Walter Rozett was born in the Bronx, New York [Annotator's Note: the Bronx is one of the five boroughs in New York, New York] in April 1923. His father was a salesman in work and sports clothes business. His mother was the mother of seven children. When he was one, they moved to Yonkers [Annotator's Note: Yonkers, New York], where he lived until he went into the service. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Rozett if the Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945, affected his family.] Very much so and it affected him because he learned money was something you did not fool around with. He graduated high school in 1940. He went to Iona [Annotator's Note: Iona College in New Rochelle, New York]. He was there for two years and decided to go in the service but got a job first. The class of 1944 graduated with three graduates. The class of 1944 graduated one student and the faculty outnumbered the students. Rozett finally graduated in 1948 with 95 in his class. Rozett was aware in 1940 that the country was teetering towards war. When war was declared in 1941, he knew he was going in the service. He had never been in an airplane but decided that being in the Air Corps was better than being in the infantry. He enlisted in August 1942. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Rozett if he remembers what he was doing when he found out about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was with a group of people who had gone to the movies. When they came out, they found out the war had started. He was not terribly interested in flying. He did not get called up until 1943. He was working and just trying to enjoy life.

Walter Rozett was sent to basic training in Atlantic City, New Jersey and lived in a hotel for three months. Whenever it was raining, they would march up and down the beach. That sand was tough to march in. After basic, the training schools were backed up. He was sent to Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts and then to Nashville, Tennessee to the classification center for a month being tested for qualifications. He was good at math and scored well for both navigator and pilot. He told them this was not a career for him and if they thought he would be a better navigator than pilot, that is what he would do. A week later, in typical Army-fashion, he was off to pilot school. He is forever grateful it worked out that way. He was in Lakeland, Florida [Annotator's Note: Lakeland Army Airfield near Lakeland, Florida] and had a great instructor. The first time they flew together in a Stearman [Annotator's Note: Boeing-Stearman Model 75 Kaydet or PT-13 primary trainer aircraft], the instructor told him to put his hands up in the air and to turn around and look at him. The instructor also had his hands in the air and pushed the throttle. The airplane wandered around the field and finally took off. The instructor told him that if you just leave it alone, the airplane will fly itself. Rozett was getting anxious about soloing. He was practicing landings and made a bad one. The instructor got out of the plane and told him to go fly by himself. That was how he soloed. He learned his life totally depend on himself. After basic training in a BT-13A [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Vultee BT-13 Valiant trainer aircraft; nicknamed Vibrator]. At the end of that, they had to choose between single engine and multi-engine flying. He chose four-engines and concluded the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] was the safest, best airplane for a crew and was significantly easier to fly than a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. He then went to B-17 transition-flying after becoming commissioned as a pilot. He went to Drew Field [Annotator's Note: Drew Army Airfield, now Tampa International Airport in Tampa, Florida] in Tampa, Florida and picked up his crew. He had the feeling that his life was intertwined with these nine guys, and they had better be a team. As the pilot, he was most responsible for making sure it was a team. He had a very good relationship with the enlisted men and saw several of them for some time after the war was over.

Walter Rozett had a very good relationship with the enlisted men [Annotator's Note: on his bomber crew] and saw several of them for some time after the war was over. They knew their lives were interdependent and they were a team. The ball turret gunner was from Charleston, South Carolina. The radio operator was from Kentucky. The tail gunner was from Massachusetts. The waist gunner was from the Midwest, as was the navigator. The bombardier was from Illinois. The pilot was also from the Midwest. The crew formed and trained at Drew Field [Annotator's Note: Drew Army Airfield, now Tampa International Airport, in Tampa, Florida]. They then picked up an airplane in Savannah, Georgia and took the northern route to England. They had trained flying over the Caribbean, but the flight was still adventurous. They flew to Goose Bay, Labrador, Iceland, and then to Wales [Annotator's Note: Wales, England]. It was a long flight in a desolate part of the world. It was in September [Annotator's Note: September 1944], and they could look down and see the icebergs in the Atlantic. There was cloud cover most the of the way. They wondered if they were going to make it. They went to Thurleigh [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Thurleigh in Thurleigh, England]. It was a typical base with Nissen huts [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building]. His group [Annotator's Note: Rozett was a member of the 369th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] was one of the first over. Rozett flew his first four missions as the copilot. He had more time to look around. He was scared, particularly over the target with the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] bursting.

