The following interview of John R. Wright was conducted on Aug. 21, 2010, in Broken Arrow by Joe L. Todd for the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan. Due to length, the interview will be continued in the Aug. 4 edition of the Examiner-Enterprise.
Todd: Sir, where you born?
Wright: Everton, Mo., a little town of about 300 population.
T: When were you born?
W: Dec. 1, 1920.
T: Who was your father?
W: Jefferson C. Wright.
T: And your mother?
W: Effie Wisehart Wright.
T: Did you go through school in Everton?
T: What year did you graduate?
W: 1938. I went to a one-room country school and Everton High School.
T: What was the name of the one-room school?
W: Pickett School. It was 6 or 7 miles from Everton.
T: What was your teacher’s name?
W: We had several teachers, Ophra, Moffet and a man named Godfrey.
T: Who was your favorite teacher?
W: I guess Ophra.
T: Why was she your favorite?
W: I can’t tell you.
T: What type of work did your father do?
W: He was a farmer and rancher.
T: What chores did you do on the farm?
W: I did all the chores with the animals and the crops. I was involved in all of it.
T: Did you plow with horses or mules?
T: Did you have a walking plow or riding plow?
T: What were your horse’s names?
W: I can’t tell you.
T: What crops did you raise?
W: I guess wheat, oats and some corn.
T: What high school did you attend?
W: Everton High, Everton, Mo.
T: How did the Depression affect you and your family?
W: Being farmers we didn’t suffer for food. We planted a garden; we had lots of food. We had lots of blackberries.
T: Were there many bad storms around Everton?
W: No, just the usual.
T: Did you consider joining the CCC program?
W: I did the summer I got out of high school.
T: Where did you go?
W: Ottumwa, Iowa.
T: What did you do there?
W: I worked in the office as a draftsman. It was soil conservation and I drew terracing. I did architectural work for terracing maps and water structures.
T: Did you spend the whole time at Ottumwa?
T: How long were you in the CCC program?
W: One summer, three months.
T: Why was the CCC program organized?
W: I really don’t know. The economy wasn’t good and it gave the young people a chance to get out and earn a living.
T: Would you describe your house on the farm?
W: It was just a framed three-room old house.
T: Where was the well?
W: Right off the back porch by the kitchen.
T: How deep was it?
W: 30 or 40 feet.
T: Have good water?
T: How many children in the family?
W: A sister and had a brother that died when he was 4 years old and my brother Joe. My mother had been married twice. She married a man with 2 daughters and they were part of the family.
T: Was the second husband your father?
T: Do you remember when Japan invaded China in the 1930s?
T: Did Everton have a movie theater?
T: What part of Missouri were you located?
W: Northwest of Springfield about 20 or 25 miles.
T: How often would you get to Springfield?
W: Later on when we had livestock, about once a month.
T: When you went to Springfield would you go to the movie?
W: No. Springfield had a stockyard and they town had a square and we would go to the dime stores and shop.
T: How many wagons did you have on the farm?
T: Do you recall the brand?
W: One of them was a high wheel wagon with metal rims.
T: Did you work on the wagons?
W: All we did was grease the hubs.
T: How did you grease the hubs?
W: Pull the wheel off and smear grease on the hub with a stick.
T: How did you keep the iron rim tight on the wheel?
W: Soak it in water.
T: When you were on the farm what did you do for recreation?
W: Hunted and fished.
T: Did you play sports in school?
W: Yes, I did.
T: What did you play?
W: Baseball and softball.
T: Did you have a good team?
T: Do you remember when Germany invaded Poland in 1939?
T: What did you do after high school?
W: That was the CCC camp.
T: What did you do after the CCC camp?
W: Went back to the farm.
T: Where were you on Dec. 7, 1941?
W: I was with a youth group from the Presbyterian Church at Everton, Mo.
T: When you heard about the attack what did you think?
W: I was kind of devastated.
T: Did you know where Pearl Harbor was?
T: After the war started, did you help with the scrap metal drives or rubber drives?
W: I really don’t remember, but I was a concerned citizen and did my part. As far as those, drives I don’t recall.
T: Did rationing affect you?
W: It had some affect on us but we were on the farm and we were self-sufficient. We grew much of our produce. I had a cousin that had an apple orchard and I went there in the fall and picked apples and put those in our cellar.
T: Did you enlist or were you drafted?
W: I registered for the draft and then decided to get in the service and joined the Air Corps.
T: Why did you join the Air Corps over the Army, Marines or Navy?
