B-17 Veterans meet again

Kyt · Nov 2, 2007

Long-separated gunner, pilot plan reunion

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071101/NEWS01/711010324/1002/NEWS

"Pilot to ball-turret gunner — get the hell out of there!"

That was a strange phone call Shreveporter Chuck Newhouse got not too long ago, thanks to some detective work by one of his daughters.

It took the 81-year-old World War II veteran a moment or two to figure out who would say that to him and why, but when he did, it sent a shiver up his spine and yet a warmth of memory after more than 60 years.

The voice on the phone was that of Darrell Blizzard, the pilot of his B-17 crew that flew out of England, someone he'd last seen and spoken to in early 1945. Not that as a ball-turret gunner he saw much of the pilot in action.

"I was never shot down or injured, but the position I was in seemed to me to be the worst," Newhouse, a West Virginian who settled here after being stationed at Barksdale and falling in love with a local lady, recalls today. "I wondered how I would ever get out in a hurry if I had to."

The two plan to get together this week when Blizzard passes through Shreveport, and may visit the B-17 bomber at Barksdale Air Force Base's 8th Air Force Museum.

As a ball-turret gunner, Newhouse had to spend hours curled up inside a spherical turret that hung under the belly of the B-17 bomber. The B-17 wasn't pressurized, so crew members had to carry oxygen bottles and at altitude, the temperature could drop to 30 below zero so they had to wear bulky uniforms and gloves.

Measure the life of a shot-up, flaming, death-spiraling bomber in seconds before it fireballs, and you get an idea of the fears that swirled in the mind of the then-19-year-old.

Part of the 535th Bomb Squadron of the 381st Bomb Group, Newhouse had time to fly only five missions before the war ended, so he never had to learn first hand just how dangerous his position was. One mission he had to take photos from his special vantage, and on another he remembers plenty of flak. During several others German fighters swarmed nearby.

"I saw a lot of Focke-Wulf 190s at a distance, and on one mission we got buzzed by an Me-262," he said, referring to the jet fighter the Germans introduced at the end of the war. "I had one of the fastest rotating guns on the airplane, and that plane just whooshed by. He was doing 600 mph, and our best airplanes, the P-47 and the P-51, were doing 350 to 400. They'd blow you out of the sky."

One mission stands out in his mind because he was part of a pickup crew on an airplane with a name, "Phyllis."

"That airplane just scared me to death," he said. "It had literally hundreds of holes in it from past missions, and they just patched it up. The wind blew through them, and the music that came out of the holes was eerie."

Working curled up like a roly-poly was a far cry from what he wanted to do when he joined the air service. He wanted to be a pilot first, but didn't have the eyesight for it, so they made him a gunner instead.

Newhouse's daughter Judy Greer remembered looking at her father's crew photo from the war and wondered whether any of the men, aside from her dad, were alive. She was finally able to locate Blizzard, and she's also communicated with the 381st's chaplain, retired Col. James Good Brown, who has written several books on the storied unit.

Blizzard, who lives in Maryland, was a second lieutenant at the time, and a first pilot, or as he puts it, "a shavetail."

Blizzard recalls he and the crew "never flew the same plane twice. Very few replacement crews, of which we were one, ever had their own plane as the original crews did. We flew home to Bradley Field, Conn., with our own crew, 10 ground personnel, and a load of bombsights.

"Since we were one of the last replacement crews to arrive at our base, Ridgewell, in England, we were one of the first to leave, having been assigned to transfer into B-29s and then on to the Pacific. Never happened, of course. ... We didn't get to set foot in a B-29!"

At the close of the war, Newhouse was sent first to Iceland, then Newfoundland, then South Dakota, then Las Vegas, then Barksdale, where he met Janie, his wife of 61 years.

"The sun was shining and everything was green," he recalls. "I thought I was in heaven."
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Antipodean Andy · Nov 3, 2007

I bet when they get together it'll be like they saw each other the day before!

spidge · Nov 3, 2007

A very special bond these guys would have!

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B-17 Veterans meet again

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