[Annotator's Note: Interview begins with Paul Dietzel and the interviewer talking about LORAN and flying over the vast Pacific Ocean.] Paul Dietzel was born in September 1924 and grew in Mansfield, Ohio. He attended Mansfield Senior High School where he played numerous sports. He was in speech class one day when his teacher had him give a five minute speech on what gold would not buy. After the speech, the teacher took Dietzel to the principal's office and changed Dietzel's class schedule to get him ready for college. This move changed Dietzel's life. Another life changing event occurred when he was walking home one evening and passed one of the classrooms and heard a clicking sound coming from it. He looked inside and saw a very good looking girl. He went in and started talking to her and asked if he could walk her home. She said no. He tried for over a month to get a date with her but she would not have anything to do with him. He was finally able to get a date with her and they soon started going steady. After graduation, she went to Miami of Ohio and he went to Duke on a football scholarship. They did not see much of each other but corresponded a lot. In the middle of his freshman year he learned that he was going to be drafted so he went back home to Mansfield. He did not want to go into the infantry. He wanted to fly so he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. When he did, he had trouble passing his eye exam. The first time he went in he memorized the eye chart and when he went back the next day he was able to pass the test. The greatest thing he ever did was join the Army Air Corps. Dietzel feels that every high school student should serve at least a year in the military. Dietzel married his wife, Anne, prior to going overseas. They were married at Smyrna Army Air Base [Annotator's Note: Smyrna Army Airfield]. Whenever they moved from base to base they were not supposed to bring any dependents with them but they did not listen to that rule. Everywhere Dietzel went, Anne went with him. They would rent a room from people in the towns near the bases he was sent to. Times were different then and they were always able to find a nice place to stay. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee they stayed with an elderly lady who was wonderful to them. She insisted that they use her china and silver whenever they wanted to have people over. They did not have much food because of rationing. For Thanksgiving, he had five or six of the guys that he flew with over. They had chicken and some sides.

From there [Annotator's Note: Smyrna Army Airfield, Tennessee], Paul Dietzel was sent to Lincoln Army Air Base for Classification. The weather was freezing. Every day they had to report to the base to see if their names were on a list. If they were not then they went home and returned the next day. During this time, Dietzel started building model airplanes again and Anne got a job in the candy department at Glowes Department Store [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling]. The department store invited all of their employees, most of who had husbands in the Army, to a nice Thanksgiving dinner after which they held a dance at the Lincoln Hotel. From Lincoln, they went out to California which was to be their take off place [Annotator's Note: where he would deploy overseas from]. Prior to that, he had gone to transition at Clovis Army Air Base in Clovis, New Mexico. Every night they ate at the officers club. By then, Dietzel was a lieutenant. They would eat and go to dances at the officer's club at night and would fly during the day. They started doing a lot of long range flights. One time, they flew from Clovis to Chicago then from Chicago to Los Angeles then from Los Angeles back to Clovis. While flying over Los Angeles, Dietzel reported to the control center that they were over the base at 33,000 feet. The control center had him repeat his altitude which he did. They could not believe that an airplane could get up that high. Dietzel's plane could because it was pressurized [Annotator's Note: Dietzel was flying a Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. From Clovis they went to Sacremento. One day, Dietzel got his orders for overseas deployment. He and Anne had only been married for a couple months and leaving her was very difficult. The deployment was hard on the wives too. When Dietzel left, Anne went back to Ohio. Dietzel flew from California to the Hawaiian Islands then from there to Kwajalein. When they got to Kwajalein there was an air raid in progress and they had to get down on the ground fast. Dietzel flew to Kwajalein in a brand new B-29 and with the same crew he had been flying with. When they arrived, the new plane was taken away from them and they were given an older plane that had flown a number of missions. Additionally, the airplane commander on his plane, Herb Kent, was transferred to another crew and was replaced by the commander of the plane they were given, Major Leroy Arants [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] from Mississippi. Arants was a chain smoker and Dietzel was a non smoker. Their new plane was named the Banana Boat.

