American bombers assemble in a secret airdrome somewhere on the northern tip of Australia.

The order of the day, attack.

Behind me is a Martin B-26 Marauder.

It's was a medium bomber used in World War two.

The crew were just six young men who, just like myself, were recent high school graduates.

It amazes me that the men who used the firepower in this war machine were just as young as I am.

When they joined the Army Air Corp for World War Two, they were called recruits.

Then they became trainees where they became pilots, navigators, radio operators, bombardiers, and gunners.

Then they flew their first mission, and forged in that fire, They forever after they referred to themselves as Marauder Men.

In this edition of Marauder Men, we'll learn of how it protected the homeland in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.

It's use in the Pacific on Midway and Guadalcanal.

Join us for a history lesson from the men who lived it.

The B-26 featured at MAPS Air Museum never flew in combat.

It crashed in 1942 while flying from California to it's wartime base in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.

It was one of three B-26s that were forced down in the Yukon territory of Canada.

The crash is an example of how ill prepared America was at the beginning of the war.

The pilots had little training in the B-26.

My pilot was designated the pilot by virtue of the fact that he outranked me by 8 weeks.

He also had one or two landings in the B-26 which I had not had at that time.

So when I climbed into the plane with him in Sacramento to start for Alaska I had had a total of 10 hours of observer and co-pilot time in the B-26.

There were no maps available of the flight path they were to take, and they got lost.

There was no weather forecasting along the route they were to fly, and they ended up fighting a winter storm.

Finally, as darkness was falling, the pilots and crew were forced to belly in when they ran out of gas.

And with the bad weather and it was decided by the pilots of the flight to crash land the three ships in the high shallow valley at about 5,000 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.

We hit the snow and crashed.The plane when up on its nose and crashed the entire cockpit area open and the pilot went out through the windshield and landed about 15 feet from the plane.

I was knocked out in the seat itself.

We were sheltered under the wing by the rest of the crew who had come through safely.

And through typical Yankee ingenuity they had taken the wing covers we were carrying with us and it formed a shelter under one of the wings and so we were in that shelter out of the weather.

Laying in our shelter we heard a low groaning voice, low groaning sound, over the southern horizon.

We looked out and there going from left to right we saw a C-47, one big dot and about 5 smaller dots the P-40s.

We had some flares.

So when we heard and saw these dots along the horizon, all the crews let go with this Fourth of July display of fireworks and pretty soon we saw those ships gradually turning toward us and they flew over us and of course we were extremely happy because while we were lost, they knew where we were.

Over several days bush pilots in small planes flew the downed crews out two and three at a time.

It was the early part of the war and some parts of the airplanes were needed to repair others.

Later on in April of 1942 the Air Force sent in a ground crew to claim some ofthe parts off of these crashed planes.

And the parts we received from that reclamation project turned out to be our air depot and supply depot for our Aleutian campaign which was soon to come up.

Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a genuine concern that the Japanese could attack Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, or the Alaskan territory at that time.

In a possible invasion of North America.

The posting to Alaska meant working in a very inhospitable environment.

The ground crews had to battle the elements to keep the 25,000 parts in a B-26 in flying condition.

I can't say enough for the ground crews and the conditions they had to work under.

They had frost bite on their hands when the gasoline would be testing it and draining the tanks and so forth would cause frost bite and the like.

And we had no hangers at all, nothing but revetments out there.

They were working day and night on engines.

They did everything they could possible do.

The pilots were soon introduced to a new weapon.

And were expected to master it with about 15 minutes of training.

We were called together in a room and in this room up at the head by the blackboard was a naval officer with an object in his hand about the size of a dinner plate and about two inches thick.

On top were a lot of calibrations.

Our main officer stood up and said,“From now on fellas we're going to be torpedo bombers."

And then he pointed to the naval officer and said, “This man, so and so, will explain to you how to operate a torpedo site.”This officer stood up and held up before us this object and said this is a torpedo site.

And of course we were duly impressed.

After about 15 minutes he said, “Are there any questions?” And we were now instant torpedo bombers.

He had told us that when we go down to Umnak there were the 6 torpedos waiting for us and the navy will install them on our planes.

At that time we hadn't even seen them.

As the war started, the Japanese codes had been broken so the United States knew that as part of a planned invasion of the Midway Islands in the Pacific, there would be a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands.

The B-26 crews were soon called upon to join in combat with the Japanese navy.

