INTERVIEWER:   Good morning, Mr. Mason.

MASON:   Good morning, Joe.

INTERVIEWER:   We are going to cover basically your time in the service when World War II broke out in December of 1941.  Where were you at that time?

MASON:   At that time, Joe, I was in my second year of college at the University of Pittsburgh.  I was born and raised in a small town southwest of Pittsburgh called West Brownsville.  My father was with the railroad and we moved around quite a bit from West Brownsville, then on to Buffalo, New York, then back to Pittsburgh, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Sharpsburg, and then over to Pittsburgh itself. 

I completed high school there and went on and enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh taking petroleum geology.  On December 7, 1941, I just happened to be…our family was visited by a girlhood friend of my mother’s and we wound up going…her son Jack and I went over to visit a friend of ours who lived right by the high school.  We came walking back later on Sunday afternoon and my father told us that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. 

I remember it very vividly because both Jack and I were aviation bugs at that tender age.  That was it.  Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper, I wanted to fly from the time I saw my first airplane.  I fell in love with aviation.  Even prior to Pearl Harbor, I tried to enlist in the Navy, I believe it’s a V8 program, which allowed you to complete two years of college and then you were to go to Pensacola to preflight and then on to Navy flight training.

The Saturday before, the week before Pearl Harbor, I went down to the Navy recruiting station and some old chief with hash marks all up and down his arm was there and he said to himself, well here’s a couple of college boys.  I’m going to fix their wagon.  He wasn’t too receptive to any of us.  But anyhow the first thing he did was hand us a piece of paper, a piece of cardboard and said put that over your left eye and read the chart, which I did.  Then he wanted me to put it over my right eye and I put it over my right eye, and I said, “No way, I can’t even see the chart”.

I didn't realize that I had a pretty good case of astigmatism.  During the summer, I went to an optometrist and he gave me exercises and whatever I needed to try to improve my astigmatism in that eye.  In August of ’42, I wound up reading the paper one morning and here I found the Army was looking for glider pilots.  So I said boy, that was for me.  One of the prerequisites was that you pass the aviation cadet mental exam and then be able to pass a physical exam with some deficiencies.

This eyesight wasn’t a problem so I hustled down to the recruiting station the next day and took the written exam, which I passed.  Then a few days later, I went back for the physical exam, which they gave me.  As it turned out with the help of Sergeant Green who was an oculist I guess, was able to get through the eye exam.  Lo and behold instead of being a glider pilot, I wound up as an aviation cadet.

From there on out, I was there in Pittsburgh waiting for a class assignment and I finally kept bugging the recruiting sergeant and Captain Floro who was the recruiting officer, to go in as a private because no one would hire me.  I couldn’t get a decent job.  I was just trying to do something.  One day I went home and my mother told me that Captain Floro wanted to talk to me. 

I picked up the phone and called me at the recruiting station and he asked me, “Mason, can you type?”  I said I could.  He said, “Would you like to come down to Fort ____, get your uniform and work in the recruiting office?”  I said I sure would.  He said they’d pay me $135 a month, which was a private’s pay plus rations and quarters.  So I did and went down to Fort ____ a few days later.  Came back a week later with all my shots and my uniform and what have you.

I got home on Halloween evening, October of ’42.  Wound up at the recruiting station the next Monday.  From there on out, why, we processed aviation cadets.  Then in December of ’42, they discontinued the cadet program because they had so many applicants and so many cadets that the backlog would take quite a while to be exhausted.  So I continued working with him and then one day, they turned us over to processing WAC’s.

The Women’s Army Corps was looking for applicants.  At the same time, anytime there was a shortage of aviation cadets going, in other words if there had been 50 people signed up to go to leave on a particular date and only 48 showed up, they would fill it in with several of the aviation cadet applicants such as myself, they’d go.  So I finally wound up going to flight training in March of ’43.

At the end of flight training, I went down to Nashville, Tennessee for classification.  I was classified as a pilot applicant.  Then to Maxwell Field for preflight and successfully completed that where I had all kinds of ground school, navigation, mechanics.  The next stop was primary at Bennettsville, South Carolina, which is about 100 miles west of here, contract flying school.

