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The Memoirs
of Sgt William I. Strickland
The 345th Bombardment Group arrived in New Guinea in 1943, fresh for a war. Their weapons were modified B-25 strafers such as Buzzin Buzzard (see lithograph above). Neal A. Wilson has donated the memoirs of his uncle Sgt William I. Strickland who flew as a gunner with this famous outfit. During the time Strickland was on combat flying status, 61 men from his 498th Bombardment Squadron were killed. On 23 June 1944, he dream that he would be shot down. It was such a vivid dream he went to the doctor and asked to be grounded. The Flight Surgeon, Captain S. R. Bloomenthal, stated in his report that Strickland was suffering combat fatigue and should be evacuated to the United States. He had spent eight months and twelve days in the forward area in the Southwest Pacific Area.
Strickland flew many of his missions in the B-25 Buzzin Buzzard, depicted above. This aircraft was B-25D-15-NA serial # 41-30362 which crashed on the 10th March 1944, at Hessen Bay, near the village of Buso. It was actually on a training mission when it hit the water with its belly, careered sideways and struck the water wing down. The aircraft crashed, sinking immediately. The cause of the accident was not determined, but there were no survivors. The body of Lt Adelman was later recovered and buried at Nadzab. Buzzin Buzzard was previously assigned to the 22nd Bomb Group, and transferred to the 498th Bomb Squadron on 31 January 1944. Its crew lost when it crashed were :
Pilot : 2/ Lt Monroe G Adelman
Co-pilot 2/Lt Edward V Stefanowski
S/Sgt John F Barkau, Radio Operator
Sgt Paul W Denney, Aerial Photographer
Here then, are Strickland's memoirs:
"At Port Moresby, the 'fuzzy-wuzzies' would go through the camps and try to exchange coconuts and bananas for cigarettes. The first week we were at Port Moresby, they came through there with a stalk of green bananas; we thought they would ripen right out. I don't know what we gave him for it, but the only thing that the stalk of green bananas did was draw in the bats. We hung them in the tent, and the bats would come in at night-I don't know whether they came in for the bananas or for the insects in the bananas. The bats raised havoc, flying into our mosquito nets, scaring us and kept us awake. And, the bananas never did ripen; they were cooking bananas.
"The 'fuzzy-wuzzies' got choosy and only wanted brand-name cigarettes-they wouldn't smoke Wings, or Fleetwoods, or anything like that; they had to have Camels or Lucky Strikes. The only thing they wore was something around the waist. Their hair was stringy and bushed out, and they had this comb that was sort of four- or five-point for teeth and they'd stick it in their hair to get the lice out. They scared me the first time I saw one-I thought, 'Jeez, he's awfully damn close!' Then we got to see some of the families. We'd go to their different camps out (around). They'd have their little huts in sort of a circle. If a woman was having her baby, they had a hut, but that was a baby hut. They went in there and stayed until they had their baby. In their circles they had one hut for supplies, like their garden stuff.
