Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
John Lucky Luckydoo. He served as a pilot and co pilot in the one
hundredth Bomb Group in the US Army Air Corps during World War Two. He
successfully served twenty five missions, which was a rare feat at that time.
And Lucky, thanks so much for being with us. Well, thank you,
Craig. Where were you born and raised there? I was born and
raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, somewhat known as the cradle of the Confederacy,
on a place called Missionary Ridge, which became a very memorable battle in the
Civil War in eighteen sixty three. And was there a history of military service
in your face family? Not really. I did become a member of the
Junior Rotc in high school and that was my introduction to the military. Living
in Chattanooga, my father raised show horses, and just twelve miles away in
Chickamauga, Georgia, was a cavalry base for the Third Cavalry, and as
townies, we were invited to participate in some of their horse shows and they
did a box highlighter every weekend and then in the summertime, I became a
member of the Civilian Military Training Force CMTZ at Fort Oglethorpe, where we lived
in tents and rode army horses for two weeks. As a result, I
noted that young officers on a cavalry base were riding around in convertibles, and
they were sought by all the young ladies, and the government furnished polo players
with a full stable of polo ponies that could travel all over the world and
compete, and if you were any good at all, that became a very
sought after avocation. I aspired to go to West Point and was sort of
attracted to the military way of life as a potential career. That was long
before Pearl Harbor, however, I believe you were about nineteen years old when
the Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, correct, And at that time I was right
between high school and college. I had just entered college there in Chattanooga,
and my best friend and I had certainly been convinced that America was eventually going
to become involved in the war in Europe, which was raging at that time.
This was nineteen forty one. The best thing that we could do would
be to since we both wanted to fly, would be to go to Canada
and join the Royal Canadian Air Force and get our training, and then once
America became involved in the war, we could transfer to our American services.
Well, we discovered that in order to train in Canada you had to have
perenial consent if you were underage, and at that time we were under a
We were both under age. My best friend, whose father had been a
victim of Mustard Gast in the World War One, was an only child.
He never knew his father, and when we presented the plan to go to
Canada to his mother, who was all she had that only child, she
said to him that, silly, if you really honestly believe that this is
what you should do, then you have my blessing. So I thought,
naturally, when I went home and presented the plan to my parents that i'd
get a similar response. When my mother discovered that missus Sullivan was willing to
allow her only offspring to go to Canada and learn to fly and prepare himself
for war, she said, well, I hate to see you all do
this, but if you considered it to be your best course, then I
wouldn't stand in your way, but you have to convince your father. Well,
when my father came home from his office and he discovered what we were
planning on doing, he said, you blithering idiots. You don't have any
idea what you're confronting with and what you're doing. It's none of your business.
And so war halfway around the world in Europe, and it's not our
concern. Back in school, over my dead body, would I ever give
you my consent. So as a result, my best friend went to Canada
and he trained on spitfires, and I went to college. So when did
you join the service? Well, I joined the service almost immediately following Pearl
Harbor. At that time. Then there was no question as to my parental
consent because we were canon fodder. We were the proper age to be called
up. So my fraternity brothers and I almost im mass joined up in early
nineteen forty two. And where were you going to school? I was going
to school at the University of Chattanooga, which is now a branch of the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Where did you go for training? I went
immediately to my actual field in Montgomery, Alabama for pre flight and was fortunate
enough to be designated as the cadet adjutant who was the second in command of
a four thousand cadet corps in pre flight. And as it turned out,
that stood me in pretty good stead all the way through my training, because
I was cadet captain of each of my classes. That became very important actually
at one point because, as you say in your book, due to some
questionable instruction, you were in danger of washing out of pilot training. But
another person wanted you to have another chance because of that title. That's correct,
and so and then you got some better instruction, right, I did
what was the difference what finally made it click for you and helped you understand
how to be a good pilot. The difference was basically in the instructors.
The first instructor I had was a west Pointer, and he could not fly
the airplane. He was really not a natural pilot, and he was not
able to impart how to fly an airplane when he couldn't do it in himself.
So I really was not learning anything. And this wasn't basic training.
