Bomber Command Pilot
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- This is a one-of-a-kind veteran interview. William Pennebaker was a command pilot for a B-17 group. This means he was in the lead plane for the 390th Bomb Group or sometimes the entire wing (390th, 100th and 95th Groups); or the lead for all groups in the stream of B-17 bombers. His leadership role provides an interesting overall view of the B-17s role in the European campaign. He was assigned to the air base at Framlingham, England. He flew 44 combat missions between 8/15/43 and 4/16/45. He was a born leader and whip smart - a Harvard and Yale Law graduate. During his interview, Pennebaker talks about the improvements of the B-17 G model over the B-17 F model. In 1943 at the beginning of the bombing campaign, in his words, "the losses were terrifying". But as the war progressed, he talks about improvements in formation flying and bombing techniques that reduced losses with better results. This is a completely unique interview.
My homage and respect to Mr. Pennebaker for his service. My uncle Henri was shot down on June 11th, 1944 piloting a RCAF Lancaster on his way to German targets. He perished at the control of his aircraft to give time to his crew to bail out of the heavily loaded airplane. May Peace be with you all, Ciao, L (Veteran nephew).
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Very clear detailed account of his past mission experiences over Europe during WW2. Is this gentlemen still alive & well? He deserves every American’s respect & admiration, especially any young people watching video in the future.
Thank you endlessly for your service and may God bless you always!!!!! 🇺🇸
I was especially impressed by how he figured out that starting several hundred feet higher and "going down hill" to the target helped.
Yes, this was something unique that I never heard anywhere else. Bill was particularly important to tape because he had knowledge that regular personnel would not have. Thanks for watching.
These personal stories of the Army Air Corps are amazing. My father and uncle were newly-weds when Pearl Harbor was attacked, sons of a mining blacksmith. Gramp went into the Manhattan Project, Dad became a leadman rigger at the naval Shipyards, but Uncle Dick became a pilot in the 8th Army Air Corps. He was stationed at the 2nd Strategic Air Depot at Abbots-Ripton in England and when planes came back damaged and were repaired, he was the test-pilot that took them back up. His best day of 30 years of Air Force life was a 1945 rocket-assisted short take-off of a B-17 from the 398th Bomber Group, ditched in an English farm field, witnessed by General Doolittle.
Recently I’ve been re-watching “12 O’Clock High”, after seeing a BBC “Time Team” show about excavating a B-17 crash. “Time Team” was the first time I had any idea how little space was there for crew inside that giant plane.
I have a set of his obsolete wings, given when I was little kid, tarnished silver. I think I need to polish them now.
Such a detailed account of his experiences. Thank you very much.
As my pastor used to say. This guy was a dude!! An outstanding man ; leader; trainer; father to the boys.
What character he has!
I had watched some other videos and heard him mentioned and was going to look him up and then his video, this one, popped up and have been enjoying his astute observation of everything he was involved in.
Thank you William for your service you saved many lives by imparting your knowledge which you gained by experience and in life experience is the king thank you Raymond for this great insight a wonderful series of programs 👍👨🏻🏭🇬🇧
Thank you for the kind feedback Paul. Because Pennebaker stayed in the UK for the duration of the war, the 390th Bomb Group didn't suffer from the brain drain that other groups suffered when the experienced veterans went home. There was a continuity of knowledge gained that Pennebaker passed on to the new pilots. And you are correct - this saved a lot of lives. Thanks for watching.
@@raymondmcfalone26 ,. You're mistaken how that brain drain comes about. You should pay attention to how the Japanese lost experienced pilots, and why their pilots, as the war progressed, were inferior to those toward the later part of the war.
There's a reason why aircrews were sent home after 25 missions, and why American aircrews remained superior.
The aircrews, pilots, navigators, bombardiers, engineers, and gunners, were sent to schools as instructors back in the States, where they were able to share their knowledge, and experience, with far more people than one bomber group command pilot could reach. A bomber group command pilot had no more influence, maybe less, than a squadron commander. A bomb group was made up of 3 Squadrons, each with it's own command structure.
This guy by going home could have imparted his experience and knowledge with thousands upon thousands of students who went on to serve in a number of squadrons, in a number of bomb groups, in the 15 numbered Air Forces serving all over the world in the US Army Air Corp.
