Charles Kitowski was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1923. He grew up during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s], but since his father was a doctor, his family didn't suffer as much as many people whose misery he witnessed. During his Saint Mary's University years, he worked in a grocery store, and did anything that came along. He was still in high school when the war [Annotator's Note: World War 2] started, and almost all of his classmates joined the armed services. Kitowski volunteered for the Air Force, and passed the tests, but it wasn't until January 1943 that he was called up. He was interested in joining the Air Corps because his older brother was a navigator in the Air Corps. Kitowski met up with his brother in Europe while he was flying out of Grosseto [Annotator's Note: Grosseto, Italy]. Kitowski went to Wichita Falls [Annotator's Note: then Sheppard Field, now Sheppard Air Force Base near Wichita Falls, Texas] for five weeks' basic infantry training, then to Stillwater, Oklahoma for five weeks, then to San Antonio [Annotator's Note: San Antonio, Texas] for pre-flight training in PT-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing-Stearman Model 75 Kaydet or PT-13 primary trainer aircraft]. From there, he went to Coffee, Kansas [Annotator's Note: Coffeyville Army Airfield in Coffeyville, Kansas] to fly the BT-13 [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft; also known as the Vultee Vibrator], then on to Foster Field, in Victoria [Annotator's Note: Victoria, Texas]. There, he trained on the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] and logged about 20 hours training in P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. Kitowski said the P-40 was a nice plane to fly, but it could be difficult because of its torque. He was in flight school from January 1943 until April 1944, graduating with Class 44-D [Annotator's Note: in April 1944]. He then went into training on the P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] at Wendover Field [Annotator's Note: later Wendover Air Force Base; now Wendover Airport near Wendover, Utah]. There, he almost shot down his first plane: while practicing on a target sleeve, he shot the sleeve cable, sending the runaway sleeve directly at his plane. Dodging it sent him into a dive, that he had to struggle out of, and he finally landed the plane. With barely enough control, he came in, wheels down, using all 12,000 foot of runway, "ground looped it about three times, and that was it.” [Annotator's Note: Through the remainder of this clip, Kitowski explains why he preferred the P-47 to the P-40.]

After flight school, Charles Kitowski went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to await orders. He flew very few hours there before being sent to Norfolk, Virginia to board a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship]. The trip overseas took 26 days, stopping first in Oran [Annotator's Note: Oran, Algeria], where he boarded an English liner that took him to Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy]. He was assigned to the 57th Fighter Group, 64th Fighter Squadron [Annotator's Note: 64th Fighter Squadron, 57th Fighter Group, 12th Air Force], and sent to Grosseto [Annotator's Note: Grosseto, Italy], where he stayed until the last month of the war. His first mission was a milk run [Annotator's Note: slang term used by American airmen to describe an easy combat mission], and the eight ship formation encountered no enemy fire. The second mission was different. The fighters were met with 88mm [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] fire, and Kitowski was so excited he fired his guns prematurely as he peeled off formation toward the target; in the end it went well. Targets were usually pre-determined, and the crews were briefed and given a map but Kitowski's flight leader was experienced, and "he could get to them." At other times, when they went off looking for targets, they attacked vehicles, convoys and gun emplacements wherever they could find them. The squadron covered northern Italy; the enemy line was just north of Rome [Annotator's Note: Rome, Italy] at the time. They concentrated mainly on the Brenner Pass [Annotator’s Note: a mountain pass through the Alps which forms the border between Italy and Austria] where the Germans brought in all their supplies by rail. Kitowski's group bombed some railroad installations, including marshalling yards. A favorite target was locomotives, because they would explode. One incident he vividly recalls was to bomb an ammunition dump in a tunnel on the side of a mountain at the end of a rail line. The first six ships missed the target, but Kitowski hit it, and "the whole side of the mountain came at him." When he pulled up, the blast passed him in a cone shape, his whole plane shook for several seconds, and he actually saw railroad wheels go past him in flight. Kitowski made it back without a scratch, but it was a scary moment. Kitowski flew 93 missions, and somehow escaped being hit, even though his fighter group had a good many planes hit, several shot down, and a number of men lost. But, he says, his squadron leaders were relatively careful, and didn't try any tricks. From October until May [Annotator's Note: October 1944 to May 1945], the group lost about ten to 12 pilots, and Kitowski remembers an early mission when he witnessed a terrible accident. One of the planes in his formation cut off the wing of his element leader's plane as they got off the ground. Both planes spun in, and all Kitowski could say was "bail out." The two planes involved crashed about a mile away from the runway, burned for hours, and neither pilot survived. As time went on, he got accustomed to losing friends. He notes that they were all young men, even the group commander [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel Frank H. Mears], a full colonel, was about 25 years old. "You got rank pretty fast, as a result."

