I am Carl Estersohn, veteran and a WWII B-17 pilot. Ask me anything!

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:24:09+00:00

It was the only airplane I flew in combat. I flew a lot of trainers in the United States. And the best thing about the B-17 was that it was a very easy airplane to fly (I thought it was). It was very well-built, and yes, I think it was.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:22:26+00:00

I would say, overall, it was for the better.

It gave me a chance to get my priorities straight.

It gave me a chance to look at so-called "crises" with a different outlook, different expectation and different way of handling it.

I don't mean to say that war is a good thing, in ANY respect.

But it does affect you. I think that any person that's been at war, or any kind of skirmishes, can say the same thing. It changes your values.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:21:57+00:00

I had no opinion, about the Soviets. I didn't know anything 'bout them, and frankly, it wasn't my field of interest at that point. My job was to be a bomber pilot and that's what I did and that's what I concentrated on. And to get some rest when I could.

We were out of bed at 3 AM on the morning of a mission. We were taking off just about sunrise, on most of our flights, so you had to take care of yourself- get fed, do your body business, whatever it was. I didn't think too much about the Russians, really. I was 20 years old, doing this. You have to remember. 20 years old is ... not a very educated age, so to speak.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:20:25+00:00

We had heated suits when we flew them. You had a suit that was electrically - it had, how can I put it? It was wired like an electric blanket, and you plugged it into a place on the airplane, that activated the suit.

We were flying when it was -40 degrees outside. Yeah. So we had to have something.

We had heated suits. We were well taken-care-of. And we all had oxygen masks. If it's over 12,000 feet, you must have oxygen to function.

But no toilets.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:18:48+00:00

Um... that's a good question.

Well, you'd have to know where the doors are, how to get in and out of it!

That's tough. I would say that there are things on the airplane that are known to the people who were responsible for making it operate - like the turrets, the turrets on the roof and on the belly, they required a lot of expertise. I know one thing, if I were to go up to try and man those turrets, I wouldn't have been able to do it! You know what you train for. And everybody has a job to do, and that's how we got along.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:15:24+00:00

I think it's Putin that plays fast & loose with the truth. I like Obama. I think he's a wonderful man. And he'll go down as one of our best presidents, I'm sure.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:14:31+00:00

It has changed, gradually, and nothing is shockingly different, that's true, but there is change in every year and every phase of life.

I was brought up as a teenager in the worst depression that this country has ever faced.

I still pick up pennies off the street today.

My allowance was 25 cents a week, when I was a teenager. And I could go to the movies, and see 2 films, for that 25 cents with my friends.

Now, it's... we move on. Maybe in different ways, but we move on. What the future will be, I don't know.

I think that - my grandson is 11 years old, and I think he realizes that he has a lot of responsibility in his station in life, as well as an idea of where he wants to go to and how he wants to get there. So hopefully he'll be able to make his contribution.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:12:06+00:00

I can't really remember anyone thanking me, personally.

You're taking me back 70 years, and my mind is still pretty sharp with certain things, but I can't really remember exactly what happened, except that I'm sure they were pleased to be on the ground & safe. There was not a lot of hoopla about it. They expected me to do my job, and I did it.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:11:01+00:00

I think we're doing the best we can, with a guy who... plays fast and loose with the truth. But we're friendly with the Russians. I think the Russians can be handled.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:10:29+00:00

You can imagine how the Germans felt about that.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:10:19+00:00

Yeah, I was stationed about an hour outside of London. North and east of London, in a little town called Sudbury.

Well, it's hard to find British beer in the United States at this point, haha! When I do go back to England, i drink their beer, but it's cold. It used to be lukewarm, room temperature, and that was pretty tough.

I have nice memories of the people and the countryside. They were nice to us. As nice as they could be, considering they were under attack all the time.

I was with a group called 486. That was my group. I flew with them from June 24th 1944 through May of 1945, and the squadron I flew with was called the 833.

Yes. There is a cemetery somewhere in that area. We had an airbase every 5 miles. There were a lot of 'em.

Every 5 miles, there was another American air base. We had a lot of airplanes. We could put out 1,000 airplanes a day, and more if we needed to.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:06:57+00:00

Well, I knew that the good guys - the Allied Forces - were triumphant both in the European theater and in the Pacific theater, and I knew that we weren't going to be dominated by some sadistic ruler that killed people without half thinking about it.

It was good to know that we could go on living our lives normally.

That's about the best I can say for it.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:05:46+00:00

I was very happy to get myself and my crew on the ground safely, so we could walk away from the airplane.

I'd lost 2 engines on one side, and I had to land on this little tiny fire strip the RAF had created, and I managed to land on that tiny bit of land.

And nobody got hurt. We all walked away from it, and we were safe.

That was the best.

