Those Who Serve: WWII bomber pilot sees threat to values he fought for
By
Paula J. Owen
Correspondent
Posted Sep 3, 2017 at 5:53 PM
Updated Sep 3, 2017 at 5:53 PM
ATHOL – World War II pilot Vincent “Bill” J. Purple said he is
disturbed by images of hatred in the media showing “alt-right” marchers
in the streets with torches shouting anti-Semitic slurs and
Nazi-associated slogans including “blood and soil” and “Jews will not
replace us.”
The protestors Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia, who wore Nazi paraphernalia, carried flags with swastikas and wore shirts with quotations by Adolf Hitler, have “no clue,” Mr. Purple said, what those serving in the U.S. military and civilians supporting the effort went through during WWII in fighting against Nazi ideology.
“What is happening in Charlottesville should never be. This is not my world. This is not my life,” Mr. Purple said while sitting in the office of his company, LP Athol Corp., surrounded by pictures on the walls of old WWII bombers. “I was very disturbed to see what is going on. We’re here. We’re Americans. It’s disturbing for not only myself, but others who participated in programs to advise younger generations who have no clue what our nation was in the development of progress during the war.”
The protests are unsettling, said Mr. Purple, who has made honoring those who served part of his life’s work. In 1998, Mr. Purple and two others formed the nonprofit Athol Veterans Park Development Corp. which raised money to build the veterans park in Athol. The organization also sponsors events in the area celebrating and honoring veterans.
“Throughout the whole time frame of World War II, there was no such thing as distortion of thought,” Mr. Purple added. “Everyone had one goal in mind - to produce every darn thing you could think of to give our troops what they needed to fight the war. All the ladies went to work. Everybody put in their every effort collecting rubber, metal, garbage ... for the effort.”
It was a different time, said the decorated pilot from Petersham, who flew 35 missions in a B-17 bomber. At 19, assigned to the 8th Air Force, 379th Bomb Group, based in Kimbolton, England, Mr. Purple had already seen many of his comrades shot down on missions.
Though Mr. Purple says his “first 10 missions weren’t bad,” his planes routinely sustained battle damage from 88 millimeter flack guns on a number of missions and there were some close calls that still cause the 93-year-old to question, “How am I still alive?”
Like Dec. 24, 1944, when he and his co-pilot Albert D. McKinnon took off in the “worst weather in the world.” There was intense fog, he said, and the orders to take off were given.
“We were the No. 8 ship to go airborne,” Mr. Purple said. “McKinnon grabbed the wheel and pulled it back as hard as he could and we took a telephone pole up eight feet from the ground with the No. 2 engine. We were mushing into the ground and I don’t know if it was a downdraft or if we were stalling out, but every instrument I checked said we were fine.”
A propeller blade broke off during the incident and landed directly
behind his head and lodging between his head and the seat until he
landed at a different base because of the fog. Part of the mission was
canceled, he said.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “If that blade struck two feet forward, I wouldn’t be here. I’m lucky to be alive. Every Christmas Eve we get a drink and call each other to talk about it.”
There was also a close call when shrapnel flew straight into the cockpit and struck him in the chest, but he was protected by the magnesium metal vest he was wearing.
“We called it the ‘tin can barrage’ because after we would go to the initial point of a bomb run, you’d be looking further into the horizon and it looked like a tin can of planes with 88 millimeter flack guns and you had to fly through it,” he said. “At your altitude, they know where you are. Alex and I were both at Hopsten and our right and left wing person were blown out of the sky.”
Mr. Purple flew 20 missions with his original crew, circling in the sky anywhere from five minutes, depending on the target, to 40 minutes. He said he would listen to “good music from Glenn Miller” to help pass the time, all the while looking around on alert making sure planes in his squadron did not run into each other while they were waiting to drop the bombs.
On Nov. 5, 1944, Mr. Purple said, he was “practically blown out of the sky” in Frankfort when his No. 4 engine caught fire.
“We put it into a sideslip to pull the flame away from the wing and eventually fell from 25,000 feet to 10,000 feet and the fire went out,” he said. “We recovered and we were able to fly back to base and crash land because the gear wouldn’t come down.”
Flying at 150 miles per hour on the missions, the aircraft
immediately would gain altitude with the reduced weight when the bombs
were released, he said.
“We’d peel off to the right or left and you never cared what hit the ground,” he said. “We never saw it.”
They had specific targets to bomb, including oil refineries and ball bearing factories, he said, to destroy supplies the Nazis could use to stop them.
After the war ended, Mr. Purple would stay on in the Reserves and National Guard until 1946, recalled to train B-29 pilots in Korea. Unbelievably, Mr. Purple’s only “war injury” was when his high school class ring became caught on one of the planes as he was exiting and it dug into his finger, cutting him, he said.
The missions he and his crews went on were much different, he said, than the “fire and fury” President Donald Trump is threatening North Korea with.
“There is no comparison. We’d drop 10 bombs that would fall a quarter of a mile,” he said last week.
“I’m frightened about what is going on with North Korea. I’m scared to death. They fired another rocket yesterday. If they ever start that, the flood in Texas will be nothing. Under a nuclear environment, that could be as big as they want to make it.”
Mr. Purple would travel to Cuba for one month every year until 1949 to spend time with a woman he met on Sept. 15, 1944, at a Rotary Club dinner attended by 800 including 100 serving in the Air Force flying B-17 aircrafts.
