Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Crumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Paul Bud HADDICKI. He is a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War
Two, where he served as a bombardier on a B seventeen crew flying missions
over Europe. And Bud, thank you very much for being with us.
You're welcome. Where were you born and raised, Sir? I was born
and raised on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois. Tell me what that
was like at that time. Well, I grew up about a mile and
a half from Rigi Ley Field with a Cubs ploy and like one of my
grandkids said, Grandpa, your backyard is like a postage stamp. We lived
in a three flat totally different than today, but it was great and I
lived there until I went into the service in nineteen forty three. Had there
been a history of military service in your family. No, I was the
first one, and then my dad missed World War One by about a year,
and then my older son Michael went to Vietnam. That's quite a legacy
right there. So you mentioned that you lived there in the Chicago area until
you joined the service. Tell me how you heard that Pearl Harbor had been
attacked. How did you learn that news? I was sitting in a mall
shop, I believe it was December eighth, with a buddy having a mault
after church on Sunday, and over the radio a voice came A state of
war exists between the fire of Japan and America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And
I said to my buddy. I remembered, so, well, oh,
we're only sixteen. We'll never get in little did it? I know?
So you're sixteen? And when did you join the service? My eighteenth birthday?
I got my draft notice May thirtieth, Memorial Day, and I was
in camp July nineteenth, not even two months later. This is nineteen forty
three. Nineteen forty three, correct, What was your training like? Well?
I went to seventeen different camps if you count them all in the service
before I went overseas and back. Initially I went to Camp Grant, Illinois,
which was induction, and then they asked anybody in rested in the Air
Force, and of course some of us held our hands up, and we
were just kids wanted to be fighter pilots, you know. And then I
was sent to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, now where my wife is buried,
where I have a son and daughter living. Didn't think of that at that
time, and I take Cadet Basic there. I'm not too sure about this
now. And then I think I went to Lowry Field, Denver, Colorado
for armaments school. And then I think I went to Kingman, Arizona for
EDDI ground gunnery, then to Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, and then from
there El Paso, Texas Biggsfield for eddaground gunnery, flying practice missions, and
then back to Lincoln and then the Camp Miles Standish in Boston overseas to deepen
Green Airfield. The Eighth Air Force, which it says on my CAP had
forty A lot of people don't know this, forty bomb groups. Each bomb
group could put up about thirty six to forty planes. So you take that
times forty, you're looking at fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred B seventeen's and B
twenty four's, and we're going to talk about that very fact in just a
little bit. Is there a particular role you wanted out market? Oh?
Yeah, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I mean, and there
wasn't a kid that didn't want to be you know, in the movies or
what. But various positions in the service, whether it be infantry, Air
Force, Navy, what have you. It was like quotas, and if
that quota was filled, they didn't need pilots, but they needed this.
And in my case, they didn't need fighter pilots. They needed bomber crew
members. And you took what they handed you. As the guy said,
when they said jump, you said how high? When did you head overseeth
I believe it was December. I think of forty four, right after Christmas.
Well, they delayed us. They let us stay, believe it or
not, go home for Christmas, and then we came back and we were
shipped overseas. I didn't fly over. I went over on the ill de
de France, which was a French luxury liner. Came home on the Queen
Mary. Not too bad, Bud. Yeah, didn't fly. Now,
before you engaged in your missions, you did practice missions over Ireland and Scotland.
Is that correct? Yes, very good. Yeah, we had to
fly. I would think more soul for the navigator who did a lot of
celestial navigation, meaning with the stars, and we would fly at night a
lot. I don't know why, but we went to Scotland and Ireland,
not on the ground, up in the air, and I believe it was
to get used to, you know, going to a specific target and then
the day came when we were picked to go on an actual bombing mission.
