Harry Carlson was born in October 1924 in Springfield, Pennsylvania. He grew up there as a single child. His father served in World War 1 and he suffered from multiple gas attacks which made it hard for him to work, but he did find employment as a bread salesman in Philadelphia. They lived in the countryside with open fields to play in. He was interested in aviation and built model aircraft. He built Wakefield models [Annotator's Note: free flight, rubber-powered, model aircraft named after Lord Wakefield, founder of the Wakefield contest for powered aircraft flight] that could fly powered by rubber bands. He became interested in aviation through friends who were already interested in it. He had a talent for building things, so it was a good fit. He recalls walking through Philadelphia on a visit when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. He was totally surprised and then he wondered how it was going to affect him as he was a senior in high school. He wondered what to do. His father's experience in World War 1 made him know that he did not want the infantry. When he realized he was going to be drafted, he volunteered for the Army Air Corps.

Harry Carlson was accepted into Army Air Corps in June 1943. He had given thought to Naval aviation, but he went to the Air Corps recruiter first. He received his travel orders and took a train to Greensborough, North Carolina. It was warm so the passengers opened the windows. This put a lot of smoke into the car and made their clothes very dirty. When they arrived at Basic Training, their uniforms had not arrived so for four or five days they had to train in their dirty civilian clothes. The training station was over a swamp which had a lot of Carolina red clay in the ground. That clay made it even worse on their clothes, making it hard to pass inspection. Failing an inspection would result in what was called a "walking tour punishment." This would be mostly marching and sometimes marching in review.

Harry Carlson's Basic Training lasted a month or two. He met friends there. They were separated into units by alphabet so their names would be similar to yours and that would be who you would associate with throughout your career. This training was all marching and physical training. The aviators were all Officer Candidates. Before the war one had to have college training to be accepted as an Officer Candidate. To keep that tradition, the new troops were sent to a college training detachment at Michigan State [Annotator's Note: Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan]. These were nice quarters. Carlson got off the train and realized that his group would be broken into squadrons. Someone thought they would be reassigned by how tall they were. Carlson and his friends were reasonably close to each other in height, so they stuck together. He slumped and another friend stood taller so all four could all be assigned together to the same room. They beat the system. Training there was education in mathematics, English, public speaking, and the history of how World War 2 had started and what its progress was. He was there for three or four months. The next step was in San Antonio, Texas to the classification center.

Harry Carlson was sent to the classification center in San Antonio, Texas. This part of his training was difficult as it would decide what part of the aircrew he would be assigned. He thought his chances of being a navigator were better than being a pilot, so he chose it. He tested and qualified for that more than any other position, so it worked out. His navigation training was at Selman Field [Annotator's Note: Selman Army Airfield in Monroe, Louisiana]. That training took some time and he thinks it was in AT-12s [Annotator's Note: he likely means the Beechcraft AT-11 Kansan which was a twin-engine trainer; the AT-12 was a single engine renamed Seversky P-35]. They flew with three navigation candidates on each flight and they would take turns training. On each training mission one would be the lead navigator who made the total flight plan. The other candidates would have to keep track of where they were at any given time. They did have a type of computer, the E6B calculator. [Annotator's Note: Carlson describes the use of the E6B in great detail]. Carlson feels that taking sightings with a sextant when being bounced around was one of the most difficult of tasks to learn. He always thought he made the right choice for this training.

Harry Carlson took his radar school training in Boca Raton, Florida. The system had been developed by the British using radio stations to get bearings to get fixes for navigation. This was being used both as navigation and bomb sighting. The Boca Raton building was similar to a millionaire's club on the beach with a swimming pool and nice grounds. [Annotator's Note: The Boca Raton Resort & Club in Boca Raton, Florida was called the most elegant barracks in history.] He really enjoyed that. After radar school, Carlson was sent to Langley Field [Annotator's Note: Langley Field in Newport News, Virginia, now Langley Air Force Base] to train in B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and B-24s [Annotator’s Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. They flew training missions where they had to navigate over Virginia and along the James River to the eastern shoreline. They used radar mostly to identify where they were by geographic information. They also used it for assisting in bomb targeting. Carlson laughs about how many times he dropped on the James River bridge. His commissioning ceremony had occurred after navigation school where he became a second lieutenant. Some of his friends were flight officers and some failed and were sent to gunnery schools.

