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Posted on 12/17/2004 10:22:32 PM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 Bill Ellett is a small man, white of beard and hair, with a tenor voice turned raspy from endless autumns of barking directions at high school marching bands. After 39 years as a band director, teacher and musician, he enjoys a relaxed retirement, tends to his yard above the Sweetwater Valley in El Cajon, and revels in telling tales of his six grandchildren, and the successes of his three children: the hydrologist son in Tucson; the violinist daughter with the Colorado Symphony in Boulder; the finance grad daughter who works in purchasing for her alma mater, SDSU. Looking at him, you'd never figure Bill Ellett for a war hero - yet his twenty-five missions as a B-17 ball turret gunner, and his two confirmed kills, and one probable, qualify him.  We met while contemplating the ball turret of Sentimental Journey, the B-17G restored by the Confederate Air Force and displayed at Gillespie Field last May. Much later, in the study of his home, I asked him how tight were the confines of a ball turret. "The first time I ever got in one," said Bill, "I didn't know if I could handle it or not. I never did like it, but I handled it. And after you've done it for a while, you get to the point, especially after you've been in combat a few times, where you say, 'Well, I'll never make it anyway, so what the hell's the use of worrying about it.' You live for your next forty-eight hour pass to London. "There were constant thoughts in my mind," he continued, "For two or three hours on my second mission when I was alone there in the waist and tail, where I had accepted the fact that I wasn't gonna make it - I thought, 'There's just no way you can keep going with that many people after you - they're comin' at you all the time and shooting this airplane - you can see holes everywhere you look ... one of those is gonna hit you." His second mission - the first combat mission with the stateside crew Bill had eaten, slept, drank and trained with for six months - taught him intimately about flak and fighters ... and about grief. Among the 10 members of the crew was his best friend, Harold MacGregor, the radio operator. "Mac and I probably were the two closest of the whole crew - we did everything together: going out on dates, together, going to town, together, gettin' loaded ... and whatever you did in those days. We were very, very close, and I wrote home a lot about him - my mother felt like she knew him as well as I did."  Bill's unit, the 390th Bomb Group, contributed 18 of the 264 B-17's that the Eighth Air Force had ordered into the sky to attack Munster, Germany on Sunday, October 10, 1943. Estimates were that the Luftwaffe had over five hundred fighters available to defend the target, and three hundred of them ripped another unit, the 100th Bomb Group, to shreds - in forty-five minutes the 'Bloody Hundredth' lost 12 of its 14 aircraft before ever reaching the target. In twenty- five minutes, the 390th lost 8 of its 18 aircraft. Along with Me-109's, 110's and Fw 190's, there were Ju-88's and Dornier's flying parallel courses, firing air to air rockets at the B-17's. The fighters attacked until the bombers neared the target, then skedaddled when they were within flak range. "They won't come in and fight with you over the target - they'll stay out of the flak, too," Bill said, with a smile. "The fighters are scary, but what's really scary is the flak. You can't do anything about that, when you're on your bomb run and you're flying flat and level as you can, no evasive action possible." And over heavily defended targets like Munster and the Ruhr Valley, the flak was so thick, " ... You'd think you could get out and walk on the smoke from the shells bursting." It was after they had dropped their bombs, with the bomb bay doors still open and the bombardier still flying the airplane, that the worst began. "A direct burst of flak hit behind the number two engine, Bill said, "And left a round hole about three and a half feet in diameter in the wing - it was huge. It winged us over - knocked us right on our back - and the plane started to go down in a spin. Later, Sabel (the pilot) said he rang the bail out bell - he didn't think he could get it under control - but nobody could hear it, the flak had wrecked the communications, too. Of course, it threw an awful lot of shrapnel as it burst up through the fuselage and out." By the time Sabel regained control of the aircraft, they had fallen considerably below and behind their bomb group and the collective, defensive firepower it held. Bill noticed three chutes below him and concluded that they had come from his plane. He struggled out of the turret, but it took a long time.  "I was crawling out of the turret as fast as I could," he said, "And I finally got out of there and noticed that the waist gunners were gone - I could see back through there and the tail gunner was gone, too. So I thought, 'Well, they're all gone, I'm here alone - I'd better get the hell out of here'." He scrambled to the already jettisoned door, strapped on a chute and prepared to jump. "I was leaning in the door, and was kind of dizzy ... in fact, I was very dizzy," he said. He had been without oxygen for some minutes and hypoxia had already kicked in. About then, Bill heard the twin-fifties from the top turret and realized he wasn't alone - only it took a while to comprehend just how much company he really had. "I had sense enough to think, 'Well, the guns are firing up there,'" he said, "They were shaking the ship - I could feel it. So, I rolled back into thewaist and plugged into the waist gunner's oxygen outlet and got to breathing and got straightened up ... and there were fighters all around us, coming at us from all directions." The German fighter pilots were no dummies - they'd look at an airplane to see where the guns were operating and attack where they weren't. Said Bill, "If the ball turret is moving around, they know somebody's in there watching for them, and if the waist guns are moving, they would know. Since those guns were all stationary, they were attacking from the back and the sides and the bottom. So, I started firing the waist guns, and I went from waist gun to waist gun, and even went back to the to the tail gun, and I was firing there, too. I don't know, it was such a confusing time ... I know I hit some, but whether I knocked any down, or not, I'm really not sure. Then, the fighters began concentrating underneath - they could see the ball turret's guns straight down - so I went to see if I could do something there."  