Did that training help you as the bombardier a lot? Kind of yeah,
I would say the thing had helped the most was getting used to being up
at altitude, being on oxygen, and being a mission in the war itself
was eight tens at sometimes twelve hours. Now. I talked to a fighter
pilot and many and a lot of them, and I'm taking anything away from
them, but they flew twenty thirty forty sixty missions, but many of their
missions were two three hours because they flew twice as fast nearly if they didn't
escort us, and they went to specific targets, but they could go to
the target. Example, when we got escorts, the fighters wouldn't take off
for at least two hours after us, and they caught up with us very
quick because with a full bomb load, I flew at about one hundred and
fifty five to one hundred and sixty miles an hour. Now, one thing
I think it's important to clarify. When you're the bobadier, do you have
some independence on when to release or are you just following orders when people say
time to release? Another good question. During the war, when it started
way back in forty two, that is, in bombing Germany, they use
the Norden bomb site exclusively every plane. But then in late forty four most
people don't know this, the Powers to be decided to go away with precision
bombing. Now what's precision bombing? Bud that is a specific target like the
Empire state building, the arch in Saint Louis. We were losing too many
men and we went to pattern bombing, or it was called many other things.
What was that We would watch the lead ship in our squadron when he
opened his bombay doors, we would open ours. When his first bomb came
out, I would release mine. We dropped on the center of Berlin,
the center of Munich or what have you? Not nice? We killed thousands
of people, but in actuality it ended the war about a year sooner.
Germany. Those historians that really looked into it was totally flat, totally.
The only example I could give you is nine to eleven when the twin Towers
were hit. I remember a guy was talking to me at an air show
and he said, isn't that terrible? I said, very terrible, But
I said, how would you like the entire city of Chicago to look like
that? And he said, are you kidding? And then I told him
about Germany and it was the knockout electricity water anything that's Paul bud Headikee a
US Army Air Forces veteran of World War Two who served as a bomber deer
for twenty three missions aboard a B seventeen bomber in the European theater still to
come. In this edition of Veterans' Chronicles, Hediqie offers more detail on what
went into a bombing run, what it was like to suffer through enemy anti
aircraft fire or flak, and the missions of mercy he was part of in
the Netherlands at the very end of the war. But when we come back,
we'll get to Bud's first mission, which may well have been his most
harrowing mission. After all, his B seventeen was badly damaged and headed to
the ground, and the pilots were doing everything they could to avoid landing behind
enemy lines. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty seconds of Service.
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just go to National Defense Network dot com. This says Veterans Chronicles I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Bud Heddekee, who served as a
bombardier aboard a B seventeen bomber as part of the four hundred and fifty second
bomb Group in World War Two. Now it's time for Hedikee to share the
story of his first mission, and it may be the most harrowing of all.
From his twenty three bombing runs, I didn't even know of this.
There were times when six, seven, eight hundred planes would come over a
specific target, the same target, the same day, and it would take
a half hour to forty five minutes for all those planes to cross over that
city and drop their bombs. Can you even imagine, you know, those
people bled just like we did. Can you imagine those people down there with
bombs raining down for not five minutes, but nearly an hour, and we
would form first, we'd take off with our own group, which consisted of
about thirty six planes. Now, if you took forty bomb groups, I'm
not too sure what would that come to three six and twelve fifteen if all
bomb groups went up at once. Now that didn't happen, I don't think.
But there were times I mentioned six seven eight hundred, so we would
have to form. You didn't just go up and go, and that's where
a lot of crashes occurred. The weather in England was very bad, very
cloudy, hazy, not too many sunshine days, and planes collided. Example,
one day we missed a plane. That was one of my jobs up
in the nose to keep my eyes out for other planes, and we missed
a plane by about fifty feet and that's a bit scary. In fact,
that's why I lost my hair joke joke. Once we formed, then we'd
continue on and meet another group and form and another group took a long time.
Then we crossed the North Sea or English Channel and went to the specific
target. And that target you didn't deviight. You were on the IP in
Michell Point. You had to because of the guy using the Norden bomb site.
