Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ripsnort on August 13, 2003, 04:46:03 PM
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Fox news, so alot of you won't believe it :rolleyes:...but..worth the read:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,94542,00.html
He was 81, and had been in the air conditioning and plumbing business in nearby McKeesport. If you had seen him on the street he would probably have looked to you like so many other graying, bespectacled old World War II veterans whose names appear so often now on obituary pages.
But like so many of them, though he seldom talked about it, he could have told you one hell of a story. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross (search) and the Purple Heart (search) all in one fell swoop in the skies over Germany on Dec. 31, 1944.
Fell swoop indeed.
Capt. Glenn Rojohn, of the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group (search), was flying his B-17G Flying Fortress (search) bomber on a raid over Hamburg. His formation had braved heavy flak to drop their bombs, then turned 180 degrees to head out over the North Sea (search).
They had finally turned northwest, headed back to England, when they were jumped by German fighters at 22,000 feet. The Messerschmitt Me-109s (search) pressed their attack so closely that Capt. Rojohn could see the faces of the German pilots.
He and other pilots fought to remain in formation so they could use each other’s guns to defend the group. Rojohn saw a B-17 ahead of him burst into flames and slide sickeningly toward the Earth. He gunned his ship forward to fill in the gap.
He felt a huge impact. The big bomber shuddered, felt suddenly very heavy and began losing altitude. Rojohn grasped almost immediately that he had collided with another plane. A B-17 below him, piloted by Lt. William G. McNab, had slammed the top of its fuselage (search) into the bottom of Rojohn’s. The top turret gun of McNab’s plane was now locked in the belly of Rojohn’s plane and the ball turret (search) in the belly of Rojohn’s had smashed through the top of McNab’s. The two bombers were almost perfectly aligned -- the tail of the lower plane was slightly to the left of Rojohn’s tailpiece. They were stuck together, as a crewman later recalled, “like mating dragon flies.”
No one will ever know exactly how it happened. Perhaps both pilots had moved instinctively to fill the same gap in formation. Perhaps McNab’s plane had hit an air pocket.
Three of the engines on the bottom plane were still running, as were all four of Rojohn’s. The fourth engine on the lower bomber was on fire and the flames were spreading to the rest of the aircraft. The two were losing altitude quickly. Rojohn tried several times to gun his engines and break free of the other plane, but the two were inextricably locked together. Fearing a fire, Rojohn cut his engines and rang the bailout bell. If his crew had any chance of parachuting, he had to keep the plane under control somehow.
The ball turret, hanging below the belly of the B-17, was considered by many to be a death trap -- the worst station on the bomber. In this case, both ball turrets figured in a swift and terrible drama of life and death. Staff Sgt. Edward L. Woodall Jr., in the ball turret of the lower bomber, had felt the impact of the collision above him and saw shards of metal drop past him. Worse, he realized both electrical and hydraulic power was gone.
Remembering escape drills, he grabbed the handcrank, released the clutch and cranked the turret and its guns until they were straight down, then turned and climbed out the back of the turret up into the fuselage.
Once inside the plane’s belly, Woodall saw a chilling sight: the ball turret of the other bomber protruding through the top of the fuselage. In that turret, hopelessly trapped, was Staff Sgt. Joseph Russo. Several crewmembers on Rojohn’s plane tried frantically to crank Russo’s turret around so he could escape. But, jammed into the fuselage of the lower plane, the turret would not budge.
Aware of his plight, but possibly unaware that his voice was going out over the intercom of his plane, Sgt. Russo began reciting his Hail Marys.
Up in the ****pit, Capt. Rojohn and his co-pilot, 2nd Lt. William G. Leek Jr., had propped their feet against the instrument panel so they could pull back on their controls with all their strength, trying to prevent their plane from going into a spinning dive that would prevent the crew from jumping out.
Capt. Rojohn motioned left and the two managed to wheel the grotesque, collision-born hybrid of a plane back toward the German coast. Leek felt like he was intruding on Sgt. Russo as his prayers crackled over the radio, so he pulled off his flying helmet with its earphones.
Rojohn, immediately grasping that crew could not exit from the bottom of his plane, ordered his top turret gunner and his radio operator, Tech Sgts. Orville Elkin and Edward G. Neuhaus, to make their way to the back of the fuselage and out the waist door on the left behind the wing.
Then he got his navigator, 2nd Lt. Robert Washington, and his bombardier, Sgt. James Shirley, to follow them. As Rojohn and Leek somehow held the plane steady, these four men, as well as waist gunner Sgt. Roy Little and tail gunner Staff Sgt. Francis Chase, were able to bail out.
Now the plane locked below them was aflame. Fire poured over Rojohn’s left wing. He could feel the heat from the plane below and hear the sound of .50-caliber machinegun ammunition “cooking off” in the flames.