Charles Kitowski and the other pilots [Annotator's Note: in the 64th Fighter Squadron, 57th Fighter Group, 12th Air Force] experienced antiaircraft fire, "as a rule." The severity of the ground fire depended on the importance of the target. Bologna was a very large center, so they dropped their bombs "and got out of there pretty fast." By the time Kitowski reached Europe [Annotator's Note: in October 1944], there were very few German planes in the air, and his squadron did some escort work. As he recalled, the three escort missions he flew on went to Yugoslovia. On only one of those missions did he meet an enemy plane, a German jet [Annotator's Note: likely a German Messerschmitt Me262 jet fighter aircraft]. The enemy jet didn't engage the squadron, it just flew through "fast." Toward the end of the war, Kitowski and a very good friend of his were on a mission, strafing trucks, when his buddy got hit. He cleared a canal and belly-landed, fortunately in an area occupied by the American infantry. The GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] pulled him out, only slightly injured, and Kitowski considered him lucky. Where the fighters had ground support [Annotator's Note: when they were flying ground support missions], they usually dropped bombs and strafed the area. Occasionally, they dropped Napalm bombs, generally where there was a troop concentration, a supply area, or an area where they "figured there was ammunition." When the tank hit, it would explode and scatter Napalm over an area roughly the size of a football field' It was a terrible thing to encounter on the ground. In Italy, Kitowski's group was assigned to support the Fifth Army. By April [Annotator's Note: April 1945], the troops moved quite fast. Kitowski flew one mission where he made a pass over what appeared to be a German tank, traveling across a field with about 50 or so ground troops. For some reason, Kitowski hesitated. As he pulled around, they put out orange smoke bombs indicating that they were American troops, which they should have done in the first place. It was a close call. He quite often flew through the Po Valley [Annotator's Note: a geographical feature in Northern Italy], an area the pilots dreaded, because they had to fly low, and the antiaircraft fire was heavy. In the Brenner Pass, where small arms fire was also a problem, they were shot at from below, above and across. Even so, morale was amazing. After flights, the pilots got together in an officers' meeting area, where they would relax, play cards, and some of the fellows would drink. The base was near a beach, and on warmer days, they would go swimming. Kitowski was billeted in beautiful home near the beach cared for by an Italian couple that could cook Spam in many tasty ways.

From his vantage point, Charles Kitowski could tell that the war was shifting in favor of the Allies. The Italian Campaign went nowhere for many months, then the Allies made a push, and got across the line. After that, the Germans got out pretty fast. Kitowski came in as a replacement, but he and the other 11 new guys fit in very well with the older fellows who were happy to see them. About six weeks before the war ended, his group [Annotator's Note: Kitowski was a member of the 64th Fighter Squadron, 57th Fighter Group, 12th Air Force] was moved to a field near Lake Como, Italy, that had a grass field, staked out by flags. On one mission, Kitowski took off at an angle, and just missed a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber], clearing it by only about 50 feet. It was pilot error on his part. Because he was young, the stress of living on the edge didn't bother him too much; how other pilots handled it depended on the individuals but most fellows held up real well. Toward the end of the war, the squadron got orders to go after anything that moved, and they were even shooting at oxcarts and bicycles. Kitowski remembers taking out several convoys. Kitowski's fighter group was very fortunate; most of them got back. They stayed in the Lake Como area for about seven weeks, then moved back to their original base in Grosseto [Annotator's Note: Grosseto, Italy]. When the group returned to the town in recent years, the whole town came out to greet them.

When Charles Kitowski returned to Grosseto, the war had ended. The group [Annotator's Note: Kitowski was a member of the 64th Fighter Squadron, 57th Fighter Group, 12th Air Force] was training to go to the Pacific, but Kitowski had flown enough missions to go home, and he chose to do so. On the flight back to the United States, he and three other fighter pilots were passengers on a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. About a hundred miles out of New England, an engine caught fire, and they were instructed to get ready to bail out. The fighter pilots, unfamiliar with the type of parachutes they were issued, were "comical" in their efforts to get into them. The plane made a forced landing in Providence [Annotator's Note: Providence, Rhode Island], which was, coincidentally, the copilot's home town. They were welcomed by "all sorts of fanfare," and the incident was written up in the local paper. Kitowski describes the harrowing experience of one of his buddies, Nick Nikels [Annotator's Note: possibly Albert Nickels who was declared Missing in Action on 25 April 1945 and never located], who was from the German-heritage town of Fredericksburg, Texas. His knowledge of the German language helped him survive a series of mishaps after a crash landing.

Charles Kitowski went into the war as a boy and came out as a man. He matured and became conscious of what was going on in the world. Americans, he feels, are a great group of people with a lot of compassion. The Americans contributed greatly to the success of the war, but were also conscious that the Russians also did their part, at great cost to their population. The Air Force [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces] lost a lot of men, as well. He thinks the war earned America the gratitude of the European countries. He thinks The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] is a real tribute to the veterans of the war. His service resulted in a number of very close relationships, and reunions have been very enjoyable.