Paul Dietzel flew from the Hawaiian Islands over Kwajalein to Tinian. During the flight they had not had anything to home in on. When they got to Tinian there was an air raid in progress and they had to get down on the ground fast. Dietzel flew to Tinian in a brand new B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] and with the same crew he had been flying with. When they arrived, the new plane was taken away from them and they were given an older plane that had flown a number of missions. Additionally, the airplane commander on his plane, Major Herb Kent, was transferred to another crew and he was replaced by the commander of the plane they were given, Major Leroy Arants [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] from Mississippi. Their new plane was named the Banana Boat. Tinian is an interesting island. It is nothing but a coral rock. Army engineers said that runways could not be built on the coral but the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of naval construction battalions] on the island, who were older men who had been engineers in civilian life, built four 9,000 foot runways in less than six weeks. Those runways are still there. Dietzel was assigned to the 313th Wing, 6th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 6th Bombardment Group] under Colonel Ken Gibson [Annotator's Note: Colonel Kenneth H. Gibson]. They lived in Quonset huts. It is very hot on the island. The Seabees did a lot for them. The group had a liquor locker. Every new plane that arrived was usually full of liquor. It cost 40 dollars to join the liquor locker. Every couple of weeks, each member of the liquor locker could get two bottle of liquor. They could get one bottle of something good, like Jack Daniels, and a bottle of rot gut. They had a lot of liquor but not much beer. They could buy anything with liquor. Dietzel bought an inner spring mattress. They would fill up their canteen cups with liquor then would give it to the Seabees who would give them snow ice in return. Other than what the Seabees had, there was no ice on Tinian. When they had to slow time an engine they would take the Seabees up and let them fly. The Seabees would invite them over to dinner and would serve French fries and steak. The island is higher on one side than on the other. On one side they were right on the ocean and on the other side they were about 40 feet above the water. They would take off going uphill.

[Annotator's Note: Paul Dietzel served in the USAAF as a copilot on Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombers in the 40th Bombardment Squadron, 6th Bombardment Group, 313th Bomb Wing, 20th Air Force based on Tinian.] The missions they flew at first were scary. They were very dangerous. There were two wings based on Tinian and one each on Saipan and Guam. Tinian had more airplanes than the other two. After taking off, they had to fly past Iwo Jima which was about halfway to the Japanese empire. As soon as they took off there would be a Betty [Annotator's Note: Mitsubishi G4M medium bomber] up there that would alert Iwo Jima that they were coming. When they got to Iwo Jima there would be enemy fighters up above waiting for them. After they cleared Iwo Jima, the enemy planes would report their position to units in Japan which would be waiting for them there as well. Then, after they dropped their bombs or mines, they would have to fly back right past Iwo again. They did not have any fighter escort because they did not have the range. Dietzel has the highest regard for the Marines who captured Iwo Jima. It is a long flight from Tinian. They flew at a speed of about 260 miles per hour. The B-29 was a wonderful airplane after training in the B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. The B-29 is pressurized and designed to drop bombs from high altitude. After Iwo Jima had been taken, Dietzel's aircraft was forced to land there. After the war they were sent a Presidential Unit Citation for taking part of the longest mission of the war. When they touched down on Iwo Jima the temporary control tower called them and told them to clear the next exit because there was still fighting going on at the end of the runway. That was the first time Dietzel ever heard rounds striking his aircraft. When Dietzel was flying, he always kept a detailed log of his missions. Being able to land on Iwo Jima saved many B-29s. There were also P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] based on Iwo Jima that were able to attack any Japanese fighters that were attacking the B-29s. During that mission they were tasked with mining the coast of Korea. To get there they had to fly over the Japanese home islands. They were all wearing flak suits in case the plane was hit. As soon as they took off, George took over control of the plane. George was the nickname they gave to the aircraft's autopilot which flew the plane all the way out and all the way back. This particular mission was late in the war. They were on their way back and had just cleared the Japanese mainland. By this time the Japanese were using kamikazes. The B-29 crewmen referred to the suicide planes as balls of fire. Dietzel was at the controls after clearing the Japanese mainland while most of the other crewmen were asleep. Suddenly, the ring gunner, Joe Roos, called out that he had sighted a ball of fire and gave its position. Everyone on the plane woke up and started watching the ball of fire heading toward them knowing that if it hit them they would go down. Then, all of a sudden, the clouds parted and everyone aboard realized that they had been staring at the sun coming up. When they got back to Tinian, Roos approached Dietzel and told him that if he had not been so calm, Roos would have bailed out over the target. Dietzel told him that they were all afraid.

