Interview of Dr. Sam Whitehead
Transcript Number 101

DECEMBER 4, 2001

Today we're interviewing Dr. Sam Whitehead of Whiteville who was a B7 pilot with the 8th Air Force in England in World War II. 

WHITEHEAD: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1921. 

INTERVIEWER: How many kids have you got by the way?

WHITEHEAD: I have four daughters, I had a son, but he was killed in Vail, Colorado. Incidentally, he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, pulled two tours in Vietnam. Got killed in a horseback riding accident in Vail, Colorado, quite a tragedy for us. 

INTERVIEWER: You bet.

INTERVIEWER 2: Where you started off was good.

WHITEHEAD: I was the youngest boy of six brothers. I also had two sisters and my...let's stop a minute. I graduated from high school in Kansas City in 1939. In the summer of '39, I went to work for the Commerce Trust Company. I was an office boy to start off with and I had a seat in the lobby of the bank which had all the officers sitting at a bench at their desks and they would call us to run errands for them. One of the officers was a vice-president, A.V. Eisenhower who was the older brother of General Eisenhower and he would call me over every morning and give me a quarter and tell me to get him a cigar and a milkshake and that takes care of the bank.

INTERVIEWER: That's Harry Truman ground two, isn't it?

WHITEHEAD: Incidentally, the Commerce Trust Company is one of the first jobs Harry Truman had. He was a teller in the bank maybe 15-20 years before I was there.

INTERVIEWER: So how did you get into the military?

WHITEHEAD: Well in 1941, we knew that we were going to be drafted after Pearl Harbor, so a good friend of mine, Ed Springer and I decided we'd try to get into the Air Force. We went to the Federal Building and applied for aviation cadets and we took an examination and we were notified that we both passed. Three or four months later, we got notification and we went down to the Union Station and got on the train with 20 year old Pullman cars on it filled with aviation cadets and we took three days to get to Santa Ana, California.

There we went to preflight school and we were there about three months. We studied all things pertaining to flying and meteorology. Then we were assigned t o primary training school. I was sent to Visalia, California in San Joaquin Valley.

INTERVIEWER: What was the name of the town?

WHITEHEAD: Visalia.

INTERVIEWER: By the way, had you ever flown in an airplane?

WHITEHEAD: No, I'd never flown before, never been in an airplane before (laughter). In the first of February, I had my first flight. Our airplane was Orion PT22, open cockpit, low wing and it was the most fun flying I'd ever did and after 10 hours of instruction from our civilian pilot, I soloed. From then on, I put in about 40 hours of solo flight. We did aerobatics and loops and spins. It was quite exciting for a 19 year old.

INTERVIEWER: Were these acrobatics authorized?

WHITEHEAD: Oh yes. 

INTERVIEWER: You were instructed...

WHITEHEAD: The instructor taught us how to do it, taught us how to get out of a tailspin. That was a little scary.

INTERVIEWER 2: You were commissioned when you soloed?

WHITEHEAD: No, no, it wasn't til I finished aviation cadets. We had to take check flights from an Army Air Force pilot. He had us go through the different maneuvers and landing and takeoffs. Some passed and some washed out, but I was fortunate enough to get through the primary training. Then I graduated from primary and went to Bakersfield, California for what we called basic training. It was a bigger airplane and much more powerful. We had Army instructors as our instructors. 

The basic trainer was called BT13A and I flew it from April until June 29 of '43. We graduated from basic and went to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, to what we called twin- engine advanced trainers. It was an AT17. Then we flew that.

INTERVIEWER: Did you want to go into multi-engine or were you simply assigned?

WHITEHEAD: Usually the small people went to fighters and the larger guys went to twin engine or four engine. So I flew from July to August 30. We then graduated from advance flying school and were commissioned as second lieutenant. We got our wings and we got our bars and then we got to go home for a week as a second lieutenant with wings. That was quite an experience. 

