The Cold Blue (2018) - full transcript

Whenever this war is over,

the victory will have been won
by you,

with the uniform you wear,
the chevrons on your sleeves,

and the instincts in your gut,
and the blood on your boots.

We will sail
across God's vast ocean,

where we will meet our enemy
and make the difference

between freedom of the world
and its enslavement.

You fought
bravely for your country.

You found in one another a bond

that exists only in combat.

Every man that's wounded,
every man I lose,



I have to believe
that it's all worthwhile

because our cause is just.

Well, I don't know.
The odds were all against you.

It was more or less like being
in death row in a penitentiary,

waiting on your turn,
and you knew it was coming.

You fly a real tough mission,

and you're so glad to get back,
and everybody says,

"Boy, we made it
through that one, didn't we?"

And the next morning
they'd come in,

put the flashlight
in your face...

"All right, boys, get up.
You're gonna be leavin'.

We're gonna be flyin'
in two hours."

Now, that's... that's tough.

I was 21 years old, yeah,



and we felt like
we could live forever.

Don't get me wrong.

We'd still get
that tight feeling...

when we would would see
bursting flak nearby,

when we'd see fighters...

We still got that feeling,
but...

you can't make a living
that way.

All you could do
is make a dying.

Anybody said
they weren't afraid,

they were full of crap.

'Cause you were always afraid
what was gonna happen next,

particularly in flak,
you're just waiting

for something to go off
around you.

And that's when the fighters
would come up.

One of the men in
our crew kept saying,

"I know I'm not gonna make it,"
et cetera, et cetera.

And you don't like to hear that.

And he was very concerned
because his wife

was expecting
within a day or two.

And, uh, the next day,
they had him flying,

which they shouldn't have had,
and...

they took so many men
from our crew to fly with him,

and they never made it back.

They crashed into the Channel.

And, incidentally...
And this isn't storytelling...

But he, he, uh...

he was killed
the day his son was born.

The war came,

and we went and did
what they told us to do.

That's the only thing I know.

The Japanese ruined my youth,

because I was 20 years old
or 19 years old

and everything was wonderful,

and the Japanese,
in one fell swoop,

ended all that.

And it lasted four years.

Well, I can see why
they get young fellas to fly to war,

or ground or submarines
and so forth.

When you're younger,
you feel you can do anything.

I think when you get older,
you get smarter.

There was
a 19-year-old navigator,

Jewish kid, sharp as a tack.

And I had some older boys,

my bombardier was 26 years old.

I was 22, 23.

Oldest man we had in our crew

was a Pennsylvania Dutchman,
32 years old.

We called him "Pappy."

Thirty-two years old!

Our navigator was 26,

and everybody else
was anywhere from 22, 23.

I can look back now
and see why...

young people are in a war...
Not older people.

Old people got better sense.

Sometimes they
say that the older you get,

the more wiser you get.

There weren't too many,
I don't think,

too much younger than me.

I flew every one
of my missions at 19.

The old man on our crew
was our waist gunner.

He was 25.

I'll tell ya, when we got
into this thing, you wanted to fly.

You know, you had a great time
training and all that.

But when you get over there,
and you got shot at the first time,

you knew you were
in deep doo-doo.

And you really
took life seriously after that.

They said we
was gonna fly 30 missions.

They started out at 25, and then they
changed it to 30 when we got there.

Then we got 26 missions in,
and they give us a week off,

then we come back and they says,

"You're gonna fly 35."

And that was kind of a shock.

It seemed like
I was flying all the time.

There were 40 bomb groups,
and our bomb group had a lot of people.

I don't know the logistics
of keepin' the fuel

and the ammunition,
loading the bombs at night,

getting 'em ready
for the next day.

I don't know how they did it.

When you're
in a position like that,

there's no tomorrow.

You do everything that you
want to do, that you can do,

when you feel like doing it,
and do it then,

because you may not get
the chance to do it again.

Wouldn't be
unusual, they'd wake you up,

the first thing you'd do
would be

go to the mess hall to eat.

The mess hall was all lit up

and everybody was laughing
and talking,

and usually,
they had Berlin Lynn,

or whatever her name was,
on the radio, broadcasting.

We hadn't been briefed yet,

we didn't know where
we was gonna go,

but this lady in Berlin
knew where we were gonna go.

And she says, "Boys,
you've got a tough one today."

You're going to
so-and-so and so-and-so,

and we'll be waitin' on ya."
And so...

that they knew more than we did.