“Everyone had a date and I had twins - Rosalia and Fefa Gonzales,”
Mr. Purple recalls with a large smile. “I went to visit for a month
every year until 1949 when they moved to Spain because of unrest in
Cuba.”
He said Rosalia “adopted me” and the two wrote to each other often and became close friends. It ended when he met Helen Brand in 1949 in Athol while she was visiting friends of her mother’s. Bill and Helen married in June 2, 1951. Mrs. Purple died in 2011 from a fall at her home.
Mr. Purple said his next big adventure is traveling back to Cuba, hopefully in a B-17.
The protestors Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia, who wore Nazi paraphernalia, carried flags with swastikas and wore shirts with quotations by Adolf Hitler, have “no clue,” Mr. Purple said, what those serving in the U.S. military and civilians supporting the effort went through during WWII in fighting against Nazi ideology.
“What is happening in Charlottesville should never be. This is not my world. This is not my life,” Mr. Purple said while sitting in the office of his company, LP Athol Corp., surrounded by pictures on the walls of old WWII bombers. “I was very disturbed to see what is going on. We’re here. We’re Americans. It’s disturbing for not only myself, but others who participated in programs to advise younger generations who have no clue what our nation was in the development of progress during the war.”
The protests are unsettling, said Mr. Purple, who has made honoring those who served part of his life’s work. In 1998, Mr. Purple and two others formed the nonprofit Athol Veterans Park Development Corp. which raised money to build the veterans park in Athol. The organization also sponsors events in the area celebrating and honoring veterans.
“Throughout the whole time frame of World War II, there was no such thing as distortion of thought,” Mr. Purple added. “Everyone had one goal in mind - to produce every darn thing you could think of to give our troops what they needed to fight the war. All the ladies went to work. Everybody put in their every effort collecting rubber, metal, garbage ... for the effort.”
It was a different time, said the decorated pilot from Petersham, who flew 35 missions in a B-17 bomber. At 19, assigned to the 8th Air Force, 379th Bomb Group, based in Kimbolton, England, Mr. Purple had already seen many of his comrades shot down on missions.
Though Mr. Purple says his “first 10 missions weren’t bad,” his planes routinely sustained battle damage from 88 millimeter flack guns on a number of missions and there were some close calls that still cause the 93-year-old to question, “How am I still alive?”
Like Dec. 24, 1944, when he and his co-pilot Albert D. McKinnon took off in the “worst weather in the world.” There was intense fog, he said, and the orders to take off were given.
“We were the No. 8 ship to go airborne,” Mr. Purple said. “McKinnon grabbed the wheel and pulled it back as hard as he could and we took a telephone pole up eight feet from the ground with the No. 2 engine. We were mushing into the ground and I don’t know if it was a downdraft or if we were stalling out, but every instrument I checked said we were fine.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “If that blade struck two feet forward, I wouldn’t be here. I’m lucky to be alive. Every Christmas Eve we get a drink and call each other to talk about it.”
There was also a close call when shrapnel flew straight into the cockpit and struck him in the chest, but he was protected by the magnesium metal vest he was wearing.
“We called it the ‘tin can barrage’ because after we would go to the initial point of a bomb run, you’d be looking further into the horizon and it looked like a tin can of planes with 88 millimeter flack guns and you had to fly through it,” he said. “At your altitude, they know where you are. Alex and I were both at Hopsten and our right and left wing person were blown out of the sky.”
Mr. Purple flew 20 missions with his original crew, circling in the sky anywhere from five minutes, depending on the target, to 40 minutes. He said he would listen to “good music from Glenn Miller” to help pass the time, all the while looking around on alert making sure planes in his squadron did not run into each other while they were waiting to drop the bombs.
On Nov. 5, 1944, Mr. Purple said, he was “practically blown out of the sky” in Frankfort when his No. 4 engine caught fire.
“We put it into a sideslip to pull the flame away from the wing and eventually fell from 25,000 feet to 10,000 feet and the fire went out,” he said. “We recovered and we were able to fly back to base and crash land because the gear wouldn’t come down.”
“We’d peel off to the right or left and you never cared what hit the ground,” he said. “We never saw it.”
They had specific targets to bomb, including oil refineries and ball bearing factories, he said, to destroy supplies the Nazis could use to stop them.
After the war ended, Mr. Purple would stay on in the Reserves and National Guard until 1946, recalled to train B-29 pilots in Korea. Unbelievably, Mr. Purple’s only “war injury” was when his high school class ring became caught on one of the planes as he was exiting and it dug into his finger, cutting him, he said.
The missions he and his crews went on were much different, he said, than the “fire and fury” President Donald Trump is threatening North Korea with.
“There is no comparison. We’d drop 10 bombs that would fall a quarter of a mile,” he said last week.
“I’m frightened about what is going on with North Korea. I’m scared to death. They fired another rocket yesterday. If they ever start that, the flood in Texas will be nothing. Under a nuclear environment, that could be as big as they want to make it.”
Mr. Purple would travel to Cuba for one month every year until 1949 to spend time with a woman he met on Sept. 15, 1944, at a Rotary Club dinner attended by 800 including 100 serving in the Air Force flying B-17 aircrafts.
He said Rosalia “adopted me” and the two wrote to each other often and became close friends. It ended when he met Helen Brand in 1949 in Athol while she was visiting friends of her mother’s. Bill and Helen married in June 2, 1951. Mrs. Purple died in 2011 from a fall at her home.
Mr. Purple said his next big adventure is traveling back to Cuba, hopefully in a B-17.
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