There, he found that the inside of the ball turret had been destroyed, when one or more 20 mm shells had stuck it. The gears were shot up and the sight glass, behind which he would have been sitting, was smashed. "One side of it had a big hole in it, and ... ," he said, then paused - and chose not to state the obvious:had he remained in the turret, he would have died. "So, I stayed with the waist guns and my tail gun until we got back over water ... probably a couple of hours of that." Once they reached the English Channel, the fighters departed and, with the his aircraft at an appreciably lower altitude, Bill believed he could relax. "So I took off my mask and started up front," he said. "That's when I discovered Mac in the radio room. He'd been hit in the face with a 20mm shell." He paused at the horror of the image. "If ... if I'd a had any food in me I know I'd have lost it. It was ... the most ... difficult thing I was ever called on to do - to stop ... and do something with him. And I thought, 'Well, I gotta do it,' so I turned his head over and ... he was cold, frozen - so I pulled the rip cord on his parachute, took it out, and wrapped his head up in it as best as I could, propped him up a little bit better and ... went up to the front." Bill struggled with the memory. "We were like brothers," he said. "In fact, after he was killed, my mother and his mother corresponded with each other until they both died. Regularly. And they'd never seen each other ... but we had spoken about each other, so much, to them, that they felt they were almost kin. When I went up into the radio room and I saw him lying there, like he was ... it just made me so sick ... I had to swallow a few times and ... force myself to be able to get him covered up. That bothered me ... I didn't sleep very well for quite a while - then for years afterward it would bother me." Up front, Sabel and the copilot struggled to keep the battered bomber airborne as it crossed the channel but, said Bill, "The plane had just been shot up so badly that they had no intercom, no aileron control, no rudder control. There were one or two cables hanging on ... the columns were just ... (he makes a rough shaking motion with his arms) ... going like that, and the poor co-pilot had wrapped his legs around the column, and his arms around it, trying to hold it, while Sabel did some kind of manipulation with the trim tabs and [tried to] fly it that way. We were losing altitude all the time, so we headed for the 100th Group field, which is right over the southern coast of England, near Hastings." He read to me from Castles in the Air, Martin Bowman's 1984 release from Patrick Stephens Publishing: 'Rusty Lode flown by LT, Robert W Sabel, had over 750 holes in her fuselage, huge gaps in both wings, rudder and left aileron and both flaps shot away. The bomber had been hit badly before the target, but Sabel forced his way home through incessant fighter attacks. However, not all his crew believed they would make it home. William L Ellett, Sabel's ball gunner, saw three parachutes opening below the aircraft. He knew they must have come from his aircraft, so he climbed out of the turret and saw both waist guns hanging limp with their gunners' gone. The tailgunner had also left the aircraft. ... Ellett scrambled back to the waist door and saw a blood-stained flak suit on the floor, then the top turret guns opened up and he knew he was not alone, after all. Sabel managed to land at Thorpe Abbotts with only two minutes fuel supply remaining. Engineering officers declared that the feat was nothing short of a miracle'.  "We made it," said Bill, "And there were none after that that were as rough, but there were enough losses every time you went out that, when you started figuring the odds, you thought 'God, I've got 23, or 22, or 20, more of these? I'm not gonna make it.' Not very many did at that time in the war." In the four days before and after Munster, the aforementioned 100th Bomb Group lost 19 flight crews, and 20 of its 21 operational aircraft. Of the three crew members who had bailed out, Bill was told that Joe Tolan had died in a German hospital from the wounds he sustained in the attack, but the other two, Leon Tennant and Marvin Cox, survived the rest of the war in a German POW camp - they've since died. Bob Sabel, the pilot, got a job after the war with the CIA, then ran a detective agency in LA. He and Bill and George Woodcock - Woody the top gunner and engineer - all met at a reunion of the 390th Bomb Group, ten years ago at Davis- Mothan Air Force base in Tucson. Sabel died two years ago, but Woody, who has a daughter living in San Diego, gets together with Bill at least once a year. Bill completed all twenty-five missions with nary a scratch, surviving a bail out over the English coast when an engine overran and caught fire, and another mission to Munster (a milk run, compared with the first). For his efforts, he was awarded the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. When he returned stateside, he became a ball turret instructor, then trained in B-29's and was preparing to fight in the Pacific, when they dropped the atomic bombs.  After he mustered out, he vowed he'd never fly again - a vow he kept until 1960, and only a disabled car and a need to be at work the next morning forced him to break it. He got his degree in music from Idaho State, taught school, met and married his wife, taught for nine years in Nevada, then twenty-six more at Granite Hills High. The last couple of years he said, "I didn't feel up to chasing the marching band around all day," so he finished his career teaching history. The images of Mac were never far away, though, occasionally haunting his dreams. " ... And then I began to think, when we talked about WWII, that relating some personal experiences to the kids would be good for them. It'd be interesting, and not only that, but it might improve relations - they might think of me as more of a human being instead of a teacher. So, I began to tell them stories, occasionally, when we got to that unit on WWII. Jeez, it got so that I was famous in the Grossmont District for telling stories about the Eighth Air Force. Other teachers would substitute another class for me, while I came to their history class and spent a day or two with their kids. And so, I did that quite a bit, until I retired. And the kids really enjoyed listening to it." And re-telling those tales from so long ago made it possible for Bill to deal with it, himself, as well.  |
Today's classic warship, USS Lamson (DD-18)
Smith class destroyer
Displacement. 700 t.
