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Oct. 24, 1999
Avalon, N.J.
John Cadden: You know, so much
time has gone by. But some things stick out in my mind. Especially on that
mission, one thing that I remember – from all I’ve read about it so far, nobody
has pointed out the fact that at our briefing that morning, they announced that
they had captured Brussels, and they had captured it with the runways intact,
so if anybody had mechanical problems or battle damage, instead of heading for
Switzerland or Sweden, which was the practice up until then, we should try to
make it to Brussels. It’s never been brought out but it’s influential in the
story of our crew because after the battle damage we were all set to bail out.
We didn’t think we could get back to England, so we headed for Brussels.
You asked about my first indication of the battle. As a radio operator I
was not in the top turret at that time. Over the target and for a while
afterwards the engineer took over the top turret and the radio operator
operated the bomb bay doors. After the all-clear we would close the bomb bay
doors and come back and monitor the radio for any messages that might come in.
I had done all that after we dropped our bombs, and the first indication that
we were being hit by fighters was from the waist gunners on the intercom, and
you could feel the bullets whizzing through the fuselage. They both reported
the Focke-Wulf 190s attacking, and our tail gunner, Henry Puto, was hit.
Apparently he was hit right from the very start and knocked out of his turret.
He’s only one of the two other members of our crew that’s alive to my
knowledge. He had wounds to his face and to his legs. We didn’t know where, we
just knew he was wounded at that time.
We had lost one engine, and Stanley Krivik, the pilot, managed to get it
feathered, but we had low oil pressure in another engine. I think it was the
outboard engine on our right. It could have been the inboard, I forget which,
one on the right, and the other on the left hand side of the plane had low oil
pressure and we couldn’t get enough power. So he alerted me to go down and open
the bomb bay doors. He didn’t say we’re going to bail out but I knew that’s the
reason he wanted them open. I went down, and I was about halfway through
opening the bomb bay doors when bullets started to whiz around the bomb bay.
And that’s the last I remember. I got knocked out. I don’t know how long I was
out, because I woke up by the nose wheel, which is farther away from where I
should have been.
When I woke up, I was off my oxygen tank. I had the portable oxygen tank
with me. I was off that, and I’d lost my helmet and my head was buzzing. I
didn’t know what was going on. I gathered my senses. The first thing I went for
was the bottle of oxygen, and I got back on the oxygen. Then I started to look
around for my helmet. I picked up my helmet, and it had been hit. It’s a steel
helmet with the hinges on either side for the earflaps because of the earphones
we wore, and it apparently hit just about where the hinge was and took the
hinge off and made a big crease right through the helmet, by my right ear. That
explained why my head was buzzing. But I wasn’t bleeding.
The bomb bay doors were half-open at that point so I went back to them.
The firing had ended by that time. I went back to open them up again, and
they’re halfway open but there was no power. We’d lost all of our hydraulic
fluid. So I cranked them open manually, which takes a little bit longer. But I
got them open. I went back up to the pilot and told him I had the bomb bay
doors open. He was in conference with the navigator at that time, his name was
[Daniel] Dale. And they were deciding where to go and what to do. They thought
they couldn’t maintain altitude but at the rate we were losing altitude we
thought we could make Brussels, so he told me to go back down and close the
bomb bay doors, we were going to head for Brussels, and get the wounded up on
the flight deck where they’d be warm. By that time the tail gunner and both
waist gunners were wounded.
When I first came up on the flight deck to report to Krivik that I had
the bomb bay doors open, he looked like he saw a ghost. His eyes opened wide
and his jaw dropped. I don’t remember much about the reaction from Dale. About
a week later in the hospital Krivik came over to see me; he was in the same
hospital. I said, “You had the funniest look on your face.”
He said, “You were covered with hydraulic fluid, and I thought it was
blood. I couldn’t imagine somebody losing that much blood.”
