EUGENE ELLITHORPE
By Jake Schneider
Gene Ellithorpe was born in Spokane on August 2, 1922. He grew up in the Palouse region with two older sisters and his mother. His dad died when Gene was only five years old. When Gene was in High School he participated in basketball and baseball, graduating in 1940 as president of his class.
Gene had his eyes set on Washington State College (WSU) where he could study to get his teaching degree. That all changed one day while he was out on a walk and three of his buddies pulled up next to him and told him he was going to enlist in the Army Air Corps with them. Gene thought that fighting for his country would be more important than going to college right away, so he agreed and went along with them.
He enlisted in the Air Corps and went for his first training session at Randolph Field, Texas. There he learned to fly PT 21s. Those planes were for Primary Flight Training, so they weren't all that powerful. They were small and didn't have a canopy. After he learned to fly the PT 21, he moved over to Chico, California for Basic Flight Training. For this training he flew the Vultee BT13-A.
After Gene's beginner's training, he then moved on to Advanced Training in Merced, California. There he was introduced to the AT-6, which had retractable landing gear. Not only did he fly the AT-6 there, but he also went through flight and combat schooling. He finished school and then moved on to Rice, California for transition to the regular fighter planes, the Bell P-39 Aircobra. This period also involved maneuvers and staging.
He sailed out of New York on the HMS Sterling Castle with the 339th Fighter Group. Gene was twenty years old when he sailed the rough North Atlantic. They docked in Liverpool, England and from there he had no clue where they would be heading, but it was quite obvious that there was a war going on. He was then a member of the Eighth Air Force.
The fun began in England when Gene was introduced to the P-51 Mustang. This fighter plane reached speeds up to four hundred and twenty-five miles per hour and had 108-gallon wing gas tanks on each side and another 90-gallon tank that sat behind the canopy. With that much fuel, they would be able to stay out for seven hours and could fly over thirteen hundred miles. While flying the P-51 Mustang, Gene's chief assignment was to protect B-17 and B-24 bombers. The bombers flew only in the daytime and when they did they were bombing German industries and railroads. The fighters were there to protect the bombers from German fighter planes trying to defend the bomber's targets.
On June 3, 1944, black and white stripes were painted on all combat planes in preparation for the Normandy invasion. For three days, Gene was in the air every four hours. In Gene's squad there were around thirty guys that were shot down. Gene's canopy was shot off and a piece of flack hit him in the left part of his chest, breaking his collarbone and leaving his arm with no feeling.
Gene became great friends with Frank Talcott. They even exchanged Navigation watches. Frank was one of the men who was shot down and it wasn't until after the war that Gene found out Frank survived and was captured in Sweden. Sweden wouldn't let Frank go until after the war. Gene learned later still that Talcott was killed in a plane crash in Sweden.
On December 24, 1944 Germany made its last push westward on the border of Belgium. This was called The Battle of the Bulge. It was the worst winter that Europe had seen in a long time. It was so bad that the planes were grounded for eight days. The Germans were running out of fuel and were slowing down real fast. That was when Gene and the rest of the flyers had their fun. Since the Germans had hardly any fuel, they couldn't attack. Gene and the rest of the American flyers flew over German air bases and destroyed them without any trouble.
When the war ended in Europe, Gene was destined for the Pacific, but the war ended there too. So he returned to his home in Palouse, Washington. He went to Washington State College (WSU) where he completed his studies to become a teacher. He also did the required schooling and worked as a Funeral Director for fourteen years. He then went on to teach at WSU and Lewis Clark State College. Gene was married in 1958 and is the father of four children.
Although Gene Ellithorpe is retired, he can be found most days working in the Colfax branch of the Whitman County Library.
AUGUST LUFT
By Jessica Wright
I interviewed August J. Luft. When I first met Mr. Luft, I got the impression that he was a very nice guy. We got acquainted by him telling me the story of how he had in recent years put together a D-Day Veterans 50th Anniversary celebration. He said it was a hard task he did pretty much by himself. He ran an ad in the newspaper and put together a list of all the Whitman County veterans he could find. He showed me a picture of all the people who came to the event.
Mr. Luft has lived in Whitman County his entire life, except when he was in the service. He went to school in St. John and now lives in Colfax. With a big smile he claimed to know just about everybody in the county because he has lived here so long and that he is an "all around likable guy." I had to agree with him on that.
August Luft enlisted in the Air Force on December 19, 1941. He was put in charge of thirteen enlisted men as they traveled to Salt Lake City, then to Wichita Falls, Texas where they attended Airplane Mechanic's school.