This was the second phase. You go from pre flight to primary, and
from primary to basic, and from basic to advance. I was, as
you mentioned, captain of my class and a civilian instructor at Shawfield, South
Carolina, where I was stationed for basic stepped forth and said, well,
you give him to me for thirty minutes, and if I can't pass him,
then wash him out. And that made the difference. I learned more
in thirty minutes from him than I did from ten hours with the previous so
called instructor. But they were pressing everybody into service, of course, as
rapidly as possible, and there were some cracks that people fell through major lucky
to do. You were also told in training, and I'm quoting here,
you're all going to be killed, which is not the most encouraging thing that
you want to hear from a commander, but given what was happening with the
bombers, it was fairly realistic. So how did you react to that?
Well, that was told to us, not in training, but actually just
prior to beings shipped overseas. Forty of my classmates from my flying school,
my Advanced Flying School were selected to be sent to the one hundredth bomb Group,
which was a V seventeen organization in Carnia, Nebraska at the time that
had already been through pre combat training and they were ready to be shipped out,
and they pulled all of the co pilots, second in command of the
crews out of the planes and stuck us in the right seat. We never
bet into B seventeen before. They only did this in this one group,
and nobody's ever explained or even admitted that this was done, but it was.
And that's one of the reasons that I wrote the book is because there
were certainly incidences that occurred in what became known as the Bloody hundredth bomb Group
that didn't happen to other groups, and this is what happened in the hundredth.
And so here we were second in command of the crew of ten men
on to BE seventeen. We were unfamiliar with the airplane. I've never been
never flown a four engine airplane before, or our training previously was on twin
engine aircraft. So the commander called it together and he said, you look
to your right, and you look to your left, and you look ahead
and behind you, and only one of you is going to come home.
So you're going to be killed and you might just as well accept it.
So that was the way we went to combat. That's Major John Lucky luckydo,
a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War Two and the bloody hundredth
Bomb Group still ahead. Lucky takes us along on its most harrowing mission,
but up next, he shares the challenges of trying to adjust to the B
seventeen while assigned to a crew that didn't want him there, and the mission
that almost cost him his toes. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans'
Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest this week
is Major John Lucky Luckadoo, a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War
Two and one of the very few who survived twenty five missions early in the
war. We now pick up his story with the difficulty of adjusting to his
new B seventeen bomber crew and how a hole in the plane put his health
and possibly his life in serious danger. Well, it took a while because
my only instruction was from my pilot and he was not a warm and fuzzy
personality. So actually, on some of the crews that we replaced as co
pilots, they accepted it as inevitable, and well, that's the military,
so we'll make the most of it and the best of it on the crew
that I was assigned to. It just so happened that the navigator and the
bombardier, who were both officers on the crew, were particularly fond of their
previous co pilots, the guy I replaced, and they resented highly the fact
that this brand new guy that didn't know from nothing, particularly about to be
seventeen, was thrust onto their crew, and so they proceeded to make my
life help. They did everything in their war in the world that they could
to discourage me from staying on the crew. I guess they expected me to
resign or insist on a transfer or something, and they were very juvenile about
it, but stopped more to be exact. So I was policing my backfield
while I was trying to learn something about the airplane and what my duties and
responsibilities were. I guess it was something of a blessing in disguise, because
it forced me to focus on the job and to be determined that I was
going to succeed regardless, regardless of the opposition, and so I didn't worry
about or concern myself with what my odds were of succeeding or surviving, because
survival was the bottom line in combat, and we didn't know anything about the
nature of the enemy that we were going to face. We just knew that
they were experienced, they were very proven. They'd been fighting for four years
on the Western Front against the British and on the Eastern Front against the Russians.
They were prosed, they knew what they were doing. They were extremely
well equipped, and they had excellent techniques and ability. And so we were
lambs going to the slaughter guinea pigs, just trying to prove a strategy of
how the bomber forces of America could best be utilized to bring Hitler to his
knees and to assist the British to avoid an invasion. You mentioned the ability
to focus on your job, but Crewe cohesion is also important. So you've
got these guys that kind of resent you. You mentioned the pilot. He
made some questionable decisions in Canada that delayed your deployment to the UK, and
then I believe he also harassed you and injured you, not seriously, but
interview in bullying you in lack of a better term. So how are you
able to work well together given those issues? Well, you soon learned that
in a ten man crew you have to depend on each individual to do their
specific job and if they failed down that's the weakest link in the chain.