"At Port Moresby, (we were in tents, on dirt floors). At Dobodura, there were lots of trees. We wanted lumber (to floor our tents), and we found out that there were a couple of engineers who had set up a sawmill. As a diversion between missions, two other guys and I checked out a wood saw and a couple of axes and borrowed a truck and we went out into the forest and we cut down the trees and cut them into twelve-foot lengths. We loaded them on the truck and took the logs over to the sawmill, where they cut the logs into boards. So, we had good boards. We had to bribe the guys in the sawmill to get the lumber; it probably cost us a couple of quarts of whiskey. That is how we got a lot of things. We could go to the officers and get whiskey for our projects. That's how I got a starter for a B-25 when it (the starter) was shot out. I went around to all the crew chiefs and asked them if they had any starters for a Wright Cyclone engine. After talking to three or four of them, one guy said, 'Yeah, I got one back here. It's gonna cost you, though.' I said, 'How much?' He said, 'A quart of whiskey.' I went and told this to Col. Murtha (Bill's pilot at this time) and he reached into his barracks bag and gave me a quart of whiskey, so I went back and got the starter. The night that I changed the starter, a Jap came over and strafed our airstrip, too, while I was changing the starter, by the light of a flashlight. We got the lumber specifically to make a floor for our tent. We cut more lumber than we needed for our tent. We had enough for another tent, so we gave it to the C. O. for his tent. It wasn't apple-polishing. We were moving to a new base, so taking the boards with us was going to be a problem. We loaded the boards on the plane that was taking the water pipe (for the mess hall) up to the next base. The plane we took our wood up in, we had water pipe for the water lines for our mess hall-about a hundred feet of pipe. It was cut in twenty-foot lengths, and we'd shove it in the tail, because we had the tail (cone) off. We took the guns out and slipped the pipe in there, and the lumber to go to the next base. We had shoved the pipe and the lumber in (through the tail opening) and pushed it up to the bomb bay, but there were about three or four feet (of pipe and boards) that stuck out the back there. We taxied down and revved the engine up for takeoff to check the magnetos; the thing went back on its tail, because there was so much weight back there. The old Colonel said, 'we can't take off that way. Something's dragging.' So I jumped out and went to the back and kept pulling out pipe. I pulled out a half-dozen pieces of pipe and the nose came down. I stacked the extra pipe by the runway. I told him (the Colonel), 'I think it may take off now.' So we left the pipe lying on the side of the runway. I got back in, and away we went for our new base at Nadzab. When we got our tent set up with our wooden floor, we were the envy of the squadron.
"A few days later, they put the machine guns in the tail of the B-25s. The three-day KP assignments influenced me to volunteer for the first replacement of Engineer/Gunner that was posted, so I could get my 25 missions in and come home. The first tail gunner-I didn't know him or anything-was shot. I said, 'Hell, I'll take that; I can get my twenty-five missions in, in a hurry.' They assured me, 'Oh, yeah, you will get your missions in, in a hurry.' That (the twenty-five-mission requirement) was later changed to fifty-five missions. So I got on Barnaskey's crew. I volunteered to replace the gunner who was killed, so I went with a crew that I was not familiar with. My volunteering as a replacement broke up the original crew I had trained with in the States. Anyway, this Barnaskey was about six-feet-four, redheaded, and big.
The copilot was almost white haired; real sharp-cut hair. Boy, they were characters!
Bridges and Moon-Bridges was the gunner on the plane. Anderson was the radio
operator. They didn't fly the plane; they were operators. They could sit around
their tent with just their pants on-no shirt or T-shirt or anything. The damn
mosquitoes didn't bother them at all. They (mosquitoes) would just swarm in
on me. I had to get into my mosquito net. That's what griped me.
"The first mission we went on, I think, was Rabaul, which was one of the toughest in the Southwest Pacific. I'd never seen ack-ack before. I remember when we got over Rabaul and we started getting some black ack-ack I called the pilot and asked 'What's that stuff?' He said, 'If you can't reach out and touch it, don't worry about it.' When I got back, I found out what it was-it was exploding shells. It (the ack-ack) was just like smoke. Going in over the ships in Rabaul, boy, I don't see how we ever got through it. On this first mission, we were supposed to knock out the radar station. The damn copilot, he fouled up on pulling the bombs, so old Barnaskey says, 'Well, Hell, we'll go around again.' We went around again and there were about five zeros got on our tail. We got a few holes in the plane but I don't see how they missed (shooting us down). I think there was a P-38 cover, too, that chased them off. I remember going over the ships in the harbor, you had to raise up (the plane's altitude) to get over them. That's down pretty low. But you had to go low like that, or else they could get their guns aimed on you. The P-38s were based in the same area, but were on separate bases. They flew cover for us. One of these P-38s got one of his engines shot out; he pulled out alongside of us and gave us the old high sign. He made it back to base-a lot of them made it back with an engine shot out. Those P-38s had two engines. That was my first experience of combat. The next mission was a week later, back to Rabaul again. We were supposed to hit the ships in the harbor. I don't know how many ships there were supposed to be, but that harbor was just loaded with ships. The battleships would lay their guns out straight like that, and they were shooting at us, we were so low. That is what probably got Imperato and those fellas. Imperato and Freitas, Lt. Guy. As soon as I had signed up with this crew (The crew I first flew combat with), I stayed with them until I had about thirty missions.
