Interview by Daniel Jackson, January 16, 2009
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Can you hear me okay?
Meyer Newell:
Yes, fine.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. First of all, I was wondering, when did you arrive in the CBI Theater?
Meyer Newell:
I guess, well, let’s see. I guess, it was late, probably about November of ’43. I guess, it’s ’44, but I got my wings in October of ’43, so in October. Probably, well, yeah, about November or December of ’43.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. And when you arrived in the theater, did you receive theater-specific training before going into combat?
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. Well, our group of fellows that came over together, we went over by plane, all across the—all down South America and across the Ascension Islands and across Africa and Aden, Arabia, and finally to Karachi, India. We were in Karachi about a week or ten days. And then we were sent to a place called Landhi Field, L-A-N-D-H-I.
Now, Landhi Field was the operational training facility for the Tenth and Fourteenth Air Force. And we were extremely lucky, our group of fellows that went through together with me, we were instructed and we were extremely lucky because the fellows that were acting as instructors at Landhi Field, the operational trainee center, were the legendary Flying Tigers. Guys like Tex Hill, Johnny Alison, Dallas Clinger, people like that were just unbelievable pilots who had thousands and thousands of hours in the air.
And the group of fellows that I was with, we had it pretty lucky, we had three hundred hours. And, of course, in the States, you could only do certain types of flying. You couldn’t go and do this, you couldn’t do that. But at Landhi Field, the training was no holds barred. In other words, when you went out on a flight for gunnery practice, or formation flying, or combat tactics, there were no restrictions. Whatever the flight leader tells you to do, you do it. And to give you an example: for example, the legendary Johnny Alison, who, I guess he became Secretary of Air [sic]. And, his signature, when you came in for a landing with him, we didn’t do it, but he would pull up, drop his wheels at the top of the loop, and land. And that was the way he landed every time he took off. And then, of course, if there were strafing missions, it was nothing if whoever was leading, a guy like Tex Hill, or Alison, or, particularly, Dallas Clinger, if he decided you were going to go inverted, you went inverted and shot your guns inverted. In other words, there were no holds barred. And we not only probably got about thirty or forty, or maybe, fifty hours there, we really learned how to fly. In the States, you couldn’t go pull this thing, couldn’t go this, couldn’t do that. But, in those hours at Landhi Field, we really learned how to fly. It was really amazing. And we were flying, actually, P-40s. Are you familiar with the P-40?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Meyer Newell:
Yeah, we learned with them first. Well, that was the type of planes that the Flying Tigers, the original Flying Tigers, flew. Then we were transferred from there. A group of us were transferred to the 528th Fighter Squadron. And we were stationed in Sookerating, which is in the Assam Valley. Actually, our living quarters were in a tea plantation. And originally there was Snow, myself, and Creech, and about four other guys joined as replacement pilots. And we flew, maybe, only four or five missions out of Sookerating. Then our whole squadron was transferred to a place in Burma called Tingkawk Sakan. Now, this was an amazing, amazing spot. It was in a valley where engineers were dropped in by parachute. They then took, oh, I guess, dynamite, and dynamited a whole strip of land. And eventually, they dropped in bulldozers that were pulled apart and they reassembled them and made a runway. And it was basically a dirt runway with some gravel. And they hollowed out one end of the strip, so you landed in one direction and took off in the opposite direction. And they hollowed out an area for your approach. But, yeah, it had about maybe thirty-five hundred feet and that was it.
And that was the most amazing—you know, we went in there, oh, almost at the beginning of the monsoon area. And our primary mission was to help the Merrill’s Marauders and the Wingate’s Raiders that were fighting the Japanese in the southern part of Burma from Myitkyina down to Rangoon. And we were there for, maybe, four or five months. And living conditions were almost pretty nonexistent. I mean, anything you lived in, you built yourself. There was sort of what we called these bashas. There were trees and then we’d take netting and put netting around and we’d use the tops of the ammunition cartons for a floor. You did that in order to keep the snakes and other pests from bothering you.