So it was a contest. We were terribly young, we were awfully innocent,
and we didn't know what the heck we were doing, but we were
convinced that it was the right thing to do. It was our patriotic duty
and we were willing to put our lives on the line in order to prove
that we could do it. And once you got to England, do you
say in your book that your first mission was pretty uneventful relatively speaking, but
you got resistance on your second mission? So what was it like to face
real hostile enemies for real? Not just training, but it's the real thing.
It was scary and chaotic. It was traumatic when you're in the heat
of battle and anti aircraft fires coming up from the ground and knock you out
of the sky. These enemy fighters are coming in and attacking you from all
angles. All hell's breaking loose. It's scary, it's just riveting. So
but you're flying in close formation at high altitude, freezing, freezing to death
because we were unpressurized. Absolutely. In fact, there was one mission where
flak blew a hole near your feet right yes, and gave you serious frostbite.
Tell us a little bit about that one. It crossed me a bit,
all my toes and stuck my feet to the rudder past and at our
high altitude, at fifty to sixty degrees below zero, if you take your
gloves off, your fingers can self amputate to the nearest knuckle and you don't
see any blood, you don't feel any pain, you're not even aware.
You just see your fingers lying on the floor. Well, it's a wonder.
It's just a miracle that I did not lose all my toes because this
hole in the nose of the airplane just sent that jet of cold, freezing
air directly onto my feet and didn't affect anybody else on the airplane, but
it didn't me, and just my toes, just my feet. When I
landed. Finally, after five and a half hours of that, they had
to chip me out of the airplane and send me up to the hospital and
gradually thaw my feet out. They packed them in ice originally and then gradually
brought them back to normal temperature. And fortunately the treatment I got was correct
and I did not lose my toes, but I still have effects from it
in the cold weather, And you were worried about making a successful landing because
your feet are critical to making a land that's right. I had to actually
manipulate the runners with my heels. When we come back, Major Luckadoo explains
the stress of flying through flak, tells us about moving up from copilot to
pilot, and walks us through his most harrowing mission. I'm Greg Corumbus and
this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our
guest this week is Major j On Lucky Lucky Do, a US Army Air
Corps veteran of World War Two. In just a moment, Lucky will tell
us about his most traumatic mission, a mission he did not expect to survive.
But first Lucky, who tells us about flying through flak and moving from
copilot to pilot to eventually becoming operations officer. Well, you couldn't deal with
it. You were helpless because if you attempted to take evasive action, you
could disturb the whole formation number one and number two, you could zig when
you should have zagged and fly into it instead of away from it. So
it was something that you had to essentially put out of your mind and say,
well, I can't do anything about this, so I'm just going to
have to apply straight level. And actually we didn't fly the airplane on the
bomb run. The pilot and the co pilot turned the control of the airplane
over to the bombadier who was literally flying it by the input that he had
with the interchange, the interconnection between the autopilot and the bomb site. So
pilot and the copilot we're just sitting there ready to take over instantly if necessary,
manually, but the plane was literally being flown by the bomb site with
the bomba deer. Now we mentioned your pilot a couple of times. He
had a mindset that he wanted to condense his missions as close to each other
as possible so he could get done with them as soon as possible. Correct,
So when he was done, you became a command pilot. Then after
that, right, how pleased were you to have that promotion? Well,
I was still a second lieutenant, and when the crew finished up, I
still had four missions to fly, and so on my next mission, I
went out with a brand new crew who was on their third mission as really
an instructor pilot too because I had the experience, and flying directly in front
of me was the operations officer who was second in command of the squadron.
This was the first Week in Black Week in October, and we were on
October the eighth. I'll never forget it was my twenty second mission, and
I've just returned now from England where I commemorated the eightieth anniversary of that mission
on October eighth of nineteen forty three. Thing I was coming back from that
one, we turned on the bomb run and we were eighteen ships from the
bloody hundredth As we turned on the bomb run, the flack was coming up
so densely from the ground to protect the target, nenser than we had ever
seen before, and the Germans were actually flying through their own flack. Normally
they didn't do that. They would stay back and let the anti aircraft fire
damage planes enough to force them ount of the formation, and then when they
were by themselves, we were duck soup. That was almost a death knell.