Now, in the Air Force,

when we went to the kitchen
for breakfast,

and we were getting, say, eggs,
we'd get powdered eggs.

That's what they had.

Once in a while,
we would get fresh eggs.

You could get two over easy,

and this was a treat.

But we knew after a while
that when you got fresh eggs,

it meant you were gonna have
a real tough mission,

so they gave you fresh eggs.

That's the story.

We don't want fresh eggs,
but we want fresh eggs.

When you go in to
get ready for a flight,

you'd go into the locker room,
and you wore long johns,

and then you'd wear
the heated suit, put that on.

And we had gloves
that were attached to those.

You had to get your gloves
into those.

They came clear around
your ankles, too.

And then you had
your flight suits.

Those were the things
that you just wore.

Then you'd load back on a truck

and they'd take you to the area

where the debriefing rooms were,

so all the crews and everything

would be sitting there, waiting,

and they had a sheet
over the wall.

They'd pull the sheet back
and say,

"Our target today is Germany.

The weather looks pretty good
as near as we can tell."

One thing always
got me about these briefings.

The Catholic chaplain,

he was back in the corner
hearing confessions...

and giving out communions.

So you knew that you
was goin' some place

that you might not
come back from.

That was one of the
most amazing things of the war,

the choreographing of putting 1100
airplanes together in formation at war.

We'd all line up
on the perimeter strip

that come around to
the end of the runway.

And the lead ship
would taxi around and line up,

and when they fired the flare
to take off,

that lead ship
went down the runway.

Next man pulled right up
behind him.

Thirty seconds, he moved.

Thirty seconds,
the third man moved.

Every 30 seconds a plane
was goin' down that runway.

That lead plane
never got off the ground

before that second plane
was already running.

Well, we'd just spin
out there on the end of the runway

and give it full throttle,

and you had to have
enough speed for it

to lift all that load up.

You had a full gas load,

you had all your ammunition
for the guns,

and you had the bombload.

'Course, while you're up there,

I could see the sun comin' up
around the Earth,

and I thought that
was the most weird thing,

to see the sun comin' up and it's
dark on Earth, you're knowing.

But you realized what was
happening to you,

and the next thing you know,
why, the sun come up,

and you see all these airplanes
circling,

straining, so to speak,
to get up to the altitude

with a heavy load of bombs.

You had to form
up, and you had a circle

you were supposed to fly till you
got formed up with your group.

And then there'd be
another bomb group over here.

And one day we come within
three or four inches...

of flakin' up
another bomb group.

Well, on some of 'em,

when the young pilots'd come in
as replacements,

if I was first man to take off,
we'd be up in the air,

say, two or three hundred feet,
climbing,

all of a sudden, boom!

You'd see a bright flash,

a red flash,
and stuff coming down,

you knew darn well
it was a midair collision.

And those were scary times,
as far as getting up.

Two B-17s,
one came down right on top of the other.

They all went to their death.

That's when I started smokin',
by the way.

Well, actually,
I believe that our officers

were closer to the crew

than they were
with other officers.

As a crew, most crews
stuck pretty well together.

We did a lot together.

I don't think
we would have appreciated

one new man joining us.

We knew what each man
was capable of doing.

Each man did his job good,
and no one complained.

We were family in the
air... you absolutely had to be.

We all had our duties.

We just wanted to stay together.

And we flew 25 missions
as a crew, all of us together.

You're a family...

exactly... you have to be.

However,
I can remember one mission

when our flight engineer
came out smashed.

And I climbed all over him.

I said,
"What is wrong with you?"

We depended on one another.

There was a
lot of spit and polish

with the officers,
and that didn't happen.

Like you say,
we're a family of brothers...

and we didn't have time
for all that stuff.

But there was no saluting and...

and "Yes sir, no sir"
and all that.

Each guy was his own guy.

Well, of course,
each man would do his job

and we all knew exactly
who was gonna do what,

so to speak.

So I knew I had a good crew.

And we just
got along beautifully.

We had a crew chief
that took care of that plane

after we got it back
off a mission.

So the three of us
walked that plane,

looked at everything
on the ground,

ask him all the questions
we could think of.

If there was any little thing

that we thought we should
pay particular attention to,

for him to tell us.

You never flew the
same plane all the time.

It's just like your car
havin' an ouchie

and you take it in to Firestone
or somewhere to get fixed.

They'd work overnight,
all night long,

trying to patch planes.

As soon as you got in,

they would take care
of any damage,

they would get in the plane
and check the engines out,

start 'em up and check 'em out.

