Presentation Date: September 24, 1998
Joe Marlovicts
B-17 Co-Pilot, 306th Bomb Group, 368th Bomber Squadron B-17 Co-Pilot, 306th Bomb Group, 368th Bomber Squadron. Flew B-17s in the 306th Bomb Group on missions over Germany in 1944. He tells his experiences of braving flak and German fighters in getting to and from Schweinfurt, Peenemunde and targets during the Battle of the Bulge. Joe survived two in-flight fires on board B-17s during his 35 missions over the Continent.
"Survival in the B-17"
"You're flying along and you hit the IP (Initial Point), and you're gonna make a stretch of about 15 miles, no variations, I mean, solid. And that's where things really get tight. The flak seems like it gets stronger and heavier. And you wonder..well, maybe the first time is going to be the last time."
That was Joe Marlovicts' impression of combat on his first mission in a B-17.
He told Golden Gate Wing members and guests at the September meeting the highlights and lowlights of his time behind the control column of the Flying Fortress.
Marlovicts grew up in a small Pennsylvania town right in the flight path northeast of Pittsburgh. "I remember stories of the Army flying the mail, and the hubbub when Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic when I was only four years old." By the middle of the Depression, both of Joe's parents had died, so his two older sisters raised him. After high school, Joe worked in a steel mill - - school from 9-1 and then 3-11 in the mill, shoveling wet sand at 79-cents an hour. " It put muscles in my teeth."
Joe had planned to become an airplane designer, but Pearl Harbor turned his course to Cadet training. Having labored in the steel mills, Joe loved the physical training of the camp, and especially loved learning to fly in a Stearman PT-17. "I had wanted to fly since I was five years old. I was in seventh heaven. It was the greatest moment of my life, to be learning to fly, to be paid 75 bucks a month, and women and song, you know."
Marlovicts ended up co-piloting multi-engine aircraft. He was teamed with a pilot from Philadelphia named Hank Dryer, in the 306th Bomb Group, 368th Bomber Squadron, and based in pastoral Thurleigh, England. It was May, 1944.
Joe recalled his first time in combat and the sound of pebbles in a can - - the shrapnel from flak shells hitting and piercing the aluminum skin of the B-17. He says nothing of great importance happened for the first few missions. Then came a series of events which has him puzzled to this day.
"You used to fly 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off. And I'd just handed off the controls to Hank, when I looked over and saw a B-17 down below, off the the side. And all of a sudden it just disappeared. One huge cloud of grey matter. And it happened later to another B-17.
"Then about two or three weeks later, I'm watching these P-51s. They would get above us and slowly do these S-curves and stay with us. And I envied them, oh I envied them. Because the first burst of flak and they were up there 2000 feet above us. We had to go through it and they were above it. And this one day, these four (P-51s) are going, and suddenly the last one just disappeared.
"Another time we were flying along and, off the edge of the wingtip when I looked out, there was a drum about three feet tall...shaped like a 55-gallon drum. What it was doing there...it was going up and slowly oscillating as it went up, and for some reason I thought, ' if it would just touch the wing, it would probably just all blow.' And when we got back I told the intelligence officer. They never did find out ..."
Later on Joe heard a story about a 15th AF B-24 bomber outfit mysteriously losing airplanes, "and one day a guy couldn't retract (his landing gear) and came back in and landed. And they found a hand grenade between the struts of the gear. So as the gear would retract, it would pull the pin. And of course it was right below the main (fuel) tank - - and that was Katie, bar the door." Marlovicts wondered if the disappearing B-17s and P-51 he saw could have been sabotage.
One of Joe's biggest tests came on a B-17 test hop. Joe and Hank were on final approach to the air base when they couldn't reach Kelly, the radio operator on the intercom. When Hank said they should check on him, the engineer pulled open the flight deck door - - only to be met with a blast of flames. Then, about three hundred feet from the ground, an oxygen tank blew, and the heat was intense.
Joe relates, "It just burned me from my head all the way down. At one point... there was a feeling that everything was all right. I almost gave up, the pain was so excruciating. Then I came back, and I kicked myself, and thought '...to hell with this. I'm only 21."
