Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Robert W. Skinner was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
Hello. My name is Mark Doud and I'm on the staff of Senator Richard Lugar. And today is July 23, 2003. I'm in Lafayette, Indiana with Robert Skinner, who is a World War II Veteran. He lives at 7614 East 800 South, Lafayette, Indiana 47909. He was born on March 3, 1920 in Stockwell, Indiana. He served in the United States Air Force. He was in the Air Transport Command. He obtained the highest rank of Captain and served from October of 1941 until March of 1946; and he served in China, India and the South Pacific.
And Mr. Skinner, if you want to maybe start telling us about, were you drafted in the service or did you --
I was drafted.
Okay.
And then I went to Camp River (ph), Georgia. And one day they wanted to -- said anybody wanted to try out for cadets tomorrow could go over the airfield down there. And I went over. And I passed my physical, but I decided I didn't want to get in the Air Force. And I went back to the base, to my field and they told me come back on Thursday. And I didn't go back on Thursday. And that night at retreat they said Private Skinner, report to the orderly room. And I went down and this First Sergeant said, Skinner, you wasn't over there today. And I said, I changed my mind about flying. He said, Okay, I'll tell them. The next night they said, Private Skinner, report to the orderly room. And I went down. And he said, Skinner, you wasn't there yesterday. I said, I changed my mind. I told you I don't want to fly. And he said, they said it's too late. Said, you be over there next Thursday. So next Thursday came and I didn't go. And that night at a retreat they said, Private Skinner, report to the orderly room. And I went down and the Sergeant said, Skinner, tomorrow morning at 4:30 there's going to be a truck sitting down here and you're going to be on it. So, at 4:30 in the next morning they got me out of bed and took me over there. And they gave me some -- I thought they was simple questions. I had the most credits as ever had at Stockwell High School. And so it was hard for me not to answer their questions. But, I thought well, they -- so then they -- I said, oh, I forgot to tell you. I said, you're supposed to have two years of college or the equivalent and I said, I don't have any college education. They said, well, we checked your test that you took to come in the Army and you more than qualified for it, the cadet. So, I got in. And I went down to Florida for my training. And the first three or four times up I got sick, but they wouldn't let me quit. They kept after me. And so I graduated then in 1943. And got my commission and they said I would go fly P38's, which you know, was a hot plane at that time. And they sent me out to a field to where they had them. And they said, some of you fellows are going to get transferred. And they sent me to Wisconsin to an Air Transport Command. Of course, that was a big drop in -- for my prestige to go from a P38 pilot down to flying one of them old box car things.
What kind of plane was it?
AT6 -- or
T. -- No. C46. And so then one day they said, well, you go down to Florida. And I went down to Florida. I didn't know what I was going to do. And they sent us down to Brazil. And then they said, take up a heading of about 95 the next day. And I thought, well, I hit this little Island of Ascension, which is only about a mile long, I think. Anyhow, I thought, well, now after I leave here I -- I'm going to Africa. I know I can hit that, you know, as big a coastline as they had. And then I flew about two months up and down hauling supplies into when the Americans -- into -- when the Germans were fighting in Africa. And I hauled supplies back and forth there. Then after we got that cleaned up we -- they sent me to India and got on a new base that they just built and started flying from -- hauling supplies from India to China because the Japanese had everything shut off on the other side. And flying the hump was scary. There's a lot of people that didn't make it to -- They figured, well, we've got to get some spies over there and if we lose a few I think, you know, it's going to happen. But anyhow, like one time I was going across and I told -- I showed a fellow the way across, a new guy. And I said, now, here's where you will see an opening pretty soon. It's cloudy. I said, over this one valley on a cloudy day there will be an opening there for a minute. And you watch it. And he said, I don't see any. I said, well, it's got to be there. He said, the only thing I see is the lake. And I said a lake? The only lake that's in here is over there by where we're going. They figured up I had a tail wind of 177 miles an hour, you know; that they, of course, didn't have weather data then for us. And all they'd do is just tell you what happened maybe the day before. And one -- They told me the first trip over, they said, Matt Andrews is going to show you the way across the hump. And he was a tall good-looking rascal and he was a first lieutenant. And come to find out -- Do you want me to quicken this up?
No.