After I closed the bomb bay doors again, I’d say maybe we flew almost an
hour, but gradually losing altitude. We were still heading towards Brussels.
And when we thought we were close enough, we thought we’d drop down below the
ceiling and look on the ground. You could pick up rivers or something like
that. And when we came through the overcast, there was nothing below us but
water. We were about, oh, I’d say 2,000 feet, no higher, and nothing below us
but water. Everybody was surprised at that point.
In the meantime, as the radio operator I was the medical fellow on board.
I had the first aid kit and I was supposed to administer whatever first aid I
could.
All the time we were flying towards Brussels we had the wounded up on the
flight deck and I had broken out the first aid kit. Bob Paul, one waist gunner,
was wounded, but he was able to treat himself. He helped himself to the sulfa
drugs and bandaged himself up, and the same thing with Bill Rand, the other
waist gunner, he was able to take care of himself. Henry Puto was hit a little
more seriously. He was in a lot more pain. I tended to his wounds as best I
could. I gave him a shot of morphine. I remember giving him the shot because at
those high altitudes you couldn’t pull his pants down and give it to him in the
leg, you had to go right through his flying suit. Heated suit and all. I gave
him a shot of morphine, and it quieted him down.
And then, really, I had nothing to do until we discovered we were over
the water, and of course Dale and Krivik, the pilot, had a hasty conference.
They assumed that we were over the North Sea, which was a correct assumption,
and if we just keep heading west we’d hit England. Which we did. But in the
meantime, we stripped the plane of anything that could be stripped out of it.
The guns. Ammo. Anything we had was stripped and dumped in the ocean.
I was in constant touch with air-sea rescue. I’d give them an SOS and a
signal and they’d plot our course in case we did go down, they’d come out and
get us. And I remember it so clearly because while I was in touch with air-sea
rescue, the rest of the crew was trying to throw the radio out and I had to
fight them off. If you’re going to go down in the water I’d like to have
somebody coming after me so I thought it was important, anyway.
When we got down around 1,200 or 1,000 feet, not much higher, we came
over England. And immediately Krivik noted where we were. It wasn’t far from
where we’d normally come in.
He then headed for the air base, with his course set on the runway. Of
course, at the sight of land everybody cheered. And I guess Krivik thought he
could get it down on the runway. We didn’t have any hydraulic fluid or brakes
so we’d probably run off the end of the runway but that was better than bailing
out. We didn’t have much altitude left, 800 or 1,000 feet or so.
The big thing then was to get the wheels cranked down, and we had no
problem with the main landing gear. It came down and locked in place. But we
couldn’t get the nose wheel locked in place.
At that time, everybody who didn’t belong on the flight deck went back to
the waist to get ready for a crash landing, including the navigator. The radio
operator and the engineer stayed up with the pilot and co-pilot. We all had
positions we’d take to brace ourselves for the crash. Mine was behind the
co-pilot.
I don’t think we were much more than 500 feet off the runway when
[Donald] Bugalecki finally got the nose wheel locked and he came up, and I
thought – everybody thought, I guess – I thought he was liable to be down there
when we landed and he’d get crushed.
Aaron Elson: Bugalecki was the
engineer?
John Cadden: Yes. I would say
we didn’t have much more than 500 feet when he finally got up out of there and
let the pilot know that they were locked in place.
So we felt pretty good. Braced for the crash. We knew it would crash.
And, next – there’s a little window by the radio set. When you’re back behind
the co-pilot on the left hand side of the fuselage there’s a window down by
your knee and I was looking at whatever scenery you could see going by, and all
I could see were trees. I had never noticed trees on our approaches to the
runway before. All I could see was trees, and the next thing I knew, Krivik was
pulling me out of the wreckage. And that’s about all there is to my tale of the
Kassel mission.
Aaron Elson: So you didn’t see
what it was on the runway that made him divert?
John Cadden: No, I didn’t.
Aaron Elson: But he talked
about it?
