Floyd Horne was born in Bowersville, Ohio in February 1922. He spent the first 18 years of life there until July 1940 when he went to Chanute Air Force Base, Illinois [Annotator's Note: Chanute Air Force Base, Champaign County, Illinois]. He enlisted there on 30 July and stayed in the Air Force until the end of April 1962. He then became a civilian employee of the Air Force from 15 May 1962 until December 1974. He retired on a disability following a tornado that destroyed his house in April 1974. He had three sisters and one brother. They lived in their grandfather's home. His grandfather was retired and drew a pension. His father worked as an automobile mechanic. He also worked at a grain elevator until about 1938. He then went to work for the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton Railroad which was owned by Henry Ford [Annotator's Note: Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company]. Life was very casual; they were poor, but nobody had money. He would mow yards in the summer. He worked at a grocery store and at a greenhouse. Joining the military was an easy decision. In 1940, there was a lot of talk of bringing up the National Guard and the draft. He knew people who enlisted to go to school. He decided that was for him. His parents thought it was the proper thing to do. He did not know anybody who had been in the Navy or Marine Corps. He only knew people in the Air Corps.

[Annotator's Note: Floyd Horne enlisted in the Army Air Forces at Chanute Field in Champaign County, Illinois in July 1940.] Floyd Horne trained there for one month, marching in the heat and sleeping on the flight line. He went to airplane mechanic's school and finished in February 1941. They were quarantined at the Illinois State Fairgrounds for a month for any illnesses that might show up. He then went to Montgomery, Alabama to Gunter Field [Annotator's Note: now Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama]. He worked on the flight line for a year and half. This was a growing up period for him. He learned how to get along with people and about airplane mechanics. He found out that if you work, you can get ahead. He tested and became a Second Airplane Mechanic rating, which was 72 bucks [Annotator's Note: slang for dollars] up from 30. He was promoted to First Airplane Mechanic and that was 84 dollars per month. He made Sergeant, so he did pretty well. He enlisted in the cadet program. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if they had any inkling of the coming war.] Most of the cadets were English, and this was their basic training school flying BT-13s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft; also known as the Vultee Vibrator] and BT-15s [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-15 Valiant, basic trainer aircraft]. As things went on, he felt that something was going to happen. [Annotator's Note: Horne answers the telephone.] Horne volunteered for the aviation cadet program because on 7 December 1941, he was in a movie in Maxwell, Alabama. He was watching Sergeant York [Annotator's Note: 1941 American film about Alvin C. York, a highly decorated veteran of World War 1]. An announcement came on the screen saying the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] and that all military were to report back to their duty stations. He did so and that night he had three corporals with him running errands and messages. On Christmas night [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1941], he was on the roof with a sergeant and machine gun to guard against any invaders. Needless to say, nothing happened.

Floyd Horne signed up [Annotator's Note: for the US Army Air Forces Aviation Cadet Program] early enough that when he was commissioned it was as a Reserve Officer. He had flown quite a few times on BT-13 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft; also known as the Vultee Vibrator] checkouts. That made him want to get into the thick of things. He had to wait six months and then went to Nashville, Tennessee, which was a bare base. They had no hot water, ate out of a mess kit, and had no lights in their barracks. They went to bed at dusk and would lay there telling "bullshit lies." After a month, he was classified as a bombardier-navigator. He went to Ellington Field [Annotator's Note: now Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, Harris County, Texas] for basic training. His final training was in San Angelo, Texas [Annotator's Note: San Angelo Army Airfield, San Angelo, Texas]. He had requested pilot training. Most bombardiers were not big people. In a B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] there is not much space; only 15 or 18 inches to get in. He cross trained in navigation and got a lot of ground training. [Annotator's Note: Horne describes the process in detail.] Then they trained in AT-11s [Annotator's Note: Beech AT-11 Kansas twin engine trainer aircraft]. He went from Texas to Eglin Field [Annotator's Note: now Eglin Air Force Base, Okaloosa County, Florida], Florida for six weeks training on different bombsights. One was the D-8 bombsight [Annotator's Note: Estoppey D-8 bombsight]. He ran a series of tests using B-25s [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] on demolished submarines. He then went to Barksdale [Annotator's Note: then Barksdale Field, now Barksdale Air Force Base, Bossier City, Louisiana] for phase training on the B-26. The first part would be doing basic pilotage with a map. The crew was selected there. The airmen picked the officers that they wanted to crew with. They would fly light lines at night from Barksdale to Fort Worth, Texas. There was a light every 20 miles that they would fly along for 225 miles. They did cross-country flights using radio lines. They had to learn a sight to fly by as well.

