John Paul was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in February 1920. The Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s] started in 1929. There were five children in his family and his father was out of work for about two years. It was not a good time. He was in school. The biggest problem was no money and they lived from day to day until World War 2 started. They had their gas and electricity turned off because they could not pay the bill. They could not buy gas for their car. The Depression left a lasting effect on those who went through it. Paul would get up at five o'clock in the morning and sell newspapers before going to school. He made 15 cents and he would give ten cents to his mother. [Annotator's Note: Paul gets emotional mentioning his mother.] Ten cents would buy two loaves of bread. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Paul if he remembers what his family thought about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States.] They hoped things were going to be better. Paul was nine years old when the Depression started. He was 17 when he graduated from high school and things were somewhat better. His first job then was driving a grocery delivery truck. He made eight dollars a week for 60 hours of work. Work was so scarce you took anything you could get. He then drove taxis. He was aware of the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps] but was not old enough to join. He remembers Germany invading Poland in 1939. The American people did not take it too seriously. Nobody thought too much about Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and what was happening in Europe. Paul was not nervous about the draft. A lot of his friends were drafted. Paul was working in a shipyard making patterns for Liberty ships [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship; Paul describes the process in detail] when Pearl Harbor happened [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Nobody took it very seriously and thought we would knock off the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] in two or three weeks. After Pearl Harbor, people who wanted to pick their outfits enlisted. Most of his friends were going in, so Paul decided to enlist in the aviation cadet unit of the Army Air Forces. He thought he might as well learn to do something worthwhile later on, if he survived. His parents were not too happy. He enlisted in July 1945 [Annotator's Note: he means 1942] but did not get called until February 1943.

[Annotator's Note: John Paul enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1942 and was called to active duty in February 1943.] His first station was Nashville, Tennessee and then he went to Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama [Annotator's Note: now Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama] for classification. It was new for him. Most of the men had never been away from home for any length of time. Paul had no problem with the training. He wanted to be a pilot. He first flew in Arcadia, Florida at Dorr Field. A neighbor of his was the instructor pilot there. He started on PT-13s [Annotator's Note: Boeing-Stearman Model 75 Kaydet or PT-13 primary trainer aircraft] and checked out as a pilot. After that training, he went to Gunter Field, Montgomery in Alabama [Annotator's Note: now Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama] and flew monoplanes which were faster and more difficult to fly. There were accidents and cadets were lost. The last phase of training was in Blytheville, Arkansas in twin-engine Cessnas. He completed that training in October 1943. He got his wings and was commissioned. His mother and girlfriend had visited him in Montgomery, Alabama. Traveling was difficult then and it was a long, arduous trip. Paul felt like he accomplished what he set out to do. He went from Blytheville to Columbus, Ohio to Lockbourne Army Air Base [Annotator's Note: Army Airfield, Lockbourne, Ohio; now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] where he learned to fly the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. It was a spectacular airplane. He then went to Fort Myers, Florida to Buckingham Army Airfield to the aerial gunnery school. He flew gunners up and down the coast for four or five months. He signed up for combat and went to Ardmore, Oklahoma for operational training. He was scheduled to go overseas from Lincoln, Nebraska. He got his crew at Ardmore. A couple of days before Christmas, they flew from Lincoln to the East Coast [Annotator's Note: East Coast of the United States]. They went to Goose Bay, Labrador and Gander, Newfoundland. It was a terrible winter.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks bomber pilot John Paul how he managed his crew.] The military is not a democracy. He learned he was in charge of what was happening on the plane. He had to assume the responsibility and the authority to take care of the crew. All of the guys were young. He never had any problems until they got overseas. They took the northern route from Newfoundland to Greenland to Iceland and then Scotland. They did not walk around in Iceland because it was so cold, and daylight was very short. There was nothing there but ice and snow. They landed into an avalanche. There are still some planes there in the ice and snow. He arrived in Scotland the week before the end of the year [Annotator's Note: 1943]. He spent New Year's [Annotator's Note: 1 January 1944] in Dublin [Annotator's Note: Dublin, Ireland]. He then ferried over to England [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Podington in Bedfordshire, England] and was assigned to his base and the 92nd Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. He was extremely curious about the missions, and how they were flown, and the rate of loss of planes. They kept busy. He flew his first mission shortly after arriving. If the weather was good, they flew. The weather in England was not good the first part of the year. There was fog, rain, damp, and cold. Weather ships were sent out to see if the targets were feasible to bomb. He celebrated New Year's 1944 there [Annotator's Note: 1 January 1944].

