INTERVIEWER:   We’ve got to ask you Bob, what’s your full name, date of birth and where you were reared if different from your birthplace.

SLOCKETT:   Okay, my name is Robert Donald Slockett and I live on Oak Island.  I’ve been here for 13 years. 

INTERVIEWER:   Where were you born?

SLOCKETT:   I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

INTERVIEWER:   So we know where you came from, where were you living at the time you entered the service?

SLOCKETT:   I was living in suburban Philadelphia outside, in Upper Donnery.

INTERVIEWER:   What branch of the service did you enlist in?

SLOCKETT:   I enlisted in the Army, but at that time I asked for the Army Air Corps and they gave us tests to determine whether you would be placed in the Army Air Corps or the Army and I apparently passed the test for Army Air Corps so I was placed in the Army Air Corps. 

INTERVIEWER:   Why did you choose the Army Air Corps over other branches of service?

SLOCKETT:   Well it goes back a long time.  When I was a little kid, I used to love to build model airplanes and having been a person that lived through the Depression, I was old enough, although quite young, to remember all the news articles on the war that was going on between Germany and England and France and Canada was involved.  I always had this great idea that when I get to be 18, I’m going to join the Royal Canadian Air Force.  But the war with our part, our entrance into the war, preceded that so that’s why I joined the Army Air Corps, US Army Air Corps.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your military rank stateside?

SLOCKETT:   I was a staff sergeant.

INTERVIEWER:   Overseas?

SLOCKETT:   Yes, staff sergeant overseas.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your occupation specialty?

SLOCKETT:   I was an armored gunner, aerial gunner.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay Bob, what was your occupation before the war?

SLOCKETT:   I had just gotten out of high school in June of 1941 and worked in a dairy in Philadelphia as a bookkeeper’s helper.  The war started December 7, 1941 and I enlisted four days later. 

INTERVIEWER:   Next question I want to ask, we already know you enlisted.  Why did you choose to do so, enlist?

SLOCKETT:   I just felt loyal to our country and I wanted to learn to fly and the combination of those two things prompted me to enlist.

INTERVIEWER:   What unit did you take basic training?

SLOCKETT:   I took basic training at Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you volunteer for any specialized or hazardous duty training while you were there?

SLOCKETT:   I actually put in an application for aviation cadet training and it followed me, the application followed me for about a year and a half before I received word that I passed everything.  I put in the application at Keesler Field, took the physical at Fort Logan, Denver, Colorado, and I took the written exam in the Aleutian Islands.  After 10 months in the Aleutians, having passed the test, I was sent back to the States for pilot training.

INTERVIEWER:   The Japanese at that time, had they invaded the oceans when you were there?

SLOCKETT:   Yes they had.  They were in Kiska and Attu Islands.  They bombed Dutch harbor with the idea in mind to demobilize that, destroy it and then invade, but we changed their mind on that .  We sent them scurrying back to Japan.  We knocked out a whole bunch of their ships and an aircraft carrier and they took off back to Japan. 

INTERVIEWER:   After you got done chasing the Japanese on the Aleutians, then you went home to flight training, correct?

SLOCKETT:   Right.

INTERVIEWER:   Tell us about that.

SLOCKETT:   I entered Ellensburg State Teachers College in Ellensburg, Washington for a three month course on aerology, meteorology, and physics and math to get prepared for preflight.  After that I was sent to Santa Ana, California for preflight.  At that time I took tests and I passed the tests for pilot training.  I was sent to Thunderbird Field in Phoenix, Arizona for primary pilot training, then to basic pilot training at Lemoore, California and then to advanced pilot training in double engine pilot training in Douglas, Arizona.

Before I could hardly get started, apparently they felt that I wasn’t happy and I think I probably wasn’t cause I wanted to be a fighter pilot.  You know, I didn't say anything, but I guess my demeanor was such that they thought this guy doesn’t want to be here.  So I was washed out of advanced pilot training basically for that reason although I had a little difficulty initially landing the plane, but I got over that.  But within about 10 hours of flight training, they sent me to Amarillo, Texas.

At that station, I was interviewed and asked what did I want to do now.  It was difficult for me to comprehend that they would ask me that.  I thought they were going to say okay, we’ll put you over here or in the infantry or something like that.  But they did ask me and the first thought I had aerial gunnery.  At that time I thought I probably could have chosen navigator, bombardier or maybe even single engine pilot training, but that’s sort of a facetious possibility.  Anyway, I’m happy that I did what I did. I became a gunner…

INTERVIEWER:   So what happened after, tell us how you became a gunner.