Marlovicts and Dryer got the bomber on the ground and both stood on the brakes as it chattered off the runway onto its nose, digging a 1000 foot furrow.
"We got out on the ground, and when we touched the wing, there was a sizzle and the skin turned white from the burning inside the wing. The first thing I thought of was Kelly, I figured Kelly was in trouble. So I went back and the door was open, and I looked way out there and there was Kelly, out there about a half mile away, just waving like this... He had known all the while the airplane had been on fire for some time."
Marlovicts says Kelly's silence stemmed from the flames burning though the intercom wires in the bomb bay. When the B-17 hit the ground, the engineer had broken his leg. He fell down outside the plane and was laying between the landing gear until Joe and Hank dragged him away from the burning bomber.
Marlovicts went to the flight surgeon, who told him he'd be staying the night. Joe protested, saying he had a hot date, then came to find out the fire had seared a huge blister on the rear of his head, neck and upper back. The doc's treatment involved removing the blistered skin and treating the area with gentian violet and a turban (which Joe says helped him attract women.)
After about two months recovery, Joe was back in the air. On his first mission back, the lead navigator accidentally took Joe's 35-bomber formation almost to Berlin, "with 15,000 guns, that's all they have there. By the time they lace us (with flak), they've knocked about five airplanes. Then the fighters, Me-262s made their passes and every time a -262 made a pass they knocked someone down. Then came the -190s. There was something about them head-on. They would turn upside down and come streamin' in like that... I used to watch them coming straight at you... they would split-s and you could actually see the .50 caliber guns hit the underside and ricochet off because they had two inches of armor between the pilot and the engine."
Nine of the group's 35 B-17s were lost on that mission, and first pilots were needed immediately. Joe says he made four takeoffs and landings when they got back, and the next day, flew the next mission.
Marlovicts has first-person testimony to a B-17's toughness. He remembers returning from one mission to have his crew chief waving frantically at him. Joe stomped on the brakes, shut down the engines and saw fuel streaming from the wings.
"The crew chief was saying, 'What the hell happened Lieutenant? They must have just been shooting at you.'"
Out of the plane, Joe took stock of the damage. "It looked like someone had taken a can opener on the right wing and run it down about 25 feet, just opening it up. There were holes all over...they started counting...they get to 11-hundred and quit counting." Despite the hits, the engines had kept sweetly turning, bringing the B-17 and its crew safely home, without a scratch. The B-17 was written off.
It was another accident that could have claimed Joe...and did cost him most of his hearing. One day an explosion ripped through the base bomb dump. Joe thought a German V-2 had hit the volatile target but discovered the explosion had been caused by a crew unloading delayed-fuse bombs. Joe says instead of using a hoist, "they had been kicking them off the back of the truck...and gone to lunch. One bomb set off 26 of them. And that's why I have to wear these hearing aids now. I was stone deaf for about maybe three minutes. The first thing I heard, was I had a newspaper in my hand, and I heard the page rattle with the breeze."
Marlovicts says he'd lived at his home in Sunol for 30 years before he got his hearing aids...and the day he got them he was amazed by the sounds of birds...sounds which had been there all along.
For Joe, the biggest disappointment came shepherding new crews through their first missions. He'd ride right seat on five missions and turn them loose. Of the three crews he rode with, none of them survived beyond five missions on their own.
"We lost those three crews and I can't understand...why...because I was pretty lucky and I thought the luck would've rubbed off on these people. But it never did."
Marlovicts recalled flying in the terrible weather that enveloped Allied troops in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. It was 55-degrees below in the B-17. Sweat from Joe's gauntleted hand froze across the throttle levers on the way in to bomb a German railyard. A hole in the clouds allowed them to find the target, and to see the boxcars flying as the group's bombs found their mark. "We would do anything...for Patton. If we had to ground-strafe with a B-17...we'd do it...because we felt that strongly for him."
That was Marlovicts' final mission, Christmas Eve, 1944. His bomber landed at a base down the coast from Thurleigh, and when Joe couldn't find an open mess hall he discovered a room with a desk. He laid down for the best sleep he'd ever had. "The next morning I woke up and felt like a million dollars. We took off, went back home and that was it. I was all done."