World War II Experiences
"Timeless Voices" Oral History Project

Interview with

Joe K. Mansell, 398th Bomb Group Engineer / Gunner
602nd Squadron, Eighth Air Force

Interviewer: Marilyn Gibb-Rice

Interview conducted at the
398th Bomb Group Annual Reunion
Livonia, Michigan, September 2006

Background:

The 398th has been interviewing its members as part of the Timeless Voices of Aviation project. More information about the project and a current list of video interviews can be found at 398th Timeless Voices Interviews. In addition to the video interviews, some of the interviews have been transcribed to text.

 

Interview with

Joe K. Mansell, 398th Bomb Group Engineer / Gunner
602nd Squadron, Eighth Air Force

MGR: Interviewer, Marilyn Gibb-Rice
JM: 398th Engineer / Gunner, Joe K. Mansell

Time of Interview: 0:54:48

MGR: My name is Marilyn Gibb-Rice and we are at the 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association reunion in Livonia Michigan September 2006. Now could you give us your name please?

JM: My name is Joe K. Mansell.

MGR: Your squadron and your…

JM: 602 Squadron with the 398th Bomb Group. I was an Engineer/Gunner on the Lyle Doerr crew.

MGR: Alright. Where were you living and what were you doing in the late nineteen-thirties and early forties?

JM: Well in 1941 I graduated from Abilene High School that’s in Abilene Texas. I didn’t have a job or anything but I did work in a service station for five dollars a week which is not much money (both laugh) but I didn’t much like that and a friend of mine was going to a business school and he talked to the owner, which was a woman, and had me come up there and she allowed me to go to school for free if I would sweep the floors and empty the waste baskets and clear the bugs out of the lights. I did that and I got a complete course, secretarial, science, business law and accounting, typing and everything. She also got me a job at the recruiting office building, which was nearby, sweeping the floors and while I was there, I noticed that pilots in the Air Force made 500 dollars a month and to me that was all the money in the world! And I wanted to be a pilot even though I had never been in on an airplane, I’d never been on a train! I tried to enlist and they wouldn’t take me.

MGR: Why not?

JM: I didn’t weigh enough. It’s hard to believe but I only weighed 109!

MGR: Oh my!

JM: And they told me to go home and gain some weight. Well I went home, they told me to eat bananas, I tried just about every way I could think of to gain some weight and I couldn’t gain an ounce! So we just forgot about that. I took a test and I got a job as a clerk typist at Account Berkeley which is near Abilene, near an army camp. I worked for the Civil Service and while I was working there, only worked about six months and I was drafted. And I went down to the draft office and low and behold I passed everything! (Both laugh) and they said that I could either be in the Marines or the Navy or the Army. Well I wanted to be a pilot so then it was the Army Air Corps so I went into the Army, and that was March the 12th 1943. And first I was sent to Mineral Wells Texas and was there for a while. Then I was sent to Randolph Field San Antonio to be a cadet. Well I didn’t know it but they couldn’t have taken me as a pilot. I went through the 84 physical as they called it, where everybody was stripped off naked, there for hours and that’s where they examined your body. That’s where I found out one of my feet was different than the other one. That's not what disqualified me! He said one of your arches on your foot is different to the other one, well that didn’t matter, anyway I had never been to college or anything, I couldn’t be a pilot or a navigator. So, they said how would you like to be a gunner and I said okay, so I became a gunner. And I was first sent, that’s right, I was sent to Amarillo at airplane mechanics school for B-29’s. And when I got through with that, I was sent to Kingman Arizona for gunnery training. And there is where we used to get on this big blue Air Force bus and drive out to the gunnery range. One time coming back we had already crossed the railroad tracks and we heard that the bus behind us got hit by a train. And it was a bus load of bombardiers. I didn’t know bombardiers took gunnery training but evidently they did, and everyone on there was killed, the whole class.

MGR: Oh wow, that’s terrible. Where did you go next? So, you had the gunnery school there, where did you go after Amarillo?

