Schock tells story of being B-17 co-pilot
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BY JOE DUGGAN / Lincoln Journal Star
“But, like the feller says, I wouldn’t do it again for a billion bucks. And, on the other hand, I wouldn’t take a billion bucks for what I’ve gone through.” — from “Thrills, Chills and a Spill” by Bill Schock
FALLS CITY — The arrival of care packages from the Red Cross always lightens the mood in prison camp.
Most of the American POWs go for the cigarettes, chocolate and coffee.
The Mighty 8th Air Force formed the greatest air armada in history, according to the U.S. Air Force Web site. Led by generals such as Jimmy Doolittle and Ira Eaker, the 8th could send out 2,000 bombers and 1,000 fighters on a single mission.
Here are some other facts:
About 350,000 men went through the 8th during World War II. About 200,000 of them served in combat roles, said Jean Prescott, research specialist with the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum near Savannah, Ga.
The 8th completed 440,000 daylight bombing sorties from England to Nazi-occupied Europe from 1942 to 1945.
The 8th suffered about 47,500 casualties, including more than 26,000 killed. The number represented half of the U.S. Army Air Corps losses during the war. About 28,000 members of the 8th became prisoners of war.
The daylight missions were extremely dangerous, especially early on when they were made without fighter escort. Of the 39 bomber crews that started with the 384th Bomb Group (part of the 8th Air Force) in June 1943, only one remained in the air just three months later, according to Fred Preller, a historian of the 384th in Fate, Texas.
Members of the 8th won 17 Medals of Honor, 227 Distinguished Service Crosses and 442,000 Air Medals.
See a restored B-17 up close in Nebraska
A $400 ticket will get you a high-altitude view from the Plexiglas nose of a B-17 when the Experimental Aircraft Association brings a functional Flying Fortress to eastern Nebraska at the end of the month.
The Aluminum Overcast will be at the Plattsmouth Airport from June 27 through 29 and at the Lincoln Airport’s Silverhawk Aviation on July 1 and 2.
The public is invited to take free walk-around tours or interior tours for $5 (discounts for families, kids or groups).
A 20-minute flight in the plane costs $399 if booked in advance or $425 for walk-ups. There are discounts for EAA members.
Call 1-800-359-6217 for inquiries or to book in advance or go to www.b17.org. The local information numbers are (402) 271-1111 in Omaha and 219-0111 in Lincoln.
Bill Schock relishes the diversion from barley soup as much as anyone, but the 25-year-old bomber pilot from Falls City also wants the paper.
Like most of the 9,000 or so Allied servicemen being held at Stalag Luft I in the summer of 1944, Schock uses some of it for letters home. The rest he fashions into a note pad.
He makes it narrow enough to hold in one hand. He hides it in the wood shavings of his mattress, because he knows he’ll be in trouble if the guards find it.
He decides the notepad is worth the risk. And when they’re not looking, he writes.
In late August 1943, 2nd Lt. Bill Schock officially became a B-17 co-pilot with the 384th Bomber Group, part of the Mighty 8th Air Force.
When he and his crew arrived at Grafton-Underwood Air Base in England, they knew they would have to fly 25 missions before they could go home or get a safer assignment. Someone at the base said less than one-third of all crews made it to 25.
Schock and the nine other men in his crew completed their first mission.
Their second involved a long run from England to Anklam, Germany — northeast of Berlin about 90 miles — to hit an airplane factory. They dropped their payload of phosphorus bombs and turned off the target.
“And all hell broke loose,” Schock wrote.
“German fighters came in from all directions and we could see we were losing a lot of bombers. Nothing in this world I have seen to this hour can compare with the sickening sight of one of your big bomber friends disintegrating in mid-air. A bright crimson puff — and what was a B-17 and its 10-man crew is now blue smoke. Other planes spiraled out of control as they headed downward. But you couldn’t dwell on it — you had work to do.”
To make their Forts harder to hit, the pilots pulled stomach-flipping climbs, drops and directional changes. Crew members called out the positions of attacking Messerschmitts and Focke Wulfes on an intercom radio while the gunners unloaded their 50-caliber weapons.
What they couldn’t evade or shoot were the antiaircraft shells exploding and throwing shrapnel into the sky. They simply had to hope the flak missed them.
All the while, they did everything humanly possible to stay in formation with the 18 bombers in a combat group, because a lone B-17 was almost always a dead B-17.
“We finally reached the North Sea and our navigator reported that we had undergone constant fighter attacks for just short of three hours.”
When they landed an hour later, the crew chief counted 42 holes in their plane. It never flew another combat mission and was used for parts.
