Friday, November 21, 2008
Thankfulness for surviving combat missions
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
Recent columns
We have another author among us. Meet Daleville's Joseph G. Johnson, Jr., an Air Force pilot. He went in the service right after the Pearl Harbor attack and stayed in as a career officer until 1972. But not before flying 65 bombing missions over France and Germany.
Fortunately for us, Johnson, 88, has written an account of his training to get ready for combat. He suffered under a lot of military rules. But they somehow prepared him for his work.
Johnson calls his book "Looking Back in the Rear View Mirror," but unfortunately for us, he has no plans to publish it. However, he let me borrow a copy. I sat down with it one evening and forgot time. I only looked up when I came to his return home and marriage to the love of his life, the late Dreama Anne Waid of Fincastle. Maybe he'll change his mind about publication.
It was at Roanoke College that Johnson's future hit him. "I was going to be a doctor but started flying airplanes. I decided I'd rather fly airplanes than anything else." The Federal Aviation Administration gave a course for pilots. "I never could have afforded it on my own," he said. "The FAA set up this course probably because they knew we would need pilots."
To pass the license exam, "I had to take a trip, plan it, figure out how to get there with the wind and so on and get back. [I flew] somewhere around 20 to 30 miles an hour. I followed the road, landed, turned around and came back." This solo flight to Montvale earned Johnson his private license. Did he do any barnstorming? "Not til I got into the service. That plane we were flying couldn't do acrobatics, the wings would have come off."
So Johnson joined up and soon was flying multiple bombing missions. Then one morning, they "woke us up at 3 a.m. and read us a letter from General Eisenhower. The mission was to bomb the anti-tank mines at Utah Beach. They [the Germans] put bars in the ground to stop tanks and then they were mined, too." Despite the terrible weather -- raining, wind blowing -- Johnson and his comrades flew in to bomb "before the ground forces landed. We could see them coming in."
That same day, his second mission stopped a German troop train. "We had to bomb visually. Because of the weather, we were 1,500 feet off the ground. They didn't shoot at us as much as they normally would; we lost one airplane that day. They were concentrating on the ground forces."
After D-Day, the war continued into Europe. However, one day he was not flying but others took off with 4,000 pounds of bombs on each plane. "They recalled the mission, called it back after 15 to 20 minutes, so each plane was landing with a full bomb load and full load of fuel. One of the planes stalled and crashed.
"We went out to get people out of the plane. The plane was burning. We got them out of the tail, got three into the ambulance. The we started to the front. The fire department was spraying on the fire. I saw the bombs were white hot, so when the water hit them they blew. It killed 38 people out of 40, including those in the ambulance. The flight surgeon and I were the only ones who lived."
His injury stopped his combat role, but he recovered and went on to a flying career and a business career after that. So with his incredible record of surviving 65 bombing missions plus that explosion, he's very thankful this season. Most of all, just for "being here."
