John Francis Angier was born in June 1923 in Burlington, Vermont. He feels fortunate he was brought up on a dairy farm. He had a deep interest in aviation from an early age and start flying at age 15. The manager of a nearby airport gave him his first ride and then flight time. He was very aware of the state of the world through his avid reading and the radio. He graduated high school in May 1941 then started a one-year program at an Agricultural School. He was with five or six of his friends at the college when they heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. One friend immediately said he would join the paratroopers. Angier decide to wait awhile, but finally enlisted in the US Army Air Forces because he wanted to fly and not be in the infantry. His three brothers enlisted as well. Life did not change much for him being in the military.

John Angier went to Maxwell Field [Annotator's Note: now Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama] for basic training which he felt was very good. He was insistent that he be a pilot and not have any other job. He loved it and he could do it. Angier guesses he had 65 hours of flight time before enlisting. He trained on three or four older aircraft. A lot of other trainees washed out, but he was very well informed, and it was very easy. Angier went through advanced flight training in 1942 and 1943. The trainees did not hear a lot about how things were going in Europe, but he read what he could, and he heard a little from a brother who was in England, North Africa, Sicily, and Italy at various times. Once Angier went to advanced training, he had a choice between bombers and fighters, and he chose bombers. He had followed the development of the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] from 1935 and already knew a lot about it. What he liked about the plane was that it had four engines but could fly on only two. The gun positions were very well placed, and it was designed to provide cover from all directions. It was easy to fly. He received his wings after graduating in 1943. Since he had studied aviation all of his life it seemed natural. Angier saw his first plane when he was four and a plane flew over and circled them as they waved to the pilot.

John Angier first met his crew in the spring of 1944 and then went overseas in a brand-new, shiny, silver B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] in May. He flew the plane for four hours when it arrived, and the next day they took off for England. He was given two choices of routes to fly and being frugal he thought either would waste fuel, so he decided to fly directly over. He first flew to Gander, Newfoundland, then directly to Wales, England. He was stationed at Glatton, England [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Glatton, Conington, Huntingdonshire, England], 60 miles northwest of London. He ended up losing his new plane to another base and he flew different aircraft while in Europe. While in the United States, he had flown in lead groups and that is what he did in Europe. He was a lead pilot in formations. There was no ribbing for the new guys. Because he had been in the Pathfinder school [Annotator's Note: B-17 Pathfinder aircraft were equipped with H2X ground scanning radar] and trained others in flight lead so he was a senior pilot due to his flight time. His crew was great though he would lose three of them later in the war when the aircraft exploded and blew them out. The engineer/top turret gunner was dead on the ground where Angier landed. Angier had not been able to deploy his own parachute until he was only 25 or 30 feet from the ground due to the wreckage of his bomber being in the air around him. The wreckage spread was less than three acres. His engineer's hand was on his ripcord handle.

John Angier had trained in the Boeing B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] Pathfinder, which he flew on his missions in Europe. The Pathfinder would lead the group, hopefully the right wingman's craft would be a Pathfinder as well. They could bomb through poor weather and at night because they had radar. The rest of the formation would drop their bombs after they did. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks about a typical day for a mission.] First thing in the morning would be a class, how the groups formed. Angier flew his first mission as a copilot with an experienced pilot in command. The amount of time it took to form into their groups depended on the weather. Often in England that would mean climbing to 22,000 feet plus and circling before forming up. 4,000 aircraft would be spread horizon to horizon. The poor weather would cause a lot of collisions while forming up. They would wait at 20,000 feet above their base to fall in line. Angier never felt fear because he knew they would do everything right from the beginning, but he felt stress.

John Angier says that once the planes were settled on the bomb run, they could not change positions and the enemy knew it. That is when they would put full fire power onto the group. On a mission to Cologne, Germany they lost 14 airplanes in a short time as the Germans were ready for them. The Germans flew spotter planes at around 35,000 feet and would radio to the gunners where the aircraft were. Other spotters would be at the exact altitude. Angier never turned control of his plane over to the bombardier. The bombardier's instruments reflected on the pilot's panel, so he flew to those instruments. Speed needed to be maintained but it was hard to manage. Angier learned early on to adjust the speed by slightly changing altitude instead of using the throttles so as not to change position much. He felt that they were careful to avoid bombing civilians. He wanted his bombs where they would do the most good, like oil refineries and assembly plants. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks what it is like to return to base without missing aircraft.] Angier says that often, someone in the crew would see what planes had gone down and they just took it to be a part of the war. The debriefing was basically an interview of each crew and was usually quite accurate. The crew saw more than the pilot did.

