WEBVTT

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(patriotic music)

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- My name is Milton E. Johnson, Milton Eugene Johnson.

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And I was a Junior, so everybody called me Gene,

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and that's been my nickname.

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Pearl Harbor happened in 1941.

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So I went down and joined.

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We left Matagorda in March of 1944,

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got into combat in October.

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About six months, but we, I went through some

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training in the P-47 aircraft.

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We were told, when we got into,

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just before we left the states,

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that fully trained P-47 pilots.

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They told me to make out a will (chuckles),

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and gave me a form to do that (laughs).

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Was a good idea.

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And moving on to St. De-ji, we began fighting missions.

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We liked that one of our missions was like,

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we went out with flights of 12,

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three flights, red, white, blue flight.

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So we brought, waited up two bombs,

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each airplane, total of 24, we were

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extremely accurate, if we could dive bomb.

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Sometimes because of weather, we'd have to

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what we called glide bomb, where you'd

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kind of throw the bomb at the target.

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So it actually went down there.

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When we dive bomb, it was like putting them in a barrel.

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Ralph Jenkins was on leave in the States,

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he was our commander for, even though we had

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five every commanders, four were shot down.

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(laughs)

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When he came back, he flew his first mission

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after returnin' with me, and, I kept

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telling him, "Let's get these airplanes up,

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because of heavy blackout here."

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And he began drawing flack, he got zeroed in

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by a flack position that hit him eight times.

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I could see the, I could see him and he had,

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because it has white explosion, and uh.

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When he flew the airplane back and uh,

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it was on fire by the way. (laughs)

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He had fire in the right wheel well and,

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he says, "How do I look?", and I said, "Well, you're

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"not bad but you've got a fire in your right wheel well."

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(laughs)

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So, anyway he flew all the way home

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and landed, the tire burned away, it fell away from the rim.

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So he landed on the rim of the,

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with sparks goin' right down the runway.

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He said, "I knew fear", but he said, "I also knew

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"I had an airplane and I was gonna make it back, if I,

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"I had the best chance of anybody out here

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"to get back with this airplane than

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"the others who were being lost so fast."

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We made a difference.

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Without question, we shortened the war,

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and we saved a lot of lives on both sides.

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So that would be my most memorable moment.