The 8th was only one of those 15, and the 390th was only one of the many bomb groups within the 8th Air Force.
Surviving 25 missions was more luck than skill. Surviving 44 was even luckier. He could have went home, and trained many pilots.
What a great bunch of young men I can only Imagine how difficult it must have been to fly into that situation knowing what's coming . To tell me what's that is like means a lot to help feel that combat flying and bombing. Again Thank You NOTHING WAS LIKE BEING THERE THANK ALL OF U GUYS FOR THAT . THIS COUNTRY WILL NEVER GET IT WE MIGHT BE SPEAKING GERMAN IF NOT FOR UALL . BLISS ALL OF U THAT ARE LEFT !!!!!!! AND ALL THAT GAVE IT ALL EVEN THE ONES MISSING.
I was a KC-135A navigator in SAC from 1975 thru 1882. Ow I understand the Origen on SAC’s emphasis on crew training and testing. On some exams the minimum passing score was 100%. Hard crews like SAC used to have were also important so each position knew the strengths as potential weaknesses of the other members of the crew. I never flew a combat mission, but had a couple of scares on alert where the klaxon went off and we taxied to the runway end and waited for orders to either launch or stand down. Fortunately, we stood down.
very good interview thank you for posting it
Glad you enjoyed it
These young men had more guts than a slaughterhouse. To think of the risk, stress and fear spread over a 9 hour mission and the death and horror they saw every mission. And if they got through that mission, only to realize they have to do it again 25 times. But they did it again and again. And they were an average of 21 or 22 years old. Just astounding
Listening to pilot Pennebaker gave me a lot of insight into the knowledge and fear these aviators had to reach into their inner most self to accomplish these missions and WE will always be truly grateful and thankful for their service to protect our freedom and liberty.
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An old reciprocating engine mechanic's thanks!!!
The Army Air Corps got a good one here! This is true leadership, as demonstrated by his sharing of the prior missions’ experience and then the training others to avoids mistakes..
America owes this man and his colleagues immeasurably.
My Dad was on a Bomber Crew. He said one time that their lead plane couldn’t find the target and they did a 360 and then through the Flak again and they were all very pissed off. I never knew about the no 360 rule. Wish my Dad was still around to talk about it
VERY INTERESTING……THANK YOU !
Thank You for your service sir. God Bless
A lawyer! you think he would have done something good with his life! HA no... really, The way he sorted thru the issues of B-17s en masse was quite well thought out! I am sure they were happy to have him in this group. Disobeyed orders too! Very maverick, that is one of the things that actually made the US military so excellent is to not blindly follow every order!
Thanks William, impressive work! Glad you are posting thise Ray. You may want to double track the audio this one is Left channel mostly
Thanks for your comments and thanks for watching.
The bottom line was train...train.train as a top down platform.Wing level, squadron level through the individual crews.
Wonderful account, like the others in this series. This gentleman's perspective will, given his position, naturally, be far more revealing of some of the policies and practices.
One lucky fella. 44 missions, albeit it at the latter stages, only undertaken at a rate of two a month and flying in the "F" variant of the B-17 must have made him one of the old-timers going back to the early part of '43.
Whilst there are fragmented accounts on the web, I wonder if there are any "Joined-up" sources in books that paint the whole picture of day to day operations ? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Mr Freeman has this all these aspects of operations detailed down to this level.
I take it, that we can we assume, that the scene in Mr Putnam's film where the Memphis Belle does a "360" for another go at the bombing run was included for dramatic effect ?
From the perspective of a 20 yr retired AF fighter pilot... excellent interview!
Thanks for watching.
No E-3 Sentry, No E-8c Jstars, No stealth, No SEAD, No offensive counter air (In the early stages), No Jdam, No GPS, guidance systems that were being actively jammed and the only in-plane counter-measures chaff/Window.. . . . . all done 25-35,000 feet-up, sans pressurisation, at temperatures of 40-50 c below and no heated flying suits (In the early stages) via mostly dead-reckoning (Inertial) navigation with the Wing-Lead/Division lead aircraft co-ordinating and showing the way . . . with 400 enemy fighters and up to 1600 flak guns (Berlin) bearing down on you and an occasional member of the top-brass, or a film crew or gaggle of journalists on board to note and record your every move.
