Robert Medernach
Born 05/19/1925
Interviewed by John and Jack Gilligan
Recorded on October 24, 2006
Transcribed on November 23 – 25, 2006
Jack Gilligan - “Today is October 24, 2006. I am Jack Gilligan and I am interviewing Robert Medernach at 235 W. 84th Street Indianapolis, Indiana. Mr. Medernach is a family acquaintance. Mr. Medernach is 81 years old and was born on May 19, 1925. Mr. Medernach served in WWII. Mr. Medernach was in 46th Reconnaissance Squad and held the following rank: Captain.”
[000]
Robert Medernach - I’ll give you a brief rundown on how I won the war and then we can fill in these questions or whatever. First are some statistics that I got from the Veterans Administration yesterday. There were 31 million men and women served in WWII, and there are a little more than 3 million of us left. We’re dying off at the rate of 1,700 per day. Doing the arithmetic, I’ve got 4.8 years left!
We’ve got to start back in 1942. I was born in May of 1925. WWII really sort of started in ‘39. The Germans invaded Poland and Austria and whatever. Shortly after that the British had to get into it. By that time (1942) the Americans got into it to help out. In early 1943, I was seventeen years old. I had some friends who were a little older and who had already been in the army and killed at last three of them. Well, slopping around in the mud with a rifle just didn’t appeal to me at all, and stepping on land minds and all that good stuff. So, there was a program in the Army Air Corps. They wanted young healthy people. We needed to expand the army rapidly, very rapidly, because we didn’t have anything before that. So, I was still in high school and I skipped school and hitchhiked down to Chicago. I lived in Rockford, IL which is in north central Illinois. I hitchhiked into Chicago with a friend of mine and I took the examination. It was about a day, day and a half examination, a medical examination - and I passed it. Then, I had to go take the physical, which was pretty stringent. However, my only problem was I only weighed 124 pounds and 125 was the minimum. So they told me to go and drink a ton of water and come back in a half an hour. Then I had to wait until May until I was eighteen. They sent me to Jefferson Barracks Missouri for training.
[076]
Now basic training means you learn how to pack a rifle and shoot and all that stuff. There was about two months of that. In the Army Air Corps - notice how I use the term army air corps, not Air Force. We are very adamant about that. The Army Air Corps came before the Air Force. Anyhow, there’s a rule that an army officer had to have a minimum of two years of college. So, they shipped us off to colleges all around the country. In two or three months we had to absorb two years of college. Somehow we did it and got through it. And then off we went to Kent State. Up to that point we really didn’t know how they were going to use us. We took qualifying exams for pilot, navigator, or bombardier. Those three were all officers. I qualified as a navigator, and they sent me to Selman Field, Louisiana for navigation school. I learned at least several different types of navigation. The important one was celestial. You couldn’t just punch a button for a navigation system like you can now. Oh no, there was nothing like that. You had to do three position fixes every hour. This meant that you had to shoot three different stars and find where they’re situated and the intersection. Once you figured that out, that was where you were. It’s called a line of position. We had to do that three times. It took awhile to do that, so we were busy all the time. When you were in the states you had some radio aids, but once you got away… nope nothing like that.
[130]
So, I got through that and got commissioned. At the time that I was in navigation school, there were other schools around the country for pilots and bombardiers and gunners and such. We were then sent to a kind of gathering point where they made up crews. Then we were sent off to Park, Florida. That was a B-17 training base. I was with half a dozen strangers, so we had to get to know each other and figure out what we each could do and train. We practiced bombing runs and all that stuff. In that part of Florida there was a lot of cattle ranching. The Air Corps had bought a bunch of land from some ranchers. We would target practice on some stray cattle and then have steak that night. Then one of my friends in the hut next to me got into a plane crash and I had to take navigator’s body home to South Carolina and tell his family, you know, “Here’s your dead boy”. That wasn’t too pleasant.