JM: After gunnery school I was sent to Salt Lake City and there is where I was selected to be on the Lyle Doerr crew. The pilot did his selection, picks his crew, course we didn’t know anybody, course I was engineer gunner, top turret gunner. My pilot's name was Lyle J. Doerr. Co-pilot was Teague, Giles Teague, he was from North Carolina. Lyle Doerr was from North Dakota and I was from Texas. And Landis Frantz was the ball turret gunner from Pennsylvania. Joe Bergant was from Salt Lake City Utah. And since we had two Joes on there, from then on, I was known as “Tex”! (Laughs)

MGR: So you got your crew there and that was at Salt Lake, so where did you go after Salt Lake?

JM: Well ok. We got on a train and went to Sioux City Iowa. And we got there and the snow was waist deep and I never had never seen anything like that. We lived in these two-story barracks and there were just little trails to walk in, where people had made a trail, ‘cause the snow was so deep! Anyway, I was there during, June 6th D-Day happened while we were there training. We use to fly around at night and practice and you know like that. Finally, I got to go, when I found out I was going to go overseas, I couldn’t go home, so my parents drove up from Texas to see me. This was during the rationing you know. You couldn’t have so much gasoline, had to have a stamp to buy gasoline. Anyway, my parents and my sister came up to see me. All I could do was get a 48-hour pass then I had to go back and get another pass so I could visit them. Finally, that came to an end and I had to leave. So, then the crew went to Kearney Nebraska and we got a brand new B-17 airplane… and we were to leave and we didn’t know where we were going, and the pilot had the sealed orders he was supposed to read while we were in the air. And we found out where we were going, we were going to England. See, we didn’t know if it would be England or the South Pacific. So, we landed at New Hampshire and the weather socked in and we couldn’t leave for a week. So I just sat around and played poker. We weren’t supposed to leave the base and I just played poker all the time… and low and behold two of our crew were caught in a canoe with two girls going down the river by the M.P.s!

MGR: Oh no!

JM: Well they were court marshalled and all their stripes were taken away, they were buck privates. But they weren’t removed from the crew, all this training and everything wasn’t going to go to waste. So, they stayed on the crew and then we finally got to take off and went into Labrador and stayed all night. Then we went to Iceland and stayed all night. Then we left there to Prestwick Isles, Scotland and we landed there in Scotland and that’s the last time we saw our airplane, we thought was ours! We found out later that they had to do other things like put armour around the engines, so enemy fire wouldn’t destroy the engines. So, we guys went into a bar, you know there in England, and ordered a drink and well we went to pay and they wanted all these foreign words, we didn’t know what Bobs were and all these Pounds and stuff! All we had was a twenty-dollar bill, they just looked at it, they didn’t know what to do! So luckily there’s some more service men in there and we made arrangements that they’d pay for it and so forth. We got on a train then to go down to Stone, I mean to the Wash they call it in England, for additional gunnery training, as if we needed anymore training. But while on that train we learned English money and played poker. We had these Pounds and Florins and Shillings, when we got through we knew all about it! Well we were there about a week or 10 days or so and we lived in tents. The officials thought the Germans might invade there in that area, in The Wash area, and they issued us with .45 automatics. We were living in these tents and at night we could hear them guns going off. They came around and took those guns away from us! (Both laugh)

MGR: Were some of them were playing with them?!

JM: Yeah! And from there then we went down to Nuthampstead. That’s where we started our training and flew around there for a few days. Finally, we got to go on our first combat mission and that was July the 31st 1944 and that happened to be the first mission for Wally Blackwell. We went to... way across the Alps and over there to, can’t think of the name of that place [the mission was to Munich, Gr.]. Anyway, it was a long, long trip, 10 hours in the air and several hours on oxygen. We finally made it back.

MGR: So, were you afraid?

JM: Yes, naturally we were afraid, it was our first mission. But we didn’t see any enemy airplanes, that was one good thing ‘cause I don’t know what we’d do there, but we made it alright.

MGR: You made it back okay. How many missions did you fly?