"On Christmas Day (1943), I participated in two missions over the Gloucester area, softening it up for American landings. These took place on December 26. I had a meal of bully beef (corned beef) at noon, but Christmas night, we had a turkey dinner.
"Other missions included New Britain Island, Kavieng, Cape Gloucester, Target Hill, New Ireland Island, Admiralty Islands-Manus and Lorengau, Schouten Islands, Biak, Wakde Island, Sarmi, Hollandia, Wewak, Boram Air Field, Aitape, Madang, Rein Bay, Finschhafen, Hansa Bay-Frederick Karl Harbor, Uligan Harbor, Lae, Alexishafen-Bogia Bay, Borgan Bay, and shipping off the coast of New Guinea.
We had a couple of trips to Sydney, Australia, together-rest leaves. I, personally, had a total of three combat rest leaves in Sydney, Australia. After a certain number of combat missions you got a rest leave. It depended on the condition of the guys. We stayed with a private family. We had to check in with the Red Cross-who assisted soldiers to find lodging in private homes-at 'Davey Jones Locker' in Sydney Australia. It was just a big department store, but it was just one floor of it. We had to report in there and there were a bunch of tags on the bulletin board, places or homes available for soldiers. We were lucky-we got one in Rose Bay, right across from a big country club golf course. This guy was some sort of a businessman. He had a 1938 Ford, so we got along good! They were wonderful people. She said, 'Any time you want something to eat, just help yourself in the Kitchen.' In the mornings, the milk truck bell rang and we had to go out and get our own milk. They didn't have the quart containers. You had to go out with a kettle or can or whatever. We went out with big kettles and got milk. Some things the people couldn't get, but the storeowners would sell them to soldiers because they could get a better price. I asked for something, and she (the shopkeeper) said, 'Oh, no, we don't have any.' Then she winked at me 'this way.' So I walked back, and then she said, 'Just wait until these people leave.' It was that kind of a deal. I guess it was eggs. The buses over there had the big air bags on the back for charcoal. They had a regular burner and when they got started the bag would fill up (with the gas for operating the engine). It was eight feet long, three feet high, and wide as a car. This one guy we had, he was a real nice family man, and so we just hired him for the week. His wife rode with us part of the time. He would take us down to get whiskey. He'd take us down some back alley. It cost us pretty high, but at least we could get it. We got a couple of quarts of whiskey-we had to have cheer and for snakebites. He would haul us all over that damn town. He knew the places to go. He took us one night to a beach. There was a party there. It wasn't crashing the party-it was just taking it over. We took a harbor trip, visited the zoo, Hyde Park, and Bondi Beach, where we had the big party. We went to a fight one night and saw several shows. The Australian people treated U. S. soldiers royally. We were there just ten days away from the base. It was a real nice old home. It would be like one of the better ones in Holbrook. This lady was real nice to us. She fried eggs and bacon for us. Maybe we did have steak for breakfast. That was one thing about eating in a restaurant downtown-you could only get one serving at a setting. We would sit one place and order a steak or steak dinner, and then we would move over to the next table and order another one. The waitresses would say, 'If you sit over there, you can order again.'