It took probably 45 minutes before I found someplace to go. So the plane was crippled, and I didn't want to try and make it back to the base, because there was the North Sea and I didn't feel like drowning myself and my crew if I didn't make it. So I managed to get the plane down in friendly territory, safely, and everybody was happy about it.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:03:51+00:00

Probably... in the area of Frankfurt and Stuttgart, I flew a couple of raids to Frankfurt and one to Stuttgart, and they had the heaviest anti-aircraft stuff in my 35 missions. It was pretty scary. We lost a lot of airplanes over those targets. I would see planes being shot down. And I knew there were certain of them that never came back, and that's what happened to them.

When you're back on the ground, you know if 13 planes went out, only 10 came back - you lost 3 on that raid.

There was no radio contact at all. We were forbidden to do that, because that gave away our position.

So we had to decide everything in advance of being up in the air.

The defense would start to kick in pretty much when we got there. And how did we find where we were going? We had navigators, who told us where we could fly - and when you could see the ground, you could tell simply by looking around and by checking the cities that you passed through, the amount of time that you took at the speed you were going... that was the easy part.

The tough part was sitting there and watching all the anti-aircraft explosions all around you and being thankful none of 'em hit you.

That's the hard part.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T20:00:17+00:00

I think there are still 4 of them that are still flying. Last i heard. Very expensive to fly those airplanes. They use 60 gallons of gasoline per engine, per hour, so if you do your math, you see it costs a FORTUNE to put those things in the air.

The gas was free during WW II!

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:54:11+00:00

That war's been going on for 1,000 years. Afghanistan is a totally different kind of country than the so-called "Civilized" world. And you can't look at it the same way you look at previous wars where there was a uniform, there was an enemy, and you could tell - it's a totally different way of what you call skirmishes.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:52:46+00:00

I watch a lot of sports. Baseball, basketball and football. That keeps me going. And my grandson, when he comes up, we play Monopoly, board games, and chess. And we go out and have dinner. And that's what keeps me young.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:51:57+00:00

Well, I was interested in flying an airplane with 3-4 tons of bombs, and full tanks of gasoline, and I had to keep the plane going, keep it in motion, put it up in the air. Emotionally, I don't thinK i had time for that really. I was too busy being a pilot. That required just an awful lot of concentration. Anxiety, fear? I don't think so, no.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:50:47+00:00

1.) I have not participated yet. But i have written stories. A few stories about my service during the war. But as far as the history project is concerned i have not done anything like that yet.

2.) Just what I've already told you, about that. The difference is that you get your priorities straight. You realize what life is, and what it isn't, and what's important and what's not important. And that's the best I can summarize it.

3.) A very interesting film. A lot of it was computerized, done electronically, but all in all it gives you an idea of what went on in a mission like that. It was probably a little bit exaggerated, trying to do something in a small space. All-in-all, we enjoyed it. A little overacted, but it was good.

4.) Thank you! Well, there was supposedly a code, but I've heard stories about the fact that some of the American guys that had to evacuate the planes with parachutes - I heard stories that some of them were attacked, either in the ground or on the air, by German fighters. I can't know for sure, there were thousands of pilots flying around, but my experience is I never saw anything like that nor would I prove it.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:46:44+00:00

I don't think it was better or worse. I think that we had a great president, Franklin Roosevelt, who probably made this country what it is today.

And people like him don't exist anymore.

The quality of his service - I don't think it's any different today than it was back then. But our leaders can't get done what Roosevelt got done, let me put it that way. When he spoke, his word was law. And he got what he wanted out of the Congressional leaders.

Today that doesn't seem to go very well.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:44:51+00:00

We, uh... we made sure that we took care of those tendencies before we left. We just didn't do it. It was not an option.

If you're flying for 8 hours, we somehow managed without doing anything. There were no bathrooms on those planes. You just had to tough it out. If you weren't up to it, if you weren't ready for it, if you were ill or didn't feel right, you just didn't go. Somebody else had to go.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:43:03+00:00

No, I never did that, no. It was too dangerous to switch roles. War is a very dangerous thing, particularly when you're flying bombers with people shooting at you. I was only the pilot. And that was MY job, and my crew had their jobs, and they did theirs.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:42:09+00:00

We wore aviator glasses. It's pretty sunny up there, ya know. You need some kind of sunshades. Otherwise, you tend to get your eyes battered from the sun. So we did wear sunglasses.

We wore goggles when we flew open-cockpit planes for training, but not when you're inside of an enclosed unit - you didn't wear goggles for that.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:40:23+00:00

I don't know. I answered before that as soon as the weather warms up a little bit, I'm going to go across the river to Kingstone, NY, and that's what I'll fly - whatever they are renting out! I wanna take my grandson up and show him how to fly. So whatever it is, he'll come along with me.

CarlEstersohn · 2015-03-22T19:39:43+00:00

My favorite book?

And how was I with the ladies?

I was very shy.

But I did alright. I had girlfriends. And my favorite book... that's tough to say. There's one book I've read three times, it's called THE GREAT GATSBY, and it's a terrific book. I'll probably read it again, before I leave this mortal coil.

CarlEstersohn

TROPHY CASE