The Crew finally arrive in Bari, Italy

TROOP TRAINS HEADED HOME

YAZOO CITY, MISSISSIPPI...

(Continuation of Captain Estes's War Memoirs)

"We made it to Bari, and they took us to an office
where there was a captain, and this captain knew
that we were coming, and was prepared for us.
He wanted to go through some questions with us
and answers, and I guess you'd call it a debriefing.
And so he asked me a bunch of questions and the
the first question was: Why did we bail out of
an $80,000 airplane or $120,000 airplane... or
whatever they said it was worth. And I told
this captain that I thought the world and all
of the B24, that it was a fine airplane and
I was privileged to be a pilot and to fly one,
but that the plane that we had bailed out of
had taken us as far as it could go, and it was
no reason for us to stay in it any longer, because
the farther we went in it, the farther away from
civilization we got. Well, anyway, he didn't
like the answer but he was glad to see us,
because the war in Europe had already --
well, it was almost at an end, and he was
ready to go home and was sitting there
waiting for us to come and to see that we
got back to our squadron area, and everything
was okay with us, and of course, we appreciated
that.

When we got back to our squadron, John and
I had infectious Hepatitis, and they sent us
back to Bari to the hospital, and there we stayed
until we were discharged which really and truly
we weren't well when we got out, but we stayed
in the hospital about three to four weeks. And
when we went back to our squadron they were
all gone; they'd been put on a boat and sent back
to the United States.

Well, what was going to happen to us...John and I?
Swain was gone and all the rest of the crew were
on a boat and going back home, and we were
still over there. Well, they sent us to a squadron
north of Lecci and we stayed around there for
a while and there was some several men there
that had been left like us and were there waiting
for a way to get home. Well, they had an ol' B24
sitting out there in the weeds in the grass and they
pulled it out and they told us to get in it and crank
it up and see if it would fly, which we did and it did
fly. It cranked up and John and I flew it around
the landing strip for two or three trips and came
back in and landed it, and they said, well, this is
going to be your ride home. So they said you load
all of these men in that thing and y'all go on back
home.

Well, we didn't have a navigator but we felt like
we would do anything we could to get away from
Italy and on back on our way home, so we got
in the plane, and there were about ten of us I would
say, and we headed out and went reverse of our
trip to Italy. We went back through Tunisia and
finally to French Morocco.

When we landed in Morocco the boy that was
serving as the crew chief discovered that we had
a leak in one of the rain tanks, and so we were
stuck there on the ground until they could send
someone over to Tunisia and get us a tank. When
the tank came it wasn't for a B24, it was for a C47,
and that wouldn't fit so we were stuck there again,
and just as well because I didn't want to face going
across the ocean in an ol' worn out B24, so we caught
a C54 at Marrakesh, and it carried us to the Bahamas
and then onto LaGuardia Field where we landed.

When we got off the plane in LaGuardia there was
a Red Cross stand there and we went by there to
see what they had to offer us, and to John's delight
they gave him a quart of milk and he drank that
all in one gulp almost; but I didn't exactly care
for milk, and they didn't have any Rocky so I just
did the best that I could with what they had.

And they sent us on up to Boston where we stayed
a couple of days and then they loaded all of us
on a troop train and it was headed south and people
got off at different places. We went all of the way
to Camp Shelby, at least I did. And I got off the
train and caught a bus home, and oh, what a
glorious sight Yazoo City was."

(To be continued.)

The Crew is Helped by the Villagers and Rebel Soldiers

(Continuation of Captain Estes's War Memoirs)

"Anyway, Swain could speak a little Italian but
none of the rest of us could speak Yugoslav or
Russian or German or anything else so we just
depended on hand motions and what have you
to kind of make our needs known. Well, from
this particular place they took us to a large
building which turned out to be a hospital;
I didn't quite understand why we were being
taken to a hospital, but it became evident
that the reason we were is because the hospital
had a lot of rooms and a lot of beds and that's
where they were gonna put us to sleep that
night. So were all assigned a room or taken to
a room and we felt good about where we were
and the circumstances we were in, and everything
looked like it was gonna go along pretty good.

