Published Sunday, June 01, 2008

Isaac: London air raid 'was serious business'

The Times-Herald

The train ride across the English countryside was eventful, but when the two American airmen stepped onto the streets of London, it felt like the world was coming to an end.

Sam Isaac looked up as German bombers roared overhead. He watched in amazement as huge searchlights manned by British women swept the skies, pinpointing targets for the antiaircraft guns that filled downtown London.

Shells burst over the city. The streets shook and fires blossomed as the bombs found their marks.

Air raid sirens blared and people rushed to underground bomb shelters, but Isaac and his Army Air Corps buddy stood transfixed, unable to do anything but watch the spectacle. An elderly woman tried to scold them into action.

"She said 'You Yanks need to get out of here and in a shelter. All the hospitals are full,'" Isaac says. "We knew we should have left but we were young and it was exciting and it was our first time seeing any action so we just stood there and watched until the raid was over."

The next morning, Isaac was amazed to see the shopkeepers sweeping large pieces of metal off the streets.

"They were cleaning up shrapnel from the bombs and antiaircraft shells that fell the night before," Isaac says. "The pieces were big. They would have killed you easily."

When Isaac and his buddy returned to their air base in rural England they went back to work with a whole new attitude.

"During that air raid, I realized for the first time this wasn't just a game," Isaac says. "I knew it was serious business and it was going to get a lot worse."

Isaac jokingly refers to himself as "A man without a state." Technically, he's right. He was born on an island in the Middle of the Mississippi River. Wolf Island was close to Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois, but not officially claimed by any state since the Mississippi is federal property.

Kentucky was the closest state, and it was a doctor from Columbus, Ky., that rowed to Wolf island to deliver Isaac on Dec. 3, 1921. After the delivery, the doctor had to spend the night when bad weather made the river too dangerous to row back.

When Isaac was still a baby, his dad moved to St. Louis to work for the Post Office. By the time Isaac started school the family had moved to Evansville, Ind., where Isaac's father worked as truck driver.

When Isaac was a teenager he got to tag along. He remembers one trip when he and his dad arrived in Chicago to find every corner covered with cops.

They learned a major manhunt was under way for gangster John Dillinger, then considered Public Enemy Number 1. Two weeks later, on July 22, 1934, Dillinger's crime spree came to an end when he was gunned down by the FBI after leaving Chicago's Biograph Theater.

"That was really big news," Isaac says. "It was exciting just to hear about it."

Isaac graduated from Evansville's Central High in 1940 and went to work as a welder at the Servel Company. The business made gas-powered refrigerators for farm families with no electricity.

When the war started, Servel started making airplane wings and Isaac started looking for other opportunities with the Army Air Corps. By August 1942, he was at basic training at Keesler Field in Biloxi, Miss.

"It was exciting," he says. "I couldn't wait to get on one of those planes."

After secondary training at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., Isaac got some good news when he was assigned to bomber duty.

He traveled to Smyrna Army Air Field just outside Nashville, Tenn. Isaac worked as a welder, repairing broken parts and welding tow bars to the massive bombers. He learned other skills, too, and became a flight engineer. Then he was ready to hit the skies.

His first ride was a real eye-opener. As the B-24 lumbered down the runway, Isaac noticed the plane was being trailed by an ambulance and a fire truck. He asked the pilot what was happening and didn't like the answer.

"The pilot said, 'they don't think we'll get off the ground.'" Isaac says. "I was scared to death until the pilot said he was kidding. After that it was wonderful. Being up in the air was everything I thought it would be."

The thrill didn't last long. In the middle of his training Isaac was told that because his vision was not 20/20 without glasses, he was being taken off flight status.

"I was mad," he says. "I was 20 years old and feeling good and ready to fight like everyone else. I didn't like it."

Isaac began training other flight engineers. It was strictly stateside duty and Isaac looked for other opportunities. He learned that a new fighter squadron was being formed on Long Island for deployment to Europe. Isaac was accepted and after learning to care for P-47 "Thunderbolt" fighters, he headed for war. He was still a welder but at least he'd be where the action was.

"Everybody wanted to be overseas," he says. "By then I didn't care how I got there, I was just glad to be going."

Isaac's 328th Fighter Squadron sailed for England on the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth on July 1, 1943. After a brief stop in Scotland, Isaac moved to his permanent base at Bodney Field outside Brandon, England.