"I didn't stay at the same base for the whole 30 missions-I moved up to Nadzab, in the Markham valley before the end of the 30 missions. You have heard of Lae, New Guinea, where Amelia Earhart landed; Nadzab is up the valley a ways. We were there for the rest of my missions-there, or Hollandia (This is now called Jayapura, Irian Jaya, Indonesia, in the western half of the New Guinea island) or Wakde Island, a beautiful little island off the coast, where they had a beautiful beach. On that beach, it was a beautiful, big half-moon of sand out as far as you could see, gradually went down. You could see starfish on the bottom. If you got in the water very far, you couldn't get your feet on the bottom, the water was so salty, just like at Salt Lake.
"At Hollandia, there was a river that curved around many bends. That was where the crocodiles were. There were about a dozen crocodiles on the beach. Before we saw the crocodiles, we were swimming in the river. After McFearon and I went up around a bend; we were going to explore the river. We started up there and we heard a splash in the water. We looked around and didn't see anybody, but pretty soon, we saw this snout with a couple of eyeballs back of it. Old Mac said that I just raised right straight up, and ran back to shore on top of the water. And then, after I got back on shore, I looked across the river and saw all these (crocodiles) sleeping over there on the sand.
"I was at Hollandia about a week-I was flying with Colonel Murtha then. The Group (345th Bombardment Group), Col. Murtha, wanted an experienced crew to fly with him while he was acting as director and coordinator for the Army, the Navy, and the Marines on landings at Wakde Island and Sarmi Beach. He picked the crew from the four squadrons of the Group stationed at Nadzab. They were making a landing on Wakde Island. We would fly in and if we saw anything that would cause resistance, we would fire a few cannon (NOTE: The B-25 model flown by Bill at this time was one of those equipped with a 75mm cannon.) shots. The Navy would see where our shells hit, and then they would lower the boom on the source of the problem. It was another week before I got another mission. He (Col. Murtha) was called back up to cover the Sarmi operation. So we had to go up with him to cover that. From Hollandia, we went back to Nadzab, and then . . .
"Our ground forces had just taken Hollandia and were fixing the airstrips and setting up base. We landed at Hollandia-bomb craters in runways made by previous air attacks made landings precarious. We had to sleep in those jungle hammocks. The jungle hammock had mosquito netting and a plastic on top-and all those zippers. One night we were sleeping just off the runway, which was just next to the jungle. There were four red alerts during the (first) night. We heard some noise, like somebody walking-the trees and twigs were cracking a little bit. All at once, I saw a person. I had my .45 under my neck and I was getting ready to cock it. I got to thinking, 'My god, there might be a bunch of them, and if he goes by without stopping we'd be better off.' I was on my back, and I ended up on my knees. When you flip over in your damn hammock, and you land on your knees with your .45, you're really pretty active. And, I wanted to be quiet. The plane in its revetment was about fifty feet away from the runway, where the engineers were filling bomb crater holes in the runway. They were working at night. We were supposed to be sleeping. Anyway, we heard some guy hollering. There was a bulldozer operator; the Jap who went through our area, probably not knowing we were there, snuck up back (behind the bulldozer) and started getting up on the back of the bulldozer to kill the engineer. They both jumped down and they were running around the tractor. There was a jeep came up, and another engineer shot the Jap. We rushed over as the two GIs fought over the damn rifle and souvenirs. It turned out that this Jap was a loner. Needless to say, it was hard to get back to sleep that night. This runway wasn't metal coated. Only the ones in a rainy area like Madang. We didn't have any except where there was a lot of rain and mud. They were dangerous to land on, too. You come down and you try to brake, you had to brake very slowly, or you'd break right through.
"In New Guinea, there were snakes hanging in the trees that blended with the branches. The snakes would strike at you if you disturbed them. We saw a big snake next to our tent-a python. Someone cut its head off and took the snake up to the mess hall door with a sign, 'Python Burgers Served.'
While (I was) riding in a jeep to the airstrip, a wallaby was running alongside. I jumped out of the jeep and tackled it and took it back to the flight surgeon. He put a collar and chain on it and it became his pet. The wallaby would ride with the flight surgeon in his jeep when he would meet the returning flights from our missions.