[Annotator's Note: Paul Dietzel served in the USAAF as a copilot on Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombers in the 40th Bombardment Squadron, 6th Bombardment Group, 313th Bomb Wing, 20th Air Force based on Tinian.] When they took off, they would rendezvous over a group of islands near the Japanese mainland. Dietzel's aircraft was supposed to lead the second element. When they took off they noticed that one of the engines was back firing. They got to the rendezvous point late and saw that another B-29 had taken over the lead of the second element. Dietzel looked out and saw a Japanese fighter flying a little way off. The enemy pilot radioed the formation's altitude, speed and direction to its base then turned and made an attack run on the second element and shot down the B-29 that had taken the lead. After that, he knew he would survive the war. When the B-29s were first over in India and China, the planes had been sent directly over there from the factory without proper testing. The B-29s had a problem with engines burning up during taxiing. The installation of baffle plates alleviated the problem. The decision was made to bomb the Shimonoseki Straits with 100 B-29s at Yawata. There was a main Japanese naval base there. About a third of the B-29s never got off the ground because of engine trouble. Of the 60 or so that were able to reach the target area, only about 20 made it back to base. Many of the others were forced to land in places all over China and India. After that, nobody wanted to go to the Shimonoseki Straits. One guy who had been in China was transferred to Tinian and assigned to the same Quonset hut Dietzel lived in. The man drank a lot and would tell Dietzel and the others about the Shimonoseki Straits and Yawata. One day during the briefing it was revealed that they were going to Yawata. Everyone was scared because they had heard terrible things about Yawata. The mission was to lay mines. The aircrews were told that they could not drop the mines at high speed. They were to drop the mines at a speed less than 200 knots and from an altitude of 7,000 or 8,000 feet. When they took off, everyone was nervous about going. When they neared the target area the radar bombardier, Tony Pantellas [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] from Chicago, took control of guiding the plane. Pantellas guided the plane to the target while Dietzel looked out at the search light beams penetrating the night sky and the flak bursts which were so thick that he could have walked on it. The whole time they were flying through the gauntlet, Dietzel continued to decrease altitude and pick up speed. When the airspeed registered about 255 they dropped the mines then quickly cleared the area. By the time they got out to sea they had been wearing their heavy flak suits for hours. Dietzel asked the navigator, Roy Pierson [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] from California, how high the mountains were on the island they flew over. Dietzel had been flying all along at 5,000 feet.

