Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Ernest Stedman 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.
Okay, I'm going to set up the way I would if I was in just a private home interviewing, like my uncle, as I did. I need to open the tape by saying today is Sunday, June 3, 2007. We're in Reno, Nevada, at the Grand Sierra Resort, and we're here to interview the brothers Ernest and Everett Stedman. And they are going to be introduced just briefly by their good friend, Captain Richard Wheeler. And I'm going to switch over to his Powerpoint.
My name is Dick Wheeler, I'm a veteran, 20 year veteran of the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. Like I said, I spent 20 years in the military, after that I was 20 years in the -- I'm supposed to turn this on, aren't I. 20 years in the aerospace industry, and I retired from that, and I'm now retired and practically full-time with the Civil Air Patrol. If you have any questions about the Civil Air Patrol you may talk to me afterwards, but it's a volunteer organization. I think all of you are doing okay. I met Everett in our church and discovered that he was a B-24 gunner, and so I struck up a friendship with him and found him to be quite entertaining when he told stories. It's amazing how military people will tell stories to each other that they won't tell to other people. So let me go through the formal introduction of Everett and Ernest. Everett and Ernest's story is not substantially different from that of other men who flew in the air war over Europe in World War II. That does not make it any less incredible or heroic. What Everett and Ernest and thousands of other young men and boys did was beyond most of our wildest imaginings. They never forgot their war years, because they know what they did. They beat Adolf Hitler and saved the world. They did it as kids. Then, a 25-year-old air crewman was the old man. Pilots, navigators, bombardiers, gunners tended to be around 20 years old. Some didn't everyone shave. They were given the responsibility for a massive piece of equipment, laden with heavy explosives, and told to go bomb targets thousands of miles away, and come home again. All the while fighting off the enemy fighters and hoping the flak missed. They watched their friends die, and wondered if they were next. They had to work in confining electrically heated suits because of the subzero temperatures at altitude. They were further encumbered by an oxygen mask providing life-sustaining oxygen. On top of this, the planes had many openings to allow the gunners freedom of movement with their weapons. These openings created mighty internal winds at their 200 mile an hour speed. It was an extremely different environment to fight in. They fought, and won. It was an intense piece of living. This first picture is a picture of a B-24 which is the type of airplane they flew. Of many choices I had of picking a picture, I picked this one, because it was a B-24 from the 93rd bomb group, 329th bomb squadron. 25 years later, after they had completed their war, I flew the 93rd bomb group. I was in a sister squadron in the 328th. At that time, we had B-52s. Which, by the way, are still flying. With that, Everett and Ernie, it's yours.
Okay, let's move into the actual interview. You have name tags in front of you, but I can't see them. So you're Ernie and you're Everett, is that right?
Yes -- no. I'm Everett and he's Ernie.
Okay, we got that.
I'm Everett and he's Ernie. (Laughter)
No. You're right.
Okay, I'm just going to say fellas. When World War II started, where were you?
We were in Modesto, California. And the next morning, after World War II, Pearl Harbor was bombed, my father, my older brother, Everett and I went down to enlist. Well, we were 17 at the time, but they wouldn't accept us because they wouldn't keep us together. So we told them to go to heck, you can draft us, so --
Is that what they did?
That's exactly what they did. Three months later our older brother was in the army, and a year later we were.
So you went into the Army branch of the service.
We were drafted in the Army. And we passed all our physicals and mental tests, and we told the Army we want to be pilots. Now, here we are 18 years old. And we were -- the reason we told them we wanted to be pilots is that we wanted to be aerial gunners. We figured we could get in the Air Corps at that time. Which we did. And I'm thinking, man, they really must be hard up to get pilots when they're 18.
So this was just very early in the war.
Very early, it was the day after Pearl Harbor.
And you had other friends that went in also?
Oh, yes. Yes, our class in high school, we were juniors, and then we went into seniors, we had a year to go. And then they let us finish high school, the draft board did. And then we were sent in the army. Drafted.
So -- go ahead. EVEREST: On February the 8th -- 11th, actually in March, we had been -- why this date here, I don't know, but we had just graduated from high school in March. Two weeks later we got our induction notice. So off we go to Sacramento, California, passed all our tests there, and they sent us home to get -- make up a will and to settle any businesses that we had, and that. But we had nothing. We had nothing.
Well, your mom already had a son in the war.
Yes.
How did she feel about her twin sons going, too?
There wasn't nothing she could do about it.
We were drafted.
Yeah.
But it's very surprising. They waited until all mid-termers had graduated from high school all over the United States, and then they got a whole new class of 18-year-olds. And 19-year-olds. And from there, we went into all of our different trainings.
So did they have a goodbye party for you?
I don't think so. I don't remember.
They waved goodbye.
That's the last thing we saw ON the Greyhound bus, was looking out the window. (Waves hand.)
So where did you go to boot camp for your basic training?
