japan your chances of getting shot down were less,
but it happened quite often. There were a lot of casualties. But if they
got ahold of you - you were done. They'd use a Samurai sword and cut your
head off, They didn't like air crews at all. There's all lands of
documented proof about that. They were a different breed of cat - the
Japanese. They wouldn't surrender to very few people - the Japanese
wouldn't surrender - they'd fight to the death, We didn't lose too many,
but we lost our share. Anything else? Surely you've got some questions.
Mr. Johnston: What was your rank? What was your rank while you were
in the service? Second Leiutenant?
Harley Meyer: Yes, Second
Lieutenant. I'm Captain now. Student: How old were you when you actually
went in?
Harley Meyer: Eighteen. I went in when I was 18, and
I got out when I was 21.1 was a Combat Commander at age 20. That's pretty
young, but you grew up pretty fast. It's a young man's game. That's just
the way it is. An old man wouldn't survive health wise and stuff like that.
You go without sleep an awful lot, and the food isn't the greatest. In
Japan -1 mean in the Pacific, we had dehydrated food, and that's not
exactly too tasty. Because of the weather and refrigeration. But it was an
interesting experience. I would say it's one of the greatest feats that's
ever been accomplished the way our country put together an armed force in
four years is incredible. We put 16,000,000 men in uniform, and the best
decisions at the high level- at the bureaucratic level were made by us -
the United States. The worst were made by Germany and Japan. The evidence
speaks for itself. They lost. They bit off more than they could chew.
Germany was whipped when she started. So with Japan, they were playing the
game. But one of the best things that happened was when they attacked us.
That galvanized the country behind the war effort. We said you started it,
and we're going to end it. And Japan's plan was to run wild for six months
and conquer what they wanted, and then go for a negotiated peace. But that
didn't work, we buttered their necktie. That didn't work. Anything else?
How about you Mr. Johnston? Do you have any?
Mr. Johnston: I've
got a question. See I have taught, and I've asked this of some of the
European guys, and I just kind of wanted you guys' opinion. Here's
something that you know I've taught World War II. We kind of go with a
survey, but we don't go into real detail. This is as much detail as we've
gone in since I've taught this. This is something that always kind of
puzzles me. That once you have Pearl Harbor you know December 7, and I know
that Germany and Italy and Japan were in the axis powers. I still don't see
why the Germans and the Italians decided to declare war on the United
States.
Harley Meyer: That was a big mistake, but they honored
their treaty agreement. That's the reason, and the 11th of December Hitler
declared war on the United States. And the German war right over here, and
heard that, was a Navy career man in both wars in Germany. He said at that
time in Germany, "We're done. When we declared war on the United States, it
is just a matter of time. There is no way we can compete with their
industrial might." It's the way it was.
Mr. Johnston: Yes, I
think they said it would have made a pretty good case in America. We're not
at war with the Germans and the Italians, we're at war with the Japanese.
We're obviously what turned the tide there in Europe.
Harley
Meyer: In World War II it turned around in 1942-43 with the Battle of
Stalingrad. Germany lost that. They went into Africa, and they turned it
around there at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Then in the Pacific the
Battle of the Midway which was June 3rd and 4th of 1942. We creamed them
there. Sunk four of their carriers, and they were on the defensive ever
since. And the Japanese they did very poor planning. See the Japanese had
no resources. All their stuff had to be shipped to the islands, built and
then shipped out again. Really one of the unsung heroes of our armed forces
were the submarines. You don't hear too much about them, but they sank
those Japanese ships by
the numbers. And that's a
terrible service to be in, it's a poor way to die in a submarine. How about
you young lady? How about you boys - you got any questions?
Mr. Johnston: What, we kind of.. .now I guess when you are first drafted
or when you first go in the service you realize that you may never come
back. How did you deal with that? How did you emotionally deal with
that?
Harley Meyer: When you're flying combat, and you guys will
bear it out - you say to yourself, it'll be the other guy. They ain't gonna
get me. That's what you go on, and in my case that's how it turned out. It
was an experience I wouldn't trade anything for. I wouldn't mind doing it
again if it turned out this way. I had a ball. I was paid well. Three
hundred and twenty-seven dollars a month as a flying officer and overseas
for eleven. What the heck. That was a ton of money in those days. Wasn't it
Bud?
Bud Albright: Mine wasn't that way, Twenty-one dollars a
month. Richard Garman: Seventy-eight dollars a month.
Harley
Meyer: I could go on and on and on for little things that happened over
there. You remember the funny things. The other ones you just.. .they
weren't funny, so you try to forget them. Well, thank you guys.
Mr. Johnston: Thank you very much. Thank you.
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