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- He is the former boss of the Blue Angels turned author.

We sit down with Bob Stumpf on this edition of Conversations.

Bob Stumpf is a Naval Academy graduate who would go on to have a stellar career in Naval Aviation.

He was awarded the distinguished flying cross and became the flight leader and commanding officer of the United States Navy's Blue Angels.

After retiring from the Navy.

Bob entered commercial aviation, ultimately retiring as a captain with federal express.

Recently, Stumpf's pursuits have been a little closer to the ground.

The long time aviator has turned into an author.

His new book "Letters to Imogene" chronicles the real life stories of some key family members during World War II.

We welcome Bob Stumpf to Conversations.

Thank you for joining us.

- Well, thanks for inviting me.

- I heard a lot of wonderful things about the book.

How did this come about?

- I got very interested in the adventures of my father, grandfather, and uncle during World War II, all in the European theater about the year 2003, 2004 when I discovered a trove of memorabilia and albums and letters, and who knows what all records from that my mother had saved up for all those years.

So it started with a examination of all that stuff.

And I decided that it would be a good idea to compile that all into one volume so we could pass that down to our kids and grandkids.

So they knew the story so that it didn't go unknown.

- Right, right.

As you started digging through it, what immediately jumped out at you?

- Well nothing really immediate, other than the length of time that they were involved in the conflict in the war, they started in 1942, in late 1942.

And they didn't get back until late 1945 after the occupation of Germany.

So their involvement was long and it was brutal.

And that became clear to me after a little bit of digging.

And I didn't know anything about that because my father really never talked about it.

- Why do you think your dad didn't talk about it?

- I think he was carrying a lot of burdens from the war.

It was a long drawn out hideous, bloody affair.

And I don't think he just didn't feel comfortable.

He didn't want to relive it if I'm sure he did but he didn't want to burden us with it.

- Right.

If you think back on your dad and others like him to, you know, what's referred to as the greatest generation, what was it about those guys?

What made them so special?

- Well, I think if you look across the board, the incredible sacrifice that the American people, the men and women alike, those that went over and those that stayed behind everyone was willing to join in the fight.

They knew it was a big one and it was it's going to be tough, but it seemed like there are very few people that shook their what they considered their duty.

I mean, kids right out of high school, signing up not waiting to be drafted.

And it seemed like everybody wanted to jump in and help.

And that one for the folks in the home front as well as I discovered researching the book.

- Right.

What do you think would have happened?

Had America not taken the stance that it took and us not been so eager to help?

- Well, in the big picture we weren't that eager to help early on in the war.

We didn't get until after Pearl Harbor, where the the Brits and the French had been fighting and others had been fighting since 1938.

So, but once we committed it was full commitment.

And what was your question again?

- Well, I'm just saying what do you think would have happened to them?

Because I kind of read into it that, like you say initially America was not that interested in getting involved in it, but had we not the world looks-- - There's a section in the, one of the early chapters where we discuss that where was the world strategically, right.

With Japan and Germany dominating so much of the world, where was it headed if something didn't change?

And the change was the United States getting into the war.

And frankly, it looked very bleak in 1940, early 1942 with the Germans and the Japanese forming a quasi Alliance.

And they were on the brink of world domination.

- Right.

- And so I think it was very, very the United States certainly was key to changing that balance.

- Because I've read some reviews on the book and folks kind of refer to it as a history lesson, certainly because and then you weave in the actual letters and involve the personalities.

Tell me about your grandfather.

Tell me about General Stroh.

- Yeah, he's an interesting guy.

He grew up in Washington DC and he always had been interested in being a soldier.

That was his goal.

And he either was a cadet battalion at his high school that he was very much a part of.

And then he wanted to go to West Point, and this was 1911.

And the only way he could get into West Point or the primary way was either political or you could compete on a national exam which really required a prep school, a year of prep school to prepare just for that exam to be competitive.

And his parents couldn't afford that.

So he joined the cadet battalion at the what's called Michigan Agricultural College now Michigan State University and then what's now called Razzi for four years there.