But on this mission. They were flying through their own flack, so
they were susceptible of being flung shot down by friendly fire as we were.
But that was how spread the Germans were at that stage, and we just
I lost twelve out of the eighteen airplanes on the bomb run, and I
brought what was left of the group back with my tacking on to a succeeding
wave of bombers in the ninety fifth group in our wing that followed, or
we wouldn't have made it back because I lost an engine over the target,
so I was only flying on three engines, and that slowed me up,
and that slowed up the whole formation if they kept with me. So it
was extremely traumatic, and the Germans were so desperate that when they ran out
of ammunition they began ramming us, just like Japanese kamikazis, and one rammed
the plane directly in front of me with the operations officer on it, and
they blew up. And so when I landed, the squadron commander came up
to me. He said, well, Lucky, where is Barker was the
ops officer? And I said, well, I saw them rammed and I
exploded. Nobody got out of that aeroplane, so he's not coming back.
He said, all right, then you are the new ops officer. I
said, well, that's going to be a little awkward, and I'm just
a little second lieutenant. He said, Nowhorry, he will give you the
support and the authority that you need and will promote you as rapidly as as
permitted. And that was every ninety days in the combat zone. And what
did that job require, Well, it required ground duties, very heavy ground
duties, and you were second in command of the squadron. When the squadron
commander was not leading or flying, then you had to fly. And you
determined the replacements, the qualifications when they came in to take over your losses,
and you set the formation. You determined what the bomb load would be
and the gas load, and of a lot sort of thing for the squadron
for each particular mission. It was really heavy duty, but you also had
to complete your tour. So when your squadron led the group formation, then
either you or the squadron commander would be the command pilot and then in those
days the co pilot on the crew would go back and fly the tailor con
position. Well, they never fired a fifty caliber of their lives. They
put me in the tail one on one mission. That was when I was
flying with my regular crew. I had no idea what I was doing.
I just bore down on we came under attack, and I just bore down
on the triggers and burned out both barrels. So I was useless sitting back
there except to call out lanes that were going down and tax were coming in
and that sort of thing. But oh, it was. It wasn't the
smartest thing. My eventual wife used to call that military intelligence. Yeah,
putting you in combat in a job that you had no training for is,
yeah, not a good policy. And I believe when you landed that mission,
you made it very clear that was your last mission as a tail gunner,
correct I did. I simply said, well, hear my wings.
You can court martial me or do whatever you have to do, but I'm
not flying in a tail anymore because I've never fired at fifty caliber. I
don't know what I'm doing. A gunner is much more effective back there than
I would be, and so I'm not. I refuse, and they said,
all right, you'll have to sit on the ground when your crew Flaes.
Let me go back to October nineteen forty three. In the mission you
mentioned a moment ago when you lost one of your engines on the way back
from the bombing run. Were you facing the same amount of heavy flak as
the way in. Yes, absolutely, And now you're going slower so they
have more time to you were a better target. And when I called the
group that I wanted to tack onto, I told them that I lost an
engine, and they said, well, we'll slow up if we can,
but we can't slow the whole formation to the point that we're going to fall
out of the sky. So if you can't cape up, I will have
to go on without you. But that was inevitable, so you did have
to leave the formation. No, they slowed up slightly and I could get
partial power out of that engine. I couldn't get full power, and that
was fun spell the difference, But that was the salvation for us getting back.
How do you go back up after something that harrowing? I don't really
know. I've thought about that and been asked about it, and I have
to tell you that when I look back upon it and I think of all
of the odds, and I think of all of the circumstances under which we
were functioning. I have to think, you know, that was suicidal,
That was traumatic. It certainly changed me drastically. But then I realized too
that nobody goes to war and comes back the same person. It's going to
change you. It's inevitable. And when you're facing death day after day,
and if you dwelled on that and your odds of surviving, that you wouldn't
last. So did you convince yourself you were coming back that day or did
you just not think? Well, you just don't think about it. You
just keep concentrating on your job and doing your job to the best of your
ability, and let events take effect as they play out. There's just so
much that you have to rely upon a go. Are you an angel?