Unfortunately, the training for the Alaskan crews had neglected to include one important detail of how to attack using a torpedo.

Captan Thornboro of the 73rd Bomb Squadron.

He found the carrier dropped his torpedo on the deck of the carrier.

It bounced off.

But they,the navy hadn't told him it has to run in the water awhile before they're armed.

Well, he got back he said, “Give me bombs.” And he went back out.

But he never showed up again.

So we don't know what happened to him.

The Marauder served for 18 months in the brutal Alaskan weather.

The B-26s, while they were still there, Were used to attack the Japanese installations on Attu and Kiska on a fairly regular basis.

The frigid Alaskan environment was more deadly than the enemy.

One crew member remarked, “It was damned cold, I wouldn't want to take a brass monkey up there today.” During the first seven months of the war from June 1st, 1942 to December 31st, 1942 we lost 35 planes to the weather and six planes to combat.

The B-26 was pulled out of the Aleutians in 1943.

As men were freezing in Alaska, the Marauder Men and their B-26s were also being sent to the Pacific theatre of operations.

However, just getting there was a perilous journey.

We left Hamilton on the second of June with a 4,000 pound overload of gasoline.

And some of us were able to fly over the Golden Gate Bridge and some had to fly under it because you couldn't gain enough altitude.

We were to cruise to Hickamn Field at 170 knots all the way.

We were supposed to make it with 100 gallons of gas to spare.

Some were a little less than that but most of us had about 30 minutes of flying time left.

When Hartman gave us a briefing he said, “If anyone has trouble on the way over, don't do to much to try to help them or you might not make it either.” He said,“Be damn hard hearted.” These were his words.

In other words, if somebody goes down don't try to help them by dropping a life raft or anything else or you might not make it either.

And his words were very good because we had 20 minutes of gas left when we got to Hawaii.

When the American codebreakers had broken the Japanese codes, knew that the Japanese were going to attack and invade Midway Island.

The morning of the attack, all the aircraft on the airfield were sent off on an uncoordinated attack on the Japanese aircraft carriers.

On one side of the MAPS B-26 it bears the name Susi-Q.

That's in honor of the plane that flew its one and only combat mission.

Four of the B-26s attacked early that morning They were the second group of aircraft to attack the Japanese carriers that morning.

Came in with no fighter escort.

Were jumped on by the Japanese Zeroes flying CAP.

And two our of four of them were shot down.

The other two were heavily shot up.

None of the torpedos hit the Japanese carriers.

But it did have a bit of a phycological impact.

There was this one moment where James Muri from the 22nd Bomb Group was flying his b-26, Susi-Q, after dropping his torpedo and went right down the flight, right above the flight deck of the Japanese flag ship, the Akagi.

In some of the memoirs of the officers on the bridge, talk about how they all dived down on the deck.

Including Admiral Nagumo the head of the fleet.

But we went on out and we were down low, 50 or 100 feet off the water.

And suddenly popped over the horizon was whole flock of Japanese ships.

And they were everywhere.

After our launch, The Akagi was turning toward us.

And we would have been coming in from 45 off the bow.

So it was almost a straight shot down the flight deck.

In fact low enough that I think we could have touched the deck with our wheels if we'd have put them down.

And we had no defense except speed.

We got on the water.

I set there driving that machine with the throttles all the way to the hilt.

Fast enough that the Zeros coming down out of dives could pull up along side of us but when they rolled up to fire through they just simply fell off and we would go on.

But we did finally get away from the Japanese Zeroes.

And then or course we were lost.

Nobody was thinking about position,where was Midway or anything else.

We were away from the Japanese fleet, we had a lot of wounded and bad damage to the airplane.

Spotted a smudge of smoke on the horizon and we turned toward it and sure enough that was main island burning.

We got on final approach and thought, "Well, this is it, we've got it made now."

And the Marines didn't know who we were.

And they cut loose with their antiaircraft weapons and drove us back out to sea.

So the next round when we got on final we had to land, there was no where else to go.

And whether they suddenly realized that we were friendly or not I don't remember.

But they quit shooting and then we had a reasonably decent landing.

and then we got the wounded out got them some medical attention.

Then went back and started counting and one side there wereover 500 holes just on one side.

We never did count the other side.

Surviving this much battle damage was one of the reasons the B-26 became a favorite for its crews.