Still couldn't get a commission when he graduated in 1915, the army was very small and they were the only officers commissions that were awarded were from West Point.

So he stayed active in the summer training with the army reserves.

And then when World War I broke out now they're looking for guys.

And so he got a commission and ended up going into the Cavalry and he spent the war strangely enough on the Mexican border, where they had regimen after regimen of U.S. Calvary, looking after that border which is kind of ironic turn around a century later.

So he was very disappointed, he didn't get to Europe but I'm sort of glad that he didn't.

So I'm here today.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

- And then the interwar years, he spent dedicated to the army very slow going against, again they shrunk down to a very small regular army and those that stuck around were destined to do big things during the Second World War, which is what happened to him.

- Tell me about his leadership style.

- There's a lot written about that I uncovered from people that knew him.

And he was highly respected by his peers and by his subordinates, they really enjoyed working for him.

He was a listener.

He would ask a question and then he would listen and he would suggest, he wasn't a brutal kind of patent S kind of guy.

He was a much more quiet taciturn and very professional.

They called him Mr. Fort Benning, because he was so well-versed in the infantry tactics of the time.

- Did you ever talk to your mom about what kind of father he was in addition to that?

- Oh, sure.

Yeah.

In fact, at the beginning of this project I sat my mom down for two days and picked her brain about everything she could recall about World War II and about her father and her brother and her husband, my dad.

And yeah, she said he was pretty strict disciplinarian but she always respected him.

And he was always fair.

She revered him.

I mean, it's very clear from their letters.

So they were very fond of each other.

But again he was, I guess he was pretty strict but I think that was the normal for the time.

- All right.

You talked about him wanting to go to West Point now, it's my understanding that his son, your uncle, I believe did go to West Point, correct?

- Indeed.

In fact, he was able to do that year prep school to prepare for the exam.

And he was able to gain entry into an into West Point.

And he struggled mightily academically for all four years but he pulled through and went into the Army Air Corps.

- Okay.

And so he became a pilot?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- So like yourself later in your career?

- In fact, there are a couple of chapters in the book that just detail his flight school experience preparing for war.

I mean, it was a war time.

Hurry up, we get you ready.

And then you're going over there and it's going to you know, you're going to have to do some work.

- Right.

Where were they training in those days?

- They trained all over.

He started in Avon park, Florida, I think.

And then they went to South Carolina and then he ended up doing his advanced training up in Groton, Connecticut.

- Okay.

And what kind of aircraft were they training in?

- Well training.

The T-6 Texan, which you still see around at air shows today, that that was the advanced trainer for all the armed forces or variants of it.

And then he went into P-47 Thunderbolts which is a big new single seat fighter at the time.

He was a little disappointed that he didn't get the P-51 Mustang which is what he had his heart set on.

Because it's so good looking.

- Right.

- It turns out that the P-47 did a lot of the lion's share of the work over there.

- Right.

Right.

And what kind of guy was he?

What kind of personality was here or what did you...

I know you never really had a chance to meet him, but what was he like from the letters and from the people you talked to?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

He was an introvert, he was quiet and he was not he was a West Pointer when he got to his fighter group, which were those pilots were rare who were also West Point trained.

And they had a real bad reputation because they were kind of sticklers for discipline and whatnot.

But he was not like that.

And some of his colleagues related that to me in person and also in the research that I did, that he was very well-liked and kind of quiet and very dedicated to his duty.

- Yeah.

Was your grandfather an introvert or was he-- - No, I don't think so.

- No?

- He liked to sing and he was an actor on stage.

- Yeah.

- He was.

And he liked to give speeches.

So I don't think he was an introvert.

- Yeah.

I read somewhere along that I think he said that had he had the opportunity to go to West Point.

I mean, he would have been, up there with Eisenhower and the rest of them.

- Yeah.

He would have graduated with Eisenhower and Omar Bradley in 1915.

They would have been classmates and would have known each other.

And he got to know them later and worked for them.

But he wasn't in that he lost two years of, of seniority in the army.