Then I was assigned to B17 transition school in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. We went right into a B17F and flew that a couple of months, graduated and November on Thanksgiving, I was sent to Salt Lake City to pick up a crew and there I met my copilot, my bombardier and my navigator. Those were the officers on the crew. Then we picked up a top turret gunner, a flight engineer, a radio operator, waste gunner, tail gunner, ball turret gunner. We all got on troop train and went across the country to Alexander, Louisiana. We got there shortly after Thanksgiving.

INTERVIEWER: So you didn't pick the crew, the crew was assembled...

WHITEHEAD: No, it was assigned to you. 

INTERVIEWER: Were you still a second lieutenant?

WHITEHEAD: Oh yeah, I'll be that for a while (laughter).

INTERVIEWER: So they packed you on a train and off you went to Louisiana.

WHITEHEAD: And that was called phase training. There we learned to bomb, learned to fly formation...

INTERVIEWER: Gunnery practice too?

WHITEHEAD: And gunnery practice for the crew. We stayed there about...until February 28th. We graduated from phase training and we transferred to Grand Island, Nebraska which was a staging area and we picked up a brand new B17 and we...

INTERVIEWER 2: A G or an F?

WHITEHEAD: It was a G. Had the front turret. Then we had to fly locally to calibrate the instruments. Incidentally, I'm not too far from Kansas City when I'm in Grand Island, Nebraska, so I ... we flew over Kansas City where I was from. I was able to buzz my folks' house and also my wife's folks' house. I wasn't married yet, oh yeah, I was married by then. That was quite exciting.

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you have any restrictions on how to cruise over populated areas?

WHITEHEAD: Well, you're not supposed to go below 1000 feet, I didn't go much below that (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER: There isn't much below 1000 feet (laughter). 

WHITEHEAD: While I was in Alexandria on February 4, me and my wife got married in a chapel at the air base by the chaplain. We met in the bank in Kansas City three years before. Going back to Grand Island, we prepared to fly to northern Ireland. On April 1, we took off and flew to Manchester, New Hampshire and we spent the night there and the next morning we flew up to Goose Bay, Labrador in Canada. When we landed there, the snow was higher than the plane on the runway. We stayed in Goose Bay until about 2:00 the next morning, got up at night and flew to Iceland. We headed out over the north Atlantic with a green crew and a green navigator (laughter). It was kinda scary.

INTERVIEWER 2: Were you flying low?

WHITEHEAD: No, no, we stayed up pretty high.

INTERVIEWER 2: I mean there were no other planes with you?

WHITEHEAD: No, I was by myself in the middle of night.

INTERVIEWER: You must have been an old man of what, about 20, 21 something like that. How old were you then?

WHITEHEAD: 22.

INTERVIEWER: 22, you're flying a B17G over the North Atlantic trying to find an island, okay.

WHITEHEAD: And we got over to Iceland about noon the next day and we refueled there and took off and flew to Northern Ireland to a base called Nut's Corner.

INTERVIEWER: By the way, what was the speed of that aircraft. 

WHITEHEAD: Normally we flew around 160, 175 something like that. And we all left Nut's Corner to go to England, took a train to Belfast I believe it was and then we got on a boat and went over to England. I went to a reception center north of London and we stayed there for a couple of weeks taking some more ground school indoctrination. Then we were assigned to bomb groups.

INTERVIEWER: What happened to the aircraft that you carried overseas?

WHITEHEAD: It stayed in Nut's Corner and they modified it for combat, prepared it for combat.

INTERVIEWER 2: You didn't have any machine guns on it then?

WHITEHEAD: Machine Guns with no ammunition or anything like that. I was assigned to 381st bomb group, 534 squadron, so they put us on a truck and trucked us to Ridgewell in East Anglia in England, not too far from Cambridge. You may have heard of Cambridge. We got to that base, dropped the enlisted officers off at one area and then they dropped us off at another area. They said go find you a bed (laughter). We didn't have any reception hardly at all. 

INTERVIEWER: But the same crew?

