Interview with William Reinka, World War II, U.S Army Air Corps
1st Lieutenant, 5th Air Force, 22nd Bomb Group, 33rd Squadron
Cook Memorial Public Library District
July 12th, 2006

Interviewer: Ellen Bassett
Transcribed by: Connie J. Pfeifer
Proofread by: Joel Boon & Ellen Bassett

ELLEN: This interview is taking place on July 12th, 2006 at the Cook Memorial Public Library in Libertyville, Illinois. My name is Ellen Bassett and I am interviewing William Reinka, a World War II veteran who served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps, 5th Air Force, 22nd Bomb Group, 33rd Squadron. Mr. Reinka served in the Pacific Theater and his highest rank was 1st Lieutenant. Mr. Reinka was born on October 27th, 1920 and is 85 years old.

BILL: 1941 was a great year for me, because I was playing Minor League baseball. Imagine playing baseball and getting paid for it. We played down in Mansfield, Ohio with the Cleveland Indians Farm Club. We played every night of the week and double-headers on Sunday, right from May all the way through Labor Day. We used to pray for rain , because there was no break in the schedule. I was developing very good coordination from playing so much. So when I came out after the season, of course, I was still 20 years old and I had to register for the draft in October when I became 21. I was working in a chemical plant in my hometown of Wyandotte, Michigan. There was a fellow there who I called “Hunky Bil" and Bill would say, “You know, Bill, you ought to look around rather than get drafted. You can pick what you want.” I said, "Yes, I’m aware of that.” And he’d say, “Well...” So I was going up to Detroit and I took the Navy exam, and I do everything except swear in…if I pass it, see. Coast guard. Finally, Bill said to me, “Have you checked out the Air Force one?” I said, “No.” So, I went down there one Saturday and . They had some women civilians as volunteers. I was, of course, married by then. They said, “Oh, your wife can live with you on the base when you’re learning how to fly,” and all this stuff. Wrong information completely, but that sounded great, plus the fact that instead of earning $50 a month, you’d earn $75 a month as a cadet. So, it was more money too. Anyway, I took their exams and passed those. I thought , “Well, this is what I’m gonna’ go for, but I don’t have to do it right now.” I didn’t have to go right now. They didn’t want us. They had so many fellows signed up that they were putting you on this…they would swear you in and then put you on Reserve Duty and subject to call. So the fellow says, “You’ve got everything ready, but no use rushing this. Why don’t you wait until you get a notice from the draft board, come down and sign up, and then we’ll notify the draft board that you’re ours and they can’t draft you…you’re in the Air Corps.” So I was going to go to New York with my wife on a vacation, and you have to notify the draft board that you’re leaving town. So I went down to the draft board and they said, “Oh yeah, while you’re away, you will get your draft notice.” That’s all the warning I needed. I went up to Detroit to get sworn in, you know, and then we went on vacation. They said, “We’ll give you 30 days notice to get your affairs in order,” and they said it would be about maybe three months or so. It turned out to be six months. I enlisted in July, the middle of July of ‘42 and they didn’t notify me until January 6th, I think it was, January 6th , in 1943. They said, “Report in Chicago on January 10th, four days later, at such and such a street and South Franklin Street.” So that was the extent of your advance notice to get your affairs in order. But that was no problem at all though. We got over here and they put a whole bunch of us on the train to send us to San Antonio. I was kind of glad, because living in Michigan, I hadn’t seen the sun for, I think, half a month. It was just cloudy every day. At least I’ll see some sunshine. So we went down to San Antonio to what they called the Aviation Cadet Center. That was quite an experience because this was our first confinement. It was just like you were chained to the post. We were restricted to a one block area . That first week, in like a quarantine plus the fact that we were drawing KP duty and guard duty, because there was just so many of us and they didn’t have enough people in there to really spread the work around, so we were doing our physical training and taking tests and so forth and all of this extra duty in the meantime. We eventually survived that, and then we went across the street to pre-flight. That was comical. I mentioned the exams that you took up in Detroit. They were simple. When you got down to San Antonio…that physical exam and the written exams were much more difficult. As far as the physical goes, they said, “Your feet are pretty flat , ” and he says “I don’t know if you can take this.” I said, “Gee, I played baseball all last summer ,” and I said, “ and I didn’t have any problems ,” and I said,“ That gets pretty hard after awhile.” He says, “Okay, I’ll pass you.” But it was amazing how my feet got into shape with all of the physical training. It strengthened them up and they’re a lot better. The written exams that they gave in classification were very, very tough. In fact, we took an exam from say 8:30 in the morning to 11:30 a.m., three hours. When we concluded that part of it…..we never had a lunch break. I thought it was the middle of the afternoon. That’s how intense it was to concentrate and take my exam. But they were separating fellows, you know, trying to weed them out and have just the very best go over to pre-flight. So, that was their method. We go over to pre-flight, then we really ran into lots of fun, I thought. I never got entered into the spirit of it. There was a class caste system, upper and lower class. As a lower classman, boy, you were subject to hazing and everything else. I made up my mind….one of the things they’d ask, “Who’s the roughest, toughest, upperclassman on the