I flew PT-17.  Finished that at the end of two months.  The next step was basic flying, which took me over to Sumter Shaw Field, had two months there and went in to fly bigger airplanes and more complicated aircraft, a BT-13.  From there at the end of a two month period, I went to Georgefield, Illinois which was across the river from Vincennes, Indiana.  Took advanced flying, twin engine advanced flying in the AT-10.

Upon completion of that training, I was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, got my wings and was assigned according to the bulletin board to twin engine missile school, flight training.  I had always wanted to fly fighters, particularly the P-38.  I said well boy, that’s it.  We were assigned to Salt Lake City, a replacement depot in Salt Lake City.  Lo and behold when we got there, we found that anyone who hadn’t requested four engine training such as B-17’s or B-24’s were made copilots on B-24’s or B-17’s not because of any flight deficiencies or anything.  It was just because that’s what they needed.

So away we went.  Next stop was Dyersburg, Tennessee where we had what was called phase training.  We learned combat flying, formation and all such things as that that we would need.  We knew that we were going to England, the United Kingdom.  That was already established.  So that was several months before D-Day.

So we wound up going to England over Easter 1944, spent Easter Sunday in Iceland because of malfunctioning in our airplane and got up the next morning.  We took off, flew over to England and from there on out, the whole crew was assigned to the 412 squadron, 95th bomb group, 8th Air Force.  I flew 35 missions with the 95th bomb group, completed my tour in September of 1944 and came home.

While home, I requested a specific school of redistribution.  It’s rather funny.  I’d been home on leave, had gotten married in the meantime and really my wife and I, a girl I had gone to high school with, we had more or less a honeymoon there in Atlantic City which was a redistribution center.  While I was there, I was interviewed by a young lieutenant who had been on _____ and had gotten a regular commission from it, from the results of that.

He asked me what I’d like to do.  Well I definitely didn't want to be an instructor of B-17’s or anything of that nature.  I knew how most 2nd lieutenants were that just had gotten out of flight school and I think I had had enough close calls flying combat in that airplane so I figured I’d better do something else.  So I asked him, at home I had run into a friend of mine who had gone into the aircraft maintenance officer training at Chinook Field.

This lieutenant looked at me and wanted to know who told me about that.  (Laughter) It was a hush hush project.  But anyhow he got me the assignment and I went from there to Chinook Field and had a six month course in airplane maintenance officer training, the same course that was offered at Yale University.  I went six hours a day from 6:00 in the morning until 12 noon for six months. 

Upon completion of that, I was assigned to Barksdale Field at Shreveport, Louisiana as a maintenance officer, B-29’s at that particular time.  Then later on, we got other kinds of trainers in.  Lo and behold they sent 22 B-17’s up from Panama and I was a maintenance officer in that.  That put me right back in the same airplane I had flown combat in which was a real pleasure at that time.  Checked out as an instructor and that was it.

In the meantime, my wife and I had our first son.  Bruce was born in December of ’45 and then I wound up again overseas in Hawaii for several months at Hickam Field.  Then went down to Johnson Island for a year.  Louise, my wife, joined me as did Bruce.  We spent a year down there.  Came back to Hickam Field and then we were on a boat going back to the States and the Korean War began.

After the Korean War, I was assigned to an organization called the 3075th ferry squadron.  We were ferrying all kinds of junk airplanes all over the United States, everywhere from B-29’s clear down to some of your liaison aircraft.  Some of them were right out of the bone yard, put back into shape.  They’d jack them up and they’d call on you to fly 50,000 miles and sometimes there were big problems.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, Mr. Mason, you have brought with you a painting of some planes and if you would be so kind as to just pick that up and what I’ll do is, I’ll let everyone see that and then you can give us a little background on it.  Okay tell us a little bit about it.

MASON:   This is a painting by John Royson of the first B-17’s over Berlin.  As many of you may know, Berlin was the hub of the whole German economy, military, etc.  In order to try to eliminate Germany, the first thing we tried to do was to get over in to destroy the German economy, the military and what have you.  All of their headquarters were located in Germany. 

This picture, painting, as I said, was made by John Royson and it shows the first B-17’s over Berlin in 1944.  The picture shows a group of the 95th, a bunch of the 95th bomb group of B-17’s and some P-51’s who were escorts.  This is rather a controversial painting because theoretically the mission that day was called off because of the weather.  Colonel Mumford who was leading the group at that time had said many times that he did not receive the recall so he continued on and they dropped their bombs and then returned home, hit with a lot of flack by German fighters.

