Green Light - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Final Missions 421
cause of the slippery grass he didn’t dare to brake the plane. We were
zooming toward the end of the field and a row of high trees; it looked like
curtains for us. What I hadn’t noticed was a plowed field about a hundred
feet wide between the end of the pasture and the trees. We slammed into
the mud in that field and slewed around about 90 degrees to the right. The
mud piled up against the wheels and stopped us just before we reached those
trees. An Army half-track had to tow us out; the mud was over the top of
the plane’s wheels. (Rex Selbe, pilot)
Tag ends
Grant Howell, one of our teletype operators, was the first person in the Squadron
to know the war in Europe was really about to end. He happened to be on duty
in the Group message center the morning of May 7. There had been false alarms
on April 23 and again on May 6. But this was the real thing: at around 6:OO a.m.
we got a TWX that Germany was going to surrender, unconditionally.
President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill designated the following
day, May 8, as “VE-Day,” Victory in Europe. The immediate problem for each
of us in the 8 1 st TCS was how to find some appropriate and memorable way of
celebrating. David Brack sent a plane to Germany to bring back some bottled
cheer, but his good intentions fell flat when the enlisted men discovered they had
received bottles of very questionable wine while the officers got schnapps or
cognac.
Crew members, in any case-and the mechanics who supported them-had
little time for celebrating. During all of May we flew heavy schedules, almost
up to our very high performance of the previous month. All we could do to mark
VE-Day was to shoot off huge batches of red, white, and blue flares. Group HQ
officers objected strenuously to this wasteful display, but everybody’s face was
saved after we came up with the clever idea that those must have been “liber-
ated” German flares.
VE-Day was much the same as any other: up at 6 : 30 and take-off at 8 : 30.
We went to R-16, Hildesheim in Germany; it was gasoline as usual. Major
Farley flew the ship for a change; he is sure a fine flyer. This was a long
day. We got back to base at 6:40 p.m. But we had beautiful weather, and
this helped some. We had lunch at R-55 [another German airstrip] with the
medics. A cheese sandwich and two slices of pineapple. We got into R-16,
but had to circle for quite a while: about thirty ships were taking off while
we were in the landing pattern. We unloaded and took off for R-55. Seems
we were the only ship to come that way, though an ATC plane landed right