hill?” There was a great big guy from Colorado by the name of Ruckett (?) Rouse and he would yell at me. I picked out a little Irishman by the name of McKenna. That’s the roughest, toughest man on the hill and I stuck with that. And, oh, did I suffer because of it. He would be after me every day , and every night that he could get at me, see, because we had time for studies, too, you know. So, they had a kind of a turnaround day where the lower class would be upper class just for one day. We had a fellow by the name of Olstein (?) that went nuts. He was chasing those upperclassmen out the door. In fact, they ripped off the screen door. They finally had to call it quits, because Olstein was going nuts. Anyway, from pre-flight we…incidentally, despite all of that hazing and so forth, our particular class which was made up of fellows from Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin set a scholastic record for the highest marks ever achieved in pre-flight. So, when it came our turn to be upperclassman, our Squadron boss or Commandant, he didn’t want any that hazing. He wanted to maintain that record. The only trouble was that we had a bunch of Texans. I don’t know how sharp they were, because I had done some reviewing on the Alamo and I knew the dates. So, I asked this one fellow, “What is the significance of this date?” He was from Houston, I think. Well, he didn’t know. I would think any Texan would be real in on it. But anyway, we went from pre-flight…they sent us up to El Reno, Oklahoma, just west of Oklahoma City for primary training, that’s the first stage. Armory training is run by civilians. It was supposed to be a country club atmosphere. This was really the best place you were ever going to have as far as your training. After that, you were back in the Army, and you’re back on the bases. So, we went up to El Reno , and it was a brand new field Mustang and we were knee deep in mud. We had to walk planks to get between buildings. The type of plane we were flying was a single-engine, low-wing, PT-19, which was about 125 horsepower…very limited cockpit procedure and so forth. But you got your start. They teach you how to make turns, how to do rising turns, how to recover from a spin and that. You were supposed to solo within 10 hours, normally. But we had so much rain that they had to extend the hours, because we weren’t getting enough time. We’d be off for maybe three or four days and that wasn’t very conducive to honing your skills. So, anyway, I think I soloed at 12 hours. After I soloed, then I was able to take the plane out by myself. This is where you have to discipline yourself, because you had certain things to do. One of the things is learning how to develop blind judgment. One of the exercises was to fly at 500 feet of altitude over crossroads. So what you would do is you’d come up, say, from the south heading north on that crossroads, and then when you got your wingtips even with the crossroad, then you’d start your turn. You’d make figure-eights on the crossroad. Well, you have a wingtip to account for. So if you’re running into a headwind, you have to kind of have a shallow turn to keep from flattening out your first semi-circle and then when you get downwind, then you have to (?) it up more in order to come out at the crossroad with your perfect and then start the other one. This took a lot of practice. It was amazing how you developed your skill if you paid attention. That, plus another one was a pylon eight, where you would put your wingtip over a pylon and do a circle around that and then roll-out and pick out another pylon farther away where you’d put the other wingtip around and roll. And you’d make those eights. You’d keep trying to make those perfect eights because that’s what they’re going to check you on when you had your check ride at 30 hours and 60 hours…all these different things, recovering from spins and…so when you got your solo time, you made the most of what you could do in the time allowed. You only had about an hour. There was one fellow from Chicago that, he was a model plane enthusiast. He loved flying. But he would do it…he’d go out on a solo and he’d fly around the country for practice. Well, come check time, he couldn’t do any of the maneuvers to satisfy the Army Check Pilot. So he was washed up. So that’s how they’d wash them out, see? Those that could do the job, they’d continue on for the next 30 hours. Others that failed to do it, they were done. They were sent to gunnery school, which was quite a change from trying to be an officer, later on. From there, we went up to Winfield, Kansas. Then we were saying, “Well, we’re back to the Army. We’re going to have the tar paper shacks and really lousy conditions.” And sure enough, at Winfield, Kansas, there were the tar-paper shacks and so forth. It was just the opposite, because the tactical officer in charge of our group was very humane, and he said, “I’m treating you fellows like you’re officers and when you do not have any duties on the base, you’re free to go into town or do whatever you want. But, the main thing is you have to watch your p ’s and q ’s, doing everything right here as far as maintaining your base quarters and so forth that you don’t get so called GIGS(?), which would be a mark against your conduct. You’d lose your privilege.” The type of plane that we went to was known as the Vulte(?) Vulcan, and this was a step up in horsepower. I think it was, maybe, 350 horsepower. It had a variable cockpit where in primary we had a plane that had a propeller that was fixed. So now we had a new cockpit procedure. We had to take off in a high RPM and then after we got up to altitude, bring it back to a lower RPM and then fly at certain RPM speeds and so much manifold pressure in the cylinders to cruise. We could do our lazy-eights, as I told you, and try to keep that ball centered. And get that kind of lazy feeling as you developed your moving. Of course, we had a lot more acrobatics. We’d be snap-rolling and other things.

