INTERVIEWER:   Mr. Hannafey, tell me, when did you go into the military, where did you go into the military and why did you go into the military?

HANNAFEY:   Well I was doing my accounting homework on a Sunday afternoon on December 7th listening to a New York Giant football game when they announced the bombing the Pearl Harbor.  Well I was of the age and I had the draft number.  I was working for a rope and canvas outfit that was making slings and bunk bottoms at the time.

INTERVIEWER:   How old were you then?

HANNAFEY:   Let’s see, that was in ’41, I was 20 years old give or take.  My birthday is January 9, so I was just 20 years old.  So I was working and I went over to Grand Central Station which was the big reception center for the New York area, did the physicals and everything over there.  I was passed for the cadets, but because I had a number that was going to come up, they told me to just wait until I got drafted.

INTERVIEWER:   What cadets are you talking about?

HANNAFEY:   Aviation cadets, Army Air Corps aviation cadets.  There was no separate Air Force at that time.  The thing about Grand Central Station, you went in there and the first thing you did was take  your clothes off and put them in a box or something, I forget that part.  For about seven hours, you wandered around that great big building bare-assed, going from one physical to another physical, but you spent the whole time, thousands of naked men running around.

Then I went back and worked until my draft number came up and then I went into the service from Brooklyn, New York.  They took us out to Camp Upton which is on Long Island and I checked in with the cadet board out there after spending about four days on KP out there because I believe the guys who were running it only went to the first barracks outside the orderly room to get the guys to go in the next morning.  Of course, it was October of ’42, is when I went in the service.

So we got picked on.  So I ended up, my mother came out to see me one Sunday, and I was boiled from elbows on doing from being in pots and pans and stuff like that there.  Finally the cadet board got me and I got away from there and went to Mitchell Field New York.  I stayed there for a couple weeks and then they bundled us all up and sent us down to Nashville to take batteries of tests to see what category of cadet you were going to go into.

INTERVIEWER:   Now where are you when it comes to year and month?

HANNAFEY:   This is all the latter part of ’42.  I went into the service in September or October of ’42.  Just around Christmas time, I think we had finished with Nashville.  I don’t know whether we stayed there two weeks or what. 

INTERVIEWER:   What was the name of the camp at Nashville, do you remember?  Where were you billeted?

HANNAFEY:   They were just tar paper shacks, I don’t know what they were.  The smoke holes, fires, the smoke went up the chimney, on top of the roof, then came on down the side of the building and you walked in sort of a smoking, choking fog all around Nashville all the time you were in there.

INTERVIEWER:   What were you doing, burning soft coal?

HANNAFEY:   Whatever they were burning, right.  I qualified for all three of them and I chose pilot school.  From there, we went to Maxwell Field for preflight.  You’d go nine weeks there just marching and drilling and basic stuff that they give you.  So I qualified in Nashville for pilot, navigator and bombardier.  One of the older heads had told me that the thing to do is take pilot training.  Then if you wash out of pilot training, you still have a chance to go to either one of the others.

Whereas if you go for navigator and you wash out of that, they probably won’t let you go back up to be a pilot.  So I went pilot.  Of course I had never been in an airplane in my life.  We went to Maxwell Field for nine weeks of preflight and then from there, we went to Jackson, Mississippi.  There was a little airfield there where they had PT-17’s and that’s where I had my first ride in an airplane.

INTERVIEWER:   You had never been in an airplane before in your life?

HANNAFEY:   No, the nearest thing I had been to an airplane was when it was Floyd Bennett Field and my father would go out and we’d watch airplanes land and take off.  That’s as much as I had in an airplane.  So my first flight was in a PT Stairman.

INTERVIEWER:   How old are you now?

HANNAFEY:   I’m 21, right.

INTERVIEWER:   So they put you in this aircraft, you and the unit instructor.  I hope you had an instructor.

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah.  Well anyway I did 13 hours and 50 minutes of several flights on that thing and finally since I wasn’t making progress fast enough for the washing machine in which they normally washed out about 50% of the people that came, they washed me out.  They sent me back to Nashville again.

I’m going to try to be a navigator, okay.  But they have another bugaboo.  This is getting into about the beginning of ’43.  From Nashville, they’ve got another wrinkle.  They send us to gunnery school.  Here we are, aviation cadets, I think we were the first aviation cadets to be qualified gunners before they even went to cadet school.

So I went from Nashville down to Panama City, Tindall Field, and we took the six week gunnery course and came out of there as qualified gunners with silver wings and then went from there to Selman Field, Monroe, Louisiana, to navigation training.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your rank?

HANNAFEY:   I was a navigation cadet, no rank.  The cadets were getting paid $75 a month which was equivalent to buck sergeant’s pay because what it was was $50 and flight training, doing all that sort of stuff, 50%, so that gave you $75 and that’s what they were paying.

