Maurice Hackler was born in 1922, the second of two sons, in Cherryville, Kansas where his parents owned and operated a novelty store. The victims of bank fraud, Hackler's parents lost everything and moved the family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his father managed a large department store until the Great Depression put him out of work, never to regain his former financial stature. When Hackler graduated high school in 1940 he wanted to become a pilot, but at the time the Army Air Corps required potential aviation officers to be 21 years of age or older, and have a minimum of two years of higher education, so he was ineligible. After war was declared and requirements were relaxed, Hackler tried again to get into the USAAC and was accepted.

On the morning of Sunday, 7 December 1941, Maurice Hackler and a friend were driving to a wildlife area to go rabbit hunting when they heard the news on the radio about the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. At that time, they had no idea of the gravity of the situation. Soon afterward, the Army Air Corps cadet program opened up, and in August [Annotator's Note: August 1942] he and several of his buddies enlisted. He was inducted at Lawton, Oklahoma and sent to Camp Livingston in Alexandria, Louisiana where he was assigned to a "casual detachment." In late January 1943, Hackler went to Santa Anna, California where he underwent coordination tests, then went to Thunderbird Field 2 at Phoenix, Arizona, and trained in Stearman biplanes [Annotator's Note: Stearman PT-17 primary trainer aircraft]. At Minter Field in Bakersfield, California, Hackler washed out of pilot training because he couldn't handle the flaps. He was sent back to Santa Anna, California and trained as a bombardier.

For bombardier training, Maurice Hackler went to Deming, New Mexico. He worked with the Norden bombsight over the desert, and in the latter part of the program was instructed in navigation. Hackler described the rotation process by which the recruits learned all bombardier and navigator positions. He later operated as a navigator on three missions, and it earned him a promotion to First Lieutenant. From there he went to Lincoln, Nebraska where he was assigned to a crew in the Eighth Air Force and sent to Ardmore, Oklahoma for crew training. This was where the crew got acquainted; his pilot had been an instructor in single, twin and four-engine aircraft, and "could do anything in that B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]." Hackler went on to describe the other crew members, and their particular characteristics. He became close friends with the copilot, and flew 35 missions with almost all of the close-knit group.

When Maurice Hackler went overseas, he was a member of a crew flying a single B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] from Kearney, Nebraska to the north of England. Hackler recalled that he had been entrusted with the crew's papers, and when they arrived they were told to take only their personal belongings off the aircraft. He was baffled to see the plane take off, and when he was asked to show the papers, he couldn't produce them because they had gone off in the plane. The whole crew had to sit and wait until the documents could be retrieved. Hackler was stationed at Molesworth [Annotator's Note: Molesworth, England], and regarded his service as the "Hollywood Air Force." The routine was to rise early, fly five to eight hours and return, clean up, dine on china plates, maybe go to the movie theater or watch other guys play cards, and go to bed about nine at night. He mentioned that the crewmembers autographed the tailfins of the bombs they dropped. The crew didn't know what to expect on their first mission, which was to Merseburg. It was a high casualty target but Hackler said he found it a "milk run" [Annotator's Note: slang term for an easy mission]. They never flew over Merseburg again, but he said after the fifth or sixth mission they "began to get serious." He recalled one mission during which they encountered a great deal of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], and in joking with his copilot, Hackler commented "a guy can get hurt up here." Hackler said he was never concerned about flying, until his last three flights when he began to think "perhaps" he wouldn't go home. He admitted, he thinks for the first time, that at the IP [Annotator's Note: initial point of a bomb run] of each mission he would pray, "Lord, if this be it, make it complete." The result was that he was perfectly happy flying.

Out of 35 missions, Maurice Hackler only had one mission he considered a close call. He was flying deputy, watching the lead aircraft, and the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] between his plane and the lead was extremely heavy. When the lead dropped his bombs, and Hackler toggled his, there was flak exploding all around and he saw a "big, red ball of fire... big as a two-bedroom house" that after flaring immediately imploded into a black cloud. Hackler's plane flew right through it. After he dropped his bombs, he realized the sight glass right in front of him had been blown out. He felt around his body, and it seemed to be intact, but as he looked on a straight line behind he saw a hole in the metal roof of the plane. The projectile had passed his right shoulder as he leaned left to watch the lead plane. Hackler said he collected a lot of little pieces of shrapnel, some that had ricocheted around him, and has kept them always.