There's story of a time when the B-29 came out and the Men refused to fly it saying it was too big for a Mission. The General had to be summoned to the Base and he took them to another Base where B-29's were being test flown after production. The General pointed to one in the sky flyin low as they pulled up, "There's one now", the Men were surprised as it banked toward them, there was a Woman in the Cockpit flying it! Ever hear about the Night Witches of the Russian Bomber Air Force? Legends.
A general taking a group of mutineers to another base to convince them to do their job. I’m sure this is a true story …
Just as true as the Highest Decorated US ground unit in WW2 was an all Japanese Unit. The 442 Regiment.
This is a wonderful channel, but those guys would hate it if we got too sentimental.
Did the aircraft with togeleers instead of bombardiers carry Norden bombsights? It sounds like they wouldn't need them.
At any time one of them might have become the lead plane so yes, they all had bomb sights and knew how to use them.
For sure. When he mentions those several missions with 50% losses seems they would have had too. Wished I had watched this earlier I got to talk to a B-17 bombardier this spring when ruclips.net/video/MQUOo0cKIfg/видео.html came to my local air port. This man was assigned to be an instructor right out of training & came to tour his old familiar work space.
Why would anyone give a thumbs down to this? Disgusting People to do such a thing !!
This gentleman used the word "chaff" to describe his war time experiences in using metal strip's of tinfoil dropped to confuse enemy Radar actuality the story behind chaff in WW2 starts with British radar scientist before the war they had figured out and so had the German radar scientist unbeknown to each other that dropping theses metal strip's caused problems for radar operators this was classified as top secret and nobody at the top wanted to use this technoggy and give the Germans this top secret method to counter radar however RAF bomber commad were taking heavy losers The RAF air chief marshall Arthur Harris commonly know in the press as (Bomber or butcher harris) put pressure on Churchill to give the go ahead to use this new anti radar device know to the British. As "Window” a code word it was only later know to the allies as chaff
The first real use of chaff came about on a Big raid over Germany by the RAF in 1943 in operation Gomorrah the target selected was he city of Hamburg unfortunately for the people of Hamburg everything was stacked against them that night it all came perfectly together and it turned out to be the deadliest raid of WW2 by the allies it was July with the heat of the summer nights mixed with high explosives it created the perfect firestorm of unmanageable destruction the use of window (chaff) and the latest British HS2 radar sets. Later given to the americans who made thousands more sets and improved sets using the powerfull. Cavity Magnetron producing superior microwave energy in a smaller compact set a British break through in radar technoggy to be used First time over Germany and a new force the pathfinders to get over the target. Drop illumination flares to pinpoint he target for the bombers this planning and execution went. Perfectly this totally confused the enemys defence's of Hamburg anti aircraft radar directed guns nightfighters all were totally inafective the British put out a maximum effort that night plus another raid following it was also joined by the USAF to add to the destruction of Hamburg 37.000 German civilians perished
in the 1990's while in the lunch line at work, there was a sweet old lady who spoke to me in english with a heavy german accent. i think her name was gertrude. i be friended her and she told me during her child hood she had lived in hamburg during the war. she was around 4 to 9 years old during that time.
i was welled up with emotion to realize that she had survived the hamburg bombings, the war and was now in america, but still working. her parent's home was not in the city center but on the out skirts of the main center.
on the night of the great fire storm, her home was hit by an incendiary bomb stick. the individual fire stick from a bomb bundle had penetrated their roof, passed through the attic, the third floor ceiling and her grand mother's bed.
in the war years, sugar was a scarce commodity. as a substitute, the germans made a kind of sweet plum jam which was used on all sorts of pastries and breads. the jam was kept in small barrels and were prized items.
many of these had been stored under grandmother's bed on the third floor. the incendiary stick had penetrated one of the barrels and exploded. however due to the nature of the sticky jam the fire material was starved of oxygen and although the bomb exploded there was no fire. the bed was destroyed and jam had been blown all over the room, but her home was saved, although many homes around hers had been burned. she said, what a mess. i guess so.
she described how people lived in fear of the nazis. one day she was outside in the street in front of her home playing, when she greeted a familiar neighbour. she had greeted him many times and he always responded in a friendly way. one day she did the same, although the only difference was he was wearing his SS uniform.
the response was a violent slap that knocked her to the ground. he said you can not smile when i'm wearing the uniform and greeting me happily is not showing respect. she was terrified of him after that.
she and her family were also some of the victims of the german fascist and allied bombing.
