Oral History Interview with Bob Claud

Shurtz: This is July 1st…2008, I’m Clinton Shurtz, in Clinton, Kentucky, interviewing Bob Claud about his experiences in World War II. Thanks for talking with me, Bob… Claud: You’re welcome.

Shurtz: …and…I guess to begin with just tell me about your, a little bit about your childhood and where you grew up at, and… Claud: Well I grew up around Oakton, Kentucky, it’s a small town, it’s about gone now, and…I graduated from high school at Central, in Hick…in Clinton. From there, I went to Connecticut and worked about a year, and when I was twenty-one I came home and joined the air force.

Shurtz: And what, what did your parents do?

Claud: He was a farmer, a farmer all his life, he did a little carpenter work. My mother was from Columbus, Kentucky 1:00and she died when she was sixty-five years old. My dad lived to be eighty-seven.

Shurtz: And…so tell me about how old were you when you joined the air force?

Claud: Twenty-one.

Shurtz: Twenty-one.

Claud: At twenty-one on October and about the 21st, about the 24th I was in the service.

Shurtz: What year was that?

Claud: Forty…two.

Shurtz: Okay.

Claud: Forty-two.

Shurtz: So tell me about…that experience, and, and where did you start basic training and just kind of lead me through that story.

Claud: Well, let’s see, I went to Fort Oglethorpe after I was sworn in at…can’t think of the name of the town, below…Tullahoma, Tennessee where I was sworn in, and then I went to Fort Oglethorpe, from there I went to…Nashville, Tennessee 2:00where they was recruiting and processing cadets, and I stayed there until they was up and going to open an airport over at Force, airport over in…oh, New Madrid, Missouri. So I put my name in for that, but they told me to go to mechanic school before I got to go. So, after mechanic school, I went to…Long Beach, California, and they showed us through the aircraft factory plant there and…I went to gunnery school at Las Vegas, and let’s see, from Las Vegas, yeah I got a furlough home, and then I went back to Salt Lake City and they formed our crew and there we went to Rapid City, South Dakota, and did our training there and the crew. 3:00Then when we got ready to go overseas, they decided they had too many crews and we was going to have to go by boat. For some reason, they decided they’d let us fly a plane over, and they’d had, they had a spare already over there. So we flew over there to England. And from there, it’s history [Chuckling]. I was in on D-Day, flew two missions on D-Day and on…I think at my fifteenth mission, we, we got several holes in the airship, which I can show you on some pictures I have of it, and I got the purple heart on that mission (Clears throat). So, I wound up with thirty-two missions and my pilot had thirty-five, so we all enlisted men got to come home. When I come home, I was sent to Amarillo, Texas, after my furlough home, 4:00and they asked if I wanted to be a engineer on the B-29, and of course they offered it second lieutenant’s job. I said “no thank you.” So I stayed there and instructed aircraft engines, until they sent me closer to home and then I was discharged. I tried farming for two years, that didn’t workout too good. Then I decided to move to town become a full-time mechanic, and I worked at…Kaiser-Fraser dealership for a while, and then I had a chance to go to…farm equipment which was more in my line, and I stayed there until I hired in at the atomic plant at Paducah, Kentucky. I stayed there nine years, and…it was kind of getting a little shaky, they 5:00was laying some men off, and I’d, I got a sh…dose of radiation and it showed up on my film badge and I had a chance to opt-out by taking a reduction in force, and I got a little more money for that. So I quit that and came home, and when the, I had had a opportunity to go, buy into Case Tractor out…dealership, and I stayed there twenty-three-and-a-half years. Then we sold out and I worked for the fellows that bought us out for twelve years, and now I am my own working around doing nothing, do what I want to.

Shurtz: How long did it take you to learn how to fly a plane?

Claud: Well I don’t know how long [Chuckling]. I, I took lessons on a tu—cub or Taylorcraft or something, I didn’t get enough hours in to fly.

Shurtz: Oh so you didn’t, you didn’t fly yourself.

Claud: Uh-uh. 6:00I was an engineer gunner.

Shurtz: Oh, okay. And what is that?

Claud: I was in the top turret where I, when we was on a mission, before we come out left the ground, I had to check the paperwork on the plane and see if everything was not red-lined or anything to keep us from flying, or if something was wrong with the plane, get the instruments all turned on, turned the master switch on, and sat there and wait until the…officers come.

Shurtz: Oh, I see. So you were never actually in the air doing that.

Claud: Oh yeah! I… Shurtz: Oh you… Claud: …I flew!