ELLEN: What is snap rolling?

BILL: Oh, you’d be flying along, and you’d kind of kick the rudder and pull back, and it would snap right over…a snap-roll, flying vertical. I used to do a lot of that stuff. I think now as I look back….those planes were not the greatest and it’s a wonder I didn’t snap a wing off or something. Anyway, I got into trouble there once when somebody said I was practicing a spin too low. I may have been, I didn’t realize it. So when I pulled out, the fellow wanted me to give him my plane number, and I refused to answer him on the radio. He had my number anyway, and he turned me in. So, I had to appear before the Commandant of the pilots there. He was really chewing me out. He says, “I’m going to give you a check ride.” So, okay. The next day I had this check ride with him. Because the way the planes are parked, he said, “Row three, the very first (?), at the end of the sidewalk.” So, we go out to his plane. I get in and I take it out and take off and so forth, and he’s saying, “Well, you didn’t look enough. That’s a GIG(?). It’s going to cost you so much, twenty-five cents a GIG(?).” And that twenty-five cents went towards the graduation dance and dinner. Every time I turned around, he was GIGGing me,GIGGing me. But he couldn’t find fault, because I was doing those lazy eights perfectly, doing forced landings…I did alright. And then, I had been landing the plane very good at that time, kind of a hot streak, you know? It was the best landing I ever made in any plane, because we came in…we were flying along, and the next thing you know, we’re rolling. Hadn’t even felt it and that was really a perfect landing, when you don’t even feel yourself land. Anyway, then when we got taxiing, it was quite windy. Of course, I was throttled all back, but the wind was blowing me, and I was zigzagging, and he says, “Slow down.” So, I practically had to keep the brakes on. So, I went back to row three, position #1. He said, “That’s another GIG. You parked it wrong. It should have been row 1, position 3.” Which is wrong because I knew darn well that he wouldn’t walk that long. He wanted it right at the end of the sidewalk. Anyway, I survived that check ride. Then, as I said, they asked us if we wanted bomber training or twin-engine or single-engine. And I’m looking ahead…that’s the whole purpose of joining the Air Corps….to see if I might be interested in flying commercially so I’d want the multiple-engine training. So, I put down bomber training, but when the assignments came out, they were sending me to single-engine advanced. That’s how I wound up in Foster Field, where we had a little faster plane. Now we’re up to 650 horsepower, and we’ve got retractable landing gear. The flaps were working electronically, too, a variable (?) and more cockpit procedures. Each step you’re getting more and more training as far as cockpit procedures. In addition to the regular training, we did a lot of follow-the-leader stuff, you know. The instructor would take off, and then all of the students in command would follow him, just like a crack-the-whip kind of thing, going all over. And it helps you, you know, get used to…if you’re flying or training or trying to trail somebody to shoot them down you’d be at low altitudes, high altitudes and so forth…diving. We had a lot of that. We also got a good taste of formation flying. That helped a lot. Although, we were learning to fly in formation, you have a tendency to over-correct and you’re jockeying that throttle back and forth, trying to stay in position. You’re either going too fast or too slow. You’re just zooming back and forth until you learn how to do it right. Then part of that training we were down in Texas. We spent two weeks on Matagorda Island out in the Gulf of Mexico, which was a government base where they would put the 30-caliber machine gun in the right wing and then you’d shoot it at targets. You’d maybe have green bullets, painted, and then see if you hit the target. Then the other part of it was strafing, where you’d come in and there’d be a target down there and you’d strafe, strafe the target, and they’d check to see how many bullets hit the target. I wish I had the strafing first, because I learned that very short bursts would be a more accurate thing than trying to hold the trigger down because then recor on the gun would throw the bullets flying all over, see. They missed the (?) target. But nevertheless, I did qualify for expert, as far as the gunnery goes. It didn’t mean anything, as it turned out. The final analysis was that they did not have enough pilots for bombers…the irony of it all. So, I wound up being a co-pilot for a pilot that went through training as a student officer. He was an ex-infantry man that opted to get out of the infantry and go into flying. So he went through as cadet. Now I had been, never in a B-24. They put the crew together in Salt Lake City, and they shipped us all together up to Boise, Idaho, Mountain Home Air Base. I didn’t know anything about flying a B-24. I was supposed to stand on the flight deck, cockpit area, and observe how you ran things as a co-pilot. Well, we had a Captain there that was going to check out my pilot. So, we took off and we had trouble. The number 3 engine had a prop-gunner that ran away. In another words, instead of maintaining its set RPM, it went out of control. That ended that particular mission. The fellow said, “Let’s go back to the base.” We make the usual traffic pattern of a downwind leg and then a base leg, and then you turn into the runway to land. Well, this fellow that was going to be my first pilot, he got lined up with the runway but at a 45-degree angle. We can’t land at a 45-degree angle. So he kicks to the left, and he kicks to the right, and we’re going down zigzag, zigzag all the way down until he gets down to the runway. He gets it fairly straight and he pulls the power off and we drop in. I had never been in a B-24. I thought that’s the way this plane flies. The Captain okays him to take the crew out on his own with me as co-pilot, and I’m trying to learn on-the-job training. I don’t know anything. I know if I take off in high RPM, and we’re going to have an extra control, automatic (?) on the fuel and air mixture. When we get up to altitude, we throttle back on the RPM’s to a cruising RPM, and also reduce the pressure on the cylinders, so we’re cruising at a certain speed and we also change the mixture control to automatic lead, to conserve fuel. So, I have to learn all of this stuff. But it’s the same story…when we finish the mission, we come back and zigzag all the way down…“boom”. Then they found out that the weather in the Boise, Idaho area was too variable to have a continuous training program. So, they shipped us all down to Tonopah, Nevada. So at 6000 feet altitude at the base alone, and lots of mountains around, so we started to fly out of there. We’d go to a bombing range and drop…practice bombing, you know, for the bombardier and for the navigator to navigate and so forth, and come back to the base. And every landing was the same thing. We were getting pretty close to completing our training schedule. The first pilot starts to develop symptoms; he didn’t feel right. They gave him a physical, and they couldn’t find anything wrong with him so he was grounded, so-to-speak. Well, one night we went out to the range, out to the flight line to fly, and there was a co-pilot sick on another plane. They said, “Lieutenant Reinka, why don’t you substitute so the crew can get their time in.” I said, “Sure.” So I flew with another pilot that night. We went out and we bombed. We came back to the base. We flew the normal base length. This pilot lined up with the runway, and we went right in, straight as an arrow and landed the plane. It hit me right then that this fellow that I was flying with all these times couldn’t fly the B-24. How he got that far, I don’t know. I don’t know how he even got through pilot training, except that he was a student pilot. We found out that his infantry outfit was going to go overseas. He was allergic to combat, apparently, and he pulled all kinds of strings to get into the