Robert A. Stachel was born in June 1924 in Hamtramck, Michigan. Growing up during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], his father was laid off from his job at an automobile company and was unemployed for 16 months. His mother worked, but the job was only six months out of the year. There was a problem getting food at the time. One of Stachel's aunts had moved in, so they were two families living together. He was 17 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was working as an usher at a theater when the people entering said Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese. He immediately wanted to join the the Air Force, but his parents would not allow it. He had taken an evening course about airplanes and used to go to the Detroit City Airports to get rides in a Piper Cub [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub observation aircraft]. He did finally enlist in the Air Force in December 1942. He wanted to be a pilot, but his test score was a few points short, and he was told to retake it in a month. In the meantime, enlistment was halted, and the draft instated wherein men would be placed in whatever branch needed men. He explained his situation to an Air Force officer who agreed for him to sign up. It was the last day before he would have had to wait to be drafted. He did basic training in Battle Creek, Michigan, and was then sent to Saint Petersburg, Florida where they took tests to be assigned jobs. He did more training in Clearwater, Florida. After a few weeks, many of the soldiers were sent to specialty training schools. He was then sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma for mechanics training. He was not given the opportunity to retake the test for pilot, as enough were already being trained, so he volunteered to be a gunner. First, he did mechanic training in Tulsa, then trained on small arms in Sheppard Field [Annotator's Note: now Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita County, Texas]. Then he went to a factory in Burbank, California where they were building B-60 Lodestars [Annotator's Note: Lockheed C-60 Lodestar transport aircraft] and B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. He trained on the B-60 and then went to gunnery school in Las Vegas, Nevada where he learned how to take the gun apart, service it, try out the different positions. He had leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go home, then reported to Salt Lake City, Utah where the crews were put together. Once that was done, they were shipped to Alexandria, Louisiana. He was assigned as a tail gunner and joined a crew already in training. They were then sent to Grand Island, Nebraska and were given a brand-new airplane to go to England via Newfoundland and Scotland. He was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 100th Bombardment Group].

Robert A. Stachel was assigned to the 351st Squadron [Annotator's Note: 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. The locals were nice to the men when they would visit London [Annotator's Note: London, England] once a month. He saw a lot of devastation in the city from German bombing. He was there to do the same to another country. His unit was stationed at Thorpe Abbotts [Annotator's Note: Station 139 in Thorpe Abbots, England] where they lived in Nissen huts [Annotator's Note: a prefabricated metal building] with his crew of six, and another crew of six men. There was a stove in the middle, and they were given a bucket of coal to burn at night for warmth. When it went out, you were out of luck and left in the cold. On mornings of missions, they would be served eggs any way they wanted them. On days with no missions, they got powdered eggs. There was such a high turnover of men, that they did not make friends with other crews. He often thought about the fact that they were replacing a crew that had gone down. They first did training after arriving in England. Their plane [Annotator's Note: a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] was initially named Hang the Expense III. A previous tail gunner had been shot and blown out of the airplane. It was repaired and given to Stachel's crew to fly. They changed the name to the Boeing Belle for good luck. On a day when they were not flying, they took it easy and wrote letters. They needed the rest for when they had early missions. On a mission day, they woke up before daybreak and had breakfast. Stachel would get communion [Annotator's Note: Christian ritual] from the chaplain in case they were shot down. They would prepare the plane and clean all the guns, removing all the oil so that it would not freeze in the air. A flare would signal them to get into the airplane and get ready to take off. If the sky was clear, the B-17s would create contrails [Annotator's Note: a condensation trail that appears behind an airplane flying in cold, humid air] which would make it seem cloudy. They usually did not take off in the rain. It was very cold in the air. After reaching 10,000 feet they would use oxygen, and ice would form inside their oxygen masks. They wore long underwear and a heated electric suit with coveralls on top of that, which had pockets to hold their escape kits. They also wore a parachute harness and flak jacket [Annotator's Note: body armor to protect from explosive weaponry fragments] on top of that. Stachel also tied an extra pair of shoes to his parachute harness, as sometimes men's shoes would fly off when bailing out. They were given a packet of gum and two candy bars, which would melt if you put them inside your heated suit, or be too hard to bite if you left them out, so if they were on mission for 11 hours they would have nothing to eat. Stachel did not move around, he was on his knees [Annotator's Note: in the tail gunner position] and when he would finally crawl out, he had to stretch his legs to get feeling back because his circulation was cut off. They were on alert all mission, keeping an eye out for enemy planes. Stachel prayed since he was already on his knees [Annotator's Note: Stachel laughs].