John Cadden: In the hospital,
he came over to see how I was doing. Probably the same day that he told me that
when he saw me covered with the hydraulic fluid he thought it was blood. He
said when he got down to the runway, he could see it was covered with lorries
[trucks] and British wreckers. He didn’t say how many. He said “lorries,”
though, not just one, it was several. And he said he didn’t want to kill
everybody on the runway so he had to overshoot it. He couldn’t get back up and
go around. He had to keep going, and he overshot the runway and crashed. He
crashed in a farm. And when I was in the hospital, when Krivik came over and we
were talking, I asked him, “Gee, I thought we were gonna at least hit the
runway before anything happened.”
He said, “I couldn’t put it down on the runway because it was shut down
for maintenance.”
Aaron Elson: When you crashed,
you passed out?
John Cadden: Yes. I remember
seeing the trees, but I don’t remember anything beyond that. And the next thing
I knew I was in the wreckage. I could see the sky, but there was stuff all on
top of me, on my legs. Everything was on fire. I don’t think we had much gas
but there had to be some gas, and there’s still .50-caliber bullets, I’d
thought we threw them all out but they were going off all over the place from
the heat. Plus I was in one of these fur-lined suits, I think I would have had
a lot of severe burns if I wasn’t. I was hot, but it protected me from being
burned. I didn’t inhale any fumes because it was wide open; I was looking at
the sky.
Aaron Elson: How did Krivik
get everybody out of the plane?
John Cadden: I was conscious
at that time, and I heard him pulling [co-pilot Leonard] Trotta out. I think he
took him out seat and all. Krivik was probably the strongest person I ever saw.
He was a bull. Matter of fact, I don’t think many pilots could have kept that
plane in the air, because he had no hydraulic fluid, and you had to be pretty
strong to handle that thing without hydraulic fluid, and he flew it all the way
back that way.
He pulled out Trotta, and then I heard somebody yelling that “Cadden and
Bugalecki are still in there!” So he came back in and grabbed me and yanked me
out and got me away from the plane. And I took about two steps and fell. Then
he went back for Bugalecki. I think at this time that Bugalecki was half out
but he wasn’t out yet, and he pulled Bugalecki out. So I was very happy I was
flying with Krivik that day.
Aaron Elson: And who pulled
the gunners out?
John Cadden: They just landed
up all over the field. I guess what happened is, the waist gunners and the tail
gunner and the navigator and the nose turret gunner, they set up a net in back
of the fuselage, across the fuselage, and they lean into that so when the crash
comes they’re braced by the net, they won’t go flying up into the wreckage. And
I guess everybody but Dale took advantage of that during the crash. He just
acted as though it was going to be a normal landing, and he just sat down on
the floor of the plane, and I guess when the plane crashed it broke in the
middle and they all flew clear of the plane, and ended up scattered on the
field with no injuries, really. But he ended up going into the bomb bay, I
guess, and he got killed.
Aaron Elson: What was his
position?
John Cadden: He was a
navigator. He was new, too, he had only flown around two or three missions with
us. We trained with a fellow by the name of [Charles] Jackson. He had gone to
Reg Miner’s crew. He never hit it off well with Krivik. As enlisted men we were
not aware of the friction between the officers. I knew there was some friction,
but most of the enlisted men loved Krivik, because he took care of us and
looked after us. So I guess Jackson managed to get off the crew, and we got
Dale as his replacement.
Aaron Elson: Explain again
about the net.
John Cadden: There was a net
they rig up across the back of the fuselage; the plane is like a big tube. I
was always up in the front, I wasn’t back there, but this net gets rigged up
before a crash landing, and they all lean into the net so when the initial jar
comes, instead of being thrown forward into the bomb bay, you get caught by the
net.
Of course I was never back there, I was always up in the front. But that
was our second experience with a crash.
Aaron Elson: It was?
