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- Apr 4, 2006
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osprey1
Incredible WW-II Story - by Whiskers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>B-17's - Like Mated Dragonflies
>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 crew
>members 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 co-pilot,
>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
>anti-aircraft 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 co-pilot, 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. A great story. I
>wonder how many more stories like this one are lost each day as members of
>the Greatest Generation pass on.
>
----------- End of Message -------------
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>B-17's - Like Mated Dragonflies
>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 crew
>members 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 co-pilot,
>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
>anti-aircraft 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 co-pilot, 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. A great story. I
>wonder how many more stories like this one are lost each day as members of
>the Greatest Generation pass on.
>
----------- End of Message -------------