Now, we flew an awful lot of missions from there. We were kind of lucky, when we joined the squadron, I had what I considered a pretty poor commanding officer. He had come over with the squadron and he was part of, I guess, the National Guard in Georgia or some place, Major Alexander. But we were there maybe no more than a month and he was relieved of command. And we were probably the luckiest, luckiest guys ever to get a West Pointer, a guy that I consider was the greatest pilot and help for me, anyhow, by the name of Jack Habecker, who is actually buried, right now, up in West Point. But, he was an amazing man. He had a tremendous mathematical mind and he started leading missions. The ability of the squadron changed overnight, he was that good. And we flew tons of missions. And the missions were just strafing and dive-bombing, primarily.
In fact, we had one mission that I particularly remember where we were ordered by somebody in the Tenth Air Force, I guess one of the higher commands, to run a high-speed strafing mission over Mandalay, which was a Japanese base at the time. And I remember this particularly because I was flying Habecker’s wing. And we came over at about eighteen thousand feet and I screwed up, they lost me. I did a wingover, went down at high speed, but I don’t even remember, there was a controller that you hit that would keep the airplane from fogging up inside. It changed the temperature, so I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. All I could see was Habecker. And I was on his wing and I went across the field. And we were doing, easy, over four hundred miles an hour. Because what they had done, they had taken off all the bomb racks, anything to speed us up and we went across that field. But Habecker shot, I shot, but nobody hit anything, we were just going too fast. And when we got back to the squadron and they debriefed us, nobody really hit anything. It was too fast for this type of strafing mission.
And then after that, we flew constant missions covering the Merrill’s Marauders, who really, really had it rough. These were the guys who were fighting in the jungle, particularly around the area of Myitkyina where the Japanese had advanced to the highest point, almost three-quarters of the part of Burma. And we would fly, you know, we got surrounded because it was very easy—we had no radio waves, but once you were in the valley, all the valleys in Burma lead north and south, so if you hit the right valley you didn’t need anything anyway. You couldn’t see anything until you were right over the field. And that was quite interesting. And we flew an awful lot of missions there.
Then we were ordered to join the Fourteenth Air Force and our squadron was sent east. And we flew from—well, what we actually did, in fact, it was one of the more interesting missions that I flew. We were sent back from our base in Tingkawk Sakan to Dinjan, to change planes. At that time, most of the missions that I was flying, I was flying the A-36, which had a service ceiling limited to about twelve thousand feet. You couldn’t get above that, and it had an Allison engine, dive brakes—fast as all hell, probably faster than all the P-51s, but their service ceiling was twelve thousand feet. I had an interesting—I’m not taking up too much of your time, am I?
Daniel Jackson:
Not at all, sir.
Meyer Newell:
I had an interesting flight: I was sent back—I was still fairly new at the squadron, and four of us were sent back, ahead of the squadron, to fly from that base in Tingkawk Sakan to Dinjan to get more planes and then we were going to China, the whole squadron.
What happened, I was sent back, and the leader of the flight was a fellow by the name of Woodcock. Woodcock had bailed out out at Tingkawk Sakan. And on his way back into Tingkawk Sakan, in the jungle, he lost a tremendous amount of blood to leeches. And in getting back, with his .45 was brushing his leg and he shot a hole in his foot.
So Woodcock, who was a captain at that point, was leading the flight from Tingkawk Sakan to Dinjan. And he, oh, I guess it was the operations officer by the name of Clendenin, he said to us—to Woodcock primarily because he was leading the flight—he said, “There’s a storm between here and Dinjan. So you ought to go up Northern Burma and then cross what they called the Ledo Pass.” And there, you didn’t need more than the twelve thousand feet if you stayed in the valley and come across into India.
And the two of us had A-36s. And the other two had 51As, which had a little better service ceiling, but not great. But he told Woodcock, “If you run into any bad weather, turn back.” Well, we started through, heading north, and boy it was black as all hell. And Woodcock said, “Well, let’s put our nose in and see how tough it is.” Well, I didn’t trust anybody in those days. My element leader was a guy by the name of Richard Newcomb. He did the same as me, we uncaged our instruments. Normally you don’t cage your instruments when you’re flying formation. And we started through the pass. And the first thing we know we were going maybe a hundred miles an hour, 120 miles an hour, all these winds—it was [inaudible 00:13:29]. And then, all of a sudden, Newcomb said, “Stick with me!” And we lost the other two guys. We found the pass. He brought us down into the pass, and went through to Dinjan and landed. We called back to the squadron and they had heard two planes had landed at a small strip between us and Ledo. But when the squadron came back and we didn’t see Woodcock, and I think this guy’s name was Roth.
