Leon Waldman was born in August 1924 on Park Avenue, New York [Annotator’s Note: New York City, New York]. He had one brother and one sister. His father was a tailor whose shop was in their living room. Waldman mainly associated with Irish and Italian kids. He was one of two Jewish kids in the neighborhood. He did not experience anti-Semitism. They would play ball and other activities. When he was 11 years old, he would deliver garments for his father. When he was in high school, he worked for a grocery store. They swam in the Harlem River. They would swim nude. They were outside all day. In New York, they went to specialty schools. He had great friends growing up. He kept in touch with them until they died. Waldman was eating lamb chops during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s], while others were eating potatoes. He graduated high school in August 1942. He was not registered for the draft yet. He got a job working for an arsenal in New Jersey. In November, he enlisted in the Air Force.

Leon Waldman enlisted in the Air Force in November 1942. [Annotator’s Note: Waldman talks about different high schools.] Then he was bussed to Fort Dix, New Jersey. He received his uniform and then was put on a troop train. When they stopped in Baltimore [Annotator’s Note: Baltimore, Maryland], the water fountains were labeled “white” and “colored”, which he had never seen before. They continued on to Miami, Florida. They stayed in hotels along the beach and learned how to shoot guns. They drilled on golf courses. Waldman did well on the radio test. He was sent to Gulfport, Mississippi for mechanics school. They were on 24-hour schedules. Next, they went to Long Beach, California to the Douglas [Annotator’s Note: Douglas Aircraft Company, an American aerospace and defense company based out of California] factory. They were building B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] for Boeing. Waldman was put on C-47s for six weeks. Next, they went to gunnery school for eight weeks in Las Vegas [Annotator’s Note: Las Vegas, Nevada]. They had to learn how to shoot at moving targets. Waldman got airsick the first time he flew.

Once they finished gunnery training, Leon Waldman and the men he was training with were put into crews. He was in the 483rd Bomb Group [Annotator’s Note: 840th Bombardment Squadron, 483rd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. [Annotator’s Note: Waldman talks about the nicknames the crewmen had.] They formed 72 new crews for a new bomb group. They trained as a complete bomb group in Florida. They got 72 new planes at Hunter Field in Georgia. They flew from Georgia to Florida to Trinidad to Northern Brazil to West Africa. They had to put an extra fuel tank in the plane before they crossed the ocean. When they landed in West Africa, the women had pebbles in their cheeks. Then they flew to Morocco and Tunis. They were the last complete bomb group to join the 15th Air Force. Their base was not ready. They had to wait two weeks to join. They landed with the 99th Bombardment Group who had been there since the North African Campaign [Annotator's Note: the Allied invasion of North Africa, codenamed Operation Torch; 8 to 16 November 1942]. The new planes were given to the veterans and they got the old planes. They had leather suits with sheepskin lining. After 11 missions, they got a new plane.

Leon Waldman was a waist gunner on the co-pilot’s side. Their crew flew 51 missions. [Annotator’s Note: Waldman discusses how they counted the missions.] His last mission was to Germany. They were with the 99th Bombardment Group while they waited for their base. They did not know people in the other squadrons. They only knew the men they slept with and their own crew. They would fly seven planes in a squadron. They flew B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and some flew B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. Their first mission was in a plane named the “Bad Penny” in April 1944. Waldman had good training. When the Germans retreated from southern Italy, they stripped the country. When they were in Tunisia, they were next to a salvage yard. They found motorcycles and took them out. They put the bikes in the bomb bay. The crew was intact for 40 missions. The pilot went to town on his bike and crashed. He was crippled and could no longer fly his missions. The squadron kept the six gunners together.

Leon Waldman was able to take leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] after 25 missions. He was a staff sergeant. He did not get along with the co-pilot. He ended up not going on a special mission to Russia. This was the same week as D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Waldman had to dig a hole for the latrine while he waited on base. He flew as a gunner for all his missions. His last mission was to an oil refinery in Germany. By 1944, they had control of the air. As a waist gunner, he rarely had the opportunity to shoot at anything. A ground officer from World War One [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] flew as an observer to Germany. They lost 14 out of 26 planes. The Tuskegee Airmen [Annotator's Note: a group of primarily African-American military pilots and airmen, forming the 332d Expeditionary Operations Group and the 477th Bombardment Group] were supposed to fly with them as the wing. They flew P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] as escorts. They were attacked by dozens of planes without their escort. German fighters could not stay up in the air long. P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightening fighter aircraft] chased them away.

Leon Waldman’s unit [Annotator’s Note: 840th Bombardment Squadron, 483rd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] they got two Presidential Unit Citations. He completed 51 missions and returned to the United States. He had R and R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation] in Atlantic City [Annotator’s Note: Atlantic City, New Jersey], then he went to instructor school for six to eight weeks. He trained guys on the ground a few miles from the base. He would be in the radio room while they would fly in the B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. He learned about flight engineering school later. The B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] was out by then. He applied for the school and made it in. While he was waiting, the war ended in Europe on 8 May 1945. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] had died in April. In the Pacific, they mainly flew the B-29s. They were hammering Japan. He was at his parents' home in New York when he heard a plane crash into the Empire State Building on the radio. He knew the war was over after the bombs hit Japan [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. The Japanese took several days to surrender. Waldman had 87 points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. He was able to go home on 6 September 1945. He was a staff sergeant.

Leon Waldman went for a year to NYU [Annotator’s Note: New York University in New York City, New York]. When he entered the Air Force, they had to have one year of college completed in order to be a pilot. He received 75 dollars a month from the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts, and unemployment]. He was delivering groceries to houses. He was getting 75 cents an hour. His sister knew a manager at a plant for photo engraving, and Waldman went to work there for a while. His parents had moved to the East Bronx [Annotator's Note: the Bronx is one of the five boroughs in New York, New York] during the war. The unions were the ones who assigned the apprenticeships. Waldman could not get into the union. They did the color work for magazines and newspapers. He applied for the Air Cadet program and was accepted in spring of 1950. He quit his job and went to Florida. He was in Miami [Annotator’s Note: Miami, Florida] for three months before the Air Force called him up. He went through two months of pre-flight training. The next few months were ground training. They gave him 20 hours, but then washed him out.

Leon Waldman wanted to make his service a career. Navigators do not become generals. He would have been a light colonel if he went for a navigator. [Annotator’s Note: Waldman discusses what happened to a friend who became a prisoner of war.] Waldman became an insurance agent.