Once you dropped the bombs, you headed straight home hopefully amazing, So
you got to be a ten hour flight. But the actual bombing the couple,
I kept a log, just one of those kooks that I kept a
log on how many hours were type of bombs, how many holes in the
plane from German eighty eight millimeter and a couple guys on my crew this is
the truth, said, what are you doing that for a head of che
We're not going to make it. Guys were very fanatic. Well, they
said, if you flew six ten twelve missions, you were on borrowed time
and back to our first mission. We you had to earn your way.
When you flew there was a high group, a medium group, and a
low group, and we got the low group. And by the time we
got there, the Germans were zeroed in pretty good and they shot out two
of our engines. And a B seventeen is not made to stay up on
two engines. So where were you when you were hit over ham Ham and
Germany? And how far into Germany is that? I can't tell you on
miles. In fact, we were going to bail out, meaning parachute,
but the pilot, thank god, said maybe we can make it and not
be poled up. He is prisoners of war. We weren't sure where the
German lines were, but they were right near the Rhine River and we made
it across the Rhine into Belgium. That's why I told you last March.
I went back to where we crashed outside of a town called Saint Royden,
Belgium, February sixteenth, nineteen forty five. Did you ever figure out how
close you were to the front and on the good side? Not really,
if I may. When we crashed and we used up a fighter field,
a fighter field like is this long? A bomber field is much longer.
So we went out into a field and nosed over. I opened the window
and this guy came out, which was an American, and if I may,
I remember this, he said, what are you doing here with that
big ass bird? And I said, what are all those German signs?
And he said, we left them up for sentimental reasons. The crowd said,
left there probably six seven months before. Now that might sound like a
long time, but it really isn't, you asked me, Miles. A
couple hundred maybe, So if this had happened earlier in the war, you
would have followed in the wrong Well, if we would have crashed sooner,
we probably would have crashed under German lines. Yeah. Take me into your
mindset when you find out that you've lost two engines. You're not going to
get back to England in this plane. You're hoping not to be a prisoner
of war. Really helping to get behind allied lines. Still your plane is
headed down, So what's going on in your head? I was very scared.
If you ever meet anybody, I don't care who, whether it be
in the infantry, air force, or what, and they tell you they
weren't scared, they're full of prunes. I was scared every mission, every
mission. And think about it, if somebody shoots at you right here on
the street, wouldn't you be scared. The Germans fired eighty eight millimeter cannons.
That was their gun, and they could fire up to twenty five thousand
feet five miles. And at first maybe when you saw the black puffs of
smoke, that's after their shell explodes. But the shell explodes into one hundred
pieces, one hundred and fifty, no exact number. I dug flak out
of our plane. I've got it at home. And of course if it
hits you here, you're gone. But many guys lost arms, legs,
what have you? We never got wounded. I set a prayer God every
mission. I happened to be a Christian man, I prayed. I had
a small book, prayer book with me. My grandma gave me. In
fact, I gave it to my son when he went to Vietnam. It
was scary, of course. What was the impact like when the plane hit
the ground. I could give you a story. I don't remember. It
was only seventy nine years ago. I mean, I don't remember what I
was last month. But it had to be scary, but thankful that we
made it. And I have a great granddaughter who we're going to see later
today, who is my son's granddaughter, who is in her fourth year at
Annapolis, who wants to be a jet pilot, who has made two hundred
and seventy some parashoe jumps, and she's going to meet us today. And
I told Wes Smith Saturday night, she, my son and I will all
be sitting together three generations. That is a family legacy right there. It
is. It is such a wonderful thing. Okay, so you're safely on
the ground, relatively speaking. Is it easy to get out of the plane.