Air Corps, and then when he was getting close to combat, he started to develop all these symptoms. They couldn’t find anything wrong with him with a physical. Finally, they grounded him, period. I think they should have really put him out of the service and let him be a Private again. Anyway, I then had a pilot assigned to our crew that could fly the plane. I learned a lot more then. We completed our training, and they shipped us up to Hamilton Field, where we picked up a brand new airplane. We were supposed to take this airplane and test it, fly so many hours and see what the fuel consumption was, which we did. Then we landed at another field, east of San Francisco. There we completed more paperwork going overseas, and they sent us, fortunately, to the Pacific. We could have gone to Europe or some place like that but the Pacific was a little better deal for us, as I’ll explain. We had to fly this new plane over to Hawaii, from Hawaii to Canton Island. That’s the island that Eddie Rickenbacker was lost on. He couldn’t find it. We landed there. Then our next stop was the Fiji Islands. We stayed overnight at each spot. Then we flew over to New Caledonia. From there, we were authorized to fly to Townsville, Australia, although the weather was bad in Australia and they said, “Well, you can fly to Brisbane or Sydney.” We said, “What’s the difference? We’ll go to Brisbane.” There’s a big difference. Sydney was so much better. But we didn’t know that. So we flew to Brisbane. On our takeoff from New Caledonia, we had problems with the #3 prop gunner. It started to run away. We thought, “Well, if it doesn’t settle down, we’ll feather the engine and fly and get out of here anyway,” because we wanted to get to Australia. So we did get to Brisbane. We told them what our problem was and he says “We’ll get a replacement part, it may take awhile.” We had like a 10-day vacation in Brisbane, out of Ipswich Airfield. We had to take the train in to Brisbane every night. There wasn’t much left in Brisbane for the servicemen, whereas Sydney was wide open for R & R, rest and rehabilitation. They were all set up with the American Red Cross and everything else, a lot of activity. But anyway, the fellow took his own sweet time getting that part fixed for us, because he says, “I know what it’s like out there. The longer you can wait, the better it is.” So we went up to Townsville eventually. We turned in the plane. They modified it for the Pacific Theater, and then from there we spent a little time in Townsville getting more paperwork done and then flew up to Port Moresby, New Guinea. There we underwent some combat training. There were some fellows that were veterans that were assigned to take us out and kind of clue us in on flying, particularly formation flying. So, we got a lot of practice that way. Also, in the states, they tell you if you are ever a prisoner of war, you just have to tell them name, rank and serial number. We had a Navy officer come in and say, “You tell the Japs that, and they’ll kill you. So, you tell them anything you want, but have a good memory so you don’t mess up. Tell them everything. We’re not concerned what they know. They probably know it anyway. Just don’t jeopardize yourself by saying name, rank and serial number,” which was the complete opposite of what they tell you in the states. You’re overseas now. You want to survive. Anyway, we completed our sessions at Port Moresby, and they sent us up to Nadzab. We found out when we landed that there was a fellow from the 33rd Squadron that happened to be out on the base. Just like a stray dog, you grab him. He was a new recruit, a replacement. We took him, and he took us to the 33rd. Then they called up the place where he was supposed to report, 5th Bomber Command, and says, “We’ve got him. Can we keep him?” They said, “Sure.” So, they forwarded the paperwork up to headquarters, and we stayed there at Nadzab one night and then they sent us up to Dutch New Guinea, an island that had been cleared by the Seabees. They made a big strip. It was an uninhabited island that they completely converted into an airbase for the 22nd Bomb Group, and they had 5th Bomber Command there, and then across the way was Biak, a very famous name. Over there was the 90th Bomb Group. So, the way they were going to operate was the 90th would fly with us on missions. One time they would be the first into the target and we’d be second, and the next time we’d be first and they’d be second. So, we started to fly combat out of there in August of ‘44, and my first mission was as a co-pilot with one of the veteran pilots. We were going to the Homaheras, and we were going to bomb an area which we thought some Japanese may be living in, not the airstrip. There was the airstrip, then this woodsy area…we were going to bomb that to see if we could kill personnel. Whether they were there or not, we don’t know. There was no opposition around, nobody was around, but we dropped the bombs and came back. So, that was my first opportunity to fly from the right seat as co-pilot…formation flying. I was overcorrecting and so forth. After awhile, the pilot says, “I’ll take it.” And he just showed me how he slid it in there, and he hardly made any correction. He got in tune to what the lead ship was doing, and he more or less matched it. So, we flew right along. What I have to tell you, this particular 22nd Bomb Group was at Langley Field when the war broke out. They were flying B-26’s, which was a twin-engine plane. It was a very hot plane. You had to (?). It was like a bumble bee. When you pulled the power, it dropped. So, they went overseas with those things, and it wasn’t suitable for the Pacific. Then they thought well we’ll switch to the B-25, the Mitchell Marauder. So, these fellows that were B-26 pilots in the original group had to be trained in the B-25 group. So, the poor B-25 group came in, and whoever was first pilot had to be a co-pilot behind these other fellows. So there was a move that way. Then they found out that the B-25 left a lot to be desired as far as range goes. The targets were far way, so that’s when the B-24’s started to come in. So, the same sequence: the B-24 pilots had to take a backseat to the B-25 and train them, and so all these pilots were pushed down and that’s why I, coming over as a co-pilot, was that much farther behind. My first pilot had to fly, I don’t know how many missions, as co-pilot. And I flew right along as co-pilot, too, with some other fellow. Then eventually after twenty-three missions as a co-pilot, I became first pilot. Then I flew the rest of my missions, twenty-one, as a pilot. When you switch from the right seat to the left seat, you’re supposed to get an automatic promotion to First Lieutenant. However, we were moving so fast, because the Japs were being pushed back that by the time the paperwork was done for my promotion, I had already completed all my missions. So, I lost out on pay that way, you know. Anyway, you survived. You had a choice if you wanted to stay over and get a Captaincy and perhaps fly as a Squadron Leader and lead the missions. We thought, “It’s better to be a live Lieutenant, because you never know.” We lost personnel. I was going to say we went from Howie…they sent an advanced echelon from Howie up to Tacloban, Leyte. That’s where McArthur returned. However, when he returned, it wasn’t quite secure. He got out of there in a hurry, but our guys were trapped. So, they had to evacuate our advanced echelon in P-47’s…not P-47’s, C-47’s. The Douglas DC-3 was a cargo plane and the troop carrier gang had two planes with 22nd Bomb Group personnel. One of them was shot down by the Jap fighters, and on that plane was our flight engineer, Charles Yargo. So, we lost our flight engineer being evacuated to the Palau group. We were on Angaur, Palau. Then we started flying missions from Angaur to the Philippines, hitting different things. Again, it was starting to move pretty rapidly. We had run out of targets, so-to-speak, from what our range was so we had to move to Samar, Philippines. I should go back and start back at Howie. We were talking about memorable missions.