There were roughly 36 planes in each mission from the base [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Thurleigh in Thurleigh, England] where Walter Rozett was [Annotator's Note: with the 369th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. They launched one plane every 30 seconds. They were heavy. They went to a marshalling point where the planes formed on the lead plane at about 10,000 feet. Once assembled, they climbed to their bombing altitude. Once they hit the continent [Annotator's Note: of Europe], they would be at about 20,000 to 25,000 feet. The process took a little less than an hour. Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] was always a place that distressed everybody. Rozett never bombed Berlin. Merseburg [Annotator's Note: Merseburg, Germany] was always a concern. It was a coal and gasoline conversion plant. They bombed it every week. It was extremely well defended with flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. Rozett's gunners never fired a gun [Annotator's Note: at any enemy aircraft] thanks to the P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] and P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft]. They flew with escorts but never saw them. In November 1944, they had gone in over a target and the antiaircraft guns were trained in batteries of four. They saw the first burst in front of the airplane and just knew the next one would be right in the cockpit. It went just below the airplane. A piece of flak went into the airplane and hit Rozett in the rear end. A piece of the glass hit in him in the left thigh and cut him. He had the copilot take over but eventually concluded he was not in terribly bad shape. If a plane had anyone wounded on board, when they got to the Channel [Annotator's Note: the English Channel] they would head directly to the base instead of staying with the group. That saved a lot of hours. They shot off a red flare to alert the ambulance. Rozett was taken to the infirmary and bandaged up. You did not pursue the Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy]. That day in particular, a gunner in his group had lost an eye and his wounds seemed superficial in comparison. In 2005, he came to the conclusion that he was entitled to the Purple Heart. It had been recorded in the logs, so it was easy to prove. On Veterans Day 2005 [Annotator's Note: 11 November 2005], he was awarded the medal. He did it primarily because it helped in negotiations with the VA [Annotator's Note: United States Department of Veterans Affairs; also referred to as the Veterans Administration].

Morale was not an issue in Walter Rozett's unit [Annotator's Note: 369th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. They had a great squadron commander. One of the unique things was that his squadron never lost an airplane on a mission he flew. There were missions in between where there were three to five airplanes lost. His mother had always told him that if he had to choose between lucky and smart, choose lucky. He was. He never had the experience of coming back and seeing empty bunks. There were losses and he felt badly about them but that was it. Returning from a mission, they would get debriefed. Mission reports have become available over the past few years. He got his in his own handwriting. The one thing that impressed him, was that they were given a shot of whiskey in the debrief. Rozett was tired. Flying an airplane was grueling. He could not handle the whiskey but always had volunteers willing to take it. His crew would occasionally go out to a local bar for a break. Most of the crew did get to go with him to Edinburgh [Annotator's Note: Edinburgh, Scotland] once. He corresponded with several people back home, but mostly with his parents.