26 thousand views and only 580 likes....common people
Its a pity he didn't focus more upon a major failure of the Norden bombsight , it could only work in clear weather. Another issue was navigation , to listen to him it was all so perfect , unfortunately events speak otherwise. No less then five occasions Switzerland was bombed by mistake , the most serious was when the attackers were 120 miles off course. On February 1944 a secondary target was chosen because cloud had obscured the primary. Resulting in Nijmegen Holland being severely bombed killing 800 and hundreds injured . A year later an even worse error was when Prague was bombed when the target was Dresden, killing 700 and injuring 1200. I have read about the November 1943 mission when a 360 was attempted. After that the American version of the British ground mapping Radar H2S was fitted to 8th AF bombers . Another British innovation they used was Oboe and much later GeeH accurate navigation radio wave transmissions.
As they found when training the bombadiers for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, the fault was not the bomb sight, but the bomber moving his head when releasing the bombs.
By installing a head rest, which the bombardier held his forehead on, the bombardier could hit within 5 meters of an X on the ground consistently everytime he released his practice bomb, and the same happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It's a common problem experienced even with rifle marksmanship.
In the Infantry we were taught to rest our cheek on the buttock in the same place by touching the tip of our nose to the charging handle. A tiny deviation changed the accuracy of our shot groups, and our scores in qualifications.
The British seldom attempted strategic bombing. They concentrated almost entirely on area bombing cities, and targeting civilians for mass casualties.
Even with ground mapping radar the bombardier had to have an aiming point for strategic bombing to be effective.
And, it was strategic bombing that won the war. Bombing cities to lower civilian morale had the opposite effect on civilian commitment to the war effort. In Germany, as it did in London, targeting civilians just strengthened their resolve...
All it did was murder innocent women, children, and old men.
Good job Bomber Harris....
@@unitedwestand5100 Sorry but your last paragraph is absolute bullshit. The most accurate bombing against the Germans was done by the RAF. You do not waste expensive Tallboys and Grandslam bombs by area bombing . For a Tallboy to be effective it has to land 12 metres from the target dropped from 20,000ft at night. Without a shadow of doubt the most remarkable piece of bombing happened on the 8/9 February 1944 . When the RAF bombed the Gnome et Rhone aero engine factory in Limoges France . Explicit instructions were that not one French civilian or worker must be harmed , which seemed impossible when the factory was surrounded by workers houses, Check it out and show me any comparable mission by the mighty eighth .
All these guys had bravery beyond comprehension,the skills of the Dambusters flying 60 ft over water,on a moonlit night dropping a mine at exact distance from the dam wall to achieve the required result all the time taking incoming fire,as well as the guys who flew the Jericho mission in the Supreme mosquitos on the Belgium prison to release 250 odd resistance fighters captured by the Germans and were going to be executed ,and the skipped bombed the walls which they did and opened up the prison so the prisoners could escape and bearing in mind these bomber crews both American and British were all nearly in there early 20,s and both had terrible casualty rates.Certainly the greatest generation the likes we are ever likely to see again.
@@gillmallcott3658 Being born in 1940 , I grew up with those who served in the various military units during the war. My mothers eldest brother was killed as a RM , her youngest mortared for hours in a French orchard after D Day . Her father torpedo'd whilst crewing an Oil Tanker . My father served five years overseas attached to the 8th Army. I do not need to be told how brave they ALL were . The vast majority are not as old as myself with a wealth of knowledge from listening and reading countless books about the war . So they will absorb any BS thrown at them because its what is often repeated . And when that BS is detrimental to the British I get angry. My greatest interest has always been the air war over Europe . My biggest angst is about the perceived accuracy of the 8th and poor bombing of RAF bomber command . I was lucky enough through my work to visit the BASF petro chemical complex at Ludwigshafen by the Rhine. This place is enormous with an area of 5*1 mile , impossible to miss in daylight , but the Americans did , bombing instead a town in Switzerland 120 miles further south.
Calm down James ,I wasn’t denigrating any of the services either British or American ,they were all doing their best under trying conditions and if it wasn’t for the Americans the British would be speaking German an us Aussies Japanese and the way it’s going with China I’m thinking of taking language lessons in Chinese .
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