SLOCKETT:   I went to Kingman, Arizona for about a three or four month course in aerial gunnery.  We flew in B17’s and fired on the tail, they had a dragging flag on the tail of another B17 and he would make movements and we’d fire on the tail.  We learned how to fire the 50-caliber machine guns.

INTERVIEWER:   So far in your experience in the Air Force, what’s your assessment of the officers, the non-commissioned officers that you’ve met so far?

SLOCKETT:   Well I always had a good experience with the officers and the non-commissioned officers.  Most of them, I would say 99% of them were in the service for the same reason I was there – to get the job done.  In basic training, you had a corporal and a sergeant that were sort of gung-ho and you could tell that they were putting on, that that wasn’t their real personality.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, now you’ve gone to gunnery school and all that.  What happened to you after that?

SLOCKETT:   I was then transferred to Tampa, Florida, McDill Field near Tampa, Florida and met up with the other fellows in my crew, my pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier and the three other gunners.  We went on practice missions all over Florida, mostly navigation training, navigation missions.  We practiced, went skeet shooting down on the ground and so forth.

INTERVIEWER:   What year is this, Bob?

SLOCKETT:   This was 1944, by the time I got to Tampa.

INTERVIEWER:   And how long did that training last.

SLOCKETT:   That was only about three months.

INTERVIEWER:   Then what happened to you?

SLOCKETT:   Then we went to Savannah, Georgia, picked up our brand new B17, took off for Fort Dix.  We had to land at Fort Dix because we ran into a snow storm and we stayed there about a week until the weather cleared.  Then we went up to Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire and the weather wasn’t too good there either, but we fueled up there, went to Labrador and it was snowbound, but we stayed there only a short time, had a meal.  Then we flew over to Blueiwest in Greenland.

We were there about a week.  The weather was real bad.  Then we flew over the glaciers in Greenland to Iceland and Iceland was socked in.  Our navigator who was a terrific navigator found one distinctive navigational point at the very top of a mountain peak, snow packed mountain peak, and he told the pilot exactly where we were and the pilot dove down through all that cloud cover and landed the plane not too far away from that mountain.

INTERVIEWER:   Now what time, what date, date roughly is this?  You’re on your way to England obviously.

SLOCKETT:   Yeah, this was early January of 1945.  From Iceland went onto England where we had some more navigational training around England to get the feel for what flying in England was like.

INTERVIEWER:   What squadron were you in?

SLOCKETT:   388th bomb group, and 560th I think , 560th bomb squadron.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, so now you’re in England.  You’re flying around England.  What did you do in your spare time?

SLOCKETT:   Slept.  After a mission, the stress of a mission was such that the first thing after a good meal, we of course didn't have anything to eat for anywhere from four to eight hours flying.  We took it easy the rest of that day.  Sometimes we’d have to fly again the next day.  Every once in a while, we’d get a three day pass and we’d go into London.

INTERVIEWER:   When you started flying missions, I think it’s time for you to start telling us about those missions.  What in your opinion, because you flew so many of them, what is your impression of the enemy’s tactics?

SLOCKETT:   The enemy, the Germans were excellent airmen and of course they were the only combat people that we encountered.  The Germans could fly just as well as the Americans.   They had good equipment and they were more advanced than we were in many ways.  They had jet fighter planes that we didn't have.   They had rocket ships that they sent up through our formations on their way to England to bomb England, V2 rockets.

The concern that we had and I’m sure our officers had was that if we don’t hurry up and end this war, they’re going to get the atomic bomb cause they were working on it.  If they did, we don’t know what would have happened.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you serve with any other allied groups while you were in England?

SLOCKETT:   No, I did not serve with any of the other allied people, but we saw the British planes occasionally.  One interesting thing I thought was on one of our missions, there was a whole fleet of British Sterlings pulling gliders containing troops presumably that were going to go invade some portion of Germany or around the Rhine River.  That’s basically all that I encountered.

INTERVIEWER:   How was the morale of your unit?

SLOCKETT:   We had great morale. 

INTERVIEWER:   Tell us about that.

SLOCKETT:   The men in my crew got along very well.  My pilot, after 50 years, assessed our crew as being a great crew.  We were loyal, we knew our jobs and performed those jobs very well.  So our morale in our crew, we had a lot of faith in our pilot, copilot, navigator and bombardier and ourselves, the gunners.  So I would say that morale was excellent.