Come to find out, he had gotten in trouble at another base and they promoted him and sent him over to our base to show us the way across. But anyhow, their briefing, they said, now take up a heading of 85 degrees and fly up for so many minutes, 20 minutes, and then take up the heading of 135 degrees and that'll -- way the Japs can't get at you very good. So, he told me that. And then I went down, and filling out the forms to go across and there's a guy standing there with shorts on and his vest open. I said, who's Matt Andrews? They said, that's him. He said, I am. I said, well, you better get ready. We're getting ready to go across the hump. He said, well, I'm ready. I said, you haven't got your flight suit on, you haven't got your canteen, you haven't got any -- your jackets, life jackets. He said, you don't need them. So, and everybody had been telling me about how rough it was over there. So, anyhow, I thought, oh, okay. So we took off and we got over the hump. And I took up a heading of 85 degrees. He said, no, no, no. Go down to 135 degrees, he said. I said, well, they said the Japs could get you in here. Oh, no. There's no Japs around anymore. So we went across and made the landing and come back. He would just take his feet and turn off the switches and stuff. Just really -- I thought, well, hey, there's nothing to this flying. And then the next trip I took across I took up that heading of 135 degrees. And that guy was still showing me the way. He said, hey, get on that 85 degrees. And I said Matt told me not to do that. And he said, well, Matt is just kind of a careless person. He said, you do that. And so I did. And a day or two, trip or two later I heard somebody call in say, hey, we're -- they're shooting us down. And the only time that I had a problem with a Zero is I was coming back and there was a Zero on this landing field down in the valley there. But there wasn't any base there, but there was a Zero there. And he saw me and he come up after me. And I was in some clouds. There was some clouds there and I dived down and got in the clouds. And I did it so fast the engineer was standing up and he hit his head on top of the ceiling. But anyhow, we got in the clouds and got away from him. And I apologized to him. He said, that's all right. We got away from him. He said, that's what I was worried about. Another time China had -- there in China there's Americans at the base, but they had the idea if we hauled 20 barrels of gas over -- They didn't want to give us any more gas than necessary to get us home. So, one night, one trip I had gone across and got over there all right. And coming back to India there's a big line of thunderstorms ahead. I was flying at I think 18,000 feet. And I told this copilot, I said, I think now we can go up over. And I kept going up and going up and 500 feet more and 500 feet more. And finally I got up to 29,500 feet. And the plane was just wobbling because it wasn't built to fly that high. So I told the radio operator -- I had a throat mike. And I said, call the field and tell them we're in bad thunderstorms and that I'm going -- I'm at 29,500 and I'm going back down. And I heard a noise like he was starting to talk and he didn't. And I -- The copilot jumped up and he -- The radio operator had a hand mike that he had to take his oxygen mask off to talk and just that quick he passed out. And so he -- the copilot put his mask on, got him going again. So we got back to base and the radio operator said to the copilot, I wish you hadn't have woke me up or brought me out of that. He said, the sky was just full of pretty girls, just whole bunches of them, the little ones, but said, they're just real pretty and had pretty dresses on. So I went -- got back, had to fill a form in after you take a trip. I put down I went up 29,500 tried to get more and I couldn't do it. About -- And I wanted to get home, and so I had volunteered for some trips. And you know, people'd say, well, you're nuts, because usually they'd fly one every two weeks. And I made three round trips in a day and-a-half one time. I wanted to get home. You had to have 62 round trips or 650 hours over the hump. So, I came back and filled out that form and said that I went that high. And about two or three days later a flight surgeon come in. He said, Skinner, I'm grounding you for 30 days. I said, why are you going to do that? He said, well, they say you're volunteering for trips. Nobody does that. Said, also they said you had to -- you told them you had that C46 up to 29,500 feet. And they had a Pratt and Whitney technician on the base. And he said -- the Pratt & Whitney guy said that plane will not go 29,500 feet. So he said, I'm grounding you for 30 days. I said, I'll tell you what, Major. You go across with me on my next trip and I will -- if you think I'm cracking up, then you can ground me. Okay. So we got over to China. And the lights showed that the landing gear wasn't down. And so I called the field and told them. I did everything I could trying to get it down. And they said, well, just come over the field and bail out if you want to. So I told the Major and the Copilot and the Radio Operator, said go ahead and bail out, but I'm going to take this in. I'm not going to -- I'm afraid of bailing out. They said, well, whatever you do, why, we'll do with you. And so, we was on the -- I was on the approach coming in being careful, and the Major grabbed my hand and said, good luck, Skinner. We got down. And I -- it was dark. And I told the Copilot, I said, now the minute we touch you cut the switches because we don't want to have a chance of explosion. And so the minute we -- they told me, said, don't land on the runway because we don't want the wreckage there. So I landed off the drive and, boy, as soon as the wheels touched I said, cut the switch. And boy, we was a bumping along. And come to find out I landed in a rice paddy and they had little dikes there about a foot high. And every time my wheels hit them, the wheels were down and locked. But anyhow, the Major said, hey, I'm grounding you tonight. I said, well, okay. And so when we got back to the home base, why, he said, well, he's okay. It was kind of funny, you know, there he thought I was cracking up there. And maybe I was really. When I think about Eric Sevareid the reporter, you probably are not old enough to know him, but he was like Dan Rather and them guys today.