Shurtz: …you, you flew.

Claud: Yeah.

Shurtz: Okay.

Claud: Thirty-two missions.

Shurtz: And how long were you there in England, was it… Claud: Well, I think I lacked six days being overseas six months.

Shurtz: Oh okay.

Claud: And the fellow up the road there, he got overseas before I did and he was still there until—in forty-six, I believe. I don’t know what took them so long.

Shurtz: Hum. Several veterans 7:00I’ve talked to…who were part of D-Day said it was very secret. Do you remember anything like… Claud: Well… Shurtz: …what went into it?

Claud: …before D-Day all at once they told us to wear our side arms. Ordinarily we didn’t wear our side arms. So, a few days before D-Day everybody was wearing a sidearm or carrying a M-16 or whatever carbine was called, and then the night…before D-Day, they come in and got us out of bed at eleven-thirty. That’s funny, they never done this before. And then we, I don’t think we had, enlisted men even knew anything about what was going on until we was crossing channel. And you could look down there and see all them boats in the channel, it was covered up with them. So we went on in and dropped our bombs and then come back and sat there on the, off of the runway until they reloaded us up and we went back to another target. 8:00Shurtz: Anything else you can talk about, about D-Day?

Claud: No, that’s about all for our…experience on it, we just flew over and dropped our bombs, didn’t, didn’t know what really was, actually what, really what was going on for sure! And…I can’t think there was…happened after that, or arou…around D-Day, I mean. We didn’t have to wear our [Chuckling] side arms after that… Shurtz: Oh!

Claud: …we didn’t have to wear that. And on…we were pretty lucky. My pilot was a, one of these kind of standoffish guys, and he wanted everything down pat. He got on the pi…co-pilot one day, 9:00he said something to him, and I was calling off air speed or something or other, I done forgot what I was doing, whether we was taking off or landing, and I just shut up, for some [Chuckling] reasons or other. I said, “If you don’t, talk to myself you don’t like the way I am doing it, I’ll just quit.” The co-pilot turned around and said, “he was [Laughing] paul…he was chewing me out, not you” [Laughing]. So we went on from there, but he w…in his letters to me, he remarked that he was kind of standoffish, didn’t even re…know much about the crew or anything much about his officers that was under him.

Shurtz: When you were on the missions, did you ever have any close calls?

Claud: Well…I’d call that about the c…closest call, because we got several shrapnel across the plane. 10:00Shurtz: Oh I see! (Papers shuffling sounds) Claud: Here is a picture of my pilot now.

Shurtz: Oh!

Claud: He even got a doctorate degree.

Shurtz: Hum.

Claud: Yeah here, you can see here. This is when, that day we got shot pretty good, we lost our hydraulic system, didn’t have any breaks, and he couldn’t operate his flaps on the main wings, and there is a picture that the air force took of us out there. That’s the bombardier, that’s me, and that’s…no, he is the navigator, bombardier, bombardier, and that’s me, tail gunner. I can’t remember that guy’s name, he was just on there for some reason, and this was 11:00the radio operator. And here is two of them up there on the plane looking down at some holes somewhere. Here’s where one of them went in and here is where some more went through the ball turret, he just happened to be out, his oxygen went out or something or other and he was coming out of there, and I, this is where I flew, while we was flying where I w…operated, is the top turret, and you can see that hole there, here you can see a better view right, right here maybe, right there.

Shurtz: Mm!

Claud: That’s me, and this is the waist gunner. Now here is a piece I think that got me, I think it come in and some way or another come through the…ricocheted off and hit the hydraulic line, and cut it in two, and it might have been the one that hit me.

Shurtz: So you were hit?

Claud: Yeah. It wasn’t bad, it’s just a superficial… Shurtz: Oh, I see.

Claud: …wound. 12:00But this one guy here, he is in a lot of pictures [Chuckling] I’ve got. There is a picture of the whole crew. He was from a, while I was in training and he was our crew chief, and s…something or other see, we flew didn’t fly as high here on training as we did after we got overseas, and I don’t know whether the high altitude affected him some way or another, but I don’t—to the best of my…what records I have of it, he only flew about two missions. Then they took him off flying status, and the pilot can’t get this straight, he thought it was halfway through our mission but he wa’n’t, because on one mission, I think it was the second mission, I flew…no, it was more than that, it was a…I’d have to look it up, but…we took off 13:00and the gas line broke and there we was, that gas spewing out in the air and had to feather that engine.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Claud: We were full of a bomb load, and…of course I turned around to the pilot right quick and told him to feather that engine, and he feathered it, and we come back in, had, had to stay up there flying around until all of them got off the ground, because they was done lined up on the taxi, on the runway, and…he’d radioed ahead for them to get some guns in another plane and we caught them two hours later when over target. I was looking back one day, the, there was several groups behind us, of course they didn’t look like they was about so big, they was so far behind us, and I saw something in it and give that, and I said, surely that’s not a 14:00pil…a pilot plane in there trying to do something or other. And about that time I saw an explosion. He’d gotten tai…prop-wash and kin…and as he fell, he hit this other plane and it exploded.