W: I had the desire to get into airplanes and fly.
T: When did you join the Air Corps?
W: Oct. 29, 1942, and went to Camp Crowder near Neosho.
T: Where did you go for your Basic Training?
W: After I was accepted in the Air Corps at Camp Crowder I went home then got a call to go to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. I was there about one month then went to St. Cloud, Minn., to a training detachment.
T: What type of training did you have at St. Cloud?
W: It was like meteorology and courses that related to flying. We were at the college. I got off the troop train at night and it was just bitter cold. It was 30 below zero and I was ready to go home.
T: What do you remember about St. Cloud?
W: I guess the Ground School Program and I flew 5 hours in a Piper Cub while I was there.
T: What is the Ground School Program?
W: Courses related to flying.
T: Had you flown before?
T: Tell me about your first flight.
W: I just don’t remember but I was excited.
T: Did you fly the Piper Cub at St. Cloud?
W: I was just a student cadet, along for the ride.
T: How long were you at St. Cloud?
W: 2 or 3 months.
T: Where did you go from St. Cloud?
W: Santa Ana, Calif.
T: How did you travel to Santa Ana?
W: Troop Train.
T: Tell me about the trip.
W: Not very exciting, sitting in a troop train in a car looking out the window going across the country.
T: Where did you sleep on the train?
W: In your seat.
T: How long did the trip take?
W: I don’t recall.
T: What did you do at Santa Ana?
W: Mostly military formations and some ground school. I have it all written out.
T: It says you went from St. Cloud to Santa Ana in the summer of 1943.
W: I know that it was hot and we had a lot of drilling exercises out on the parade field and I got sunburned.
T: It says you had preflight training. What is preflight training?
W: Ground School and book work. And learned about the mechanics of airplanes.
T: Where did you go from Santa Ana?
W: Rankin Field at Tulare, Calif. That was Primary Training in the PT-17.
T: What is Primary Training?
W: That is the initial training in the Air Force program. You start out in the small airplanes and graduate to the bigger airplanes as you progress.
T: Is the PT-17 a single wing?
W: No a double wing.
T: Is it open or closed cockpit?
W: Open cockpit.
T: Were you still a cadet at this time?
T: How many hours did you fly in the PT-17?
W: I don’t know, 50 or 60 hours.
T: It says in November 1943 you were sent to Minter Field.
W: Minter Field at Bakersfield, Calif. That was a little bigger airplane, open cockpit, the BT-13.
T: What is the difference between the P-17 and the BT-13?
W: Just a little bigger airplane, single engine, two cockpits one for the pilot and one for the instructor.
T: How many hours did you fly in the BT-13?
W: About 70 hours
T: Where did you go from Minter Field?
W: Douglas, Ariz., for Advanced Flight Training in a twin engine aircraft. We called in the bamboo bomber. The AT-17.
T: Why was it called the bamboo bomber?
W: It was a nickname because it was so light. It fluttered in the breeze.
T: How many hours did you fly?
W: 120 hours. After that we got our commission as a Lieutenant.
T: You mentioned a hot pilot, what it that?
W: That is a fellow that can take an airplane and think he can do anything with it.
T: Where did you go from Douglas Arizona?
W: Mather Field, Calif., at Sacramento. We flew the B-25 there. It is a combat airplane but it was stripped down. After we finished our flight training at Mather Field we were put on a troop train and sent to Columbia, S.C., for further assignment. I was sent to Charlotte, N.C., to the A-20.
T: What is the A-20?
W: That is a twin engine bomber. That was training for the step overseas, either Europe or the Pacific.
T: What is the difference between the B-25 and the A-20?
W: The B-25 had more of a crew and the A-20 had 2 or 3.
T: Tell me about going overseas.
W: It wasn’t very enjoyable. I went to Savannah, Ga., for a while then got a troop train to Camp Kilmer, N.J. We got orders there to ship out in the middle of the night and went to the docks and went aboard the Queen Mary and it was loaded with bunks. I was in the middle of the ship and it was stacked with bunks.
T: How were the meals on the ship?
W: Military chow.
T: When you were on the Queen Mary heading out, what were you thinking?
W: At the docks we were given coffee and donuts and I thought to myself I was heading for the war zone.
T: What were you told to do in case the Queen Mary was torpedoed and sinking?
W: I don’t remember we were told anything.
T: What were you going to do?
W: I don’t recall. I guess get a life jacket on and wait to be rescued.