We went to -- first we went to Fort Ord in Monterey County, not right at Monterey, and there we were transferred to the Air Corps and went to Fresno, California, for basic training. And there is where we took our physicals for aerial gunners. We told them we didn't want to be pilots now, we wanted to be aerial gunners. So eventually we passed all the physical and mental tests there. And then we went into our actual basic training.
How was basic training, pretty harsh?
Well, we made a couple of mistakes there. The first one was we had been in about three weeks, and our barracks had to take KP. So the first night we got real cocky, and we stole a few little foods. Bologna, whatever we could get ahold of. And that night in our barracks after all the lights were out and everything, we all snuck out and we were lined up in our walkway in the barracks, and we was eating all this stuff. Hey, this is great. Tomorrow, we're going to really clean up. Well, we did. They let us clean -- we had pies, cakes, we had bologna. And about 10 o'clock, here we're all sitting down and eating. And boom. The doors opened on each end of the barracks, the lights come on, and here comes our sergeant in and our lieutenant. Bad mistake. We got caught. We had a good two or three weeks on KP. After we got through KP they took us out to the obstacle course. Now, we would get through the obstacle course about midnight. 4:30 in the morning, back on KP. So after about two or three weeks of that, I swore we was never going to steal nothing again. And that was true, too.
So after your basic training where were you sent?
We were sent to Denver, Colorado. And there we went to Buckley Field, which is right out of Denver, and we had our --
That's all right.
Colorado, then we started our training on turrets, gunneries, everything on B-24s or B17s, because we had no idea which ones we were going to be on. And from there we went to Lowry Field, right next to Buckley Field. And there we really had to learn how to do the guns and everything. We actually, we could blindfold -- a caliper 50 machine gun we had to, blindfolded, take it apart and put it back together again, blindfolded. Which we did do. I don't know why we were so good, all we were doing is just helping ourselves out to go to combat quicker. So we ended up having a real good time there, we had good officers, good instructors. And there, from there we went to Laredo, Texas. Now, down in Laredo, Texas, it was completely different. It was quite hot, and we were right out in the desert. And every night from Laredo,Texas the wind would come over and bring all the sand. The next night it would go back the other way. And this went on quite awhile. So there, we were shooting everything. We shot caliber 50s, we shot 20 millimeters, we shot 30-'06s up at Bowden yards, pistols. And then we -- just envision this table out here, and this table is a track, so they had 22 stations that the -- what do you call those things that --
Skeet shooters.
Skeet shooters. And you would be going around with a shotgun, 22 miles an hour. And they had 25 positions that you would shoot, and the skeet would come at you from all different angles. And here you're shooting, bang, bang, boom, and you go all around. And so the next day was my turn to work station one. And you go and drop in this little box, and as a truck comes over, there's a wire going across the street, or the dirt road. And everything time a truck would go over, the wire would be depressed, and it would release the skeet that you had put in. Well, then you had to arm it back up, take and put another skeet on it, and hope it didn't break inside. I was lucky I never had one break. So the second day I had to go back on, work in the box. I dropped down in the box, and I had company. I had about a probably a six and a half foot rattlesnake in there with me. And they're big in Texas. And they're big around in Texas. And the proof of how big around they are, we actually went over one driving out there one morning, it was so big, when the 6 by 6 went over it, you could actually feel it. That's how big those rattlesnakes are. Well, I come out of that little box real fast, faster than that snake could hit me. So I ran up and got a shotgun, and after that I was able to go back down in there. Do you want to go ahead, Ernie?
Well, is that where you got your gunnery training and you were accepted in your dream job?
We had no wings or anything yet.
No, you didn't get it until you got all through school.
You had to be all finished. Well, anyway, this was a very crucial part. Because as you're going around this thing, you're learning to shoot like all different angles in your plane. You had no idea where the fighters were coming in from, and you had to be able to know the curve. And the curve would be -- take a paper boy, as he's driving on his bicycle. This is what we were taught. When you come up to a house here, if you wait and you're going on this bicycle, if you throw it to the house, it's going to land up here. Up in front. So what you have to do is you learn the curve, and you throw the paper before you get to the house. Naturally, it lands on the porch then. Which it's supposed to do. Well, this is what we had to learn in our basic shooting situations.
I wanted to mention, we also shot shotguns on a stationary turret, at skeet. And believe it or not, those guys got pretty darn good at it. They had one shotgun in a turret, it would be a numbered turret that they had out there already. Now, you've got to remember that the schooling that we had was pretty comparable to all over the country to gunners. Some of them didn't have quite the type of instructions we had, which was pretty darn thorough. And now I remember the first time I was going to fly an airplane. I think I had been around an airplane one time in my life. And I'm standing by this AT-6 waiting for the pilot to come out, and I'm looking at the -- "Stedman, what in the heck are you doing here?" I'm 18 years old. And so I waited for the pilot to get there, to make sure that I didn't do nothing wrong. He told me to get in the back seat. I crawled up there, and before he started up the engines I'm looking things over, and here's two rods sitting there. "Sir, what are these for?" "Keep from shooting this damn airplane down." "Oh, okay, sir." That was my introduction to flying, right there. Scared to death.