INTERVIEWER:   Bob, you flew 17 missions, is that correct?

SLOCKETT:   Right.

INTERVIEWER:   Why don’t you start by…can you remember them all? I would think so.

SLOCKETT:   I can remember them pretty much, yes I can.

INTERVIEWER:   Why don’t you start with mission number one.

SLOCKETT:   Mission #1 was to Berlin.  We called it the Big B.  It was to marshall yards just outside Arienburg which is a little town north of Berlin.  The thing I remember about that mission was how I involuntarily became very ill just as we turned onto the bomb run.  I won’t go into details, but I had an oxygen mask and a heated suit on at the same time.  There was a lot of flack.  We didn't see any enemy aircraft, but there was a lot of antiaircraft fire, but we got back safely with a few holes in the plane, but that’s all.

INTERVIEWER:   Any planes lost? 

SLOCKETT:   Pardon?

INTERVIEWER:   Any planes in the squadron lost that day?

SLOCKETT:   There were, not in our squadron, but in the group there were, yes.  We did not encounter, our squadron did not encounter any fighters, German fighters.  Number two mission was to Ruhland, oil refineries in Ruhland.  That was a target that was very important for us to knock out because they made synthetic oil and the Germans defended that target with antiaircraft and fighters because they didn't want to lose their ability to supply oil to their aircraft.

That mission was a sad mission in that the pilot’s friend, 19 year old friend who was a toggalier, that’s a gunner that took the place of a bombardier when there wasn’t a bombardier available for some reason, he was only 19 years old and was in the plane right next to us, right there and they got shot down.  The toggalier, a boyhood friend of my pilot’s, got killed. 

As a matter of fact, six of the nine people on the plane got killed.  The book that I wrote called Mission Accomplished describes what the three that survived went through, how they were able to get out of the plane and how they survived civilian interference once they got down on the ground and then the POW camp.

INTERVIEWER:   Bob, between your missions, how many days did you have to rest in England?

SLOCKETT:   It varied, it varied a lot.  There was one period where we flew three missions in three days.  Then there were times when we didn't fly for five or six days.

INTERVIEWER:   What did you do to amuse yourselves between missions?

SLOCKETT:   Well our airfield was right within walking distance of little towns, very small towns and we would saunter over to one of the little towns occasionally and enter a pub and have some warm English beer.  That would be one thing we would do.  But if we had three days off, we would go into London.  I was interested in going to Coven Gardens which was a big dancehall like our Palladium in Los Angeles where they had big name bands and so forth.  I enjoyed doing that. 

But we did go on sightseeing tours on the double deck buses.  We went into parks along the Thames River.  Every park that you went into, somebody would be on a soapbox giving a speech about something, politics.

INTERVIEWER:   How did you find  your reception with the British?

SLOCKETT:   No problem with the British.  I can cite one example, however, that was disappointing to me.  I met a very nice 16 year old girl, I was only 19, at Coven Gardens.  After the dance I took her home, went home with her on the bus and so forth.  She invited me to come in the house and we went up the steps.  She opened the door and her father was on the other side of the door.  He said, “You can’t come in”. (laughter)  He was just protecting his daughter.  But that was the only case.

INTERVIEWER:   Go on, what was the next mission?

SLOCKETT:   That mission to Ruhland where we lost our pilot’s boyhood buddy was aborted actually.  Just as we got on the bomb run, it was decided that the cloud cover was so bad that we would leave the bomb run, not drop our bombs and go to another target.  We did that, it was Plauen.  That was marshalling yards again.  We bombed the area that we were supposed to.  It was a lot clearer there.  It wasn’t Ruhland so we were able to hit the target very well.

Antiaircraft fire at Plauen wasn’t nearly as severe or accurate as it was at Ruhland.  We then, on the third mission, our target again was to be Ruhland and the very same thing happened.  We got there and we got just under the bomb run and got all the antiaircraft fire sent up and our plane was just bounced all over the place and had a lot of damage.  We still turned off the bomb run because of the cloud cover and not being able to see the target.

We went to the same place again, Plauen, and bombed the marshalling yards again there.  Communication of course was an important thing for the Germans or anybody in a war.  So that was an important target.