JM: Well, you know originally the tour, they called it, was 25 missions. The higher ups thought that was about all a guy could take was 25 missions and then later on when we got fighter escort, you know we didn’t have fighter escort before, just to the English coast was as far as we could go. We got fighter escorts that could go further so they raised it to a tour of 30 missions and then later on I understand they changed it to 35. Well, I flew 30 missions and I was kind of surprised because after 30 missions they came in one day and told me I was through. What had happened, I had flown one mission with another crew, not of my choice. They came in which they normally do at 3:00 am in the morning and shine a flashlight in your eyes and tell you you’re flying. I said no not today and they said you’re flying with so and so crew and I said I didn’t think much of that, but I didn’t complain and went ahead and flew with this crew and it’s a good thing I did because of what happened later. My crew, since I was one mission ahead you know, they had to continue on flying. Well on their last and 35th mission, they went down and were all killed.

MGR: Oh, well it was good you got to go on your other mission, wasn’t it?

JM: That had something to do with it, I don’t know what.

MGR: So were you ever shot down on any of your missions?

JM: No never were shot down, but we did have one mission, aborted they called it, and if you don’t go over the target you don’t get credit for that mission. Well we didn’t make it to the target, and we had an engine leaking oil and we tried to keep going but just couldn’t make it. The engine failed and we had to come back. A P-51 Mustang appeared on our right wing, that’s where I had to shut it down. He escorted us all the way back to the coast on the way home to keep the German planes away from us and we just dumped the bombs in an open field in France.

MGR: And you made it back home. So what did you do on your time off? Did you ever get to go into London?

JM: Well, we always went to London, that is myself and a couple of the guys. All of the crew didn’t go, we had some of them that were married and they probably did things that we didn’t do, but we always went to London because that’s where the girls were!

MGR: (laughs) So tell me about your first trip to London.

JM: Well, the first trip my ball turret gunner and I was there walking down the street and we met these two girls and they said give us some money and we’ll go get some drinks and we can have a party. So naturally my ball turret gunner didn’t have any money ‘cause I was the only one who ever had any money. He had shot dice and lost his money or spent it. So, I gave them some money, I don’t remember how much, they took the money and they started running, and we started chasing them and we couldn’t catch them! They ran through the back alleys, couldn’t see them and we finally gave up. That’s the last we saw of them. (Both laugh)

MGR: So the girls took your money!

JM: They kept insisting ‘now are you sure this is the first time you’ve been to London?’ And we didn’t catch a clue there!

MGR: So what did you do when you went into London?

JM: Well, we went down to Piccadilly Circus, where we always went… finally found some girls!

MGR: Oh okay! So what did you think about the food?

JM: The what?

MGR: The food.

JM: Well we didn’t eat much outside the base, those people didn’t have anything to eat. All they had was potatoes and they could fix potatoes any way you could think of, ‘cause they didn’t have any meat. Well, there’s one thing, we always stayed at a certain motel, a certain hotel and I use to take... we’d get in the PX, not the PX, back on the base we had apples and oranges. Well, they didn’t have any of those and I used to save mine and take them to give to that guy that worked at the hotel to take home to his children as they didn’t have any.

MGR: Well that was nice. So, were you ever in the Woodman Pub while you were stationed over there?

JM: You know, I never did know that pub was ever there. There were guys who talked about that, about cutting the wires and slipping out but I didn’t know that pub was over there because we always went to London.

MGR: So you never went into Royston like a lot of them did?

JM: We had to go to Royston…

MGR: To get the train…

JM: To get on the train, we rode on this truck over there to get that train, those trains weren’t anything like ours. You couldn’t go from one car to the other, they were separate cars. And they had these doors that opened out, two bench seats in there for you to sit in. It took us about oh, a couple of hours to go to London and it was only 40 miles. They’d stop at every little place.

MGR: So tell me about your living conditions over there?

JM: You mean on the air base? Well, we lived in this Nissan Hut, the enlisted men were in there and we had three crews, that would be 18 people, 3 times 6. And our officers were separate, commissioned officers, and the first time they were in a tent with an earthen floor but later on they got better barracks. But we were in there and it was cold and I was from dry west Texas and not use to all that rain, rain, fog just all the time. It felt like if you could just get more warmth, you know, you would be alright. Felt cold all the time and we had this stove in there but didn’t have any coal for it, and the guys would go steal some from the mess hall, if they didn’t get caught, and bring some to last for a little while. So, we had two army blankets and I had put one down on my cot to lay on and one to cover me and I took my overcoat and put it on top of that and slept in my clothes.

