Clarence Lee Dobbs, known to his friends as Jack, was born in June 1925 in Dearborn, Michigan. He grew up there, and learned to fly while he was in high school. When he graduated from Fortune High School at 17, he tried to join the Army Air Corps, but his mother would not sign for him to enlist while he was still underage. Dobbs was disappointed, because all his friends were already in the military. He started college, studying aeronautical engineering, and stayed one semester. He then went to work as a rivet bucker at the Ford Motor Company plant in Willow Run, Michigan building B-24 bombers [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. Dobbs' family lived next door to the town's mayor, an old Marine captain, who helped Dobbs finally get into the Army Air Corps. He went to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri for basic training, and qualified to become a pilot cadet. He was moved to a college training detachment in Springfield, Missouri where he met his future wife in 1943. He always wanted to pilot P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightening fighter aircraft] but instead was trained on B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and B-24s. One morning, he and his classmates got the news that the Army Air Corps had a surplus of pilots and was short of gunners. They were "relieved" of pilot training and shipped to Tyndall Field in Apalachicola, Florida for gunnery school. It was a great disappointment to the cadets and at graduation they were told that their bad attitude earned them the distinction of being the worst group in the entire history of the gunnery school. But they got over it, according to Dobbs.

After gunnery training, Clarence Lee "Jack" Dobbs was sent to a staging area in Lincoln, Nebraska, then to Harvard, Nebraska for gunnery training on B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. Dobbs trained on the left waist .50 caliber guns over bodies of water in Jamaica, firing at tow planes. Upon completion, he was sent to Alamogordo, New Mexico, and assigned to totally different training on B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. Dobbs said it was a "delight" to fly in a B-29 at that point, and the connection between the crewmembers became close. He trained as a central fire control gunner, and could remotely fire any of the four sets of twin .50 caliber machine guns on the plane's sides. In Wichita, Kansas the crew picked up a new plane and flew from Sacramento, California to Honolulu, Hawaii then continuied on to Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands] in the Pacific and finally to their home base at Northwest Field on the island of Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. Their crew belonged to the 315th Bomb Wing of the 20th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 501st Bombardment Group, 315th Bombardment Wing, 20th Air Force] under the command of General Curtis LeMay.

General Frank Armstrong [Annotator's Note: US Air Force Lieutenant General Frank A. Armstrong], a great man, according to Clarence Lee "Jack" Dobbs, headed the 315th Wing [Annotator's Note: 315th Bombardment Wing, 20th Air Force], and flew the lead plane of every difficult mission. Once his bombs were away, he circled his formation until all their loads were dropped. Dobbs embarked on a total of 15 night missions, two of which were aborted mid-flight because of engine problems. All of their targets were Japanese oil refineries and flights lasted from 12 to 16 hours each. By staying busy, cross training when possible, the crew had less time for fear; on the homeward bound flights, they could sometimes nap. Dobbs joked that after completing their primary mission, the crew would look for the lights of a coastal installation and kick off their remaining bombs, saying "Here you go, you little bastards." [Annotator's Note: Dobbs and the interviewer both laugh.] Dobbs described how General Curtis LeMay ordered alterations to the bombers as their purposes became better defined. He also talked about the technique of scattering tin foil [Annotator's Note: also referred to as chaff] to thwart enemy radar detection. Because they were flying night missions, Dobbs explained, he never encountered any serious threat from Japanese fighters or other antiaircraft opposition.

Clarence Lee "Jack" Dobbs was still on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: Japan]. He said the 315th [Annotator's Note: 315th Bombardment Wing, 20th Air Force] flew missions in between the two bombing dates [Annotator's Note: 6 and 9 August 1945 respectively], and on 14 August 1945 they flew what turned out to be their last mission. Their target was Japan's last working Nippon oil refinery at Akita, Japan, and it was 95 percent destroyed. When the plane nicknamed "Bockscar" dropped the second atomic bomb, Dobbs' plane sat ready on the runway for several days in case it was needed, but the Japanese surrendered. After the war was over, servicemen were returning home on the points system. Being a newer crew, Dobb's group was left on Guam for another four or five months after the war ended. When word finally came that they could leave, they got on a boat to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands]. There they got new uniforms and sailed to San Francisco, California on a crowded, uncomfortable, flat bottomed ship. Dobbs remembered passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, and taking a train to Chicago, Illinois. He got a 30 day leave at that point and visited his family and friends. He then went back to Great Lakes, Illinois for discharge.

He took the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jack Dobbs went right to work, hauling building supplies. He established a trucking business of his own, but eventually accepted an offer to attend the General Motors Institute in Michigan. His mechanical aptitude won him a job with the Buick Motor Division. He worked his way up to management, and stayed with Buick for 26 years before becoming a partner in a Cadillac dealership in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked there 20 years before he sold out and retired. Asked if he thinks the people of today understand what World War 2 was about and the sacrifices his generation made, Dobbs said he doesn’t feel they understand the complexities that leaders like LeMay and Armstrong faced in making men out of the boys under their command. It made them better, and made the world better for those that didn’t deploy.