Lenght. 293'10"
Beam. 26'
Draft. 8'
Speed. 28.6 k.
Complement. 107
Armament. 4 3", 3 18" tt.
The USS Lamson (DD-18) was laid down 18 March 1908 by William Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa. launched 16 June 1909; sponsored by Mrs. Henry S. Gore, and commissioned 10 February 1910, Lt. Comdr. J. M. Ludy in command.
Assigned to the Atlantic Squadron, Lamson operated along the east coast and in the Caribbean from 1910 until 1916 participating in torpedo exercises, fleet maneuvers, and coastal patrol. Departing Key West 7 May 1916, the destroyer arrived Dominican Republic 2 days later to support the U.S. Marines sent by President Wilson to protect American interests during the Dominican revolt.
She returned to Key West in mid-June before sailing on the 28th for Vera Cruz. She joined other American ships in Mexican waters as the Mexican political situation was still in turmoil. Following her return to Key West 11 July, Lamson operated along the east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico until the United States entered World War I.
During the early months of the war she patrolled the coastline before preparing for overseas service. Arriving Ponta Delgada, Azores, 26 July 1917, the destroyer performed escort and patrol duty for the next 3 months. Lamson departed the Azores 6 October for escort operations out of Brest, France. She assisted survivors of Finland on 28 October after the merchant ship had been torpedoed by a German submarine.
The destroyer continued escort and patrol operations for the rest of the war, and aided in the victory of Allied forces by neutralizing the German U-boat threat to convoys. After the Armistice Lamson departed Brest 11 December 1918 and arrived Charleston, S.C., 31 December. She decommissioned 16 July 1919 and was sold November 21 1919 and broken up for scrap.
What a Maroon. It's not a state. IMNSHO, there should be NO permanent residents in D.C., including elected ones.
Hi miss Feather
Howdy ma'am
Same old same old.
Prosecuting troll targets that show their beady eyed heads, wandering, ghosting about, haunting, the usual.
*chuckle*
GM, sw!!!!
free dixie, bf
HUGS to sw and duckie!
free dixie,sw
i can smell the credit cards SMOKING from here. LOL.
free dixie,sw
Oh now, more shoes and matching handbags!! LOL!!
sw you want duckie to look grand at the Ball right??
5 trolls this morning.
Was an interesting pile on too.
Seems ot be a lull at the moment.
Waiting for the next troll to show itself.
Congratulations on your impending unclehood! Girls are fun; but they grew up much too soon these days! I know you will watch out for that. And good morning to you, its good to talk to you again!
unless you're moving the ball to Bagdadh, i won't be there and neither will she.
i mailed a note to JimRob, a couple of weeks ago, telling him that i could "get a really good deal" on renting the ENTIRE Bagdadh Hilton for the FR Inaugural Ball, especially given that the hotel is currently missing the entire facade (due to a VERY LARGE detonation of a truck-bomb).
tgslTacoma then sent me a message that "that would make it CONVIENIENT for OPEN AIR dining & dancing"!!! (rotflmRao!)
free dixie,sw
that's how to take care of TROLLS!
free dixie,sw
LOL!!!!
Open air dancing!! WOO HOO!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1304125/posts?page=26#26
My personal 'bias' leans towards using artillery.
;-)
BTW, read the rest of the Dixie thread this morning; you are an untiring amazing warrior. Would love to share with you sometime the horrendous class I took at the University of Pennsylvania on Reconstruction. Wish you were there then! But that's for another topic, don't want to break with protocol here.
Did you hear about the Wisconsin (I think) elector in this election who cast a vote for EWARDS for President and EDWARDS for Vice President. I don't think he was protesting anything, but rather made an honest mistake. Given his spelling skills (I should be the one to talk...) he makes a lot of mistakes...
tgslTakoma is SOOOOOOO FUNNY!
free dixie,sw
LOL!
No displays yet, maybe on the 21st., I think we have Bill gates worried and looking over his shoulder. ;-)
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