Money shoulders to see you through? And I was extremely fortunate to have survived
well. The title of your book and how you describe it in the book
basically says it that it's not really skill that determines whether you survive a mission
or not. It's true, it's just some make it and some don't.
That's exactly right. Now. One of the other things I think I read
in your book is that even though it could be and always was extremely cold
on the plane in stressful situations, you would still sweat. Exactly in the
heat of battle and trying to struggle and keep your airplane airborne and you and
your place in the formation and dealing with everything that you're having the cope with,
you realize that the sweat's just pouring off of you and you're wearing them
an oxygen mask and to survive that perspiration freezes instantly and it blocks, It
creates ice crystals in the flow of oxygen, so you're having to crack those
up with one hand and fly the airplane with the other. How much did
you sweat that day? You had three and a half engines, a lot,
yeah, plenty. Now you also made sure you had two things with
you every time you got on the plane, and one of them saved your
life. It was a small bible, right, How did that happen?
Well? I used to carry My mother gave me a new testament that I
carried in my breast pocket and I wore that on each mission. And the
other talisman that I had was silk stocking that the girl I was romancing at
the time had had given me as a good luck term. And uh so
those those were the two we all had superstitions, or we all had our
routine that we would undergo. If it had worked before, maybe it'll continue
to work. So you find yourself doing some strange things, but nevertheless,
you're you're just praying that you're going to survive. But the Bible literally saved
your life one day with shrapnel correct did the thin fuselage of the airplane is
just a little plate of aluminum that an alloy that you know flat, goes
right straight through and a piece of black came through instruct that testament then increased
the cover of it, or else it would have penetrated my heart. Do
you still have it? I do, but I can't find it. We
moved to a retirement facility some years ago and in the process it's been misplaced
and I can't locate it. But I know among my things, but I
just can't put my hand on it. Tell me about your final mission when
you finally got number twenty five done? What was that mission like? Well,
I was acting as the squadron operations officer of a second squadron, not
the first one that I was assigned to, and of course was in a
position to select the mission that I would lead, and the squadron commander was
had combat fatigue and he had been sent to the fleckhouses we called it,
or the rest home, and he wasn't even on the base, and so
I was in command of the squadron and this mission came up. Where this
was in early of forty four. The Germans had erected these launch pads along
the coast of Calais, and we're lobbing these V two rockets into London and
causing horrendous damage. So we had a mission at lower altitude to knock out
one of those, and that looked like a milk run to me. So
I selected a pilot who was on his last mission happened to be from Dallas,
and his crew and we completed our tour. We thought that we just
duck over the coast and drop our bombs and scoot home. Going to be
a short and sweet mission and that would end it. It so happened that
the Germans knew our target, and they came halfway out across the channel and
attacked us and inflicted some damage, but they didn't to terr us. We
went ahead and bombed the target and managed to get home. What was that
feeling like, Well, it was such a release relief, and it meant,
of course that I was unassigned instantly. I didn't have a job,
and I'd been so concentrated and focused on doing what I was doing for so
long that it just left me, you know, useless, And it just
wore on me from that point on, because eventually I stayed on the base
for about thirty days and still had no duties and on wasn't flying, and
they offered me several jobs but pathfinder or spotting commander or other jobs, but
I'd still have to fly combat. And I said, hey, wait a
minute, I've pressed my luck for twenty five missions with the bloody hundredths,
and I think that's the extent that I ought to do, so I could
be sent home to train replacements coming over. And I said, well,
how soon can you cut those orders? So I went to Liverpool and came
home by boat. And that was a slow process because we had flown our
airplanes across the North Atlantic when we went to combat, and going back to
twelve days on an old World War One clunker called the USS Washington, our
guest is Major John Lucky Luckadoo, a US Army Air Corps veteran of World
War Two. In a moment, he'll tell us what he believes the legacy
of the Bloody hundredth Bomb Group ought to be, and the tragic end of
his friend who joined the service in Canada before the US joined World War Two.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans' Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest this week is Major John Lucky Luckadoo, a
US Army Air Corps veteran of World War Two. In a moment, Major
Luckadoo will tell us what he is most proud of from his time in uniform
and what the legacy of the Bloody hundredth Bomb Group ought to be. He
will also share the devastating story of losing his friend, who joined the service
in Canada before the US entered World War Two. But up next, I
asked Lucky about whether he had fighter escorts for his bombing runs, and he
explains how General Jimmy Doolittle made the bombers safer than ever. Only part of
the time we were supposed to have fighter escorts, and the theory was that
they could protect us from attacking fighters. Well, the thing that was completely
forgotten was that the fighters were twice as fast as we were, and so
in order to stay with us, they had to orbit and burn o'fuel and
they couldn't stay very long, so they would have to leave and another group
supposedly would rendezvous with us and pick up and carry us from there, so
they'd just relay us. But those rendezvous were very haphazard and they didn't work.