The next day we were taken outside and they put
us on a cart and we all loaded onto the cart and
they assigned some men to go with us, and we had
no idea where we were going, and we couldn't
speak to 'em, but we began to go along this
trail or road. And it took us to a house where
they stopped along the side of the road, and
one of the men that was assigned to us as a
guide or whatever, went up and knocked on the
door and this man came out and they had some
words and they told us to get out of the cart and
we got out, and two or three men came out of the
house and they looked us over real good. We
didn't know who they were, they didn't know
who we were, but one of them went back in the
back and came back with a goat and proceeded
to kill him and skin him; and they had a fire
going underneath a spit and they started
cutting the goat up into pieces and put it on the
spit, and this was gonna be our supper.

Well, I hadn't never eaten any goat that I could
recall, but I was of a mind to try anything they
gave me. Well, of course, the fire was not close
enough to the spit to properly cook the goat,
and the goat came out half cooked, and they
started taking pieces off the spit and handing
it to us, and it was a new experience for me to
naw on something that was half done. It was
sort of like trying to chew rubber, but I didn't
complain about it; I ate what they gave me.
Then they took us to a room and we all laid
down in the room and slept.

The next day they got us up and we started
walking now instead of being in a cart. The
snow was covering the ground or covering
the road, and we were going up a mountain
trail and evidently was going to lead us
over the Alps, and we had about five men
walking with us. And we'd been walking
for a few hours when we encountered an
old man on a white mule or a white horse
coming down the trail that we were going
up, and he had behind him four or five
women and they were all dressed in long
skirts and they had these baskets on top
of their heads. And when they came up to
us, this old man stopped and he had a few
words for the soldiers that were with us,
and he had a wine skin that was on the
horn of his saddle, and he took that loose
and took it off and he handed it to one of
the soldiers. The soldiers of course were not
unused to drinking from a skin, so they knew
exactly how to handle it, and they put it
over their shoulder and drank some of it,
and passed it onto some of the other
soldiers, and finally it had gotten around
to giving it to us. And I remember when
I got ahold of it I tried to do like they did,
and I got a mouth-ful of it and it was
just like liquid fire in my mouth, it was
so hot. It was a very, very high percentage
of alcohol, very condensed and we found
out that it was called Rocky, and they made
it from pear juice, and it wasn't unpleasant
to taste, but it was strong as hell. So after
we all had a drink and the soldiers had
talked to the old man, then he went on his
way down the trail and we went on up the
trail."

(To be continued.)

With the Help of Rebel Soldiers the Crew Makes their way to the Adriatic Sea

(Continuation of Captain Estes's War Memoirs)

"Close to evening we came to a large barn-looking-building,
and they indicated that we were to go inside and we did.
It was what you would probably term a hostal, but was
in the middle of the mountains and it was there for people
traveling through to stop and spend the night. Well,
one of the soldiers went over to this ol' potbelly stove
and put some wood in it and got a fire started. And
there were some raw potatoes on the floor in the corner,
and we guessed that we would eat potatoes for supper.
And sure enough they took 'em, put 'em in the fire, and
cooked the potatoes for a little while, and pulled 'em out,
and each one of us got a potato, and it wasn't bad.

So we had our -- we still had our heavy flying clothes
on. They were not leather, they were cloth and I had
on my pants and my jacket as did the rest of the crew
did, and we were fairly comfortable. We were warmer
than they were because they didn't have anything on
but just their uniforms and they were not quite heavy
enough, with the snow outside on the ground and the
cold like it was, for them to be as comfortable as we were.
There was some straw laying around on the floor so we
heaped up a little here there and yonder, and each one
of us found us a place and we settled in; we were tired
so it didn't make much difference what we were lying
on, we went onto sleep. The next day we got back
on the trail and walked some more.