Shurtz: Hum.

Claud: And they fell and it caught another plane and it exploded.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Claud: That was thirty men, right there.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Claud: But that was a…of course that was another group and everything. See, really the…see the men, the enlisted men stayed apart, not to get too close to the officers, and they was carried in another section when before they all more or less stayed together. And…I guess that’s why they scattered us out in Quonset huts, it was just another crew in our Quonset hut there with us and they got it one day, they got prop-wash but I wa’n’t on that mission.

Shurtz: What’s that word ‘prop’?

Claud: That’s the blast of the air that’s it’s a propellers are pushing back… Shurtz: Oh.

Claud: …you know, if you see a boat, that stuff behind the boat? 15:00That’s their prop-wash for the boat.

Shurtz: Oh I see.

Claud: And they cannot fly in, in that prop-wash, because they done lost all their pull.

Shurtz: Were you at, age twenty-one, were you, did you enlist yourself, or were you drafted…when you joined?

Claud: No, I enlisted.

Shurtz: Okay.

Claud: I enlisted, volunteered.

Shurtz: Yeah.

Claud: They said it was going to have a permanent training base. Well that was kind of tricky, it, after I got through with my training base, why I was through, it was permanent until I got through with my [Chuckles – Claud and Shurtz] training. But I went to aircraft schools, it was a m…mechanic school.

Shurtz: Is that when you taught? When you… Claud: No, that was after I got back from overseas.

Shurtz: But did you teach mechanics and or… Claud: and on engines.

Shurtz: Okay.

Claud: I was—told one boy 16:00to take the sparkplugs out of that mockup. He looked at me like I was crazy. I said, “don’t you know what sparkplugs are?” “No.” I said, “don’t you ever drive a car?” He says, “no, I had a chauffeur.” And another boy there I told him something about to do some one day, day there and he kind of looked kind of funny. I said, “what in the world did you do before you got in the air force?” He said, “I was studying to be a lawyer” [Chuckles – Claud and Shurtz]. So you see they took all kinds of people and put them in some job o…is what they wanted them in, mostly, not what you wanted. In our days, I think you can kind of ask for what you want.

Shurtz: Mm-mm. Did you have what you wanted?

Claud: Yeah, I had the air force, I didn’t know I was going to ever fly though until they give us a physical one day and he turned around and asked the captain says, “captain, will low blood pressure keep this man from flying?” He said, “no, send him over.” That’s the first I knew 17:00that I had low blood pressure and I was going to be ( ) up in the air.

Shurtz: I’m still, still trying to understand what you, what did you do in the air when you were… Claud: Well, actually I wasn’t doing anything but up in that turret and I was keeping an eye out all around… Shurtz: Oh, okay.

Claud: …to see if any…bandits were close.

Shurtz: I see.

Claud: And, don’t, we never had bandits real close, but one time there was six of them turn right through the squadron, and I got on one of them, I pressed my trigger and it didn’t work, the automatic shut off, it was down through lower down in the, there is a cam in there keeps you, the guns from shooting, but that B-51 right on his tail got him. I saw them go through the clouds, and this B-51 was just following right down to see whether he was faking I guess.

Shurtz: Can you talk any about the, the equipment, as far as…the 18:00guns you used and the, the bombs and… Claud: Oh they was, fifty-caliber machineguns is all we used to have some thirties on the tail gunner but they changed them all to fifty-calibers. They finally put a turret in the, no…t…nose section and one of the officers had to operate it, in case they come in from the…at twelve o’clock, and…that’s about all you can do, just stand up there and take it, like the pilot said, “I never did get s…to do anything, all I had to do was just set up and, and got to do was sat there and”…sweat running down his face, I’ve seen sweat, balls of sweat roll down his face that big. But most of the time, before we got into where was, into flak or anything, 19:00I could sit down on my turret and it had a round spot at the bottom about like that, and it turned with me as I went around, and look out and see if there was any bogies they called them, I think, over there.