So he was behind those guys.

- Right.

Interesting.

Did your mom ever say what it was about him?

The reason he wanted to be in the military at such a young age, what was there something that inspired him along the way?

- You know, the little things that I learned about his boy hood, they were big fans of the John Philip Sousa band, the Marine band.

And they would go to those band concerts there in Washington.

And he was a big fan of fire engines.

He liked to see the fire engines with the horses come roll.

And I guess they live near a fire station in DC.

So other than that, I'm not really sure where it came from but he was definitely a soldier, soldier, for his life's work.

- Right.

Right.

What about your dad?

Tell me about your father.

- Yeah.

He was an only child.

Son of a physician in near Akron, Ohio.

He was, I guess he was real smart in high school and ended up graduating at 16 and then went to Akron University for a year.

And it was during the depression.

The folks didn't have a lot of money to be sending him to a college.

So I guess his father had some pull with a Senator and next thing he had an appointment to West Point not having any, background at all in the military.

- Okay.

Do you think, so he never really, he just kind of fell into it more or less, he didn't-- - Correct.

- Okay.

And what did he do?

Tell me a little bit about his role.

- My father, he did well at West Point and graduated just fine.

Never had any academic problems.

Really I think he really received the military culture well.

He really liked it.

He liked the discipline and he liked the goals.

He liked the spirit of duty, honor, country.

You know, that's what they instill in you in West Point.

And it did well in him.

He became an infantry officer, which is, commanding ground troops.

And then he decided to go into the Ordinance Corps which was building and developing weapons systems for the army, because they offered him a scholarship to MIT for graduate degree to do that.

With the war that went away.

And he found himself back in the infantry in North Africa.

He went at shore initially with Partinson, first wave into Casablanca, and then worked his way to the armor corps tank, a tank division as an infantry battalion commander.

And then did the rest of the war in the infantry as a battalion commander.

- And the fascinating thing about it is that, I mean all three of them were over at the same time.

So it was your grandfather, your uncle, and your father.

And tell me about what that dynamic was about.

- Well, the letter are very expressive about it and especially my grandfather was a very prolific writer and he spent a lot of time talking about my dad, his son-in-law who he sort of adopted as a second son.

And the culmination of that dynamic was on Christmas Day, 1944 when they all got together in Southern England where my uncles' airfield was there and the headquarters for my grandfather's division of which my father was apart, they were all right there.

And so they spent the holiday together at Christmas and which was really a huge morale booster for all of them.

- I'm sure.

- And they were able to tell the folks back home about that and that gave them a huge morale boost as well that they know that the women at home knew that the men were all together over there.

- Did your mom ever share with you what it was like for her personally?

I mean here's her husband, here is her father, here is her brother.

And?

- Yeah I think, I don't know if she addressed it exactly but I could tell that she was just immense pride.

She was just so proud of them.

And she was so afraid for them as well.

And that comes out loud and clear in the letters.

You'll see there they are very worried about all of them, because they were in some really tough situations over there.

And those are again described, but yeah, it was I think pride is the best thing and she was trying to do her part on the home front by volunteering for various jobs over there to help the war effort during the war.

- I'm just curious of just kind of curious what it must have been like for the folks back home and especially with their sons and husbands and fathers.

- Yeah And the rationing, the sacrifices they had to make they ran out of gas.

They ran out of coal to heat their house.

You know, they scrounging wood to heat their house.

The General's family scrounging wood to heat their house in Washington, DC, in the cold, things like that.

But she was really upbeat throughout the whole thing.

She said, don't worry about us.

We got more than we need.

And, because the guys over there were worried about them too, you know?

- Right, right.

- It was a big deal.

And it, I think the fact that they were gone for such a long time, without getting home at all, no telephones, no emails just letters, which were pretty regular, but not you couldn't set your watch by them.

- Right.

And it wasn't instant.

Right?

I mean, it wasn't like you said an email or it wasn't like a national television broadcast that could report on what was going on.

How did she say they would primarily get their news and find out about how the war was progressing?

