By Mike Jackson
Watching the Apple TV series “Masters of the Air” had a special meaning for my siblings and me. Watching the aerial combat scenes was impossible without thinking of my dad, a Tippecanoe graduate, and his missions during WWII as a waist gunner on the B-24 Liberator aircraft. This is his story.
Like the heroes portrayed in the series, I’m sure my dad was scared to climb into the aircraft, knowing what awaited them over enemy territory. Bombers were being shot down at such an alarming rate that crews were initially sent home after completing 25 missions. Few crews reached that number of missions, and Dad saw many of his friends and squadron mates shot down. Tent mates often didn’t come back, and the empty bunks where his friends had slept the night before must have haunted him as he prepared for yet more missions.
Dad was one of the fortunate ones on his first few missions, and while his aircraft returned with numerous holes and other battle damage, he remained unharmed. His luck was to take a serious turn on a mission over Nice, France when his plane was hit with anti-aircraft fire, and he was wounded by pieces of flak, injuring his left arm. Despite having the use of only one arm, he kept firing his gun with his right arm. At one point, he wondered why the floor was slick and looked down to see that his blood was pooling on the floor and freezing in the sub-zero temperatures inside the plane.
As his plane returned to their base, his crew fired a flare, which meant a casualty was onboard, so they were given landing priority and were met by an ambulance. Dad was rushed to the hospital. He was awarded his first Purple Heart. Two weeks later, with his arm still bandaged, he was back on the flying schedule.
On August 7, 1944, on his 14th mission, one with the goal to destroy a synthetic oil plant in Germany, the aircraft was hit with flak and lost an engine. Unable to keep up with their formation, they were targeted by “what seemed like the entire German air force,” and Dad was again wounded, this time by 22 pieces of shrapnel in his right arm and wrist. After losing a second engine, the crew began jettisoning all unnecessary equipment to lessen weight, but the plane was not responding due to the loss of two engines out of four and other unknown damage.
Dad didn’t want the crew to give him a shot of morphine to dull his pain because he knew they were probably going to have to bail out over enemy territory. When they did have to bail out, one of his crew put the ripcord D-ring of his parachute into his hand so he could pull it after exiting the airplane. As he jumped from the plane, Dad hit his head on the edge of the hatch, and the crew worried he had been knocked out.
As Dad descended toward the ground, he saw a large crowd of people below him, many armed and pointing their weapons at him. Upon hitting the ground, he was dragged across a field by his parachute and began yelling “Americano, Americano” at the top of his lungs. Luckily, he had landed among a group of partisans, and they bandaged his badly bleeding arm and wrist and made a sling from a piece of his parachute. (Note: he didn’t let go of his parachute rip cord and kept a piece of his sling in a display case today.) After loading him onto a mule, they had traveled for about four hours when he heard someone yell, “Hey, Jackson!” The partisans had also rescued two other members of his crew. The remaining crew members were captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.
Eventually, this small group of downed crew members grew as the partisans consolidated them with other downed allies. So many bomber crews were being shot down that the partisans also brought in the aircrew, which had replaced Dad’s downed crew. The partisans were subsequently able to contact the allies about their growing group, and an American pathfinder captain and a British radio operator parachuted into the partisan compound with supplies for the partisans and updated information on German patrols in the area.
On September 8, 1944, four C-47 airplanes landed quickly in a farm field while a flight of P-51s flew cover against German patrols that were converging on the airstrip after seeing the planes land. One of the P-51s was shot down, and its pilot ran to board a C-47. All of the aircrews escaped successfully, although the American captain and the British radio operator remained with the partisans.
After being declared missing in action for 33 days, Dad was back on friendly soil in Italy. During his hospital stay, the doctors told Dad that removing the shrapnel fragments from his arm would require too many incisions, so he carried them for the rest of his life as a reminder of his ordeal.
Following Dad’s plane being shot down, his parents received a brief telegram informing them that their son was missing in action, and the Tipp City Herald reported this. Dad’s parents received no other word on his welfare until a second telegram arrived more than 33 days later, stating their son was alive but giving no details. I can’t image the pain they and other parents and spouses felt dealing with not knowing what was happening to their loved ones.
The rest of the story is that Dad was eventually sent to a convalescent hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, for three months to recover from his wounds. While in Louisville, Dad met Winnie Hamblin, and they were married shortly afterward on April 12, 1945. Dad was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross at his next base, a second Purple Heart, Air Medals, and other awards.
Dad died in 2010, and he will always be the person I most admire. He never bragged or told anyone about his WWII exploits and led a simple, admirable life. He was the father I always strive to be. They’ll never make a movie about Staff Sergeant Edmund Jackson, but he was my Master of the Air.