Are you stuck in the plane? Get out and try to figure out
where you are? What happens? No? Good? Quick. We got
out of the plane and they had a truck there, and this truck took
us to a schoolhouse for shotdown cruise. We weren't the only one, you
know, through the war that got shot down and we stayed there four days,
and then a C forty seven that's a transport plane was sent from England
to Belgium to pick us up and they took us back and then I flew
twenty two more combat missions. That's Paul Bud Hedike, a US Army Air
Forces veteran of World War Two who served as a bombardier for twenty three missions
aboard a B seventeen bomber. He was a member of the four hundred and
fifty second Bomb Group in the European Theater. You just heard the story of
Bud's first mission and how he crash landed. Thankfully, he and his crew
were okay, but there were twenty two more missions that would follow, and
that's where we'll pick up the story in just a moment. I'm Greg Corumbus,
and this is Veterans' Chronicles. This is Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Bud Hedike, who served as a bombardier
aboard a B seventeen bomber as part of the four hundred and fifty second Bomb
Group in World War Two. You just heard the story of Bud's first bombing
mission, which was very nearly his last one still to come. Bud shares
why he is so proud of his military service and the details of a vital
mission to keep the Dutch people fed at the end of the war after the
defeated Germans inflicted completely unnecessary cruelty against them. But first there were more bombing
missions, including the awkward feeling of getting back into a bomber after being shot
down on his first mission. Again, it's too long ago they exactly remember,
but I'm sure with some hesitation and fear, it didn't really matter.
Of the twenty three is an example. I bomb Berlin, Munich, Townsend,
know Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfort, Cologne, Keel, and there's others.
But the rest were smaller towns. But why smaller, Bud, because
they probably had a factory there, or oil refinery or what have you.
Sure major infrastructure that helps the German war machine you need, right, we
didn't choose them. They told us where to go, and my log it
says Marshaling yards. That's railroad yards. If you could cripple the railroads,
couldn't you know, transport anything as you said to slow down the Germans.
Now were all of your crew members uninjured? Everyone was never hurt. They're
all gone now. I'm the last of the Mohicans. But we were a
blessed crew. We really were. Because I had a guy when I went
back to Deefngreen in eighty four, we were at Maddingly Cemetery, which is
a American cemetery donated by the English, and Stars and Stripes is a newspaper
and it's still in existence. And they were interviewing him and he said,
you don't want to interview me. And the guy says, why not?
He said, I only flew half a mission. I says a half,
right, He said I got to the target and we had a bail out.
And he said I was a prisoner of war nearly two years. So
my point is some guys flew a half, won two missions. Others like
mine, I flew twenty three. You didn't know. You didn't know.
My last mission was somewhere latter part of April, and then the war ended
two weeks later. You were a couple of missions away from being done anyway,
then, right, No, they increased it to thirty five from twenty
five, and We were all real happy about that. And when I went
home, I was told I needed twelve more missions and after my leave I
would go to the Pacific. And I remember telling my dad about that,
and boy, he really got it. Well, I mean his kid,
you know. And when I was on home on leave, the JAP surrendered
and I was one happy guy because you know you, like you say,
how far can you push your luck? You mentioned how tight you were with
your crew. Did you have the same crew for all your missions? I
flew two missions with another crew. Why because that position the guy got sick.
That happened quite often. But other than that, the same crew.
Now, as the bobadier, let's talk about what you did on a regular
basis. What would you be doing as the bomberder before the flight took off,
Well, we all kind of did the same thing. We had nothing
to do with the bombs. The ground crew loaded the bombs, did all
that. We picked up the fifty caliber machine guns, I remember that,
and brought them out to the plane and put them in the whatever receptacle.
We would check our oxygen to make sure it worked. I don't know if
you know this or not, but every position had its own oxygen tank.
And if an oxygen tank got hit, which it did many times, a
guy wouldn't even know it. But what would happen. He'd go to sleep
and he'd be dead in about five minutes from an oxyo. So one of
my jobs was to check for oxygen to make sure they had it. If
they didn't, my position would unplug our line, put a portable bottle and
go to that position and administer oxygen. I never had to do that,
but we had. I'm sure I can't remember all of them little responsibilities.
I mean, you didn't just get on the plane and suck your thumb.
You had to do something. Sure, Now, as you approached the bomb
site, what would you be doing? Well, as I told you,
we didn't use it. We watched the lead ship. It was there if
we needed it. But we dropped when he opened his doors. But what's
the mechanism to do it? What's the mechanism to drop it? How did
you physically drop the bomb? Well? I don't remember all this stuff.