INTERVIEWER:   Now a buck sergeant had three stripes, is that right?

HANNAFEY:   Three stripes, old time sergeant.  What they are now is three stripes is airman first class or something.  So we’re marching around Selman Field with wings on already.  I was in class 4315 and we graduated around September 13, 1943. 

Oh I might mention that I had known about the battleship North Carolina before most North Carolinians did because my father worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and worked on it back in ’38 and ’39, so I had heard of the North Carolina long before they ever knew about it here.  I just happened to think of that.  It might be interesting to people from North Carolina.

Okay navigation school, about 15 or 18 weeks.  Graduated from there and this friend of mine, his name was on the list just a little below mine because his name was Bob Harris and he was a North Carolinian, came from Spring Hope, North Carolina.  But he had done a little time in the service, had been a radio operator and had flown some patrols I think out of Wilmington.  He was in the cadets now and he said, “We got a good airplane at Wendover, Utah.”  He said they had B-17’s out there and that was the best, what you wanted to get into.

So when they were picking out, giving different bases, people were wanting to go someplace near home.  It didn't matter to me because they didn't have any places on the east coast.  So he said Wendover, and I said already Bob and he went to Wendover and I went to Wendover.  Wendover, Utah is 128 miles west of Salt Lake City.  When you get out there, it’s right on the borderline between Nevada and Utah. 

You couldn’t get a drink in Utah, but on the other side of that same building which was called the Stateline Café, you could get all the booze you wanted.  Wendover, there’s nothing between Salt Lake City except straight Salt Lake and Wendover, Utah backed up against the mountains.  So Bob talked me into it, to go to B-17’s.  So we got there, they had B-24’s.  That was it.

INTERVIEWER:   Now the B-17 was called the Flying Fortress?

HANNAFEY:   Right.

INTERVIEWER:   And the 24 was called the…

HANNAFEY:   Liberator.  So we got there and got assigned to different crews.  I got assigned to the 789th squadron.  The colonel comes through, we get there one day at the end of the month, I guess the end of November and the colonel comes through and shakes everybody’s hands and says, “Congratulations on completing first phase.  We start Phase II in the morning”.  Well we just got there, but the other crews had been transitioning in the airplanes, the pilots and the engineers.  They had been flying.

The navigators hadn’t arrived because they never got away from the field.  They were learning how to fly the damn things themselves.  So we were in second phase.  So I fly with them for a couple of months and then in January of ’44, they’re getting ready to send us overseas. 

INTERVIEWER:   Let me ask you this, when you flew out of Wendover, would you fly in formation or was it like geese and you just went off?

HANNAFEY:   Now you’re stealing my stuff there.  No, the whole thing was you flew a lot of missions, like navigation missions, you flew on your own for practice and getting used to the crew.  You did a 500 mile cross country and 500 miles back and stuff like that.  You also had a lot of formation flying because the colonel, do I mention his name?

INTERVIEWER:   Sure.

HANNAFEY:   Alright, Al Richauer.  He was a real stickler for good formation so he stressed that and he did a lot of formation flying there too.  It was a requirement because you were going into places where formation was going to save your neck.  So they did all of that.  They transitioned, they flew navigation legs, they bombed and they flew formation.

In January, they’re getting ready to go overseas and my crew, the squadron commander and the squadron navigator decide they’re going to fly over in our place on my crew.  So the bombardier, Seymour Arnold from New York, and I were bumped off so that the squadron commander and navigator would have spots to fly over.  They bump us off and those seats are reserved so we get put in with the ground troops that are leaving Wendover by train to go to the east coast.

Ray Dossey was the pilot on that first crew and while we’re waiting with the ground troops to catch the train, Dossey and the copilot are up flying more transition and they ran into a mountain just north of Wendover, Pilot’s Peak, about 10 miles.  It was in January, they didn't find them until June.  Seymour and I are on the ground and we’re with the ground troops so they take us with them.

We’re going, we get to Topeka and Tommy Krause gets tonsillitis there so he gets bumped out and left there.  We get to Camp Shanks which is just north of New York City, New York harbor, and they put us up there waiting for a boat to go overseas.  So we’re there several days and of course being a New Yorker, I’m in my element now.  I know the railroads and the subways.

Every night at 6:00 when they dismiss us from hanging around up there, I take off on the train and go to Brooklyn to see my mother.

INTERVIEWER:   Are you a 2nd lieutenant now?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah, I’m a 2nd lieutenant.  When I finished at Selman Field in Monroe, I became a 2nd lieutenant on the 13th of November I think it was.

INTERVIEWER:   Alright, when you get ready to ship overseas, you’re now 21 years of age?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:   And where are you in time?  You’re in New York, you’re going to go overseas.  What month and what year?