Well, give us a little flavor of your boot camp and training time. There were guys there your age from all over the country?
Oh, yeah, we were all over -- all over the United States. You've got to remember, we were just two of many thousands.
Sure.
And we did what we had to do in our scope, and other people were trained different ways, but we all ended up with the same ending.
What they did, they had us in groups of four. Four people. So what we would do in our training, we would all put in 50 cents. And when we would shoot, no matter what type of equipment that we were using, whoever got the best score would get the money. So either Ernie or I would always get it. So at the end of the week, what we would do, we'd go down to the PX and we'd have a great big 3.2 beer. Never had beer in our life. We earned it. And this is what we did for four weeks. Every time we got the money, it was pretty good. It was very interesting.
We had ground splashes, targets on the ground, originally, and we'd fly by them, and our job was to shoot at the targets, and they would check us out and make sure that we would -- come close, anyway. And our second flight, he was behind me, and I was in the lead ship on an AT-6. Had 12 or 14 ground targets. And this second target we come on, there were a bunch of javelinas on it. Well, the hunting that we were trained on, all growing up, and kids and fishing, I couldn't help it, I started shooting at the javelinas. And he was behind me, and together we had about 15 javelinas. And they closed that part of the area off, went out and got the pigs. And two nights later the officers had a big luau. A pig luau.
We didn't get a pig.
They didn't save any for you.
No. No, they saved nothing for us. But we did -- we did a lot of ground targets, and then we did shooting the targets that were being thrown. And we almost didn't pass aerial gunnery, because in fact, they flunked us. What happened, the tow plane had the tow target out, we shot about three quarters of it away, and they couldn't count enough bullets in there. So we explained to them what happened, and so they sent us back up again, and then we qualified. We had different colored bullets that we were shooting at it. I had a yellow bullet and he had a red one, or whatever. And you had to have so many bullets in the ground -- in the tow target.
Up here we have what they called frangible bullets. And we used those in our training. And they would have a fighter plane come alongside of us, and we would shoot with these. Now, the plane was -- had electrodes all around them. And if you hit with that, it would disintegrate and it would make a mark. Well, we shot two of them down, so they quit using the frangible bullets. We actually we shot two of them down. So they got these little paper bullets down here then that they made us use. And it was very interesting shooting them planes down. We -- I don't mean they went down in smoke or anything, but they didn't -- they couldn't keep us with us, we just had them completely out of the service.
When we graduated from gunnery school, Everett was going to go overseas and they were going to keep me as an instructor. So I went to the lieutenant and I asked him, I said, "Hows come he's going and I'm staying?" "Well, we're keeping you." I says, "Well, I want to go with him." He says, "No." So I asked him, "Lieutenant, can I have a pencil and paper?" "What do you want that for?" I go, "I'm going to write the President of the United States." I said, "You can't separate twins. Brothers you can separate, but not twins. The only way you can separate twins is if we want to be separated." So he didn't like my attitude, so I went.
Okay, so you finished up school, and where were you assigned next?
We went to Harvard, Nebraska, and there we had -- no.
You're seeing the world already.
Denver, yes.
I said you're seeing the world already.
Yes, we had never been out of Modesto.
We went to Denver, and we were assigned our B-24s. Not the ones we took overseas, but training B-24s. And there, we did fly a lot. Actually, we had a night mission that we flew down to a little town called Canadian, Texas. And right next to Canadian, Texas, is a little bitty town called Gem, Texas on the Canadian River. Well, on this night flight we flew over the first time with our landing lights on, came around, and the little town at the football field, they all had their headlights on on their cars, all going. So the second time, we all had little parachutes made, and we had notes to Mrs. -- the mother and father of Mr. William Reilly Jones. He was our nose gunner, that was his name. And we all threw out our little parachutes with our notes. And about, mm, maybe three weeks later we got letters from all the people down there. Very, very nice. And that's the only time we ever did anything like that. But it was very, very interesting. So there, after our Denver training and everything, that's when we went to Harvard, Nebraska. And we flew a lot of training missions there, then we went to -- where the heck was it?
Kansas City.
Kansas City, and got our new planes. Brand new B-24s, beautiful.
This is on our way overseas.
We're getting ready to go overseas.
So this is how long after you first went into the service, after you were first drafted and waved goodbye from the Greyhound?
Well, when we first -- well, it was just about a year.
A year.
Of training. We were very well trained. All the areas that we were in.
Now we're getting ready to go overseas. We've had all of our final modifications on the B-24s, and then we flew to Miami, Florida. And there we got some more modifications, and now we're getting ready to go overseas.
Let me ask you a quick question.
Yes.
At this time what was going on in the war that you knew about?
Nothing.
No idea.
Nobody was telling you --
No. All we know is every time we'd go into a camp, there would be the [banner] "You're Entering through the Portals of the Best Damn Outfit of the Best Damn Army of the Best Damn USA of the Best Damn Air Force, and you're the Best Damn People." And you walk in and, and there was people lined up. "You'll be sorry. You'll be sorry." You walk by. Yes, up yours, you know.
