Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania in August 1925. They lived in a coaling town named Amend [Annotator's Note: Amend, Pennsylvania]. The town had about 50 houses and a cross-section of middle-Europeans including Czechs [Annotator's Note: Czechoslovakians], Hungarians, Polish, Italians and Germans. Most were Roman Catholics. There were also Lutherans from Poland. They had a lot of mountaineers who came to mine coal. They interacted and never had problems. His dad came there in 1920 to run a company store [Annotator's Note: a retail store selling a limited range of food, clothing, and daily necessities to employees of a company]. The miners were paid in false money and had to go to the company store to get cash. His dad bought the store in 1922. Lochra's brother was born in 1917. Growing up, Lochra remembers his mother, who was missing an eye, wanted to learn to drive. She promptly put them in a ditch. A farmer with a big, white horse pulled them out. That was around 1928. He started school at six in a two-room school. He went to a four-year high school by bus. WHen the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] hit, his dad was into the stock market and lost just about everything. He kept the store open, so they had food. The coal mine was open for work for two to three days a week. They all managed. Then the war came with Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. His brother left in 1942. Lochra was 16 when Pearl Harbor was attacked and was in high school. He heard about it on the radio. He wondered where Pearl Harbor was, but his father and brother told him. The next day in school he heard Roosevelt's [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] speech [Annotator's Note: Infamy Speech; President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, 8 December 1941] over the speaker system. They grew up real fast after that. His dad owned another grocery store about 65 miles away. Lochra and his mother ran that store. They closed it by the time he graduated. His mother was very ill. Gas rationing was an issue, but they also sold gas at their stores. His dad took coupons for the rations. Lochra operated the store at 16. When he was a senior in high school, some of his classmates dropped out and joined [Annotator's Note: the military]. After he graduated, he tried to get into the Army Air Force. Two or three weeks later he learned he failed. He was dumbfounded. Two to four weeks after that, they told him they made a mistake and he had passed. He went to Pittsburgh [Annotator's Note: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania] to get a physical exam. The last exam was eyes and he failed. This was around 10 August 1943. They told him to come back in a week and try again. His eye doctor said there was nothing wrong with his eyes. He gave him an exercise to help his eyes. He was now 18 and passed the second test. Now he had a draft number, and he thinks they played with him. Aviation sounded good to him, and he was not fond of long hikes. It was probably more emotional than rational. His parents were proud and already had one star [Annotator's Note: service flag; a banner that has a blue star for each family member serving the military] in the window. Now they could put two there.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr.'s father had been in World War 1. His brother went overseas on the Aquitania [Annotator's Note: RMS Aquitania] near the end of 1942. He served in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Corsica, and Italy. He was in Headquarters, Headquarters Squadron, 12th Air Force. His brother returned to the States [Annotator's Note: United States] on the USS West Point [Annotator's Note: USS West Point (AP-23)]. He was then sent to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] in time for the huge typhoon. He spent about three days in a cave and the war was over. Lochra went to Greensboro, North Carolina around 25 October [Annotator's Note: 25 October 1943]. He went to Basic Training Camp Number Ten [Annotator's Note: Army Air Force Basic Training Center No. 10 in Greensboro, North Carolina]. They were just run to death and insulted the whole time. He did a lot of KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police]. In late December [Annotator's Note: December 1943], he got orders to Sioux Falls, South Dakota [Annotator's Note: Sioux Falls Army Air Base; now Joe Foss Field Air National Guard Station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota] by train. He arrived and it was cold. He got terribly sick and was sent to the hospital for a week with pneumonia. He had sweat so much, he had to get a new mattress. He took 20 weeks of school. That finished in early June [Annotator's Note: June 1944]. This was radio school. He had taken a test earlier. He was going to be a gunner and decided he wanted radio and a buck sergeant [Annotator's Note: the lowest rank of sergeant in the military; E-5] got him in it. He had to learn all about how radios worked. It was really to operate it and not to repair it. The school was very good and thorough. He had to learn to code as well. He got his first airplane ride there. There were eight to ten of them in radio school. They were taken out in a Lockheed Hudson [Annotator's Note: Lockheed A-29 Hudson light bomber]. None of them had flown before. The next time he got in an airplane was about a year later. He left Sioux Falls for Yuma, Arizona [Annotator's Note: Yuma Army Airfield in Yuma, Arizona] for gunnery training. In a way it was fun but it was very hot, and they had a big sandstorm while there.