John Paul and his aircrew arrived in England in January 1944. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Paul if he flew any missions for Big Week, Operation Argument, 20 to 25 February 1944] He flew his first mission on the 15th [Annotator's Note: 15 January 1944] to Freiburg, Germany. The next mission was 17 January to Amsterdam, Holland. After that, almost all of the targets were in Germany. Where it really hit him that he was in combat was when there was a lot of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. There were not many fighter attacks at that point in the war. You could not do much about flak. You just flew your mission. When reaching the initial bomb target point, the plane was turned over to the bombardier. As a pilot, it made Paul feel helpless. The pilot never saw much because your eyes were on the formation. There were several missions where the airplane was shot up badly. On one to Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] one engine was shot up and the hydraulic lines were shot out. They flew back to England that way. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Paul to describe a day of a mission.] They did not know where they were going when they got up in the morning. Usually, a sergeant would wake them up. It always startled Paul. It was always cold, damp, and unpleasant. They had to be careful about what they ate because at high altitude any gas would expand. You could not relieve yourself at mission altitude, it's 30 [Annotator's Note: 30 degrees] below zero and there were no toilets. They would get briefed on where they were going and what to expect. He would talk to the crew chief about the plane. Depending on weather, they would take off. He had three instrument take-offs out of his 34 missions. [Annotator's Note: Paul starts to get emotional.] Getting off the ground was the scariest part of the mission. Some planes went down at the end of the runway. Once in the air, they went to a rallying point to form up. They took off one right after the other. It would take about an hour to form up and head off, 90 percent of the time to Germany. They would not get escorts until they got over France. Prior in the war, the escorts were limited by fuel. Later in the war, the P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] could escort them in and back out. Going to Berlin or Dresden [Annotator's Note: Dresden, Germany] was eight to nine hours in the air. He never saw any escorts over the target areas on long missions. He remembers seeing his first P-51 and he was happy to see it. The Germans had the first jet plane, the Me-262 [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter aircraft]. The first time he saw one was on a mission to Hamburg, Germany. It was surprising to see a plane with no propellors and they were very fast. If they [Annotator's Note: Germany] had built enough of them, they would not have been able to continue bombing. The cities were not targeted until near the end of the war when the Germans started bombing London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. Allied targets were mostly industry like ball bearing plants and munitions factories. They were picked because they would reduce the German war effort. He does not know how accurate the bombs were. They could not see much of what happened and he never saw the damage. The war ended mostly because of the bombing efforts. He thought a lot about the people he was bombing. He was never happy about bombing cities indiscriminately. A lot of innocent people were getting killed. War is hell. There is no other way to describe it.

[Annotator's Note: John Paul served in the US Army Air Forces as a pilot flying Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers with the 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force out of England.] When he returned from a mission, he was pretty tired. They would go to a debriefing, where they could have a shot of cognac if they wanted. He would have two of them if he could get them. They had not had anything to eat for the last ten to 12 hours before this. [Annotator's Note: the interviewer asks Paul what it was like to see the empty bunks of men who had been shot down.] The bunks did not remain empty for long. Someone would go in and clear everything out. New people were assigned within a day or two to help keep up morale. After the war was over, Paul's original copilot and bombardier lived in Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. He and his wife would go visit him. On one trip, there was a B-17 at a local airfield, and they went to see it. [Annotator's Note: Paul tells a story of a man who was also there who had been in 92nd Bombardment Group at Royal Air Force Podington, Bedfordshire, England as well and he starts to get emotional.] The man was a sergeant and he had been assigned to pack up the belongings of the men who had not returned from a mission. Paul corresponded with his family during the war. Letters from home meant a lot. They would get the Stars and Stripes newspaper [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper]. They did not get much news about how things were going. Paul was not in the area on D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. A lot of people lost their lives on that day. It was just a statistic to the people planning the invasion. He was glad to see it finally come about. If it had not come, we would have a different world than we have today.

