Interview with Pacific B-24 Pilot Kay Morris

8/7/09-- It’s a long way from Rigby, Idaho to the war-torn skies over Okinawa and Japan, and many years have passed since young Kay Morris flew as a B-24 pilot in World War Two, but thanks to good health, a good memory, and a mother who liked to scrapbook, Morris’s war experiences are as meticulously recorded as if they’d happened yesterday. Every letter Morris wrote to his future wife, from basic training through the end of the war, maps, photographs, chits, dog tags and patches, they’re all there, most bound up in a scrapbook covered with white silk from the parachute Morris brought back from the war.
Kay Morris started life on the Snake River Plain, in Idaho’s premier potato-growing region, and went off to school at nearby Ricks College, a Latter-day Saint-run school now known as BYU-Idaho, before transferring to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Morris joined the Army Air Forces in April, 1943, and was selected for the Aviation Cadet program. He trained at San Antonio, Texas, deciding to go into multi-engine aircraft because “I didn’t like aerobatics particularly”. After earning his silver wings on August 4, 1944 in Altus, Oklahoma, Morris was assigned to the 494th Bomb Group, 865th Squadron, a B-24 Liberator outfit that flew medium altitude bombing missions against the Japanese.
Angaur Island is located South of Peleliu at 6 Degrees 55 Minutes North Latitude 134 Degrees 8 Minutes East Longitude. Angaur Island is about 2 miles long and one and a half mile wide Morris’s photo of Anguar during the war, airstrip at upper right. (Courtesy Kay Morris)

The 494th Bomb Group was nicknamed ‘Kelly’s Kobras’, in honor of General Laurence B. Kelley, who led the group. Created in 1943, the 494th was assigned to the U.S. 7th Air Force, the 494th arrived in the combat zone in August 1944. The group history describes the arrival of the advance echelon in less than idyllic terms. The group was dumped on the island of Angaur, “the meanest of the Palau Group...Though all organized resistance had ceased in the estimation of the communiqué writers, there was still plenty of the unorganized variety, and few if any of that first echelon will forget the first weeks of trying to cope with Jap snipers, land crabs, pup tents, K rations and the jungle growth separately and collectively. Pelelieu Island, on this 30th of September '44 was still in the process of being separated from its Japanese defenders, and the strip at Angaur was far from complete. The Advance Echelon wondered if it would ever see the rest of the Group again.”
(484th Unit History, http://home.att.net/~kelleys_kobras/494history/written.htm)


By October, the group was flying missions, bombing targets in the Phillipines.

A 494th B-24, photo courtesy of Kay Morris.

Initially a copilot, he ended up as the aircraft commander of his own Liberator, flying out of Angaur, Palau. The island had been taken by American forces in fierce fighting in September and October 1944, a battle that cost 264 American lives and over 1,300 Japanese lives. The strategically important island gave the Americans a vital airfield from which it could bomb Japanese targets in the Philippines. Photos show a small island with a runway and not much else. “We were in tents,” he recalls, “four officers to a tent and six enlisted men to a tent. There wasn’t any entertainment or anything to do, really. It was pretty boring. We spent a lot of time resting between missions. Sometimes there were movies and of course there were card games. Morris also did his best to practice his Mormon faith, and wrote letters to his sweetheart and family back home.

Morris remembers that the missions from Anguar to the Phillipines were relatively short ones. However, they were not without their dangers. Morris remembers one plane in his formation going down after its wing was shot off.

Map of 7th Air Force Operations. (Courtesy Kay Morris)
Later, as the war moved closer to Japan, the 494th flew out Okinawa and bombed Japan proper.
In the Pacific, the B-24 was classified as a medium altitude bomber. The B-24 was a four engine bomber that normally carried a crew of ten—four officers and six enlisted men. Officers included the pilot and copilot, bombardier, and navigator. The enlisted personnel was comprised of the flight engineer, radio operator, ball turret gunner, two waist gunners and a tail gunner. High altitude bombing was the job of the advanced, pressurized Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The B-25 Mitchells handled the low-altitude bombing.