The invasion of Europe was still months away but Allied bombers pounded targets in German-held France every day. The 352's fighters accompanied the bombers, fending off German fighter planes and attacking targets of opportunity whenever they popped up.

Planes, pilots and crewmen were lost almost daily. The fighters that survived a mission often came back shot up, missing parts or barely able to fly. Isaac's welding shop was always busy.

In early 1944 flights became more frequent, the training tempo picked up and nerves were on edge. Everyone knew the invasion was approaching, but exactly when and where remained the biggest secret of the war.

One blustery June morning everyone was awakened earlier than usual. When the fighters left before dawn they took off four abreast instead of single file.

Near the end of the runway, a new brick control tower was being built. As four of the fighters roared down the runway, one struck the new tower and went up in a ball of flame when its fuel tanks exploded. Seconds later, 50-caliber machine gun rounds started cooking off, sending ground crews scattering.

"When it happened we all just hit the dirt," Isaac says. "The pilot died in the explosion. We learned a little later that it was D-Day. It didn't get off to a very good start for us."

As the Allies pushed into Europe, bomb raids went deeper into France and Germany. New bases had to be found on the continent so the short-range fighters could accompany the bombers.

Two months after D-Day, Isaac's group headed to the continent. The voyage across the English Channel was rudely interrupted when American destroyers dropped depth charges on German submarines.

"The explosions were huge and the ship swayed from side to side" Isaac says. "We ran to the deck to see what was going on but by then it was over."

After Isaac's ship arrived at LeHavre , France, the first stop was the mess hall. German prisoners were serving the food and Isaac says they weren't happy.

"They were 17 and 18-year old soldiers and they wouldn't even look at you," Isaac says. "They were mad and didn't want to be there and made sure we all knew it. We just ignored them."

Isaac's unit traveled across northern France to a new base near Asch, Belgium. It was a former German fighter base the Americans had taken as they swept through. The field was a pasture and the hangar was a large barn, but it was ideal for Isaac's fighter squadron, which had upgraded to faster, more maneuverable P-51 "Mustang" fighters.

The town was home to a Catholic convent. The facility had two buildings across the road from each other. American airmen moved into one building and the nuns took the other.

Most of the nuns were missing several or all of their fingernails. They had been pulled out when the Germans tortured them to obtain military information the nuns never had.

"Their hands were horribly disfigured," Isaac says. "The nuns took it better than you can imagine. They were brave women."

Isaac's base was only attacked once. The result was a tragedy for the Americans. Isaac was watching when a pair of German fighters approached the base. The attack caught the Americans off guard but Maj. George E. Preddy got to his plane and gave chase. Preddy was the unit's top gun, credited with 24 kills. Ground crews opened fire with small arms, but the German planes swept past untouched. Preddy wasn't so lucky. He was hit by friendly fire and went down to his death.

"It was a terrible loss," Isaac says. "Those things happened, but you never forget them."

Isaac's unit returned to England in early 1945 and were at Bodney when Germany surrendered. Americans were not allowed to join the party in London but held an appropriate celebration at the base.

"The mood was really jubilant," Isaac says. "And not just because the war was over. We'd been gone over two years and we were ready to get home."

Isaac was discharged in September 1945. He went back to Evansville but wasn't interested in welding. He took a job with L&N Railroad and moved to McLeansboro, Ill., to serve as a station manager. He worked for L&N until he retired.

Soon after he moved to McLeansboro, a woman who worked in Isaac's favorite restaurant said she knew just the girl for him ... a St. Louis lass named Floris Bachman.

St. Louis was 100 miles away, but it just so happened that Floris was coming to McLeansboro to visit her friend. She and Sam had dinner, and it wasn't long before they were dating.

Sam rode the train to St. Louis every week to court Floris. When he was transferred to Belleview, Ill., just 15 miles form St. Louis, the dating schedule picked up dramatically.

Sam and Floris were married on April 14, 1950. The family eventually grew to two children and two grandchildren.

Isaac moved to Coweta to be closer to other family members after Floris passed away in 2006.

"The Air Corps was really a good experience for me," Isaac says. "War is a terrible thing, but we all felt like we were doing something really important. Our country was in trouble and we all wanted to do our part to help."