HANNAFEY:   Well this is about February of ’44.  I’d be just 23.  So every night, I’m riding down on the train to see my mother and then taking off from there at 3:00 in the morning and going back to the camp.  The commander of the ground troops has us up exercising or taking hikes you know to keep us busy because at Camp Shanks there’s nothing to do but just sit there and wait until they get the boat ready.

So I do that for about three or four nights and then finally somebody lets the rumor out that they’re thinking of taking the flyboys that are stuck with the ground troops up to Stewart Field which is the field near West Point and let us get our flying time in, see, so we’d be able to get paid.  Well that’s a good rumor so I take all my dirty clothes and take them down to my mother and told her that I’d be back the next night. 

Prior to that I used to say, “Well I don’t know if I’ll be back”, but this one I was sure.  So I took all my clothes, dirty clothes, and took them down to my mom.  Just to get past that, it was a month, a month and a half before the package arrived in England.  My mother shipped my underwear to me (laughter).  That’s the one time we didn't get off. 

They took us from Camp Shanks, put us on the train on the Jersey side, backed up a ferry boat, marched us on the boat, went across the Hudson River and anchored at the end of one of those long piers, marched us off the ferry boat this side, then turned us left and marched us up into this steamer.  It was the Frederick Lykes. 

Now I’m familiar with the names of the ships and all that because as I said I worked for rope and canvas people and we knew all the boat names.  We made boat covers for them, lifeboat covers.  We made debarkation nets and these slings, cargo nets and so forth.  So I knew the Frederick Lykes.  It was a converted transport and they loaded us on there.

Then we sailed out of New York harbor.  That was rough.  The Atlantic Ocean for 10 days and it was a real bouncer all the way across.  We got partway out there and had some trouble with one of the engines so we dropped out of the convoy for about six or eight hours and had a destroyer escort circling us while they fiddled around to get us fixed again.  Then we came chugging back in.

But that’s lonely out there.  It was so crowded, about 12 men to a room about this size, figure four bunks, three high, in a place about this big.  These are all officers, all 2nd lieutenants.  One guy I think weighed about 200 pounds.  He got in one of the bunks and didn't get out of it for 10 days.  I think he weighed about 175, he was sick the whole time.  They only served two meals a day and you could see him and he was sick on that boat because the number of people that showed up for meals got smaller and smaller.

We got down to a routine where we had breakfast.  Then we went to the room and slept, got up, ate supper and then sat in the dining hall all night long reading or playing cards or something because it was a little quieter and you had a little more room and the other people were sleeping.  We were sleeping like day shift and they were sleeping night shift.  The poor guys, the enlisted men down on the bottom – when you see these pictures on some of those things they show on the history channel, six and seven high bunks, you know, things like that.  They really had it rough down there.

Well we arrived over in Scotland.  They loaded us on a train and took us down into England and took us to a place called Rackey’s which is about five miles outside of Norwich, England and it was a new base just completed and that was home.  In the meantime, the flying echelon had flown the southern route and were now pulling in about the same time we did.

So I’m over there without a crew because mine were splattered on the mountain back in Wendover.  Rigsby and the 791st, his navigator is sick so I get assigned.  So the first time I met the crew I flew combat with was in England.  They were as green as me.  They had never flown combat.  I was a replacement on his crew, but I wasn’t exactly what you would call being replaced on a fill-in for something else.  I was assigned to that crew and that was it.  They didn't have any combat experience either.

That’s the thing, the whole group, this was a new group that had gone over together.  Colonel Shauer took us over there and he’s one of the few commanders that brought them all back at the end of the war.  He was still commanding and he brought them all back.  So I met up with Rigsby.  We flew a few practice missions around England and then we went into combat on April 10, 1944.

We fly a few practice missions.  So on the practice missions, they put these flack suits up there and of course I’m being a navigator, I’m in the nose of the airplane.  Mine is a full front and back and apron on the front and an apron on the back to cover my butt.  So picked that thing up and my God, it weighs 40-50 pounds.  They said I’d better take these alone and try them cause you’re going to have to get used to them.

I put it on, this was on the training mission, stand up there and at the end of about 30 minutes, my chin is hanging on the desk.  I said, “I can’t stand this thing on”.  So I unbuttoned it and took it off and laid it down.  That was torture. I mean I could never stand up with that thing on. 

So on April 10, we went on our first combat mission.  We’re starting down and see some flack.  “Here comes some flack.  Get your helmets and flack suits on”.  I took that thing with one hand, whipped it up, throw it on my shoulder, button it up and wore it standing up for five hours, never bothered me. 

INTERVIEWER:   Now let me ask you a little about the flying conditions.  What altitude were you flying?

HANNAFEY:   We flew from anything from 22,000 to 28,000.

INTERVIEWER:   So that means you have to have an oxygen mask on.

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah.  There was only one mission out of the 35 I flew that we did not have oxygen on.  I think we were at 15,000 and it was one of those close support missions for the ground troops.

