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Truly amazing B-17 story

Posted by bdk on Wed Feb 04, 2004 04:30:45 PM

Not sure of the source, I got it by e-mail.

>12 August 2003

>

>Piggyback Hero

>by Ralph Kinney Bennett

>

>Tomorrow morning they'll lay the remains of Glenn Rojohn to rest in the

>Peace Lutheran Cemetery in the little town of Greenock, Pa., just

>southeast of Pittsburgh. He was 81, and had been in the air conditioning

>and plumbing business in nearby McKeesport. If you had seen him on the

>street he would probably have looked to you like so many other graying,

>bespectacled old World War II veterans whose names appear so often now

>on obituary pages.

>

>But like so many of them, though he seldom talked about it, he could

>have told you one hell of a story. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross

>and the Purple Heart all in one fell swoop in the skies over Germany on

>December 31, 1944.

>

>Fell swoop indeed.

>

>Capt. Glenn Rojohn, of the 8th Air Force's 100th Bomb Group, was flying

>his B-17G Flying Fortress bomber on a raid over Hamburg. His formation

>had braved heavy flak to drop their bombs, then turned 180 degrees to

>head out over the North Sea.

>

>They had finally turned northwest, headed back to England, when they

>were jumped by German fighters at 22,000 feet. The Messerschmitt Me-109s

>pressed their attack so closely that Capt. Rojohn could see the faces of

>the German pilots.

>

>He and other pilots fought to remain in formation so they could use each

>other's guns to defend the group. Rojohn saw a B-17 ahead of him burst

>into flames and slide sickeningly toward the earth. He gunned his ship

>forward to fill in the gap.

>

>He felt a huge impact. The big bomber shuddered, felt suddenly very

>heavy and began losing altitude. Rojohn grasped almost immediately that

>he had collided with another plane. A B-17 below him, piloted by Lt.

>William G. McNab, had slammed the top of its fuselage into the bottom of

>Rojohn's. The top turret gun of McNab's plane was now locked in the

>belly of Rojohn's plane and the ball turret in the belly of Rojohn's had

>smashed through the top of McNab's. The two bombers were almost

>perfectly aligned - the tail of the lower plane was slightly to the left

>of Rojohn's tailpiece. They were stuck together, as a crewman later

>recalled, "like mating dragon flies."

>

>No one will ever know exactly how it happened. Perhaps both pilots had

>moved instinctively to fill the same gap in formation. Perhaps McNab's

>plane had hit an air pocket.

>

>Three of the engines on the bottom plane were still running, as were all

>four of Rojohn's. The fourth engine on the lower bomber was on fire and

>the flames were spreading to the rest of the aircraft. The two were

>losing altitude quickly. Rojohn tried several times to gun his engines

>and break free of the other plane. The two were inextricably locked

>together. Fearing a fire, Rojohn cuts his engines and rang the bailout

>bell. If his crew had any chance of parachuting, he had to keep the

>plane under control somehow.

>

>The ball turret, hanging below the belly of the B-17, was considered by

>many to be a death trap - the worst station on the bomber. In this case,

>both ball turrets figured in a swift and terrible drama of life and

>death.

>

>Staff Sgt. Edward L. Woodall, Jr., in the ball turret of the lower

>bomber, had felt the impact of the collision above him and saw shards of

>metal drop past him. Worse, he realized both electrical and hydraulic

>power was gone.

>

>Remembering escape drills, he grabbed the handcrank, released the clutch

>and cranked the turret and its guns until they were straight down, then

>turned and climbed out the back of the turret up into the fuselage.

>

>Once inside the plane's belly Woodall saw a chilling sight, the ball

>turret of the other bomber protruding through the top of the fuselage.

>In that turret, hopelessly trapped, was Staff Sgt. Joseph Russo. Several

>crewmembers on Rojohn's plane tried frantically to crank Russo's turret

>around so he could escape. But, jammed into the fuselage of the lower

>plane, the turret would not budge.

>

>Aware of his plight, but possibly unaware that his voice was going out

>over the intercom of his plane, Sgt. Russo began reciting his Hail

>Marys.

>

>Up in the cockpit, Capt. Rojohn and his copilot, 2nd Lt. William G.

>Leek, Jr., had propped their feet against the instrument panel so they

>could pull back on their controls with all their strength, trying to

>prevent their plane from going into a spinning dive that would prevent

>the crew from jumping out.

>

>Capt. Rojohn motioned left and the two managed to wheel the grotesque,

>collision-born hybrid of a plane back toward the German coast. Leek felt

>like he was intruding on Sgt. Russo as his prayers crackled over the

>radio, so he pulled off his flying helmet with its earphones.