Capt. Rojohn ordered Lt. Leek to bail out. Leek knew that without him helping keep the controls back, the plane would drop in a flaming spiral and the centrifugal force (search) would prevent Rojohn from bailing. He refused the order.
Meanwhile, German soldiers and civilians on the ground that afternoon looked up in wonder. Some of them thought they were seeing a new Allied secret weapon -- a strange eight-engined double bomber. But anti-aircraft gunners on the North Sea coastal island of Wangerooge had seen the collision. A German battery captain wrote in his logbook at 12:47 p.m.:
“Two fortresses collided in a formation in the NE. The planes flew hooked together and flew 20 miles south. The two planes were unable to fight anymore. The crash could be awaited so I stopped the firing at these two planes.”
Suspended in his parachute in the old December sky, Bob Washington watched with deadly fascination as the mated bombers, trailing black smoke, fell to Earth about three miles away, their downward trip ending in an ugly boiling blossom of fire.
In the ****pit Rojohn and Leek held grimly to the controls trying to ride a falling rock. Leek tersely recalled: “The ground came up faster and faster. Praying was allowed. We gave it one last effort and slammed into the ground.”
The McNab plane on the bottom exploded, vaulting the other B-17 upward and forward. It hit the ground and slid along until its left wing slammed through a wooden building and the smoldering mass of aluminum came to a stop.
Rojohn and Leek were still seated in their ****pit. The nose of the plane was relatively intact, but everything from the B-17’s massive wings back was destroyed. They looked at each other incredulously. Neither was badly injured.
Movies have nothing on reality. Still perhaps in shock, Leek crawled out through a huge hole behind the ****pit, felt for the familiar pack in his uniform pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He placed it in his mouth and was about to light it. Then he noticed a young German soldier pointing a rifle at him. The soldier looked scared and annoyed. He grabbed the cigarette out of Leek’s mouth and pointed down to the gasoline pouring out over the wing from a ruptured fuel tank.
Two of the six men who parachuted from Rojohn’s plane did not survive the jump. But the other four and, amazingly, four men from the other bomber, including ball turret gunner Woodall, survived. All were taken prisoner. Several of them were interrogated at length by the Germans until they were satisfied that what had crashed was not a new American secret weapon.
Rojohn, typically, didn’t talk much about his Distinguished Flying Cross. Of Leek, he said, "In all fairness to my co-pilot, he’s the reason I’m alive today.”
Like so many veterans, Rojohn got unsentimentally back to life after the war, marrying and raising a son and daughter. For many years, though, he tried to link back up with Leek, going through government records to try to track him down. It took him 40 years, but in 1986, he found the number of Leek’s mother, in Washington state.
Yes, her son Bill was visiting from California. Would Rojohn like to speak with him? Two old men on a phone line, trying to pick up some familiar timbre of youth in the voice of each other. One can imagine that first conversation between the two men who had shared that wild ride in the ****pit of a B-17.
A year later, the two were re-united at a reunion of the 100th Bomb Group (search) in Long Beach, Calif. Bill Leek died the following year.
Glenn Rojohn was the last survivor of the remarkable piggyback flight. He was like thousands upon thousands of men -- soda jerks and lumberjacks, teachers and dentists, students and lawyers, service station attendants and store clerks and farm boys -- who in the prime of their lives went to war in World War II. They sometimes did incredible things, endured awful things, and for the most part most of them pretty much kept it to themselves and just faded back into the fabric of civilian life.
Capt. Glenn Rojohn, AAF, died last Saturday after a long siege of illness. But he apparently faced that final battle with the same grim aplomb he displayed that remarkable day over Germany so long ago. Let us be thankful for such men.
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Wow. Amazing story and amazing people.
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Haven't it read it yet, but I wasn't aware there was a competition for medals... and certainly I don't believe anyone was in a competition to "win" a purple heart.
News sites desperately need to locate some semi-intelligent writers.
-SW
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Quite a story. Never heard of that incident before.
Oh yeah, and what's the world coming to when an airplane BB filters out the word "nosepit"?
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http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent?file=PRdragonflies
Heres more on that from military.com
Heres some other ww2 stories fropm same site
http://www.military.com/History/History_Period?mlegend=0&period=WWIIEU&service=
Heres an archive of stories from different wars
http://www.military.com/Archives/History/HistoryArchiveIndex/
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Oh gawd, don't tell me we're gonna have to start refering to them as chickenpits, as they do on another bbs.:rolleyes:
Amazing story though. Thanks for posting it Rip.:)
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Testing because Gscholz might be pulling a fast one, never trust anything someone else has tested if you can test it your self
****pit of the B17
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unbelievable, sorry to have doubted you GScholz, really I am.