[Annotator's Note: Floyd Horne was trained as bombardier-navigator on the Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber. His crew was formed at what is now Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana.] The crew was composed of three officers; a pilot, copilot and bombardier. Then there was the engineer-top turret gunner, the waist gunner and tail gunner. Their tail gunner shot down one Me-109 [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Me-109 or Bf-109 fighter aircraft]. He said he could see the pilot slump over. He also took out a B-26, killing six of his own people. Horne wonders if that was worth it or not. They used Norden bombsights [Annotator's Note: Norden Mk. XV, known as Norden M series, bombsight]. They bombed a lot of airfields, coastal guns, antiaircraft guns, bridges, and buzz bomb [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] sites. The buzz bombs made a "putt-putt" sound and when that quit, it exploded after eight seconds. During his time off, Horne would go into town. He does not recall going to town without spending the night in a bomb shelter. He got to know the English people well. He got to England in late September 1943 and then to Northern Ireland from 15 November until 15 January 1944. He returned and joined the 386th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 386th Bombardment Group] in Great Dunmow, England [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Station Great Dunmow, or RAF Great Dunmow, Little Easton, England]. He went home in August 1944. All of his missions were between 15 February and 8 August. D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] was his 44th mission. He flew as part of the 553rd Bomb Squadron, 386th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 553rd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force].

[Annotator's Note: Floyd Horne was stationed at Royal Air Force Station Great Dunmow, or RAF Great Dunmow, Little Easton, England with the 553rd Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force.] Horne was rarely there as he was busy every day. He rarely went to town. He would go to Braintree [Annotator's Note: Braintree, England]. The drivers would stop and get coffee at USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] stops. He was married. Most people had good relationships with the British. [Annotator's Note: A telephone rings and Horne answers it.] Horne had been married on 1 May 1943; his wife died 1 February 2002, on their son's birthday. He met her at Barksdale Air Force Base [Annotator's Note: Barksdale Air Force Base, Bossier City, Louisiana]. Once he flew ten missions in six days. Even at 21, you are pooped [Annotator's Note: slang for being exhausted]. They would get up, get food, take a shower. They did not have conveniences, he would ride a bicycle to take a shower. He might play cards or shoot pool. He had a friend there [Annotator's Note: in England] and he went and spent a week with him once. They played ball. Every three weeks they would get a couple days off and go into London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. They were otherwise busy. One day he wanted to buy a leather suitcase for his wife but it was too expensive.

Floyd Horne was fortunate that his first combat mission was short. It was near Calais [Annotator's Note: Calais, Hauts-de-France, France]. They had British Spitfire [Annotator's Note: Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft] escorts and it was a milk run [Annotator's Note: slang term used by American airmen to describe an easy combat mission]; no fighters, no flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], no nothing. That was kind of a betrayal as it was one of the few milk runs, they had. He also flew five or six missions with other crews. The Bombardier-navigators were always needed as flak punches holes in the Plexiglas [Annotator's Note: material used for aircraft windows]. He had it happen to him. A shell casing came right through his window and hit him in the shoulder. White chaff [Annotator's Note: small, thin pieces of aluminum, metal, or plastic dropped from aircraft to confuse radar operators on the ground] went by his eyes, cut his face, and went out the other side. He was fortunate as he could have been blinded. He ended up in the hospital with pneumonia due to the air that came through then. It was about 20 degrees below zero. He was out in four days. By then his crew was ahead of him in number of missions flown. A couple of times he and his pilot were assigned to do diversion missions to dispense chaff for deflecting radar signals. The B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] had four-forward firing guns. One time the gunner fired them all at once and Horne said he thought he was going to "shit his pants" when the tracers went flying by. By and large "you are scared." They had a lot of tough missions. Tom Stovall [Annotator's Note: later US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Thomas B. Stovall, Sr.] led them one morning on an 18 ship mission to Paris [Annotator's Note Paris, France]. Paris had 155mm flak [Annotator's Note: 15.5 centimeter K 418(f); German name for captured French Canon de 155 Grande Puissance Filloux (GPF) mie.1917 155-millimeter antiaircraft gun] and it was like sticking your head in a furnace every time one of them went off. Six of them went to fire on coastal guns. Three of the six were shot down and Tom’s plane was hit and went down in the English Channel. Horne says he did not fly 68 missions, he had 68 high-altitude prayer meetings.