- Well, it was newspapers and magazines, they read prolifically and the radio, but, a lot of that information was blacked out from the media, just for war contingencies.

They couldn't for instance write where they were until 14 days had elapsed.

So they, everything was delayed so they could write about it 14 days later.

And then it was another two weeks before they get the mail.

So everything was delayed a month.

And by then so much had changed.

There was everything's happening so fast.

- Did she say or indicate to you that, I mean where people were here in America, were they living in fear?

Were they afraid or were they how'd they feel?

- I think their biggest worry was about their folks over there.

That was their biggest concern.

I don't think they were afraid they were dealing with it, dealing with the transportation issues and the food and the heating and that sort of thing.

But it was things that they felt that their sacrifices were minuscule compared to what the troopers were going through over there on the ground.

But I don't think they were necessarily afraid.

- Didn't necessarily feel like that they were going to be attack or anything like that.

Even after Pearl Harbor.

What do we as a society right now modern society, what are we missing?

What don't we understand about that war and about that era in time?

- I think it's just lack of education.

I don't think they're exposed.

We and our children and grandchildren are not exposed to the circumstances that existed in World War II and how, I don't think we can emphasize enough how the country pulled together to win that war how it changed world history significantly.

And that's kind of why I wrote that.

I wanted my kids and grandkids to know what their ancestors had done and to learn about that here.

It is a history lesson.

It was a history lesson for me doing it which I enjoyed very much.

And I just hope that they will enjoy it too.

And it's always there for them.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

You personally, what did you learn as you were doing it that you didn't already know?

- You know, I think there are many, many things but the one that's strikes me hardest, I think is the plight of the United States, army infantry, men who unlike the airborne divisions, these strictly ground pan and grounds got into it.

And they were there until the end.

They were not going home unless they went home in a body bag or with a million-dollar wound.

If they got a wound that just go to the hospital and get better and go back to the line.

And there was no letup.

I think between June after the invasion until say mid November or October of 1944 my father's unit didn't have any breaks.

I think the longest time they'd have office, maybe three days to clean all their stuff and get ready for the next battle.

They just on the go sleeping in holes in the ground, they didn't have cots or beds or just slept in the ground and they'd dig a hole and sleep in it.

That's every night after night after night.

I mean, for months on it, it was brutal.

- It truly was.

It's almost unimaginable isn't it?

- It is.

Yeah.

I don't know how they carried, the ones that made it through which there weren't many that made it all the way through.

I don't know how they carry that burden, for the rest of their lives.

It was just the PTSD thing was unknown, I guess.

- Yeah.

I was going to ask you about that.

Did you have any indication, as you were reading through the letters or as you talked to your mom, anything like that carried over?

- No, they never talked about it.

And I've mentioned it in the book that I asked my dad as a child, you know, to tell me about the war and the romanticized version of the war that you see on the movies.

And he just, he sidetracked all those questions.

He would talk about the war in humorous terms.

Like when he taught me how to play the card game casino he said, I learned, we played this in the foxholes, you know, where the guns going off and that sort of thing.

- Right.

- But yeah, they didn't talk about it.

- I think that's good or bad.

- I don't think it's good, but they didn't know.

I mean, they didn't have the therapy that's available to the soldiers coming back today which is a wonderful thing.

The wounded warrior kind of things going on.

They just didn't had nothing like that.

No help for those folks.

- What inspired you to go in the military?

- I grew up in that military household and you absorb a lot, you just, you do.

And my father ironically, took us to visit the Naval Academy one summer.

And I was just absolutely blown away.

I loved the uniforms.

I love the marching.

The architecture, the water, the boats, everything.

And I think I was about seven or eight.

And I that's when I decided.

- That young?

- Yeah.

I had no idea I wanted to fly but I knew I wanted to go to the Naval Academy and be a Naval officer.

- And at what point did you decide you wanted to fly?

- I guess my junior year at the Naval Academy, summer training.

And when we came here to Pensacola and I got to fly in a jet fighter type trainer and I went, this is pretty good.

