Carl Platkin was born in September 1924 in New York City [Annotator’s Note: New York City, New York]. His father worked in Queens [Annotator's Note: one of the five boroughs in New York City]. His family was in the garment business. They did well with the garment factory and the store during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. Platkin went to military school when he was in the ninth grade. He enjoyed military school. He enjoyed going to the lake. He got home in time for New Year’s Eve in 1942. He got married and had four children. [Annotator’s Note: Platkin talks about his children and grandchildren].

Carl Platkin was in military school on Pearl Harbor day [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. It took a while for it to sink in. He did not volunteer until that summer. He went on to be an airplane mechanic. He wanted to go into the Navy at first, but he went into the Air Force instead. His basic training was in Miami Beach, Florida. Platkin was a drill instructor. The guys that wanted to be gunners went to Amarillo, Texas. They were there for six to eight weeks, then they were divided into bombers and fighters. Platkin went with the bombers. He wanted to be an aerial gunner. He was sent to Las Vegas [Annotator’s Note: Las Vegas, Nevada]. They trained on several different guns. One day, their plane caught fire and they had to bail out during training. They had larger parachutes. Then he went to Greensboro, North Carolina. They went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey to board a ship to go overseas. There were about 500 to 600 men on the ship. They landed in Scotland. There was a band playing American music. Further down in Scotland they went to a distribution place for men in the Air Force. They had dances and girls were there. They were there for 10 days. Then they went to Diss, England. He was assigned to the 418th Squadron [Annotator’s Note: 418th Bombardment Squadron, 8th Air Force]. They had good food. The officers’ mess and the enlisted men were together. They could eat all they wanted.

Carl Platkin was in England for a week before he flew his first mission. He went down to a briefing at four o’clock in the morning. He went to fill in for a waist gunner. They were all New Yorkers and they were a lot of fun. Another time, he was with a group from Arkansas and they were not fun. He went in a plane called Messy Bessy which was short a ball turret gunner. They went to Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] and they dropped the bombs and then returned. He flew on 12 or 13 different planes. One plane was called the Silver Dollar and they flew over Germany. There was a lot of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] there. Platkin shot down a plane with two other guys. On the way, back flak hit his turret and jammed his gears. His guns were pointing straight down. They had to drop the turret because they would not be able to land with the guns facing down. They told the commander they left it for Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. He got in trouble in London [Annotator’s Note: London, England] for being two days late. They were sent to the 349th Squadron [Annotator’s Note: 349th Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. Platkin finished up his missions there. When they went to Munster [Annotator’s Note: Munster, Germany] they were under attack. Their group had 24 planes. One plane exploded off to the right. Another plane was on fire, and then two more were smoking and going down. That was a tough raid. Platkin had two guns. One gun carried 575 rounds, and the other carried 475 rounds. He had a good guy taking care of his guns for him. The guns jammed once. His guns froze on him over Denmark. The heated suits were terrific. On one mission, his plane was on fire. Two engines were shooting flames. The pilot told them to bail out. Platkin floated down really nicely. It was quiet. He went down pretty far in the water. When he popped out of the water he rode the waves until a British boat picked him up. They pulled him up on the boat and gave him dry clothes. They landed at Liverpool [Annotator’s Note: Liverpool, England]. Then they returned to Diss. He bought a bike.

Carl Platkin remembers they could not do anything about the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. They got sprayed by flak a few times. The tails would get hit a lot by the flak. It was usually at the end of the bomb run. They had to go through it. They were given a rough idea of what the defense would be like. He was in the ball turret gun. The side glass was shattered by flak and a piece went in his neck. The co-pilot wound some bandage around his neck. An ambulance met them and took him to the hospital. The doctors told him he was lucky. They went to Munster [Annotator’s Note: Munster, Germany] three times. Ball bearings were big in Schweinfurt [Annotator’s Note: Schweinfurt, Germany] and they lost a lot of men going there. It was heavily defended and there was a lot of flak. The B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] took a lot of holes. There were some guys that died in the planes on the way back. When he got to 20 missions, they raised the quota to 30 missions. When he got to 30 missions, they did not change it. They gave him an extra shot of whiskey when he came back. They could hear the other guys talking. When the Germans started to bomb London [Annotator’s Note: London, England] they bombed all the Germans. They did not go to Berlin [Annotator’s Note: Berlin, Germany] until later on. It was a pleasure to have the escorts all the way in. The Mustangs [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] were the planes that scared the Germans. He had two official kills and two halves. They had to be careful not to shoot their own men.

Carl Platkin usually went to London [Annotator’s Note: London, England] alone because he had a couple of girlfriends there. He liked to go to the dance halls. He did not like to hear of people getting killed. His last mission was somewhere in France. They sent out 500 planes that day. He finished his missions and then he hung around for a week. Then he went to a city and they prepared to get aboard the ship. Their ship was the Queen Mary. Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] was on board and he went around shaking hands with everyone. They stopped in Canada and dropped Churchill and his group off. Then they went on to New York. He was in the waist gun when he died and was resuscitated. His oxygen came free and he was pulled up by one of the other guys.