Robert A. Stachel [Annotator's Note: a tail gunner in the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group] was part of a crew consisting of pilot Ed Wolf [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Edgar W. Wolf], co-pilot Kennedy [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Everett R. Kennedy], bombardier Howard E. Newell [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Howard E. Newell], navigator Donald L. Thompson [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Donald L. Thompson], top turret gunner Paul Sattler [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Paul J. Sattler], ball turret gunner Arthur Karnis [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Sergeant Arthur F. Karnis, Junior], waist gunners Lazarchik [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Sergeant Edward Lazarchik] and Howard [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Sergeant William J. Howard], and finally himself as the tail gunner. The Boeing Belle[Annotator's Note: the name of their Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] was armed with .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun]. Stachel's first combat mission was in April 1944 to an airfield in Reims, France, considered by the crew as a "milk run" [Annotator's Note: slang term used by American airmen to describe an easy combat mission] because they did not encounter anti-aircraft guns or enemy planes. They were lucky, but under no impression that all missions would be so easy. Their next mission was the following day over Rostock, Germany. They encountered German fighters approaching the tail, when two collided into each other. The others were unable to hit the B-17 with their 20mm guns. Stachel's cousin had given him a silver dollar when he joined the Air Force, which he always carried with him for good luck. German fighters had initially attacked from the tail but changed tactics to attacking from the front. After one bombing run over Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany], Satchel was at the tail and saw a 38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] above them, thinking they had it made, but all of a sudden, he saw a wall of 20 mm shells and puffs from the enemy guns. Several airplanes went to their formation, a P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] dove into the middle of the attacking German fighters, scattering them, and the formation did not lose any airplanes. It was hard to tell if he personally shot down any planes because when in the formation, there were so many gunners on so many different planes you could not know who hit what unless you were a straggler taking the enemy on one-on-one. Their base was once attacked by German fighters. The B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] always came in after the B-17 crews. German fighters followed these B-24s to base and shot a few of them down. Radar would generally spot enemy aircraft and American fighters would be sent out to intercept them. Stachel's eighth mission was to Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France] and led by Colonel Kelly [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel Robert H. Kelly]. When they got over the target, Kelly said to hold the bombs, that they were going to come around again. Kelly's plane and two others were shot down and lost to flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. On one mission, Stachel saw a plane explode next to them. Another time, anti-aircraft exploded right below their tail and lifted up the tail without doing any damage. On one mission, their plane took 100 holes. The B-17 could take quite a bit of damage and continue to fly.

Robert A. Stachel [Annotator's Note: a tail gunner in the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group] did not encounter fighters on every single mission. Several formations would be spread out and the Germans could not attack all of them. Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] was the most heavily defended target they hit. They were told by intelligence that 1,500 antiaircraft guns could get to them, and it took 20 minutes for them to fly through that fire. The German pilots and aircraft were good. After a milk run [Annotator's Note: slang term used by American airmen to describe an easy combat mission], a German fighter approached from the left front, hitting the prop [Annotator's Note: propeller] on the number two engine. The armored part of the shell dropped on the navigator's table, and a second one landed between the waste and tail gunner blowing a hole in one side, and like a screen door on the other side. The waist gunner was knocked down but was not wounded, nor was Stachel. On D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], there were so many ships that from the air, it looked like you could walk from one ship to the other from England to France. It was a milk run for his crew that day. All of the Eighth Air Force B-17s had to fly in one way and go out another, if anyone flew the opposite way it would be shot down. Once they dropped their bombs, anti-aircraft shells came up from a bridge which Stachel reported. The next time he saw that bridge, it had been blown up. The D-Day armada was unbelievable to see. The day after D-Day, Stachel had to fly with a different crew, which was sometimes seen as bad luck. When Stachel arrived at the new crew, the waist gunner suggested they trade positions, which they did. Over the target, his job was to drop chaff, aluminum foil that would distract the anti-aircraft radars, at certain intervals. As the shells started getting closer, he was throwing it faster than he supposed to. He does not know if it worked, but they made it back.