We finally came to a railroad train or railroad track,
and there was kind of a half station there, and we
stopped there and they went in and talked to the
people inside, and they determined that we were
going to ride on the train. And it was a narrow
gauged train; it was very narrow -- the tracks were
not as wide as our train tracks, and the trains were
not as big either. They were small trains. They didn't
have any heat in 'em except for a potbelly stove in each
one of the cars, and they didn't have any stacks or any
pipes going up to take out the smoke; they just had a
hole in the roof and the smoke went up to the top and
went our the roof. It worked all right so I guess there
wasn't any use in arguing about it or even thinking about
it. So we rode on the train until we got to a place where
they stopped or the train did, and we got off the train, and
there was some old Dodge trucks there. And as far as we
could tell none of 'em would run. And the Yugoslavians
they didn't know anything about mechanics, so they
didn't know how to make 'em run. When they quit,
they just quit. Well, anyway, one of the men on my
crew had a knife with a file on it and he pulled the
distributor cap off and got in there and filed the points
on the distributor, and the old truck cranked up;
it backfired a few times, but it started to run.
And the Yugoslavians soldiers just didn't know
what to think. They had no idea anybody
could make those trucks run.

Well, we got three of 'em running and we loaded
up in the back of 'em and they started out on
the road. We didn't know where they were going
to take us but we wound up in the outskirts of a
pretty large town, and it turned out to be Split,
which is in Yugoslavia, S-P-L-I-T. Well, Split
evidently was large enough to have an embassy
there where the English had a representative,
and the United States had a representative, and
we went to each one of 'em and explained who
we were and why were there and what we needed.
At the English Embassy they gave us a bottle of
White Horse Scotch. That wasn't exactly what we
needed but we took it. And at the American Embassy
they gave us a can of pork and beans and of course
we enjoyed that; that was something different for
us.

We got them to contact our people in Italy and they
did and the message came back that they were going
to send a plane over to pick us up. There was a little
island just off the coast of Split named Vis, V-I-S, and
we were very much encouraged and looking forward
to getting back to Italy. When the weather turned bad
they let the embassy -- the American Embassy at Split
know that they were not going to send a plane; that
we just had to find another way to come. And so
they put us on a boat that full of refugees. They were
Italians and they were going -- they had come to
Yugoslavia to get out of the way of the Germans
over in Italy. And they each had a wife and two or
three children, and dogs and cats. When we left the
port everybody got seasick, all of the refugees did, and
it was an awful sight; it was kind of terrible, but we
lived through it. They had given us some rooms on the
boat, and the refugees they were out there on the deck
just doing the best they could. So we were treated
real well. The trip across the Adriatic to Bari, Italy
didn't take too long. I think we spent one night
on the boat and that was plenty. "

(To be continued.)

The crew prepares to bail out over the small town of Prnjavor, Yugoslavia

(Continuation of Captain Charles Estes's War Memoirs)

"Well, we all agreed on that and Swain indicated that there
was a little town up about 50 or 60 miles in front of us
named Prnjavor, and that if we were able to bail out
there he thought everything would be fine; that it
was indicated to him in his briefing that that was
not enemy territory but friendly territory.

So I got the crew all ready and everybody knew where
they were to go, so when we got close to Prnjavor I
gave the word for them to bail out, and everybody
scuttled to their point to bail out from. And of course
that was 12 men bailing out of an airplane that was
flying two engines,and so that lightened the airplane
to a great degree, ton maybe; and that made a lot
of difference in the ability for the plane to fly, so it
flew pretty well after that.

I had it on auto pilot, and when John and I left the
pilot and copilot seat and went down onto the flight
deck where we were to bail out from, we made it out,
and bailed out and believe it or not our chutes opened
and we floated down to dear ol' terra firma.

And when I landed there was an old Yugoslavian woman
running towards me, and I could hear her yelling,
"Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness." I sat up
and looked across the field and here came this old
Yugoslavian woman running over to me as fast as
she could come, her skirt pulled over her knees so
that she wouldn't get tangled up. When she got to
me she said, "Are you okay?" And I said, "Yeah, I
think I'm going to do all right." And she helped me
up, and I'll never forget that wrinkled face looking
down at me with so much concern. I didn't
know who she was or anything about her,
but she helped me out of my parachute.
And I had no use for it so I told her if you
have any use for this parachute then I give
it to you, and was just overjoyed with my
gift. And she led me to a path that went into
Prnjavor.