MGR: Did you have sheets?

JM: Huh?

MGR: Did you have sheets with those blankets?

JM: Oh no. No sheets!

MGR: But aren’t those army blankets really rough and made out of wool?

JM: Well yeah, they’re a 100% wool. O.D. color.

MGR: Yeah, that’s what I thought. That’s why I remember they were very itchy. So, um, did you have interactions with the local population? I mean you said you went into London so did you, besides the girls, did you meet other people? Or did you meet any people that lived around Nuthampstead?

JM: No, like I said we didn’t go into town there. Didn’t know anybody other than that fella that worked at the hotel.

MGR: So when you were in your Nissan Hut at night did you play cards play poker then when you weren’t on a mission?

JM: I played poker all the time. ‘Cause I won!

MGR: That’s the reason you had money!

JM: And a lot of the guys didn’t know how to play! A lot of them shot dice in the latrine, but I never did. On pay day, they'd go in there and shoot dice and lose all their money, they never had any money. I sent money home. I had a bank account at home and my mother... and a, I wasn’t married but if you were married you got an extra money, you know. They made me take out an allotment, I guess they were afraid that I’d spend all my money. I finally decided to take out an allotment and they’d send part of my money home and my mother would put it in the bank for me and when I got out there’s my money.

MGR: That’s good.

JM: When I was coming home, ah, that’s another story, I used to send money home and since I was coming home, I didn’t send any for a while and I had 900 dollars in my pocket when I was coming home.

MGR: That was a lot of money back then, wasn’t it? So, when did you get finished and were able to go home?

JM: Ah, my last mission was December the 12th 1944… and we went to some place, don’t remember where it was, I guess we were waiting for a ship to go home and finally got to go on the ship. I Don’t remember the name of it or if I ever knew it, but while I was on there, there were many, many soldiers with their legs missing and in wheelchairs and like that, going home and I was probably one of the few able-bodied people on there so they put me on the duty serving on the mess line at meal time. The only time ever that I got nauseous, or seasick as you call it, was when I was standing there serving. It was hot down there in the hold and I became sick. And I went out on the deck and that cool wind hit me in the face, it just instantly went away and I never had been airsick flying on the airplane or anything, that was the only time.

MGR: Well, like you said it was hot and probably all those smells. So, was it a lot different when you got back home?

JM: Yeah, there wasn’t anybody around. All my friends were gone and I didn’t have any contact with any girls or anything. So, it was pretty lonesome.

MGR: Did you use the G.I Bill after you got home?

JM: I sure did. You know I would never got to go to college if it hadn’t been for that. And I think I got out in October, the nearest I could go to college was midterm, you know. The night before I was going to register, I went on a blind date and that’s when I met Willetta, who turned out to be my wife. And I went and enrolled in Hardin-Simmons University the next day. Under the G.I. Bill we got one year for every year you were in the service. Well I was in the service two years, 6 months, so I only had two and a half years. I went to college all the year round, all the summer long, and got a degree in two and a half years.

MGR: Wow.

JM: Business administration and accounting.

MGR: Very good. Was this in Texas? Was this college in Texas?

JM: Abilene. In Texas.

MGR: So were you home when we bombed Japan?

JM: Oh do you mean when we dropped the Hydrogen Bomb?

MGR: Yes.

JM: Oh yeah, yeah I was. I approved of that wholeheartedly, because that saved thousands of lives, I’m sure.

MGR: Well that’s good. So what was your biggest fear when you were...