Incidentally in the upper part of it, you’ll see some P-51’s flying top cover for the group.  Chuck Yeager who is now General Chuck Yeager, first man to break the sound barrier, that was the day he got his first picture.  So it’s a little historical content, the whole thing.  Other than that, the picture tells the whole story.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, now we’re going try to get some stories from you about just what your everyday normal work routine was.  Let’s start with the States.  Most of the States was training?

MASON:   Right.

INTERVIEWER:   And you went to Europe from there.

MASON:   Right, yes.

INTERVIEWER:   Tell us about your experiences in England in terms of the people who served with you, some of the characters that served with you and also the civilians if you had a chance to meet any of them if you had free time and you went off the base.  Were you able to mingle with people and the different kinds of foods you may have experienced and the actual culture?

MASON:   Yes, during the stateside duty, most of our time was spent, as you’ve said Joe, training.  It was more or less an eight hour day.  My experience with food and quarters and everything, quarters were rather rudimentary.  Food was, for all practical purposes, was good.   I had no complaints about food.  When we went overseas, we left the states, flew our airplane over and went to _____ Scotland down into England where they took our airplane and passed it onto some other group that needed it.

The time in England initially when we got there was devoted to training, to find out what it was all about, about formation flying and weather and all such things that we were going to need once we became operational.  Our day-to-day activities, once we completed our initial training and started flying missions, we didn't spend much time doing anything other than just flying missions.  We flew the first couple of months 10 missions a month which was pretty well…it took up your time, resting and whatever because it was rather a situation where you had tension and what have you.

The idea was to eliminate as much of that as possible.  About once every two to three weeks, we’d get a 52 hour pass and we could go anywhere we wanted to in England and most people wound up going to London.  We found London to be a very cosmopolitan city, same type of traffic and buildings as we would have in New York or Buffalo or Savannah, Georgia, any town of this nature.

The British people were wonderful.  I can’t say how nice they treated their boys.  They considered us their boys, not as Americans, but as their boys.  There’s a lot of talk about the old cliché that the Americans, how did it go, overpaid, oversexed and over here.  This may be true in some cases, I can’t say for sure about it.  By in large, the average British civilian treated us great.

Occasionally we’d get a chance to get with some of the British air crews and we were flying a set number of missions.  When we first got there, it was 25 and then it went up to 30 and then up to 35 missions per combat tour.  The British air crews, we met several of them who were on their third and fourth operational tour with their bombers.  They were fighting for their survival.  And the same way with the Germans.  The German air crews were doing the same thing, they were fighting for their survival.

We kind of had it easy compared to these other people.  It was a nice tour.  If you were going to have to fight a war, that was the way to do it.  When you got back from a mission, you generally had a hot meal waiting for you and you had a dry bed, a warm bed so it was a good way to fight a war.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you get regular mail?

MASON:   Yes, our mail, packages and so forth, we got just like you’d be back in the States.  It was good. 

INTERVIEWER:   Was there a point system at all in the branch of service that you were in or was that mostly for other areas?

MASON:   Well the point system didn't come into play until later on in the war as it wound down.  Then you were graded on how many months you’d be overseas and how many combat decorations you had and how many combat battle stars you had.  You’d get so many points.  After you got so many points, then you would be eligible for rotation to the states or to get out. 

Primarily it was to get out, out of the service.  I don’t remember how many I had and it really didn't matter because I was doing what I wanted to do.  I wanted to be a member of the Armed Forces and particularly the Air Corps.  It was not something that I was really interested in. 

INTERVIEWER:   Were you very well informed about what else was going on in the war?  In other words, in the Pacific and Manila, from where you were in London and England and Europe?  Were you able to get information as to what the status was of the war?

MASON:   There was a newspaper printed by I guess it was the Army at that time, Stars and Stripes.  They kept us pretty well appraised of what was happening elsewhere in the world in the Pacific or the Aleutians or wherever elsewhere we were.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay Mr. Mason, what we’re going to now is kind of go to where the war in Germany was ending and how you heard about it and what steps were taken, as you said, shift things over towards the Asian war.  We’ll take it from there, like right around the beginning of 1945.

