Marvin J. Miller, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Luke Kelly, June 11, 2001: Saving the legacy tape no. 242

Page 21

Marvin J. Miller .June 11 2001 a ign d to Red Baker. This was a il er aircraft, but it \\a on l th~ ld r mo kl . \nd \\ ~ flew Red Baker for a while and then we had anoth r da) ff and Red Bak },. n \ ~r rcturnL:d. W found out when we got to the prison camp that the fonnati nab Red Baker had dropped their bon1bs and a bomb had knocked a wing off. But the pil t 1nanaged t n1aintain control and all of them got out. Next, we were assigned an aircraft called Red Roger. It had a red R on th taiL and that's how they identified the airplane. It was a fairly new aircraft and w liked it. And we flew n1ost of our 1nissions-from then on-in that aircraft. But, on our day off some of the fellows had decided to take a break, and they had borrowed Red Roger to fly over to Bari from our airbase-which was on the coast. Bari was a resort area. And on the way back the fellow that woke us up in the morning-his name was Heinz, Sergeant Heinz-had been along on this R & R trip. It was just for the day. And when they were coming back, why, the engineer went up to check the nose gear to see if it was down and locked. He signaled that, "No, it wasn't down. It wasn't locked." And Heinz turned and gave the A-okay signal to the pilot. And the pilot set the plane down. When he eased it forward, the nosewheel collapsed and, so, that ended our flying Red Roger. They assigned us to another beat up aircraft, and it was called Combaty. This was our 20th mission. We were assigned to this old aircraft called Combaty, and our target was up in Czechoslovakia, and it was a long mission. We started off that morning and as we went down to breakfast that day-on other occasion's too-there was a fellow that had sat off to the side. He didn't mingle with anybody. He was real quiet. He was on a crew on this particular 18