In July of 1942 he moved to Long Island, New York on a train with no air conditioning or ventilation. It was hot that July and they had to travel with the windows open so they would not suffocate or die from the heat. The open windows let in coal dust so they were constantly sweaty and dirty. When they got to Mitchel Field in New York, they began working as mechanics on B-25 airplanes the next day. Three months later they were transferred to Westover Field in Massachusetts. After schooling there he started flying on a crew as an Engineer. They did anti-submarine patrol duty over the Atlantic Ocean. The entire crew kept watch for subs or oil slicks, flying one hour east, one hour north, one hour west, and then one hour south, then returning to base. They also flew patrol for ships entering and leaving harbors.
Next move was to Tyndall Field, Florida in June of 1943 where he attended gunnery school, then in August he went to Gowen Field in Idaho. When he started flying training missions on B-24s he thought he would soon be going into combat. However, in October his group went to Wendover Field in Nevada where he was able to get away to Reno several times to break the monotony. In January he moved to Hamilton Field near San Rafael, California and from there things started to happen as he found himself quickly getting ready to enter the European Theater of Operations.
Luft was then an Engineer Gunner on a B-24 bomber, the biggest bomber in combat at the time. In January of 1944 they flew to Florida, then to Brazil, then across the Atlantic to Africa. From Africa they headed north to Valley, England, then to Norwich where he was stationed while he did combat flying of bombers over the enemy occupied areas of Europe as part of the 8th Air Force 96th Bomb Wing, 458th group, 755th Squadron. It was Luft's job as Engineer to make certain the plane was ready to fly at all times and to look after the plane during flight.
The pilot who had flown them overseas was also the pilot they had on their first five missions and the best pilot August had ever known. Due to an ulcer that pilot was grounded after their first few missions. They were given a co-pilot from another crew who turned out to be the worst pilot Luft had ever known, having no natural flying ability. When he took off he swerved from one side of the runway to the other and bounced the plane around on take-off and landing so that they were more scared of their own pilot than they were of the enemy. Flying in formation was scary too because he couldn't control the plane and it was always going up and down and from side to side.
On August's second mission with that pilot, he was manning the waist gun in the back of the plane. The pilot called him to come forward to help him close the bomb bay doors. Luft made his way to the bomb bay doors, which were actually closed, and opened the doors. The catwalk that runs from the back of the plane to the front is only eight inches wide. It was eight feet to the bomb racks with a passage between the bomb racks that was one foot wide. There were supposed to be ropes about one inch from the door, but they were missing, so he had to travel along the catwalk without the help of the ropes. They were flying at twenty-three hundred feet, the air temperature was twenty degrees below freezing and the bombs were still in the bomb bay. The pilot called him again to come to the cockpit to help him get the bombs out and get the bomb bay doors closed.
He had to think about what was going on: there were nine other men on the plane, the bombay doors were open, they had a full load of bombs, and they couldn't get out of Germany like that. He kept trying to release the bombs. He had learned in training that you needed to take a screw driver to turn a knob and the bomb holder would release the bomb. What they didn't tell them was that once the bomb was in place, you couldn't get to the release mechanism. He went back to the cockpit and noticed the handle to the salvo for the bombs was dangling. He knew right away the pilot had pulled the handle, but he hadn't told Luft he had done that. In a matter of minutes he had reset the cam and closed the bomb bay doors. They were safe, but Luft was angry.
After landing in England they went to briefing, then to see the group commander. They told him they couldn't fly with that pilot, so they were assigned a very good replacement and the other pilot ended up in the North Sea. From then on Luft flew in the top turret gun position or the cockpit to better look after the plane in flight.
Mr. Luft told me he was on the farm when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He, like so many other people, was very confused as to why that had to happen. He wanted to know why there was no one up in the control tower, and why no one saw the Japanese coming. He got a bit upset when he was talking about this, and I do not blame him. He said many people had an idea it was coming because there was some sort of big metal shipment to Japan going on. He says that when he found out about it, the first thing out of his mouth was "That metal is going to come back in bullets." Sure enough, it did.
He said he always wondered where Germany got all of its money during the war. "I was watching the History Channel one night," he went on to say, "and I found out that the Nazis had a Jewish man in a huge underground tunnel just making counterfeit money all day and night long." He is of the opinion that the History Channel has pretty much gotten it right when it comes to all of the details of history.
I greatly enjoyed interviewing Mr. Luft. I only wish I had longer to talk with him. I am sure he had many more great stories to tell. Mr. Luft seems to me to be a very warm, kind guy. I think that we should do interviews like this more often. Maybe not even for reports, just for educational purposes. There are so many wonderful people out there with so many great stories. I just wish that we could get to all of them.
I wish we could too, Jessica!