Because the rest of the summer training was destroyers, submarines and the Marine grunts.

And I said, I think I'd rather do this.

It was truly an inspiration coming down here for that.

In fact, we were flying out of the Blue Angel hangar.

They shared a hangar with a training squadron and there were all the blue jets.

And wow.

- At that stage in your life, did you look over and say one day that's-- - I had no idea.

The first time I saw the Blue Angels fly while I was training in flight school here in Pensacola, I'd seen them at Annapolis and I'd seen them when I was a little kid.

But first time I saw them as a potential aviator who is now training to do what they do.

They did that Florida Liam maneuver where they break out and go into a loop and they're upside down, spread apart in the diamond and they rendezvous on their backs.

And I couldn't even rendezvous right side up.

And I went, how in the, that's impossible.

(chuckles) - Well, once you get there, so you're, I mean you're at the top.

I mean, you're the leader.

What's that like?

- It was tough.

It was certainly the hardest thing I've ever done.

It was, the flying was hard.

The leadership was difficult.

The constant pressure, there's a lot of stress involved.

Just the routine.

It was, you know, it was go, go, go, go, go.

So after two years I was worn out and it's really, it's not an easy grind.

- Bob what makes a good leader?

- I think a leader, a good leader listens and he inspires and he encourages so, and you have to learn that.

It's easy to go on and just throw your authority around but you have to be able to engage the folks that you're leading.

And that really goes a long way.

What could we, as a society take away from the way the Blue Angels operate?

- Well, I think if you look at the Blue Angels are just a microcosm of military aviation in general, of which I know most about Naval Aviation and they're very self-critical.

So after every mission you come back and you pick it apart from top to bottom often the debrief takes longer than the actual mission took.

And you learn and you identify mistakes and things you could do better and you work from there.

- And as I understand it, and nobody's off limits.

So even though you're the boss they can tell you.

- And my guys were brutal (laughing).

At times and I probably deserved it too, but yeah it kept me humble.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

How do you deal with that?

- I don't have much choice, I guess.

You know, that it's helping the team to be able to be that honest with each other.

And you hear all about the Blue Angels debriefs and whatnot but that goes on in the fleet too.

It's a very critical, for instance when you come back from landing on the ship the first thing you do after you take your stuff off you walk into the writing room, and there's the LSL waiting for you, the landing signal officer and he debriefs you on your path, on your landing approach that you just made to the ship.

You know, that's the pride and joy of a Naval aviators is find a good a good approach to the ship, a good landing.

And when he takes you apart and says, this is what you did and you're going, I didn't see that.

That's pretty only, but, that's what you do.

And then that particular approach is posted on what's called the greeny board so that everybody can see how you're doing.

It's compared with, everybody else in the squadron.

- In about a minute advice to young aspiring aviators or anyone who wants to go in the military and serve our country.

- Yeah I think the most important thing and probably something that I didn't do as well as I should have is as you need to really study and work hard and try to be the best you can be every day.

You can't just have fun and say, oh this flying stuff's great.

You got to really, really work at it, work at your craft and realize that it's going to take a while to make it to be good.

- And just in a couple of words take away from the book, what do want people to know?

- I want them to realize what the families went through and how important their efforts were to winning that war and changing history.

- And it's available Amazon and-- - Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

The eBooks are at Kindle, NOOK, Apple.

It's available with Bodacious Bookstore downtown.

- Great Great.

A lot of nice reviews and I've had an opportunity to read some of it.

It's a history lesson weaved in with real life and personalities.

I think you'll find it very, very fascinating.

"Letters to Imogene" written by Robert E. Stumpf or as we know him around Pensacola at one time, the boss of the Blue Angels, it was a pleasure my friend.

- Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff.

I appreciate it.

- By the way, you can see this show and many more of our Conversations online at wsre.org/conversations.

We're also flying around YouTube and Facebook as well.

I'm Jeff Weeks.

I hope you enjoyed the broadcast.

Thank you so very much for watching and take wonderful care of yourself.

And we'll see you soon.

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