Richard Brandt

Richard Brandt, Army Air Corps in Europe

How many missions did you serve?

Thirty five.

What was the period of time that you were overseas?

Approximately a year.

So you did almost three per month then?

You’d have aborts, where you’d fly over and you’d get to the continent and you couldn’t really get a cloud cover. Instruct them to come back and you wouldn’t get credit. So you probably flew 60 missions total.

Did you bomb first and then use the guns?

Oh no, the guns were only for airplanes that were attacking us. You never shot at anybody. You were too high. You were 23-24 thousand feet.

And that’s where you dropped the bombs?

Yeah. Well, sometimes you would have a low level emission. We had one where we were hitting some oil fields in the southern part of Germany, came really low about a thousand feet and that’s not really the way you want to go. I mean we came in and you can see the stuff erupting when the bombs hit.

They were B-24s. It was a very powerful airplane. A little faster and higher than the 17 engine.

So once you were down, it wasn’t that hard to get back up?

Oh no, no, no. Well, you saw the thing take off and that was a powerful airplane.

Did you ever land over there?

One time. After the invasion, we had occupied part of France and we lost a fuel pump over Germany and we couldn’t transfer fuel, so we had to make a landing in occupied France. We landed in a town right on the Belgium border called Mons on the France/ Belgium border.

While I was there they had just captured a bunch of Germans. They had these mountains of helmets and rifles and everything they took from them, so we all grabbed a helmet and refueled, and took off.

When we landed we all put our German helmets on and scared the hell out of everybody. (Laughter) It was kind of dumb because they might have shot. Nah, we called ahead and they knew we were coming. We’re not that dumb, ha.

Your brother was in at the same time?

My older brother was a Navy pilot. And my younger brother was an Army pilot or Air Force pilot in the Vietnam era.

No sisters?

No, I have a sister, but she didn’t fly.

But then you all came home?

Yes. I was the only one in combat, my brother never got to combat. He wound up being an instructor and got to go home.

When we were leaving, the girls got together and they were singing to us. They sang “The Yanks are going, the Yanks are going, they’re leaving us by ourselves, to sit on a shelf, to play with ourselves because the Yanks are going…”(laughter) I don’t know all the words, but we thought that was kind of funny.

It was, but I wouldn’t want to go do it again. You have to be 18, 19, or 20 because if you were older than that you would say, “you’re crazy.”

Either you sit in the steel tube that’s colder than heck and it gets to be 50, 60 below zero and you couldn’t touch anything. We all wore silk gloves underneath our heated gloves, because if you had to touch something, if you didn’t have your gloves, you’d stick to the metal. You didn’t suddenly freeze because the metal was so cold, and it was like a wind tunnel because there’s no insulation, no heat and if you didn’t have your heated suit you would freeze to death.

How was your suit heated?

From electricity, that was heated, it was like a nylon it wasn’t nylon yet because I don’t think they had invented it, but it was that kind of material and interspersed were heated wires. Over that you’d wear your flying suit and then you’d have heated boots and they all plugged in. Heated gloves too, because otherwise you couldn’t survive.

But you could operate the plane with that?

Oh sure. You’d have frost dewarmer on your action mask because the moisture might seep through, so every once in a while you’d have to take your mask off and get the ice off your face. It was no fun.

We were just kids. And if some kid got hit, there was nothing you could really do for him, so all we did was give him a shot of morphine and we had heated bags, we would put the guy in the bag so he’d keep warm and he would have to sit there and suffer until we got back. He could be sitting, laying there for three, four hours.

Did a lot of those guys survive?

Oh yeah. Some didn’t, of course, but most did.

So did you fly once you got out?

Oh yeah, I flew over at the Elgin airport.

Obviously you and your wife traveled a lot; did you go back to England?

Yeah, I have a picture of me standing at the thing.

What was it like to go back post war?

Well you know, like anything else, it’s a visit to the old pubs and its all there, England doesn’t change.

Did you go to Germany at all?

Oh yeah. We biked in Germany. We biked along the-I think I got one of the slideshows of our bike trip, which was very interesting. We took it from Frankfurt to Munich and when we were there we went to Dachau, which was just outside of Munich.

It looks like they rebuilt a lot of that-

Oh you couldn’t see any. The only thing was in Cologne, there were a few nicks on the cathedral from bursting shells nearby but the cathedral was not touched directly.

But the bridges, all around, that was devastated, so we did a pretty good job of not hitting the church, well, we didn’t aim for those anyway.

That was great. Thank you for coming in.