WHITEHEAD: Same crew, they went to their area and we went 544th officers' area where we found a Nissan hut and we had to go around and round up some mattresses and furniture. We set up housekeeping. A little bit of information about the bomb group - bomb groups are made up of four squadrons, 532nd, 533rd, 34th and 35th, and I was in the 534th. When we flew combat missions, we flew as six ship squadrons and a group made up of three squadrons and when we went to the target, we would rendezvous over the airbase and pick up two more groups, so we had three groups flying together as a combat wing. Then we went on to the target. 

The reason for everybody flying together, we had all that fire power for protection. And also when we dropped our bombs, only the lead ship had a bomb sight and as soon as the bombs left the bomb bay of the lead ship, every other bombardier hit a switch called the toggle and all the bombs dropped in a big pattern. If for any reason the lead ship got shot out, we'd have a deputy lead, which was in the high squadron. He would take over the bomb site. 

My first mission was April 27th, 1944, not mission, local mission. We flew locally getting indoctrinated at the airbase, making landings. The next day, the pilot of the new crew flies as copilot with an experienced crew so my first mission was April 28, 1944, to Saint Avold, France, which was a German fighter and bomber base and I flew with an experienced pilot. His name was Carl Gordon and I flew as his copilot to get experience with a little bit of combat and it turned out to be quite a mission. 

Everything went fine, we got over the target and the bomber on the lead ship got shot out. It was led by a Major Jones. When the lead ship got shot out, it was chaos almost. The deputy lead took over. We dropped our bombs and had a successful mission, but there were only two survivors out of that lead plane, the waist gunner and the major in the pilot seat. Anyway, I was hoping that whatever mission wasn't going to be like this because there were fire planes flying around everywhere. We came back with just the loss of that one plane and two of the crewmen survived. That was the first mission.

Nobody knows how it happens, you have a mission, the operations officer will wake you up in the morning somewhere around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and you get up and you dress and you go to breakfast and if you're flying, you get eggs (laughter). Then after breakfast, we go to a briefing. They have these big curtains up on the front on the stage and the C.O. of the squadron usually runs the briefing. They pull the curtain back and then there's a red line going across the map and that's your mission for the day.

My second mission, that line went all the way across to Berlin and it was...

INTERVIEWER 2: This was the first mission in which you were in command of the plane?

WHITEHEAD: No, I was still flying copilot. This is my second mission, still flew again with Lieutenant Gordon. It was another hairy mission. We had a lot of fighter attacks. We got through it. I guess it took about seven hours to fly to Berlin and back. But there was, we were in the first bomb division. There are three divisions in the 8th Air Force. The first is the B17's that I was in and the second bomb division is B24's and the third bomb division is B17's again. I learned later that the 3rd bomb division lost about 38 planes on that mission which is one of the toughest missions they had. So I got a good indoctrination.

INTERVIEWER: What was the responsibilities of the copilot? Don't get killed, I guess (laughter).

WHITEHEAD: Look for anything that's coming and also help flying. Of course, we had to fly formation I should have mentioned and you're jockeying the throttles all day long. My longest mission was 11 hours to Poland one time.

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you have an automatic pilot and could you use it?

WHITEHEAD: No, not flying formation, but when you got to be a lead ship, that's when you get to fly on auto pilot. Now later on in the tour, they did have a what they called a formation stick which is hooked to the autopilot. I flew that plane several times. You have a little stick you work with your hand just like that and it flew the plane through the autopilot and you jockey the throttles to keep yourself in position.

INTERVIEWER: Let me take you back to what may seem like a trivial point, but I never heard it before. You said when you went to the mess hall before a mission, if you were flying you got eggs. What if you weren't flying?

WHITEHEAD: You got powdered eggs (laughter). Sometimes a few guys would get up early in the morning, eat those fresh eggs.

INTERVIEWER 2: A lot of them were too nervous to eat anyway (laughter).

WHITEHEAD: The third mission was to Lyon, France, and that's when I first took my crew with me. We hit an air base over in France. That was an 8-hour mission, 1400 miles and everything went fine. We didn't have any problems. 