MASON:   Well at the time that World War II in Europe ended, I had been sent back to Chinook Field for some further training in B-29 aircraft maintenance.  As the war was winding down in Europe, there was a steady stream of bomb groups and fighter groups and the like being reassigned and shifted over to the Pacific for the final assault on Japan.

April of ’45 when the war in Europe was over with, we were on base at Chinook Field and as it turned out, we were all restricted to base so it really wasn’t any grand and glorious thing at that cessation of hostilities with Europe.  That was about it.  Most of us were looking forward to where were we going after the war in Europe was over with.  I was already working with a B-29 combat crew training school at Barksdale Field in Shreveport, Louisiana. 

So figured my next stop was going to be in the Pacific somewhere.  Well lo and behold after completion of my B-29 maintenance training, I went back to Barksdale Field.  That was a few months later, in August of ’45, they dropped the big one and we all had heard about it.  It was kind of funny, I was at work one night and went and pre-flighted an airplane that we were going to fly to Pittsburgh.

Several of us were going up on a cross-country navigational trip and we were going to Pittsburgh to visit our families.  So we took off at about 8:00 and climbed up into the cool weather.  It was beastly hot and muggy on the ground and climbed up and set course for Pittsburgh.  We landed there and since I worked all night, I went home and went to bed and when I got up, my mother told me the war in Japan was over, that Japan had given up.

So I went ahead, all of us were still in uniform.  Went downtown in a small suburb of Pittsburgh and saw the sights, everybody was jumping up and down and having all kinds of celebration regarding the end, for all practical purposes, the end of World War II.  It was a great relief to everyone.  I appreciated it.  I’m just sorry it had to go that far. 

INTERVIEWER:   You also served through several more years after the war was over.  You retired from the military actually with about 20 years or so in there.  After you got out of the service, just briefly tell us about your connection with the Boy Scouts.

MASON:   As a youth, I was very active in two areas.  One was in the Boy Scout program and secondly in the high school and college swimming, varsity swimming.  I wasn’t a champion swimmer, but I participated.  Boy Scouts, both my brother and I became Eagle scouts.  At the present time, I have two sons who are Eagles and I have a grandson who hopefully this fall will become an Eagle scout.

It taught me a lot particularly about survival and about a lot of everyday things, how to cook and all such things as that.  It was, to me, it also taught patriotism.  You don’t say I’m going down to the store to get a load of patriotism.  You learn the flag, you learn the Pledge of Allegiance, you learn the whole spectrum of patriotism by participating.  There wasn’t a holiday that went by, like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, that I wasn’t involved in a parade somewhere with a Boy Scout troop.  All of us in Pittsburgh were involved with that.

The first job after I retired from the military was with the Boy Scouts of America.  My boss was on the council, Larry Sunderland asked me if I’d like to go to work for the Boy Scouts and I said well I didn't have anything else so why not.  So I went with them, became an executive and spent probably a year or two years as an executive of the Boy Scouts.  Then I went into my own business and spent time in that for a couple of years.

Then I decided I was going into sales.  I always thought that a salesman was somebody who was trying to get you to buy something you didn't need in the first place which was, to some degree in a lot of cases, true.  But the type of business I was in with Johns Manville in their particular division tied right in with the training I’d received in the Air Force and the Army in maintenance.

We talk about gaskets, we talked about sheathing, all different types of the things you would use in performing maintenance on aircraft and this carried right over into industry.  As a matter of fact, in the Navy we have your Spruance class destroyers, the DD963.  They’re powered by gas turbines.  Johns Manville made a very high temperature expansion joint.  It was not a metal joint, but a polymer joint that allowed the modules that the engines were mounted into shift back and forth and eliminated all the vibration and the cracking that you would get in a metal expansion joint.

INTERVIEWER:   So you were able to use a lot of the training you had when you were in the military service.  You were able to bring it forward into your civilian life afterwards.  In closing, you had mentioned patriotism.  I would like to just briefly read off some of the decorations that you got while you served in the military.

Among them was the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters, the European Theater of Operations medal, the Outstanding Unit award, these are battle stars, World War II Victory medal, the American Theater medal, the Armed Forces Reserve medal, the Good Conduct medal and the National Defense medal.

Mr. Mason, I want to thank you very much for your time and we are honored and grateful that you took the time to come here and let us know what your story is.

MASON:   Thank you Joe, I enjoyed it.