INTERVIEWER:   Now it’s cold at that altitude.

HANNAFEY:   55 degrees or better.  Of course if the needle goes over to the pegging, forget about it.  Oh yeah, it’s very, very cold.

INTERVIEWER:   So you’re using oxygen, you’re all bundled up in a flying outfit, you’ve got a flack jacket on top of that, you’re wearing a helmet, now why were you standing up?

HANNAFEY:   Well if you’re familiar with the navigator’s position in a B-24, the B-24, the cable is here, the pilot’s feet and pedals are right up in here.  The front of the airplane is over there.  They had like a sling type of seat that you had to hook up over here and you could set in that.  That wasn’t the best thing, the easiest way.  There’s the world coming across the front of you and you’d have to turn around to see everything.  So the best thing to do was just stand up and that’s what I did.  I think most navigators did.

INTERVIEWER:   Let me ask one other thing.  In the event of crew casualties, were you also supposed to take over as a gunner?

HANNAFEY:   Well if it ever got to that.  It never did.  I fought the war with a pencil, an E6B computer and a pair of dividers although I was a qualified gunner.

INTERVIEWER:   But there were situations in which radiomen and navigators also became…

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah, a lot of them were cross trained and things like that.  Plus we were the best qualified, the crew that graduated with me because we had gone to the regular aerial gunner school.  The thing was if you washed out of navigation, boom, they could still use you, put you right into a crew and make you a gunner.  That’s what I could see being the thing see.  Instead of going through the rigmarole, you were already a qualified gunner so you could step in and handle any of the guns or any of the turrets because six weeks in Kendall Field, Florida and Panama City, we operated all the different types of turrets and all that sort of stuff so we were qualified gunners.

INTERVIEWER:   Well let me take you back to this first mission.  So there you are, you’re going to drop bombs on France, is that right?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah right, railroad.

INTERVIEWER:   And you’re catching flack.  Were there any pursuit planes after you?

HANNAFEY:   No, don’t rush me see.  So we go to that one.  The second mission we go on, we’re going into someplace in Germany and the copilot is flying the airplane and I’m standing up in the nose.  We had just gotten into Germany and we’re flying number 4 position, which is right under sort of the tail of number 1 airplane.  I look up at the astrodome and said, “Chief, look at those guys climbing.”  Then I noticed, I don’t hear the sounds, we’re about 22,000 feet, I don’t hear any real noise and you get used to that. 

What it is, the copilot had been running up a little close on the number 1 and he had pulled the throttles back a little to let it fall back a little and then when he leaned into them again to get the power on, the power didn't come back up.  The four engines are out there just sort of windmilling (laughter).  They’re up there, the engineer, the pilot and the copilot are up there and makes a 180 turn and we saw it gliding back toward France at least.

Finally get it going and we’re letting down.  The pilot hits the dingle bell, the alert bell, and we start to get everything out of the way to get ready because maybe we’ll have to bail out.  So he’s gliding down and finally when we get down, the gunners are standing in the bomb bay, the bombardier and I are ready to dump the nose wheel and we’ll go out the nose hatch, just waiting for the long ring which means get out. 

At about 13,000 feet, we’re idling and going down about 2,000 feet a minute.  At 13,000 feet, the engines all come right back in so the pilot tells us to get back.  So everybody gets back in their position, but being a new group, we were last in this bomber’s stream apparently.  We’re looking around and looking for another airplane and we can’t see another soul except us.  So he says we’re over here by ourselves.  “Give me a course for home.”

So quick like a bunny, I have him a course for home and told him we had about an hour and a half to go.  All the gunners get back there in the turrets, running around and around.  That’s a lonely place to be up there all by yourself.  But we managed to get back out.  A couple of P-47’s come by and looked at us a little bit and saw that we were all right and followed us a little bit, but then they were going back.  They were running out of gas so they had to go back.

INTERVIEWER:   Had you jettisoned your bombs?

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah, yeah, we jettisoned.  We hit some woods in Germany or something.  We didn't get credit for that mission.  Anyway we got back, didn't have to change, and went straight back and landed.  A couple of days later, the pilot and the engineering officer and squadron commander, they all took that same airplane up, pulled the throttles back, let it glide around a while, see if they could duplicate it and they never could.

But I think some months later, some other outfit had the same problem and it worked out the same way for them.  I’m not in that engineering group, but they found out something was happening.  To have all four engines quit at once, just sitting up there windmilling, doesn’t make sense, but he never could duplicate it again.  People think, oh chicken.

All right, then we got into the groove, went a few more missions.  All we would run into was a little flack.  Well they had patterns.  They had radio beacons and you’d come out to the coast and hit that and then you climbed at 300 feet per minute out so many minutes and then you made a turn and then you climbed back for so many minutes and you just sort of spiraled up until you got to the altitude they wanted you to, something like 15,000 or 20,000, break out on top of the clouds.  Airplanes all around you, all flying air patterns from all different places.