Harry Carlson's training at Langley Field [Annotator's Note: Langley Field in Newport News, Virginia, now Langley Air Force Base] was all about Germany so he thought that is where he would be assigned. He was surprised to be ordered to Great Bend, Kansas [Annotator's Note: Great Bend Army Air Field in Great Bend, Kansas] which was a site for B-29s [Annotator’s Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. Carlson and his crew covered a good bit of the United States in flight training and even did a mission over Puerto Rico. They stayed a few nights there and that's where he learned to play golf. He had never seen a B-29 until then and was very impressed. It was very different. It was pressurized and very comfortable to fly in and had much better armament than the 17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and 24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. The guns were in turrets that were above and below the body of the craft. The central fire control was at the middle top of the aircraft. The gun sights were remotely controlled with electronics. The system worked quite well, and one individual could control multiple guns and gunners. He liked the B-29 better than the other aircraft by far.

Harry Carlson stayed with his crew for the remainder of the war. The crew came from a wide range of states and represented the whole country pretty much. He feels that this was the time in the country where the people were very united. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer describes his family story.] There was a great mixing of the populations for the first time in American history. Carslon was assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 28th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force]. They left straight from Kansas [Annotator's Note: Great Bend Army Air Field in Great Bend, Kansas]. He never received leave until the end of the war. Earlier at Langley [Annotator's Note: Langley Field in Newport News, Virginia, now Langley Air Force Base], he had met his future wife. A good friend asked Carlson to go to church with him in Hampton, Virginia and at some point, they met some girls. They were very kind to them and one of them started talking to him. Carlson felt she was a serious girl. She had been employed at the Pentagon and was assigned to work in the liaison office at Langley. She was responsible for communications between the research labs and the Pentagon. Carlson gives an example: the ditching of 17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and 24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] was a risky business. The research lab was tasked with finding ways to make it less so and she worked on that. She had known about the development of the atomic bomb which he found about later. They had an informal engagement after about one month and communicated via Victory Mail [Annotator's Note: also referred to as V-mail, this was a hybrid mail process used as a secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad] for the rest of the war. [Annotator's Note: He describes this in detail.] His future wife's name was Dorothy "Dottie" Roberts.

Harry Carlson finished his training in Great Bend, Kansas [Annotator's Note: Great Bend Army Air Field in Great Bend, Kansas] and was sent to Kearney, Nebraska [Annotator's Note: Kearney Army Airfield in Kearney, Nebraska, now Kearney Air Force Base] which is where they learned would be sent to the Pacific. They did not have their own aircraft. They flew on a C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo and transport aircraft] to San Francisco, California and then to Hawaii where they stopped for a short time. From Hawaii they flew to Guam where they were stationed. They arrived in February 1945. On Guam, they were assigned to a tent village where there was segregation between the officers and enlisted men, although they were close by each other. Japanese troops were still there at the time and they had heard that sometimes the Japanese would be found in the lines trying to get breakfast, but he never encountered that. On their free time, they would tool around in a jeep. They found a cave and some maps which Carlson kept as a souvenir. They did not take a guard with them, but they did carry guns on these trips. They would also be assigned sentry duty at times when not flying. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer notes that the last Japanese soldier to surrender on Guam did so in the 1970s]. Here he was in the 28th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force. The first few days on Guam were settling in. He did some exploring and hiking around. They also went to Agana Beach which had nice surf. They had some contact with the native population who did their laundry. They had a volleyball court nearby. The Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] eventually built some Quonset huts for them. He was grateful to the Marines and Seabees for all they did for the aircrews. [Annotator's Note: There is a break to change tapes.]