Then the fourth mission was to I believe Frankfurt.  For this mission, our group put up three full groups for a combat wing.  Thirty-nine aircraft out of 42 returned so we had three that did not return.  This was a mission to aircraft, air fields.

Our fifth mission was to Dortmund which was again marshalling yards that we bombed.  The flack was very accurate.  We had some problem with our controls in the tail and my pilot called back to me to see if I could find out what was wrong.  I checked the guide wires and so forth and I couldn't see anything wrong so we went on our way.  Then our wingman, Lieutenant Dennis, was shot down over the target and I saw five shoots escape the plane just before it blew up; however the entire crew did escape the plane and became POW’s.

INTERVIEWER:   Bob, by now after five missions, how’s the morale of particularly your air crew standing up and yourself included?

SLOCKETT:   I would say our morale was good.  We didn't really talk much about it cause we all knew that  we had more missions to go on and there was always that inward fear of what would take place on subsequent missions.  Thinking back about it now, it’s sort of interesting.  We didn't talk about the missions, but I think it was basically because we knew we had so many more to go and there was this inward fear of what would take place.

INTERVIEWER:   Alright, go on to the next, the highlight of each one of your missions. What it was all about.

SLOCKETT:   So number six was to a little town called Rheine in Germany and it was to an airfield and it was about 15 miles due east of Amsterdam.  So this was a fairly short mission really going from England to near Holland.  We feel that it was sort of a milk run we call it because we didn't get much flack and we didn't see many fighters.  The reason that we called it a milk run and why it was that was the Germans were too busy fighting Montgomery and his troops to worry about us.

We did get a fair amount of flack as we passed over the Frisian Islands which are the islands off the coast of the Netherlands.  We shacked that target, that airfield we felt wouldn’t be used again for a long while.  There were 27 German FW1-90’s and ME-109’s shot down during the mission by the group.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you have fighter cover?

SLOCKETT:   Yeah, we had fighter cover.  Our 7th mission was to Hanover which is located about 80 miles south of Hamburg and 150 miles west of Berlin.  We carried eight 500-pound bombs and four incendiaries.  We assembled over France in dense clouds.  We could hardly see our wingman who was only about 30 feet off our right wing.  Our lead ship had to abort because of flack damage and so the deputy lead had to take over.  Our pilot and a pilot by the name of Humm shared that high lead.  Thirty-six aircraft returned out of 38 in our squadron, no our group.  This mission was for factories and marshalling yards.

Number 8 was to Hamburg and I remember this one very vividly because I would call it the worst, most difficult mission we had.  We originally were going to hit submarine pans in Hamburg, but we didn't.  We ended up hitting, bombing oil storage tanks and that was really a sight to see.  We hit the storage tanks and blew up a bunch of them.  The smoke, first the flames and then the black smoke rose about 10,000 feet and of course we were at about 25,000.  That was pretty high.

The mission itself, as I say, was one of our, if not the most, difficult one we had because we had originally three engines shot, knocked out.  One of them was on fire and Billy, our pilot, dove down and blew out the fire and was able to get one of three started back up again.  He said over the intercom that we may have to go to Sweden which wasn’t all that far away, maybe 100 miles or so. 

So we were all prepared to maybe go to Sweden, but once he got that fire out and one other engine started again, he dove down.  We didn't even drop our bombs on the oil dumps, oil tanks.  We had to get out of there real quick because we didn't really know what we were going to do, whether we were going to go to Sweden or try to get back home on our own.  We chose, because we did have two engines, to go back home on our own. 

We had to fly very low to avoid the German fighters that were located on Heidelburg, an island that was well covered with German aircraft and antiaircraft fire.  So we flew back to England at about 500 feet which was below that island.  It was an island that had a plateau on the top and it was high up in the air.  We flew down below it so that they didn't see us, that their radar couldn't detect us.  So that was a rather scary mission.

We received about 10 holes from flack.  One piece missed the bombardier by half an inch. Another hunk of flack missed Jack Holt’s head by two inches, our radio operator.

INTERVIEWER:   Bob, people have noticed by now that you’re reading a book and it should be noted that you wrote the book.  Would you like to tell the folks.

SLOCKETT:   Yeah, this is a book that I wrote about our experiences, my experiences basically and our crew’s experiences during our tour in England and our missions over Germany.  It’s entitled Mission Accomplished, Memoirs of a Tail Gunner, a World War II combat autobiography of myself, of these 17 tail gunners in the air over Nazi Germany.  It took me about a year to write this book. 

