When I was traveling a lot for work in the late 1990's I made sure to be as much of an aviation tourist as possible. Usually, that means getting a C172 rental checkout wherever and whenever possible. If the fates do not allow that, the next best thing is to find aviation museums and pester the old timers that work at them for aviation lore. The days of running into old timers that flew during WWII are, unfortunately, coming to an end. Partly for this reason, I plan to post some of their stories here in my blog and also on my website http://www.aviationlogs.com./ I am very interested in any aviation stories, and old logbooks. If you have aviation stories, and / or old logbooks, contact me. I would like to digitize that information and post it where it will be publicly available. I think it would be very interesting to post links to old WWII logbooks (or the entire flying career of a lifelong pilot).
Anyway, about that story...
I was at the Boeing Museum of Flight where I met a volunteer who had been a B24 bomber pilot during WWII. I can't remember his name right now, if I remember I will fix the post, but for now I'll call him Mac. Mac had some great stories to tell. He told me how, when he was first assigned an aircraft, his was given a bill of lading and told to "go get your plane". There was definitely a twinkle in his eyes when he told me about walking down a line of brand spanking new B24s looking for his "ship".
Soon after getting his new aircraft, and with fewer than 200 hours of flight time, he was on his first bombing mission. His first mission was a high altitude bombing raid over a distant target after a long flight. Mac and his crew got over the target and when ordered to start his bombing run, found that he couldn't open the bomb bay doors. Mac called the flight leader and told him he couldn't participate in the bombing run, because the doors wouldn't open. The flight leader exclaimed; "You [went to the bathroom] out of the relief tube, didn't you!" then said "Drop the [expletive] bombs! The doors will bust open!"Mac said that despite his misgivings, he did as he was ordered and the bombs "safely" broke through the doors. The open doors resulted in an uncomfortable ride home, partly because the broken door was banging against the plane, but mostly because it let in a wind storm carrying air that was -35°F. Mac and his crew had indeed relieved themselves using the relief tube. I should probably mention that the relief tube on a B24 was designed (albeit poorly) for this use. Apparently, the cold air at 20,000 feet over Europe was enough to freeze anything coming out of the relief tube over the bomb bay doors.
As a result of their experience, Mac and his crew had learned not to use the relief tube. Instead, they relieved themselves into their flak helmets. During a later mission, where Mac had to descend to a lower level to make his bombing run, he started to take heavy flak. At this point you may see where this is going...
He said the flak sounded like a hail storm on the skin of the plane. It was at this point that his training and survival instincts took over. He reached under his seat and quickly put on his flak helmet...Fortunately for Mac, the temperature in the airplane was well below zero and had frozen the contents of his flak helmet. He told me that the helmet was standing 6" off his head and looked very amusing to the co-pilot, who made sure everyone on board knew what was going on.