INTERVIEWER 2: Your flying time varied, did you ever fly seven days straight?

WHITEHEAD: Not quite seven, maybe five or six.

INTERVIEWER 2: Then things got pretty tough, you needed to rest.

INTERVIEWER: And all of your missions were during the day, is that correct?

WHITEHEAD: Oh yeah, normally we'd take off at 6:00 or 7:00. I got to my seventh mission which was an exciting mission (laughter). I flew to Leipzig, Germany. On the bomb run, my #3 engine got shot out and I lost all my oil and I couldn't feather the prop. In other words, if you lose an engine, you feather the prop, you fly along without any problem, but if the prop windmills, it causes an extreme vibration if you try to keep up with the formation. So we had to drop out of the formation. We started back for the airbase, we salvoed our bombs and started back for the airbase, of course going along pretty slow. We were sitting ducks if an enemy fighter found us.

INTERVIEWER: I'm sorry, what did you say you did with the bombs?

WHITEHEAD: Salvoed, turned them loose. See if you're over Germany, you can do that, but if you're over France, they want you to wait until you get to the water to put them in the ocean.

INTERVIEWER 2: The problem with an unfeatherable prop is vibration or wringing the shaft in two, isn't that possible too?

WHITEHEAD: Yeah, well I'll tell you about that (laughter). I got over Belgium and they started shooting at me and I started taking evasive action. I put it in bank and the prop came off and cut a big hole in the nose of the plane and I could see sawdust going around in the astrodome which is the top when the nose of the airplane...I thought they were all chewed up in there, but luckily it just hit the navigators in the heel and didn't injure him.

INTERVIEWER 2: But it did hit the fuselage?

WHITEHEAD: Hit the fuselage, cut the hole in there. They told me it went down and went up in the air (laughter).

INTERVIEWER 2: Still a good prop.

INTERVIEWER: Like a Frisbee.

WHITEHEAD: Like a Frisbee.

INTERVIEWER 2: What got it? Fighters?

WHITEHEAD: No, the flak is what hit us and lost all our oil. Of course, the shaft didn't have any oil so the prop came off. We were able to fly back to the airbase easily then and we landed before the bombers came home. I got a picture of that hole in the plane if you want to see it.

INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah, I'd love to see it.

INTERVIEWER: Well could we see it after the video tape because the tape is running.

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you have any other real close calls?

WHITEHEAD: Well the next big mission, D-Day, that was June 6, we got up and found out...we didn't know anything until we got the briefing and found out this was a big invasion in France. We flew in six ship squadrons instead of a group and they flew everything they had on the base that would fly. We flew to Normandy and dropped our bombs by radar through the clouds. You know the weather on D-Day, it was all overcast and our target was the gun placements at Sword Beach and we dropped them 30 minutes before the British hit the beach at that point and that was a ...

INTERVIEWER 2: Bombing by radar was very new.

WHITEHEAD: Well fairly new, but we used it quite a bit, whenever the target was overcast and the radar was able to pick up a point where they could reference the target. That was called PFF, I don't know if you ever...

INTERVIEWER: Well that was a short flying time, wasn't it?

WHITEHEAD: No, that was a fairly quick mission. The fact is the bomber pulled two missions that day.

INTERVIEWER: With the same target?

WHITEHEAD: Well all along Normandy there, different targets on Normandy. We only had to fly one, but we had other personnel. In other words, E squadron pulled up every one of their planes. 

INTERVIEWER 2: Did your plane have the broad white stripes on it? On the wings and the fuselage?

WHITEHEAD: No, usually those were the fighter planes.

INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah, the 26AF, transports. What altitude were you bombing at over Normandy?

WHITEHEAD: Well normally we bomb around 25,000 feet. I believe we were a little lower on that mission. Now we did a lot of missions in support of the troops beyond Normandy and those missions were around 12-14,000 feet. 