JM: Flying? The biggest thing that you feared was that flak. There’s no defence for the flak and there’s no place to hide and you couldn’t just do anything but crouch down there and hope it doesn’t hit you. Now if you had a fighter shooting at you, you know you could fight back and try to defend yourself but that flak was just, you just couldn’t do anything about it. And we had several big flak come in there and tear... the skin on an airplane is not very thick, you could just push a pistol through it… and that flak just ripped through there you know. And one time, I was in the top turret gunner, you know, right behind the pilots, and I got down out of that. This mission we were flying on August the 8th 1944 [Bretteville Le Rabet] we were flying lower than usual. We usually flew at 30,000 feet and we were flying maybe about 15,000 feet, somewhere there, and we were supposedly going to bomb in support of the troops after D-Day. We were flying low, I guess, so to more accurate, not hit the wrong people you know. But we were so low they were just blasting us and the flak was flying through the air and some came through and hit the hydraulic system right next to me and I was down on the floor and it sprayed this red hydraulic fluid all over me and the co-pilot thought I was shot! I gave him the thumbs up and he settled back in his seat. And there was a big piece of flak, the largest I’ve seen and it was still curved - it was the outside of the shell, stuck in the windscreen, the windshield, right in front of my pilot’s face. He wanted that so bad for a souvenir and that stayed in there all the way home and on final approach it fell off!

MGR: Oh no! So he didn’t get to get it did he. So, on a flight, on a mission, when they took off, were you sitting up in your position?

JM: Yes.

MGR: Yeah, you were… and you stayed there the whole time and you when you landed you were still up there?

JM: Uh huh. But now, one time we had trouble and the flak knocked out our hydraulic system like I told you and we didn’t have any brakes. On a B-17 there are only two things hydraulic and that’s cowl flaps for the engines. The flak had burst it open so we didn’t have any problems with the engine over heating but we didn’t have any brakes. So when we landed it was going to be a new experience. We all got down in the floor in the radio room which is in the centre of the plane and braced, you know, for a crash and we landed and made a perfect landing and coasted right to the end of the runway and finally stopped.

MGR: Well that was good. Did you, did your... any of the planes you flew on did any of those have nose art on them, that you remember?

JM: Yes some of them did. Most people don’t know that it was never the same plane. I flew in 16 different aeroplanes during those thirty missions. I have a list of all of them and some of them two or three of them did have names, but most of them did not have names.

MGR: Did they paint the bombs for the number of missions you went on?

JM: Some of them did.

MGR: Some of them did…

JM: Now, you see the ground crew. You have a ground crew that works on one airplane, “their” airplane, and they do that painting and the naming of them, stuff like that. Some of them did have names and bombs painted on them but not all of them.

MGR: Did you receive any special medals?

JM: Well I had the Air Medal six times I think. Good Conduct Ribbon and a Presidential Citation that the Group got, you know. That’s about all.

MGR: Did you have any good luck items you carried with you?

JM: Any what?

MGR: Any good luck items?

JM: No, they did give us a little packet that we carried with us, had some French money in it, a fishing hook and some tackle, just in case we bailed out, you know, that we were supposed to try and survive on but I didn’t have any lucky charms or anything.

MGR: So what do you think your biggest accomplishment was?

JM: Well I survived (laughs). We did our duty and flew our missions and survived. I mean I did, the rest of the crew didn’t.

MGR: So when you got back home, was there rationing when you got back home?

JM: No, I was gone all that rationing time, I didn’t have to experience any of that.

MGR: Well tell me about returning home. You took the ship back, right?

JM: Yeah, the ship. The guys that stayed there until the end of the war a lot of them flew back in the airplane. But that went on for nearly a year after I left.

MGR: So, when you came back home what port did you come back into?

JM: We came into New York, it was during the war and everything was black. No lights on, couldn’t even see the Statue of Liberty or anything. One thing I mentioned, I was out on the deck trying looking trying to find to see something. It was cold and I had my overcoat on, which I only used to cover me while I was sleeping and there’s some officer standing there and he says “soldier what’s your rank?” and I told him “Tech Sergeant” and he says “ where are your stripes?” and I says “ there are some back in my bag" and I went back and got some stripes and used a safety pin and put those on. This guy, I didn’t even know who he was or anything. Anyway, we disembarked there and went to Fort Dix, New Jersey and that’s where they gave us a haircut. While we were over there at Nuthampstead, we had a soldier there who would cut our hair. Anyway, we got a haircut there and we could get anything issued we were short of, without having to explaining it. A blanket or shoes, anything that you needed you could get replaced. And they put me on a troop train and sent me to Fort Bliss, El Paso and that’s not very close to where I live in Abilene, but it’s in Texas and they thought it was close - I would have rather went to Fort Worth - and it took several days because if we met another train, they had to take us into sidings to let other trains go by. It was a long trip.