Uh-huh.
And he took a trip over the hump and they had to bail out. And they was, I think, about two weeks of walking out of the jungle.
Now, why -- You said the landing gear wouldn't come down or did one of them --
I had a warning light that showed the landing gear wasn't down and locked.
Oh, okay.
And I dived it down and done that trying to get it to lock in gear.
Yeah.
We tried to crank it down by hand and nothing worked. The landing lights stayed on. And so, but I first -- to tie-in with that, they told me go out over the hump and throw your bombs out where there's no villages or anything so you can come in light, you know, the weight. But, oh, that was some of the things I... Then I came back from overseas and got married. And then I went to south -- down to California and fly C54s which was a four-engine plane. And you went down to Manila and back.
Were you still in the service?
Yeah.
Okay.
And we'd haul supplies down to the Army. And then we'd bring wounded back. And one time I was on a trip and a Major told my copilot, he said, hey, I'm bumping you off copilot. You can catch the next trip. I want to get back home; he told me that. And he had the authority, you know, being a Major to do that. So we got up and started flying. And we got to, I think it was Guam at night and landed. And we had 62 wounded people on and six flight attendants. Boy, I was tired after about ten hours, a 12-hour flight, but no oxygen, you know. And I was up filling out the thing, and they said, hey, the guy that was supposed to take this plane on is sick. Can you take it? And I started to say no, and the Major said, yeah, we'll take it. So we took off and got up to fly -- flying east you fly out at a thousand feet. So I went up to 9,000 feet and was flying east. And the Major said, Skinner, he said, I'm going to go back and sleep a little bit in the bunk. Is it okay? I said, yeah, go ahead. Oh, after about a couple hours I started getting sleepy and I'd slap my face, shaking myself around. And only just couldn't stay awake hardly. So I felt his hand on my shoulder and he said, how is it doing, Skinner? And I said, okay, sir. And he said, well, I'm still a little sleepy. I'll go back and sleep a little more. And I looked and somebody had walked from the tail up to the front evidently, made it a little nose heavy. I had it on automatic pilot. And I looked and there we were down to 2,500 feet. Went from 9,000 down to 2,500 feet while I was asleep. And boy, that woke me up when I -- and I woke up. And I had to ease the plane back up. I didn't want him to know that I had done that. So I eased it plumb back up to 9,000 feet and got them then into Hawaii there. Another trip worth telling about maybe is I -- of course they didn't have the weather reports then either. And so I was going out from Hawaii. And boy, once we hit a storm and I mean a bad storm and it was just shaking the plane up and down, and all at once we broke out and just immediately it was calm and the sky was beautiful, a red -- just like a bunch of rainbows. And the Copilot said, boy, I'd hate to go through that again. I said, you might as well get ready because we're in the eye of a hurricane. And in about three minutes we hit in the other side of it and -- but, you know, it wasn't anything.
Yeah.
I'm a good pilot because I was scared, you know, of flying. And I flew with United Airlines during the Army. I took some training with them for a couple months. They said, come back after the war and we'll give you a job, but I didn't want to fly anymore. I -- When my commission expired after ten years I just didn't re-sign. One thing I might mention about flying the hump, you could get over the edge of the hump and all it was is a bunch of huge ridges, just one after the other. And you'd get -- approach one and you'd start going up 3,000 feet a minute and you'd push the nose of the plane down and you'd still go 3,000 feet a minute. And then when you got across on the other side you went down 3,000 feet a minute and you just wondered, well, you know, am I going to hit. Then you'd be way down that next mountain and you'd think I hope there's enough draft air to take me across. And there always was, but I mean, you know, it's hard to believe that a plane, you can have the nose sticking down and still climb in altitude. Well, that's about it, all the junk I could think of to tell you.
And for posterity, tell us what the hump was exactly. Is it a range of mountains?