According to Morris, the most important man on the crew was the navigator. “Most of our missions were eight hundred miles over water,” he remembers. “You had to rely on the navigators pretty heavily.” Not only that, but unlike their counterparts who flew over Europe, the Pacific bomber boys of the 494th flew in formations of only six airplanes, with limited fighter support.

1st Lt. Charley Wilcox was a bombardier in the 494th, and describes some of the differences between the Pacific and Atlantic bomber wars. “There are many differences between the European Theatre and the Pacific Theatre. For instance; in the European Theatre the planes were subjected to ‘Flak and Fighters' from the time they crossed the channel until they returned (if they were lucky); whereas in the Pacific; we generally had a peaceful flight over vast stretches of water; generally encountering ‘Flak & Zeros’ only when near the target area. A good indication of how the Brass compared the two theatres is by the number of missions required to rotate home. In the European Theatre, you needed 20 [actually 25] and in the Pacific Theatre, you needed 40. I have pulled some missions with more than 12 hrs of flight time; all over water. I can recall a General who was traveling from a Pacific base to another base - he never made it and to this day no one knows just where he was lost or what happened to him - "Lost in The Pacific" would be a good title for that story.”

Morris agrees. “We didn’t try to think about going down in the ocean,” he says. “The plane had two lifeboats under the wings, and there was an escape sub in the inland sea of Japan if we went down”, but the odds of rescue were very slim in such vast expanses of water. The bomber crews flying over Europe could bail out, for the most part, knowing that they would end up on land and have a decent chance of survival. The Pacific bomber crews knew that death was the most likely result of an ocean ditching, followed by imprisonment by the Japanese, who treated captured prisoners much more harshly than the Germans.

"Blood Chit, requesting protection and safe conduct to downed airmen in multiple languages. Courtesy Kay Morris.
In July, 1945, the 494th moved to the island of Okinawa for attacks on the Japanese heartland. His first really scary experience was over the Japanese island of Kyushu, the first time he encountered flak. The second was a particularly memorable mission on July 28, 1945 to bomb the Japanese battleship ‘Haruna’.

Battleship Haruna (class Kongo) under air attack. Kure, July 28, 1945. (Source: www.ww2incolor.com/japan/haruna.html)

“We used two-thousand-pound bombs on that mission,” he says. “That was the biggest bomb we ever used in the war. We were over the harbor at Kure, and one of our bombs got hung up in the bomb bay. The nose dropped far enough to arm it, and the navigator and flight engineer went back into the bomb bay—without parachutes—and physically kicked the bomb out. It was said that only one-sixty-fourth of an inch of movement could detonate one of those bombs, and it was one of the two times overseas that I was really, really scared.” After jettisoning the bomb, the manual release stuck the bomb bay doors open, and Morris’s plane began to lag behind. Finally, the crew was able to close the bomb bay doors and catch up. In addition to the hung-up bomb, the group history notes that two B-24s were lost and that “Jap gunners threw up the most terrific curtain of flak ever experienced by our crews. Participating personnel declared that was one mission they would not soon forget.” (Unit History)
Fighter escort was ‘iffy’ at best, according to Morris. P-51 Mustang fighters occasionally failed to show up, even when the ‘Kates’—Japanese fighters—did.

“We had to worry about flak from time to time,” Morris remembers. “And the Jap Air Force would come up and visit to see us once in a while.” On one mission, the pilot behind Morris’s plane was killed by a Japanese ‘Tony’ fighter. The co-pilot managed to bring the plane home. “Missions from Okinawa could be eight hundred miles,” says Morris. “The navigator was a very important guy when flying that far over open water. We normally flew at about 11,000 feet all the way to and from the targets—quite a bit lower than the bombers in Europe—and bombed from that altitude as well. We didn’t go on oxygen unless we were at fifteen thousand feet.” He remembers that the temperature in the planes was quite nice, compared to the heat on the ground back at the base.

With all the missions over water, I was curious as to whether Morris was a good swimmer. He shook his head, and told me he preferred to rely on the Mae West life jacket. In fact, he recalled an incident in training where the crew was pushed from a dinghy to simulate a ditching. Another crewman also couldn’t swim, and grabbed at Morris, who promptly pushed him away. Both men passed.