INTERVIEWER: 25,000 feet, you're on oxygen?

WHITEHEAD: Oh yeah, above 10,000, you're on oxygen. You had to wear a flak vest, I had a steel helmet and an oxygen mask. About the 20th mission, my copilot took over my crew and I advanced to a lead pilot and I flew the squadron plane with the squadron bombardier and navigators and special crew. I flew as a lead pilot.

INTERVIEWER: What was your rank then?

WHITEHEAD: I was a first lieutenant. 

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever make captain?

WHITEHEAD: I did before I was separated.

INTERVIEWER: Another interviewee was saying that the air crew got very, very close to each other.

WHITEHEAD: We couldn't do that over there. We were so isolated. We were in one part of the base and the enlisted men were in another part and the only time we saw them was when we flew. Of course, we were pretty close together when we were flying.

INTERVIEWER 2: When your copilot was given a ship of his own, you had a brand new crew. You just took over...

WHITEHEAD: They were called squadron crews where they flew just lead missions.

INTERVIEWER: You know one of the things that is not known much about is what did you do when you weren't flying? How did you occupy...you had to sleep some and what have you.

WHITEHEAD: When we were flying, we went to bed pretty early (laughter). No, we got weekend passes to London several times. In July, we had a whole week off, we went to Ireland for a week, I don't mean Ireland, I mean Scotland. 

INTERVIEWER 2: By train?

WHITEHEAD: By train.

INTERVIEWER: So it was flying and sleeping and flying and sleeping.

WHITEHEAD: Just about.

INTERVIEWER: Couldn't get into much trouble that way, could you?

WHITEHEAD: Well I went in April and finished in August so I wasn't there a whole long time.

INTERVIEWER 2: That was longer than most of them (laughter).

WHITEHEAD: On my next to last mission, I flew lead ship with my squadron commander and we led the whole 8th Air Force over Brandenburg which is the outskirts of Berlin. That was one of my special missions.

INTERVIEWER: You said you flew a very long and lengthy mission into Poland.

WHITEHEAD: Yeah, it was all the way to Berlin, went around it and went on to Poland. It was...took 11 hours.

INTERVIEWER 2: 11 hours?

INTERVIEWER: What was the target?

WHITEHEAD: The target was Poznan in Poland. 1100 miles, no it was more than that...1700 miles.

INTERVIEWER 2: How many hours?

WHITEHEAD: 11 hours.

INTERVIEWER 2: No refueling?

WHITEHEAD: No, no.

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you not on a mission that long, cut the bomb load, to have enough fuel? Cut the bomb load down some?

WHITEHEAD: No, we never went so far that we couldn't handle it I guess. That was the farthest.

INTERVIEWER: What did you eat on board? Did you have C-rations, K-rations, nothing?

WHITEHEAD: No, we didn't think about it.

INTERVIEWER: Could you smoke?

WHITEHEAD: Oh yeah, I didn't smoke, I had a cigar once in a while. You can't smoke up there on oxygen.

INTERVIEWER: Why were you bombing Poznan?

WHITEHEAD: It was just, I think there was an airplane factory there they were bombing.

INTERVIEWER 2: The Germans had the idea they should move far enough away from England to escape the bombs, they said. I had read the Germans kept moving their stuff further east cause the Russians didn't have much of a long range bomber force and a long range mission from England before the 51's got in was pretty rough on the Americans so they said well we'll just get out of their range because we got more time to shoot 'em down if they goin' to try to get us. But then the 51's sort of changed that (laughter).

WHITEHEAD: So I figured up August 8, 32 missions, and won the Distinguished Flying Cross and the air medal with three oak leaf clusters. You get an air medal for every ten missions. Instead of giving you another medal, they give you an oak leaf cluster.

INTERVIEWER 2: And you did get the DFC?

WHITEHEAD: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER 2: Were you ever wounded?