Shurtz: So how, how long was the war con…how long did the war continue after you came home?

Claud: In ’45, I, I don’t know what month it was, it was…April, I believe, when the war was over with Germany, and I think the…war was over with…Japan in August, because I was home on leave, I believe at that particular time.

Shurtz: Oh.

Claud: And I remember hearing them horns a blowing and everything. Somebody said, whatever, somebody said, “what’s all them noise about?” I said, “I think the war is over.” 20:00Shurtz: Do you remember any of the, the, the rationing and those, those things in, in the United States?

Claud: No, we never had any rationing. The plane we flew over had some C-rations in it, and we got hungry before we got over there and said we wish we knew what we had, but didn’t know, we didn’t know they was in that, they filled a bomb bay full of stuff like that. And we went out to the plane, if it had…incendiaries, in all probability we was going to…Germany. Otherwise, if is bombing a place in France they used straight bombs, regular five-hundred pound bombs.

Shurtz: And were you…did you get married after the war?

Claud: No, I had been married for, I was in the service when we married. I married in…’43, and then at, went back to Ama…Salt Lake City where they formed our crew, 21:00and then I come home in ’45.

Shurtz: And your wife, what did…what was she doing during the war, while you were gone?

Claud: Oh, why she worked some at a clothing manufacture, some, at Fulton, Kentucky. They had a couple of…places there that made clothing, and all of them, I think has gone to, gone south. But she stayed at home with her parents. And then when we, when I got out, I moved over, in the—actually they—somebody moved into the house where I was born and raised. Dad owned that farm, why, we moved in there for a year or two, but farming didn’t pan out for me, you couldn’t get a new tractor, and I bought a secondhand 22:00one and I had trouble with it.

Shurtz: Hum. And the stuff, you, the mechanic work you learned in the military, did that transfer over and help you… Claud: Well I’ve been… Shurtz: …with automobiles and… Claud: …I had been to diesel engineering school before I went in the service.

Shurtz: Okay.

Claud: And…come home and got a job on a boat, I think it lasted seven days, or maybe a little longer, I don’t remember, but they’d just had a boat to burn up, and of course the whole crew was…yeah, I’m going to leave the river. But when they spent the money, they come back wanting a job, so I was…new, so they let me go. They didn’t say anything except, “well we don’t need you anymore,” paid my bus fare home [Chuckling].

Shurtz: And then again you said you had your own, your own business for a while and then sold out to… 23:00Claud: Yeah, it was a fellow here in town had a Case tractor agency, and my mother had died and we moved back here and I was, had some time between shift changes, and…I asked him if he had a tractor, cheap tractor, an old tractor or something I could fix-up. He said, “yeah, I got one.” And it was a small Case tractor. I said, “well, what do you want for it?” He says, “two-hundred dollars.” I said, “I’ll take it.” So I r…re-worked the motor, and…he saw what I could do and I was out there one day, and he says, “How about working for me?” Well I was making three dollars and a quarter an hour, that was big money back then, that was in…f-f-f…’50, around late ‘50s, late ‘50s, something like that, and I said, “why you can’t pay me a, what I’m making up there at Carbide.” He said, “well I’ll sell you an interest.” I said, “now you’re talking” [Chuckle – Shurtz]. So he, 24:00and he, I signed some notes for him and paid him off fully, not too awful long. But I, I enjoyed working for the farmers, go out and I wasn’t in the shop all the time, I was out on the…fields, following hay balers and combines, just last week, my son-in-law lives in Union County, had baler trouble. Of course he calls me the first thing. Well, he didn’t seem to be getting along too good, but the last thing I told him fixed it before I could get up there [Chuckles – Claud and Shurtz]. It’ll take about two-and-a-half hours to [Chuckling] drive up there. But I can’t get down and do stuff like I used to, I, I might near got to have something to hold on to get up so I tell him what to do.

Shurtz: Oh.

Claud: So we got him going, and I, baled around, while another—we 25:00was waiting on another man and had a load on the truck, so when the man got there, he took over the baler and I drove the truck while they, he and…my grandson and my daughter loaded the truck. But other than that, I don’t do much farm work. I do a little mowing.

Shurtz: Were you able, when you were in the, when you were overseas, were you able to communicate with your family? And how did that work?

Claud: Oh Yes! See there, where, where I wrote to my wife there?

Shurtz: Oh yeah.