I do remember a thing called interveolometer. I could set it at how many
bombs. Hypothetically, Let's say we carried which we did one hundred founders two
fifty five hundred or one thousand. We never mix the bombs. And when
I speak in schools, I ask kids, if we carried forty one hundred
pound bombs yesterday and we wanted to carry the same weight today and they were
one thousand pound, how many would we carry. It's kind of cute.
And somebody had say four. I'd say, teacher, give them an a.
My point is we never mix them. There were general purpose and sindiary.
We even dropped napound bombs to burn out the Germans out of a fort
Every bomb had a fuse in the back. If you see and when you
hear in a movie the the bombs going down that said fuse spinning out countercli
lotwise. Once it's out, now the bomb is armed and when it hits
detonation, it explodes. And on two missions where we got lost, I
had to go back in the bomb bay, which is about that wide,
and put the cotter pins back in the bomb. Why because when we landed,
if the bomb was live and we had an accident, it exploded.
But by putting the cotter pin back in, the bomb was safe. If
you could go down on the bottom of the North Sea or the English channel.
You would see many be seventeens that didn't make it. They thought they
could and they ran out of gas. We would carry two thousand, four
hundred gallons of gas. Compared to your car that carries fifteen to twenty.
We would burn fifty gallons of gas per hour per engine. Four engines,
we'd burn two hundred gallons of gas per hour under good conditions. Now,
if you're hit and there's trouble, just like your car, you don't get
the mileage. But two hundred into what I say, eighteen hundred miles enough.
Yeah, for about Berlin was about sixteen hundred miles. So under good
conditions you'd come back with a little gas. But there were times when you
were leaking gas. Most of the gases in the wings that's where they kept
it. And if you were losing gas, the guys all of a sudden
run out and down go. They had a fuel gauge. But there were
number of guys so I heard that were gong ho. They were going to
make it home and they didn't. We landed Brussels once in Paris to refuel
because we knew we wouldn't make it home. But was there always one target
permission or were there mole we would have a secondary Another very good question.
Why got to remember god radar was in its infancy at that time, and
if it was a total overcast, you're guessing. So I don't remember how
many, but we hit secondary targets, meaning you couldn't see the first one,
so you hit something else. Once the bombs were away? What was
your job the rest of the mission? Home? Let's go home? No?
Really, I mean if you can visualize bombs away and then you would
the planes would and going to a target you would go to throw the Germans
off. If you went direct, they would be you know, kind of
no, but it was amazing they knew anyway. They had their spies just
like we did. So you're in these large formations, so it's every plane
doing that zig zag. Yeah, the group would fallow in one another.
And then if you had wounded on board, which many many did, they
would shoot a red flare off and they got priority to land first. Why
to take the guy into ah hospital? Was there more chaos during takeoff or
during landing? I would probably say takeoff because we had a load of bombs.
Remember I said to you, now, the pins were not pulled.
My job is if you pull the pins before takeoff, you're asking for trouble.
So once we got airborne, I have no idea what hell. I
had to go back and remove the cotter pins, but that was scary.
And then of course coming home, I remember they used smoke pods because the
weather was soap you couldn't see, so if the smoke or fire were We
came in once where we didn't even use the runway. We just used grass.
You couldn't see. Planes were zig zagging across from one another. Pretty
dangerous. But coming home was the exciting part because you knew you were home
when you saw and you know, Hollywood, but when you saw the white
Cliffs of Dover, you knew you were home. Let's talk about the resistance
that you faced on these flights. Now, talk about how you dealt with
flack and whether there's any particular memory of flack that stands out to you.