“We were getting ready to invade Japan. And it would have been bloody, for the United States and Japan. We were very grateful when President Truman dropped the bomb in August,” says Morris. Unfortunately, several 494th crews who had been previously shot down, were prisoners of war at the Military Police Barracks at Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th, 1945, when the A-bomb was dropped on the city. Charley Wilcox writes that “the families [of the twelve POW crewmen] from the aircrafts ‘Taloa’ and ‘Lonesome Lady’ were told their loved ones were ‘missing in action’ and some 3 years later were told they were ‘killed in action’ and never told they died from friendly fire—the A-Bomb.”

The war was over, much to the relief of the men of the 494th. But they were not going home just yet. On September 26, 1945, Okinawa was hit by a serious typhoon that destroyed much of the base and cut off the island from civilization for several days. “The storm was so strong that it bent the flagpole at Headquarters a perfect ninety degrees about six to eight feet up, with no wrinkle in the tube,” says Morris. Miraculously, Morris’s tent did not blow down during the typhoon, though many tents did and the base was wrecked.

Morris’s photos of the typhoon damage at his base(Courtesy Kay Morris)
Finally, in December 1945, Morris was sent home. He went back to BYU, and got married in January of 1946. He’d brought a parachute back with him, and the family used the silk fabric to make a wedding dress for his bride.
A news article from the Rigby, Idaho paper about the parachute-silk wedding dress. (Courtesy Kay Morris)
After finishing school, he worked for a few years before joining the 116th Army National Guard in Idaho as a liaison pilot. He was serving with the Idaho Falls unit when it was called up to go to Korea. However, as a surplus pilot, he ended up in Germany instead. He was there for three years, his main duty was to fly the commander of the 11th Engineer Group around Germany to inspect bridge sites in the early days of the Cold War.
(Source: http://www.aviation.army.mil/aircraft/h-13_oh-13.jpg)

He then went to San Francisco, California, and flew the Bell H-13 helicopter—one of the U.S. military’s first-- in support of the 30th Topo Battalion, which spent the summer making a thorough mapping survey of the territory of Alaska. While there, he was promoted to Captain.
Morris followed that with a stint at the Army Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Alabama as an instrument flying teacher. While he was stationed there, his daughter Marcia remembers going to the parades on base as a favorite activity. Someone came up with the idea of putting square dance costumes on the H-13s—shirt and tie for the ‘boys’, skirts for the ‘girls’—and the chopper pilots would then ‘square-dance’ over the parade ground, to the delight of all in attendance. This activity was cancelled after a few years due to safety concerns.

Morris and family were then off to Iran, where he supported construction efforts for the Shah of Iran’s airfields and other projects.

Morris lives in the same house he bought back in the Sixties, and his memories are safely stowed in the parachute-silk scrapbook and several others. A shadow box on the wall displays his many military decorations. The movie-star-handsome young bomber pilot is older and has less spring in his step, but Kay Morris still lights up when remembering the days, so many years ago, when he flew the unfriendly skies over the Pacific in World War Two.

What was it Like in the Ball Turret?

This is from my friend Les, whose grandpa was a ball turret gunner in the 95th:

"For my grandfather:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvuChgh4fGg


…that is without the E/A and flak!

-Les"

Hell's Kitten Crewman Reunited with Son of Crewmate

The crew photo that started David Hughes on the mission to reconnect with his late father's crewmate, Dan Culler.

In one of the most amazing series of events covered on this blog, the son of a former B-24 bomber crewman was united with one of his father's former crewmates after 65 years. Dan Culler flew as a flight engineer on the B-24 heavy bomber Hell's Kitten over Europe in World War Two, and John Hughes flew as a waist gunner on the same plane. The plane was heavily damaged in aerial combat over Germany and made a forced landing in Switzerland. Both men eventually escaped.

