On the morning of June 3, 1945, with Stud and Dan flying as navigators, Little Joe as radio operator, Ellis as flight engineer, Bud as my co-pilot and fourteen passengers [ground support personnel from the 398th B.G.], we took off from Station 131 for the last time and headed west for Valley, Wales, the field from which we would depart the British Isles. The flight was scheduled for about an hour but it was clear that with the number of passengers we had on board, their baggage and a full load of fuel, the tired old engines on the war weary airplane we were assigned had all they could handle, even for this 150 mile flight.
As we approached the mountains of Snowdonia in northwestern Wales, the oil pressure on my no. 1 engine started dropping [a signal that the engine was about to fail] so I feathered the propeller and cut the engine. The remaining three engines weren't enough to get us over the mountains comfortably so Ellis and I decided to restart the no.1 engine despite its problems and use the additional power to get us to the airfield. This turned out to be a bad decision because in trying to get the engine going again, the feathering motor burned out, the propeller shaft broke and we were again left with three engines but now with the additional drag of a windmilling propeller. We worked our way around the higher mountains and called in to Valley to clear us in for an emergency approach. We put the plane on the ground finally, none the worse for wear, but with the clear understanding on our part that despite the end of the war in Europe, our travails were not yet over. Since we now knew that we were going to have to take several days to repair or replace the engine, we established a round-the-clock guard detail to protect our belongings and prepared to spend a little time at Valley.
That evening when I went to the Officer's Club for supper, I ran into Norm Stephens, my old flying friend from Columbus, Panama City and Tampa. Norm, like me, was flying a B-17 back to the United States. He told me that Bill Thistle had been shot down but he had heard that Bill had been taken prisoner and was alive. Norm seemed to be pretty reserved if not downright drained of "joie de vie"--a big change from the lively friend I had met a year and a half earlier. His comments led me to believe that his war experiences had been pretty bad although he never elaborated on them. I saw Thistle after the war and in January of 1999 Norm Stephens called me to tell me that he too was a resident of New Mexico and after a hiatus of 49 years we resumed our close friendship.
Another person I met at Valley was a communications officer, Lt. Harold Feigenbaum, an old fraternity brother from college. Harold popped up at odd times in my life, the last time was in 1975 when I attended services for the death of my mother, it turned out that Harold had died the same day as my mother and the two services were held at the same time. And in 1992 I discovered that the surgeon who had performed a cataract operation on me in Albuquerque, NM was Feigenbaum's nephew. I kept crossing paths of people I knew as I traveled back to the United States from England.
We were able to get a replacement engine so all of us set about removing the old engine and installing the new one. Fortunately we had half a dozen experienced ground crew mechanics among our fourteen passengers so there was lots of expert help for Ellis. It took two days to change the engine and on the third day we ran it. It ran rough so we looked through the supplies at Valley, found a new propeller and solved that problem. Meanwhile, during the ground tests the oil pressure on the new engine stayed low, we tried switching instruments, changing the wiring and everything that anyone suggested, all to no avail.
On the morning of the fourth day we decided to flight test the new engine so Bud, Ellis and I started the engines and taxied out to the end of the west runway in preparation for takeoff. The west runway faced the Irish Sea and off the end of the runway, perhaps a quarter of a mile out, there was a large rock jutting out from the water. The pre-flight check went perfectly, the newly installed engine purred smoothly, all the instruments gave us the right answers so once we got clearance from the control tower, we lined up to take off. I pushed the four throttles full forward and we rolled towards the sea. As we gained flying speed and I allowed the plane to lift off the ground, I heard Ellis say,
"There goes the oil pressure".
A glance at the gauge showed that the oil pressure on no. 1 engine had dropped to zero, another glance down the runway revealed the rock in the sea beckoning to me. I was committed to the take off so I ignored the engine problem for the moment, climbed to 2000 feet and circled the field. We set the engines for cruise and watched the instruments expecting any moment that the no 1 engine would start to overheat because of the lack of lubricant. We were relieved to see that all the engine indicators, except the one oil pressure gauge, showed perfectly performing pieces of machinery.