We probably got flack, I'm again guessing a little, but probably on two
thirds at least of our missions. We had a couple which were called milk
runs. What does that mean? No fire or no flack, went to
the target, dropped the bombs, went home, it was just an easy
flight. But generally speaking, the Germans would move guns in, meaning somehow
I don't don't know how they knew, but we were going to this particular
target and maybe it wasn't fortified. They'd moved guns in overnight. We did
not get much fighter opposition when I flew, but we did get attacked by
the German jet EM two six two. Give you an example, America,
we had blueprints. Their scientists were so far ahead of us, and I
mean Germany was known for brilliant scientists. Example, the war ended Russia England,
America fought for the German scientists. Who did we get Werner van Brown,
our father of the space program at Nassau. He believed it or not
was a German science to developing jets years before. I used to think,
wait a minute, that was our enemy. The German jet was a total
surprise to me. They came in so fast we didn't even know what it
was. And they could only make one pass, meaning they couldn't keep going
around. They made one hand of land, but they were very effective.
But our P fifty one Mustangs history records shot down German jets, but German
jets shot down P fifty one Mustangs. Also, I'm guessing you feel fortunate
that you had fighter escorts when you were on the bombing run. Yeah,
we didn't have them, and I'm not saying this to be critical. You'll
hear a guy say, yeah, we got escort Bologne. Well, sometime
we didn't. Why generally because they couldn't go in that far they would carry
they being a P fifty one Mustang. When I flew wing tanks, extra
gas tanks because the initial tanks wouldn't give them enough mileage to continue with us
to Berlin or Munich. Munich was way down by the Swiss Alps near Italy.
Just a couple questions left Bud. First of all, what are you
most proud of from your time in service? Making it as you got older.
I'm ninety eight and a half now. When I was twenty five or
thirty, I didn't even think about it. I mean, I'll be retired
forty years February twelfth, and I have still formed my salesman call me,
which is really sweet. But we didn't talk about it like this event.
Here we are being so honored and it makes you feel good. When we
were on a plane coming from Boston to here. My son and I sat
right up in the first seat in regular right behind first class, and this
guy comes wanted to shake my hand, and he said, I just admire
anyone on. He said, I want you to take my seat. I
said, no, no, you stay where you're at. But the honor
of these events, the honor of being taken back to Europe last March,
I'm very thankful to that that people remember. But you know who really remembers
the people in Europe. Everybody there, kids, they weren't even born.
Thank you for our freedom. And I said, how would you know?
You weren't even born. Yeah, but I got a mom and dad and
grandparents, and they told me about it. The Germans not all I found
that out when we went, but occupied the Netherlands, Amsterdam, the Hague,
the Delt, not all of Holland. And they knew the war was
over because this was the end of April and the war ended May eighth.
So what did they do to be nice guys? They blew up the dykes
and Holland was inundated, flooded. And I didn't make this up. They
were starving at five thousand a week, eating tula bulbs, to stay alive.
And I believe Eisenhower and Churchill, who they put plywood floors in the
bombay, loaded it with k rations and instead of flying at twenty five thousand,
can you imagine coming intot two hundred feet dropping the food written on the
rooftops by the people in flowers. God bless you boys. It was a
beautiful way to end the war. And yet of that one hundred and eleven
thousand tons of food, fifty percent was confiscated by the Germans. Those people
have not forgot, and I suppose we wouldn't either if we were attacked.
You know, we are a very blessed country, and this is what I
wish and hope and pray. Whoever sees this realizes how blessed we are.
And I in my talks every time the eighth therefoce we lost a little bit
over twenty six thousand guys nineteen to twenty eight. Think about this. They
gave their lives. They never became husbands or dads, They never came home.
And I tell these young people, when you go home tonight, you
say a prayer thanks to God for those men that fought for you and gave
their lives. We could be talking a different language. I'm not saying we
were, but we could have. Now that's what I'm proud of that I
was able to do something for my country. But it's an honor always to
speak with you. Thank you for your time, and truly thank you for
all you've given for our country. Thank you so very much. We've been
speaking with Paul budd Hedike. He's a US Army Air Corps veteran of World
War Two, where he served as a bombadier on twenty three missions part of
a B seventeen crew flying over Europe. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans
Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans
Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please
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