@Sherrick_13, @ShermiesRules @NoMoAmmo

I need your guys' (and other members') help in interpretating an 82nd trooper's misadventures in Market Garden.  

"I carried a land mine in my left leg jump suit pocket and a Gammon grenaded in my  left leg pocket; two fragmentation grenades in my jump jacket pockets; K rations, sniper rifle, an ammo bag with 200 plus rounds of ammo, gas mask, pack and other items.

....(T)the plane started filling with smoke.  As I looked across dthe planeI noticed that Lt. Rynkiewicz had been hit in the left knee and Hatfield, the BAR man, was hit on the back of his hand.  To my right,  a  trooper was on the floor of the plane, again, I think it was Rideout.  I remember saying, 'let's get the hell out of here,' and we started standing up.  The Air Force sergeant dove out thee door of the  plane.  Within seconds, the plane was so full of smoke you could not see anything.   Some men near the cokcpit of the e plane started coughing and pushing for the door.At that time, others and I fell through the floor of the plnae. We were hooked up and when my chute opened, I could smell  flesh and see the skin hanging from my  face and hands.  I had released my rifle when the flames burned my hand."

He couldn't have been thinking of jumping with his rifle in his hands, could he?  That scope was not durable and could break or gete jarred.   Additionally you need your hands on the riser and yank up right before you land to soften the landing (in college I jumped 5X).  Could he have had the 03A4 in a modified Griswold bag but with burnt hands how does he release it?

I read from Walsh's Look Out Below! that as a rifle grenadier (M1903 w/grenade launcher) would jump w/rifle vertical. If it was horizontal, he couldn't get out the jump door. Per James Gavin Onto Berlin (or something) he jumped with it vertical and then once out of the aircraft, moved it horizontal (no broken jaw that way).

The "released my rifle" leaves me baffled. The Griswold bag had to be modified by a rigger to be longer to accomodate a M9103A4. As mentioned, some of the experienced 82nd jumped into Normandy w/out the Griswold. They wanted to be fight ready when they landed. The 101 was new and didn't know better.

@NoMoAmmo @Sherrick13  @ShermiesRules

Just dawned on me and I dunno the answer.  If a  paratrooper was captured, he couldn't meet the requisite # of jumps to continue receiving jump pay.  So if he's sitting in a PoW camp as a kriege, he wouldn't get that extra $50 a month would he?  Thoughts?

In WW2 they didn't jump with their weapon in a case.

You pull up on the risers to steer yourself to a better landing spot.
You do not have to pull up on the risers at all in order to land.

Even if you lose your jump pay (like everyone in the Gulf War did - 10 months in the sand with no jumps), you still get your combat pay to offset it.

Air Force sgt in WWII??

Some times the Air Corps was called the Air Force but it was still the Army then.

Many jumped their weapons "Exposed" (without padded weapons case) to get into the fight quickly.

Sounds like bullshit.

Hawkins mines were usually strapped to the outer ankle.  The left leg jump suit pocket and the left leg pocket are kinda the same thing.  I don't think you could put a gammon grenade anywhere other then the cargo pocket.  I don't think BARS were in paratroopers. Glidermen, like DeGlopper, carried them but that was it. In modern day C-130s and such you have loadmasters in the tail of the plane but back then I don't think they had them, or needed them, so why is there a crewman at the tail of the plane? I don't ever recall reading about WWII paratroopers going out the door of a C47 with someone back there.  I assumed any enlisted crew would be up near the front so they didn't get in anyone's way.

"others and I fell through the floor of the plane."

Horse. Shit.

The skin of a C-47 isn't that thick.  An explosive device that is big enough to blow out the floor of a C-47 big enough so a man can fall through it, but doesn't harm him or the others?   That sounds like an 88 which is a twenty pound shell with approx two pounds of HE. An 88mm is blowing 18 pounds of frag if it hits the belly of the plane.   I doubt a 20mm or 37mm would make that kind of hole. Stand in a C-47 when one  of those hits the floor of your C47 and you aren't falling through any holes in any plane. The man would be dead.  Control cables probably cut, plane crashing, etc.


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"the plane was so full of smoke you could not see anything"

C-47s are flying at 100-110 knots with a door that's about 25 square feet wide open.  And the plane is so full of smoke you cant see?  Unless a bullet hit someone in a smoke grenade Id be curious what this fire is and what the fuel is, what it is burning to cause this.