Half the time. The fighters couldn't find us, and so essentially during
my combat tour, I flew unescorted. We had P forty seven's, we
had P fifty one's, and we had some P thirty eights which we never
saw. But the Germans would simply wait until the first relay would run out
of fuel and have to go back, and then they'd jump us. So
it was duck soup. When Jimmy Doolittle took over from General Aker on January
of forty four, he said, well, forget escorting. You know,
that's not your job anymore. You go down and straight the the airfields and
catch them on the ground before they ever get out. And that worked far
more effectively than trying to pick us up or dog fight in the air.
Just a couple of questions before we let you go, sir, What do
you see as the legacy of the Bloody hundredth. Well, it was a
very unique outfit. Its history was very unusual. Things happened to it that
didn't happen in any other group. It's being documented now by Tom Hanks and
Steven Spielberg and the docuseries that will be issued shortly in January. I think
it became notorious because of the extremely heavy losses that we sustained. When we
sustained them, we did not end up through the entire course of the two
years that we served. The group served in Europe in the eighth Air Force
as the group that lost the most aircraft. It was only the second or
third, but when we lost we lost very, very heavily. For example,
in Black Week, on my worst mission, we lost twelve out of
eighteen aircraft the first day. The second day we send up eighteen aircraft and
we lost nine. The third day we could only put up thirteen aircraft.
We got one back that was Rosie Rosenthal. So that was a perfect example
of how our losses were really staggering. When we sustained them, but overall
it sort of averaged out a little more favorably, So we were about the
second or third. What does it mean to you that you and the men
you served with are going to be getting so much attention through this Masters of
the Air documentary. It just means that we were accidental members of history through
no accident on our part. We ended up being somewhat famous or infamous because
of our losses. And Hitler certainly miscalculated in thinking that we could not replace
our losses, but he completely ignored the fact that we were protected by an
ocean on both sides, and in the meantime, our subvented population was out
producing the world for not only ourselves but all our elities. So we could
we could produce, and we could train, and we did, and that's
what spelled the difference for our prevailing I want to circle back to something we
talked about at the very beginning. You're explaining how you initially tried to join
the service. Your father was very clear that he would not give you permission,
but your best friend did, and it's a big part of your book.
He did not come home. What happened to your friend Sally yes.
Sully went through the North African campaign, flying spitfires and chasing Rammel all over
the African continent. And then by the time Pearl Harbor occurred and I went
through training and got sent to England, he had been reassigned to England.
He came up to my base when and visit me in a spitfire and I
took him up at it be seventeen and put him in the pilot's seat and
let him get the feel of the airplane and everything. He looked at me
and he said, buster, this ain't flying. You're nothing but a truck
driver. And I said, well, lucky er, silly, I guess
you. We need truck drivers too. And he said, well, let's
land and you fly my spit and you'll know what flying is all about.
So we landed and I said, no, I'm not going to do that.
That's stupid, because there's so much difference between handling a little single engine
fighter and a four engine bomber with ten on the crew. He said,
no, it's a piece of cake. So he put me in the cockpit
and pointed out the controls and gave me the speeds and everything. He says,
take her up and foolishly I did. I said, this is stupid.
