Russell Klingensmith flew 27 missions as a navigator with the 303rd Bomb Group and then became Assistant Group Navigator, briefing the navigators before their missions.



FROM BANKER TO NAVIGATOR



Russell’s father worked in a glass factory although he was out of work during the Depression. He had two brothers and two sisters. He graduated high school and went to work in a local bank as a teller.



Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the aviation cadet program and did his training at Salmon Field, Monroe, Louisiana. Then he went to Dyersberg, Tennessee where his air crew was formed and trained and then he was sent overseas to the UK.



He went on 27 missions. His pilot for most of them was Howard Dahleen, and they usually flew on the ‘Bad Penny’ (‘I eventually married someone called Penny, but she wasn’t bad’). He flew the last seven missions with different crews. There was a mix-up when they first arrived in England when the officers were sent to one group and the enlisted men to another, but they were eventually reunited.



His fifth mission was to Oscherleben – Jan 11th 1944, a notorious mission. The German fighters met them half-way across the North Sea and attacked them all the way to the target – a Focke-Wulf 190 plant – and back. 60 planes were lost that day. His group got a unit citation.



MERCY AND A CRASH-LANDING



The Dahleen crew crash-landed coming home from Frankfurt on his 10th mission. ‘Scorchy’ was the name of the planet that they were flying that day (42-31314). They were hit multiple times by flak and lost one wing tank of gas when the flak went through the wing and ruptured the tank. Two engines were knocked out.



They were struggling to get home on two engines. They decided to get rid of their bomb load and chose to bomb a stretch of railroad tracks. They were flying into a headwind and getting low on gas. As they came through France, two ME109 German fighters came up to meet them. ‘For some reason, they decided to let us go and went back to their base without attacking us.’



They thought they would run out gas before they reached England, but they made it. He navigated to the first airfield – an RAF Spitfire field – which was too small for them to land so they passed onto the next one. The next one was also a fighter field but the pilot said that they were out of gas so they’d have to land. Their hydraulic system was shot out – they had no breaks. The pilot directed the nose of the plane between a gun emplacement and an admin building and ‘when we hit those two obstacles they stopped us!’ The fuselage of the plane broke through the radio compartment from the force of impact.



Some of the crew were injured – dislocated shoulders and concussions. He had a small ding in his head and shins, but nothing serious. Everyone survived.



MEMORIES OF ENGLAND



Russell found the country cold and wet and he had trouble keeping warm in the winter. He lived in a Nissen hut which was not very well heated – they were given only one bucket of coal per day. He had seven blankets on his bed.



He remembers taking a two-day pass to go to London. He got off the train, checked in at a hotel and had come outside looking for a restaurant when a buzz bomb landed and exploded about half a block away. Everything shook. He turned around, went back to the hotel, checked ou, got back on the train and went back and spent his two-day pass in Bedford. He thought, ‘I’ve not survived a B-17 to die in London!’



He remembers visiting ‘the lovely city of Cambridge’.



He spent a lot of his leave on the airfield, but used to go up to Glasgow on two or three day passes occasionally along with another fellow from the base. They went to visit Loch Lomond on a 7-day leave. They stayed in an inn where it was deadly quiet, so they left after two days and spent the rest of the week in Glasgow. One of their vacations was spent riding a tram back and forth on Sauciehall St. He met a girl in Glasgow. Her name was Vi Miller. She was a very lovely girl. He didn’t stay in touch though. ‘When I left England, I left it all behind me.’



FINISHING HIS MISSIONS AND GETTING A NEW JOB



USAAF pro-rated those who were nearly finished when they raised the bar to 30, which is how he ended up with 27 missions. He was asked to stay on as Assistant Group Navigator with the Headquarters Squadron of the 303rd Bomb Group, and he chose to do so.



His job was to indoctrinate the replacement navigators as they joined the group (‘The best advice I could give them was to pay attention… and duck!’), and brief them before missions. When they returned, he had to review them.



POST-WAR



Russell left England in March 1945 and lived with his parents in Ford City.



After the war, he went to college on the GI Bill and then worked as an engineer for the Pennsylvania Health Department for 17 years and for a consulting engineering firm for another 17 years.



In 1947 he got married and had three sons and two daughters. He now has 8 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren (soon to be 3).



He didn’t know about the reunions until 1995.



He said it took him a long time to get over his wartime experiences: ‘For a long time after coming home, I was very much aware when there would be sudden noises. I would just come to attention when I heard any sudden noises… for a long time after I came home.’



‘Anyone who says they weren’t scared is lying.’