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. grew up in a community where he heard a lot of different languages. His father was a native of Norway and his mother's family was German and had come to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. Different kinds of peoples did not bother him much. Other people had some problems. One guy committed suicide because he could not take it. In Lincoln, Nebraska [Annotator's Note: Lincoln Army Airfield in Lincoln, Nebraska], Lochra was assigned to a crew. They were also told the rules of military discipline. He saw the Memphis Belle [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress heavy bomber tail number 41-24485] on its tour while he was working at his father's store [Annotator's Note: before he entered the service]. The first time he saw one [Annotator's Note: a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] was when he was in gunnery training in Yuma, Arizona [Annotator's Note: Yuma Army Airfield in Yuma, Arizona]. It was a huge plane. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Lochra to describe a B-17.] Painted planes flew about ten miles per hour slower than the aluminum one. It had four engines. It was beautiful when it was flying. The British and German planes looked like they had been crafted by carpenters. The B-17 looked like it had been designed. They had many designs and ended up with the Model G [Annotator's Note: unlike all previous models, the Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress heavy bomber was equipped with a turret in the chin that housed two Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine guns]. Each was an improvement.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. went to Rapid City [Annotator's Note: Rapid City, South Dakota in 1944] for flight training in B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. He saw his first B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] and P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] there. They did crew training there. Once, a plane had difficulty and they had to bail out. One parachute did not open. That made him think a bit. They left Rapid City and went to Lincoln, Nebraska [Annotator's Note: Lincoln Army Airfield in Lincoln, Nebraska]. Most of the crew went to Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. They had to wait about three weeks there and then went to New Jersey [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, January 1945] to sail over [Annotator's Note: to Europe]. Some did fly over. They went from Camp Kilmer to New York Harbor in Hoboken [Annotator's Note: Hoboken, New Jersey] and got on a huge ship. It was the Aquitania [Annotator's Note: the RMS Aquitania]. He came back on the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Elizabeth]. They went over in the winter and the water was rough. They zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver]. They landed in Scotland. He was on G-deck which is two decks below sea level. He spent most of his time on the upper deck reading. The nose would go under the water and come up. Where he slept the wall swept in. As the boat rolled, the whole boat would shake. He never got seasick. The English had a lot of oatmeal and once it spilled all over the floor. One man slipped on it and slid all the way across the deck. Other than thinking about U-boats [Annotator's Note: German for submarine], he enjoyed the crossing in a way.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. knew nothing of the Bloody Hundredth [Annotator's Note: nickname for the 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force due to their high number of losses] before he joined. They landed in Glasgow [Annotator's Note: Glasgow, Scotland] and went to Stoke-on-Trent [Annotator's Note: Stoke-on-Trent, England] to the camp. He was in the mess hall and met people coming home and they heard a lot. They heard about the 100th but did not know what it meant. He was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] but it still did not mean a lot. They caught a train down to London [Annotator's Note: London, England] and then to Diss [Annotator's Note: Diss, England in February 1945]. Thorpe Abbotts [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Abbotts, air station] was near there. They got oriented by the 100th Bomb Group people. They were told they were more fortunate than the ones before them, as they were only losing 40 percent now. That sounded like an awful lot. Towards the end of the war it was better than that, but they still lost 14 planes while he was there. He had two people he knew that were killed. He also saw some planes get hit. His tail gunner was looking at the group behind them once, and a plane exploded. Depending on when the take-off time was scheduled, they could be woken up as early as 2:30 [Annotator's Note: in the morning]. They went to the mess hall, then to a briefing, then gather their equipment, get to the plane and put the guns in. The crew member briefings were by an officer who told them where they were going, the weather, and more. The radio operator was given extra instructions. He would guess that it about three to four hours from getting up to getting to the plane. They met the ground crew then. He is often asked what his plane's name was. Most did not have a name and were just a number. They could get anyone. In the early part of the war they named them but most of those were lost. He would have liked to name it "Butch's Boys." His pilot's name was Orville K. Broyles [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Orville K. Broyles] and he preferred "Butch" Broyles. They were only assigned the same plane twice. They had to get ready and ran the props. They got in position and waited. They took off 30 seconds apart. Occasionally a plane did not make it and crashed. They would fly around to group up. That could cause problems. One time there were flying through pea soup. They suddenly went down, and he put his parachute on. He started to move towards the ball turret area, and they suddenly went up again. What had happened was that another group were coming at them head-on, so the pilot went down. By the time they formed up, they were over the North Sea or the Channel [Annotator's Note: the English Channel] flying towards Holland. They would test their guns then. It would take at least an hour or more to form up before going to the target. They flew anywhere from 19,000 to 26,000 feet.