When Maurice Hackler got to England, he stayed at Bovington for about a week, and experienced air raid warnings for the V-1 rocket [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse-jet rocket bomb] attacks that were aimed at London. After several nights of getting out of bed for nothing, Hackler stayed in bed when the alarms sounded. He heard what sounded like a personnel truck slowly passing down the road. Next day at lunch the air raid signal went off, and he once again ignored it, but he heard the "truck" coming down the road again. He looked out the window and saw a V-1 bomb "putt-putting" across the sky. When it went silent, he took cover, and heard the bomb explode in a wooded area nearby. When he arrived at Molesworth, England, Hackler was assigned to the 360th Squadron of the 303rd Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 360th Bombardment Squadron, 303rd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. His crew was allocated space in the barracks of a group that had been lost over Denmark, and walking in was "a little spooky." When he was checking out the bunks for one he wanted to occupy, he was advised that no one who slept there completed his tour; Hackler selected it anyway. He said airmen didn't get closely acquainted with other guys in the barracks because "you wouldn't know them very long."

The usual aim points for a bombing mission that Maurice Hackler flew were manufacturing, oil and transportation, particularly aircraft factories and marshaling yards. The aircraft employed radar, located in the radio room of the aircraft, and Hackler described the practices used in concert by the radioman and bombardier. He was never concerned about the targets for his missions, except when it came to bombing at Cologne [Annotator's Note: Cologne, Germany]; there he was worried about hitting the Cologne Cathedral. The aiming point was the marshaling yard just across the street, and the cathedral was visible in the crosshairs of the bombsight, but they didn't damage the church. Cologne and Mannheim-Ludwigshafen [Annotator's Note: Mannheim, Germany and Ludwigshafen, Germany are separated by the Rhine River] were their targets six times each; but the most flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] he encountered was at Frankfurt [Annotator's Note: Frankfurt, Germany], and it was the "spookiest" mission he flew. He could see flak that they were flying into, but most often he couldn't see the target at all, and action was driven strictly by radar readings. His thoughts often went to people on the ground, but felt that they had warning and had plenty of time to reach shelter. Watching an American plane go down in flames, followed by a long stream of fire, was dreadful.

On the last mission that Maurice Hackler flew over Ludwigshafen [Annotator's Note: Ludwigshafen, Germany], his aircraft had approached the Rhine River, south of their target which was a bridge, when they encountered pink flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], and clouds moved in, so they had to switch on and off radar twice. When the clouds opened up, like a doughnut, the aircraft was right over the bridge. As a result, they missed the bridge by about seven miles. Misses were not uncommon. In 35 missions, Hackler said, he never experienced a fighter attack, and except for one occasion, the flak he encountered was distant. There is nothing to be done when an aircraft is flying through flak but sit it out, Hackler said, and he liked to joke that in the aircraft's bombardier position he had a front row seat in the balcony of World War 2. In the plane's "blister" he could look up, down, left or right and straight ahead, but couldn't look behind, so he couldn't see most of the other aircraft in the squadron [Annotator's Note: 360th Bombardment Squadron, 303rd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. He thought the movie "Memphis Belle" was melodramatic, and mentioned that after their second or third mission his crew started getting together after a flight to discuss the action; there was an agreement that when they relayed information on the interphone, it would be in a normal tone. He recalled that his navigator, who went home after his ninth mission, was hit in the arm on that flight, and was beating on Hackler's back, insisting that he do something about the situation. Hackler put him off until after he dropped his bombs and closed the bomb-bay doors. The man had a tear in his jacket and a minor scratch on his arm, and had overreacted; Hackler said the crew didn't approve of his overall behavior, and didn't miss him when he was replaced after the flight. A package the man received after he left for home was not sent back.

Maurice Hackler recalled having been sent to Czechoslovakia, but they could only do visual bombing in that country. Cloud cover prevented the mission, so they turned to the alternate, Dresden [Annotator's Note: Dresden, Germany]. After they hit their target, the ball turret gunner called to the waist gunner, pleading, "Pete, help me out; I've been hit." Pete answered, "I can't. I've been hit, too." Hackler took his "walk around bottle" [Annotator's Note: a portable bottle of oxygen], and went through the plane checking on the crew. He found the waist gunner lying on the floor beneath the left window armor plate, but the man gave him the "OK" sign, and Hackler moved on to the ball turret gunner who was standing by the window, with his heated jacket torn at the elbow. When Hackler got a knife and attempted to cut into the jacket; sparks flew everywhere because the heated suit was still turned on. Hackler persisted and found only slight damage to the loose skin behind the man's elbow. Nevertheless, he was awarded a Purple Heart for the wound. After flying his last mission, Hackler described the blind landing they had to make on return to the base because of dense fog. Two other airplanes were at cross purposes for the same landing and Hackler's plane had to move its landing to an alternate air base. He found it ironic that he had completed his last mission but couldn't get back to base. Next day he learned that a lead pilot he knew had lost his life in a mid-air collision.