ELLEN: Yes, what is your most memorable mission?

BILL: There were three of them that I wrote up. The first one was on October 14th, 1944. It was the equivalent of the Ploesti of the Pacific. If you recall, the Ploesti raid from New York. They flew the planes from North Africa to Romania to bomb, to target the oil industry there. There were a lot of casualties and so forth. The mission got messed up because it was navigational error and everything got out of sequence. So they had planes coming at all different directions at the wrong time. So it was quite a mission. We went on October 14th, and it was like flying from Chicago to Los Angeles to reach the target. So, what we had to do in order to do that, we had to remove… we had to install extra gas tanks in the front bomb bay, and then we put three bombs in the rear section of the bomb bay. I think they were one ton each, plus a half-ton bomb. So there’s two thousand, two thousand and a thousand pounds. In order to reach the rendezvous point, which would be in the Celebes Sea at 11:00 a.m., we had to leave in the middle of the night so we took off, and there was bad weather between there and the rendezvous point so we were flying at night looking for lightning flashes to see whether there was an opening in the thunderheads to fly through them…around them, you know. So, we went through two of those fronts and hit the rendezvous point right on schedule. Everybody got into formation and we were…our group was on the right wing. The 408th, I think, was in the lead, 22nd on the left, the 19th in the (?). So whoever was leading the group as we got near the target, here comes the B-24, P-38’s our cover and I could see way down north of the refinery, was a Japanese fighter strip, and those planes were taking off like bees coming out of a hive. I thought, “Uh, oh. Here we go.” Well, anyway, this P-38 came up to me, and I looked at his fuselage, and he must have had the whole thing plastered with Japanese flags. And I thought it was Major Bong, who was a famous fighter pilot with a lot of (?). But it actually was Major McGuire, who was battling with Bong for the leadership. He gave me a wave, and I of course, was right out on the right, and I didn’t even wave back. Then he went up to altitude and waited for the Japs. It wasn’t long and we started to turn toward the target, here comes the Jap planes after us and they were throwing aerial bombs. You know, they would come at you and kind of release the bomb, and it would explode. They would hit you if they could, but they didn’t. The end result was whoever was leading the group forgot he was leading a group, because it’s like marching, you know, on the inside you have to slow down in order to let the outer flank out. Same way with formation flying. Only trouble is he made it too sharp, and we had to slow down too much to keep in position and we were going dangerously low on our air speed. So, we had to break off…break up…and that’s when the Japs saw us break up, and he came after us. But, he fell harmlessly and missed them. Their method was to come at you head on and then do a Split-S. They turn a rollover on their back and fall away from you. I think our right waist gunner, when he did that, really gave him a belly full of shot. I don’t know if we got him or not. I couldn’t tell from (?). I knew he was coming down. So, we pull full throttle and tried to slide in behind the lead group, or squadron, I should say. So, we went in about 10,000 feet, dropped the bombs and by the time we pulled off the target, the smoke was already up 10,000 feet because every bomb hit the refinery and blew it up. So then we had to form a...the Japs were pretty well beat up by then. The B-38’s were knocking them down all over. A fellow I graduated from high school was in that fighter group that was covering us that day, but he didn’t fly that mission. His tent mate did and he said he set a record flying on one-engine all the way back to base (laughs). So we had to return to Middleburg Island to refuel and spend the night. At that time, it was 16 hours of flying… End of Side A

Beginning of Side B
BILL: As I said, we left the target and we had to fly back to a refueling point called Middleburg Island and we landed and they refueled the plane, we spent the night. We had our dinner there and I went to bed, I think at 7:00 o’clock. I slept the clock around. I was exhausted. So the next morning, we flew the remaining two hours of flight back to base. It was then that we learned that apparently during the night when we went through all the weather, that we lost a plane. Somebody said they saw it crash. He may have gotten vertigo flying through there and lost sense of where he was. But I couldn’t tell from where we were flying whether all the planes…because we were up front, in the formation. He was in the back, or would have been in the back, but he didn’t make it. That really was a distinguished flying cross mission. But we got nothing…..we got a letter of commendation, so to speak. But they weren’t too anxious to give out medals, because that meant you could gain points to go home if you got these extra awards. So, then about two weeks later they had the battle of Leyte Gulf, where the Japs were coming from three different directions to an undermanned U.S. Navy and somehow the U. S. Navy bluffed them into retreating. And what got through to them, they beat up so bad, that they were retreating and there were Japanese vessels trying to get back to Borneo. They were badly damaged. One of them, I should say, the 5th Air Force then had everything they could fly up in the air on October 25, 1944 trying to find those Japs in bad weather and that and they finally had to give up. As a token, the next day, they picked out three planes from our Squadron and I flew co-pilot on the left wing. The 90th group was going to leave. They had three planes, also. So we found this flight cruiser trying to evacuate back to Borneo. So the 90th being the first one had the first run and I’m sitting there, and I have a grandstand seat seeing this thing. There was a lot of anti-aircraft coming up from the plane right about the level that we were, like 10,000 but they were shooting over, they were (?) above. They were missing the planes, but they somehow exploded. This distracted the bombardiers in the 90th group, and all their bombs fell beyond the ship. So then it was our turn. So we came around and I kept waiting for the anti-aircraft to come up, called the (?). I couldn’t see anything. So, we made a nice run and the navigator’s job was to look down the bomb bay’s down there, and he’d record where our bombs would hit. Well, what they were doing was, the lead bombardier in the first plane, he would do the bomb sight and all of that and the others would watch him. When he let his bombs go, they’d hit a switch and drop their bombs. So the navigator came up to the cockpit after we dropped the bombs, and he said the lead bombardier hit this vessel right in the middle, ours hit on the stern and the one on the right wing hit right at the water level. That ship went down like this and then came up and then later on, I read in a book here that that thing sank in about two hours. There were about 126 Japanese killed, I think. The Captain survived and about 245 survived. It was a light cruiser, the Abukuma or something like that. We got commendations on that one, too. That was a sixteen hour mission, too. On our return, we ran into weather, and so our three planes had to break up and fly individually back to the base for about two hours on instruments. So, that was the second most exciting (?). Then, on December 24th, we were flying out of Angaur, Palou, and we were going to bomb Clark Field, north of Manila. There were a lot of Japanese planes that they were using for the kamikazes and we were trying to put them out of commission. So we carried a bunch of what we called fragmentation bombs. These were small bombs, but when they hit, they would spread shrapnel all over, and they could really tear up the plane. So I don’t know what happened on that mission, but we had some fighter cover for awhile. And then when we got into the target area, we didn’t have anything but there were Jap planes galore flying all over. I never saw so many tracer bullets flying passed our planes in all different directions, from the top, from the bottom, sideways…we were going in on the target, and somehow maybe the wind had shifted, but we were flying into a headwind or something. But we spent the longest time going over the target. We were sitting there, trying to dodge the yak-yak(?). I could see this one Japanese plane coming around. He was head on. Of course, we’re sitting out there, last group(?), and he was after us on the right wing. I said to them on the intercom…I said to the nose gunner, “Jap plane coming in at twelve.” He flew over a squadron ahead of us, and then he shot at us, I think, and did this (?) away, like the other one in Borneo. He must have missed us or something. Anyway, we didn’t know any better. So we finally got the bombs off and we got out of there. The fellow that was leading the squadron, both his waist gunners were killed from all of the Jap firing and all. We went back to Tacloban to refuel and then go on to Angaur. When we got to Tacloban, the engineering officer inspected our plane. He says, “You fellows are grounded.” We said, “Why?” because we had flown the plane beautifully. In fact, we were showing off, you know. We would show off how good we could fly our formation. We came over all those Navy ships down there, Merchant Marine…we’re going to show them how to fly. We had a beautiful…real tight. We had the wing tips inside, you know, the plane you’d see the leading edge there, the trailing edge of the wing and then the stabilizer and that, we’d be (?) inside. So then we all came around flying. And he said, “No. You’ve got a direct hit from a cannon fire that just missed knocking the stabilizer out and the rudder controls.” It was right over the pilot’s head, this shot that this fellow gave us, but it was just a little bit too high. Because on the plane you’re sitting up there, and then maybe about this high is the stabilizer. We never even felt it as far as flying the plane. It was flying great. I said, “We’re not staying here tonight. We’re getting out of here.” So we got on another plane. We split up the crew. We got on some of the planes that could fly back to base. We left the plane there. A fellow by the name of George Hugg(?) was our tent mate. He had dripping oil from both inboard engines. So he stayed overnight. I says, “How was it?” He said, “It was like the 4th of July. The Japs came over during the night. We didn’t get any sleep. He says, “All those ships in the harbor were letting loose.” He said it was spectacular. He came back the next day, and he brought…it was on December 24th. He came back on Christmas with a whole bunch of turkeys that the commander of the group, his brother was in the quartermaster corps and he said, “Here you are. Take them.” So we had a big turkey dinner.

