What was your rank during the war?
"Well, I was a 2nd lieutenant then, and I stayed in the Air Force 28 years. I was a lieutenant colonel when I retired in 1970."What was your basic job description?
"Well, at first I was just a combat aviator. I was a first pilot on a B-24 Liberator during WW II. The crew consisted of four officers: a pilot, a co-pilot, a navigator, and a bombadeer. We had six enlisted men on the crew, one of them was a flight engineer, one was a radio operator, and then we had four gunners on the crew."Were all of those on the same plane? Did you all travel together?
"Yes, ten man crew on one airplane then. A combat crew is considerably smaller than that now-they don't have gunners or such as we did then. The gunners would carry 50-caliber machine guns that would fire out of both waste windows, the tail, one underneath, and one that we called the "Ball" that hung down underneath the airplane, and one in the nose of the airplane. Military aircraft has changed considerably since then.What was your basic training and background before the war?
"I grew up in Washington, D.C. and graduated from high school in 1938 in Washington. I was working in the naval gun factory, which was referred to as the Washington Navy Yard, but it is the U.S. Naval Gun Factory, and they were manufacturing cannons for military ships at that time -- from five-inch guns to 16-inch cannons."Did you enlist, and what was your training?
"The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and every young man in the United States wanted to get in to the military so I tried to get into the pilot training program and I took the examination at Boeing Field in Washington, D.C. I passed the exam and they said, "Yeah, we can enter you in the program." That was October 1942, and they sent me home for three months because the classes were all filled up. They told me they'd call me when they needed me, so they called me back to duty and so in February 1943, I went through basic training."Where did you go next?.
"We went through Goosebay, Labrador and from there to the Azors Islands and to North Africa - Marakesh and Tunison, North Africa. And then we jumped up to Southern Italy, where I turned in that airplane. They took it away from me and assigned it to a squadron where they had suffered some aircraft losses. And I was assigned to the 465th Bomb Crew Heavy, which meant there were 4-engine bombers -- to the 780th Squadron. While I was there, our crew flew 28 combat missions to targets in Southern Europe."Mr. Nichols talks more about his time in Italy.
"My first combat mission was to the Railroad Marshalling Yard in Munich, Germany, where we blew up the railroad yard, and then we had other targets like Nazi U-boat installations on the Southern coast of France and on the coast of Greece. We bombed Truth installations in Yugoslavia and in the Poe Valley in Northern Italy. We also had targets in the Burnham Pass; the Burnham Pass runs from Northern Italy to Innsbruck, Austria. At one time they had the Winter Olympics, I don't remember the year, but the Winter Olympics was held in Innsbruck, Austria...it's a beautiful place, and I hate to think about bombing places like that. One time we even bombed Salisbury, which is a crime to do that."Where were you during the end of the War in Europe?
"I stayed in Italy to fly about 28 missions there, and I was there when the war ended in Europe. It ended in May, 1945, and when the war ended in Europe, it was usually referred to as V-E Day, which meant victory in Europe. Of course, the war was still going on in the Pacific, but after I completed my tour in Europe, they let me fly in an airplane home. We came back over the Sahara Desert and across the South Atlantic into Brazil, up through Puerto Rico and back in to the States. We landed in Hunter Field in Savannah, Georgia. I got a few days at home, then I went back to duty at Drew Field, which was at Tampa, Florida at that time. I was down in Tampa, Florida when the Allies dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After they did that, the Japanese surrendered pretty quickly. That was in August of 1945, and was referred to as V-J Day, which was for Victory over Japan. That was effectively when the fighting for WWII stopped at that time."Identifying Aircraft of the War
B-24 Liberator
"That's a picture of a B-24 Liberator 4-engine bomber, used extensively in Europe during WWII. In fact, they used more B-24 bombers than any other bomber in the United States at the time for WWII."
P-17
"That's a picture of a PT-17, a training plane. It had an open cockpit, bi-wings, and had a very narrow landing gear. It was difficult to land that airplane, but it was the most fun airplane to fly that I've ever flown. You had to wear a helmet and goggles because your head hung out in to the slip-stream. When you turned upside down in that airplane doing air acrobatics, there was nothing holding you in there but the strap across your lap. That was kind of tricky with your head hanging out in the wind while you were upside down."
P-38 Lightning
"That's a P-38 Lightning built by the Lockheed Aircraft Company. A 2-engine fighter airplane with a cockpit and then a cell in the middle of the airplane. If you'll notice the horizontal stabilizer that went from one boon to the other, that goes across here. To bail out of this airplane you had to turn the airplane upside down and drop your canopy off and then fall out of the airplane. If you tried to bail out of it right side up when you got out of the cockpit and jumped, the horizontal stabilizer would hit you."