John Paul and his crew had flown about five missions when his engineer told him he could not fly anymore. He said that once he got into the combat zone, he could not function. He was the top turret gunner as well as engineer and was the oldest man on the crew, about 28 years old. He just stopped flying and Paul never saw him again. He could not help it; he was useless as a crew member. There was one other case that Paul heard of that involved a copilot who grabbed the wheel when they came into flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] and tried to turn around. His plane did not have a name, most of them did not. He was just happy to get a mission over and get back. They did not have the same plane every time. He flew seven missions in seven days twice, that is called maximum effort. [Annotator's Note: Paul gets slightly emotional.] When that is over, you do not care if you get killed. Flying formation in a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] is a very arduous thing. It is like getting up in the morning and not eating anything, then going to the gym and hoisting weights for eight hours straight. It is a constant shifting of the plane and trying to maintain position. It is extremely tiring. He flew lead once. On a mission, the speed was 150 miles per hour. The lead ship had to be almost perfect at maintaining that speed. At altitude, it was hard to do. The jets were powerful at that altitude. Once he got out of formation and could not get back.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks John Paul what it was like to see Berlin, Germany as the target for the first time in a mission briefing.] It was not good, every time. There were a lot of derogatory comments made. Berlin was the most heavily fortified city in Europe and the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] was terrible. You knew there would be people who were not coming back. You thought it would not be you, but the law of averages catches up. On a mission to Hamburg [Annotator's Note: Hamburg, Germany], he saw a 262 [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter aircraft]. In the debrief, they wanted to know what he had seen. Fortunately, not many were made. In the movie "Command Decision" [Annotator's Note: Command Decision, 1949 war film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer], a General asks an advisor if they should hit a city in reference to the 262. In Holland, they bombed sub pens with Disney bombs [Annotator's Note: 4,500 pound concrete piercing, rocket assisted bomb; also called the Disney Swish. Paul describes how the bomb was supposed to work.] When he saw the two bombs hanging on the wings, he knew why they were bombing from 12,000 feet. [Annotator's Note: Paul laughs.] They never got any feedback on whether or not the bombs worked. His plane had a reporter on board. They did not encounter any fighters. The tail gunner was screaming about the flak popping behind them.

John Paul flew 34 missions as a bomber pilot [Annotator's Note: with the 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. The quota [Annotator's Note: tour of duty] was 35. On his 34th mission, he went down over Dresden, Germany. Another plane collided with him on 17 April 1945. That was the end of the war for Paul. They were heading into Germany with hundreds of planes. They had been told of a cloud layer over the target. They were going to fly just under the cloud layer. The Germans were pretty accurate with ack-ack [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. The prop [Annotator's Note: propellor] wash from the plane in front makes it almost impossible to control the plane. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Paul about what they did about the people who made the choices of how they flew. Paul says you just did what you were told.] They did not drop their bombs because the lead ship did not drop theirs. The group commander was faced with deciding to bomb the secondary target or get back in the bomber stream. He decided to get into the stream. This was all futile because Dresden was not a military target. They all had to do a 360 [Annotator's Note: 360 degree turn, or a full circle turnaround] and try to get back in line. Everyone was at the same altitude which made it hard to squeeze in. There were airplanes everywhere. The guy off of Paul's wing crashed into the top of them. They still had all of their bombs. Paul was knocked unconscious. He came to laying in the escape hatch underneath the pilot's seat. The plane was spinning down. He tried to get up but could not, so he just dropped out of the hatch. He got out at about 17,000 feet and the parachute worked. German soldiers were waiting when he hit the ground. They were just outside of Dresden, which was being bombed. Some civilians were trying to get them. They did get the copilot and the next day the stormtroopers [Annotator's Note: SS, or Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] executed him. The two soldiers that took Paul were Wehrmacht [Annotator's Note: unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, 1935 to 1945] and abided by the Geneva Convention [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war] pretty well. He started thinking about what was going to happen. He had dropped his gun on the way down on purpose. Two or three other guys landed there too. They boarded a streetcar and were taken to a jail for a couple of nights. Only the two planes that collided were lost. Only Paul, his copilot, and the tail gunner made it out of his plane. Once the plane is spinning out of control, it is extremely difficult to get out of it.