Robert A. Stachel [Annotator's Note: a tail gunner in the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group did a shuttle run to Russia with his crew. The whole British Air Force and the Eighth Air Force were supposed to go out, but the British backed out. Stachel's crew landed in Russia after bombing the suburbs of Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany]. A truck picked them up to take them to a place to stay. The man drove wildly, trying to kill a rabbit [Annotator's Note: Stachel laughs]. German aircraft came to bomb the fields including Poltava [Annotator's Note: Poltava Air Field, now Poltava Air Base in Poltava, Ukraine]. They then set out for Kharkov [Annotator's Note: now Kharkiv, Ukraine] which was bombed and had to be repaired. Once this was done, they bombed Poland before heading to Italy. Crews whose planes were destroyed were transported by other aircraft to Italy. In Poltava, they had slept in sleeping bags under their airplane. In Kharkov, where the Germans had been driven out just five months before, they slept on the floor of a building. The food was lousy. They were fed out of garbage cans. There were armed children in the area. Stachel did not communicate with any of the Russians. Normally, he should have been relieved after his 31st mission, but was told that the number had been upped to 35 and he would have to stay. He was not very happy about it, he wondered when his luck would run out. He got leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] for a while and went to visit the waist gunner Howard's [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Sergeant William J. Howard] aunt in Scotland. After his leave, he had four more missions to fly. His last mission was 28 July [Annotator's Note: 1944]. He faced a lot of antiaircraft fire and thought they would be shot down. He was finally told he would be able to go back to the United States, which made him feel very good. Some of his crew mates left on the same boat, the pilot and copilot had to stay a bit longer because they had not flown all their missions. The enlisted men were not very close with their officers. The crew was tight knit.

Robert A. Stachel [Annotator's Note: a tail gunner in the 351st Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group] flew 19 missions on the Boeing Belle [Annotator's Note: the name of his Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. Having completed enough missions, he was sent to Miami Beach, Florida where an officer wanted to assign him to fly B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. Stachel would not go in again, he had done his 35 missions and was finished. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross [Annotator's Note: the Distinguished Flying Cross, or DFC, is awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight], for flying 31 missions. He was sent to a rest camp in Denver, Colorado where he remained for a few months until being discharged in March 1945, with the rank of Staff Sergeant. He was home when he heard that the war had ended. He used 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] to go to school. Serving in the war made him appreciate his life, and to value his freedom. His mission over Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] is his most memorable combat experience. The ground crew could tell by the looks of the air crew where they were going [Annotator's Note: Stachel laughs]. The ground crews still had to worry about certain things happening. A ball turret gunner once accidentally fired all of the ammunition out of his gun, destroying parts of their airplane and hitting a truck. Another time, in Italy, Stachel was cleaning a gun when the top turret gunner told him about an inspection on the airplane. In the meantime, the ground crew tested the ball turret gun that should not have been loaded. Stachel's legs would have been shot off by a .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun] if he had been in the tail. This was not an uncommon occurrence. The crews were supposed to unload their guns when they were over the field for landing. After unloading, they would go into the radio room and put their backs up against the wall in case they had a problem with the landing gears they would be in a safe position. They would do this for take-off and landing, otherwise they were in their positions.