As the war quickly escalated Robertson noticed more and more empty desks at the Liggett-Meyers office. For more than a year the military draft took co-workers all around him while Robertson remained uncalled. Knowing that he had a very high draft number and might not receive a draft notice for quite some time, Robertson became impatient and decided to take matters into his own hands.
“They had drawings for the draft and I began to see fellas working in the office with me leaving for the service,” said Robertson. “I began to see the fellas go and I thought, ‘What am I doing here? I need to get in this thing.’ Finally, I went to the draft board and told them to put me on the next draft list. So they drafted me.” Robertson can’t recall if he discussed the decision with his wife, Betsie. But in early 1943, with the war’s outcome still very much in doubt, there really wasn’t much to talk about.
“I don’t recall if I spoke to her or not,” said Robertson. “But all of our friends were going and she knew it was just a matter of time. It wasn’t a big issue then.” Besides, Robertson was eager to begin pursuing his longtime goal of becoming a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces.
“Oh, man, I thought I was going to be a hot shot pilot,” said Robertson.
Robertson began basic training in mid-April of 1943 in St. Petersburg, FL. He took the pilot’s test and was quickly accepted into pilot training. “Everything was done quickly then,” said Robertson. “A year was an eternity back then.” Robertson began pilot training at Souther Field in Americus, GA under the tutelage of a former barnstormer, Mike Delaney. He learned the basics of flying in an old PT 17 Stearman biplane.
“Mike was hired by the government to train young pilots like myself,” said Robertson. “Boy, he could fly that airplane. He took me out and just wrung me out. He wanted to see if I could take it and luckily I did.”
Three of the five trainees in Robertson’s group soon washed out. The two remaining pilots then had to fly solo for the first time, an experience that still makes Robertson laugh.
“He told me to go around the field five times and come in on the fifth time,” said Robertson. “I thought I was doing great. The cockpit sits back and you’ve got to have a feel for where the ground is when you land. My first time, I landed about fifty feet in the air. I thought I was close to the ground but I wasn’t. You know what happens when a rubber ball drops, don’t you? That thing bounced right back up like a rubber ball. “Not knowing anything I pushed my throttle up and took off. Later, they rushed me to the hospital to see if I was all right. Mike said, ‘What happened to you?’ I said, ‘I thought I was on the ground.’ I knew how to do it the next time, though.”
Soon after completing basic flight training Robertson was slated to begin primary training. But the Army had different plans for the trainees.
“The order came to cut the entire school out,” said Robertson. “They didn’t need pilots any more. They needed gunners. I was very, very disappointed.”
Robertson was sent to Kingman, AZ where he took a rushed gunnery training course. “They needed us so bad for those crews that they just shot us through,” said Robertson. “If you didn’t get something the first time they told you then you just didn’t get it.” Following gunnery school Robertson was assigned to a B-17 crew at Drew Field near Tampa, FL. Following numerous training missions, the crew was sent to Turner Army Airfield in Georgia before flying to England in December of 1944. Once in England the crew was placed in a reserve pool until they were needed.
“We were there until we were needed by one of the squadrons or units,” said Robertson.
“We were there for a couple of weeks before we started flying. Then, boy, did they fly us. They nearly flew us every day.”
After arriving in England in late December of 1944, Clayton native Sam Robertson and his crewmates were designated as replacements for any squadron or unit that needed them.
It took about two weeks before they were assigned to the 390th Bomb Group at Framlingham Station 153, an airfield located in the small town of Parham.
The next several months were a whirlwind of activity as the 8th Air Force pounded the Third Reich into submission. Robertson’s role in the grand scheme of war totaled 18 bombing missions over Germany and four food drop missions in Holland.
His first combat mission was a bombing run over Oranienburg near Berlin, which Robertson still recalls with great clarity.
“I remember that very, very well,” said Robertson. “You always remember your first one.”
By the time Robertson joined the war the German Luftwaffe had been practically destroyed. But as he quickly learned on that mission to Oranienburg, the Nazis still had plenty of anti-aircraft protecting their Fatherland.
“As the (Allied) ground forces moved further into France and Germany (the Germans) destroyed everything they didn’t need,” said Robertson. “But they needed those flak guns. So the further they moved back into Germany the more concentrated the flak guns were. On our first mission we had 32 holes in the plane when we got back but we were still flying.”
Sitting in the ball turret on the belly of his B-17, Robertson remembers thinking how beautiful the anti-aircraft blasts looked from several miles away. That notion didn’t last for long.
“You didn’t know any better on that first mission and you’d think, ‘Oh, that’s pretty,’” said Robertson. “And it was pretty from a distance. Then it hits – bang, bang. When I got back from that (first mission) I thought, ‘I don’t know if I want to go no more or not.’ But it didn’t work that way.”
The flak was so heavy over the target zone that fighters escorting the bombers kept their distance.
“When you start on your bombing run your escort fighters, which were mostly P-51s, stayed back,” said Robertson. “They didn’t go in there with us. Then they would join us again.”
Nearly all of Robertson’s missions had either railroad yards or ball bearing plants as the main targets. As dangerous as some of those bombing runs were he realized it could have been worse.
“Some of the boys got into some heavy (flak) bombing the Ploesti oil fields in Romania but I never had to go there,” said Robertson. “Of course, what we did was no piece of cake, either.”
Robertson’s B-17 incurred flak damage on nearly every mission and the plane lost one or more engines on several occasions. Yet, all nine crew members escaped the war unharmed.
“We would get some engines knocked out on occasion but we were fortunate,” said Robertson. “All of us made it back. The good Lord was looking after us. We didn’t know it then but he was.”
Part three will continue in next week’s edition…
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