It could bring them back alive.

But the airplane was tough, it was extremely tough.

And I doubt, seriously, that regular combat airplane could've stood up to what the B-26 did.

While the B-26 caused no battle damage during the engagement, its presence in the fight created an opportunity for the battle to be won.

It caused the Japanese fighters to stay on the water.

The Navy's airplanes coming in from the carriers were on the deck.

We were open the deck.

So they were down shooting us and the dive bombers off of our carriers managed to get in and made their dives and got their hits.

And that was to late for the Zeroes.

Nothing they could do about it anymore.

And they hit them all.

I mean those dive bombers hit every carrier.

And where were the Japanese going to land?

They had to land in the ocean.

The Marauder Men were spread out all over the pacific.

Some groups were stationed in Fiji while others flew on to Australia.

The strategy in the Pacific was island hopping.

You invade an island, secure it, then move on to the next island.

When the Marauders and their crews arrived on Guadalcanal the living conditions were deplorable.

The first time I went in to Guadalcanal we held just about around the circumference of the field.

They were always lobbing shells in there.

And sometimes they would have incursions and we could hear firing during the night.

It was just very upsetting to even be there at that time.

We lived in slit trenches.

You didn't dare live in the tents.

If you wanted to sleep, you'd better be in a slit trench.

And our first bivouac area was near a, well, it was just a garbage area they'd covered over.

You could smell bodies if the wind was just right.

It was just untenable really.

And it was hard living.

And I could see in just a matter of weeks the moral would go down.

Because it was such terrible conditions.

I, myself, I slept in the trenches.

They had like bowls, they had dug large areas in the ground and they put these limbs across it.

Then they put this matting and leaves and such on it and that's how they slept underneath.

Now if it rained the water would come into this and you'd just lie in this about half a foot of water.

You'd just lie in it.

Now the only thing our squadron had to eat at that time was these big cans of crackers.

Great big tins of crackers and I think it was grape jelly.

And that's all I can remember is eating crackers and grape jelly.

I washed my teeth with sand.

I was young at the time, I didn't have to worry about shaving, I didn't even have any whiskers.

But we bathed in the sea.

We would swim in the saltwater there to bathe.

And the heat in the daytime was hitting around 125 degrees inside the aircraft and sometimes you could leave part of your skin on the inside of that aircraft it was so hot.

Another enemy you had to battle were the mosquitos.

They were a problem wherever you were in the pacific.

Slept on the wings of the airplane.

There was no place to sleep, no tents, no blankets, no nothing.

Well, you didn't need blankets.

But you did need mosquito net because the mosquitos would carry you off.

But if you slept on the wing of the airplane, the higher off the ground you were the less the mosquitos would bother you.

My turret gunner, ole George, one night I saw smoke coming out of the airplane and I run over there and here he is setting up on the catwalk in the bomb bay of the airplane and he's got a fire going so he'd get enough smoke to keep the mosquitos off of him.

If you can believe it.

The Marauder Men knew that bombs and machine gun bullets constituted a language that needed no interpreter.

We were briefed that the marines would put a red panel out in front of their lines.

And anything beyond that line was fair game.

So six ships with twenty 100 pound bombs took off.

Made a circle out at the end of the runway, came right back over the runway and we only flew about two minutes when we passed over the panel the marines had laid out.

We were knocked about I should say pretty bad from the concussion of our own bombs being only 1,000 foot of altitude.

Every man in the ship had a gun except the pilot and copilot.

And they fired everything they had at which anything that was moving down below.

And you could see the Japanese gunners shooting up at us as we went over this lines as we made a swift turn and came back.

The bombers were used to harass and destroy the enemy's supply lines and their air forces.

A lot of our targets were jungle targets and we didn't have the satisfaction of blowing up locomotives and warehouses and bridges and petroleum tanks and all the good stuff the guys had in Europe.

We would see a Japanese strip down there and nothing else round it.

Well they were masters at camouflage and they would pull their stuff back in where we couldn't see it I flew my first mission out of Port Moresby to Rabual and all we were told was, we were shown pictures of the Lakunai and the Vunakanau airdromes at Rabul.

And we were to bomb the runways.

We take of from Moresby, fly over the Rwenzori Stanley Range.

Go right back down on the water to keep from getting picked up by radar.

We got on in to Rabual finally through bad weather and everything.

Flying at about 300 feet.