I have a map to show you.  It would drive you nuts to see how many airfields are over in that place at that time.  Anyway for six missions, we just hit a little flack.  Gee, you’re thinking, I wish we saw some fighters.  I’m tired of this damn flack.  So number 7, 21 April, Berlin.  Okay so we get up and they use the straightforward approach.  They come straight into Berlin, right through the heart of the countries that they had overrun and all that.

I remember places like Dumalake and Stein Dumalake in Germany.  At 11:02 just before we got to the IP, we saw a gaggle of airplanes lining up at about 10:00 high and I said enemy fighters, 11:03 fighters attack and they come zooming down and cut us out of the left hand side of the formation.  Then they come sailing through there.  One of them fires his guns and he hits the armor plate in the nose turret and blows all the Plexiglas out of the nose.

We’re at 22,000 feet at the time, 25,000, we’re up in altitude.  We’re just north of the target.  Blows all the Plexiglas out of the nose turret, blows Wicks, who was the bombardier, blows him ass over teakettle out of the nose.  He comes out and falls out of the nose, disconnects my headset, my oxygen and we’re in a tangle down there.  Here’s this 55 degrees below zero wind whistling through the nose.

The pilot is sitting up there and he thinks he has two dead people up in the front of the airplane and all it is is Wicks and me all tangled up trying to get back on oxygen and back on the phone to find out what in the hell is going on.  So Wicks, we finally get hooked up.

INTERVIEWER:   How do you spell his name by the way?

HANNAFEY:   W-I-C-K-S.  He was from upstate New York and he just died about two weeks ago.  Anyway we finally get the doorjambs closed again and get on the horn to the pilot and tell him that we’re still alive.  So there’s nothing we could do in the nose because our oxygen was just about out.  So we came out onto the flight deck.  But that was our first encounter with the fighters.  We’ll take flack any day.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you finish your bomb run?

HANNAFEY:   Well the only thing that saved us, he kept in formation and kept right with them, dropped the bombs and we got our way back out.  But he had to keep that nose stuck in there, cause they could have cut us out of the pattern; we didn't have any protection.  But we got back from that run too.  The airplane was in pretty sad shape. 

Our copilot was a fella named Tom Murphy.  I think he came from Glenn Falls or something like that.  He’s a good pilot.  He flew our first half dozen missions and then they gave him his own crew.  So they let him use our airplane, the one with the big red heart on it, no that was the other one.  The Stinger, anyway, Murphy, they let him use our airplane.  He flew our airplane, came back over the field, horrible looking shape. 

He bailed his whole crew out over the field and took our airplane to Watton which was a depot and crash landed it over there because he knew it was in too bad a shape for him to land it and he didn't want to risk his crew so he bailed the crew out and then landed.

INTERVIEWER:   But he rode the aircraft down.

HANNAFEY:   Yeah, by himself, he flew it over there.  That was the end of the airplane.

INTERVIEWER:   Was he injured?

HANNAFEY:   No, no, Murphy was all right.  He got out; he was lucky.

INTERVIEWER:   Did he get decorated?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah, I think they gave him the DFC for that one.

INTERVIEWER:   That’s the Distinguished Flying Cross?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah.  So that was the end of that airplane.  Then we continued on.  Once you got in the groove of flying, you got used to it.  Then it was just like going to work.  We’d get on our bicycles and ride down to one of the local taverns after work and have a couple.  The Green Man, the taverns had all kinds of weird names.  We had another one, The Ferry.  They had a place where you had to get across this little section of water and they had a rowboat with a chain at each end and you put your bicycle in there and pull yourself across to get to The Ferry, that was one of the local joints.

The thing was they had beer rations over there.  After you’d been there awhile, you got to know which pubs got their beer on what day so you toured around.  Go here tonight and so and so’s tomorrow night because that’s when they had their beer rations. 

Another time, we went down to London one day.  We got a 48-hour pass and we went to London.  We were getting a room in the Reindeer.  They had a little hotel for officers there.  We went down there and it was about the time the buzz bombs were coming over.  We went down, the four of us got a room.  We heard this noise that was the buzz bombs.  So I walked over and I opened the window and looked out.

About a mile down in front of me, here’s one of these buzz bombs flying.  They were low altitude things, 500 feet.  About a half a minute later, it stops.  Then the next thing you hear is a kaboom.

INTERVIEWER:   Now a buzz bomb was an unmanned rocket explosive device.  It was fired out of Germany.

HANNAFEY:   No, most of them were fired from the coast of France right over there around Dover, places like that.  They had these little ramps that they had built and would scoot the thing off and just so much gas in it for the power to get it…

INTERVIEWER:   And it made a characteristic sound, sort of like a put-put-put.

