Presentation Date: November 20, 2003
CAPT Cal Rose USAF
* WWII B-25 command pilot * 56 combat missions MTO/ETO * 310th bomb squadron 380th bomb group 12th air force * WWII B-25 command pilot
* 56 combat missions MTO/ETO
* 310th bomb squadron 380th bomb group 12th air force
* Decorations: DFC and 8 air medals
* Flew last mission of the war
* Flew his B-25 "How boot that" back to USA. Was on display at Oshkosh.
Incidents and Coincidence
Born on a farm in Kansas, Cal Rose graduated from high school in 1940 and started a job, making 10 dollars a week. As was the case for so many young men and women, the events of December 7, 1941 changed his path.
Cal and his cousin and a friend had come in from dove hunting, and were heading off to dates that night, when they heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. "We had no idea what Pearl Harbor was or even where Hawaii was. But we knew somehow it affected us."
Cal’s cousin had gotten a job with Boeing, in Wichita and Cal got one there, also. He was attracted to joining the Army Air Corps by reading of the pay offered. In March 1942, Rose saw a post office sign stating ‘I Want You", and another sign offering $500 a year for each year of service upon discharge from the Army Air Corps. Cal says he went to Ft. Riley, Kansas, and "took a test to determine whether or not I was qualified and was told to come back in 30 days to enlist. So, thirty days later I came back and enlisted."
Rose says the first thing he was asked for was his address. At the time, Cal had been living with cousins and friends, and he had no permanent home address. Instead, he gave the address of his uncle and aunt’s farm, which proved to be mistake, because every time Ft. Riley called for Cal’s induction, he wasn’t there and his aunt didn’t know how to get ahold of him.
After waiting without word for six months, Cal decided to marry his sweetheart, Florence Swedlund in November of 1942. By the next February (1943) Cal got word that the Army had called.
"So I quit the job in Wichita and went by train to Kansas City to the reporting station," says Cal. "Sure enough, I was on their ‘wanted’ list. I told them the whole story and he said. ‘Well, it’s okay. You’re here. Where should we send the next call."
That next call came to Florence’s parents home in Salina, and finally Rose was headed off to eight weeks of basic training at Sheppard Field, Texas.
By this point in the war, the ranks of volunteers for the Army Air Force had swollen so much there wasn’t room in training bases for all who wanted to fly. Instead, fresh recruits were sent to College Training Detachment, and that had Cal packing for Morningside City College in Sioux City, Iowa.
Six months later, in the fall of 1943, Rose was sent to begin flight training in Santa Ana, California where he was sworn in and told to pledge that he would relinquish his 500 dollars a year Army Air Force pay.
In addition, Rose found himself among other recruits targeted for a series of "assessments". The first of those was a ten dollar "donation" for grass seed at the air base.
Then, there was another 10 dollar assessment to have photographs taken.
"I wound up that payday owing the government. Because I got 50 dollars a month, 20 dollars went to Florence, and then it was all gone."
The next month, there was a 20 dollar assessment for athletic gear. Later, the officers who had ordered the assessments were investigated, found guilty of scamming the recruits and sentenced to Leavenworth prison.
Primary flight training finally came in Blythe, California, with Rose flying the Stearman biplane for three months. He graduated to fly BT-13s for six weeks, UC-78s for eight weeks and then chose to captain a B-25 bomber instead of becoming a fighter pilot flying a P-38. Rose says his decision was inspired by the Doolittle B-25 raid on Tokyo.
Another major milestone was recorded in March, 1944, and that was the birth of his first daughter - - Diane Kay.
The North American B-25s which Cal and his fellow trainees were learning to fly were weary. "Every rivet was loose," Cal says. "All day they would rattle. But it was a good experience, a little frightening. The first day we were there a Colonel called everybody into the theater and said, ‘I want you to take look at each man on each side of you. Have a good look at ’em, because by the time you leave here two of you are going to be gone, going to wash out."
Cal says the wash out rate wasn’t that high, with only a handful of pilots not making the grade. Those who graduated with Cal’s class of Class of 44F, moved on to Columbia, South Carolina. First there came news that the newly created crew would remain together as a replacement crew. But later, they would be broken up.
Cal’s crew boarded a Liberty ship, the SS Bret Harte, and steamed 31 days from Newport News, Virginia across the Atlantic Ocean. Docking in Marseilles, France they were bombed their first night there. The crew then boarded a C-46 to fly to Naples, Italy and finally touched down on the island of Corsica, as members of the 380th Bomb Squadron, 310th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force.
It was cold on Corsica, and a stone house was welcome relief from the chill for the B-25 crews. The airstrip surface was pierced steel planking. Rose learned to speak Corsican, a bastardized version of French spoken by the island natives. Cigarettes, at a nickel a pack, were used for bartering.
Rose was assigned to pilot a B-25J, serial #428925, with a yellow stripe on each of its vertical stabilizers, designating the 380th Bomb Squadron. Inherited from another crew, the bomber had a reclining Varga girl painted on its nose, along with the inscription, "How ‘Boot That!?".
Before he got his own plane, and his own crew ( known as the "Greenville Six"), Cal became a co-pilot in a B-25 that flew the ‘slot’ position in a box of six bombers. Christmas Eve, 1944 was Cal’s first mission, a bombing raid on La Spezia harbor. From then until VE day, missions would be flown at an average of one every three days.
The 380th Bomb Squadron flew eighteen B-25s, in six plane boxes, to each target. Typically, crews logged four hours at about 12,000 feet on most missions. In the six months Rose flew with the 380th he logged 200 plus hours on 56 missions.