[167]
And then eventually we were all trained and shipped to Savannah, Georgia where we were given all of our combat gear. This was about 1945. So we still had a pretty good war going in the Pacific. And we retrained in B-29’s, which are quite larger. I’m trying to remember, but I think our top speed in the B-17s was about 165 (mph). In the B-29 it was about 265 (mph). The 17 was not pressurized. It could only go about 10,000 feet without oxygen. However, the 29 was pressurized and so we did most of our stuff at higher altitudes. So we retrained in that. Then we were shipped out to the Pacific. We didn’t spend much time there because that was pretty much over. My age was with me because since I was young the bad stuff had already happened.
[200]
After awhile I was in Guam bringing back B-21’s and dropping them off around the country. The war was not over. There was the Cold War with Russia. It looked like we got into trouble. So I became a spy and they put together the 46th Reconnaissance. I was a navigator in the 46th Recon. We worked at very high altitude. They stripped out all the guns and we had special fuel tanks made. The problem was everybody was getting breaks, doing trade offs and sleeping, but the navigators were working all the time. We didn’t have any navigation aids, it was all celestial. The biggest problem was that the Polar Regions and the North Pole were on the north side of Hudson Bay. As a matter of fact there are two north poles. The North Pole is magnetic so a compass was useless. You could have a change of variation in your compass maybe fifty to sixty degrees. So we couldn’t even use them. We went over to Point Barrow. I would turn up the radio station and to the identifier of the UTA of the frequency I said you’re going to let me fly. And I said when we get to Fairbanks I’ll just turn up that station.
[264]
One time I said, “look at the navigator there’s ice coming into my scope.” Ice? I got busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Over in Siberia, there was a Russian station and they were transmitting our frequency. They were transmitting our call sign trying to suck us in and see what in the world we were doing. They almost got us. More than once we would be coming back and we’d have a MIG glaring at us. I was there for four and a half years. So, once it got pretty much wound up they let me go.
Then, I bought a 1936 Auburn Speedster up there. It had the pointed back end, and it was supercharged and everything. I got permission to drive it back on the highway. I’m not trying to tell you that I suffered great hardship or anything. First of all, I was an Air Corps officer which means I always had a bed at night. I also had a nice young girlfriend in Fairbanks. Her father was a Ford dealer. So I got out from Fairbanks and went over into the Yukon Territory. That was my first stop twenty-three hours later. Now when they built the Alcan Highway, they built base camps every 200 miles. People started setting up restaurants and gas stations around these base camps. Everything was a dollar and a quarter back then. Then I made it down to Montana and I was discharged there. Well, they wanted me to stay in the reserve for a while after that. So I did. It was quite an experience. I got through it, and I didn’t get killed.
[320]
Then, (this is something that you should look into and make a part of your report) the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act of 1940-whatever happened. That’s one of the greatest pieces of legislation that Congress ever passed. It allowed us to become different things other than a bunch of farm hands or things like that. It educated the population. Some kids would never have been able to go on to college or places like that and now they could. Some people couldn’t even buy a house because technically you had to have at least 25% or 30% of the price of the house in order to put down a down payment. But, the government would guarantee your credit so you didn’t have to have a down payment. It really made a big difference, but there are remnants of that law in effect. When people get out of the army, some of those benefits are still available.
JG - Where were you living at the time that you joined the Air Corps?
RM - Rockford, IL
JG - What time of year was it when you arrived in Alaska?
RM - It was probably around October or November.
JG - What was the climate like?
[344]
RM - It got down to sixty-eight below zero for nine days straight. Yeah, it was cold. Our buildings were connected by big underground tunnels. There was a big central steam facility. I formed a very close friendship with the steam radiator.
That brings up something else. Airplanes are made out of a lot of different metals – brass and steal and every other damn thing. And they all have different coefficients of expansion. Well, we were taking off one time for a twenty hour run and we sprung a fuel leak in one of the engines from the expansion issue. The fuel hit the exhaust manifolds and caught fire. 10,000 gallons of gasoline leaked onto those manifolds. We crashed at the end of the runway. That was just because of cold. I mean it was nothing to take off at fifty below. Now, these were not jet engines. These were eighteen cylinder reciprocating engines. We would show up at about four o’clock in the morning to a flight and first we would put gasoline heaters with a hose up into the engine to warm it up somewhat. When we thought the oil wasn’t frozen anymore we did what was called “walking through the prop”. It was a big four bladed prop - two of us on each blade. We had to turn the prop to get all the oil moving. One of the problems was that the oil would go down into the lower cylinder which would cause a hydraulic lock. So we had to get that out of there by pulling the props through. That was a regular thing, probably every flight. I did maybe two or three flights every week. The plane was called a B-29. When it was all stripped of the guns it was called an F-13.