But did you --
I would like to say something.
Sure, go ahead.
We were very lucky. My older brother, our older brother, was a paratrooper. And he had just finished up his training as we had finished up our gunnery school, and we got furloughs together, just before we went overseas.
I forgot about that.
We was home four days together. We never slept for four days. Well, yeah, we were a very close family growing up. And I missed him by a week and a half, when we -- when I went over -- he went before I did. They took a bunch of us gunners, and sent other personnel, key personnel, in our place. Flying. And I went by boat. And -- but I missed my older brother by a week and a half in --
Newport.
Newport News, Virginia. So I felt bad about that. But hey, that's the way it went.
Now, the war was taking place on a couple of different parts of the world, now, did you know where you were going to end up going?
No. No.
They didn't tell you even when you got on the boat?
Nope.
Had no idea.
Well, I knew we was on the east coast, I figured we was going to Europe. But at that time, we -- we didn't know.
Okay, so you went from your furlough to Virginia, and then off to war.
Off to war.
And at that time, were you still going to be together?
No. No.
You said you went on the boat.
He left before I did, because that was one of the gunners that went by boat.
Tail gunner unit.
Yeah.
Go ahead and tell them about your trip, Ernie.
Oh, okay.
Tell them about the trip, Ernie.
Well, it was pretty exciting. When they put us on the boat, I was -- I learned to hate our government right there, because they had -- well, yeah, I'm serious. They had MPs on each side as we were going up the ramp carrying our stuff. And they figured that we was going to be running away, I guess. I never forgot that. Here they were machine guns, and they looked like they hated us. We got out on the liberty ship, and we went out in the estuary somewheres out there, it was nighttime when we did it. They dropped anchor, and it was just flat, it was just like this. Can't believe the guys that it was sick on that boat. It was just sitting there. But anyway. When we took off, we was in a convoy of maybe 60, 70 ships, I couldn't count them because they was scattered all over. And I was assigned on a 20 millimeter tub on the liberty ship. And everything was peaceful and quiet until we went by the Rock of Gibraltar, and we looked -- waved at the British soldiers, and they waved back at us. And seen the baboons on the rocks. Well, about three nights later, that alarm went off. And I was on the 20 millimeter, and we were jumped by probably 30, 40 Me-210s, twin engine bombers. Twin engine bombers. And we had quite a night. I never seen such fireworks in my life, I mean, the whole sky was lit up. And we had -- the ship next to us was damaged very badly, and they went into shore, and three others went in that I could see going in. Because we had -- the Germans had parachute flares, I mean, it lit up the whole sky, it lit up that you could see every ship in the convoy. And we struggled through that night. The next day my captain come to me. And I didn't give the guns to the Navy gunner when he got there, because we was having fighters come -- or the bombers coming in pretty low. I took his guns, and I kept them the whole time during the mission, there. My captain called me. I said, "Well, I kept telling the Navy gunner I had training on 20 millimeters, and if he's not going to be there, and there's bombers coming in, I'm going to shoot at them." Well, he was crying and he squealed on me, so I told my captain what happened. He says, "Well, don't do it again." I said, "Okay, I won't." Then a couple, three days later, after we got off of our tubs -- we had to be there before daylight in them, until about 9 o'clock in the morning, and then we'd have to be in them about 5 o'clock to dark. But anyway, we were standing in the back of the liberty ship. Back of us up come a sub. And he was quite aways back. And so some of the guys hollered up to the skipper at the wheel, and they -- pretty soon there was four British escort ships went back. We watched three of them get hit, and the fourth ship rolled over that submarine, and we could see the sub going over. And that was -- by then we was going over the horizon. So that was pretty exciting.
I guess so.
Then we stopped at Augusta, Sicily, for a couple of few days until they rerouted, made up new convoys. Then we went to Brindisi, Italy, which was on the southeast coast of Italy, and landed there. And from there, we hopped one of them (?40 N 8s?). A little story. Walking up the street, cobblestone street to the train, people are selling wine, so another guy and I, we bought a bottle of wine. I pulled the cork off of it and smelled it, and you could smell gasoline in it. So the guy that was with me, he took a whiff of it, and I just took that bottle and smashed it on the street. Well, the Italians got a little upset because they wanted to use that bottle over again. So we had five guys go blind that we never saw any of them again. So that's what that gasoline will do if you drink it. Then we he had three days -- well, there was a lot of guys, we spent three days on that. Probably go about 60 miles, spent about 3 days on that (?40 N 8?). That first night was horrible because some of them guys that drank that wine, I mean, it was terrible. There was -- it was crowded so bad in them darn trains, and they'd stop about every hour or so and everybody would peel out, and we had guys that was so sick from that wine. I was never so glad to get to a base in my life.
Everett, where were you at that time?
Well, we started flying, and we went from Miami, Florida, down to (?Berittman Field?) in Puerto Rico. And then as you can see by the lines going down to South America, we ended up at Dakar, then we flew across to -- I can't think of the name of it right now. The Gold Coast of Africa. And it was a trip of 11 and a half hours. We were very concerned, and every -- I was the only one in the back of the ship because we had all of our B4 bags, A2 bags.