It’s self-published.  I don’t have it in the hands of a regular publisher.  Whether I will do this or not eventually, I don’t know.  I received very good comments from people.  The important thing, the reason I wrote the book was for my crew who were ecstatic over it.  They are very, very pleased that I did do that and of course my children.  I have five children, three boys and two girls.  They of course like the book so they’ll hand it down to their children, my grandchildren.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, let’s get on with your missions.

SLOCKETT:   Okay, that was 7 to Hamburg, and number 8 was to, no that was number 8 to Hamburg.  Number 9 was to Kiel.  Kiel is on the eastern section of the peninsula that ultimately becomes Denmark and it’s not many miles away from Denmark in the Baltic Sea.  The interesting thing about that is we went there twice two days in a row to bomb submarine pens and I think we did a good job of hitting those submarine pens. 

Of course the Germans used the submarines for a lot of different duties, not only combat, but to transfer important people to various places.  I suspect that Adolf Hitler was moved to different places at times.  As you know, he ended up in Berlin.  The interesting thing about these bombing missions to Kiel was how many hundreds, and I’m not exaggerating, of civilian and military German ships scurried away. 

They saw us coming and you could see their wakes as they full throttled themselves as far away…they knew what we were going to do cause the submarine pens were the only military target in the area.  That was a very interesting sight to see, all these ships going hundreds of different ways to get the heck out of the way. 

Years later, I just have to mention this, my wife and I went on a cruise.  It started in England and went around Scotland, Oslo, Denmark and through that Kiel Canal so we passed right by where the submarine pens were and lo and behold, hundreds of ships were just like they were during the war.  Tall ships, there were a number of those there in that Baltic Sea.  They say that Kiel Canal of course was used for freighters, many, many of them a day would go through that canal.  But it was interesting to be there 50 years later and see all those ships in the Baltic Sea.  They weren’t scurrying around like they did during the war.

INTERVIEWER:   With all this going on Bob, did you receive any decorations for service?

SLOCKETT:   Yes, I received the air medal for meritorious service as a tail gunner flying missions over Germany.  I received two oak leaf clusters meaning I really received three air medals.  I got them for five missions, each one for five missions so that was 15 and I flew 17.  I think the most important thing that our crew and our squadron received was a distinguished service emblem.  We all received that.  I treasure that, the fact that our crew was part of a squadron that was cited by General Jimmy Doolittle who was the 8th Air Force commanding officer.  We were cited for doing a good job.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, go on with the missions.

SLOCKETT:   Okay, that was number 10.  Number 11 was to Nuremberg and that was a near fatal mission for me.  Our pilot always had the rule that just before we started the bomb run, we would call in and tell him that we’re okay.  I didn't call in and the reason I didn't call in is that my oxygen mask got disconnected from the tube and I was starting to pass out.  Fortunately this happened at that time when I was supposed to call in.  If it happened earlier or later, that would have been the end because at 25,000 feet, you become unconscious in about three minutes.

Some 10 minutes later without oxygen, you just die.  So I didn't call in and the pilot said, “Somebody check on Slockett back there”.  The radio operator who was manning a waist gun and the waist gunner started throwing empty shells back at me.  Of course I was still slightly conscious and I would turn around like this.  I couldn't do it.  I didn't have the ability to hook the cylinder.  I knew what was going on, but I couldn't get it connected to my mask.

So the pilot sent the top turret gunner down with an auxiliary oxygen cylinder and he came back and he hooked it right up and gave me a shot of oxygen and I was okay right away.  They kidded me afterwards that they couldn't stop me from talking.  You know, all that oxygen, you know all of a sudden, I was talking a blue streak.

INTERVIEWER:   Pretty scary.

SLOCKETT:   It was scary.  I was lucky.  That was Nuremberg. 

INTERVIEWER:   What mission are we on now?

SLOCKETT:   This is #11.  We bombed an aircraft in Nuremberg.  Once we made the bomb run at Nuremberg, we were met with a lot of flack and at least one FW190.  There was a short trail of smoke coming from his engine as he passed under us out of range.  I fired at him once, but he disappeared below before any further damage to his plane could be observed.  So I don’t know whether I aided in shooting him down or whether he was headed for a landing.  Maybe he was actually shot down when he passed the tail of our plane, but I did fire at him.  Whether I hit him or not, I don’t know.