MGR: Were you immediately, did you immediately get out of the service once you were back home?

JM: Oh no. No from there I was sent to Santa Ana California but I had a delay on route of two weeks to go home in Abilene. So I was on vacation or leave for two weeks before I had to report there in Santa Ana California. That’s supposed to be R & R, and the mess hall there, you could have anything you wanted and guys would just going up to the line and would get three or four cartons of milk, they hadn’t had any milk. But the food was so good there, it was supposed to be a ration and a half allowed and ah, when we go to town or Hollywood, when it come time for a meal, we’d come back to the base to eat! (Both laugh)

MGR: So, did you gain any weight the whole time?

JM: Well I gained a little, I don’t remember (Joe speaks to his wife who is off camera) “what did I weigh when we got married?” (His wife replies 138), she says 138 when we got married. Weigh more than that now! (both laugh)

MGR: So, have you been back to Nuthampstead?

JM: Oh yes, we’ve been back with the 398th Bomb Group, three times. You know we didn’t find out about the 398th Bomb Group until long time afterwards, about the organization. And I had been listening to a local radio station and they mentioned the 8th Air Force was going to have a meeting in New Orleans, which is nearby up there in Houston. He said if anybody is interested give him a call, so I called him up and told him my name and what I was in and everything and low and behold I got a letter from George Hilliard. They had furnished that information over to the 398th, I didn’t even know it existed, all these years and I got a letter from him, you know, so I sent it in and signed up. Been going to the reunions ever since. First we went on a trip to Europe and that was in 1992 and, oh in the meantime, my pilot had a sister named Sylvia... not Doerr, ‘cause she got married. They were from North Dakota and she, when her parents died, she inherited all these things from my pilot, you know, and she wanted to find out what happened, nobody knew what happened and the army didn’t tell anybody anything. So, she joined the 8th Air Force and they referred her to Allen Ostrom. Well Allen Ostrom and her worked together and they found out about me. So they were having a reunion down there at Santa Ana in...

MGR: San Diego.

JM: San Diego, and Allen had stopped in there, she (Sylvia) lived in Huntington Beach and he stayed there all night and talked her into going to the reunion. Well she said, I won’t know anybody, but she went you know and kinda enjoyed it. He gave her my name and we started corresponding and we met for the first time on our first reunion in Nashville Tennessee and we started meeting every year at these reunions after that. She had a husband that went with her, he wasn’t really enthused about that, but he went along with it. He had been a pilot in the Eastern over there flying the hump in China during the war, being a pilot. So he had his own little war besides us. We had fun meeting at all these reunions but she died a few years ago. He called me on the phone the other day, see what happened on these trips I made some movies and I sent these tapes, trying to keep her informed and everything and I sent her all the literature that we get from these reunions to her… and he called me the other day and he said we’ve got all these tapes Joe that you’ve sent Sylvia, do you want those back? I said yeah you go ahead and send them back, I will find somebody who wants them. And he says he’s 90 years old now and he doesn’t care or not if he wakes up or not the next day and he was going to move to his sister’s assisted living place. And I told him to give me a call so I could keep in touch with him but he never did call so I don’t know where he is now.

MGR: Did you get the tapes back?

JM: Yes, and I was going to give those to Wally Blackwell but he didn’t come to the meeting so I didn’t bring them. I corresponded with Wally by email. Told him I had those, he might be interested in looking at them. They also included some trips extra we made while we were over there. We went to Ireland on one trip. On one trip we went to Sweden and Norway and Denmark and anyway…

MGR: They might be good to keep in the historical records if they’re just extra copies, if that’s something you wanted to do, I could do that, if you want. So, you’ve been back to Nuthampstead several times, right?

JM: Yeah in 1992, 1994 and 2000.

MGR: Had it changed any?

JM: Huh?

MGR: Had it changed any?