T: Where did the ship land?
T: What did you do in Scotland?
W: We de-boarded and went to a place called Hanby Stoke on Trent. That was the metropolitan area. We spent a little time there until we got orders.
T: When did you leave the States?
W: November of 1944.
T: From Scotland, where did you go?
W: We went to Paris.
T: How did you get to Paris?
W: In a C-47 and landed at Le Bourget Airport.
T: What unit were you assigned to?
W: I went to this replacement depot first and then was assigned to the 416th Bomb Group, 617th Bomb Squadron located at A-55.
T: What is A-55?
W: It is the number of the Airfield southeast of Paris. It was built by the Germans after they invaded France. We lived in a tent and had a potbellied stove for heat.
T: What did you burn in the stove?
W: Wood from bomb crates or anything we could scrounge up. The Germans had a lot of bombs crated up and they were torn up and scattered around.
T: What airplanes did you have?
W: The A-26. That is the plane I flew in combat.
T: When did you fly your first mission?
W: I don’t recall.
T: What was your target on that first mission?
W: I don’t recall. Our targets varied from ammunition dumps to bridges to troop concentrations.
T: How many planes on a mission?
W: We took off in 15 second intervals and I don’t recall how many airplanes would be on a mission. When the temperature would drop, the propellers would ice up and we wouldn’t have lift and some crashed. Luckily mine didn’t crash but saw some that did.
T: What did you think?
W: Thank God that’s not me. The Germans would strafe the field at night but it was just a nuisance strafing. This happened at Christmas time. We had foxholes we would get in and didn’t have any injuries.
T: You mentioned low level support missions.
W: Those were over Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. They were strafing the Germans, but I wasn’t involved in that.
T: How many missions did you fly?
T: Were you attacked by German fighters?
T: What is the 88?
W: That is the German anti-aircraft gun.
T: What is flak?
W: They had a battery of 4 guns and the first burst was way back, the next burst was closer and the next burst was in the formation. That is from those 88 shells.
T: Was your plane hit by flak?
T: How bad.
W: Punctures in the fuselage, but fortunately nothing very serious.
T: How long were at the A-55 Field?
W: I don’t recall.
T: Where did you go from A-55?
W: We went to A-69, which was closer to the front lines. We had flights into the Ruhr Valley.
T: What is the bomb load of the A-26?
W: About 5,000 pounds. It is a light bomber.
T: What type of bombs did you carry?
W: It varied. Sometimes we carried explosives and some were fragmentations that threw out shrapnel. It depended on the mission. On one mission, one of my gunners, Sergeant Burke, flew on another airplane and they were shot down and he was a POW for a while. We had missions toward the end of the war where we flew low level missions and bombed anything we saw. I recall on one low mission I saw one German soldier in a field and he hit the ground but I didn’t strafe him because I knew he was scared. I’m thankful I didn’t strafe him.
T: What is your most vivid memory of a mission?
W: In the Ruhr Valley toward the end of the war when I saw the plane shot down that had my gunner, Sergeant Burke on board.
T: Where were you when the war ended?
W: I was in Brazil.
T: What were you doing in Brazil?
W: Flying planes back to the States. After V-E Day we had orders to fly back to the States and prepare to go to Japan. We took our planes in and had fuel tanks put in.
T: What did you think about going to the Pacific?
W: I wasn’t in favor of it; I didn’t want to go.
T: When you heard the Japanese had surrendered what did you think?
T: When did you get your discharge?
W: I don’t know.
T: Did you stay in the reserves?
T: Were you called up for Korea?
W: Yes. I was working for a contractor in Illinois and going to a reserve unit there and they were called to active duty.
T: Did you go to Korea?
W: No. I went to Wichita to Forbes. It had been closed down and the hangars were being used to store wheat. I had a degree in engineering and was sent there to help reactivate the base. I was sent to a course at Dayton, Ohio, and when that was finished, Korea was over and I took my discharge.
T: When were you discharged?
W: It was after Korea.
T: What did you do after Korea?
W: I went to Omaha, Neb., and worked on an engineering project.
T: When did you come to Broken Arrow?
W: 6 or 7 years ago.
T: Why did you come here?
W: The home office was in Wichita and we didn’t have any family there and my wife suggested we come to Tulsa.
T: Would you join the Air Corps again?
W: I doubt it.
T: How do you want to be remembered?
W: A good soldier that tried to do his part and served his country.
T: Sir, this is a very good interview. I want to thank you for you service and thank you for the interview.