Number 12 was to Munich, the Reims airfield in Munich, and this was a big airfield for the Germans’ jet planes.  One of the things I remember vividly was one of the planes in our squadron got shot down on that mission right over the airfield.  I saw three parachutes from guys jumping out of the plane.  But they landed right on the airfield because that’s right where the plane was shot down.  I always wondered whether they survived or not cause there were many planes to come yet that dropped bombs right on that airfield.  We never heard whether they survived or not. 

INTERVIEWER:   Those German jets that you ran into by now in this part of the war, were they pretty efficient?

SLOCKETT:   They were efficient for short term.  We were told that they could only stay up in the air for about five minutes.  They could get up in the air and then do damage, attack a squadron or a plane, but have to go back in five minutes because they hadn’t mastered the fuel situation, how much would be needed to fly and the type of fuel, I guess they had problems with that. 

What they would do, they would come up maybe six of them and they’d fly parallel to us and then make one swoop right on through and their hope was of course to knock down as many B17’s as they could.  And they did, they did get us, but we got some of them too.  An interesting thing about that too also was that our conventional fighter planes did a pretty good job with those jets.  It was about an even match which was good.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, next mission.

SLOCKETT:   Okay, number 13 was to Zerbst which was in the northern part of Germany, another airfield.  We dropped six 500 pound bombs on the airfield.  The flack was light, but there were many German fighter planes in the area, about 60 jets and a few FOK190’s were encountered.  They shot down 16 of our B17’s and two B17’s in our squadron were shot down.  One blew up and one spiraled down. 

Our navigator saw seven chutes in that one that blew up.  Our fighter planes shot down 20 and destroyed 335 parked German planes on the airfield.  Zerbst is about 20 miles southeast of Magdeburg in northeast Germany and about 70 miles southeast of Berlin.  Our squadron, all but two of our aircraft returned. 

Mission 14 was to Donauworth which is 20 miles northwest of Augsburg and 50 miles south of Nuremberg.  We shacked the target.  They were marshalling yards and the group attacked six marshalling yards and two airfields and two ordinance depots and an ammunition factory in south Germany. We sustained a few holes in the right wing and left horizontal stabilizer, but no damage to any vital parts.  We saw no fighters until we left  the target and were on our way back.  There was a flight of six jets that flew parallel to us, but decided not to attack.  They were just out of range of our 50-caliber guns.

I didn't mention on that on our third mission which was our second one to Ruhland how badly damaged our plane was.  One 88mm shell and we know that by the size of the hole that it made came up and was only about anywhere from about 6” to 12” behind me, came up and it didn't explode on contact which most of them did.  It apparently was a timed shell and it came right up through the tail behind me and blew up above the tail.  If it had exploded on contact, it would have knocked the plane down.

INTERVIEWER:   Taken the tail off.

SLOCKETT:   Yeah, taken the tail off.  Number 15 was to Rouen in France.  The Germans had a pocket of troopers near Bordeaux and we wanted to get them out of there cause they were holding the place in captivity basically.  So we flew two missions to Rouen to do that, to get them out of there.  The first mission was normal bombs.  We enjoyed the mission having not to go over Germany on the way back.

We were in France so we flew actually fairly low level and the people would wave.  The French people would wave at us and were glad to see us and all.  It was an experience to be over friendly territory for a change. 

The 16th mission was the second one of Rouen and this was the sole operational employment of  napalm, jelly bombs, by the 8th Air Force in World War II.  It turned out we decided it was not a very effective thing, but I remember seeing the jelly bombs explode on the ground and the flames that came from just one jelly bomb, they were really anti-personnel things. 

So there’s sort of a guilt really attached to having done that.  But we weren’t aiming for civilians.  We were aiming to get the Germans out of there.  We were after pillboxes, gun pits, tank trenches and heavy gun placements, but that was the only time and the first time that we dropped jelly bombs by the 8th Air Force.  

Then the last mission, 17th, was to Strabing which is in southeast Bavaria, way down there, long mission.  We hit a rail bridge and marshalling yards and two transformer stations with 500-lb demolition bombs.  It was an eight hour mission which is pretty long.

INTERVIEWER:   What date was that, Bob?

SLOCKETT:   That was April 18, 1945.  It was my last mission and of course the war ended May 6.

INTERVIEWER:   Where were you when the war ended?