JM: Well, yeah, the air base had changed quite a bit and you know Wally always has a tour to show where everything was back then. He can remember that, being a pilot, he knew where each squadron’s hardstand was and the bomb store was and the dump. By the way, after I had left, they claimed, my friend claimed one of those rockets, those V2 rockets landed at Nuthampstead. I didn’t know that, and it barely missed our bombs. Our bomb supply was over there in a bunch of trees off to the side. It just barely missed that and I didn’t know about that and he told me about that V2 rocket ship. When we go to London you hear those buzz bombs you know, as long as you could hear them everything was alright but if you hear one stop, it’s time to duck! And all the English people they were down in the underground... It was terrible, those buzz bombs were just destroying everything.

MGR: So, did you go into London a lot?

JM: Every time I got a pass! (Both laugh) You know really, if you had wings, gunner’s wings, you didn’t have to have a pass. We weren’t issued a pass, we just signed out at the First Sergeant’s office and we were supposed to be back within 48 hours and if you weren’t flying, I guess, you could always go, so we always did.

MGR: Yeah, so were you home for Christmas, ‘cause you said you finished in December, so were you back in the States for Christmas?

JM: No, not that year.

MGR: Yeah, yeah. Do you remember Christmas at the base?

JM: Oh Yeah, it was, at the base they had a celebration for Christmas and I still got one of those cards they sent out. Oh there’s another story I didn’t tell, you know that my pilot was killed. When Allen Ostrom wrote that story in the Flak News it had his [Doerr’s] picture in there and this woman, this English woman who had married an American named Fox, saw that picture and she says ‘well I know him, I had a date with him and we went to the Christmas dance and he never did come back and I kinda liked him’. She didn’t know that he died five days later. But she read that story and she got in touch with my pilot’s sister and we met, all of us, at the reunion that year, in Tucson, wasn’t it? Tucson Arizona. We sat at the same table there but we haven’t seen them since.

MGR: Well that was nice that she came to that one. So, what would you like people to know about this time in history? During the World War 2?

JM: Well you know my children and grandchildren don’t care a thing to hear about it, WW2, but some people say later that they will. But if they could realize what a period that was, that if we hadn’t won, what it would be like.

MGR: We’d be speaking German.

JM: We had to win. And we went all out to win and we accomplished that.

MGR: That’s true. So did anything... well I was going to ask if anything affected you during the war, or happened during the war, that affected you for the rest of your life but basically losing the rest of your crew did, didn’t it?

JM: Yeah losing my crew did. At the reunions they use to have them stand up and say, him and his five crew, him and his four, when it got down to one I'd stand up.

MGR: There was a lot of those this year, wasn’t there?

JM: Yes, there was very many.

MGR: So what would you have changed about your war experience if you could?

JM: What would I change?

MGR: Uh huh

JM: I don’t know if I could change anything. I survived.

MGR: Yeah. So is there anything else you want to tell me?

JM: I would like to have had my crew survive and have that friendship but that’s not to be.

MGR: Right, so any other stories?

JM: I guess not. Well another thing, did I tell you about when the bombs didn’t go down?

MGR: No.

JM: Well we went over the target and he said ‘bombs away’ but nothing happened. And the pilot said to me, I don’t know why me ‘cause I’m not the armorer, the ball turret gunner is our armourer, guess I was kinda handy, being behind him. He said ‘Joe go back there and see what’s wrong’. Well there we were at thirty-thousand feet, at 30 below zero, and I had to unplug from the oxygen, get on a temporary bottle and unplug my heated suit and go back there, and the bomb bay doors are open. The winds coming up there, you know, I look down there and we had thousand-pound bombs. We had three on one side and three on the other side of the bomb bay and the bombs on top released but the ones on the bottom didn’t and they’re all jammed up on top of each other. And I wasn’t about to climb down there on those bombs and kick on them. If they went down, I'd go down with them. I don’t know, it was several feet down to where they were. There’s a little cat walk I was standing on across there and some guy I told that story to said if you had a screwdriver you could put it in there and flip on there. I didn’t have a screwdriver! Maybe I supposed to carry one around! But anyway, we had to come home with those bombs and I may have told you that, we had a scare, you know, those things were armed and ready to go. What happens is that just before you get to the target the bombardier comes back and arms those bombs, whatever that is, I don’t know, whatever it is how he does that, but they’re ready to go. The slightest jar and the thing would explode. There we are coming back with those bombs and we made a smooth landing you know and as soon as that plane stopped, we all got out and started running! (Both laugh) and it was up to the ground crew to take care of those bombs and they did ‘cause they diffused them. They knew how to do that. That’s one scary moment we had.