We needed to break the engine in by running it for several hours before we could commit to an overseas trip so rather than return directly to the field we toured the area for about two hours watching the instruments and waiting for disaster to strike. It never happened so at the end of the flight, we landed, gathered Dan, Stud and the passengers around us and agreed to fly the airplane as it was, oil pressure or not. We were all eager to get home but we didn't want to take any unnecessary risks and it was made clear that anyone who felt uncomfortable with the decision was free to get a ride on a different airplane. No one demurred.
Two days later the weather and winds were satisfactory for flying the second leg of the trip so I filed a flight plan for Reykjavik, Iceland and we took off despite having the no. 1 engine oil pressure reading zero and causing a certain amount of mental discomfort on my part. I was instructed to check in by radio at Prestwick, Scotland to report on whether or not I had experienced icing conditions on that part of the trip [some, nothing serious]. When I did so the Airdrome Officer came on the air and asked me if I was the Paul Wagner he had known at college in Albany, NY. Another coincidental crossing of paths, eight months later when we were both back in school we chuckled over this.
From Prestwick we set a course over the North Atlantic towards the easternmost tip of Iceland where the field at Reykjavik was located. The weather was good but there were spring thunderstorms all along the route and I changed course constantly to avoid them. Stud complained that my dodging the storms fouled up his navigation and we were sure to get lost over the open sea. By now I was used to Stud and wasn't at all surprised when as we approached our ETA [estimated time of arrival] a tip of land with an airfield located on it appeared directly ahead. Iceland was quite a sight--not a tree to be seen, everything was flat and the Quonset huts were faired into the ground as if to keep from blowing away, adding to the impression of flatness. We landed, parked and made arrangements for refueling. I was sitting in the pilot's seat filling out the Form 1 [pilot's post flight aircraft report] when the refueling crew started to fill the tanks. One of the men ran across the wing, stuck his head in the window and said,
"Hi Paul, how's the trip going?"
This one was an old high school acquaintance from Albany. Someone once said something about this being a small world, I believe it.
We were scheduled to sleep for eight hours but I napped and was up after about four hours. I went out to the aircraft and ran into Ellis who had an interesting report to make.
"Buzz", he said, "When I went to the mess I ran into a man from the 303rd BG [former home base for our aircraft] who asked me how the plane was behaving and especially did we have any trouble with the no.1 engine"
It turned out that Ellis had, by sheer chance, run into the former crew chief for our plane who told Ellis that they had always had trouble with the oil pressure indicator and no matter what they did it never did work right! What a relief. I filed a flight plan, gathered up the crew and passengers and happily ignoring the zero oil pressure, took off in the Arctic near-twilight for Labrador.
As we flew, I lighted up a cigarette, set the autopilot, put my feet [in my warm German flying boots] on the rudder bar supports and joined in the singing of the mix of bawdy and patriotic songs that could be heard on the intercom. Our flight took us over the southern tip of Greenland [which was covered by clouds] then across the Labrador Sea and Lake Melville to Goose Bay located at Happy Valley, deep in the evergreen forests of Labrador.
When we came in sight of the airfield I circled it once to familiarize myself with the layout. The terrain was hilly and there was a small mound in the center of the field with the runways making their criss-cross pattern on the flat area surrounding the hill. It was evening and not very light and as it had been six months since I had last made a night landing I was a little cautious in my approach. I brought the plane in fast and when I was sure we would hit the runway correctly I cut the engines to kill the speed and get down on the ground. When I did this, the rich mixture of unburned gas coming out of the four exhausts caught fire [a common occurrence] and also caught the eye of the traffic controller in the tower as we disappeared behind the hill and out of his line of view. He assumed we were on fire and sounded the alarm so that when we rolled to a stop at the far end of the airfield, we were met by what had to be Labrador's finest fire fighting crew. With lots of chatter on the intercom about my needing rescue equipment even for a normal landing and many chuckles among the passengers on the airplane, we taxied to the refueling area escorted by the rescue equipment. I thought it was a rather colorful reception.
After getting a little sleep and some food I was ready to go again. The crew and passengers were as anxious as I to get back to the United States so I wasted no time in filing a flight plan [the weather was perfect with ceiling and visibility unlimited for the trip] and getting under way. We flew south over the hills and forests of Labrador and Quebec, across Maine and finally set the aircraft down on the runway at Bradley Field, Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Home at last!
From "The Youngest Crew" by Paul Wagner
Lagumo Press, Cheyenne, WY, 1997, ISBN 1-878117-18-1