What finally happened, we were on our way to China, oh, I think maybe two months later, they found Woodock and the other guy, side-by-side, in the mountain. They had lost their way and didn’t fly instruments or turn back and they hit the side of a mountain. That was pretty much interesting. The next interesting thing though—this is not taking too much of your time?
Daniel Jackson:
No. You have plenty of time. Don’t worry about that.
Meyer Newell:
Alright. Then the next interesting thing I had was on the way from Burma, we went back to India, to Dinjan. From Dinjan we flew over the Hump, on our own to Kunming. Kunming was a big base on the other side of the, I guess you’d call the Himalayas. We landed there. And then they decided our squadron was going up to Chengtu. Chengtu was in the area that they had built—we knew nothing about it, of course, but they had about four strips there. Each runway was over ten-thousand foot. There was no such a thing as ten-thousand-foot runways! But these were built for the B-29s, by the Chinese labor.
When we went over, they gave us B-25s, for every I think maybe twelve planes. I think we were about thirty planes altogether. And we took off from Kunming, we had about a four-hundred-mile flight north to Chengtu. But the B-25s led us in between the clouds and the first thing you know, we didn’t see any more B-25s, so we all started dead-reckoning into Chengtu. And it was a very interesting thing.
We got into the area and we started looking around. And sure enough, we see—I saw it and a couple of the other guys that were in on my flight, saw this gigantic airstrip. I mean, we had never seen anything that big. And we split up to take a look around and it was already—oh, I’d say dusk. And all the guys were so happy to see the ground, that we were landing in two different directions!
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, no.
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. And it was rather interesting. I told you this guy Snow, Harold Snow, he clipped wing tips with somebody, but neither one of them were hurt and the planes were able to continue.
We stayed there in Chengtu, providing escort to the coast for the B-29s. And then when we finished that, doing our fighter-bomber tactics, hitting the railroads, which was our primary targets. And from there we moved up to Hsian. And from time to time, groups of four or five of us were sent up to a smaller strip to the north. And then we ran missions from then on, primarily against the railroads.
I was one of the lucky ones, never got shot down. I got hit once or twice, but I never had any very serious things, like my friend Creech or probably Hank Snow, you probably read of their escapades in the magazine.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Right.
Meyer Newell:
That was pretty much it. And then I hit, I think, about seventy, eighty missions, and then the flight surgeon decided I should go home for a thirty-day rest and rehabilitation. Snow had left, Creech and all the old-timers had left and so we were getting a lot of replacement pilots at that point. So I got home, left my footlocker, all my souvenirs, and uniforms. And I was supposed to go home for a thirty-day leave and rehabilitation. And I went home through Cairo and I was lucky, we had a number two priority, which meant that you went home and came right back. But I ran into a friend at the Cairo airport and I asked him to delay getting my orders, so I could spend a couple of days in Cairo, which I did.
I got back and had my thirty-day leave and got as far as Greensboro, North Carolina, on my way back. I was supposed to fly out on my way back to China when they dropped the big bomb. And once they dropped the big bomb, all movement was stopped. And I tried to get into a fighter squadron and you couldn’t get into one. And finally, I remember I was sent to a place called Craig Field in Selma, Alabama. And what was my job? It was to teach French cadets advanced flight training. I had no—well, you know, I had high school French, but I was not good at talking French, their French. So I did that for about a month and a half. And then what happened was, shooting landings, I was in the backseat of an AT-6. And we’re shooting landings when this French cadet, he put too much bottom rudder on me on the final turn into the runway. He put me on my back, so I rolled it out, got around, got back, went to see the CO, and I said, “This is not for me. If I can’t get to a fighter squadron, I want out.” I had more than enough points. At that time it worked on points. So I went back to college. That’s my life. So I had a couple of scary missions once in a while, but most of them were—you know, we were kids and it was fun.