About two weeks ago, David Hughes returned from his mother's house with a small box full of his late father's WWII possessions. In this box, he found an old photograph of an air crew in front of a B-24 named Hell's Kitten. He got on the internet and Googled Hell's Kitten and was directed to this blog. To his great surprise, he saw on this site the very same photograph that he held in his hands. My friend and sometime contributor to this blog, Les Poitras, had written an article about Dan and another bomber crewman, Maurice Rockett, and had included the photo.

David left a message on the blog for me; however, the posting was from September of last year, and I rarely go back and look at blog entries from that far back. More than likely, David's post would never have been discovered and the story would have ended there. The very same day that David posted the response requesting more information on the blog, another friend of mine, Richard Havers, who lives in Scotland, noticed it and brought the post to my attention. I then got in touch with David.

David was unaware that any members of his father's crew were still alive. His father had passed away and had never really discussed his war years much with the family. His knowledge of that era of his dad's life was a void. I made contact with my good friend Dan Culler, making sure it was okay to give David his contact information. Dan generously agreed, and so, after 65 years, a reunion of sorts took place between Dan and the son of his friend and former crewmate John Hughes.

Another photo that belonged to John Hughes, showing the crew of Hell's Kitten.

It's a series of coincidences and 'almost-never-happened' events that convinced Richard Havers to admit that some things are just meant to be. This is one of them.

Duxford Air Museum Photos

In early June Alan Johnson and I went to the huge air museum at Duxford, not far from Cambridge. It reminds me very much of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Not only does it have a great collection of aircraft, but it also has many other war exhibits relating to Great Britain. Here are some photos from that visit.The first Concorde, test model.
Concorde Interior.
Messerschmitt

Alan in front of display honoring English servicemen in the Malaya Campaign. He fought there in the early fifties.
This B-17 was used in 'The Memphis Belle' movie.
It still has one side decorated to that effect.
Lancaster--the greatest British bomber.
Mosquito--the greatest recon aircraft of the war.

Another Messerschmitt
V-1 Rocket and Launch Pad.
B-24 Liberator---Lovely plane.
Rommel's staff car.
Montgomery's mobile field office.

M3 Flak Helmet: Newest Acquisition

I recently purchased an M3 flak helmet used by Army Air Corps flight crews in the skies over Europe in World War Two. This is an early-generation helmet, basically just a standard infantry helmet that has been modified with hinged ear flaps to allow for the fit of headphones underneath. There is also a slight lip to allow the headphones to fit under the helmet. These helmets were used in 1944 primarily. This particular one is in fairly good shape. I put it on a standard Air Corps leather flight helmet, with standard headphones and goggles, and though the helmet is a little tight for this set-up, you get the idea.

This helmet saved the lives of flyers during the war, though it was by no means perfect. It did help against flak and shrapnel, and was usually worn in conjunction with a flak vest. Many men also put flak vests on or under their stations to protect themselves from below.

Flight Clothing for High Altitudes

A crew posing with full equipment in WWII. Note the parachute packs in foreground.

Airmen flew in extreme weather conditions. At 20,000 feet, the air could be fifty below zero, and nearly devoid of life-giving oxygen. Both the B-17 and the B-24 were unheated and unpressurized. The photos below were taken at the 390th BG Museum at the Pima Air Museum in Tucson.

Exhibit at the 390th Museum at Pima Air Museum, Tucson, shows the full flight kit of a bomber crewman. Flying in temperatures down to fifty below zero at altitudes nearly devoid of oxygen, the kit includes, top to bottom, leather flight helmet with built-in headphones, flight goggles, throat mike, oxygen mask, shearling leather flight jacket, Mae West yellow life jacket, parachute harness, shearling leather flight pants, shearling leather gunner gloves, and shearling boots. The parachute is at the feet of the airman.
A vintage shot of a crewman with much of the same gear, though he is wearing clothing for slightly warmer conditions.
This electrically-heated 'bunny suit' was used by early air crews. Plugged in to the aircraft's power supply, the suit had a tendency to overheat or short out, causing burns, and many stopped using them because of this.

This flak jacket and helmet protected airmen from the dangers of jagged, red hots shards of flak.