John Cadden: Yes. The first
plane – I flew 19 missions and I’d say the first 11 or 12 were on a plane
called Fearless Fosdick. And we used to have all kinds of trouble with the
gasoline tank readings on that plane. We thought we were running out of
gasoline over the Channel on one of our missions. So as soon as we hit the
English coast there was an air base [at Manston] that had extra long runways,
and we put into that. And it turned out, we thought we were just about out of
gas, it was reading empty, and we had 200 gallons left. I think Krivik got in
hot water for that. So they recalibrated the gasoline gauge, and it was shortly
after that, maybe the next mission, that we thought we had a lot of gas and we
ran out. We were over England at the time, and we’re flying about 1,500 feet,
and all the engines conked out. Fortunately we were in a farming area and we
crashed into a cornfield. They call them cornfields, it was like a wheat field.
Nobody got hurt, but the plane was totaled. After that mission, that’s when we
started flying Percy. That was the name of the plane we were on on the Kassel
mission.
That had been one of the original planes, I understand, that came over
from where the 445th started out. That’s the one we were on the day of the
Kassel raid because after the crash of Fearless Fosdick, that’s the plane that
was assigned to us.
I got in hot water because of the crash of Fearless Fosdick, because up
until then intelligence gave me this camera and I was supposed to take pictures
of the bomb hits out the bomb bay doors. It’s a great big thing that you hang
out the bomb bay doors. And I did a good job of it so they kept letting me take
pictures, but after that crash I took that aerial camera and I took pictures of
ourselves all over the plane, waving, and when I got back, it never dawned on
me, I forgot that this thing would be developed, and they got mad. They didn’t
say anything to me, but they raised the devil with Krivik over it. And after
that they never assigned me the camera again. I didn’t enjoy hanging out the
bomb bay anyway.
Aaron Elson: After that first
crash-landing, were you antsy? Did that make people extra nervous?
John Cadden: I think it gave
us confidence that we could crash without the thing blowing up, because I
always thought if a B-24 crashed you’d get a ball of flame and that would be about
it.
Aaron Elson: Had you seen any
like that?
John Cadden: No. I’ve seen
them from a distance. As I remember two planes collided, but it was maybe five
miles away from the base and all I could see was the smoke coming up. Some of
the people had seen it. I didn’t see the accident but I did see the smoke
coming up from one of the wreckages. But I hadn’t witnessed any crashes on the
air base at all, because if we weren’t flying I wasn’t even paying much
attention to what else was going on.
Aaron Elson: Where was your
crew formed?
John Cadden: We were formed up
in Westover Field, Massachu-setts. I went through gunnery school in Laredo,
Texas, and we graduated from gunnery school. It was after Christmas, between
Christmas and early January.
Aaron Elson: Had you enlisted
or were you drafted?
John Cadden: I enlisted in
1942. In December. I was in Morris Junior College, and I knew my number would
be coming up soon, so I figured I didn’t want to end up in the infantry, for
obvious reasons, sleeping in trenches; my idea of the infantry was World War I.
I said, “I’ll probably be going in,” so I initially tried to get in the
Air Corps, their pilot program. I was trying to get a college education in
those days. My family couldn’t afford to send me to college so if I got in a
program like that I’d get some college in. But I was colorblind. I couldn’t
even get into the Marines or the Navy. But I could join the enlisted reserve. I
joined in December and I got called up on April Fool’s Day, April 1st of ’43.
When I joined the enlisted reserve, I joined the artillery. I figured,
that’s far enough away from the front lines, the living conditions are better
anyway. But they put me on a train to Fort Dix. I got down in Fort Dix – there
was a whole group of about 25 of us from Morris Junior College and there were
about 30 from Seton Hall, or Seton Hall Prep.
Aaron Elson: Where was Morris
Junior College?
John Cadden: In Morristown.
That’s where I was born and raised. When I got off the train in Fort Dix, we
went through the usual procedures of getting transferred from being civilians
into the Army and being measured and getting clothing issues that didn’t fit
and all that. I don’t think we took any tests. I don’t know what we did down
there except get lectures and get clothing, get shots and that sort of thing.