"One soldier bought a white macaw in Australia. It would fly from his tent over to the screen when we had a movie. It would perch on the screen and then fly back to his tent when the movie was over. Whenever anyone would walk by the tent, it would call out some indecent words.
"In our free time, waiting for missions, I kept busy making salt & pepper shakers out of 20mm shells. They had to be defused before we could cut the shell casing and empty them. I sanded the shells and soldered a floor in the bottom for the base. Drilling the holes for the salt & pepper to come out was a very time-consuming job, because we didn't have a vise, so holding them steady while drilling was a problem. I had them silver-plated in Oakland after I got home.
"The fragmentation bombs were antipersonnel bombs-they had little hunks of steel that would fly out and kill. They would just tear one open or cripple him. We dropped them to kill the enemy. We carried them if we were going to hit a base camp, where there were a lot of tents. Sometimes we would use smoke bombs. The antipersonnel bombs would scare so many people, plus, they might get an arm blown off or a piece of steel in the hand, or arm, or in the body someplace.
"They had some parachute bombs that were to be dropped from one hundred fifty to two hundred feet, but on February 2, at Dobodura, someone made the decision that we had to go in lower over the target to release the bombs than first scheduled. We had to remove the bombs from the plane and shorten the parachute cords for our lower bombing run. This was very dangerous, because the bombs were all fused, ready to go off with very little movement. As we were unloading the bombs, one of the firing mechanisms clicked, which meant it was about to go off. We all ran except for one man, who was experienced with armor. He picked the ticking bomb up, knowing it might explode at any time. He carried it to the top of the revetment and gave it a toss, instead of laying it down carefully. It exploded too close to him, and he lost his life. His heroic deed saved unknown damage and loss of life. We had to finish shortening the cords and be ready for the mission in a few hours. The people that plan the missions know what to have. They plan it for one way, and then someone else decides that would be more productive to have it at a lower altitude. We were so low, you could hit us with a .45. You go to fifty feet over something, you're getting pretty close. You never got out without someone being hit. Like at Rabaul, Lt. Guy's crew-they were flying off to our right, and they got hit right in the bomb bay. The only thing you could see was a couple of props spinning down, and little bits of the plane in every direction. The whole plane just disintegrated. They hit the bomb bay-the bombs were loaded in there-with that much explosion, nothing can withstand it. On that one raid, there were sixty-one men lost. It would be about eight or nine planes. There were six men on each plane. You had your radioman, and gunner, you had the engineer, you had the pilot, copilot and the navigator. Sometimes they wouldn't take the navigator, because they didn't do much good anyway. We only had the one turret gunner, because we flew so low you couldn't use the lower turret. The airstrip at Wewak (where we were to use the shortened parachute cords) was covered with Japanese planes. We flew in twelve planes abreast. The 498th Bomb Squadron was credited with destroying thirty-five planes that mission.
"This was the type of plane, at the time, when they took the Plexiglas out of the tail (cone) and put in boards to make it solid enough to hold the machine guns-the metal on the planes was too flimsy to hold them. The machine guns were mounted on a 2 x 12 board. The boards were bolted down with big washers to the aluminum catwalk. Before we put the guns in, the B-25 didn't have any guns shooting out of the tail. First thing they did, one guy got the idea of knocking some holes through the Plexiglas and fitting out two broom handles and painting them black. The Japs saw those broom handles sticking out and thought they were guns, so they turned away. One of the officers had the idea of putting in twin tail guns. Then, later, we had four fifty-caliber guns firing out the nose and two on each side, one pair by the copilot and one by the pilot. You had the two up above and then we had the waist guns, and then we had the two in the tail. The guns on the sides and the ones in the nose, too, were fixed guns and were fired by the pilot. The pilot pushed a button. The turret and the tail guns and the waist guns were flexible. The tail guns stuck out about two feet, with only about a foot of the gun inside. The diameter of the tail of the plane was only about two feet. One didn't have much room to spare. I had to lie on my stomach back there. I had to reach clear outside the plane to load or change the ammunition belt if it broke. We had probably a thousand rounds or better of ammunition on each side of me in a metal box. I had to grab that, pull it up, over and stick it in and pull down the cover and then kick one into the chamber, and then start firing. The belts were just metal clips. The wind would flop these around. They were steel and would flip this way a little bit and they would break. Then I would have to reach outside the plane and reload the gun again. This all was done while the Japanese were coming at us. One time, I think we had close to a hundred holes in our plane. That was on each side of the plane. The guy (Japanese fighter pilot) got so close to us before he started shooting; the holes were just outside of me. (World War II single-engine fighter planes, with guns in the wings, had the wing guns 'harmonized,' set to converge the bullets at some distance ahead of the fighter. If the pilot gets too close, the bullets pass on either side of the aiming point) When we landed, the ground crew said, 'You'd better call the ambulance.' They thought nobody could live back there, with all those holes. I crawled out and said. 'I guess that I was just too tough for them.'