John Angier explained that the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] would try to catch the bombers right before the actual target run started. Between 100 to 120 of them would spray the whole formation and not just pick a single plane. Early on, the Luftwaffe pilots were very good but towards the end, you could tell they did not have much training. German pilots who had fought in Spain and Russia were very good. The enemy would fly over the bomber formations upside down and then turn down into them, spraying them with machine gun fire. A lot of planes were damaged and crew injured but the planes would make it back. They could see rockets and they were deadly. The B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] could take a serious beating and still fly. The B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] could not take much damage to the wing like the B-17 could. Angier never counted the holes in his plane. After landing, the ground crew would get reports from the aircrew to know where to start work, especially on hidden damage. All of the missions he flew are remembered. There were not many missions that he would call a milk run. Occasionally, a target would not have guns on the ground but not often. He flew a mission to Norway which was a long one that was heavily defended by German fighters which surprised them. Fuel was an issue on long runs. Fuel was not an issue over the continent unless they were leaking it due to a hit. The Germans would change tactics often to surprise the crews. Mostly it was 100 or so fighters coming head-on and spraying them with ammo. They were escorted by Allied fighters on most missions. The escorts would go as far as they could, but had to leave when the bomb runs started as did the enemy fighters. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him to sit still.]

John Angier's 33rd mission was to Cologne, Germany which should have been a relatively short mission. They were hit before they started the bomb run. He could see the wing was on fire and had started to come off. He had no control of the aircraft. He told the crew to bail but they were blown out before they could. His engineer was dead on the ground when Angier hit the ground. They lost three men in the explosion. He was knocked unconscious and was in free-fall before coming to. He had been blown out at such a high altitude that he had ice on his clothes when he came to. Angier guesses he had fallen about 1,200 feet from a little over 24,000 feet when he woke up. The plane was falling tail first when it exploded so everything was falling around him. It was not good to open your parachute up high as you could not breathe. Angier's oxygen bottle helped revive him. He had been injured but was able to stand. One German and one Dutch soldier came over to him. The Dutch soldier tried to shake hands, but Angier's shoulders had hit his knees when he landed and hurt too much. Both soldiers were teenagers. Civilians took over and started beating Angier before some other soldiers came over and saved them. There were a couple of his crew some distance away. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer has to ask him to stop twisting the microphone chord while he talks of this.]

John Angier had been shot down over Cologne, Germany, nearly beaten to death by civilians and saved from them by German soldiers. In the north of Germany, the people were very bitter, different from the south where downed crews would be treated well. He does not fault them for this. Even the soldiers were rougher in the north, but he does not criticize them. He was taken to a police station for interrogation and some of his crew were there. He was then taken to a local jail where he had a difficult time climbing the stairs. It was alternatingly very cold and very hot, and he was on a concrete slab with just a blanket. A few days later he was interrogated by a German who had lived in the United States for eight or nine years. These interrogators knew the group names, what kind of cars the commanders drove, where they had gone to school, etc. Angier only gave name, rank, serial number but he did acknowledge what they knew about his schooling. He said it was surprising that they knew so much and that made it kind of a fun thing. He was sent to a small camp and then sent to Stalag Luft III-A [Annotator's Note: Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Poland] although he spent the most time at Moosburg [Annotator's Note: Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, Germany] where he was liberated from.