HANNAFEY:   That’s right.  Oh yeah, you knew when you heard one.

INTERVIEWER:   Then there would be a deathly silence and the engine had stopped and the explosive device would plunge.

HANNAFEY:   Right, the whole thing would come down.  That was our first visit to London and we were ready to go back home.  It was safer back at our base (laughter).

INTERVIEWER:   How were you treated by the British?

HANNAFEY:   They were all right.  I didn't have any trouble with them.  We seemed to get along with them.  The thing was most of the men were away, see.  The women were friendly (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   Now are you still a 2nd lieutenant or have you been promoted?

HANNAFEY:   No, no, the thing is I flew 33 missions as a 2nd lieutenant and my last two, I was a 1st lieutenant.  However, when you stop to consider the normal time and grade for 2nd lieutenant in peacetime or maybe even wartime was about 18 months.  Well I was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in November of ’43 and in about July of ’44, I made 1st lieutenant.  I was only eight months in grade, but I had 33 combat missions by that time.  So I flew only the last two as a 1st lieutenant.

INTERVIEWER:   What was the worst mission?  If you had to pick one out and said, “I hope I never have to do that one again?”

HANNAFEY:   Well you can’t beat that one to Berlin.  That was the hairiest.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you have any that were really relatively soft going?

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah, sure.  Some of these they called no-ball targets.  What they were, were these rocket-launching platforms right in Dover.  We had one mission there, it was right on the coast there.  I don’t know if it was Dover or a little bit below.  In fact, we practically came up to the coast and turned up on the side and bombed almost without even going over enemy territory.  That was the easiest one I’d say.

INTERVIEWER:   That was really a milk run?

HANNAFEY:   That was the milk run.

INTERVIEWER:   By the way, what was the crew’s size on a B-24?

HANNAFEY:   Ten. 

INTERVIEWER:   Tell me, you had a pilot and a copilot.

HANNAFEY:   Well you had a pilot and copilot, a navigator and a bombardier.  They were the four officers.  Then you had a flight engineer, a radio operator, a tail gunner, a right and left waist gunners and a ball gunner.  My crew, I flew 35, five of us that I know, I think there were six, but I’m sure of five, five of us flew all the same missions.  Occasionally a gunner had some other duty and he couldn’t make the flight and things like that.  But the pilot, the bombardier, me, and the engineer, and radio operator, we all flew the same missions.

INTERVIEWER:   What did it feel like as the numbers of flights began to increase, 25, 26, 27?  You know you’re going to be rotated out at 35, is that correct?

HANNAFEY:   Well that’s the whole thing.  When I got over there, the quota was 25.  Then we started flying and working toward the 25, I don’t know how many we had in, they raised it to 30.  Then as we worked our way up toward the 30, D-Day came.  Well D-Day, all bets were off.  It was fly until you die.  That went on for a couple of weeks and then they came back and put a lid on it, 35.

INTERVIEWER:   Well what did it feel like to get closer and closer to that number?

HANNAFEY:   It doesn’t bother you after a while.  We’re counting backwards and then what the hell, it didn't make much difference.  You’ve got to understand, on D-Day, we flew on D-Day too.  We passed over the beachhead there at about 6:27 in the morning.  There were so many airplanes in the air that you had to go about 50-75 miles into France before you could make a right hand turn to get out even if your airplane was falling apart.

But you had to come out all the way around Cherbourg because if you ever made a turn right here, you’d have a traffic jam.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your mission on D-Day?

HANNAFEY:   I think our target was Colville.

INTERVIEWER:   Ground support?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah, we were at 20,000 something like that.  I don’t know if we could do much good, but we were all there.  That was the whole thing and you could look down and you could see the ships and the damn airplanes all over the place. 

INTERVIEWER:   What was your 35th mission?

HANNAFEY:   Well it was right down, I’ll tell you, it was right down to the edge of Switzerland.  It was Ludwigshaven or something like that.  In fact, while you were running your bomb run, you could look out ahead and you could see the mountains and you could see Switzerland.  We were that close to Switzerland that if anything happened, you could almost glide into it there.  Of course that was a neutral country.

Now we all talked that we were going to be down there, but it was our last mission.  We’re going to get home.  I mean we’re not going to take the easy way out.  When we finished our bombing, we stayed with the group and we didn't chicken out.  Some of them that were having trouble did go into Switzerland.  I forget who.

INTERVIEWER:   So your whole crew had 35 missions?

HANNAFEY:   Well I think some of the gunners were short one or two because they had missed, but the basic five people that I told you, the pilot, the bombardier, me, the radio and the engineer, we did have all 35 together.

INTERVIEWER:   Nobody has ever told me this on the videotape.  When you landed from your 35th mission, you’re done.  Did anybody come out and shake your hand?