You know, we talked about it—I think I told you about this—Hank Snow, he probably had more combat missions than any pilot in the Air Force, okay? He wound up, through three wars, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, with 666 missions, which is almost unbelievable. And the only time that he was shot down or had trouble was with me. I was with him when he had to walk out, had to bail out. But he was a sensational stick and rudder man, I mean.
When we were at Hsian, the big problem we had in the beginning, gasoline, getting bombs, we were always short, always waiting for these things. You had realize, even the B-29s when they were in Chengtu, they’d be getting gasoline, they’d be getting bombs—it was ferried from the States. So, you know, it was a forgotten war. We used to sit there in Hsian, China, which, as you probably know, is now the site of a big dig where all these ceramic horses and soldiers were found. That wasn’t known in those days. We’d sit on the end of the runway and we’d play games or make wagers. One of the things I remember is that I made a lot of money betting on how fast Snow could put the airplane on the ground. Because he came across—and I remember these figures and he doesn’t dispute them, I see him from time to time. We have reunions. He’d hit the end of the runway and twenty-seven seconds later, he’d be down on the ground. I made a lot of money betting on him. He was a hell of a stick and rudder man. He was unbelievable.
Do you have any other questions I can answer for you?
Daniel Jackson:
I do, actually, if you don’t mind, sir.
Meyer Newell:
No.
Daniel Jackson:
First of all, you talked about how the airstrip at Tingkawk Sakan was basically built in the middle of the jungle. Do you remember about how tall the trees were around the field?
Meyer Newell:
Oh, yeah. I’d say, oh, maybe a hundred feet, something like that.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. So they were pretty tall?
Meyer Newell:
Oh, they were big, tall trees. What they did on the one end of the runway, the one that you jumped into, you’re landing into or taking off, the runway—and they built it from mud and the dirt, so the runway was about, oh, twenty feet higher than that pit. So when they built it, they sort of cut out a space to fly in. And you’ve got to give these engineers and the people that built this just tremendous credit. Our life there wasn’t too bad because we had one, well he was basically an engineering officer, by the name of Elmer Todd, who was born and raised in the Montana and Colorado area. And he could do anything. When I say anything: He dug a well for us. He made an oven out of twigs and things like that, some of that mud. He was our lifeline, as far as we were concerned. Elmer was [inaudible], he could do anything. And he was just an amazing man. He made our life a lot simpler. You know? A lot easier for us to live.
I had one incident there, I don’t like to remember it because it’s the only airplane I ever cracked up. I was taking off on a mission; I don’t remember what my position was, element leader, or what, but taking off on this one particular mission, as I got over that strip at the end and started clearing the trees, my engine started sputtering. And you can’t—you know, the one thing you’re not supposed to do in an airplane when you take off is turn back. But I dropped the bombs. You know, I just jettisoned them without arming them so they didn’t go off. With that, I had sort of a little jump, so I decided, “To Hell with it.” After Snow and Creech and everybody else had taken days to get back to the airstrip, I decided, “I’m not going to walk out.” So, I did the exact thing that I wasn’t supposed to do, I had enough altitude to turn back. I turned back and I realized that I didn’t have enough speed, so I put the nose down and tried to increase the speed, which I did. And then, as I told you, it was about a maybe a seventy-five-foot hollow at the end of the runway. I dove for the hollow and tried to make the runway and I didn’t quite make it. And I made the runway, but I took my wheels off and so I skidded down the runway. Of course, I wasn’t hurt or anything, but I guess my operations officer wasn’t too happy, but I was safe and happy, so I was happy.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I mean, if you’d bailed out, they wouldn’t have any airplane left.
Meyer Newell:
Well, if I had bailed out—well, he was just a pain in the ass. In fact, he never came to one of our reunions. Not one guy in our squadron has anything good to say about our operations officer. I mean, he was a son of a bitch to put it exactly. And what happened there is I skidded down the runway and bent the prop. And I guess they probably salvaged the rest of the airplane.