Harry Carlson does not recall his first mission target. The B-29s [Annotator’s Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] were built for high-altitude, precision bombing, flying out of India and China before flying out of the Marianas Islands. The first missions were this kind of bombing from as high as 35,000 feet. It turned out that accuracy was difficult due to the high wind speeds over Japan. Likely when the jet stream was discovered, and they were faster than the aircraft. [Annotator's Note: Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Ooishi had discovered the jet stream in the 1920s. His research was ignored by scientists until 1944 when B-29 pilots noticed them.] A number of those were flown over Kobe, Japan where the fighter opposition and ship-based flak was intense. They noticed the flak was bursting in a great variety of colors. This was so that the correct crews could be awarded the kill of a B-29 hit. They also flew over industrial and military targets before tactics were changed by Curtis LeMay [Annotator's Note: USAAF then USAF General Curtis E. LeMay]. Lemay was put in charge of the 20th Air Force and was called "Iron Pants." He changed from high-altitude, precision bombing to nighttime bombing of cities in the pattern developed by the British in Europe. The nighttime raids were not in formation but in a train of 12 aircraft following each other at one-minute intervals. The lead bombardier would drop on the center of the target area and then the following craft would spread out the bombing to cover as large an area as possible. In the latter part of the mission the target would be well lit. After each mission they would make a rapid turn and gain speed to get away from the enemy fighters. It was very harrowing and frightening. Each craft was then on its own to find the way back to Guam. By this time, Iwo Jima, Japan had been captured, so on each leg of the mission they could use it as a helpful landmark. It also provided P-51 escorts [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft]. The B-29s would help the 51s navigate back to Iwo Jima. Twice he had to land on Iwo Jima in damaged aircraft. He credits this for his survival as ditching a B-29 successfully at sea was not an easy task.

On one mission, Harry Carlson's aircraft had to land on Iwo Jima due to a lot of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] damage that prevented the bomb bay doors from closing and another time, they had to land on Iwo Jima because they were low on fuel. Carlson and his crew were so grateful for the Marines for taking Iwo Jima. He would not have survived the war if they had not done so, as did so many other aircrews. Sometimes in formation flying, aircraft would crash into each other. Carlson lost some friends due to that. They would also crash sometimes on take-offs and landings. On Guam, there was a severe drop of several hundred feet at the north end of the airstrip thereby losing the ground effect for the aircraft which could cause them to crash. His aircrew carried survival kits for overwater bailouts, but were warned about the mistreatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese. B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] crewmen were referred to as criminals or special prisoners. Carlson says that he and his crew thought about the people they were bombing. Their superiors worked hard to show them why the nighttime raids were crucial, saying that the Japanese were creating war materials in their homes. They did not all buy this idea but what option did they have other than to follow orders.

Harry Carlson feels his most eventful missions were the nighttime missions over Japan. They were frightening at times due to the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. Flying over a city already on fire was difficult. They wanted to get away as quickly as possible. He does not recall his last mission but knows he finished up his 35-mission requirement around the middle of the summer 1945. He went back to the United States very quickly after that, about a month before the war ended. He was flown on C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo and transport aircraft] back to San Francisco, California. He was then sent to Muroc [Annotator's Note: Muroc Army Air Field in Kern County, California, also referred to as Muroc Lake; now Edwards Air Force Base], in the desert and assigned to lead crew school to teach navigation. He was in touch with his girlfriend during the war using V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory mail; hybrid mail process used as secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad]. When he was transferred to Muroc, he asked her to come out and marry him, which she did. On the way out, was the first news of the first bomb [Annotator's Note: atomic bomb] drop on Japan. They married in Lancaster, California and they lived there for about a month. He thinks he was walking around the base when a soldier told him the war was over. He was given orders to go back to Pennsylvania at first but then given his discharge orders in August 1945 as a first lieutenant.