Around the time Paul Dietzel flew his first mission, General Curtis LeMay had gone to the Pacific to take over the 20th Air Force. When they were first flying missions they were bombing Japanese cities from 20,000 or 21,000 feet because that was what the B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] was designed to do. The winds aloft over Japan are so strong that they would cause the bombs to all miss the targets. To remedy this, LeMay ordered his crews to start bombing from 5,000 feet. Dietzel's first mission was the first fire raid over Tokyo at 5,000 feet [Annotator's Note: on 9 March 1945]. It was a scary way to begin a tour of duty. They were dropping napalm bombs which burned fiercely. Everything they hit burned. It was very scary going through there. They knew that every B-29 on the mission, hundreds of them, were at the same altitude, flying in total darkness and were all on the same path. Pathfinders had gone in and dropped the first bombs so everyone else knew where to drop their bombs. That fire bombing raid destroyed a large portion of Tokyo. A night or two later they went back and bombed Tokyo again. The only thought Dietzel had was hoping he could drop his bombs then get back to the island [Annotator's Note: to their base on Tinian]. They did not think about what was happening on the ground because it was terrible. Dietzel has mixed feelings about the people who oppose putting a B-29 in the Smithsonian Institute because of the destruction they caused. The United States did not start it. No one asked the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor. There is a great picture about the devastation on both sides. Every time they took off on a mission they were overloaded. During takeoff, the pilot not flying the plane is responsible for calling out the airspeed to the pilot who is flying it. Because of being overloaded they almost always had to use every foot of runway to take off. The shortest mission Dietzel ever flew was 13 hours and five minutes. All of his missions were in the 13 to 14 hour range. The mining mission to the coast of Korea was over 17 hours. After returning from a mission, they had to go to the debriefing hut where they were each given a shot of whiskey to calm their nerves. Dietzel did not drink, neither did one of the young kids on the plane so the flight engineer, Bill Hawkins, would usually get a few shots. After a mission they were very happy to get back on the ground after being in the air with nothing to see except Iwo [Annotator's Note: the island of Iwo Jima] and that was not a happy sight at the beginning.

There were four parallel 9,000 foot runways [Annotator's Note: on Tinian]. Paul Dietzel's group was at the far end. One day, a chain link fence was set up all the way around the runway next to them, including the revetments. There were also Marine guards posted all around the runway. When they saw the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] coming in on that runway they noticed that they did not have any turrets. When they asked about them, they were told that they were photo recon aircraft. Dietzel did not realize until much later that one of those airplanes was the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. Dietzel and his crew had flown 12 missions when they were notified that they had been picked to go to lead crew school at Muroc Dry Lake [Annotator's Note: now Edwards Air Force Base] in the Mojave Desert. When Dietzel and his crew arrived, there was no place for them to stay. All of the lodgings were occupied. Anne joined Dietzel there and they found a little cabin out in the desert. The cabin had a make shift air conditioner which was a bale of hay that water dripped onto. A fan on the other side of the bale blew the cool air into the cabin. When Dietzel went back to college after the war he told his father that he wanted an air conditioner like the one at the cabin. His father told him that where they lived they had to take the water out of the air, not put water into it. They ate most of their meals at the Army airbase. They were taken up and taught how to lead a formation. They were told that the training would take a month then they would return to the Pacific to put their training to work. Halfway through their training, the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb. A few days later the second bomb was dropped and the Japanese surrendered. Some of the guys in the training program were told that they could go back to their original base to collect their belongings. Dietzel wanted to get his inner spring mattress [Annotator's Note: see segment titled Being Based on Tinian]. They were also told that since they had passed lead crew training they would be advanced two ranks so when Dietzel went back out he would be promoted from second lieutenant to captain. The other option given them was that they could be discharged immediately. Dietzel chose to take the discharge because he wanted to go home and go back to school.