I had one other bad incident there and that was another one that probably got me in trouble with that guy, Clendenin. We had only been in the squadron about—maybe about a month. And a rainy day we took off on a mission, four planes, I was tail-end Charlie. And what’s interesting, the same guy was my element leader by the name of Woodcock again. Remember? He was the guy eventually that was killed.
We took off on a mission, did strafing, and came back. And it was muddy and rainy. And, earlier as I said, we had nowhere to really land, but having instruments it wasn’t that bad. We got in the first time, we landed a little hot. And the idea is, once you hit the ground, you’re supposed to hit throttle and clear yourself because the man coming behind you has to have room to land. Well, when the first guy did that, but my roommate, a kid by the name of Baker, he landed short and I guess I didn’t give it enough throttle to get out and get that airplane out of the way. Woodcock landed hot and unfortunately crawled up the back of Baker. And I came in, I was the fourth airplane, but they shot a red flare, which meant that I had to pull up and go around. Unfortunately Baker and Woodcock’s plane, Woodcock climbed up on Baker. And what happened, Baker got trapped in the airplane and the plane exploded. And I’m trying to remember who it was exactly, but two of the ground people climbed up on the airplane and tried to get Baker out, but just as they got up there and were trying to get his seatbelt released, the plane started to explode and he burned.
In the meantime, I’m flying around and I didn’t have that much gas left. And this Clendenin says, “Do you have enough gas to get back to Dinjan?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, then you’re going to have to bail out,” and I said, “No way.” So I kept circling and circling and hoping they would clear up the field, which they didn’t. Finally, I decided I’d come in and try a landing, which I did. After what happened to Creech and the other people, I didn’t want to bail out into that jungle. So I came in as slow as I can, with my flaps full flaps, and dropped the airplane maybe about two hundred feet off to the end of the runway. Luckily nothing happened, except that I got in trouble with Clendenin again. But I was able to get out. And unfortunately, Baker didn’t make it. There was nothing left of the airplane, but just ashes. That was it. And that was one of the worst things that happened to me.
And one other bad incident I can remember, we were flying out of Hsian and we were sent to hit the railroad tracks on the northern part, on the way to Peking. In those days Beijing was called Peking. And we were out in the middle of nowhere and the leader of the flight was a fellow by the name of Ritchie Newcomb. At that point, he was leading the flight. I was an element leader. And then we caught this train in the middle of nowhere and we hit the locomotive on the first pass, blew it up. And all the troops jumped onto the ground and started firing on us. We made another, I think one other pass, a second pass. And then Newcomb said, “Let’s make one more pass.” And what happened, Newcomb must’ve been hit because he went right over the train, right into the ground. And that was the end of Newcomb. The rest of us flew back and had no problem. But the hardest part of the whole mission, a fellow by the name of Roundtree was the assistant operations officer and received word that Newcomb had completed his over a hundred missions at that point. And his orders had come through to return home on rest and rehabilitation.
Now, Roundtree tried to reach us. He said he called for at least a half an hour, trying to reach us. And, of course, he never did. So that left a bad taste in everybody’s mind.
Daniel Jackson:
Wow. Let’s see here. I had just a couple more questions. On missions in Burma were you guys ever bothered by Japanese fighters?
Meyer Newell:
Almost never. We had control of the air in Burma. And most of our missions were dive-bombing. And one of the things that we did, particularly when I was still flying the A-36, they had dive brakes. And the only problem was that you couldn’t depend on them. Sometimes the one on one wing would be open and the other one wouldn’t and you’d have a hell of a job. So, eventually we decided we wired them down so that we couldn’t use them. They also gave us those preliminary rockets, which were just three tubes hanging under each wing with a rocket in each tube, but they were very, very inadequate. The item that we used a lot, which we never liked and hated dropping because—was napalm. I remember with the Japanese, you’d see them in trenches or something and you had napalm, you’d come in on your run and drop your napalm. And the problem with that is you’d just smell everything—the burning flesh, everything. That was the one thing nobody liked to drop. But that was quite the item. It’s the kind of thing where just you could drop these tanks. It looked like, just like you have these belly tanks you used for additional gasoline, except you would drop those and they would just burst apart, just liquid flame would go into wherever you dropped it. That was the worst type of weapon that we used. Nobody liked to drop that.