Clothing.
A lot of whiskey. I don't know how they got in there. But we had oranges that were green. I was very surprised. Bananas you eat them green, you open them up, they're beautiful on the inside. Just absolutely wonderful. The same way with the oranges. They would be green, you'd peel them and they were just beautiful. So for 11 and a half hours, every half hour I would have to go to the tail gun and drop a smoke bomb. Well, I'd throw the smoke bomb out the side, and I'd run back to the tail, hop in, and I'd take the tail gun and I'd follow it all the way until it hit in the ocean. And I'd look up, and I would start at zero, and I'd go right to where it stopped. Then I would call the navigator, and I'd tell him the angle that we went. Maybe three, four degrees, five degrees. Well, the navigator would then compute that on his instruments. For every half hour I had to do this. And that was a long, long trip, because I was all back there by myself. We hit heavy -- four hours of heavy winds coming right toward us, so when we got to Dakar when they landed on the field, on the runway, I never heard such noise in all my life. It was just -- I was just petrified, I couldn't figure out what it was. Well, it was the landing strip was that steel mesh. And I didn't know they had that there, but they sure did. We got to the end of the runway, made a left turn, and got about 200 yards, and we run out of gas. Boy, that didn't have a drop left. So they came out with a truck, and they hooked up and they towed us to our revetment. So then we hopped across Africa, and we ended up in Tunisia. Bitter cold. Days very hot. I mean, it was just scorching. And this is why they always wore white, because -- and the turbans. So we had one blanket, each of us, and we were just freezing our tail ends off at night. So three B-29s came in, and they were going to the CBI, which is the China Burma India theater. And lo and behold, one of them had blankets, bales of blankets in there, the old OD blankets. Well, that evening we happened to have a whole bunch of wine with us, and we went over and we got the guards and got feeling pretty good. In fact, we got them drunk. So we went in this B-29 and we rolled out bales of blankets. We had five bales of blankets. It was like a little bunch of grinches, we took off with our blankets, and we each had two blankets. So then we got to thinking, gee, we haven't got no money, we can't buy nothing. So we had all these mattress covers. White mattress covers. So we would take and, hey, we'd sell them. And you've got to go down this alley here. Well, we had a bunch of guys down at the alley. "Hey, what are you doing with them? Those are ours." We'd take them back and sell them again. Pretty soon we had enough money where we could buy our own wine. So we quit that then. Then we flew on into our base. And we had no way to make our ammunition up. So we set up our tables, and then they brought in deals and we spent hours and hours day after day making belts of caliber 50 machine guns. Because we had none of our ground crew was in yet, except the first bunch came in and set up camps and that. So we finally got all the ammunition done. We had one quart of water a day, was what we were issued. Here we had to bathe and drink and -- with our one quart of water. Boy, we got pretty good. I'd take a bath out of your steel helmet, that's what we used it for, and to cook food in. And then we got lister bags, which they're about this big around, so tall, full of water, and they had these little spigots. And then as air would go by them -- they were made of canvas. And as the air would go by, it would cool it. And it was ice cold all the time, you could always get a ice cold drink. And boy, we loved those things. And then we were starting to get ready for our first missions. Wheels? This is my crew. I guess you would never have picked me out of that bunch, I'm sure. Well, after our first four or five missions, they all wanted to be my size because they couldn't duck down any lower.
So would that be you in the middle?
Oh, that's me.
Okay, just checking.
That's me. Now, this --
So where was your base?
This was before we flew any missions. And we were stationed at Cerignola, Italy, which is just north of Bari, Italy.
Were the people nicer to you there than they were --
They were very nice, yes.
They were starving.
We had lots of K rations and C rations, and we would always do our best to give them food. And especially the kids. When you see them out there on the garbage heaps picking to get food to eat, it just tore you up. And we would always give the children all kinds of food. And the parents, too, we always did that. Now, we couldn't eat any of the vegetables that they brought to our base until they went into a solution, because they use human feces to put on their fields for the agriculture. And it's just one of those things that they did for centuries, and it didn't bother them, but they figured they would kill us, so that's what they did. We had special treatments on -- the doctors gave to us.
And in Italy we could not drink any of their water.
Never.
And we had to take Atebrine tablets for malaria.
So Ernie, were you on the same base as Everett?
Oh, yeah.
So by that time you had reunited.
Yeah, we had come in, and once we got reunited things were pretty well set up then. We started out with 66 bombers.
Wow.
All brand new. We were 100 percent wiped out.
Oh. That was not the only base you spent the war at?
No, that's the only one.
That was the only base, yes.
That was the only one. Did you know where your brother was then?
No. We'd get a letter after he'd get off -- he jumped in Normandy and fought all through Normandy as a paratrooper of 101st Airborne, and he jumped in Holland. I was in France when they jumped in Holland, and I was guarding our plane that night. And it came out on the BBC that the paratroopers had jumped in Holland. And so we he didn't get too much communications between us. But boy, when we did, we'd get a bunch of letters.