[384]
It wasn’t all bad. I had a friend who was in the air sea rescue unit. When a plane went down they were supposed to go get them. They had all kinds of equipment. They had track vehicles, sea planes, and such. You have to understand we were all like nineteen to twenty years old out there bored stiff. There was something called a dew-line along the coast of Alaska. It was a series of radar stations which helped for navigation. They were all manned by civil service girls. Well, my friend had access to a ski plane and we would go off to try to relieve the loneliness with some of the girls there. That was a long time ago.
JG - How many people were on the base out there?
[400]
RM -Oh, I don’t remember. There was another unit called the cold weather test attachment. They were testing trucks and terrain equipment to use on the ground. Here I made this for you. One of my planes. That’s the whole crew. Tom Madison – 1st pilot... Ben Chinn – flight engineer... Dave Stout – bombardier… I was the navigator… This is the B-29. We still had the turrets on it.
JG - Do you ever wish you had served anywhere else?
RM - No. Like where for instance?
JG - Well, maybe because the weather was so cold or something.
RM - Well, I mean I didn’t have to slop through the mud or anything - just the snow. It wasn’t all bad. The fishing was great in the summer time. We bought a 1934 Ford up there. The engine was burned out, so we went over to salvage yard where the wrecks were hauled off to. We pulled an engine out of a Ford dump truck and put it in that ’34 Ford. So, we had transportation. We would go back to the woods and go fishing a lot.
JG - I know it was pretty remote at that time.
[430]
RM - Oh you bet. We must have gotten about 100 miles back up into a little logging trail one time and we got stuck. There was absolutely nothing around. So, we said, “well, let’s start walking”. It was in the middle of the afternoon. So, we had to hike down this logging trail back to Fairbanks. We got several hours down the road and we came to a cabin. There wasn’t anybody there so we went in and decided to spend the night in this cabin. We got in there and there was actually some canned food. I remember there was some Dinty Moore beef stew. I’ll never forget it. There was even an old crank telephone on the wall. We started messing with it and my God, it was still connected. So, we called the base and told our crew members to come get us. Several hours later, they showed up and got us loose. It was one thing like that after another with a bunch of nineteen to twenty year old kids.
This whole mission we were on was top secret till about five – six years ago. Now there’s a book written on it. Ken White, Major White’s son, wrote this book from his father’s records. Now raise your right hand and swear that you’ll return it and I’ll let you borrow that. There’s a lot of stuff in this book.
JG - Is that you?
RM - Yeah. That’s a different plane crash than the one I was talking about earlier. Here we are again. This crew is the one from Alaska. We’re definitely dressed for winter there. Here’s the ’34 Ford. Now, this brings us to another story.
[472]
There was one time that the navigator on another crew was sick. They asked me if I could fly in his place and so I did. The next day I was scheduled to fly with my regular crew, but I was still up in the air when they were ready to take off. So, they went off up in the Polar Regions without me. You understand now about celestial navigation – you have to be able to see the stars. However, you can get into terrible twilight periods out there where the sun isn’t down far enough to where you can see the stars. So, they got lost. And they were running out of fuel. They went down in Greenland onto a frozen lake. So, that’s where my crew went down. They were all rescued though. I mean, the pilot was able to make a landing on the ice and everything. They were able to send signals out so people could figure out where they were. They sent a C-54 on skis which is a four engine Douglass out from Andrews Air Field in Washington. It took them back to Washington and eventually they made it back to Alaska.
You can take this book – but you have to bring it back! You can have it for three weeks.
JG - What was the food like at your base?
RM - Not bad at all. There was plenty of it. The food was fine. Rations – never saw one in my life.
JG - How about on the plane when you were out there for 20 hours?
RM - We had metal cabinets with trays full of food just like on a commercial airplane. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner cabinets. It was no problem.
JG - Was there something special you did for good luck?