SLOCKETT:   I was in…well we flew, the day the war ended, we flew over Paris, flew to Paris.  Fortunately we were one of the lucky crews that were chosen to do that.  This was just to show the French people that the 8th Air Force was in support of the war being over and so forth.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you guys party that night?

SLOCKETT:   Yeah, we had a party, but the interesting thing about the flight to Paris was we circled the Eiffel Tower and we were down below the peak of the top of the Eiffel Tower and we circled that and we saw all these thousands of people in the street leading up to it waving.  After we finished circling, we dove down very close, just buzzed the people in the street and of course we weren’t supposed to do that (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   Did you meet any famous people in your tour of duty in the Air Force?

SLOCKETT:   Well to me the most famous person that I got to know was in the Aleutian Islands.  My commanding officer was the son of General Clair Chenault who was the man in charge, the general in charge of air fighter planes that had shark tooth nose on them over in China.  This was before we got into the war.  My commanding officer was his son and he was of course my commanding officer and he was a great guy.  I’d talk about him about how he gave me a promotion without even knowing who I was.

I was sitting in the headquarters office one day and he came in and he was talking to the sergeant in charge.  They were talking about promotions and I could hear everything they said.  After the sergeant would recommend a certain person for promotion and Major Chenault would agree.  Then all of a sudden he looked up and he said, “Who’s that fellow over there?”.  He whispered this, but I could still hear him.  The sergeant said that’s a corporal Bob Slockett.  He said, “Let’s promote him to sergeant”. 

INTERVIEWER:   Do you remember any particularly humorous or sad incidents?  You told us about the sad one over Germany.  Any humorous or sad incidents that you remember that you don’t forget.

SLOCKETT:   It was sort of humorous thinking about it after the fact, that on my way back from the Aleutians to the United States after 10 months in the Aleutians, we came back from Adak Island to Seattle, Washington, all by ourselves on a liberty ship.  That was about a 1000 mile journey and my brother who was in the Navy, he was on destroyers, when I told him that he said, “They’re crazy.  They sent you on a thousand mile trip in the north Pacific back to the United States without any protection”.  We didn't even have guns on the liberty ship, but we made it.  That’s sort of humorous when you think of how odd that was to a Navy person.

INTERVIEWER:   How long after the war ended did they bring your group home?

SLOCKETT:   The war ended in Germany, in Europe May 6 and in June, that June just a month later, we flew a plane, a B17, all the way back and were given a 30 day furlough.  Then I reported to Rapid City, South Dakota, presumably to go into B29 training over Japan.  But before we could even get into the training part of it, the war in Japan ended.  I was in Rapid City in August, I think it was August 8.  But then they shipped me to Lincoln, Nebraska to get discharged and I was discharged October 1, 1945.

INTERVIEWER:   When they discharged you, where did you go?

SLOCKETT:   The interesting thing about that to me was, a humorous aspect of that, I was given the money to get home on a train, but I decided I was going to save a little money and I’m in no great hurry so I started hitchhiking.  I hitchhiked from Lincoln, Nebraska.  I left Lincoln about noon and got to Chicago about midnight and instead of, of course by that time I was ready to go to bed somewhere, continuing on my hitchhiking, I decided to take the train so it cost almost as much money to go from Chicago back to Pennsylvania as if I had taken the train from Lincoln, Nebraska. But the sort of humorous thing.

INTERVIEWER:   What did you do when you got home?

SLOCKETT:   I had a get together with the family.  I decided I was going to go to college on the GI Bill of Rights.  I had heard about that so I applied and I then sent in applications to the University of Pennsylvania and Ersangus College which isn’t too far away either.

INTERVIEWER:   How old were you then?

SLOCKETT:   I was 22 when I got out.  So I decided whichever college sent me an application first, that was the one I would send the application…no whoever answered my application first, that was the college I would go to.  Penn answered first.  So I started, actually Penn was on a trimester basis at the time and so their new trimester started in November.  That was only a month away from when I got discharged. 

I decided I might as well try to get a job somewhere for that month and I did.  I had two jobs.  The first one I didn't really like.  I was a meter reader and it was to some of the worst places, homes, you had to go down in the basement in some of the houses.  I didn't like the job very much so I got a job as a milk bottle filler at a dairy.  That was a tough job.  I had to pick up milk bottles by both hands and put them on the machine that filled them with the milk.  That was my job.  After about three days of that, the muscles in my wrists and all were so sore.  I think I worked there about a week and I left that job (laughter).  I wasn’t in condition for that kind of a job.