And the next thing I knew we were shipped off. I think they shipped us off a
little prematurely because somebody in our barracks came down with meningitis
or one of those very contagious diseases and died, so I guess they didn’t want
us on the base. All of a sudden we got shipped out and I ended up on a train
that was going south to the Air Corps. We were going down to basic training in
Miami Beach. The train was full of GIs. I don’t think we had much of a kitchen
because all we had for three days, I guess we had corn flakes in the morning
and the other two meals were boiled hot dogs, and that’s it. It took us about
six days to get from Fort Dix down to Miami, because they’d sidetrack us for
more important things. I guess we weren’t that essential to the war effort at
that point. So we’d get sidetracked and spend the night on the railroad. The
next morning you start up again, go forward, get sidetracked again, so it took
a long time to get down there. I’d never been as far south as Philadelphia. I
guess Fort Dix was the farthest south I’d ever been to that point.
We got assigned to a hotel in Miami Beach, and they gave us all kinds of
IQ tests and decided what we’d be best at. They rated me as a radio operator.
And I guess at that time they needed gunners, because being colorblind didn’t
seem to make much of a difference. They had some balls of yarn and they asked
you to pick out the red ball, and if you picked out the wrong one they’d say,
“You know it’s not that.”
I went to Scott Field for radio school. I did well in Scott Field. I
enjoyed that. Then gunnery school, which I enjoyed. I couldn’t shoot worth a
darn with the Thompson or a rifle or a pistol, but with the aerial gunnery I
was good. I was told down there I was No. 2 out of 500 in aerial gunnery. And I
was pretty good with the clay pigeons, too; we had to shoot those. But I
couldn’t shoot anything that was standing still. So I guess from my shooting
ability I was better off where I was than anyplace else. But after we got to
combat, the radio operators didn’t spend that much time in the turret. Before
we got to the target I’d spend some time. Then over the target the engineer
would take over, and when we got off the target again then I would go and spell
him until we got out of enemy territory.
Aaron Elson: Now, we were
getting to where the crew was formed.
John Cadden: Oh, the crew was
formed up in Westover. I left around New Year’s and took a train – they gave us
a week to get there so we could take the train up and have a few days at home
and then take the train up to Westover. And out of a class of 500 there were
only two of us who were assigned to Westover. We were both from that neck of
the woods. The other fellow was named Bobby Beckwith. We rode up together on
the train. The train wrecked on the way up – it got sideswiped just before we
got to Buffalo, in a town called Ashtabula, and it went off the tracks. Maybe
some people got hurt, but we didn’t get hurt. We were sound asleep when it
happened, it was around 2 in the morning. After a while they took us off the
train and bused us into a hotel in Ashtabula and we spent the night in the
hotel, and the next morning they put us on another train, we got off in Grand
Central Station, he went his way and I went mine.
Aaron Elson: Did you ever find
out what happened to him?
John Cadden: Never did. His
family were in the jewelry business in Beacon, New York, and were the nicest
people I knew. I remember he had a beat up little radio, he used to have it in
the barracks, and he loaned it to me when I was going to my home and I had that
there, I could listen to the radio in my room. That was a big deal then, I
didn’t have to go down and listen with the rest of the family if I didn’t want
to.
We were together there in Westover, but I fractured my ankle chasing a
bus up there, and it laid me up for a month in the hospital. In the meantime,
he went on with the crew so I ended up four weeks behind him in training and
naturally he was gone four weeks before I was finished, so I have no idea where
he ever ended up.
I don’t know when I found out I was going to the European Theater. I know
that when we finished our training we were given a leave of about five or six
days.