We were not always in the same plane. If a crew was sick, they would put another crew into the plane. If you were to go on a mission, they would read off the name of the plane you were assigned. You took whatever plane was available, because the planes were being repaired. The plane with the cannon in, when we got the old H (B-25H), it was assigned to our crew. I painted the tails white. We had fixed it up a bit. The H model had a bigger tail back there, so one could sit like a gentleman and fire at the Japanese planes. You had the fifty calibers. The G was the first one to come out with the 75mm cannon. At Columbia, South Carolina, we fired one a few times, but the skin buckled. There was so much concussion, so they had to redesign the mounting. Everyone was sort of leery of that; I don't think they even got them over in combat. It (the cannon) wasn't designed to be fired from a plane. Then they came out with the H, and boy, it was a neat one. They had racks for twenty rounds of ammunition. We had that plane for the last fifteen or twenty missions.
"We dropped propaganda pamphlets down on the Japs. The plane had a big, long tube (to stuff the pamphlets into for dumping) and if you're flying just so, the plane is going to suck everything back in. The pamphlets got caught in the rudder cables. The plane had to make an emergency landing without the use of rudder cables. He (Lt. Barnaskey) had to really fly it into the runway. We had to pull all those (pamphlets) out, after we landed. There are a number of cables and pulleys to operate the plane's two rudders. The pamphlets got jammed into the cables so the rudders wouldn't turn. So we had to clean out the pamphlets. We landed back in our own territory. We got back to New Guinea and landed at Dobodura-the base was right on the waterfront. Oh, we had to fly from New Britain Island, which is probably several hours-three hours' flying time, which is probably three hundred or four hundred miles (from our base in New Guinea). From there (the emergency base at Dobodura), we had enough gas; we went on to our home base. In these pamphlet-dropping runs, the idea was that we would drop the bombs-and the pamphlets, too. See, as long as there was no fighter interference, the gunner would have the chance to throw stuff out-if there wasn't fighter interference. The turret gunner could call you on the intercom if there was anything coming. This happened before Christmas, 1943. They were trying anything to get them (the Japanese) to surrender. They had some good pamphlets-and some of them not so good. They suggested that one turn himself in at a certain place, he would get food and rest, and stuff like that.
"Tokyo Rose was the best entertainer we had! She was real accurate, though; we were in our tent once, listening to her, and she says "The Yellow Nose Butchers (The 498th Bombardment Squadron, Bill's unit, whose planes were notable for having the noses painted yellow) are moving up to the Markham valley on a certain day.' That was the day we moved, all right. Where she got that information, I'll never know. Some of what she fed us was true, but a lot of it was to make one homesick. She played popular American songs that made us homesick, which accomplished her purpose. When she said that the Yellow Nose Butchers were moving up to Nadzab a couple of us ran out and down to the orderly room to verify it. It was true, all right. She (Tokyo Rose) went to UCLA or USC.
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