Oh, you did, good. Letters from home?
Yeah.
Now, this is a list of my missions that I was on. I know you can't read them because it's pretty small, but they have all the missions, 50 missions. Now, some of the missions were 10 hours, some of the missions were 11 hours. Now, these, because in the 8th Air Force they flew 25 missions. If they could make that many; it was very, very rough. We were first had to fly 50 missions. Well, we found out that on our 10 and 11 hour missions like up into -- way up into, excuse me, Germany and Austria, it was -- you're sitting in a turret for eight or nine hours on an 11 hour mission. You can't go to the bathroom, because you can't get out of your turret. And you can't go to the bathroom anyway, even if you had to, because you was always so scared. And cold. And -- but that's what you got your -- they got it down to where it would be 35 missions, not a full 50 mission flight. So actually I flew, myself, 17 missions that we did not get credit for. If you -- if you got hit and you lost your engines and you couldn't keep up with the group, you had to turn back. You couldn't get over. 17 times we lost engines, had been hit, and hit by flak, or get oxygen shot out, and you couldn't keep up. We didn't get credit for those missions. Although we got hit every time. And I thought it was very bad, but there's nothing you can do, because you're in the Army, that's all it was to it. So anyway, that's -- I was so happy when I got my missions finished.
Our first mission as a full group was April 29th, 1944. And Everett and I -- well, they needed a tail gunner on their plane, so I volunteered. We were on different planes, same squadron. And the mission was canceled. Our commanding officer heard that we were on the same plane, and he made it a very definite point that we were to never fly on the same plane again. But the trouble was, I spent more time and he spent more time, you know, worrying about his plane. I seen two planes one day get shot down out of his box, and pretty soon the waist gunner would say, "60 is still there." And that's all he'd say. So then I'd know he was still up there. And it seemed like I worried more about him, and he worried more about me, I'd have rather that we were on the same plane. So.
You only were on the same plane that once.
No, we never got off the ground. But we did get chewed out.
So where are some of the countries where you flew missions?
We flew all over the Balkans, France, Germany, Austria, and later up into Czechoslovakia. So we covered a lot of area.
Were you pretty isolated from the other Allied troops, did you meet any of the British or --
Well, we never flew with the British, because they flew at nighttime.
Okay.
And they flew a little -- where we flew --
36?
One thing you don't want to call a Canadian is a limey, either, because you was going to have a flight on your hands.
Okay, well then, don't do that.
Now, our fifth mission -- my -- your fourth, wasn't it?
No. My fifth, your fourth.
Your fifth, my fourth. We hit Vienna, Austria. Now, up til then we he had mild targets because they wanted us to learn to really concentrate on formation flying and giving the bombardiers a chance to practice what they had been taught or do what they had been practiced to do. So we had -- we won't call them milk runs, but they could have been. In our fourth and fifth missions we had Vienna. They only had about 4,000, 5,000 guns there. And I had a little problem in the tail, I had to go to the bathroom pretty bad, so they hand the can to me. And we got rocked in flak. I lost the can, lost my parachute straps, and I went over the target with no parachutes. Scared to death. Because this was really our first bad mission. "Hey, these people don't like us." And I watched two Me-109s come in through the flak at us, and they was still too far to start shooting at them, but they were shot down by their own flak. And we lost -- what did we lose, four planes that day out of our group. We had 36 planes, that was 40 men we lost. And so after about 15 minutes, 20 minutes of flak, we finally got out of it. And that night we were sitting on these cots, we were talking about the mission. "I don't know," he says, "we've got 45 more of these." He says, "I don't know about this." Now, we're 19 years old. But from then on, the war completely changed with us. Up until then it seemed like it was just a game.
I told him, we were sitting there, I says, "How many missions you got, Ernie?" He says, "Four." "Well, I got five." "How in the hell are we going to make 50?" It was just -- it was so violent. I saw four planes go into this one lake called Lake Valentine. I actually saw them crash into it, the water flying up and everything.
We --
Go ahead.
We were 21,000 feet. But they had us zeroed in every time we went there.
They had batteries and batteries of guns, and they would just follow across. And they didn't shoot at one altitude, they would be in -- some of their areas would be like this, from maybe 20 to 25,000 feet the flak would be going off. And they would traverse across the sky with you, and would just be black.
It just looked like a big black cloud when you was going into them heavy targets.