On the crew I trained with, we had a waist gunner and I forget his name
now, but he never showed up when we were supposed to leave from Mitchel Field
on Long Island. He had been an instructor up at Westover Field and I don’t
think he had any ambitions to be in combat, but they assigned him to our crew
as a waist gunner, and I don’t think he was too happy about it. But on that
leave we had before we picked up our plane at Mitchel Field, he never showed
up. And the last I heard of him, he ended up in Leavenworth because once you
get your orders, it’s desertion. But he was older than we were, married, with a
newly born child, so I guess he figured it wasn’t for him. The last I heard he
was in Leavenworth, but somebody told me he got released.
We flew over without him, and we flew up to Gander. Initially we landed
in Maine and refueled, and there they issued the watch. I’d never had a
wristwatch before but they gave me an Elgin watch because the radio operator
had to keep track of the time messages came in and so forth. I still have the
watch, by the way.
From there we flew up to Newfoundland. We spent the night there. This was
in June. It was after D-Day. The last day of my leave was D-Day. The next day I
went over to Mitchel Field.
An interesting thing about Mitchel Field is a fireman in Hempstead, New
York, threw a beer party for us. I don’t know how many crews, there were about
30 or 40 of us, and they had us all over, you know, young guys, happy, drinking
beer, all this free beer at the firehouse, and oh, about 1:30 in the morning
they packed us all in the fire engine and drove us back to Mitchel Field with
the lights flashing, the siren going. It was great stuff. I don’t know if they
did that for everybody or what.
From Newfoundland we flew over to Ireland. It may have been a 10- or
11-hour flight. After about five hours, all we could do was look for land. We
weren’t even near land yet.
Aaron Elson: That must have
been spooky, flying over the ocean for the first time.
John Cadden: Yes, you’re all
by yourself, and all new, green, even the navigator, and we were depending on
him. But sure enough, after about ten hours we sighted land in Ireland, and
then we landed and left the plane. They spent two weeks in Ireland
indoctrinating us. Telling us what to do if we’re captured, and issuing us all
fake identifications and things like that. Shaving our heads. The whole idea I
guess was so we wouldn’t look like aviators but more like civilians if we got
shot down.
After about two weeks in Ireland, they didn’t fly us so we took a train
to England.
Aaron Elson: As an enlisted man,
did you have any contact socially with Krivik?
John Cadden: Yes. He
encouraged doing things together as a crew. We used to go horseback riding
together, the whole crew. And he was sort of a nut. He played football.
Anything physical was right up his alley. He played for Fordham before World
War II. And before that he played for Bloomfield High. He probably was
All-State. He was one of the strongest men I ever saw, not tall, but was he
strong. We’d go horseback riding together as a crew. We’d go from the base, and
a farmer would rent us the horses. We’d get ten horses and go riding. It was
like playing cowboys and Indians. He’d lead the charge, charging into the
woods. With the low branches you’d get knocked off a horse pretty quick. It was
crazy.
Aaron Elson: Did anybody get knocked off?
John Cadden: Yes. I forget
who. I don’t think I did because as a child I rode horses a little bit, but
some of them would have a hard time staying on. I used to ride horses bareback
as a child, not horses, ponies. But I grew up in the country, so horseback
riding was nothing new to me. But to a lot of them it was.
And I don’t think Krivik had been on a horse much, either. He’d always
want the wildest horse, and he was gonna show us how fast this horse would go,
and he opened it up, we were all watching, and he ended up under the horse,
with his arms and his legs around the horse, the horse couldn’t get rid of him.
Finally the horse gave up and just stopped, and he climbed back up. He was
something else.
Of course as an enlisted man I wasn’t privy to what went on with the
officers. But I think probably a guy like Krivik rubbed a lot of them the wrong
way. I had that suspicion. I always thought the planes we got to fly in were
probably the oldest planes that were on the base, that sort of thing. But he
was a good friend with Miner. And there was another fellow he was close to, who
had been a pilot before the war, but he got shot down on the third or fourth
mission. All I know is his radio operator – usually you got close to the
fellows on the plane who did the same job you do and I was close to this fellow
Beggs, and he was on this crew. His pilot was probably the best pilot in our
whole group, and he got shot down over one of the north Germany targets and he
just went up in a ball of flames. Nobody ever got out of it.