Floyd Horne says the B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] was a very tough airplane. He recalls seeing them land on the belly or on the nose wheel. He has a lot of respect for it. If a guy could fly, you could make it. [Annotator's Note: Someone knocks on the door and the tape cuts. When it restarts, Horne is looking through a book and showing pictures of a hunting lodge that was on the base to the interviewer.] At the lodge, 16 of them stayed in one room. Two guys decided to stay in the bathroom. At the end of January 1944, there was a big fight over England with the Germans. They all stood in that bathroom and could look down into London [Annotator's Note: London, England] and watch the explosions. [Annotator's Note: Horne searches for a picture of a person in particular. The interviewer asks him what some of his tougher missions were.] Coastal guns and buzz bomb [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] sites were tough. Buzz bomb sites were in the woods. The Germans would sometimes send up just one shot [Annotator's Note: of antiaircraft fire] to say they were waiting on them. That was demoralizing but they could not let that stop them. The flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] gunners were, by and large, accurate. If they had to fly to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] all the time, they would be scared all the time. [Annotator's Note: Horne shows more pictures of the crews to the interviewer.] One of the aircrew members in the group was Robert Preston Meservey [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Robert Preston Meservey; intelligence officer, American stage and film actor] who became an actor. A lot of things went on in the bomb group that Horne felt sorry about. They did not have fire extinguishers in their airplanes and sometimes he would watch a plane have a fire start out small and then go down. It is tough to see your buddies shot down.

[Annotator's Note: Floyd Horne was a bombardier-navigator in the 553rd Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Air Force based at Royal Air Force Station Great Dunmow, or RAF Great Dunmow, in Little Easton, England.] Nights in England were dark for only four hours. [Annotator's Note: American forces bombed during the daylight, while British forces bombed at night.] The weather was always a problem. [Annotator's Note: Horne shows England on a map to the interviewer.] You could leave England in nice weather and then not be able to see it on the way back. The weather could change that much in a couple of hours. They had a radio compass to find their way. One day, as they broke through, another airplane was heading towards them. They missed, but when Horne looked over he saw there was another one. It scared him. They normally bombed from about 11,000 feet. On D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], they bombed from 2,500 feet because of bad weather. They flew two missions and were the number one B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] crew. They bombed at Omaha [Annotator's Note: Omaha Beach, Normandy, France] targeting coastal guns. There were 5,500 ships there in the Channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel]. The casualties were indescribable. There were 11,000 airplanes involved. The missions were typical. The difference was the impact. He felt honored. [Annotator's Note: Horne shows a map in a book off camera and goes over the details of how missions start with the interviewer.] When they took off on D-Day, their left engine quit. They had to go around, get a different airplane and then catch up. They had 4,000 pounds of bombs on each plane and only 4,700 feet of runway. [Annotator's Note: The video ends suddenly.]