Daniel Jackson:
Did you use that in Burma or just in China?
Meyer Newell:
We used it in Burma more than we used it in China.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. I’m interested, could you describe what a typical mission was like flying close air support to the troops at Myitkyina?
Meyer Newell:
Well, we had a controller. They usually, 90 percent of the time, particularly in Myitkyina, we had somebody there that would direct us. And usually, a flight of four planes would go. And then right after that, twenty to thirty minutes later, another flight. In other words, we’d be programmed. As I told you, we got the Presidential Citation just in 2005 I think it was, sixty-some-odd years, when we should’ve got it. We kept almost constant cover on Myitkyina. So it was just unbelievable. They’d tell us where to hit and where to end. And we were able to do exactly what they wanted.
Daniel Jackson:
What kind of targets were you hitting?
Meyer Newell:
Troops, primarily.
Daniel Jackson:
Were they entrenched, or out in the open, or in buildings?
Meyer Newell:
No, no. They were usually dug in pretty well. There were almost no buildings left in Myitkyina at that point. It was around the airfield, and we were trying to control the airfield.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. So most of your missions to Myitkyina were in the vicinity of the airfield, right near the front lines?
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. Right. And not enough credit given to the Merrill’s Marauders who were fighting in that area. These guys, just unbelievable. I mean, this jungle was rough, tough. And not one of them, when we started to walk out, we saw these troops come past us, every one of them were sick, dysentery, malaria, just unbelievable. They never got the credit they deserved.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. How far from the front lines would you be bombing? Would it just be a few meters or a hundred yards?
Meyer Newell:
I would say anywhere from fifty yards to a hundred yards. You know, they would use some colored smoke to indicate where they were, so that we wouldn’t hit them. We’d try not to. We never got any feedback that we were hitting our own troops—or the Merrill’s. We were doing a great job. And primarily because of Habecker. He was just an unbelievable CO.
Daniel Jackson:
How long would missions like that last from takeoff to landing?
Meyer Newell:
I would say an hour—hour-and-a-half at the most.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. And would you usually just come in, make one pass on the target or would you stay?
Meyer Newell:
Oh, no. We’d stay over the target, making different runs, until we were out of ammunition. We had more than enough gasoline.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Let’s see. How were those missions briefed? Were you just told to basically fly to Myitkyina and then the controller—
Meyer Newell:
No, no, no, no. We had a squadron intelligence officer who was receiving orders as to where to hit, what part to hit, and so forth and so on. And he would brief us exactly what we were supposed to be looking for. And the flight leader would attack the target and we’d follow his orders.
Daniel Jackson:
How did the weather affect your operations there?
Meyer Newell:
It didn’t. Even though, like I said, even though it was the monsoon area that we were flying in. As long as we were in the right valley, navigation was no problem. You could fly up the valley and look until you saw the strip, then do quick flip-over and come in for landing. The weather was no problem. And as pouring as it ever was, and as heavy as it was, we’d go out in any weather. What we’d do, actually, in the morning, we would send out a plane who would fly a weather mission. And they flew it and come back and we’d have a good idea of what to expect over the target.
Daniel Jackson:
Now, you guys also flew missions behind the lines, attacking Japanese transportation, right?
Meyer Newell:
Oh, yeah. Well, actually, there were more railroads to hit where we were. And actually we didn’t do our railroad busting, which—and trucks and things there and railroads and things like that, that happened after we got into China. Most of our missions in Burma were against troops.
Daniel Jackson:
Gotcha. Okay. Was there much ground fire when you’d go on those missions?
Meyer Newell:
Oh, yeah. Always.
Daniel Jackson:
Was it just small-arms fire? For the missions against troops, did—
Meyer Newell:
Mostly small-arms. The one thing about the Japanese—and I guess it’s their ferocity—no matter how bad you caught them, if they were not in a trench or something like that, if they were out on a road or in an open area, they’d just stand there with their rifles, shooting back at you. Unbelievable. That’s, well, I told you what happened—I told you, on that railroad mission when Newcomb was killed by small-arms fire. We’re sure what happened there is when the rifle hit him and he just went straight in. [inaudible 00:41:09], I guess that was their creed.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. I had one more question for you: Were you on the December 1944 mission to Hankow?