The Army Air Corps had so many people in the system that they had to figure out what to do with them so they created the College Training Detachment. When Paul Dietzel got to the College Training Detachment he was sent to Syracuse University. He had gotten his basic training in Biloxi, which was overrun with personnel. When they arrived in Biloxi it was hot. They were not allowed to leave the post because there were too many of them. As they marched in, there were 2,000 aviation cadets who had washed out that yelled at them and told them that they would be sorry. After basic training Dietzel was sent to Syracuse University. When he first arrived at Syracuse he was given a coupon to buy a new pair of shoes. There, they were going up with an instructor and had to have good shoes on. The civilian instructor scared Dietzel so much that when he was asked what he wanted to do he picked navigator. Fortunately, he was put in pilot training anyway. The most wonderful plane Dietzel ever flew was the Stearman PT-17. Dietzel performed the maneuvers he was assigned to do but also did a lot of acrobatics. From there, they went to the Vultee Vibrator [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft]. The Vultee was the worst airplane Dietzel flew. After basic training he was sent to Seymour, Indiana [Annotator's Note: Freeman Army Airfield] where he flew the AT-10 [Annotator's Note: Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita twin engine trainer]. Dietzel enjoyed navigating and became a good instrument flyer. Dietzel's instructor, Lieutenant Burlington, was from California. When landing, they were supposed to come in at 45 degrees to the downwind leg. Burlington could never figure out where 45 degrees to the downwind leg was. Dietzel's pilot in the Stearman was a guy named John Shockley [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] who was from Indiana. During training, they got 45 or 50 hours in each aircraft. A civilian trying to get that kind of training time would have to be a millionaire. They would have 230 hours or so before they even got to the big airplanes. After classification, he ended up in a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consoldated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. The B-24 is a tough airplane to fly. The B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] was like flying a Cadillac after driving a Model T Ford. The amount of training he received would be impossible to duplicate in the civilian world. The Army Air Corps trained them very well.

Paul Dietzel continued flying in civilian life after the war. When he would fly with the team, the pilots would sometimes call him up to the cockpit and let him fly the plane. When he was at the University of South Carolina they bought a twin engine airplane. It was a fine airplane but Dietzel did not trust himself so he hired a pilot who was also an old Army Air Force pilot. The pilot's name is Roger Bucko [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling]. Even though he has a pilot's license, Dietzel would never fly the plane by himself. Dietzel would take off, fly it, and land it and Bucko would handle the radio. Dietzel took advantage of the GI Bill after leaving the service. He moved into a veteran's village at Miami of Ohio where 200 veterans and their wives lived. When it was decided to open a store for the veterans, Dietzel took charge of handling the store's butcher shop. A lot of the girls there did not know how to cook. Dietzel would try to teach them to cook. One of the things he did was ham patties on a stick which he called Miami Chickens. Anne [Annotator's Note: Dietzel's wife], heard him and called him out. They were allowed to buy their food at a discount so they ate well. They stayed in Quonset huts and theirs was right across the street from the meat market. Each building was a single living quarters and measured ten feet by 20 feet. Everyone there was happy. Anne got a job working for one of the sororities and Dietzel ran the meat market at the village store. At the time he was also in school and playing football. Since Dietzel worked, he had to pay 35 dollars a month for their unit. If neither he nor Anne was working the unit would have only been 27 dollars. Dietzel had a good coach, Sid Gilman, who was like his dad. His senior year they went to the Sun Bowl and beat Texas Tech 13 to 12. Later Dietzel went into coaching which he enjoyed very much.

Paul Dietzel is very proud of his service during World War 2. When he first came to LSU he was 30 years old. He did not have much success during the first three years. He got a letter from General Troy Middleton informing him that he and his wife enjoyed getting to know Dietzel and Anne. He also told him that he liked the way Dietzel was running LSU's football program. Dietzel finally got some fine athletes and he became a great coach. Recruiting is the name of the game. Dietzel feels that the greatest thing that happened to him was going into war with a bunch of guys who were all sold on what they were doing and who were did their job and were happy to be there. Dietzel grew up a lot in the Army Air Corps and learned what life was all about. When he was flying in the Pacific it was scary but it was also very important. When he was coaching things could get touchy. He suggests reading the book by Leon Uris. Whenever he thought things got tough in coaching he thought about what the Marines went through. Dietzel admires the Marines and Army soldiers for what they did. Dietzel thinks that museums like The National WWII Museum are very important. There may come a time for young men when they want to know about what their father or grandfather went through. They need to know what happened in this country before. Now they do not seem to care. Every year the 6th Bomb Group gets together. There are now fewer veterans of the 6th Bomb Group and more of their sons who are there to experience it.