Maurice Hackler's final mission gave him some concern. The departure of his pilot after Hackler's 30th mission meant that he had to join another crew that he didn't know or trust, and as togglier, he didn't have much to do. His last mission was to Mannheim [Annotator's Note: Mannheim, Germany], and Hackler remembers that on this trip, and all the others, he wore a single panel out of an olive green silk parachute as a scarf, and considered it a good luck charm. He was asked to sign up for a second tour, and offered what was supposed to seem like an attractive opportunity, but after thinking about it, Hackler declined. He had been reflecting on all the guys who were enduring hardships during the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], and he let it be known that if he signed up again, he would only fly ground support missions. The recruiter couldn't guarantee that, and Hackler said, "Goodbye." In mid-February [Annotator's Note: February 1945], two or three weeks after his final mission, he went to Scotland where he and one other navigator were the only passengers assigned to a C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymster cargo aircraft] flying to LaGuardia airport in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. When he arrived in the United States, Hackler knelt down and kissed the ground. He brought home some unprocessed film, which he was supposed to turn in at customs, but he feared he would never see them again, so he smuggled them through in a tobacco package. He did claim possession of a decommissioned German "potato masher" hand grenade, and it was confiscated on the spot.

On his return to the United States, Maurice Hackler was stationed at Camp Chaffe, Arkansas. He recieved a 30 day furlough then returned to Santa Monica, California for processing. From there he went to Midland, Texas to retrain. He was given five choices for reassignment, and although he chose Post Exchange Officer, he became a rehab instructor for guys returning from combat. One of Hackler's two students, a first lieutenant who had served in the Pacific as a skip bomber, had one bomb to drop to complete his record. They flew out on a compass calibration mission, and the student asked if he could complete his record with a toggle bombing; Hackler agreed. When Hackler looked up from filling out paperwork for the mission, he saw the target five feet below the plane; two guys in the back of the plane had talked the plane's rooky pilot into skip bombing, and instead of keeping the plane at its minimum 500 foot altitude, they were so low that sand was flying up through the open bomb bay doors. The student dropped his bomb, and when the plane was inspected after landing there was an open hole in the wing, the lower canvas of the wing was in shreds, the metal framework pocked, and Hackler said the plane could never fly again. The pilot was court martialed and Hackler had to cancel his leave, he was going home to be married, to attend the proceedings. He felt sorry for the pilot, and didn't want to testify against him. Hackler was advised by the pilot's attorney that he could avoid having to testify by pleading the 5th Amendment rather than answer questions related to altitude, which he did. During the break period, the Provost Marshall called Hackler out and required him to sign one of two prepared documents: either the 104th Article of War or a General Court Martial with discharge. In signing the 104th Article, Hackler lost any chance of advancement.

Maurice Hackler eventually made it home to marry on 14 July 1945 and was later discharged from the Army Air Forces on 28 September 1945, after the war had ended. He stayed in the reserves, remaining a first lieutenant, until 1 April 1953. When he left active duty, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill for an education at Tulsa University [Annotator's Note: University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma] for one semester, then moved to Oklahoma A&M [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College or Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State University or OSU, in Stillwater, Oklahoma] where he completed his degree in mechanical engineering in 1950. Through the years, the World War 2 experience that he has thought most about is when a projectile passed just above his shoulder during a flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] attack. He noted that he only intentionally left his base at Molesworth, England one time, to go by truck to the Bedford USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations]. The room he entered had a big peat fire blazing, but there was nobody around. He sat down in the easy chair in front of the fire and waited about a half hour, but still finding himself alone, he returned to base. At one point he was sent to a Rest and Recreation facility for about a week, where he got acquainted with the two Red Cross girls who ran the place, but never participated in the activities. He remembers walking from there into town and sampling a local meat pie, and was disappointed to find it savory, rather than sweet, and threw it away.

In closing, Maurice Hackler declared that he fought in World War 2 in order to become a pilot. He intended to use that experience to build airplanes after the war. As it turned out, he became an aeronautical engineer with Cessna Aircraft building metal furniture for the military, but eventually became section head over the T-37 [Annotator's Note: Cessna T-37 Tweet trainer aircraft] primary trainer program, and accomplished what he set out to do. When he left Cessna, he worked for Aero Commander, in preliminary design for jet commercial business aircraft. Hackler recounted that among his aeronautical accomplishments he had been a pilot, a bombardier, a navigator, and an aircraft builder. He said the war changed his life by enabling him to return to school under the G.I. Bill, and today he views the war as "just an event that happened," and a busy period of time in his life. Asked what he thinks the war means to Americans of today, he responded that it prevented Germany from taking over England, and, in turn, America. He believes it important for institutions such as The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] to teach the lessons of what he called "an honorable war," one that "cleared the disposition of people's thinking" about America's reasons for fighting, "...and the Holocaust... and D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]” which need to be remembered.