.
Aaron Elson: On your first
mission, you flew to Gotha?
John Cadden: Yes.
Aaron Elson: When you did
that, had anybody talked about that disastrous Gotha mission?
John Cadden: I think we heard
about it, yes, because that was still being talked about when we got there.
There was a lot of flak but I expected a lot of flak. We were pretty well
prepared on what to expect, so even though you’re green, nothing came as too
big a surprise.
Aaron Elson: Does anything
stand out? Usually the first mission is something that’s just engraved in
people’s minds.
John Cadden: No, the flak, you
can hear it, the spent flak you can hear hitting, the flak that’s going to do
damage you don’t hear.
Aaron Elson: You went to Gotha
on July 20, 1944, that was your first mission. You also flew on July 23, 24 and
25?
John Cadden: Some of those
were milk runs. Tactical. Probably one of those was with the breakout of St.
Lo, that would be one of those tactical missions. We bombed on one mission I
remember, it was probably this one on August 1st, the biggest bombs I’d ever
seen. I don’t think the B-17 could carry them. We could only carry one or two.
They were big things. We were dropping them on St. Malo, that island that’s off
the coast of France, it’s like a shrine there or something. The Germans had a
lot of guns on there.
Aaron Elson: What was the St.
Lo raid like?
John Cadden: It was like
flying at night when we got to the target. We went in at 5,000 feet, which is
low for us. And I don’t know where we stood in the parade of planes that went
over that day, but it was like flying into midnight. Approaching it would be
like broad daylight. And all of a sudden it would get darker and darker and
darker. These are from the bombs and the smoke. And then over the target you
could see the flashes on the ground. You couldn’t see a lot of movement because
everybody was hunkered down. But you could see the flashes and the gunfire. We
just dropped our bombs, and as we pulled out of there, it was back into
daylight again. An interesting thing about that: On that raid a B-24 tried to
get in formation with us. It wasn’t from the 445th, he had different tail
markings. He tried to get in formation with us and our tail gunner opened up on
him. It had a different tail marker and he shot at it. And they had to just
about pull him out of the turret. And he got reprimanded, they told him he
shouldn’t have shot at a B-24. About two weeks later, intelligence came back
and said that was Germans in a B-24 trying to get in your formation
Aaron Elson: Did you fly again
after the Kassel mission?
John Cadden: No. I had a bunch
of injuries, including a fractured back. When the ambulances got there and
carted us off I was just about out of it. They brought us into the hospital –
that was the 65th General Hospital in Diss – and they cut off our clothes. They
didn’t undress you, they just cut you right out of your clothes. And they knew
we hadn’t been to the bathroom in a long time, so they gave me a catheter, I
guess I couldn’t use a bedpan. And everything that came out was bright red. So
I guess I got pretty well jarred up.
It cleared up in about two days. And then it was just a matter of
recuperation. In the middle of getting better I got pneumonia. They had put me in
a body cast and I got pneumonia in the body cast, so they cut me out of that.
But I got through the pneumonia; that was the most dangerous part of it.
Aaron Elson: Did they have
penicillin then?
John Cadden: Yes. I had never
heard of penicillin before, and it looked like something you’d give a horse.
The needle was about an inch around, and about ten inches long. And to preserve
it they used to keep it refrigerated so it was ice cold. And they gave you that
in the rump. That hurt. But it did the trick.
Aaron Elson: Did Krivik fly
again?
John Cadden: I don’t know if
he flew. He was in the psychiatric section of the hospital, but I guess all his
concern about his crew and all that got to him. But the psychiatrist got him.