ELLEN: Very nice.

BILL: Then we got some welcome news. They said, “You fellows are eligible for some R & R”, which we needed. So we went down to Sydney. We were supposed to be down there ten days and somehow there were so many personnel down there AWOL, that when we arrived, we didn’t know it, and we were in no hurry and my pilot and I, we sank in, we were down at the bottom of the list. So, ten days later, we got back on the plane to go back north, and the propeller ran away. So that’s all those pilots needed was another night in Sydney. They scratched the plane and had to repair it. So when we came back the next day, there’s a Sergeant onboard. He said, “Lieutenant Reinka, Lieutenant Conway and Sergeant so and so….I said to Conway, “Get the luggage off.” I knew right away we were being bumped, because he had to get some of those AWOL fellows back north. That’s the only way they got them back. So, we got about twenty-three days in Sydney. It took us about seven days to get used to the food, because we were there in Angaur. They had some sort of a meal that they called M & V in a can, meat and vegetables. Our flight surgeon would complain that it was terrible. They’d say, “It has all the ingredients those men need for nutrition and so forth.” He says, “Yeah but they’re not eating it.” So my wife was sending me Lipton noodles dishes.

ELLEN: Oh sure.

BILL: What she was doing was getting out the consumme or whatever. She’d ship that airmail to us and leave the noodles out and then we would fill up the canteen and dissolve that in water and cook it. So George Hugg(?) was our cook. We had some Australian rum on Angaur that we brought up from our Brisbane days and we were saving that and of course, money’s no good overseas. It’s all of this trading so we heard these Marines say, ”We’ll give you a load of lumber for this rum.” They says, “We’ll deliver it at night.” So, okay. That night they came along with the lumber and we gave them the rum. We said, “Now, this is pretty powerful stuff. You really should dilute it down.” Those Marines just took it and drank it right out of the bottle straight. That was fine until the next morning. We looked at that lumber, and it looked like it was stolen out of a U. S. lumberyard. Prime wood….so what we did we started…put everything together and nailed it all together and make a frame for our tent and put the tent on it. It had a floor and everything else, see? We slept in it one night then we went to Sydney. So George was left alone with the tent. In the meantime, when we were down in Sydney, the group had moved from Angaur to Samar, Guinan Strip. So, George had packed all our…and put it in the cabin for us. The reason I bring up George is because I mentioned about that Patient Kitten… picture.

ELLEN: Yes, you’re posed in front of this plane.

BILL: That was taken on February 15th, and on April 15th George Hugg(?) was flying that plane over an airbase in northern Formosa, and they were after kamikaze planes again with the (?) bombs. As they rounded with the bomb bay open, they got a direct hit by an anti-aircraft, and it just blew the plane all to bits. I guess every plane in our Squadron got (?) by the debris that was blown, but none of them got hurt, nobody got hurt in the other planes but we lost 10 men with that thing. And reading some accounts of that, I think….. remember when I told you about how you take evasive action from the anti-aircraft? There was no evasive action. The fellow flew a very straight course, and he was just waiting for it….bang….you know. They had the right altitude and all that. They just got a direct hit. Of course, I don’t know how many times we were flying, and we’d see the bombs ahead of the aircraft bursting in front of us, so we knew we’d have to make a change, so we’d do that. But, we didn’t know how many just missed us going up and exploding over our head, because we were already gone (?)…and just blew the thing apart.

ELLEN: You were never injured, were you?

BILL: No, no. None of us were injured. We did lose a bombardier and a flight engineer. The bombardier…..it was a shame. His name was Max Stevens from North Warsaw, Indiana. His father had a trucking company. His father and the general manager were the only ones that knew how to operate…the family didn’t know anything about running the business. So when Max’s father died of a heart attack suddenly, they tried to get Max to come home. They said, “No. We need him too much.” And that wasn’t right, because they had a lot of bombardiers. So he had to make the agreement that he would fly as much as possible, get in his time required and go home. And he was within two missions of completing his mission and they went up to Formosa one time, and he flew. The plane got a direct hit and knocked the wing off. They were bombing a power plant trying to knock out the electrical power. Everybody got killed, went down like a leaf, I think probably centrifugal force more or less pinned those fellows into position so they couldn’t move. It was an irony that he had to fly those missions, when they really didn’t need him that much, because they had other bombardiers. I felt real sorry about that and about George Hugg(?) too. The odd part of it was we had an air raid the night before Max’s last mission. There was supposed to be a Japanese plane in the area. He kept saying to me, “No Japanese is going to get me. Nobody,” like he had a premonition. I was getting kind of irritated. “Don’t talk like that, Max. You never know.” But he had that kind of premonition. What were the other questions you…you asked about the food. I’ve already told you about it was like in Angaur. When we first got to Howie, it was pretty nice. We were still close to Australia so the group plane could fly down there and get fresh eggs and so forth. And the officers chipped in so much money and we got these extra supplies so we’d have pretty nice meals but we did have a lot of corned beef. Fortunately for me, I liked corned beef canned. And they’d serve it hot; they’d serve it cold, mixed with mustard, any way they could serve it. I felt sorry for the guys that couldn’t eat that stuff. Then when we got to Angaur, we had that M & V, it was terrible. And Samar was a different story. They had a little better food. In fact, they had Spam one night which was terrible, you know for everybody? It was a treat for us, because we never had it. So, they had a limit how much…two pieces of Spam. But we found out that we were living adjacent to a Seabee outfit. We found out that we could go over and eat in the Seabee mess.