WHITEHEAD: No, we were extremely lucky. I told you about Lieutenant Gordon, the one I flew copilot with my first two missions - not a month later, he was flying in Berlin and he got a direct hit and the plane flying right under him got a direct hit and they both collided and had a ball of fire there and killed the whole group. It was just tragic. And I didn't learn this until...I got it off the internet. We have a website, 381st.org which has war diaries of all the groups, all the squadrons. You can download a world of information that I didn't know the particulars of. 

INTERVIEWER: Where were you when V-E Day was announced?

WHITEHEAD: Well I was back in the States. 

INTERVIEWER: You had rotated back because ...

WHITEHEAD: August 8th, I went back to Kansas City and my wife and I went to Santa Monica, California for an R&R for a week at what they called the Del Mar Club on the ocean and then I was assigned to El Paso Briggs Field as a B17 instructor pilot and I was there for about four months. That was in '45, January '45, and transferred back to Grand Island, Nebraska, where I took off from. They sent me to Maxwell Field, Alabama for B29 transition. So I flew B29's there for about a month in transition and came back to Grand Island. 

Then I went to Pueblo, Colorado, as a B29 instructor pilot training crews for the Pacific. I did that for several months and went back to Grand Island again and went to Riverside, California, and did the same thing and then V-E Day came.

INTERVIEWER 2: You got out then. How many missions did you have?

WHITEHEAD: 32 missions.

INTERVIEWER: What was the difference between the B29 and the B17?

WHITEHEAD: Well it was quite dramatic. The B29, you didn't have to wear an oxygen mask.

INTERVIEWER 2: But you had one on, did you not? Or you would have had in combat?

WHITEHEAD: In combat, oh yeah. 

INTERVIEWER: It was a bigger, more sophisticated plane?

WHITEHEAD: Oh yeah, bigger and much smoother flying.

INTERVIEWER 2: It had a smaller crew, did it not?

WHITEHEAD: Yes.

INTERVIEWER 2: Because one gunner was using radar.

WHITEHEAD: Of course, I never had a full crew because I was an instructor pilot, but I taught the pilots without the big crews on it.

INTERVIEWER: Let's see, the B29 had a tricycle landing gear, but the B17 had dual.

WHITEHEAD: Well it had a nose wheel, the B17 doesn't have a nose wheel.

INTERVIEWER: Well isn't there a great difference in landing these two aircraft?

WHITEHEAD: Not really. I mean you more or less stall out a B17, but you fly a B29 on to the ground.

INTERVIEWER 2: But they never used the 29 in Europe at all, did they?

WHITEHEAD: I don't think so. It wasn't very practical with...you couldn't shoot, what do you call it when...the cabin was pressurized. It had a pressurized cabin.

INTERVIEWER 2: You had heat in it too.

WHITEHEAD: No, you wouldn't fly a pressurized cabin where you're picking up flak. 

INTERVIEWER 2: No, no.

INTERVIEWER: Anything else you want to tell us, sir? Any other reminiscence?

WHITEHEAD: Well...

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you lose any crew to direct enemy action?

WHITEHEAD: No, we all survived. We were extremely lucky.

INTERVIEWER: What was the name of your airplane?

WHITEHEAD: That's another interesting thing, I flew 15 different airplanes and they all had different names.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever name one?

WHITEHEAD: No, they were already named before I got to them. The first one I flew with my crew was the Betty L. and my wife's name is Betty L, Betty Lou, and I was able to take off the internet the pictures of all the planes I flew. There they are. 

INTERVIEWER: And what was the last plane, so long it's been good to know you (laughter).

WHITEHEAD: Well I got the names of them, the first one we flew was Sweet Petutie. I flew as a copilot. The second was Avengress, then I flew the Betty L, the 3rd and 4th mission was Our Captain, interesting thing about Our Captain, I flew behind it on our 7th mission. It was shot down right in front of me, went down in the English Channel, lost its power, engines were shot out. The plane I flew the most was the Patsy Ann. I flew 13 missions in Patsy Ann. Then there was Joanne and My Son Bob, Avengress II, Panola Express. Then I went to lead ships, Peacemaker and Dee Marie was the last one I flew.