INTERVIEWER:   Tell us a little bit about your education.  What did you do at the University of Pennsylvania?

SLOCKETT:   I decided I wanted to go to dental school at the University of Pennsylvania and it would require two years of college, pre-dental.  Actually I went, after one year, I applied at the University of Pennsylvania Dental School and I was accepted on the basis of my grades in that first year.  But I ran out of money.  I didn't have any money and the cost of going to dental school was a lot more than was regular arts and sciences.  So I withdrew my application, got my $25 back.  I just didn't have the money to go.

I continued on at Pennsylvania taking pre-dental and then after the third year, I decided to go to Pennsylvania State College of Optometry.  That was less expensive.  And I went there one year, got good grades and decided I still had this desire to go to medical or dental school.  Before I left Penn and joined the optometry college, I saw some Navy recruiters in the hall at the University of Pennsylvania Arts and Science Building.

I was inquisitive and I went over to them and they said they were recruiting naval cadets and they told me that you would serve two years on active duty.  I had it all figured out that well I’m going to apply for this because I could save enough money in that two years to go to medical or dental school.  So that’s why after a year of optometry school, I got the call, I had passed the exams.

I got the call to go to Pensacola to begin pilot training in Pensacola.

INTERVIEWER:   Now you’re going to do it in the Navy.

SLOCKETT:   Now I’m going to do it in the Navy.  I got up to advanced pilot this…I made a mention to this in the book, I’m probably the only person that ever got as far as advanced training in both the Army Air Corps and the Navy Air Corps.  I may be the only person that ever was in training with both of them.

But anyway after about a year and just prior to about two or three weeks before the Korean War started, and nobody, I didn't know and my fellow trained pilot cadets didn't know when that Korean War was going to start or if there ever was going to be a war.  We didn't even think about it.  But on the commanding officer’s bulletin board in the hall one day I looked at the memo on the board and it said all cadets except for the upper 5% upon graduation were going to go back into civilian life in the reserves.

So that just destroyed my goal to serve two years on active duty or save some money and go to medical school.  So I walked right into the commanding officer’s office and told the secretary I’d like to speak to him and I just point blank asked him if this was true, that you’re going to have all of us except 5% go back. 

He said that’s what Secretary of Defense Johnson wants done.  So I said I was going to have to leave and told him why – that my goal was to go to medical or dental school and that goal has been destroyed, no way can I do that in the reserves.  I’m not going to earn any money in the reserves.  So they processed me through.  It took two weeks to be discharged.

Three days before I was ultimately discharged, the Korean War started and I thought to myself, what shall I do.  Should I just go back to the commanding officer and say well because the war has begun, I changed my mind or should I just wait and see.  I thought they surely weren’t going to let me leave.  The three days passed and they did, they gave me my discharge.

So I went to college, finished my college training at Tulane University, got my Bachelor of Science in chemistry.  Got a job with DuPont and worked for them for 29 years, in the meantime received a Master’s degree at Temple in chemistry.

INTERVIEWER:   Bob, this is a question I’ve just been sitting here waiting to ask.  Was there anything a World War II veteran like yourself, a fellow that grew up in the Depression, would want the future generations of Americans to know what do you think it is?

SLOCKETT:   I would say and I would address this to future Americans, but also to my grandkids and great-grandchildren, I have two of them now, for them to be conscious that it is so easy to get involved in a war and that we should do everything we can on the home front in the way we handle our business, politically and our relationships with foreign countries, that we keep that in mind, that war is just a terrible thing, that millions and millions of people were lost, civilian and military in WWII, and all the other wars. 

It’s just something we don’t ever want to happen again.  Even these small wars, we have to get smarter than we are from a political and how we deal with foreign countries to avoid and help those people to avoid wars cause they are just a terrible thing.  To think that the young people are the ones that fight these wars, these 17, 18, 19 year old kids, to lose their lives because of some idiot like Hitler or Tojo in Japan or somebody in Iraq, Hussain.

A lot of our  young people are going to get into the political scene and the military and for them to just realize that it’s not a laughing matter at all and anything to keep this in mind, anything we can do to be smarter to avoid wars certainly is worthwhile.

INTERVIEWER:   Alright Sergeant Slockett, let me be the first to congratulate you.

SLOCKETT:   Thank you very much.

INTERVIEWER:   My pleasure to know you.

SLOCKETT:   Thanks a lot.