The 380th bombed railroad lines, bridges and tunnels in the mountains of Northern Italy near Brenner pass. Rose says Army Air Force intelligence uncovered an interesting phenomenon there, after noticing trains were appearing on the rails south of bridges that had been reported as destroyed.
"We’d knock a bridge out, and the next morning there’d be a train that had come through during the night. Every morning they’d send up a plane just to check the railroads, and the bridge was out. How did the train get through if the bridge was out?
"The Germans, clever as they were, would put a bridge back together except for the center section. They had a train crane inside a nearby tunnel that would lift out that center section, and back up into the tunnel. When a train would come along, the crane would go out and drop the bridge in place, let the train through, then put the bridge back in the tunnel so that you couldn’t see it."
Rose says during his tour of duty he saw very little in the way of enemy fighter opposition, although the group did get hit by German jets on one mission.
"We’d see a puff of smoke, puff of smoke, puff of smoke, to 20,000 feet or so. We’d tell the top turret gunner,’ if you don’t see that next puff of smoke, start firing, because they’re coming through. And they’d come right down through the formation and we lost a number of ships that way."
Heavy concentrations of flak proved to be the greatest threat to the B-25s. Many missions were low-level, below the mountain peaks of the Po Valley. Rose remembers hearing of the Germans hauling heavy anti-aircraft guns up the mountain sides to 10,000 feet altitude, hoping to use them to take out a whole squadron of bombers. Fortunately, the guns never became operational.
"The definition of flak was ‘if you could see it, if you hear it, and you could smell it, it was close and accurate.’ It was always close and accurate. Believe me, they were good, very, very good. I actually saw the first burst of flak knock down the lead ship of the formation."
Rose says flak killed or wounded many of his crewmen. Of Cal’s original crew, one flight engineer named Wilms was hit in the leg by flak while manning the top turret. He survived, but that wound ended his flying. A tail gunner named Scott wasn’t so fortunate. A three-inch piece of flak pierced his back and passed through him, lodging in his chest pack parachute. Bombardier "Speedy" Speidel was shot down in another B-25, bailed out, and was returned by Yugoslav partisans.
Cal recalls one mission against German forces around the Po River. His squadron’s B-25s dropped 20 pound fragmentation bombs on concentrations of tanks defended by flak barges on the river, west of Venice.
Rose says partnering with P-47 Thunderbolts made the job possible. The P-47s flew escort off the B-25s’ right wings, and the fighters would dive-bomb, dropping white phosphorus bombs to destroy the enemy guns and crews. Rose says the teamwork brought mutual praise. "I’d salute them and they’d salute me, and that took care of the flak, for a little while."
The last mission of the 380th Squadron stood out in particular detail for Cal. Rose says out on the plains of Northern Italy, "there were rows and rows and rows of tanks. I was to go in at 500 feet, open the bomb bay doors, and we threw out ‘nickels’ - - paper leaflets stating in German, "The war’s over. Stand still. Wait here until General Clark of the Fifth Army shows up and accepts your surrender."
"Going in at 500 feet over tanks with guns pointing right up at you, with your bomb bay open, makes you a little nervous... No shots were fired."
Following that mission, the war in Europe and the Mediterranean was over. Of the intensity of the six months of missions in World War Two he and his crew went through, Rose says, "We were kids, and we did a man’s job."
Rose says they spent idle hours over the forty-five days lying on the beach. Then it was time to bring the Bomb Group home, across the Mediterranean to North Africa, around the West coast of that continent and then crossing over to South America, ending up in Savannah, Georgia.
In June, 1945, Cal flew his B-25 to Naples, to start the succession of hops - - Tunis;
Casablanca; Marrakech; Dakar; the Ascension Islands; Natal, Brazil, Puerto Rico - - to safely bring the bomber and its crew back to the United States.
A auxiliary ‘Tokyo tank’ gave the bomber a 7-1/2 hour fuel supply. Cal says the Ascension Islands proved to be the worst challenge on the trip.
"It’s a rock that sticks up out of the ocean, at least 500 feet as you’re coming in. It’s a vertical cliff. And you look down at the bottom of the cliff and there’s the damnedest pile of scrap. It’s all aluminum. And it makes you... suck it up. You land uphill, then downhill... you’re supposed to land on the second third of the runway. To get to the revetment parking area, you’ve got a full 18-20 inches of mercury to get uphill.
"There’s not a tree on this island. So Seabees made a tree with some boards and some gunny sack material painted green. On that tree it had signs that pointed every direction (with mileage to each destination)."
Rose ‘sold’ the aircraft back to the USAAF on July 1st, 1945. A new B-25 was worth $180,000, and pilots paid for any damage to their aircraft in returning them to the States. Rose says a few pilots in his group ended up paying for wing tips broken off when turning their B-25s in revetments. Flying back a bomber brought the responsibility and paperwork to deliver it safely back to the USAAF.
After the war, Rose returned to Kansas, where he was released from active service. His decorations: the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and eight Air Medals He chose to stay with the Air Force Reserves, and continued to fly until 1956.
In 1995, a friend in a Ford model-A car club Rose belongs to showed Cal a picture in the magazine Sport Aviation of a B-25 that appeared at the Oshkosh Fly-In that year.
Cal says, "I looked at it very carefully and on the nose of that airplane was a reclining Varga girl that I recognized. And so I looked at the tail and there was a yellow stripe on the tail that was our squadron. And I looked at the serial number and it’s old 9-2-5, "How ‘Boot That!?". That’s the plane I brought home!"
The B-25 Rose had flown back from Italy had been completely restored and was fully operational with the Cavanaugh Museum of Flight in Richardson, Texas, where it remains today.