Yeah. Wheels? Okay now, this was that mission we were talking about, over Wiener Neustadt, Austria. This was our fifth mission, and you see it was May, 1944. Now, all those little bombs going down are incendiary bombs. We had, I don't know, 40 or 50 of them in each plane. Actually we he had -- this was to go over the air -- huge air base there. Airdrome. Well, lo and behold, we got hit in the bomb bay, and we had a bunch of those hang up in our bomb bay. Well, I was the armament gunner, I had gone to armament school, so I'm out in the bomb bay hooking all the shackle -- redoing the shackles, and rearming all these, because we couldn't dare let them hit the slip stream, because if they went off, with the incendiary, they'd just burn right through your plane. So I got hit -- I got hit in the shoulder, and it knocked me over into -- in one of the braces. And I had a five minute bottle, and I was running out of oxygen, and one of the -- I think it was the bombardier handed me another five minute bottle. And finally I got it on, and I -- I got over, and I dropped my little zirk fitting, it's a little thing about that long, and I was popping the bombs out. Actually, I got the bombs out with my fingers, releasing the shackles. And I -- I was standing in the walkway, and I got, oh, maybe eight feet to go across the -- the little catwalk, and the door is only about this wide where you go from the bomb bay into the back compartment. And my waist gunner was standing there, was sitting there watching me, and I'm running out of oxygen again, and I -- the last thing I remember as I got ready to run across there, I had no parachute, and I couldn't get the parachute through the door. And I remembered my mother telling me, when I was a little kid, that I was as worthless as tits on a bull.
He was.
And I remember that it POed me, it upset me so bad, that I dove across, and I turned sideways, and I got my shoulders in. And my waist gunner grabbed me, threw me down in my turret, hooked me up with oxygen and my communication, closed the door. And I'm sitting in my turret like this and, gosh, I see this red. Going what the in the world that is, I must have blood coming out of my eyes. And it wasn't. It was just a fraction, maybe -- when the German fighters would come by, it would be so fast that maybe you'd get maybe six or eight seconds to shoot. And I started shooting. I just reached up, and never even used my sights at all, I just started shooting, watching my tracers. And they went in, and into the front of there, it was an Me-210, had twin engines. And we set our sights always at 39 feet, but I never used it. And I seen a canopy flying off, and everything. I did not get credit for the kill, but I know I did. And when I got home I told my mother about that, and what I remembered her saying, and she's, "I never said anything like that to you." You know, and I could just see that little thing just still talking like that. I told her, "Mother, if you hadn't said that to me I wouldn't be here today, because you saved my life." And she did. Finally I convinced her. Took a long time, but I finally convinced her.
Let me ask just a couple quick social questions.
Yes. Yes.
How was the food at the base?
Terrible.
If you liked eggs.
Spam, powdered eggs.
Powdered eggs and Spam.
You would have loved it.
Did you have any free time at all, and how did you spend it?
Oh, really, you didn't go off the base too much. We'd go into this little town of Cerignola, and we would go to the Red Cross, you had to buy everything there. We'd go to Salvation Army half a block away from there, they gave us everything free.
Well, that's a note to make.
One thing, when we went into town to eat, we would -- Ernie would, if he wasn't flying or anything, is he would come up with just our crew. We never leave friends with another crew.
No.
We did at first, and what would happen, they'd get shot down.
Yeah.
And you would lose them. So we made it a policy never to make friends. And we had some awful wonderful people in our crew.
Yeah, I bet you did.
But we couldn't do it. Wheels? This is D Day of southern France. Now, we had hundreds of ships out in the ocean. And these were 100 pound bombs. We dropped half of our bombs in the water, and half on the shore. And this was for sea and land mines. Well, every group that came in after us hit a certain part of the beachhead. Well, just come to find out that there was no enemy German people there at all, they had all moved out. So when all of our landing crafts came in to take the beachhead, they had no resistance whatsoever.
My goodness.
They had to go through a lot of bomb holes.
Yeah I guess so.
Wheels?
That was the only mission I was ever on without a parachute.
Here's your waist gunner here.
Oh. Yeah, that's my waist gunner, Charlie Smiley. He pulled me out of my turret twice. When I was hit once, and another time I got frozen. And he had to pull me out of the turret twice. So anyway, that's enough of Charlie.
Well, that was my home. My little home away from home.
That tiny little space is where you spent your time?
That's -- that's it. That's called the lower ball turret, and that's what it looked like looking straight out.
That looks kind of exposed there.
No, you have four inches of steel, with glass in front of you, special tempered glass. On the side you had the heavy steel. You sat on steel, and your back ha the heavy steel. So I would take my flak suit and I'd break it apart, and I'd put one on this shoulder, and one on this shoulder, and I'd put one in my lap. And the reason for that, I was thinking way in the future. Because boy, I sure wanted to have a family if I get through this. Evidently it worked very nice. I had a daughter.
I flew ball gunner one time. My navigator came to me and he said, "We need a tail gunner, will you volunteer?" And I said, "Well, I'd like to get lieutenant, so I'll go with you." And I never saw -- after we took off, we was the last plane in the group, which was the lowest ship. I never saw another plane from the time we took off 'til the time I could crawl out of there. I said never again do I volunteer to be a ball gunner. I did nothing.
When bombs away, of course, all the planes are in different situations to -- in the first place, that when you dropped your bombs, you would have no chance of hitting another plane. And another thing, the minute you dropped your bombs you're going to have, say, 8,000 pounds of bombs, and your plane is going to go up like this. Because of the weight being gone. So we had to be -- the pilots were -- we had great pilots. And -- okay, Mr. Wheels?