It was a range of mountains about 300 miles wide. It spanned between India and China. And there was no landing fields in between. It was just one mountain after -- and a valley after another mountain. You didn't get into anyplace where you could make a forced landing if you had to. You'd just have to bail out. One thing was the Japanese put -- There was a mountain over there about 18,500 feet. And of course, they had us flying across it at 14,500. And they said that the Japanese put some homing things on this mountain. And several of our planes followed it, you know, but I never -- I had a radio compass that you could check in with whether it was your station or not. And I didn't go to the Needle A, which gives you numbers every once in awhile showing if you're really listen to the right thing. One time I -- might throw this in. One time I was coming back and I was showing a fellow. And he went to sleep all the way across. And it was cloudy. And I thought, well, he's tired. And I flew across, landed and started back. And I thought, well, he'll stay awake now because I wanted to show him some things. Got up to there and the first thing you know he was up there and he was asleep. So I turned the plane and headed to -- up north toward to where this mountain, 18,500 feet was, and then he went to sleep. And I jarred him a couple times. He woke up and he said, what heading we supposed to be on? I said, oh, about 185. He said we're on 240. I said, well, that takes us up to Mount McKay. I said, gosh. I wonder how long we've been here? And boy, he stayed awake the rest of the way home.
Okay. Well, anything else about your experience, any funny stories while you were on the ground, or did you have a lot of buddies?
Oh, when I was in the cadets there was a couple funny stories. One kid was -- if you had a malfunction like the landing gear coming up on you or something, they'd wash you out. I had a guy that was really -- from New York. And he was a really likeable rascal. But he come in one day -- and them instructors had a habit of yelling at you. They wouldn't correct you nice. I mean, they would get through your -- And so this guy said, Ryan, what did you do wrong? And Ryan thought, well, I got my flaps up. So he moved the landing gear handle. And Christ, got down. And another time I was flying and taking -- still in the cadets. And the plane ahead of me was coming in to land and he didn't have any landing gear down. And I thought, hey, you better get your landing gear down. And they said -- They had a control plane down there. And they said, plane on the approach go around, go around because your landing gear is not down. This kid went in and made the prettiest landing you ever saw; sparks flew. So I was down right away. And I was there before the ship was. And they said, Snydall, why didn't you go around? He said, well, I heard you trying to tell me to, but that horn was making so much noise I couldn't understand what you said. And the horn was built into it. Any time that you cut your throttle and the landing gear went down the horn would blow. And here he said that the horn was making so much noise he couldn't understand what it was.
You flew the same planes your whole time?
The __ and he got washed out, too, but some of the fellows they would, if they couldn't make it would send them to bombardier school, you know. And then some they'd just send back to the Army.
Why didn't you want to go -- I guess be a cadet early on? Why? What --
I just went to be a cadet to get out of a big hike we was going to have the next day.
Oh.
And you know, I got -- they said we was going to have a 15-mile hike with a full pack. I thought, hey, I'll go over there tomorrow, get out of that hike. I was a good soldier when I was in the infantry, but I -- it made sense if you didn't have to take that hike to get out of it. And that's the way I got out. Got into cadets and then they wouldn't let me get out of it. In fact, after I went to Camp Wheeler before I got in the cadets they sent us up to Fort Dix, New Jersey. And they said, okay, after some training up there, he said, turn in your bedding, we're going to board ship. And we went -- they loaded us all on a truck and took us down to board ship. And they said there was a hurricane coming up the coast. We can't board. We'll have to go back to barracks. And when it calms down a little bit, why, we'll go. And the next day I got a letter saying, Private Skinner, you've been accepted in the cadets.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it was that close. I think of those things that, you know, seemed to work out for me pretty good. Although at the time I feared they had to make a parachute jump and I was not going to make a parachute jump. I couldn't do it.
Okay. Is there anything else you want to add to --
I took you enough of your time.
It sounds like you have a lot of good stories.
Yeah. My grandson, he's 12 now. Three or four years ago he wanted me tell him stories, you know. And he would call me. His dad was a veterinarian so, you know, he didn't have to worry about phone calls; but he'd call me, Grandpa, tell see me the story about flying over there, tell me this or that. I told him maybe about something that happened. One thing that happened over there, a fellow borrowed a hundred dollars off of me to go on rest leave. And on the way back he got -- the plane crashed and killed him. And I was telling the guys about it. Said, well, write his folks, tell him that, you know, that he owes you a hundred dollars. I said, I'm not about to do that. They'd think, well, that's somebody just trying to take advantage of our misfortune and... Well, I'm done.
Okay. All right. Thank you for coming in today.
Yeah. Okay.
Thank you for your service.
It's been nice talking to you.