Meyer Newell:
No. That’s one of my biggest disappointments. As I told you, in fact, Bill Creech didn’t go on that. I don’t think Snow went either. What happened, Clendenin, we all thought, was a coward. He didn’t like me. I think a little bit of antisemitism was in there, but he did not pick me to go on that mission. And some of the newer guys, for example, Dave Thompson, Red Hess, guys that were new got on the mission and I didn’t get on it. I was one of the few guys that didn’t get that. It was a turkey shoot. One of the guys that came back said it was like shooting ducks. And we missed that mission.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. I talked to Hank Snow on Tuesday and he said that—
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. He’s quite a guy.
Daniel Jackson:
He said that he was back in India, ferrying a new airplane over or something and pretty upset to miss that.
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. A lot of good guys missed that mission, but it was one of the few missions, by the way, that Clendenin flew. He never went on the tough missions. That’s what—you know, I hate to make this indictment, but I just didn’t like the guy, I didn’t trust him. And I thought he—well, I’ll just leave it at that.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, yeah, that’s important in a combat squadron though.
Meyer Newell:
Oh, yeah. You know, there’s people you like and people you don’t like.
Daniel Jackson:
So he was in charge of the squadron at that point though?
Meyer Newell:
Pardon? Yes, he eventually, for a short period, became CO. Habecker was sent to take over a group. And I think Clendenin was the CO for a short while. And then Roundtree after that. And then Chennault. I think Chennault, after I left, on my way home, Chennault became the CO for a while.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. He was the group CO.
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. What’s interesting then, and we’re most proud of—particularly Hank Snow and myself and Creech, but the other boys, Dave Thompson—is that eventually we were given the Presidential Citation, sixty-some-odd years later. And that was primarily for the work that we did in Burma. I mean, we were in the air constantly, regardless of the weather, regardless of conditions. Most of us had dysentery at that point, so we were in bad shape, but we just went out and flew the missions. It was quite a time in that area.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I appreciate you giving the time to talk to me, sir. A lot of good information. And I will send your book back next week, so you can—
Meyer Newell:
Whenever you get a chance. There’s no hurry on it, but be sure and send it back.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. I appreciate that. Do you have any photographs of yourself during that time?
Meyer Newell:
Oh, I probably do, yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
If you wouldn’t mind either scanning them in, sending me a disk, or if I could borrow them and scan them in, that’d be great if I could use those.
Meyer Newell:
Well, you know, I’m one of those people that, even though before I retired I used the computer, I don’t keep a computer at home at all. I’m now called “computer illiterate.” But, I mean, if you would mail me your email maybe I can have my daughter or granddaughter email it to you.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Meyer Newell:
All right?
Daniel Jackson:
Sure. That would work great. I would appreciate that.
Meyer Newell:
All right. And best of luck to you.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Meyer Newell:
You’re on schedule to graduate?
Daniel Jackson:
Right. I’ll graduate on May 27th. I’m looking forward to it.
Meyer Newell:
Yeah. I guess you heard all the excitement of what happened not too far from our area. I know the area very well, that A320 that went into the Hudson River.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. I saw that.
Meyer Newell:
What’s most amazing is that the guy had to make a quick decision. And as you can see, really, by his background, he has a tremendous amount of hours. But he also had that fighter pilot background. And I think he had that decision to make, either try Teterboro or the water. And I think he made the right decision. I’d say 75 percent of the pilots that would’ve been in his place probably would’ve tried Teterboro. I think that he made the right decision.
Daniel Jackson:
Right person at the right place at the right time.
Meyer Newell:
Exactly. Lucky people that were on his plane.
Daniel Jackson:
I’m pretty sure they’re all very grateful.
Meyer Newell:
I’m sure they are. Nice talking to you, Daniel. Lots of luck in your future.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, thank you, sir. I will talk to you later.
Meyer Newell:
All right. Bye-bye.
Daniel Jackson:
Bye.