INTERVIEWER: When you came back to the States, how did you get back? Did you fly back?

WHITEHEAD: Flew back in a C54.

INTERVIEWER: Cargo plane.

WHITEHEAD: Yeah, landed in New York and took the train to St. Louis and met my wife there where I was processed. We took a train to Kansas City. I might mention that I, they were getting ready to send us to the Pacific. We had our choice of getting out or going to the Pacific and I had a son on the way so I got out in March of 1946.

INTERVIEWER 2: You still stayed longer than a lot of them, did you not?

WHITEHEAD: A lot of them got out earlier than that.

INTERVIEWER 2: Did any of the 17 pilots in the Air Force end up in the 29's in Asia?

WHITEHEAD: Maybe a few of them. You know the pilot of the Memphis Belle, he ended up in the B29's, he was the squadron commander over in the Pacific flying B29's.

INTERVIEWER 2: Sam, tell us about your living accommodations at Ridgewell.

WHITEHEAD: Well we were in a Nissan hut. It wasn't too bad. The officers and two crews were living together. 

INTERVIEWER 2: Communal bathroom.

WHITEHEAD: I'm sure I did. It's kind of funny how we can't remember those things.

INTERVIEWER 2: Heated with a coal stove I guess.

WHITEHEAD: Yeah, we had a stove. Of course I got there in April and we used it maybe just for the month of April and I ended in August so the weather wasn't too bad.

INTERVIEWER 2: During your pre-mission briefings, the crew and the officers all got the same briefing or did you have separate briefings.

WHITEHEAD: The officers were together in the briefings, the enlisted personnel were not in the briefings.

INTERVIEWER: So you came out and told the crew what ...

WHITEHEAD: Where we were going.

INTERVIEWER 2: And the briefing officer supposedly says you're going to see a lot of flak...

WHITEHEAD: We were briefed on where we could expect flak or fighter pilots or any kind...I might mention when I got out, I went straight to optometry school. I was an optometrist for 50 years. I went to school in '46 and got out in '49.

INTERVIEWER: Where did you go to school?

WHITEHEAD: I went to school in Chicago. My uncle, his name was Dr. William Needles, was the president of the school and the founder of the school and I have four of my brothers and me were optometrists. And four of us were in North Carolina and one was in Kansas City.

INTERVIEWER 2: Why did you pick North Carolina?

WHITEHEAD: Well I had a brother that came down here in '42. We liked it down here.

INTERVIEWER 2: Well we didn't have optometrists in Whiteville. Were you the first one?

WHITEHEAD: No, I think I was the second one. Remember a Dr. Bill Jackson?

INTERVIEWER 2: Vaguely remember him.

WHITEHEAD: Anyway, I took over when he left.

INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you one question before we sign off. I ask all the other ones, I'd appreciate your comment. What did you learn, look right into...talk to your great grandchildren now, what did you learn and what did it all mean to you, all those combat missions and all the people you knew that were killed, people you knew who survived, what did it all mean to you?

WHITEHEAD: Well I was extremely lucky to survive seeing a bunch of my friends not make it. I'm very thankful for coming out of a hairy experience. I should mention I've got four daughters, Linda, Rita, Susan and Kimberly and two son-in-laws, Matt Henny and Gil Straiter and five grandchildren, Matthew and Harrison Henny and Casey and Brett and Samantha Straiter,;cause they may be seeing this some day.

INTERVIEWER: If your grandchildren had to go to war, what would you tell them?

WHITEHEAD: I don't know exactly what you're referring to? What are you suggesting?

INTERVIEWER: Well if they came to you and said, "I've got to go off and fight. Grandpa tell me what I should do?"

WHITEHEAD: I think you should go. I wouldn't shirk your duty. It's your duty to support your country.

INTERVIEWER: Does war ever solve anything?

WHITEHEAD: Oh I think it does. It takes care of the bad guys (laughter).