And they would
clean up everything.

Tremendous workers.

They were so good.

We came back in B-17s
with two engines,

with the tail fin shot up
and busted away...

with all kinds of holes
in the plane,

and in two days, that plane
was flying missions again.

We had armor on our crew.

And he'd be there when they...
Most cases, not all cases...

Sometimes a plane'd be loaded
before we ever got there.

The armor gunners
took care of all that.

They'd bring 'em out
on big carriers, and...

it was a dangerous job.

We did not load the bombs,
no, but we did come out and check.

They were all fused,

and they had fusing wires
stuck to the propeller.

These fusing wires
were hooked on the shackles

that the bombs are hung on,

and when they left the plane,
they would pull the wire out.

Now the bomb is alive.

If you've seen movies
and you hear bombs...

goin' down,
that's this fuse spinning out.

Now the bomb is live,
and once it hit,

of course, it detonates.

We had two missions where I
had to go back in the bomb bay

and put the cotter pins back in.

And that is a little hairy.

Why? 'Cause when you landed,

if you didn't,
the bombs were armed,

and if you had trouble,
of course, you'd detonate.

Well,
we talked about just about everything.

Our families, et cetera.
It didn't matter what it was.

We kept pretty much of a running
conversation between everybody.

It made the mission
go a little easier.

First thing you did,

soon as we cleared
the coast of England,

everybody would test their guns.

Well, of course,
I can only speak for myself,

but when you're in
hostile territory,

and I was in a top turret,

so all of my vision was 360...

90 degrees this way, ya know.

Contrails would
form at the tail of the ship.

The moisture in the air
and the ship flying through it

made the contrails.

And a lot times
we wouldn't have 'em,

because it depended on the
amount of moisture in the air.

Couldn't see a
prettier sight than that.

Kind of spell-bound,
ya know, spell-bound.

A beautiful sight.

If you're watching
on the ground over in Germany,

they tell me, it took about 30
minutes for 'em all to come over.

They said on a clear day

that the Germans could see us
coming 50 miles out

from the contrails.

And unfortunately,
when that happened,

that wasn't too good,
because they were ready for us.

In 1938, I was down in Chile,

and they threw a good will tour
down there.

I remember going out
with my father

and seeing these big planes.

And I said to my father,
"Someday I'm gonna fly in one of those."

Little did I know.

The B-17 was not
only a beautiful ship,

but it flew like a dream,

it flew like
an overgrown Piper Cub.

It flew nice and smooth.
Beautiful.

Took a lot of punishment.

The greatest
airplane ever built,

as far as I'm concerned.

It brought us back 35 times.

Sometimes in condition
that you would never even think

of trying to fly an airplane,

any other airplane,

that plane came back,
and that plane brought us back.

It was a marriage, I'll tell ya.

A lot of guys,
they'd name their own planes.

And they had
all kinds of kooky names.

The original crews

had a lot of good painters

and they had a of planes
that were decorated

and had logos on 'em and so on.

Vargas girls, like Petty
girl... Petty girls, Vargas girls,

sexy girls...

There weren't too many
serious things.

I think to keep guys loose.

Well...

on a warm day
it would be 20 below.

But sometimes it got 60 below.

And often times
I had to take my oxygen mask

and crack the ice out of it

and check if it would
freeze into the tube.

That was one of the worst parts
of the mission,

was the cold air.

The only time you didn't feel it

is when you were
fightin' fighters

or goin' over the target.

Oh, at 30,000 feet the...

I think the temperature drops
two degrees every thousand.

It'd be about 40 below
at that altitude.

In the cockpit, a little bit of heat
came off the number three engine,

it came into the cockpit
where the pilot and I sat.

And there's enough
to kind of keep your feet warm

and your hands.

Our ball turret
gunner had a gun problem,

his gun jammed,
and he took his gloves off to work on it,

and both his hands
got frostbitten

and he didn't fly with us for a
month until his hands healed up.

Well,
it was so cold on one mission

our copilot suffered an anoxia
situation where he passed out,

and his hand froze
to the plexiglass window,

and then they had to amputate
the fingers of his hand

because it was so cold that his
hand, when he tried to help himself,

froze to the plexiglass window.

Well,
the British treated us very nice,

in some cases royally.

They called it
"The Friendly Invasion"

'cause we flat invaded
that country.

England's a small country,
and we had it

absolutely covered up
with American soldiers.

And they tolerated us.

I was single then,

I could run around,
do whatever I wanted.