Rip, good story, I have a book on B17's buried in a box in the attic, someday I'm going to dig that book out if it has been eaten, I think that story is in there. Its a history of the B17 from design to end
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You know what this means **
No more ****-and-bull stories
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we could always call it "der Platz, in dem der Pilot sitzt"
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dickpit. There ya go.
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Originally posted by ra
dickpit. There ya go.
OMG, Too Funny!
Skuzzy, don't you think this is a bit silly?:rolleyes:
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Originally posted by MajTom
unbelievable, sorry to have doubted you GScholz, really I am.
Rip, good story, I have a book on B17's buried in a box in the attic, someday I'm going to dig that book out if it has been eaten, I think that story is in there. Its a history of the B17 from design to end
oh man! Scanner time! {please....} :)
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that story raised the hair onb the back of my neck.... thanks for the post Rip !
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Not bad Rip, but how about this guy:
(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~vcweb/images/nz_pics/ward.jpg)
James Ward was born at Wanganui, New Zealand, on 14 June 1919. At the age of 21 he enlisted in the RNZAF on 2 July 1940 and left for Britain in January 1941. Following training at an Operational Training Unit he was posted to 75 (NZ) Squadron, RAF, where he served as a second pilot in Wellington bombers
He won his Victoria Cross for an extraordinary act of bravery during the return flight from a bombing mission in 1941. The citation for the award reads as follows:"On the night of 7 July 1941, Sergeant Ward was second Pilot of a Wellington bomber of 75 (NZ) Squadron returning from an attack on Munster. While flying over the Zuider Zee at 13,000 feet his aircraft was attacked from beneath by a German ME 110, which secured hits with cannon-shell and incendiary bullets. The rear gunner was wounded in the foot but delivered a burst of fire, sending the enemy fighter down apparently out of control
Fire then broke out in the Wellington's starboard engine and, fed by petrol from a split pipe, quickly gained an alarming hold and threatened to spread to the entire wing. The crew forced a hole in the fuselage and made strenuous efforts to reduce the fire with extinguishers, and even coffee from their flasks, without success. They were then warned to be ready to abandon the aircraft. As a last resort Sergeant Ward volunteered to make an attempt to smother the fire with an engine cover which happened to be in use as a cushion
At first he proposed discarding his parachute to reduce wind resistance, but was finally persuaded to take it. A rope from the aircraft dinghy was tied to hint, though this was of little help and might have become a danger had he been blown off the aircraft. With the help of his navigator he then climbed through the narrow astro-hatch and put on his parachute. The bomber was flying at a reduced speed but the wind pressure must have been sufficient to render the operation one of extreme difficulty
Breaking the fabric to make hand and feet holes where necessary, Sergeant Ward succeeded in descending three feet to the wing and preceding another three feet to a position behind the engine, despite the slipstream from the airscrew which nearly blew him of the wing
Lying in this precarious position he smothered the fire in the wing and on the leaking pipe from which the fire came. As soon as he had removed his hand, however, the terrific wind blew the cover off and when he tried again it was lost. Tired as he was, he was able, with the navigator’s assistance, to make a successful but perilous journey back into the aircraft. There was now no danger of fire spreading from the petrol pipe as there was no fabric left near it and in due course it burned itself out
When the aircraft was nearly home some petrol which had collected in the wing blazed up furiously but died down quite suddenly. The safe landing was made despite the damage sustained by the aircraft. The flight home had been made possible by the gallantry of Sergeant Ward in extinguishing the fire on the wing in circumstances of the greatest difficulty and at the risk of his life." (London Gazette, 5 August 1941)
Sergeant Ward continued to fly on operational sorties but on the night of 15 September 1941 he was killed during a bombing raid over Germany. He is buried in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg, Germany.
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In WWIIOL forums it is Chickenpit :D
and guy with a nick hathc ock is hathchicken when said in the post :D
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Originally posted by Vulcan
Not bad Rip, but how about this guy:
[Sergeant Ward continued to fly on operational sorties but on the night of 15 September 1941 he was killed during a bombing raid over Germany. He is buried in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg, Germany.
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Great story Vulc!
*Thank you for sharing!
*for ease of Nash's conscience
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What exactly was the Wellington airframe made of? Im guessing not titanium or aluminum...
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Originally posted by Tarmac
what's the world coming to when an airplane BB filters out the word "nosepit"?
My thoughts exactly.
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(http://www.100thbg.com/mainpages/crews/crews5/images/Piggyback.jpg)
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so....Russo (the ball turret gunner in the top plane) didn't make it out? did i miss something?
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Originally posted by mason22
so....Russo (the ball turret gunner in the top plane) didn't make it out? did i miss something?
Hmmm, good question...it did say "hopelessly" but doesn't report any further of his whereabouts afterwards..here's another account of it:
http://www.100thbg.com/mainpages/crews/crews5/rojohn.htm
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rip nice pic there, never seen 2 B17's humping before, thanks for the thread