B-17 vs. B-24

B-24 Liberator bombers skim the landscape as they attack the oilfields at Ploesti, Romania, one of the greatest aerial attacks of WWII.

A B-17 Flying Fortress banks, showing its classic lines.

My good friend Dan Culler, a former B-24 flight engineer, wrote me today and wondered why the B-24 always seems to get the short end of the stick when compared to the B-17. Dan wrote:

"Seeing how you and others are wrapped up in B-17 Flying Fortress WWII history, it makes me wonder how the B-24 Liberator groups are ignored from the air war in Europe, it as if we never were there. This even though more B-24s flew then B-17. When the B-24s flew the low level Ploesti raid, one of the most daring and costly raids in WWII, it was said if one B-17 was on that raid it would have been headlines Flying Fortresses hit Ploesti...I remember after the war and even today when people ask where I flew and when I say 'Europe', their first remark, Oh you flew the Flying Fortress? When I say B-24 or Liberators, they remark they never heard of it. Jimmy Stewart commanded a B-24 Squadron, shortly after I was shot down."

I emailed Dan back that I'd tried very hard not to stiff the B-24, which is every bit as good a plane as Dan says it is, in my book. While the B-17 may have been more durable, the B-24 was faster, carried a heavier bomb load, and was used in larger numbers. One of the keystone chapters of my book Untold Valor is about Dan, a B-24 man. In any case, I threw the question to one who knows more on the subject that myself, former B-17 bombardier Maurice Rockett, also a good friend and someone I trust as a straight-shooter. My own take on the B-17 vs. B-24 controversy is that the B-17 simply got more ink. It flew out of London, a city bursting at the seams with war correspondents, while the B-24 flew many missions out of North Africa and Italy, not a favorite for war correspondents. It was the media baby, the sexy plane, and the B-24 never got the same attention. Maurice basically agreed that it was a matter of ink, of publicity.

I know many men who flew on B-17s, and also many who flew on B-24s. I find it interesting and telling that B-17 men all consider the Fort to be a great plane, and the 24 men--to a man--swear by the 24. Suffice it to say that both were simply outstanding bombers and that the 24 is one of the unsung heroes of the war.

So here is a tip of the hat to the B-24 Liberator Bomber.

So please, readers, comment! What do you think?

44th Bomb Group, Shipdam, Today

I'm posting some photos taken by British aviation historian Trevor Hewitt.

They were taken at the old 44th BG Base at Shipdam, England. I have several friends who served at this base, Dan Culler and Will Lundy, so perhaps they will be able to shed some light on the places shown.

The 44th was a famous B-24 Liberator unit that flew the amazing Ploesti mission.

Outstanding B-24 Video: Watch it Here

My friend Marilyn Walton, whose father was a B-24 crewman, emailed me about this outstanding B-24 tribute on Youtube. I checked it out. It is outstanding. Watch it by clicking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0GnJ9T2Fc

If this incredibly powerful video does not choke you up, nothing will.

These were brave men.

Paper Modeler Honors Great Warbirds

John Morris built this P-47 Thunderbolt and the planes below from paper, using glue and a few other materials. Paper model-building is a fast-growing hobby in the United States.

The current generation of paper models are incredibly complex and realistic. One modeler, John Morris, who also happens to be my brother, has been building paper models for several years. These models can be downloaded off the internet or ordered as kits. They require incredible patience, precision cutting, and lots of time. In fact, I'm not sure I'd be able to do one, though John sent me one last week of a B-17 that I'm going to attempt. John has always been superior to me in building things with his hands. I think you'll agree his efforts are impressive.

Here are some photos sent by fellow aviation buff (and my brother and good friend) John Schupfer Morris of Euless Texas. For more information on paper modeling, contact me and I'll forward the information to my brother. The P-47 is entirely of paper (except the glue). All but the Me 109 were downloaded from the internet and printed on my brother's printer using thick-stock paper.