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr.'s first mission [Annotator's Note: with the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] was to Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany, 25 February 1945], and they had no problem. The next day, they flew to Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany], which was a long mission for a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. Berlin was the worst target because it was distant and because as the Germans retreated, they had more guns concentrated. They took off and somewhere over Holland, the plane started to shake. The number three engine had something happen to it. They had to turn it off. An oil line broke and the right side of the plane got covered in oil. The propeller was turning the engine, creating a drag on the plane. It was over an hour of this. They stayed with the group which meant the other engines were using more gasoline. They stayed in formation and dropped their bombs then they skirted off to side. Then the plane suddenly smoothed out. The propeller shaft had broken. The propeller was still turning but not shaking the plane. Over Holland, they turned another engine off to redistribute the gasoline. They were 10,000 feet over the North Sea and started descending to save gasoline. Every last plane of the 8th Air Force passed them other than some hangers-ons with problems too. There was a P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] who came in sideways. He looked at the plane, flew under them closely, looked at Lochra, flew above them and under again. They waved at each other, and he took off. They were about to jettison everything when they saw the English coast. They took the first landing of opportunity at a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] field. As they landed, another engine quit. They stopped. A truck came to get them a couple of hours later. The pilot told the crew they had enough gas left to wash the plane. They were lucky. The plane apparently had previously been hit over Munich, and it was not discovered.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. is sure the P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] kept planes away from them [Annotator's Note: 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. One time, he was looking out his window and saw all kinds of activity ahead. He saw a black streak come up faster than anything he had ever seen. It was a Messerschmitt 262 [Annotator's Note: Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter aircraft]. It leveled off but they turned, and he could not see it anymore. Usually, the P-51s had taken care of things before they got to the targets. By that time the Germans did not have much left to fly. They had more planes than they had pilots or fuel. The only thing he could see of the 262 was that it was so fast. It was not in any silhouettes he had seen. Lochra never had to come back to see empty beds in his barracks, but he did know others who had gone down, and it hit him pretty hard. On one mission, they finished, came down to 10,000 feet and started to eat. He looked out the window and saw black smoke. A plane had been hit, flew into another plane and broke it in half. It went straight down. The other plane lost about eight feet of the left wing but made it back to base. They were told to land last. Lochra watched it. He almost had it on the ground and had to go around. He did land it the second time. He had not lost any men. Everybody cheered. The flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] had been right at his plane.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. and his crew [Annotator's Note: 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] got along. There was one Italian and two Polish. Robb was [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Charles E. Robbs] strait-laced but the Air Force modified his behavior somewhat. He became squadron commander just about the end of the war. After a mission, they got out of the plane and the ground crew took over. They went to a briefing. Lochra did not drink much but some of his crewmembers were glad to get a drink. He assumes the pilot and navigator were asked more questions. They only had a bombardier for a few missions before going to the togglier [Annotator's Note: crew member responsible for arming and dropping bombs in lieu of a bombardier]. Their copilot was anybody. They did have Slaton [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to verify identity] a few times. The togglier could be anybody. Lochra threw out a lot of chaff [Annotator's Note: tin-foil strips or aluminum-coated fibers released to confuse enemy radar] on the bomb run and was pretty good at it. The Germans had the antiaircraft wall Annotator's Note: flak, antiaircraft artillery fire] up there pretty well. He did not correspond with family as much as he should have. He and his brother were seven years apart and did not have that much in common. Even when he was in training, he knew the war was coming to an end. He did not know about Japan. When the war ended in Europe, he was the first member of his crew to be sent back to prepare to go to Japan.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. had several good, non-combat-related flights [Annotator's Note: with the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. One was a Chow Mission [Annotator's Note: Operation Chowhound, 1 to 8 May 1945, Netherlands] to Holland. The Germans still occupied it at the time. They dropped food from their bomb bay on platforms. He watched it go all over the place. He did one of those. He had one flight to Casablanca [Annotator's Note: Casablanca Green Support Mission, 12 June 1945, Casablanca, Morocco]. They had people getting out on points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] and some who needed to be hospitalized. They flew over Spain and Gibraltar on a five or six hour flight. They left there for Port Lyautey Naval Base [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Port Lyautey, Morocco]. They landed and a tire blew out. They stayed that night and watched a movie. The next day he had his first experience with Navy beans for breakfast. They flew back to England that