>

>Rojohn, immediately grasping that crew could not exit from the bottom of

>his plane, ordered his top turret gunner and his radio operator, Tech

>Sgts. Orville Elkin and Edward G. Neuhaus, to make their way to the back

>of the fuselage and out the waist door behind the left wing.

>

>Then he got his navigator, 2nd Lt. Robert Washington, and his

>bombardier, Sgt. James Shirley to follow them. As Rojohn and Leek

>somehow held the plane steady, these four men, as well as waist gunner

>Sgt. Roy Little and tail gunner Staff Sgt. Francis Chase were able to

>bail out.

>

>Now the plane locked below them was aflame. Fire poured over Rojohn's

>left wing. He could feel the heat from the plane below and hear the

>sound of .50 caliber machine-gun ammunition "cooking off" in the flames.

>

>Capt. Rojohn ordered Lieut. Leek to bail out. Leek knew that without him

>helping keep the controls back, the plane would drop in a flaming spiral

>and the centrifugal force would prevent Rojohn from bailing. He refused

>the order.

>

>Meanwhile, German soldiers and civilians on the ground that afternoon

>looked up in wonder. Some of them thought they were seeing a new Allied

>secret weapon - a strange eight-engined double bomber. But antiaircraft

>gunners on the North Sea coastal island of Wangerooge had seen the

>collision. A German battery captain wrote in his logbook at 12:47 p.m.:

>"Two fortresses collided in a formation in the NE. The planes flew

>hooked together and flew 20 miles south. The two planes were unable to

>fight anymore. The crash could be awaited so I stopped the firing at

>these two planes."

>

>Suspended in his parachute in the cold December sky, Bob Washington

>watched with deadly fascination as the mated bombers, trailing black

>smoke, fell to earth about three miles away, their downward trip ending

>in an ugly boiling blossom of fire.

>

>In the cockpit Rojohn and Leek held grimly to the controls trying to

>ride a falling rock. Leek tersely recalled, "The ground came up faster

>and faster. Praying was allowed. We gave it one last effort and slammed

>into the ground."

>

>The McNab plane on the bottom exploded, vaulting the other B-17 upward

>and forward. It hit the ground and slid along until its left wing

>slammed through a wooden building and the smoldering mass of aluminum

>came to a stop.

>

>Rojohn and Leek were still seated in their cockpit. The nose of the

>plane was relatively intact, but everything from the B-17's massive

>wings back was destroyed. They looked at each other incredulously.

>Neither was badly injured.

>

>Movies have nothing on reality. Still perhaps in shock, Leek crawled out

>through a huge hole behind the cockpit, felt for the familiar pack in

>his uniform pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He placed it in his mouth

>and was about to light it. Then he noticed a young German soldier

>pointing a rifle at him. The soldier looked scared and annoyed. He

>grabbed the cigarette out of Leek's mouth and pointed down to the

>gasoline pouring out over the wing from a ruptured fuel tank.

>

>Two of the six men who parachuted from Rojohn's plane did not survive

>the jump. But the other four and, amazingly, four men from the other

>bomber, including ball turret gunner Woodall, survived. All were taken

>prisoner. Several of them were interrogated at length by the Germans

>until they were satisfied that what had crashed was not a new American

>secret weapon.

>

>Rojohn, typically, didn't talk much about his Distinguished Flying

>Cross. Of Leek, he said, "In all fairness to my copilot, he's the

>reason I'm alive today."

>

>Like so many veterans, Rojohn got back to life unsentimentally after the

>war, marrying and raising a son and daughter. For many years, though, he

>tried to link back up with Leek, going through government records to try

>to track him down. It took him 40 years, but in 1986, he found the

>number of Leek's mother, in Washington State.

>

>Yes, her son Bill was visiting from California. Would Rojohn like to

>speak with him? Two old men on a phone line, trying to pick up some

>familiar timbre of youth in each other's voice. One can imagine that

>first conversation between the two men who had shared that wild ride in

>the cockpit of a B-17.

>

>A year later, the two were reunited at a reunion of the 100th Bomb Group

>in Long Beach, Calif. Bill Leek died the following year.

>

>Glenn Rojohn was the last survivor of the remarkable piggyback flight.

>He was like thousands upon thousands of men -- soda jerks and

>lumberjacks, teachers and dentists, students and lawyers and service

>station attendants and store clerks and farm boys -- who in the prime of

>their lives went to war in World War II. They sometimes did incredible

>things, endured awful things, and for the most part most of them pretty

>much kept it to themselves and just faded back into the fabric of

>civilian life.

>

>Capt. Glenn Rojohn, AAF, died last Saturday after a long siege of

>illness. But he apparently faced that final battle with the same grim

>aplomb he displayed that remarkable day over Germany so long ago.

>

>Let us be thankful for such men.

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