ELLEN: What does Seabee stand for?

BILL: It was a division of the Navy that was made up of construction people. They built the airstrips and so forth. These Seabee ’s had refrigeration and everything. They had ice cream and what have you. We found out that for twenty-five cents a meal, we could eat all our evening meals over there. We opted to go over there and pay the twenty-five cents. Then the officer in charge of the Squadron says, “You know, you fellows are paying twenty-five cents a meal for ours, I’ll work it out so that you’ll get a credit on that so you can pay for your meals at the Seabee (?).” So that worked out pretty good. Then when we got to Clark Field, the food was all right. Then we had natives coming around with fried chicken you could buy off them.

ELLEN: Was it really fried chicken?

BILL: Yeah, fried chicken.

ELLEN: Oh.

BILL: When I was in Tonopah, Nevada, I was somewhat leery of eating anything off the base, because there was an officer that was stationed in Libya or something like that and he contracted some parasite from eating off the base. He had to go to the hospital every so often and be treated. It was with him all his life, I guess. None of that for me.

ELLEN: How long were you overseas?

BILL: Just one year to the day.

ELLEN: One year, and you flew over forty missions?

BILL: Forty-four missions. We got over there at the right time for a lot of action. So, we get our time in and got out of there. We flew out like on June 26th, ’44, and we had to take a boat back, and we got off the boat in San Francisco on June 26th, one year later.

ELLEN: So, you weren’t over there on VJ Day.

BILL: No. I was in…in fact, they surprised us, “You want to get out of the service?” I’m thinking the war’s still going on and I says, “No I don’t want to go back to civilian life and be subject to the draft.” So I stayed in. Some of them had a place to go and they left when they got back to Fort Sheridan. I had to report to Santa Ana Air Force Base. When I was there, that’s when the VJ people got out, and I was mad. I says, “You can’t let them quit. Not until you kill them all.” That’s the attitude you develop, you know, toward the Japanese in the war. You’re ready to kill every one of them. As I look back now I can see how you were trained mentally to fight them. Now would be a different story, you have some tolerance. But in those days, I was mad that they let them get out.

ELLEN: So, on VJ Day, you weren’t up for a celebration then.

BILL: Not at all. I was just the opposite.

ELLEN: That’s interesting. Once you came back…..

BILL: I had just a little bit of college prior to World War II, so I had run into a lot of fellows who had gone to college and I was really anxious to take advantage of the G. I. Bill of Rights. I came back, and I was married and we had one child. He was born while I was gone overseas. While overseas, one of the questions was what did you do? There was baseball to play and so forth and card games. A lot of people played bridge that never played bridge before and I spent my time studying. I got a correspondence course about railroads, all about the different freight classifications and territories of the railroad and how the rates were constructed and so forth. So I had a, you might say, a pretty good knowledge coming out of the…book knowledge, see, coming out of the service. When I went to the unemployment office, I said, “I learned about this.” And the fellow said, “Why don’t you try… there’s the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, and they’re looking for a fellow with your qualifications.” So, I went up there to talk to them, and I found out that the fellow that they were trying to replace was coming back out of the service. So, they had no room for me so they said, “Well let me call the New York Central and the Pere Marquette and see if they have any openings.” He said, “There’s one at the New York Central, but there isn’t any at the Pere Marquette, but it wouldn’t hurt to talk to them.” So, I went to New York Central and they were kind of on the fence. They didn’t know. So, I went up to Pere Marquette and I walked in and I had my flying uniform on, you know, the officers uniform on and I got to see the Assistant General Freight (?) and I told him just a little bit….I didn’t talk to him very long, and he said, “Just a moment.” He went in to corner office where the traffic manager was. He was like a Vice President. He said, “Mr. Parson wants to talk to you.” This was on a Saturday morning. They’re very busy on Saturday. That’s a half-day. He started talking to me, and I was explaining some of the things about the interstate commerce commission, and he was looking at me kind of surprised. Here’s this fellow that doesn’t have any experience, yet he knows all the background on how these things were constructed, and how they got into existence, a lot of…the background and the history and that. He said, “What if I didn’t hire you, what would you do?” I said, “Well, I’d probably try to get into the airline cargo business. I’m not interested in flying, but I think it has good potential.” He said, “Like Hell! You’re going to work for me starting Monday.” I didn’t even have any civilian clothes….a suit …to report to work. Anyway, I started there. As I look back, it was a great experience. I learned a lot because I was in with all the experts that spend maybe 25 years getting up to that level of office. They go through the local office, then the regional office, then eventually get up to the main headquarters. So I had the benefit of all those fellows that I could learn from. I was like a sponge, I was just picking up information and knowledge. That was really great. Then the Pere Marquette was…merged with the C & O. The Pere Marquette was non-union. The C & O was union. The C & O was a dominant, you know, already, so everything was going to be run like the CNO but through Marquette district. So as a result of that kind of unionization, I was low man on the totem pole as far as seniority goes. And there was a fellow in the Tariff Bureau…the Tariff Bureau is where they can buy the railroad’s tariffs…he wanted that brake job that I was on, which was great. I talked to the public and solved problems for them and everything else. It was a great experience. Seniority prevailed and I had to go back to his job. I made more money in the end at his job, but it was very boring. In other words, you’d take a tariff and you’d proofread it with somebody else, if everything was right, before letting the printer print it. Sometimes you’d have to create a tariff, you know. You’d cut and snip different parts of the tariff that applied, and it was quite boring. We did not have a routing guide. It was kind of like open routing. It was a mess as far as Pere Marquette goes. They decided they’d better tighten things up. I was assigned with this fellow to work out a routing guide for the Pere Marquette from every origin to connection with a carrier that had divisions worked out. They were trying to tighten that up. So, while we were doing this project, this fellow says, “I’m looking at a job in industry, and if I don’t want it, I’ll let you know about it.” After about two or three days, he says, “Bill, I’ll tell you where that job is. It’s in Flat Rock, Michigan. It’s an oil refinery.” I says, “Oh! I know them. In fact, I was talking to this fellow about his problems with crude oil out in (?), Michigan and I got them all solved.” He says, “Well, why don’t you contact him?” So, I called this fellow and I introduced myself and asked him did he ever got that solved on the (?).” He said, “Oh yes, thank you very much.” I said, “I understand you’re looking for a man.” He said, “Yes!” So then we made an appointment to meet.