As they met with an Air Corps intelligence officer, each crew member was offered, and downed, a jigger of scotch. And they soon learned the Germans had shot down 35 bombers that day.
Somehow, over the next eight months, Schock managed to survive 24 missions.
His good fortune ran out on the 25th. On April 9, 1944, the plane took two direct flak hits at 12,000 feet and caught fire.
After assessing the damage, Schock switched on the alarm bell, which signaled the crew abandon the plane. Schock was the last to parachute out.
“Never shall I forget the ghost-like quietness I experienced after clearing the big bomber. Inside the plane, the noise was terrific... It all stopped abruptly when I went careening into space and the only sounds audible were those given off by my clothes as they cut the air while I plummeted earthward.”
After he landed, German soldiers soon took him prisoner.
A crowd of civilians gathered. Someone shouted “Baby killer. Baby killer.”
Before long, Schock reunited with his crew at a Nazi detention center. Except one man was missing — the Germans reported Staff Sgt. Luke Shannon, top turret gunner, was dead.
Schock underwent several interrogations which he said adhered to the Geneva conventions. Then he and other prisoners were transported by train to Stalag Luft I, a prison camp on the Baltic Sea near Barth, Germany.
The camp housed some 9,000 prisoners, mostly American and British airmen. They called themselves Kriegies, an abbreviation of the German word for prisoner of war. They called their guards Krauts.
The accommodations were spartan. About 200 men slept in each block. A single, 20-watt bulb provided light in each room, when there was electricity. They had no heat.
“They say that an American soldier can acclimate himself to about anything and that is what happens to me after several miserable weeks of not knowing — or or much caring — whether I am afoot or horseback. A good sense of humor is a lifesaver.”
Early on, they regularly got Red Cross packages, which supplemented the barley soup and black bread supplied by their captors. But as the war came to a close, food rations became smaller and less regular.
They got most their information from new Kriegies, who updated them on war progress. A few men in camp were able to keep an illegal radio.
As Allied troops continued their advance, the POWs grew increasingly concerned about their fates. What would their captors do in the final moments of the war?
After it was all over, they learned Hitler apparently ordered all prisoners shot. The report quoted the head of the Red Cross saying that the German army refused to carry out the order.
In late April, the Germans began evacuating camp. As the German guards prepared to march out, their commander met with Col. Hubert Zempke, an American fighter pilot who led the prisoners. Zempke called the bluff and flatly refused the German officer’s order for the prisoners to leave.
Finally, all of the Germans fled.
“The next morning Stalag Luft I is a madhouse of the first order as Kriegies get their first taste of freedom.”
Under Zempke’s order, most remained behind the wire until American forces arrived.
The true liberation began May 17, 1945, when a B-17 landed on the airfield at Barth. Additional troop transport planes landed and over the next three days, the prisoners were evacuated.
Schock, some 35 pounds lighter than when he arrived, flew out on one of the final planes.
“As the bomber becomes airborne, I withdraw to myself. I thank God for another chance at life. It looks to me like others are doing the same.”
On June 27, a train pulled into the station at Falls City and Schock got out.
He didn’t know his arrival date far enough in advance to notify his mother, so she wasn’t there to greet him. His father had died when he was 17.
Schock hitched a ride home.
On the way, he saw his mother’s car parked at a local grocery store. He asked the driver to let him out.
He found her standing in an aisle, looking over some items on a shelf.
He gave her a hug.
They embraced for a long, long time, not speaking a word.
More than six decades have passed since Bill Schock started writing about his experiences as a B-17 pilot and a POW.
He’s 89 now.
His hair is a white. Hearing aids curl out of his ears. A few months ago, he lost Dorothy, his wife of 61 years. He’s a great-grandfather, three times over.
His laugh still booms, filling his office at the Falls City Journal, the newspaper he owns and where he still works about every day. And his eyes sparkle as he tells his story.
“All lies,” he says with a frequent smile. “Don’t make me out to be a hero, because I wasn’t one.”
He has many memories of the war, indelible marks that shaped his life. But he doesn’t have to rely solely on the memories.
That’s because he still has the notepad.
He keeps it in an old cardboard box. The paperboard cover is worn and soft, but the neat script inside is still plainly legible.
He turned it into a self-published book called “Thrills, Chills and a Spill.” He gave it to close friends, his two children and grandchildren.
It’s just one out of millions of stories from the war, he says, too personal to ever think of publishing widely.
But the story also belongs to every man who rode a Flying Fortress in World War II.
Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com.
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