MGR: So, the bomb bay doors were open?

JM: They were open and we were afraid to close them. Afraid those bombs would fall on them, so we came all the way back with the bomb bay doors open and, we, every time a little town we went over, they would start shooting at us! They thought we were going to bomb them! (Both laugh)

MGR: You were really lucky because with those doors open and landing. Wow so the plane didn’t blow up or anything? They were able to get them off?! Wow that was lucky! So, what do you remember about the weather?

JM: Well the weather is cold and I guess it’s not that cold in degrees but around just above freezing and it’s always wet. It definitely never dried out, just rain, rain, rain! And I wasn’t use to that but it’s just cold all the time. If I could get a little warm. one day I got a crick in my neck and we weren’t flying that day, and I got a crick in my neck so I went to sick bay and this nurse put me on the table and put a heat lamp on my neck and oh that felt so good! Finally, she woke me up, I had been to sleep and she said ‘we were through a long time ago but you looked so peaceful we left you lying there’. I had been asleep for an hour or more I was so warm, you know!

MGR: Did you get warm in your flight suits, your heated suits? Did you get warm then?

JM: Uh huh.

MGR: That’s good.

JM: And it’s always overcast and just dreary you know. We would take off for a mission when you fly up through that, the sun would be shining so bright and pretty up above there, most of the time. Yeah, we had those heated suits that we checked out each time we went on a mission and we were comfortable and warm in there.

MGR: So what kind of food did you get to take with you on the flight?

JM: Nothing.

MGR: Nothing?

JM: I have heard stories about guys having candy bars and things but I never remember having any food on the airplane.

MGR: And nothing to drink?

JM: And nothing to drink for 10 hours. No food, nothing.

MGR: I don’t see how… that’s….

JM: First thing we’d do when we came back was to go to briefing and they’d give you a shot of whisky. There we were 19 year olds, you got a shot of whisky but had nothing to eat for 10 hours.

MGR: Then you would go into the mess hall and have dinner?

JM: Yeah that night we'd have dinner.

MGR: Well I’m glad you survived. Is there anything or anymore stories?

JM: I can’t think of anything now.

MGR: Well alright, as part of the Second Generation, I want to thank you for your service and you know, I am glad you survived and I’m glad that you are able to come to these reunions and to be able to tell your story to us, for our history books.

JM: Well thank you.

[TIME OF INTERVIEW 0:54:48]

 

See also:

1. Doerr's Crew - 602nd Squadron - 12 August 1944
2. The Extra Mission by Joe K. Mansell, Engineer/Gunner
3. The Kentucky Colonel by Joe K. Mansell, Engineer/Gunner
4. Return to 398th Timeless Voices Interviews to view and listen to the interview, Joe K. Mansell 398th Engineer / Gunner - 602nd Squadron (54m 48s).

 

Notes:

1. T/Sgt. Joe K. Mansell was a Flight Engineer / Top Turret Gunner in the 602nd Squadron and flew with the Doerr Crew.
2. The above transcription was provided by volunteer transcriber, Amanda Cockcroft. Amanda would like to dedicate her Joe K. Mansell transcription not just to Joe, but also to T/Sgt. Frank E. Garry, Jr., Flight Engineer of the 603rd SQ DeCleene Crew and all of the brave flight engineers of the 398th. Amanda is a big 398th BGMA supporter and also maintains the DeCleene Crew's crash site at Birchenough Hill in England.
3. The transcription was obtained from a video file.
4. Punctuation, grammar and minor word changes may have been made to improve readability.
5. Additional information may be shown in brackets [ ].