[515]
RM - I got up in the morning - that always worked.
JG - What were some of the pranks you or others might pull?
RM - Oh, we wouldn’t do anything like that! I remember I was confined to the base for two weeks one time for driving the ’34 Ford up the sidewalk in front of base headquarters. Nothing too wild ever happened though.
JG - Do you recall the day your service ended?
RM - More or less.
JG - Where were you?
RM – Great Falls Air Field, Montana.
JG - What did you do in the days and weeks afterward?
RM - I went back to Rockford, IL and slept for about a week.
JG - What did you do with your Auburn?
[530]
RM - The vice president of Bowman Areas in Chicago bought it from me. He had quite a collection of old antique cars. I briefly touched on the GI bill. Part of that was that there was a subsidized program for business training. You could go into a business and enter their training program. That’s what I did. So, I had to have a business car. I sold the Auburn and bought something you’ve never heard of: a Frazer. I drove that until it fell apart.
JG - What was it like being back in a civilian environment after the war?
RM - Well, I had to calm down. It took a little taming. I made it through.
JG - Have you joined a veteran’s organization?
RM - No.
JG - Do you attend reunions ever?
RM - Well, all my people are dead. Like I said, 1,700 a day die.
JG - What did you go on to do as a career after?
RM - Well, I’ve been retired so long I can’t quite remember what it was I did. I had a career in finance. I was president of a mortgage banking company. Also, I owned half of a large construction company. We built apartment complexes in about ten states. I retired in 1975.
JG - Did your military experience influence you’re thinking about war or about the military in general?
RM - No.
JG - How did you’re service affect your life?
RM - At the age that I served I was immature. It kind of pushed maturity on me.
JG - Do you feel that serving your country taught you valuable lessons?
[565]
RM - Well, not just because I was serving my country. It did teach me to depend on my friends and the other people around me.
JG - Is there anything about WWII that you feel young people do not have an understanding of?
RM - Well that was so along to your generation. It was really, I think, the last time when everyone was unified. We didn’t have people marching around protesting. Everybody was on the same page. That was the last time that’s happened. We really haven’t won a war since that one. We didn’t win Korea. We didn’t win Vietnam. We’re not doing too well in Iraq. But WWII it was like, “Okay, we won now everybody go home”. So that was the last time when everybody was on the same page and everybody depended on each other.
JG - Is there anything else you would like to add?
[580]
RM - I don’t know. I think I covered a lot. So, you can have these if you want. So it sat there on the ice, and it really wasn’t beat up all that badly. Airliners started using a route through there and of course they saw that thing sitting down there. There was a pretty famous person named Darryl Greenamyer who thought that it would be pretty damn valuable to have. He got permission to try and get it off the ice. He got a cargo plane and a bulldozer and stuff like that. He went up there with a crew and picked it up. They replaced the engines and props and got the landing gear straightened out. They worked all summer long on that thing. This was about ten years ago. There was a special on it on PBS that I taped. They couldn’t start it with a battery. So in the back of the plane they had a gasoline engine with a generator on it. It was the tail gunner’s responsibility to take care of that. So, they started it. It’s called an APU (auxiliary power unit). They started that up and got all the engines running. Greenamyer had bulldozed sort of a runway on the ice for it to take off. So they were bouncing sort of around the ice for it to go off. But they forgot to shut off the APU. It was bouncing around you know, and it bounced the fuel tank loose. When it hit the exhaust it caught on fire. They all jumped out and sat on the ice and watched it burn to the ground. So here it is. So, take this home.
JG - So how many days did the crew end up spending out there? Just a couple?
RM – Four or five I guess maybe. Well we were the first ones up there with equipment like this. None of them had experience on a thing like that. So we had to test out stuff you know. And of course they gave us tropical sleeping bags. There were a couple of polar explorers who were trying to show us what to do. One of things that is interesting is when you’re lying in the snow in your sleeping bag you have to take off all your clothes – all of them. You had to do this because you’re clothing will have some moisture from perspiration or whatever and that’ll make you so damn cold.
JG - Did you ever have to spend nights out there in training?
RM - Oh yeah, but only in training just to show me how to do it in case of emergency.