It was so sensitive and so different, and of course all the instruments
were in kilometers in different than than our instruments. And because it was the
spit was a tail dragger that meant the tails out on the ground when when
you were in take off position you couldn't see straight ahead. In order to
taxi you had to s turn and look out one side and turn look out
the other. So it was all together different. Make a long story short,
I managed to take it off and very tenuously get it around the pattern
and just get it back on the ground without killing myself or cracking it up.
And he said, well, you've got to come down and visit me
at my base. And in the meantime he had been transitioned from the Spitfire
to a very vicious airplane that the British had called the Hawker Typhoon. And
the Typhoon was so overpowered that when you took off down the runway you had
to keep pull pump opposite rudder just to keep it straight because the torque was
so heavy that it would pull the airplane off the runway. And it was
about a month later before I could get loose and get down to see him.
And when I did, and I squeezed my bomber into his fighter base,
where the runways are only half as long as they are at bomber bases.
I saw the smoking wreckage off to the side and still smoking, and
I taxed it up and asked to be shown to his quarters, and they
said, well, you have to see the COO. And I said,
well, I understand that that's the protocol, because you land on the farm
base, you report to the commanding officer and telling him you need fuel or
you're lost, or what circumstances are. But I said, I'm in a
bit of a hurry. I've got to get back. Can't you just show
me his quarter? I said no, you've got to see the CEO.
So they showed me into this wing commander's office and he was writing and h
didn't look up, and I cleared my throat and he said, you looked
at me, and he said, Yank, what the hell are you doing
here? You lost? You need fuel? Why'd you land here? And
I said, no, sir, I was just on a social call to
say hello to my best friend, Sally Sullivan. He said, you knew
him, and I said, yes, sir, he was my best friend.
We were fraternity brothers together. And he said, did you see the
wreckage when you landed and I said yes, sir. He said, we
lost him yesterday afternoon and he was on takeoff and as he just cleared the
runway his engine quit and with full opposite rudder, he just cartwheeled in and
was killed. And he said, I was just notifying his mother next to
kin, and I want you to do it. I said, well,
sir, he wasn't playing for the Americans. He's lying for the British and
under your command. I think that's your responsibilities. I know, and I
will, but I think she would prefer to get it from you first.
So I had to cable her that Silly lost his life in England and they
buried him three days later, and I was just back at his gravesite last
week. Sir, When you look back at your years of service to our
country, what are you most proud of, Craig. I'm proud that I
served. I am somewhat discouraged that current generations are not fulfilling their oath that
they took when they entered the service to protect our value, both foreign and
domestic, because I fear that today America is being betrayed from within. And
lastly, sir, what does it mean to you to have us at the
American Veteran Center record and share your story. Well, I spend much of
my time currently and half for the last thirty five years speaking to younger generations
and reminding them of the tremendous sacrifices that were made ultimate sacrifices by fellow citizens,
or they wouldn't be here. They should never forget that people didn't feel
so strongly that our ideals and our values were so important that they were willing
to sacrifice their life for the perpetuation that's above and beyond. And not only
speak to younger children, school children and college kids and all the way in
between, as well as older people to remind them of that. But I'm
also mindful that during World War Two, a phenomenal thing happened. The country
came together, was galvanized and unity to outproduce the world. And that's why
we prevailed. And those citizens, those people who came out of the homes
and the rosie the riveters and kept the home buyers burning so we'd have something
to come home to. They've never been recognized. So I'm trying to get
Congress too, and one of my lifelong missions is to get Congress to dedicate
the day to commemorate the service of those who weren't in uniform, who supported
those who were. Call the Hometown Heroes Day. It's a great idea.
It's a great idea. I hope it happens, and I hope you are
there to watch the signing of it when it happens. So thank you,
Major Luckydo. It's been an honor to meet you, sir. Thank you
very much for your time today, and most of all, I thank you
for your devoted service to our country. Thank you, Thank you, Craig.
We've been joined by John Lucky Luckado served in the one hundred Bomb Group
in the US Army Air Corps during World War Two. Successfully served twenty five
bombing missions with his B seventeen. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veteran's Chronicles.
Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
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