Well, while this was happening to me, Swain
came down in a field very close to where I was
and he was greeted by three soldiers each with
a gun, and each with a gun trained on him,
and he pointed to the American flag on his
jacket and lowered their guns. Now when
Swain landed he landed in a plowed field and
turned his ankle and he couldn't walk, so these
three soldiers between them carried Swain into
Prnjavor.

We all met later. But John Congleton he came
down in a field similar to the one that I landed
in and as he was struggling to get out of his
parachute shroud lines, and he finally made it
and he stood up and he heard something behind
him that sounded like a gun being cocked, so he
turned around and there was this young
Yugoslavian kid sitting on top of a fence and
he had a rifle pointed right at ol' John, and
John pointed to the American flag on his
shoulder, and the young kid jumped down
off of the fence and ran over to John and
hugged him on the legs.

And those were the only three landings that
I have any recollection of. The other men
when we finally got together we didn't really
and truly go over anything like that, and after
I got home from the service I didn't hear from
anybody, so I don't know what happened to them;
but we all were brought back to Prnjavor and to
this central office. It turned out to be a communist
office and it was run by this ol' colonel who I
think was an Italian."

(To be continued.)

The town of Prnjavor, Yugoslavia

Flying on a Wing and a Prayer

(Continuation of Captain Estes's War Memoirs)
"Well, we hadn't been on the bomb run too long
before a big burst of flak hit the left engine number
one outboard, and we had to feather it. John
Congleton was right on the ball; he knew exactly
what was going on and what to do, and so he
did what he had to do and that engine was
feathered and we continued on the bomb run.

And then the bombardier indicated that the
bomb bay doors be open and they were opened,
and shortly after that we dropped our bombs
and rallied to the left. And as we rallied, the
right outboard engine number four was
hit, and John had to feather it, and we were on
two engines and we couldn't continue as the
lead of our formation; so we dropped out of the
formation, and just hoped that we could choose
the right manifold pressure and everything else
to carry our plane as far as we could go. We
were going to continue on the course that we
originally would have flown had all our engines
been running.

And that carried us to the foothills of the Alps,
but we had lost considerable altitude because
we couldn't continue to hold altitude at
altitude with just two engines; we were losing
about 5, 6, 700 feet a minute, and finally we
got to Yugoslavia. As we passed Zagreb we
picked up some flak and they were pretty much
on target. It sounded like hail on a tin roof, and
we were getting shrapnel from the aircraft guns
that were shooting at us.

After we past that point we were at about 8,000
feet and we were approaching the Alps. And I
called to Swain and asked him what was the
highest altitude of any peaks in the Alps on our
course, and he indicated 8,000 feet. Well, the
Alps were covered over with clouds, and I couldn't
see the peaks, but we knew they were there and we
knew they were at the same altitude we were; so
I couldn't afford to try and pick my way through
something that I couldn't even see where I was going.
So I turned left or south towards Sarajevo which was
not even known then hardly because the Olympic
games hadn't been played there, and there was no
airport there or anything else. We turned in that
direction and it became evident that there wasn't
any reason for us to continue going south; we couldn't
go north, that would carry us back into enemy territory,
and we certainly didn't want to turn back to the east
and go back into enemy territory again. We couldn't
go west because that would carry us right into the
Alps, so I told John that I thought that our best
chance was to get everybody ready and bail the
crew out and take our chances on the ground because
our chances in the air were no good."
(To be Continued.)

Mission 34: Schwechat Oil Refinery

This map depicts the target which is located at the
top of the map: Vienna, Austria - Schwechat Oil Refinery.
After their bombs were released the number one and
two engines were hit. They passed over Zagreb and
bailed out over the small town of Prijedor, Yugoslavia.
(click on picture to enlarge)
Aerial view of Schwechat Oil Refinery - Vienna, Austria


Photos of the bombs being
released