We climbed up to about 4,000 feet so we opened the bomb bay doors,put the plane into a dive and we crossed the runway and dropped 100 pound bombs from 300 feet at 400 miles an hour.

We destroyed some Zeroes, some flying boats and so forth.

And as we turned coming off of the target to come back to the water to start back to Port Moresby.

We came over a building with a red cross on top of it.

But as we passed over this building I could see that they had laid out red cross panels on the top of the building.

Yet they had machine guns mounted on top of it shooting at us.

American ingenuity came into play as the crews modified the planes to fit their needs in combat.

For example these windows and thirty caliber machine guns proved inadequate for the job.

All we had in the waist position for guns were two 30 caliber mounts.

And these guns would be poking out these oblique doors in back.

The radio operator,Pat Norton, along with other members of the crew, Johnny Foley the turret gunner and so forth decided that if Norton had a window that he could look out and kneel and replace those 30 calibre mounts with 50 calibre mounts and getting decent guns down in the waist positions that he may be able to do some good.

Instead of lying on his belly watching these guys flash by, the enemy aircraft, before he could even get his finger on the trigger let alone sighting the thing.

And taking a chance of shooting the plane next door in the formation.

Why ah, he could sit up and do the job right.

So we stayed up all night several nights and carved windows.

And the first mission our wingmen let their waist guns fire out the 30 calibers and soon picked the safe range form those tracers.

And then Norton held his fire and cut loose and the best information we had was that he got two Zeroes on that first go around.

And within a month every aircraft in the group was so modified.

That later became a factory modification we were told.

There were many different tactics pilots came up with to get away from Japanese Zeroes.

On the job training you might say.

Nobody ever told me how to get away from one of them.

You can't out run them, we can't out run the bullets.

And in desperation when they were really poring it into us, and keep in mind that little three eights steel plate that was behind the back, when you can hear those rounds ricocheting off you get a little bit disturbed.

I'd roll the wheel a far as I could two the right and push the left rudder.

Now, imagine the typical B-26 going along at 300 miles an hour and suddenly having full right wheel and full left rudder at the same time.

What happens?

That thing goes from here 10 miles over here and well I'd get away from them.

It worked.

And there we are tight flying along and this poor Zero pilot has got to set himself up to attack us.

And there may be 8, 10, 12 zeroes lined up and these guys, one at a time mind you, would have to commit themselves to our airplane.

Now here's the technique.

We hold very steady until this fella had actually committed himself to the attack.

He was now fully in his turn.

Now his guns would start to fire and it took a little teeth gritting to wait another several fractions of a second longer.

Until he was now literally almost facing us.

Now we do three things.

We turn within his radius of turn, we'd loose elevation to pick up speed, and the guy would fly right over the top of us and you'd watch his head wobbling around in there almost saying to himself, ”Where'd they go?

Where'd they go?” And he'd go right by us over the top giving a beautiful, beautiful shot in most instances to our turret.

The missions were tough and for the individual crewmen it was hard getting accustomed to the idea that the man the next bunk, who was cracking wise in the morning was dead at sundown.

Combat missions in the Pacific were done at the far range of the B-26.

Some crews were lost while coming back from hitting a target.

That was one of the reasons the plane was pulled out of this theatre after 36 months of operations.

But we lost quite a few crew primarily by running out of gas.

Not because we got shot at or anything else.

It was just stupidity by running out of gas.

We could not handle the range that they were assigning us.

From Port Moresby to Rabual and back without getting in any trouble it was just critical that if you got into any trouble and you had to burn any extra gasoline or use more power to get away from them.

That ate it up and it created a bad situation.

They decided then that the B-26 was not the proper aircraft to have in the South Pacific.

The 22nd bomb group converted from B-26s over to B-25s in about June of 1943.

Well I'll say this.

You didn't ever take your clothes off.

You didn't no showers didn't have a shower?

Shower?

oh, maybe about every month or two.

Or maybe more often.

They would heat up some water.

You'd take all of your old clothes off.

There was a sergeant there standing underthe heated oil drum.

I mean full of water.

Step under it.

He'd give you time to get wet.

Lather up.

Step to the side.

And lather up and wash good.

Then you could step back under the shower.

He would pull the handle and you'd rinse off.

And you were through.

And they uh, a lot of times they sent boat loads of that old clothing home.

Really?

I'm glad I wasn't on that boat.