Harry Carlson used the G.I. Bill to go to Virginia PolyTech [Annotator's Note: Virginia Polytechnic Institutein Blacksburg, Virginia]. The transition to civilian life was easy for him. He feels the G.I. Bill was important to building postwar America. He would never have been able to afford college otherwise. Prewar he was hoping to get a college scholarship based on his track skills. Carlson decided to study Mechanical Engineering. He would have liked Aeronautical Engineering but felt it would be more difficult for him. He and his wife traveled a bit in Pennsylvania and Virginia before going to school. The University of Virginia did not recognize his previously taken courses but PolyTech did, so he got a good jump. PolyTech also allowed him to go to school in summer which helped with the timing. He went to work for NASA [Annotator's Note: National Aeronautics and Space Administration]. Don Bayles was head of the supersonic tunnel and they talked and got along well so Bayles offered him a job doing wind tunnel work. After a short time, he grew tired off working the night shift, and chose to learn about computers and move into aerodynamics. He took a number of night courses and learned programming and theory around aircraft wing performance and design. He was one of the first to combine these disciplines in aircraft design. He was also involved in sonic boom research discovering how it affected the ground, buildings, and people on the ground. There was just enough that could be done with the boom to make supersonic travel by commercial aircraft financially infeasible. All of this work was a direct result of what came out of World War 2. He feels that the work would still have been done ultimately but it would have taken longer without the war. Things like computers really advanced by trying to solve problems during the war. The E6B computer [Annotator's Note: E6B flight computer; circular slide rule] was a forerunner to solving navigation problems this way. Pre-NASA, he worked at Langley Field [Annotator's Note: Langley Field in Newport News, Virginia, now Langley Air Force Base] in the NACA [Annotator's Note: National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, est. 1917] and worked in the development of computers. At that time the term computer referred to women using calculators and not machines. They needed this to record and process the data being generated by their tests and experiments. There were hand-operated computers like Friden [Annotator's Note: Friden Calculating Machine Company] and Monroe [Annotator's Note: Monroe Calculating Machine Company]. Most of the operators were women [Annotator’'s Note: he references the motion picture titled Hidden Figures, the 2016 biographical drama based on a book by the same name about black, female NASA mathematicians]. Carlson worked in particular with Christine Gardner [Annotator's Note: unable to verify this individual], who was prominent in the film.

While at NASA [Annotator's Note: National Aeronautics and Space Administration], Harry Carlson had an opportunity to go to Huntsville, Alabama and Washington D.C. to work but decided to stay with aerodynamics over learning about space. He worked for NASA for close to 50 years in total. He was employed in 1952 as a civil service employee and retired in 1980. He then worked for contractors like Lockheed [Annotator's Note: Lockheed Martin Corporation] and still worked on NASA projects. Even later he worked as a consultant on many problem projects until around 2000. He was told his work contributed to the SR-71 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnaissance aircraft]. People at Boeing [Annotator's Note: The Boeing Company] would have him help them occasionally. Carlson worked closely with engineers who worked in the acoustics generated by aircraft, which required teams of people working closely together. They never could find a way to design supersonic transport style craft that could work commercially.

Harry Carlson says that conducting fire bombing raids over Tokyo, seeing the city on fire, the multi-colored flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], enemy aircraft hitting them with bullets, and trying to get out quickly are his most vivid memories of the war. He feels he did not have a choice but to enter the war. It was an obligation and he never thought of a way to get out of it, but there was no other motivation than American duty. He has no idea of how his life would have gone without the war experience. He had always wanted to be an engineer and had an uncle who was one. This was the easy way to do it and he might not have been able to do it without the G.I. Bill. Carlson credits his service with how he got to be where he is –, healthy and 93 years old. He was athletic early in his life which also helped. He won some state championships in his 80s and 90s at track. He does not do marathons because they require too much training for him. He feels the war is relevant to what might have happened if we had lost. He thinks the whole world would be different than it currently is. He is concerned that our current tendency to mob rule and pure democracy is not a good thing. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks what freedom means to him.] To be able to make your own choices. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is very important because there is not enough emphasis on history being taught in our schools. Our students need a thorough understanding of how we got to where we are.