On 30 March 1945, Walter Rozett and his group [Annotator's Note: 369th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] were flying under the 8th Air Force name of "Vine Grove." They were in Vine Grove 313, which meant they were the last group in the 12 airplane group [Annotator's Note: to bomb the Valentin submarine factory at Rekum, Germany]. The bombs they carried weighed around 4,000 pounds each and they had one under each wing [Annotator's Note: Disney Bomb; 4,500 pound concrete piercing, rocket assisted bomb; also called the Disney Swish]. They were about 5,000 pounds over the weight limit for the plane and just barely got off the runway. Climbing was extremely slow. There were two squadrons of six planes each. One in his squadron aborted. They made the first run over the target and the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] was right on them. They had to stay at 20,000 feet because the bombs had a rocket that kicked in at 10,000 feet. They had to be dropped at 20,000 to maintain the right trajectory. The bombardier lost the target in the clouds, and they had to make a second run. On the first run, they [Annotator's Note: German antiaircraft guns] got the number two engine. On the second run, they hit the bomb release but the bombs would not drop. They had to make a third run and again lost the target. They made a fourth run. This was the only time in the war that a lead aircraft had to make four runs over the target. They had lost an engine. They went back over the Channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel] and Rozett had a discussion with Major Witt [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Major Thomas F. Witt], the command pilot, about going to Holland instead of back to England. When you lose an engine, you use a lot more gasoline. He decided to go to England. Rozett landed at Attlebridge [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Attlebridge in Attlebridge, England] with five minutes of fuel left. The command pilot got a Silver Star [Annotator's Note: the Silver Star Medal is the third-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] for the mission. It was a good mission and they got three direct hits on the target. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer adds that Rozett got 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.] Medals were not important at the time and Rozett was not overly impressed with it.

Walter Rozett's last mission [Annotator's Note: with the 369th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] was on his birthday, 15 April 1945. They were bombing a German holdout fort on the west coast of France [Annotator's Note: Royan, France]. They rendezvoused over Paris. They did not get above 12,000 feet. It was a milk run [Annotator's Note: slang term used by American airmen to describe an easy combat mission]. They dropped on the target, wiped it off the face of the earth, and flew back to England. One flight that was not a mission was 2 May [Annotator's Note: 2 May 1945]. There were no targets to bomb, and they delivered newspapers. They flew alone and right at the ground to be safe against potential German aircraft. They went first to Ludwigshafen [Annotator's Note: Ludwigshafen, Germany] and dropped barrels of paper with parachutes. After that, they went to the prison camp at Buchenwald [Annotator's Note: Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, Germany] which had been freed three weeks earlier. He flew around it for about a half an hour. It was one of the most emotional moments of his lifetime. There was a grave opened with about 1,000 bodies in it. The survivors had arms like toothpicks and were waving at them. If he could have gotten his hands on any German, he would have killed them. It was the perfect way to end the war, because he did not know how many people he had killed, or how much damage he had done on his 33 bombing missions, but it was totally justified by what he saw that day. The day the war was over, the operations officer, squadron commander, and Rozett were concerned because everyone was shooting their guns into the air. The bullets eventually come down. When they got to VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945], they knew it was coming and the night before they gathered all of the guns so they could not have a repeat of VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945]. Rozett had 88 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] and came home in September 1945. He flew the southern route home to West Palm Beach, Florida. About a week before this, his copilot had a camera that he put in the well where the control column fits into the deck of the plane. When he went to land, he could not pull the control column back. He yanked it just before they hit the ground and crushed the camera. The following morning his back was killing him. He had torn some muscles and got pain medication. He flew home mostly flat on his back in the back of the airplane. He went to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Trenton, New Jersey] and spent three months in the hospital. In January 1946, he left and had four or five weeks of pay so he was discharged in February 1946. It was a great experience and probably the most dramatic year of his life. Rozett thinks it is important that kids learn about World War 2 because the world is changing. You have to be able to look back and see how things can be dealt with. There were horrific things then and now. The war matured him. He was at least ten years older at 21 than any 21-year-old is today. He had more responsibility at age 21 then anyone does today. He was a 21-year-old kid who had make a decision as to what part of the world he was going to obliterate. He never had any qualms about his targets. They were only after military targets. The British were attempting to wipe out Germany just as Germany was attempting to wipe out England. They occasionally hit civilian targets because they were close by. He never had any issues with PTSD [Annotator's Note: post traumatic stress disorder; a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event either experienced or witnessed]. He would like future viewers to know you have to be responsible, do what you can to assist in times of trouble, and take a positive approach to what might not be a great thing to be doing in the world.