We --
Let me interrupt just to say you know what, I realize that I made a tragic mistake by not setting you guys for three hours instead of one. So I was really hoping maybe we could wrap up with how you spent the war, how you finished up the war, and how it's impacted your life. And then for those who have to leave, they can. And if you guys are willing to linger, I'd love to see all the rest of your slides, and maybe you could take a few minutes to show some of this wonderful memorabilia you brought with you.
Well, after we finished our missions, we went to Laredo, Texas, we went to instructor school. We instructed officers through what they call flexible gunnery officers course. We instructed there for about six months, and they pulled us out of the school and sent us to B-29 school. To be honest with you, I figured out every way I could get out of it down to the point of shooting my foot. And I figured, well, one night I was laying in my cot and I just put my arms up. Got to go again. I know I will never come back. This was -- I knew I was never coming back. We knew when a person was going to get killed. You could -- they -- it came out of them.
When we were there, when I was in B-29 school, I got all high grades, very high grades on my shooting, and all my tests. When all of a sudden I realized, hey, they want us to go back overseas in combat. You know, suddenly I became the dumbest and the worst gunner they ever had. I couldn't hit nothing, and I couldn't pass nothing.
We still was going to go.
They still could have sent us. But boy, they're going to get me the hard way.
The only reason we're here -- I knew I had it. I couldn't take another tour. I mean, I would have done it; I didn't want to. But they dropped the first atomic bomb, and that's all that saved us. Well, my older brother, him, and me. I'm sure that's all that saved our lives. Because they've estimated that there would be a million Americans and Japanese killed if we had to invade the island.
I'm going to give a real quick rundown on the B-24. We were in the 484th bomb group, 826th bomb squadron. Now, this particular plane, they made over 18,000. That's an awful lot of B-24s. Now, the top speed was supposed to have been around 303 miles an hour, but we were lucky to get 275. But when you had 8,000 pounds of bombs, you couldn't even get that. Now, we were supposed to fly at 25,000 feet maximum, but most of our missions were around 23 to 24,000 feet. Well, you know, with that many B-24s, I wonder how many really are left. We don't really know. Probably three to five that actually they could fly. Now, I saw one in Arizona, and it was completely refinished, it was very, very nice. And I'm glad that I flew in them, and I never want to do it again, but they took all those planes and they -- they flattened them out. Thousands of them. So anyway, if you have anything else to say, Ernie?
Yeah.
I don't think we should --
We lost -- we lost 66 bombers. We started out with 72 crews as a full group. That was 6 hundred -- 660 men. And we were one group of 21 groups in the 15th Air Force. So we had 640 aerial gunners in our group. Now, we were 100 percent wiped out.
Over 100 percent. Yeah.
Yeah. And it -- to stop and think back how lucky we were to survive. And how lucky all three of us came home.
That's wonderful.
There was seven Stedmans in actual combat, and we lost one. And he was in the Air Corps of the Navy.
He was on a B-24 with a single tail, called a privateer, and they were off Iwo Jima and they spotted a -- Japanese ships. And they -- last radio calls they got, they were going to go in and bomb them. And that's the last they heard of them. That's the only cousins that we had lost in the war. So we were a very, very fortunate family.
We were also very fortunate, we had six enlisted men and 12 officers, after we had finished our missions, received the Distinguished Flying Cross. And Ernie and I were both very fortunate to receive these Flying Cross, we have them up there. Ernie has his Purple Heart. We have our air medals, we have other memorabilia up here. We'd be more than happy to --
Please come on up and look at them. Questions, we'll answer any questions you want.
Let me ask you just quickly.
Yeah.
What did you do after the war? How did you get on with your lives, and what did you do for your careers?
Well I worked for Sears for three years, and I worked for a carpenter. And I become a fireman, and retired fireman, and had a very successful life.
Great.
I went into the fire service in Modesto Fire Department, and I was there for almost 10 years. And in fact, I worked with my own father in the station. He was my lieutenant. Believe me, I had to be on the ball. It wasn't like working for some other lieutenant. We ended up 19 of the Stedman family was in the fire service in Modesto. From my grandfather through my grandson. My son just retired with 32 years with Tahoe Douglas Fire Department. I had 30 -- 29 years in the fire service, I had my last 20 years with South Lake Tahoe, California, and we both retired as battalion chiefs. And believe me, we have beat the system.
Sounds to me like that's a lifetime of service, that's wonderful.
We had -- I had -- we've been both retired now, retired the same time, 28 years.
Wow.
Beat him.
Wonderful. Well --
We've got 28 more to go.
On behalf of the Nevada Court Reporters Association, let me read this to you: In celebration of your distinguished participation with the Nevada Court Reporters Association and the Veterans History Project, and your honorable service in the United States Armed Forces, two United States flags, one for each of you, is being today flown over our nation's capital in your honor. They will then be mailed to our association, and they will be presented to each of you as soon as they arrive. Thank you so much.