National Archives: "Corsair fighter looses its load of rocket projectiles on a run against a Jap stronghold on Okinawa."F4U Corsair
"That's another U.S. airplane, used extensively by the Navy and the Marine Corps. A lot of Marine aviators flew that airplane. It's a Corsair...an F4U Corsair built by the Vaught Air Craft Company."
P-51D
"This is the world's most loved fighter airplane-a Mustang, built by the North American Aircraft Company...a P-51D. Every fighter-pilot that's every flown would like to fly that airplane."
B-29 Super Fortress
"This is the airplane that superceded the B-17 Flying Fortress. They call this the B-29 Super Fortress, built by the Boeing Aircraft Factory. That is the airplane that dropped the atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima."
B-25 2-Engine bomber
"That is a B-25 2-engine bomber built by the North American Aircraft Company. A B-25 Mitchell...that is the airplane that General Dolittle trained in. He trained in Florida with the flight crews and learned how to fly that airplane off of an aircraft carrier. That was the first airplane that bombed Tokyo during the war. It was just a psychological thing, more or less. It couldn't actually do a whole lot of damage, but they did get to Japan and drop bombs on Tokyo. That was the airplane that did that."
What are these photos?
"The picture with the helmet and goggles on was taken at Albany, GA when I was in primary flying school flying a PT-17, that open-cockpit bi-plane. You had to wear the helmet and goggles because your head was out on to the slip string. The picture on the left was taken in Lawrencefield, Illinois...that's when I first graduated from college."
Were you marrried during the war?
"I was...I had been married about 2 years. In fact, before I could enlist, I had to get a letter from my wife, Marion, saying it was alright with her if I enlisted in the Army. I guess they wanted to avoid the possibility of getting a hardship request at a later date or something. Then I had to get a release from the commandant of the Navy Yard where I was working because it was an essential War industry at that time, and they didn't want to release me to go in to the military service."
Talking about enlisting & military life.
"The hardest thing for me to do was find a birth certificate from the state of Alabama. I was born in Mobile, and that's classified information. But I had a heck of a time finding a birth certificate. It actually took me almost 4 months to enlist in the service at that time. I didn't have any children, and my wife liked being in the military--she liked that, so that was good. For a guy that's going to have a military career, he'd better have a wife that likes it because he'll be miserable the whole time if she gets upset while he was away…you know, it's just too bad. I'd go away...I was in Italy for 9 months, I was in Okinawa for 7 months, and I used to go away a lot of times for 3 months at a time. She couldn't go on those things so that's the way military people live. I think that military people are the most loving, caring people in the world...they just have to be violent at times when the military mission requires that they be that way."
More talk about life in the military.
"But the military people make HUGE sacrifices that the average civilian person doesn't know about what they give up and the kind of life that they have the lead to stay in the military on act of duty for long periods of time. You'll see it every once in a while right now when those guys were getting ready to go to the Gulf War and things like that. They have to leave their families behind. In some instances, they have children that they've never seen before, and don't get to see until they're 2 years old. So living in the military's kind of tough."
Were there support groups for the families of the men at war?
"Every base has one...everybody's confronted with the same problems of living while their loved ones are away. They have to deal with separations or their husband will be away, or one of their children will be sick. Military people just look out for each other and care for each other-whether they know you or not! They're on the base and they know that you're there and you need help. All you gotta do is call and somebody's gonna be there before the sun goes down to help take care of you for long periods of time, for months at a time. I enjoyed it...I would have stayed in the military forever if I could have figured out how to stay young. If you're flying airplanes, you gotta stay kind of young-I was 50 when I retired."
Did you have a best friend during the war?
"I went through high school with a guy named Tommy Diggs. He and I went through high school and graduated in 1938. We enlisted in the Pilot Training Program for Aviation Cadet Training in the Army. We were both accepted and I got delayed for about 3 months from getting in because I had to get a birth certificate from the state of Alabama. I had trouble getting that birth certificate, and they wouldn't accept me until I got one so he went in a few classes ahead of me. We both went through B-24 training, and he flew B-24's in England...I flew B-24's out in Italy. On his 4th mission, he got shot down. He got down to the ground alright and bailed out of the airplane-it was all shot up. He got to the ground alright, and he was rescued by the French Underground. One of the Frenchman that saved him and brought him back to the Allies' lines and brought him back to safety. The Frenchman's name was Jon. J-o-n is the way he spelled it, and Tommy named his first son after the Frenchman-Jon."
"He goes back to France to visit with those people that saved him when he bailed out of that airplane in World War II. In fact, I talked to him on the telephone just 2 weeks ago. Today is what, the first week in March and I was asking him about the weather down in Florida where he lives. He told me that in 2 months he was going back to France to visit those people that saved him during World War II."