HANNAFEY:   Well by that time crews had been finishing all along.  It wasn’t like the Memphis Belle, you know, the first one that ever finished according to what they say.  No, I don’t really remember anything like that.

INTERVIEWER:   It was over and it was done.

HANNAFEY:   Right, I just remember I’d been saving booze for several missions and had a party by myself (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   How many reunions have you gone to?

HANNAFEY:   Well let’s see, Frances and I, the first one we went to was in ’76.  We went up to Valley Forge, passed through Philadelphia.  That’s the year they had Legionnaire’s Disease in Philly.  In ’79, we went to one at Hershey.  That was just roughly a month after Three Mile Island happened.  That was on the way up there (laughter).  That’s just two.  I’ve been to one in Texas, one in Colorado, I guess about ten.

They have an organization, the Second Air Division, was all the B-24’s in the 8th Air Force.  There were three divisions in the 8th Air Force.  The 1st and 3rd division were all 17’s and the 2nd air division was all the B-24’s.

INTERVIEWER:   I interviewed a man who flew, who was a pilot.  His copilot became first pilot of another aircraft.  On his first mission, he was killed.  The copilot now a pilot.  You flew 35 missions.  What’s the difference, how come you survived all 35 and other people didn't?

HANNAFEY:   I don’t know.  I know our group had a good loss record because I think of Colonel Shauer’s and his tight formations.  I mean he insisted on formation.  The enemy would take a look at some crew, a loose formation, and would say they would go after those guys because if they could see a packed in group…

INTERVIEWER:   So part of it is training?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:   But part of it is just luck.

HANNAFEY:   Right.  I’d look out the window and see a new crew, maybe one or two missions.  In fact, I didn't even get to know all of them.  I’d know the navigator or something.  They were flying in an element down below and I looked out there and then I’d see a big streak of fire running through the inside of the airplane and the whole airplane was burning and fell out of formation and blew up.

INTERVIEWER:   Sir, is anything ever fixed as a result of war?  Do wars change anything?

HANNAFEY:   Not a thing, no. 

INTERVIEWER:   What did you learn from all your battle experience?  Look into the camera and tell your grandchildren.  Tell the kids that are going to watch this in the history classes.  What did you learn?

HANNAFEY:   Well war does not solve anything.  Now I stayed in the service.  I did 20 years.  I flew in other airplanes and I’ve been out on alerts and it hasn’t proven a thing to me except that we spend a lot of time and money for something that they should have solved some other way. 

One of the stories is Rigsby.  A B-24, you had to manhandle it.  The airplanes nowadays with all their electronics, anybody can fly them.  But this was strictly a manual airplane flying formation.  Rigsby who was the pilot told Gracie and I this story.  He said he’s got this little electric suit on and he’s up there flying formation and working up a sweat.  Then he’d get a little sweat and it would run down and it would get into one of these wires and he’s getting shocked by the wires and worrying about flying formation and getting burned and shocked (laughter). 

Then the story Gracie wanted me to tell was one of these missions, we were coming on the way home and we hit the coast of the Netherlands and getting ready to start letting down.  I look out the window and I see this flack coming up, four guns, boom, boom, boom.  They’re beating the hell out of the low element down at the bottom there.

I look out and think those guys are catching hell down there.  I’m facing the back.  The next thing I know is like somebody is hitting a tin can with a wet mop, whomp, whomp.  Hitting us.  I don’t know how many and one of those things come in by the bomb bay handles, comes in and hits the apron of my flack suit, the bottom part and bounces it up under the table like this.  I’m standing there and feel something cold running down my leg and I reach over to see if my leg was there.

Rigsby says, “Anybody hit?  Anybody hit?”  I said, “I don’t know yet.  I’m checking my leg, something warm or cold ran down my leg”.  Everybody thinks I wet my pants.  I think it was just sweat.  But it took and bounced the apron of my flack suit up.

INTERVIEWER:   So the shrapnel went between your legs?

HANNAFEY:   Well it came in from the handles over here and hit and scooted by me.

INTERVIEWER:   A few inches the other way and…

HANNAFEY:   (Laughter) Yeah.  Then we finished up the end of August.  If you stop and figure it, 35 missions in…we started April 10 and the 31st of July we were finished.  I didn't do anything in August.  In August our airplane was assigned to another outfit, another crew, a new crew and they were up flying formation and practicing. 

The operations officer was checking the formation flying around in a P-47.  He hit our old airplane.  I wasn’t aboard, but hit it and cut the nose turret right off.  That gunner got killed, but they got the aircraft back.  A couple of days later, they needed a volunteer crew to fly it over to Watton to see about getting it fixed so I volunteered to fly it over there.  Here it is with the nose cut off.  That was hit by a P-47. 

INTERVIEWER:   What happened to the pilot of the P-47?

HANNAFEY:   Oh he’s all right, he made it all right.  But if you notice right up here, there’s my name, Duffy. 