And Puto. But Krivik used to come over and visit me in the hospital, that’s
where I found out why we crashed. I couldn’t figure out, you know, everything
had gone according to the textbook up to that point. That’s when I found out
why we crashed. And in all the books I’ve read, the official reports say “other
aircraft on the runway.” But that’s not the case. [Colonel William] Jones, I
just read in the latest newsletter, he died recently, I blame Jones, but maybe
he reported what really happened and they changed it up at headquarters, so you
never know. But there must have been a lot of people watching, especially when
so few of us got back, watching that landing and who knows exactly what
happened.
They shouldn’t have tied up the runway with the planes out on the
mission. As far as I’m concerned if it was Jones’ fault he should have peeled
potatoes for the rest of the war. I’ve always said, if it was Jones’ fault, he
has to take responsibility. He should have gotten the German Iron Cross. He
took care of us for the rest of the war. Otherwise we’d have been flying more
missions.
But maybe as I say, he reported it but everybody there in the tower, if
you watch the famous movie “12 O’Clock High,” I wouldn’t say they’re that
concerned, but a lot of people are very concerned. A lot of the ground crews
should have been concerned watching for the planes to get back.
Aaron Elson: Was Krivik
married at the time?
John Cadden: Yes. I don’t know
what shape his marriage was in, we really didn’t talk about that.
Aaron Elson: From what I
understand, his marriage broke up after the war.
John Cadden: It did. I met him
several times after the war. Morristown and Bloomfield aren’t that far apart.
Aaron Elson: Did he have any
children?
John Cadden: I don’t know
whether he had a child or not. I didn’t pay much attention. I knew he was
married, and he was 22 I guess. I figured he was an old man. I wouldn’t be
surprised if there was something about him having a baby or something. I forget
now. I saw him, as I said, several times after the war. I was working in New
York.
Aaron Elson: What kind of work
did you do?
John Cadden: I was an
electrical engineer and I was in sales. And I was working down on what’s the
World Trade Center now but it used to be 30 Broad Street. I started working
there in 1949, when I got out of college.
Aaron Elson: That’s when I was
born.
John Cadden: That’s when I got
out of college.
Aaron Elson: Where did you go
to college?
John Cadden: Villanova.
Aaron Elson: Where would you
meet Krivik?
John Cadden: He stopped by at
4 o’clock in the afternoon one day and offered me a ride home. And we had a
chat. My boss was happy to meet him. And he had a woman who he introduced as
his fiancee. The last I knew Krivik was married, so I didn’t say anything. He
drove me home, and then he was playing semi-pro ball in North Jersey, and he
used to play a lot down in Madison, New Jersey, and I’d go down and watch him
play and we’d go out and have a few beers after the game and chat about old
times. But I never got into his personal life because I knew he probably
wouldn’t want to talk about it.
Aaron Elson: Had he recovered
mentally from the strain?
John Cadden: Oh, I think so
because we’d be talking about it, there was no apparent strain on him, and he
reenlisted. He was doing roofing work at one time, and the next thing I know he
had reenlisted in the Army and was flying, made it his career, stayed in as a
pilot.
Aaron Elson: Did he go to
Korea?
John Cadden: Yes. That’s when
he reenlisted, during the Korean War. And he retired from the military around
1970, because it was around 1975 I called the VA trying to track him down,
because I hadn’t heard boo. I stayed in touch with a few of the crew members
but nobody had heard anything. I called the VA and they were reluctant to give
any information out about him, and I told them why I was calling. I said, “He
saved my life in World War II, I’d just like to get ahold of him.” The woman I
was talking to was very sympathetic, so she said, “I’ll tell you this much.”
She apparently had pulled his records or something like that on the computer.
She said, “He retired from the military in San Diego or Seattle or Los
Angeles,” and that was about 1970, “and he was admitted to a hospital a few
days later and died within 24 hours.” What it was all about her records didn’t
show, but he was admitted to a hospital and he died within 24 hours. So she
said it must have been some sort of an accident that he had. I guess he went to
the VA hospital. And that’s the last I heard.
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