As to the original question, you wouldn't jump it in your hands, and you wouldnt have it in your hands and then shove it under your reserve at the last minute.  You dont jump out of planes with things in your hands.  Of course if he had it rigged diagonally under his reserve that's an awfully big hole he fell through.

There isn't a lot of space in the back of the plane between the jump door and the rear bulkhead so I question how the Air Force Sergeant punched his way past all these troopers to bail out.  There is plenty of space in the back of a C-130 on the back ramp in the tail.  Not a C-47.

There isn't a lot of mass in the belly of a C-47, and by the way if you are flying at 800 feet AGL or so, and get hit by flak in the belly, that is also unusual since you figure a flak position a mile off to one side or the other, aiming at a plane, is much much more likely to be coming up at a 10 or 20 degree angle and hit it in the side vs the belly.  As the Germans didn't have proximity fuses they would have been cutting time fuse and a direct hit isn't likely.  

The implication of this story is they were sitting down and got hit well short of the drop zone at Market Garden.  But Eindhoven and Nijmegen were only 40-50 miles from the coast, which is 20-25 minutes away.  And the drops for Market Garden were at 11AM or so.  I assume in broad daylight so again, noone accidentally flew right over the top of an 88mm flak battery at 10AM on a Sunny day in September. But I am wondering where this is and how they took a hit from flak before they stood up and rigged up.

I hope this is an 82nd guy because a 101st trooper on the southern flight route in would have been standing up before they crossed the FLOT, they had a very short flight over German controlled territory.  But the story is garbage, we're just wondering to what degree.

I jumped a C-47 over the summer and I have no idea how someone could fall through the floor.

Attached File

I don't' know for a fact, but my guess is yes, he would keep receiving the pay he was entitled to when captured.


The only similar story I know of is kind of the opposite thought.  A Staff Sgt, who had been acting platoon leader, was captured.  He didn't know it but a direct commission had been in the works for him.  So when he was liberated all his back pay was at a 2nd Lt (and automatic 1st Lt after 6 months) pay.  He was quite surprised and bought a house with it when he got home.

I would think it would continue as well like flight pay. But if I know anything its that .mil finance can screw up anything.

You are paid for everything, pilots get flight pay, automatic promotions continue, jump pay, any other special quals or billets with extra pay, sometimes even quarters and uniform allowances. Your drivers license does not expire until six months after return to the zone of the interior, legally it's a full stasis. Since they can't send checks to the POW camp, it all goes on your books.

If you officially die in captivity, your heirs on your GI LIF get your back pay up to the date of your death, along with the other stuff and bennies.

Whatever else you want to say about the Krauts, they generally treated our POWs correctly, Malmedy and such things aside. But an American or Brit who made it to a Stalag usually survived. Not so the Soviets, 90%+ died. And allied prisoners of the Japs did not have any good days.

Shitbird Berghdal got all his back pay & they even promoted him from PFC to SGT after he deserted & joined the enemy...

Airmen who were prisoners of the Luftwaffe had it better than GIs.  Yeah, they were hungry, but they weren't abused like the GIs were.

I've read several GI PoW accounts and the Germans starved them and worked them and if they had a nasty guard, beat them.  Herb Sheaner's A Prisoner's Odyssey is one such book.  Thin soup and bread with wood flour  (sawdust).  The recipe is in the History Forum here.  I've other books that talk about enlisted mens' captiviity.

By contrast German or Italian prisoners who survived and were shipped to America got the same food as the GI (which included plenty of meat, milk and butter).  Prisoners got a weekend pass and even got to date American girls.  If they were escorted to the cinema, the PoWs got to sit in the orchestra seats and their black GIs who supervised them had to sit in the balcony.  Black GIs had to ride in the back of the public bus whereas German PoWs got to ride in the front.

Some pictures of B-17s that were hit by 88mm shells and made it home.

Generally speaking, with direct hits the 1-2 crew closest to the blast were killed. And crewmen in a B-17 were more spread out then paratroopers in a C-47.

Also, when an artillery shell hits something, it usually takes 1/1000 or 2/1000 of a second for the fuse to cook off the main charge.  As a shell is moving 3000 feet per second, this is why you see artillery craters (due to the downward trajectory, shells are a few feet underground when they explode) and why many of these hits against B-17s look like the explosion blew from the inside out...because the shell had passed into the interior of the plane and then exploded.

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Here is an outstanding youtube analysis of the effectiveness of 88mm against US Bombers.

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Here is a first person account from a crew chief on a C-47.