But I didn't feel uncomfortable

with the British people
at all...

once I got to be able
to understand the language,

because... that English language

is a little different then ours.

Very good people.

As you know,
at the beginning of the war

they weren't too enamored
by the Yanks comin' over.

They said we were "overpaid,
oversexed, and over here."

I remember that.

Flak is German
88-millimeter cannon shells.

Flak was responsible
for more planes being shot down

than enemy fighters.

And when you see a flak,
black puffs of smoke,

that's after the shell,
of course, has exploded.

And it explodes, hypothetically,

into 200 pieces...

and it's powerful.

You don't know where
the flak is coming from.

You don't know if the next
burst is gonna hit you or not.

You never know where
the next one is gonna be

in a case like that,
and that's what scares ya.

It just looked
like a big thunderstorm,

so to speak,
that's what it amounted to.

But you had to keep on flyin'.

God was on your side
when you didn't get hit.

The flak would vary so much.

The Germans had
pretty good radar...

They could judge your altitude,
your speed,

and your direction.

I think the
worst that I ever had...

Over Kassel, Germany,
I will never forget that one...

It blew my windshield out

and come into my face
at 160 miles an hour.

You'd look at that
flak out there, and you'd swear

you're not gonna
get through it...

where the sky's almost black
with these things

bustin' all over the place.

It's amazing we did make it
through as much as we did.

Well, we had a dog,

and it looked more like a pig
than a dog.

But it was our mascot.

We had a stove
in the middle of the barracks,

and we used to make sandwiches
on it and so forth.

If the dog was around,
we'd feed him whatever we had left over.

He hung around the barracks
until we got back.

Don't know if
he had a name or not.

He was a faithful little dog.

But it had a real wide nose.

Oh, you get superstitious.

I remember I had to put on
a clean pair of socks

the day I was shot down.

I'd been wearing
the same pair of socks.

Evidently, I think that the pup
got one of my socks

and was chewing on it
and hid it,

and I couldn't find it
that morning,

I had to put on
a clean pair of socks.

That might have been the reason
I was shot down.

You are to believe this or not,

but somewheres around
the 10th or 12th mission,

I got to a point, and I know some of
the other fellas reached the same thing,

that they were feeling blasé.

"They didn't get us up to here,

they ain't gonna get us hereon."

I was somewhat superstitious.

I always felt
God would bring me home...

And I mean that sincerely...

However, I wasn't sure
if it would be in one piece.

I flew five days in a row.

Five missions.

And I remember
by the fourth or fifth one,

you really didn't care...
You were worn out.

You wanted to get away from it.

I saw a lot of
'em break under pressure.

Come back and told the flight
sergeant, "I can't fly anymore."

And they didn't.

Nobody pointed
their finger at 'em

and ridiculed 'em.

Nobody.

Yes, the bomb run.

That was the worst,

'cause you had to
keep everything steady.

If you weren't on a bomb run,

you could slide over
once in a while,

that made 'em
think they'd miss ya.

But on a bomb run, you just
had to set there and take it.

Try to shrivel up, I guess.

The lead ship does it all.

You just follow what he does.

The lead ship, and then
the two on each side,

one down there and one up here
and around there.

I was flyin'
right above the leader,

and when you're watching him

and you see that the bomb door
is open, then you open too.

And then you wait
for him to drop bombs,

and when he drops bombs,
then you drop 'em.

We can't change our altitude,

and we can't change
our direction,

and we're what you call
sitting ducks at that moment.

It was rough,
because any minute,

you were gonna get hit.

The bombs are
dropped, bombs away,

and the first thing you hear is,

"Let's get the hell outta here."

We make a sharp turn,
and the group follows the lead.

After a while,

fighter attacks
started coming in,

and they didn't miss very often.

They'd be out 20, 30 miles,

and they'd come rush
straight at your level.

You couldn't hit
anything with those guns like that.

By the time you saw a guy,
he was gone.

You'd see one comin', he's gone.

You don't have
much time to shoot at 'em.

If you get off a burst or two,
well, you're lucky,

then they'd go zoop!

He'll drop off, he'll fly down,

and then he'll line up on ya.

Then he'll peel off.

The copilot was hit
pretty hard when we were shot down.

A 20-millimeter shell
popped right above his head

and it knocked an eye out.

So it was high noon,
an ME-109 was back there blasting at us,

and I heard the copilot,
he said, "Jesus Christ",

number four's on fire. Get out."

When that thing is spinnin'
and headin' down,

you were glued to your seat,

you couldn't move
if you wanted to.