[Annotator's Note: John Paul served in the US Army Air Forces as a pilot flying Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers with the 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force.] The crew varied on almost every mission. They did not have any waist gunners for the last few months because there were very few fighter attacks. By that time in the war, most people thought it would be over within a month and it was. The Germans were thinking about protecting themselves. The guys who had them [Annotator's Note: the Germans who had captured Paul after his aircraft crashed as a result of a mid-air collision] just wanted to get rid of them. There were some old men there they turned loose. There was a prisoner of war camp at Moosburg [Annotator's Note: Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, Germany] that they were trying to get them to. In the daytime, they would hitchhike. The rail service was shot up. They had nothing to eat and no way to carry water. That was the biggest problem. The guards ate what they ate; they were all scrounging. They came across a Red Cross, horse-drawn wagon train. The guards convinced them to get a box of food. They traded a lot with the Germans. They stopped once at a place that sold booze to get hot water to make tea. A Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] guy came up who wanted to trade cigarettes for jam. It was hysterical. The Germans were down to the bare bones of eating. They had bread and lard to eat. They eventually got to Czechoslovakia where there was a British prisoner of war camp; Pilsen [Annotator's Note: Pilsen, Czechoslovakia; now Plzeň, Czech Republic]. The British had been captured in North Africa. Paul and his men stayed there until the war ended. They were liberated [Annotator's Note: on 6 May 1945] by Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] Armored Division [Annotator's Note: 16th Armored Division, 3rd Army]. There was a lot of freedom involved. The British knew the people in town already and what food was available. After that, they stayed a couple of days after the war ended. He then went to Regensburg [Annotator's Note: Regensburg, Germany] and stayed in the Messerschmitt factory [Annotator's Note: Messerschmitt AG, German aircraft manufacturing corporation]. He then went to Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France]. He was elated when the tanks rolled in to liberate them. He did not want to get captured by the Russians. His family had received a telegram that he was missing in action. They were later notified that he had been released.

John Paul returned home on a 14 day boat trip to Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, New York]. His original bombardier and copilot were there with all of his belongings. Most of the guys on the boat were POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war], thousands of them from all service branches. There were a lot of people waiting for the boat to come in. Paul did not worry about claiming POW status. He goes to the VA [Annotator's Note: United States Department of Veterans Affairs] and has told them he was a POW but did not press the issue. The war was odd. We think of medals as something that was desired. In the Air Force, if you flew five missions and came back safely, you got an Air Medal [Annotator's Note: US Armed Forces medal for single acts of heroism or meritorious achievement while in aerial flight]. He got a Distinguished Flying Cross [Annotator's Note: US Armed Forces award for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight], but he did not get anything but the letter awarding it to him. He should have gotten a Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy], but he never pushed for any of them. It is tough dealing with the bureaucracy. Paul does not think anyone can go through combat without having it affect them. That is why there is PTSD [Annotator's Note: post traumatic stress disorder]. The guys on the ground are the worst off because they put up with inhuman conditions. It has to affect you. You lose a lot of friends. He does not know if his military life helped in his personal life. He had a wife and child. He thought about staying in the service. He does not know of any pilot who stayed in. He thinks it is very important that kids today understand that the price of freedom is high. He was surprised at a dinner with his daughters and their families when one father asked his children what they should give thanks for and the oldest said "freedom." Paul thought that was unusual. [Annotator's Note: Paul gets emotional.] Paul asked him why he said that, and the boy said they were learning about the cost of freedom in school. Kids at a certain age should know that what they have in this country cannot be taken for granted. Paul thinks The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] is necessary. Paul says he would tell future viewers not to take freedom for granted. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks people off screen if they have questions. One person asks about a particular person being in Boston, Massachusetts when he arrived.] Paul's crew had family. There were a lot of children who lost their fathers. He met his infant daughter when he arrived home.