INTERVIEWER:   You mentioned something about the Enola Gay.

HANNAFEY:   We were flying B-50’s and we went up to the base in Albuquerque where most of the atomic stuff is.  A friend of mine was up there in a B-47 and his bombardier was the guy who dropped the bomb from the Enola Gay.  Tom something or other, that was where I met him.  Are you interested in after the war stuff?

INTERVIEWER:   Let’s hear it.

HANNAFEY:   From ’46 to ’49, let’s see, I got back to the States September 18, 1944.  In other words, for roughly two years, from civilian status, I had gone to 1st lieutenant; combat 35 missions completed from a civilian in two years.  Came back, 30 days at home and then went to Selman Field to central instructor school.  Monroe, Louisiana.  Went from there, that’s the same place I went to navigation school, they were going to make instructors out of the combat people.

I volunteered to go into radar when I passed the test there.  So they shipped us from there to Victorville, California.  We went to radar school there to learn how to be a radar operator to go into B-29’s, but there were about six to eight ex-combat men there they pulled off and made us all instructors and let the rest of the class go through and go to the 29’s so I didn't get in the 29’s then.

So we stayed flying B-24’s training missions out there for I guess close to a year. The war ended.  I went to Minner Field, California and got into statistical controls, worked there.  Then finally I came back to Mitchell Field and went to two-week school and then went to Greensboro.  From Greensboro to Panama.

INTERVIEWER:   By now, you’ve decided…

HANNAFEY:   Stay in, yeah.  We’re now up to, this is the end of ’45.  I got down to Panama in the zone in March or April of ’46.  My primary job down there was stat control officer, but I still flew in all kinds of airplanes as a navigator going around the islands and stuff like that.  Then in ’49 came back from Puerto Rico and at that time Strategic Air Command was building up so all the ratings were going back to refresher schools and going into SAC.

I went into El Paso, went into B-29’s and B-50’s.  There we flew alerts and training missions and some interesting things.  Did a couple of TDY’s in England and went back in ’50.  A little bit Africa, went into P-36’s.  We were carrying A-bombs.  We would take one to England, in the 50’s, we got to Bermuda and the engine caught on fire.  The pilot hits the bell and we bail out and start running down the runway.  We had an atomic bomb.  It was safe, but we were carrying it anyway.

INTERVIEWER:   The aircraft was on the ground, is that correct?

HANNAFEY:   Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:   And the engine caught on fire and you did the heroic thing, you got out of there.

HANNAFEY:   Well the pilot hit the bell.  The thing was, the weaponer, the man who was minding the baby in there, he was sitting behind the hatch.  I picked up the hatch and hooked it up and the bombardier and I hit, fell out of the B-50, running like hell.  Then the weaponer finally got himself out from behind there and got down and he was running.  He passed us on that runway.  We practically ran off the island of Bermuda (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   How was that situation diffused?  What happened?

HANNAFEY:   What do you mean?

INTERVIEWER:   Well I suppose the fire department showed up.

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah, when you have takeoffs and so forth, they have the fire trucks sitting right out there.

INTERVIEWER:   So once the fire is out, the danger is…

HANNAFEY:   Yeah, they had to send in another engine and you laid around there a couple of days.

INTERVIEWER:   Well that was tough duty, hanging around Bermuda.

HANNAFEY:   Well yeah (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   Military aircraft have changed substantially, haven’t they?

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah.  See that’s the thing.  I don’t know how much time we spent on oxygen because anytime you went over 10,000 feet, you were supposed to be on oxygen.  You didn't come into these pressurized cabins until you get into the B-50, B-29, B-36, they were all pressurized.  You could go for awhile with your mask hanging on there without it being hooked across your face.

In the B-24, there was no central heating or air conditioning.  The wind just comes through whenever it felt like it.

INTERVIEWER:   And it was noisy.

HANNAFEY:   It was noisy and above 10,000, you had to have your oxygen on.

INTERVIEWER:   What was the speed of the 24?

HANNAFEY:   I think we’d cruise right around 155-160 indicated.

INTERVIEWER:   Well let some listener put their head out of the car window at 75 miles an hour and hear how noisy it is and that would be doubled.

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah.  That’s the thing, when the guy pulled the engine back, you notice the quiet (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   The show’s over.  Well got anything else you’d like to say?

HANNAFEY:   No, I don’t think so.

INTERVIEWER:   It’s been an interesting life, hasn’t it?

HANNAFEY:   Oh yeah.

INTERVIEWER:   Would you do it again?

HANNAFEY:   Well I guess so.  A couple of times there I’m sure if LeMay had his way, he would have gotten some of the old boys back in and old boys would have gone with him in some situation.

INTERVIEWER:   Let me thank you, well done.

HANNAFEY:   I’m glad you enjoyed it.