[Annotator's Note: This clip starts with Floyd Horne discussing the bad reputation of the Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber.] At Barksdale [Annotator's Note: Barksdale Air Force Base, Bossier City, Louisiana], there was a group that lost 13 airplanes in two weeks due to crashes. The reputation they [Annotator's Note: the B-26] had as a "widow maker" was deserved. If you got through the crew training, you had a decent chance. It was not easy, but he had a good pilot, Charles A. Schwitzenson [Annotator's Note: phonetic; unable to identify]. He had a good copilot too. They had a good crew and got along well. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Horne how he dealt with losing so many crews in training.] Horne says he did not know them all. It is just like in combat. In combat their group lost 183 people. By and large it was not equitable. One squadron had more than anyone else. It was unbearable. It just is one of those things that happens. [Annotator's Note: Horne shows a book off-camera to the interviewer. He notes the other squadrons at the base.] Horne points out a squadron commander. There were some people who wanted to just fly a couple of missions. Burt Dugger [Annotator's Note: phonetic; unable to identify] flew ten missions and got an Air Medal [Annotator's Note: US Armed Forces medal for single acts of heroism or meritorious achievement while in aerial flight] with an oak leaf cluster [Annotator's Note: ribbon device to denote subsequent decorations and awards; bronze cluster indicates one additional award, sliver cluster equals five bronze clusters]. Horne flew 68 missions and got an Air Medal with 12 oak leaf clusters. Occasionally, they would tell the crews they could take someone who had not flown missions with them on easy missions. Weiss [Annotator's Note: likely US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Donald L. Weiss, shot down 12 June 1944] took their flight surgeon on one and they got knocked out of the sky. That ended that stuff right then and there. They lost a squadron commander and a person with no flight status. You do not beat the odds. Horne was supposed to fly 65 missions. When you get past 60, the bombardiers are thinning down and are asked to be lead bombardiers. On his 62nd mission, Horne was asked to be one and he said no. He had to fly three more missions then he could go home. When he hit 65, he did not get to go. He ended up with 68. He was fortunate. He left there and went to Chorley, England for three weeks before he got on a ship to go home. Up there, all the guys did was gamble. A lot of guys spent their free time gambling. One friend made a lot of money.

Floyd Horne flew a lot of missions before his D-Day missions [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He was flying every other day. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer describes the differences in mission requirements between 9th and 8th Air Forces; the 9th required nearly twice as many missions from their crews.] Horne wanted no part of 8th Air Force missions because they flew so far inland. If they were out of formation returning home, they were easy targets. In the B-26s [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber], if you got knocked down, you went straight down. He never knew of anyone who got picked off by a fighter pilot. There was one gunner who became an ace for having shot down five German planes. Horne's tail gunner shot down one German fighter. One time, Horne heard fighters coming in and got his guns ready. An Me-109 [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Me-109 or Bf-109 fighter aircraft] was coming up under them. He was able to do that, because their tail gunner was asleep. On the whole, Horne did not have time for a lot of foolishness. They got shot up. Their airplane was named "Spare Parts." A B-26 was prone to just quitting control-wise. His toughest mission was his 39th mission, going over Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France]. They were bombing around Trier [Annotator's Note: Trier, Germany] and there was a lot of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] and that made a Christian out of Horne. This was 27 May [Annotator's Note: 27 May 1944] before D-Day. He was not happy the first time he saw a plane go down. What made him unhappy was that you did not have time to see what happened to the people in them. One time, a guy told their pilot they were going to get it that day. That guy got it instead. He was hit and the airplane was blown in two. In cadet training, he went through with a guy he really liked. In Europe, Horne did not recognize him because he had been hitting the sauce a lot [Annotator's Note: drinking a lot of alcohol]. He got shot down. It is not an easy life. Nobody in Horne's barracks ever got shot down.

Floyd Horne's combat tour ended 10 August 1944. He went up to Chorley [Annotator's Note: Chorley, England] for three weeks. He just read the newspaper and watched the guys gamble. He returned aboard the Manhattan [Annotator's Note: USS Wakefield (AP-21). He had gone over on the Manhattan from Camp Kilmer [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey]. They sailed right by the Normandie [Annotator's Note: SS Normandie; seized and renamed USS Lafayette]. It was a burned out rust bucket. They went so far south [Annotator's Note: crossing the Atlantic Ocean] they were out on deck in shirt sleeves. He wonders how they ever got in without getting clobbered or sunk [Annotator's Note: by German submarines]. [Annotator's Note: Horne changes the ship names.] He went over on the RMS Queen Mary and came back on the Manhattan. There were 18,000 troops on the Queen Mary. A guy he trained with on B-26s [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] was transferred to B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] later. They were on the Queen Mary together. They got two meals a day. For lunch, they ate a one pound chocolate candy bar. Horne came back to Miami Beach [Annotator's Note: Miami Beach, Florida] for rehab [Annotator's Note: rehabilitation] and then to Midland, Texas for retraining in aircraft maintenance to go overseas again. They finished in February 1945. He was glad to get a ground job.