Here are the production credits for the models:

The P-47 is available here: http://www.gremirmodels.com/

The PB4Y is available here: http://www.fiddersgreen.net/

The MiG-3 and the P-40 are available here: http://www.blogger.com/

John Morris writes:

"P-47 made ENTIRELY of paper, absolutely nothing else (except glue). Others have wire or toothpicks in landing gear struts.* All except Bf-109 downloaded from internet and printed on my printerbefore building. Bf-109 purchased preprinted in a booklet by Orlik Models.* MiG-3 has a clear canopy that I purchased."

PB4Y

Mig-3

Me-109

Ball Turret Gunners---- A Breed Apart

This is from my personal collection. It's an ad from a magazine during World War Two advertising Nash-Kelvinator and their role in the manufacturing of ball turrets. This is my favorite shot of the ball turret.

The ball turret gunners were a breed apart. Suspended in their pot-metal cacoon on the underside of the B-17 and B-24 bomber, these men had to deal with three of man's main fears---heights, enclosed spaces, and death---while at the same time defending their ship from intense enemy attack.

An Army Air Corps schematic of the Sperry Ball Turret.

I have been impressed by these men since I first interviewed two of them for my book. Frank Coleman and Bob Capen were both ball turret gunners in the 95th Bomb Group. I spent hours interviewing Frank and Bob sent me several hours of taped memories. These became the basis of my chapter 'Ball Turret Gunner' in my book, Untold Valor.

The caption on this photo says this is a gunner from the 95th. However, he looks a lot like Clifford Puckett, the ball turret gunner on 390th Bomb Group's 'Betty Boop/Pistol Packin' Mama' and I'm willing to bet it is.

By necessity small in stature, these men were long on courage. When I met Frank and his wife in Salt Lake some years back, I was impressed with how much his experience had impacted him as a human being. He still suffered from hours at fifty below zero, curled up in the ball turret of a B-17, often unable even to relieve himself for hours at a time. Frank anguished about the people the bombers killed on the ground in Germany. A strong Mormon, he came home from every mission, and the first thing he did was go to a nearby farm where he could be alone and pray. He would ask God's forgiveness for what he'd had to do, knowing at the same time that somebody had to do it to keep facism at bay.

The American poet Randall Jarrell wrote a sobering poem about ball turret gunners. Here it is:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

No glamor here, just sudden death and the end of dreams for one young gunner.

The following is from the Commemorative Air Force website:

"Flying Fortress crew members considered the ball turret the worst crew position on the aircraft. The confining sphere fastened to the underside of the aircraft required an agile occupant immune to claustrophobia and brave enough to be without a parachute close by.
The turret revolved a full 360 degrees, providing an extraordinary vantage point and covering the aircraft against attackers from below. Ironically, thought of as being the most dangerous position in a B-17, it turned out to be one of the safest-as far as suffering battle wounds. The gunner, curled up in the ball in a fetal position with his back against the armor plated door, had less of his body exposed to enemy fire than the other crew members.

The turret was stowed with the guns facing rearward for takeoff and landing. Once the aircraft was airborne, the turret would have to be cranked by hand to position the guns straight down, revolving the hatch inside the airplane. The ball gunner would then enter the turret, fasten his safety strap, turn on the power and operate the turret from inside.
The ball turret gunner would be hunched, legs bent, with his feet in stirrups on each side of the 13 inch diameter armored glass panel. His face was about 30 inches from this panel, and suspended in between was the optical display of the computing gunsight. A pedal under his left foot adjusted the red sight on this display and when a target framed within, the range was correct. While sighting, he would be looking directly between his knees. Two handles projected rearward above the sight and controlled movement of the turret. At the end of each handle was the firing button for both guns."

Finally, I salute my friend Les Poitras's grandpa, Leslie Moore, who also served as a ball turret gunner in the 100th Bomb Group.

Lest we ever forget the sacrifices of these brave men.

If you'd like to read a website by one of these true heroes, I recommend Andy Anzanos' website at this location: http://www.andyanzanos.com/. And while you're at it, order Andy's SIGNED biography about his experiences as a ball turret gunner in the 390th Bomb Group. Check it out. You will not be disappointed!

390th Ball Turret gunner Andy Anzanos holds a copy of his book about his experiences. You can order it, signed and inscribed by this living legend, at the address above.