Claud: E-mail they called it (Chuckles – Shurtz). That one was to my wife and this was to my mother and daddy, and this is my certificate for Enfield diesel school at Memphis. 26:00And this was a diary I kept right here. They wouldn’t let me bring it home, so they cut all the pages out of it. It was just a little…book that I just noted stuff down in. The pilot didn’t even know where his officers were from, I mean their address, where they was from really.

Shurtz: And yet they wouldn’t let you take it home? What was it… Claud: Uh-huh, they waited until the war was over before they mailed to me.

Shurtz: Ah whoa!

Claud: I, I said, “I don’t see anything [Chuckling] that would hinder the war effort in there.” (Papers shuffling sounds) There is a big picture of the crew. Here is the pilot, 27:00you can see some ( ) the day.

Shurtz: Oh, okay.

Claud: This is the co-pilot, this is the navigator, bombardier, and that was the engineer at that time. He was a waist gunner, he was the tail gunner, no, he was the ball, ball turret gunner, he was the tail gunner and this is me, and this is the radio operator, and the pilot and myself and this guy, unless he’s died recently, is only three living still.

Shurtz: Hum. Have you kept up with them through the years?

Claud: No, I, really I haven’t. I kept up with the…radio operator for a long time, because we more or less budded together and…suddenly I didn’t hear anything from him, and I assumed he, either got killed or died, but he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t have been all that old. He was in the…middle 28:00‘70s, I think when he, when I didn’t hear anymore from him, and…Sonny he got some information off the internet, and I sent the navigator—no the bombardier—a card, and didn’t hear anything. One day the phone rang and I answered it, and it was a woman’s voice, she says, “I got a letter here, that says something about,” I don’t know what she said but it was something about…“is this something about during the war?” I said, “Yeah.” I says…” she told me who she was, and I said, “yeah.” I said, “he wa…” I said, I said, “I was the engineer on the, on the, that crew.” And she said, “well, he died a little but wa…well a little, a little while before he hadn’t, he hadn’t been dead too long at that time. She said she met him in Fort Hood, Texas. In three weeks they married 29:00 [Chuckling].

Shurtz: Have you been involved in any veterans’ activities throughout the years? You… Claud: Oh I belong to the American Legion.

Shurtz: Yeah.

Claud: I think I’ve been a member fifty something years.

Shurtz: Yeah.

Claud: We don’t do much down here.

Shurtz: Oh, okay.

Claud: Not enough to, oh, the old timers done gone.

Shurtz: Hum.

Claud: This Barkley I was telling you about, up, lives up the road up here, his brother was in the service and…he was pretty much worker in the legion, but he died here a couple of years ago, and another friend that was a kind of good friend of mine, he was in the Battle of the Bulge and he got two purple hearts and a, and a battlefield commission at that time, but 30:00he died in, either late January or early February of this year, he’d been 87 years old. He didn’t quite make it.

Shurtz: Hum. Something I have been asking…other, other veterans, and always get a variety of responses, but…what’s your opinion on our current military situation?

Claud: Not good, I don’t think. Back, well even in s…Desert Storm, they used satellites for finding targets. I’ve never heard anything about it in this war. Why don’t they use those, that satellite to find those targets? The technology we got and not using it is a shame.

Shurtz: Mm. 31:00Do you think the…I guess the American mentality is different about war as a, I mean did you, it always seems like everyone was for World War II, everyone was… Claud: Yeah.

Shurtz: …was, and did you see any resistance to World War II with the people that… Claud: No!

Shurtz: Yeah… Claud: …they didn’t… Shurtz: Yeah.

Claud: …it was, it wasn’t, didn’t do like they’re doing in these others. Now my son was in Vietnam, and I don’t think they did like…from that war like they did when…Korean War, protesting and whatnot.

Shurtz: With your son in Vietnam after, after seeing com…after, you know, war yourself, what did, how did you feel whenever he went?

Claud: Well, sh…she did [Chuckling] more worrying than I did, I didn’t…he was a military policeman.

Shurtz: Oh.

Claud: And they, actually it was before 32:00they get right into combat, he didn’t get right into combat. And he went back, tried again several years later, and he was too old to get in the air force and [Chuckling] anything like that, and he just barely did be able to get into the…army. So he got in the army and stayed three years as a military policeman.

Shurtz: Well is there any, anything else, any other stories you can think of off hand? or… Claud: N…not off hand.

Shurtz: Well thanks for talking with me. I’ll go ahead and turn it off.

“END OF INTERVIEW”