ELLEN: The rest is history.

BILL: That’s how I got into the industry, because I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere at Pere Marquette. So, I saw an opportunity to get out into the industry. Of course, I continued to go to night school and get transportation and marketing degrees.

ELLEN: While you were doing all of that, did you keep in touch with anybody?

BILL: Oh, yes. All these people that we met…we’re still friends. We call them long distance periodically. We keep in touch with them. Of course, some of the fellows were killed overseas that I was associated with.

ELLEN: How many guys were in your, was it a squadron...is that what it’s called?

BILL: Yeah, a squadron. Generally, they would send out...at one point, they sent up six planes which is like, that’s sixty men flying at one time.

ELLEN: Oh, I didn’t know a squadron was that big.

BILL: They were more planes, you know, but they ’d only send out six in a squadron. And then because the islands are pretty limited, a bomb group would be limited to twenty-four planes on a mission. That was the 90th, and that would be about forty-eight planes. That was about the maximum that you could do. Of course, the targets were pretty much defined, too, with these islands. As I said, it was a break for me going to the Pacific, because we flew a lot of our missions so we wouldn’t have to use oxygen up, we flew about 10,000. It’s a wonder the Japs didn’t catch on. We flew the same level all the time to bomb, yet they were still missing as far as anti-aircraft goes. But it got more accurate as you got closer to Japan. They had the veterans closer to home. As it turned out, it was okay. You might say I’m very lucky.

ELLEN: Your memories are incredible.

BILL: You never know really know how many missed you.

ELLEN: Yeah. You never will know, I suppose. Even now, do you still keep in touch with any of the guys you met?

BILL: Oh, yeah, right.

ELLEN: That’s wonderful.

BILL: I think there ’s only two of us still living of the crew members… and the armor gunner, Ken Keyes, and myself. Ken was a wheat farmer and an oil wildcatter. I kept in touch with him over the years. Ken lost millions and he’d come back and he’d make millions. Then he developed an oil-free service, and the poor fellow, and he sold it for ten million and he put in the local bank in Chanute _______, Kansas, and the bank went belly-up because of all the bond loans. He lost everything, but he still had some property that he hung on to. So, he wasn’t completely wiped out this time.

ELLEN: It sounds like….what a career you’ve had with the military and beyond that.

BILL: Oh, yes, very exciting.

ELLEN: You’ve covered everything thoroughly, quite thoroughly.

BILL: Oh I…(?)

ELLEN: No, not at all. It’s been wonderful. I have nothing else to add unless you have anything to add.

BILL: I’m just trying to think if there’s any something that I’ve overlooked.

ELLEN: Boy, I can’t imagine what it could be.

BILL: Well, as I say, you had to have a sense of humor. So many times you ’d get frustrated, you know, by the...with rules and regulations. As I said, you enter into it, pre-flight, just get in there. We had more fun resisting, particularly the big guys, you know. I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch with some of those fellows. I ran into one that was an upperclassman. He made it as a pilot, and he was flying planes , ferrying planes, out of (?), Michigan. I was home on leave, and I saw him there. He says, “You’re out of uniform.” Typical upperclassman .

ELLEN: Right.

BILL: Summertime …I said, “I’m still waiting for my clothes to come back from overseas.”

ELLEN: It was the first thing he said, though.

BILL: Yeah, first thing.

ELLEN: I want to thank you so much for sharing your story. It was an incredible story, and I want to thank you for service to our Country.

BILL: Thank you. The worst part, I think, was the anxiety that developed at the beginning, because none of us were certain about what was going to happen. There were was a lot of anxious moments until finally you got into the service and then you had some sort of a program, and you just relaxed and went with the flow.

ELLEN: So your confidence increased with each mission?

BILL: Oh , yes. In fact, the military training was a tremendous boost to my academic pursuits because when I went through high school, I was, you know, just passive. I didn’t make any effort to get good marks or something. But then when you ’re are learning to fly, you’d better learn or you’re going to kill yourself. So you’d better know what you’re doing. That sort of training carried over, so when I was going to college you really hit the books harder. You trained a lot better. It was marvelous training. I had been kind of a… C student coming out of high school, really at that time, there wasn’t much college available for the working class so - to - speak. So, your option (?) was baseball. You try to make it that way. That was a whole concentration in the 30’s , trying to become a big-league ball player.

ELLEN: Had not it been for the war, if you hadn’t gone into the war, do you think you would have made it to the majors?

BILL: I don’t know. Maybe and maybe not. You have to have someone higher up kind of look over…if you have a bad season and kind of forget about it, give ‘em a chance. If you aren’t right on the mark every day, they’ve got another fellow ready to step in. So, it’s really a tough grind to make it. You have to keep improving. I know I improved a lot during that 1941 season, and I was really looking forward to 1942. But then Pearl Harbor came along , and we forgot all about that. I didn’t touch a baseball at all for about four years, I think.

ELLEN: Oh , no kidding.

BILL: Yeah. But, I did play baseball when I got out of the service, more or less locally, you know just locally… hometown teams...just to keep a hand in on it.

ELLEN: You were probably the guy everybody wanted on their team, weren’t you?

BILL: I had a lot of fun with that.

ELLEN: Was that something you did for recreation?

BILL: Yeah, recreation. Yeah, right. So, okay.

ELLEN : I better go ahead and…
END OF INTERVIEW

1. 2. 3. 4.

1. Training squadron at Foster Field, Texas. Bill Reinka is pictured standing to the left of the no. 196 on airplane. 2. View of the B-24 cockpit of plane Bill Reinka flew in Pacific Theater during WWII 3.Crew of B-24 #355 at Tonopah Army Air Base in Tonopah, Nevada 4.Bill Reinka at Guinan Air Strip in Samar, Philippines in front of plane he flew.