Robert Tyler Oakes was born in March 1922 in New Albany, Indiana. He enjoyed his youth participated in plays in high school. He grew up with two older siblings. His father worked for the railways. He recalls that during the Great Depression, there was no money. Many people did not have any work. He would take a bicycle to school. After graduating from high school, Oakes attended Perdue University [Annotator's Note: in Lafayette, Indiana] for one semester. He studied surveying and was able to get a job in that field prior to the war. Oakes recalled he was on his way to Louisville [Annotator's Note: Louisville, Kentucky] for a date when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer pauses the interview to fix the interviewee's shirt collar at 0:07:40.000.] Oakes enlisted in the Army Air Forces in Louisville in 1942 with a friend and was ordered to active duty in February 1943. He was sent to Texas for basic training. He was quarantined for a while because someone contracted Scarlett Fever. After completing basic training, he was sent to San Antonio, Texas to a classification center. He then went to radio school in Sioux Falls [Annotator's Note: Sioux Falls, South Dakota] and after six months was sent to gunnery school in Arizona.

After graduating from gunnery school, Robert Tyler Oakes was sent to Salt Lake City, Utah to meet his crew. They were shipped to Texas for crew training for one month. He was then sent to Gulfport, Mississippi for overseas training on the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. He was able to see his brother who was also stationed in Gulfport. Oakes was ordered to fly overseas and was stationed in Italy as part of the 340th Bombardment Squadron, 97th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force. His first mission was to blow up a bridge. The mission was easy and Oakes did not receive much flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] from the enemy. His second mission was much harder. They had to fly to Ploesti [Annotator's Note: Ploesti or Ploiești, Romania] to hit oil fields. He recalled the Tuskegee Airmen [Annotator's Note: African-American pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group, 15th Air Force] would escort them throughout their missions. Oakes recalled the flak was very bad. He identifies his fellow crew members and states where they came from. He recalls bombing Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria] several times and they bombed Munich [Annotator’s Note: Munich, Germany] several time too. Most of his targets were oil refineries. After waking up and eating breakfast, they would be debriefed on their mission for the day. Then Oakes would be sent to the radio meeting. He would then go to the airport and get his equipment and head to the plane. They would take off and get into formation. Being in the plane was cold, but they had gloves and electrically heated suits.

Robert Tyler Oakes was a radio operator [Annotator's Note: on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber in the 340th Bombardment Squadron, 97th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] and was responsible for relaying messages from the main station to the pilot. He had to use Morse code to send messages back and forth. Oakes was able to tune in music throughout the plane on their way to the targets. On his last mission, as they were clearing the target their bomb bay doors were still open. His plane had been hit by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] and caught on fire. He was told to bail out of the plane. He fell a little before pulling his chute and realized that it was defective, but he was still able to land in a cornfield without much damage to himself. He hid in the woods but was captured a day later by a German citizen and was taken to a village [Annotator's Note: near Plzen or Pilsen, Czechoslovakia].

Robert Tyler Oakes was pushed and shoved around by the villagers after being captured after bailing out of his plane. He was taken to a county jail. The next day he was driven to another town where he was turned over to the German Air Force. He and his tail gunner were put on a train then interrogated in Frankfurt, Germany. It was cold and he was put in solitary confinement for four days. The food was horrible. The Germans wanted to know more about the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and asked Oakes about the new modifications. He told them he did not know anything because he was just a radio man. He was given some extra clothes and then sent to a camp in Poland.

The first prison camp that Robert Tyler Oakes went to was Stalag Luft IV [Annotator's Note: Pomerania, Poland]. The camp was in the woods and surrounded by a wire fence. He also spent some time at Stalag Luft I [Annotator's Note: Western Pomerania, Poland], which was an officer's camp and he was treated better, and he spent time at Stulag Luft III [Annotator's Note: Zagan, Poland]. At Stalag Luft IV, he recalls the guards being mean, and the food was meager. At Stalag Luft III, he had to sleep under the table because they had no more beds. He remembered that during roll call, they would stand outside for several minutes if any of the prisoners were missing. He would receive Red Cross packages about once a month. As the war came to an end, there was hardly any food for the prisoners and the German guards. There was an instance when Oakes was sleeping in his barrack one night and a German soldier crawled underneath to eavesdrop on the prisoners. They decided to pour a bucket of water on him and the guard began to scream in German and retreated from underneath the barracks.

Robert Tyler Oakes recalls that the prisoners had a homemade radio that they hid from the German guards while he was in the prisoner of war camps. They would get news every day. Oakes was transferred from Stalag Luft III [Annotator's Note: Zagan, Poland] to Stalag Luft I [Annotator's Note: Western Pomerania, Poland] as his health was decreasing. The Russians eventually liberated Stalag Luft I, but they refused to let the Allied prisoners go until a couple of weeks later when they were threatened by the American troops. Oakes did not care for the Russians. He thought they were rude and mistreated people. Oakes was taken 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] and stayed there for two weeks. He traveled 13 days on a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] and landed in North Carolina. When he returned home, no one was at the house, so he went next door and had a drink with his neighbor until his mother arrived.

Robert Tyler Oakes easily adjusted to civilian life. He was glad to be home. He does not recall any posttraumatic stress from World War 2. He kept in touch with many of his crew members. Oakes thinks the war changed him on how he met and conversed with people.