John Angier was taken to Stalag Luft III-A [Annotator's Note: in Sagan, Poland] after being captured near Cologne, Germany. Conditions at the camp were better than he expected. He thought they would be more harsh, due to the amount of damage aircrews like his had been causing. Camp life was organized and planned. What he calls "schools" were going on all the time for escape attempts. He was amazed by it. He never gave a thought to escaping though due to his physical condition. They did not always have enough to eat but most of the time they did. Once they went four days without food due to the trains not getting through, but the Germans were hungry too. The Great Escape [Annotator's Note: the mass escape of 76 prisoners on 24 and 25 March 1944 from Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Poland] attempt had happened before he had arrived. It was being talked about, it was great that the effort was made despite 50 of them being executed upon recapture. The ones who survived that came back and told them of a number of German families who had assisted them. Angier notes the British had been there for a few years. He recalls they staged a lot of short plays. A local chaplain arranged to get quite a few books in and interviewed a lot of the men and told them about the German people. Some prisoners wrote a lot. Angier sent letters from the camp to his family once in a while, but he received no mail. He had a girlfriend in England who wrote him daily but he only received her letters long after he had been liberated. Red Cross parcels came regularly. They could contain raisins, which were craved, and durable goods like SPAM. It was hard to divide the goods among so many men. Angier says the less you get the better it tastes. Not many would have made it without those parcels. Camp social life was good. He met a man from Pennsylvania who had worked in the county in Vermont where Angier lived. After Angier returned home, they visited each other. A couple of years later this man had a baby who walked into the road and was hit and killed by a car. The man died two or three weeks after that. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks about hearing news from outside.] The prisoners got reports from the Germans which were not accurate and did not say they were retreating. Angier did have a general idea of what was going on as he would hear reports from the soldiers who had a secret radio. One station in England was very good. Angier never saw or listened to this radio and only received news via other prisoners.

John Angier never personally interacted with his German guards at Stalag Luft III-A [Annotator's Note: in Sagan, Poland]. One prisoner was killed when he was standing and looking at the wire that was placed 50 feet from each fence and that they were not to cross over. The winter of 1945 was very cold. They had some fuel which they would save until morning so they could have a warm breakfast. It didn't last long though. The more people in the room the better. They were required to keep their windows open during the night and the guard dogs would look in. Angier and the prisoners were transferred from Stalag III-A to Stalag Luft VII-A [Annotator's Note: in Moosburg, Germany]. They were marched quickly and would sleep in barns. One night they slept in a small church and that was the best due to it being very warm once all of the people were in there. Several prisoners died on the march as they were in really weak condition. Angier felt in relatively good shape until he had to walk a few days. He said he got through it one step at a time. The last day he was stumbling all day and all night when they were suddenly on a paved road. He laid face down on it due to being so exhausted. In the town, he was only able to climb to the third floor of a factory which was covered in dust. He laid down and fell fast asleep. They were given water and some soup but not enough for everyone until the next day. They then marched from there to trains and were crowded on so that two-thirds of them had to stand. Four days and nights on the train and they arrived at a decent prison. Trucks and trains were coming in from the Red Cross. He lost at least 65 pounds during imprisonment.

John Angier was a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft VII-A [Annotator's Note: Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, Germany] STalag VII-A was overcrowded and there was not enough food or water. He feels they did they best they could. More prisoners were dying due to the conditions and the Germans did not have enough food either. They knew it had to end as the Americans were pouring into France and the Germans around them wanted to end it as they were suffering too. The prisoners were concerned about being liberated by the Russians due to stories they had heard about being moved to Russia. The prisoners knew of the battle going on around them and on 30 April 1945, Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton] came in, strutted around, and told them he had a war to win and left. Angier later went to the coast of France to a Red Cross camp where they were fed five small meals a day. Those five weeks were a life saver to Angier who would walk down to the coast and look across nearly every day. He would also walk into Le Havre, France and buy cherries and strawberries which he thought were so good.

[Annotator's Note: John Angier was a prisoner of war in Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, Germany.] The German forces held even with the American forces for a while, and they could see the shells go over the camp. He thinks there were a few prisoners killed in the crossfire between Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton] and the Germans. Angier was in charge of the food for his group and they wanted to eat the remaining food thinking they would be freed soon. They were lying flat on the ground to avoid the flying bullets and eating peanut butter and bread. The American forces crashed through the camp's gate and a soldier was asking for someone named McCracken who was standing right next to Angier. It turned out that the two soldiers were brothers. When Angier saw the American flag raised over the camp it was wonderful. Then Patton took off to fight his war. Reflecting on all of this, Angier says that gratitude for living through it all in pretty fair overall shape is what comes to mind first. He does not dwell on it. He came back to the United States on a ship. He went down to the enlisted ranks below decks to find one of his men and it made him sick. The officers were above deck in fresh air. The ship arrived in New York City in dense fog. Around mid-morning the sun broke through and shone on the Statue of Liberty which he was thought was wonderful. By noon, they docked and went onto small ships up the Hudson River where they got great meals. He was lucky and got on a bus the next morning to somewhere near Boston, Massachusetts, and he went home to Vermont for 60 days before reporting for another 30 days of duty before being put in the US Army Reserve.