night. One week after the war, Henderson [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Corporal Clarence V. Henderson], the top turret engineer, and he were told to report to a hard stand. A ground crew was there. They were told there was some brass [Annotator's Note: slang term for high ranking military officers] coming in. Colonel Sutterlin [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel Frederick J. Sutterlin] came in with other officers. They took off and whoever was flying was great. They flew to Orly Field [Annotator's Note: now Paris-Orly Airport, Paris, France] in Paris and picked up some armored personnel who were all officers. They then flew to Munich Municipal Airfield [Annotator's Note: Munich-Riem Airfield in Munich, Germany]. All of the people got out and went off. They left Lochra and Henderson there to sleep in the plane. They tried to eat supper at a field hospital and all they had was bread, gravy, and coffee. They had a better breakfast there. They saw the strangest plane. It was German and had an engine at both ends [Annotator's Note: Dornier Do 335 Arrow heavy fighter aircraft]. They watched it take off and fly. It had never flown combat. Later on, he found out that it flew to Calais [Annotator's Note: Calais, France] and was taken to the States [Annotator's Note: United States] to be tested. In early afternoon, the officers came back with a box loaded with trophies and a motorcycle. They loaded it all and took off for Orly. They returned to their field with the motorcycle. He never did get the names of the people. Years later at a reunion of his group Lochra asked a navigator, who had written a book [Annotator's Note: "A Wing and a Prayer: The ‘The Bloody 100th' Bomb Group of the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Action over Europe in World War II", by Harry H. Crosby], if he had flown on that mission. Crosby was his name and had flown from the very beginning to the very end. The officers had gone into the Bavarian Alps [Annotator's Note: in Germany] and had a roaring good time.

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. went to London [Annotator's Note: London, England] on a three-day pass [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. When he got back, he was told to get up to squadron [Annotator's Note: 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] headquarters. He reported in and was told he had missed his orders home, but he got everything done in one day. He asked not to go back but he was shipped out to another group base. He sat there about five days and then went back to Stoke-on-Trent [Annotator's Note: Stoke-on-Trent, England] for weeks. He then went to Greenock [Annotator's Note: Greenock, Scotland] to the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Elizabeth]. He heard a big rumor that a big bomb had been dropped on Japan [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945]. On the trip back, the second bomb was dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945]. He got into Camp Kilmer [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer in Piscataway Township, New Jersey and Edison Township, New Jersey] and then went to Indiantown Gap [Annotator's Note: Fort Indiantown Gap in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania]. He took a train and one hour out of Greensboro [Annotator's Note: Greensboro, North Carolina], the train whistle blew because the war was officially over. They blew the whistle for one hour. He got off the train. His mother and father picked him up and took him home. That was his birthday too. When he was in London on a pass [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], the war in Europe ended. That was the wildest time he has seen in his life, before or since. Everything was free. It was a grand, glorious time. He worked in the discharge center for a couple of months starting in September 1945. He got out 4 December [Annotator's Note: 4 December 1945]. He had met his now wife, on Halloween during that time. They have been married since 1947. His brother came down with his wife to see her family in South Carolina around 7 or 8 December [Annotator's Note: December 1945]. That was the first time he had seen him in three years and 11 months. They were together at a restaurant when they announced that Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] had died [Annotator's Note: 21 December 1945].

Albert Pultz Lochra, Jr. believes that kids today need to learn about World War 2. He also believes that everybody should have some kind of responsible, public service for two years before they reach 21. He was not part of the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps] camps, but he knew about them. He knew someone who was there, and it did him and his family a ton of good. It builds character and keeps them off the street. Lochra also believes the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is very important and wishes it was in Greensboro [Annotator's Note: Greensboro, North Carolina]. He thinks the Korean people Annotator's Note: veterans of the Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] need something. Ever since World War 2, he is not sure we [Annotator's Note: the United States] have fought any war that needed to be fought. He thinks Senator McCain [Annotator's Note: John Sidney McCain, III; United States Navy veteran and politician] never saw a war he did not like, but Lochra thinks there are better ways. Lochra would like to tell future viewers to learn about what was done and what sacrifices were made. America had about 400,000 deaths. Russia lost something like 20 million, the Germans lost three million, the Japanese around three million, and the British around 800,000 to 900,000. The sacrifices were great. We [Annotator's Note: the United States] won the war, but we had a lot of help. All of the Jews who were slave laborers helped sabotage things. The Japanese and the Germans were irresponsibly led, and they followed. We need to know who our leaders are and where they are taking us. Let us not allow them to take us where we do not need to go.