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The crew chief sat behind the co-pilot and pilot, and on the run in to the DZ he stood up and stuck his head in the glass dome so he could look for the signal from the lead ship to drop.

If you've ever participated in an airborne operation, its pretty darned impossible for a crew chief in the front of the plane to bull his way past 16 paratroopers that are stood up and hooked up and get out the door to bail out.

I have read that the drop commands in WWII were a 4-6 minute affair.  I think, but cant prove, that US paratroopers would normally stand up when entering enemy territory. Perhaps they did not and in this case were seated when they were shot down.  Standing up for 20-30 minutes with 100+pounds of gear can be exhausting.

It is likely the crew chief freaked out and perhaps the plane was hit by some 20mm in the wing, or shrapnel in the wing, and they bailed out through the door.  I don't know why you would not rig your weapon before you get on the plane.  The belly band is supposed to be TIGHT and I would think veterans would cinch that weapon down and make it hurt before enplaning, rather then just carry it on the plane and try to shove it in there in flight.

There are massive exaggerations in this story and implausible events. I would not cite it, myself, in any scholarly work.

@CharlieR  -  thanks for your research and insights.   I'm not dwelling on the "Air Force" issue as I've read other memoirs that referred to the fly guys as both Air Force and Air Corps.  We don't call the Mighty Eighth the Eighth Air Corps but the Eighth Air Force.  Ditto w/the Ninth, Fourteenth (China) and Fifteenth (Italy).  As for the "floor" issue, I read that as the plane disintegrating mid-air.  If that happened while their static line was hooked up, it would make sense that the chute would open w/out pulling a ripcord.

What puzzles me is the released the rifle bit.  Their scoped rifle was not as strong as today's and the Weaver 330 could be damaged easily.  The Redfield mount could also shift and didn't necessarily return to zero if the scope was removed.  Originally 82nd paratroopers jumped with the rifles in the Griswold bag but after Sicily the 82nd decided to jump combat ready (at least the 504 did).  We know the 504 didn't jump on D-Day (thanks Mark Clark for depleting them in Anzio) so their knowledge may not have been shared with other regiments of the 82nd.   Here's a photo that shows men with their rifles in their hands:



The could have slung them and with the "hands upon the riser" there'd be no problem with the rifle slipping (but what of the impact upon landing).

Paratrooper who made the statemenet, George Willoughby, survived and was captured.  He  passed away not too long ago.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/Hometown/Anybody-in-Murfeesboro-/38-651266/

If you look at WWII paratrooper rigging you may see they didn't use (or trust) much jump-dedicated special rigging for combat.  The Griswald bag was a failure.

No padded weapon cases (the M1950 came for Korea), no separate rucksack/haversack "H" harness.  Looks like they simply depended on the standard cotton web pack shoulder straps.





Jump school photo, Benning, 1944:

Attached File


This was Market-Garden (they appear to be officers -- no long guns):

Last pic.  Could be HQ section.   Guy getting in most likely has a carbine getting in, he has a full riggers pouch with (most like likely) carbine mags.  You can see what might be a carbine stock right over his reserve.

Gris bags were used for DDay if mandated by the officers but many wanted their rifles immediately.   They didnt know what to expect.

For MG jump, Griswolds were used more.

Well if the floor aint there anymore........

Could he have been in one of the gliders?  Those things weren't particularity sturdy.

Source of the statement was 82nd Airborne's Lt. James Magellas' book, All The Way To Berlin (or sumthin).  Willoughby was a paratrooper.

I haven't seen that book and have no idea who he is but gliders were used in Market Garden.  Just a quick reference I found:



Gliderborne soldiers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division unload their wrecked aircraft after what amounted to a controlled crash in a Dutch field during the opening hours of Operation Market-Garden.
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2019/01/01/the-forgotten-american-airborne-of-operation-market-garden/

No idea if any of this helps, but it would explain the floor falling away comment.  

Looking at it after your comment, it looks like #1 and #3 have carbine cases behind the reserve between the butterfly snaps.

My grandfather received his additional pay while a POW for 98 days, as well as the 6mo he was in the hospital in Paris recovering. Additional pay stopped when he was put on the boat home.

The only reason I know this is my family received those records while getting him his 100% disability rating in the 90s.

The US Army Air Corps was officially named the US Army Air Force in 1942 IIRC.

It was colloquially refered to as the "air force". So a sgt. aircrew member would be called an air force sgt.

As far as a previous poster nit picking about the crew chief being in the front of the cabin, it was and is common that more than one crewmember would be on board.