After the war, Floyd Horne got into investigations. This was in 1946. He got out of the service as a First Lieutenant. He re-enlisted in April 1946 and went back in as a Tech Sergeant [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant, E-7]. He worked as a handy man for a troop commander for a year. He applied to the Air Force Counterintelligence Corps School. He trained at Hollenberg [Annotator's Note: likely Alamogordo Army Airfield which became Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo, New Mexico]. On 1 August 1948 when the Air Force started, he was in the Air Force office of investigations. He made Warrant Officer One through Three [Annotator's Note: rank above enlisted but below commissioned officers]. In 1951, he made First Lieutenant and Captain in 1953. He made Major and got out in April 1962. Three weeks later he returned as a civilian employee in defense electronics in Dayton [Annotator's Note: Dayton, Ohio]. He went to Wright-Patterson [Annotator's Note: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio; often referred to as Wright-Pat] and then was recalled to Washington D.C. as an investigator. He was promoted to GS-13 [Annotator's Note: government employee rank]. He worked every job there was; backgrounds, intelligence, counterintelligence. He was Chief of Police at Wright-Pat. He retired 3 April 1974 on disability. Horne was watching the war end on the news. He was happy for it. In 1945, he was in Waco, Texas as an aircraft maintenance officer. He decided to get out then. He enjoyed his career and did pretty well for a kid who never had any education. He first separated 7 December 1945 and re-enlisted April 1946. He had been discharged in San Antonio [Annotator's Note: San Antonio, Texas]. He ran into guys he had known. He was a First Lieutenant when discharged. He was working for the National Cash Register Company. He got called in for not making his quota by six cents. That made Horne decide to re-enlist in the service. He bought a house on the G.I. Bill in 1961 after returning from Korea. He was in Korea from 1959 to 1960.

D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] was the most memorable experience Floyd Horne had, seeing all of those ships between England and the coast of Normandy. The weather was lousy, and they were bombing from 2,500 feet. He was looking at the hill the guys were trying to climb up. He was honored to be the first ones over the target. They were in on it right from the beginning. He could see the men crawling in the water. Saint-Lô [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lo, France] was just below where they went, but he cannot say that they flew in support of the break-out there [Annotator's Note: Battle of Saint-Lô, 7 to 19 July 1944, France]. They did go to Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France] around the end of June or maybe in July [Annotator's Note: June or July 1944]. There was one 37mm [Annotator's Note: German 3.7cm Flak 18/26/37 series of antiaircraft guns] firing, four shells only. [Annotator's Note: Horne indicates a book from the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.] At Wright-Patterson, there is a B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] with a plaque on it. It describes Horne's missions taking out the German guns and supplies. He could see what they were taking out. They would take out the abutments on bridges. [Annotator's Note: Horne points out a list of targets in the book.] Horne was personally convinced that he could make a contribution to the safety of the country. The war became his life, he became a military man. He was not a hard and fast soldier, but he was a good officer who did his job and earned his pay. He got promoted in every job he had. He had problems, he wears a hearing aid. He got Meniere's disease [Annotator's Note: an inner ear disorder that causes episodes of vertigo, or a spinning sensation] in 1963. He now has Parkinson's [Annotator's Note: a disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement, often including tremors]. He feels he made a contribution and is proud of his World War 2 service. He thinks the war means nothing to anyone other than veterans now. It is a forgotten period. People do thank him for his service individually. "How many people read a newspaper now?" If people cared, the guy who is President [Annotator's Note: Barack Hussein Obama, 44th president of the United States, 2009 to 2017] would not be in there. The Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] should absolutely continue to teach World War 2 to future generations. Horne is a charter member of The National WWII Museum.