And you're lucky if you
see two or three guys bail out.

We would count the chutes,

and usually if we
started to look too long

after a ship
that was going down,

the pilot would say,
"OK, guys, off... ".

We didn't want
to spend too much time

looking at a plane going down

when we had fighters
in the area and so forth.

The gunners and the others
that were watching all the time

would tell ya, "Boy, I don't think anybody
got out of that one, nobody got out,"

and then sometimes you'd
see chutes comin' out of 'em

before they blew up or anything.

If you didn't have your chute on

and get out of there
in less than 30 seconds,

you're gone.

You're gone.

And seven out of eleven
out of my crew got out alive...

and one of 'em,
when he got on the ground,

they pitchforked him to death.

How could you kill a human
like that?

As we approached the
field, we set off flares.

Red flares means
you have wounded aboard.

Everybody else
gets out of the way

and the wounded comes in first.

To this day, I still see it.

When I think of it, I choke up.

I can't help it,
they were friends of mine,

they were good friends,
and it hurt so bad.

"What a waste."

With the job we had,
the chance of dying was at least 50%.

50% chance of living,
50% chance of dying.

You know, a guy
said, "Your name's on it."

Well, maybe it was.

But it was scary.

And I get very irritated when I hear some of
these guys say, "I wasn't scared one bit."

They're full of prunes.

I was scared every time.

I went out to a ship one time

when they were taking
a young fella off,

and I thought I could help them.

The guy they were pulling
out of the ship...

he was calling for his mother.

In about late 1944,

the Allies decided

to do away
with precision bombing.

We went to pattern bombing.

Unfortunately, it killed
a lot of people,

but brought the war to a close
about a year sooner.

The United States military

did not go out to carpet-bomb
civilians or anything.

They went out to bomb factories,

rail yards, refineries,

and places that had something
to do with the war.

I don't think that
I felt bad about that at all.

That's what we were
supposed to do.

But toward the end of the war,
the Germans would not give up.

Never thought a thing about it.

We didn't think about people
being down there.

That never crossed my mind,

about a human being
bein' down there.

Never gave it a
thought, they just Germans,

you know, and I never
gave it a thought.

For some reason,
I didn't hate 'em.

If I had a fighter plane

come within
shooting-me distance,

my thought was, "This kid probably
wanted to live as bad as you did."

I really didn't have
any hate for 'em.

I was just scared of 'em.

Never gave it a thought.

I honestly
never gave it a thought.

I JUST FELT THIS WAY:

"They're gonna do it to us,

we better do it to them
before they do it to us."

And that's the way I felt,
and I couldn't help it.

Bring any thoughts, seeing that?

Well,
I drifted off into several thoughts.

Most of 'em, you know, uh...

were bad thoughts when
you're lookin' at a mission.

I see what took place
on that mission,

and your mind drifts back
to those times, you know.

We had a lot
of midair collisions.

Some guys would get mixed up,
pilots,

and they'd start flying...
the wrong direction and so on.

But the scary part
of most of our missions

was just getting through
all of that.

Did it get easier or
harder as you flew more missions?

I just... Like I
say, I was scared to death.

But, uh...
those were not good days.

There was no radio
communication at all.

We had the intercom goin'
all the time, though.

I'd check in with the man
with the oxygen mask on,

make sure their oxygen
was flowing right.

Especially the tail gunner,

he was layin' back there
by himself so much.

You got very close
with the men and everything.

And they're all young kids.

They're all dead now, I'm sure.

When you're that high up,

everything on the ground
looks like a little toy.

If you see a truck or something,

it really looks small.

It was hard,
but you had to do it.

We had to get rid of Hitler,
and so we did it.

You guys know that some bombs
went through the wings of B-17s?

I always wondered
how in the world...

They were out of position...

in the formation.

God's been good to me.

First of all,
he's given me 70 years

with that lady over there,

and we have a wonderful family.

We have six kids

and we have 20 grandkids,
22 great-grandkids.

So we've been
a very blessed family.

I didn't say I want 'em all
at the house at once.

What do you
think about "The Good War"

and "You're
the Greatest Generation"?

Well...
I'm beginning to believe it.

Does that make sense to ya?

You kind of grew up 10 years
when you went into that thing.

And when I came back home,

I didn't feel like
the same man anymore.

What do you say to
people who say, "John, you're a hero."

You're a hero"?

I say, "OK,
you're probably right."

I don't know what else to say.

I wasn't one of the hero-heroes,

the guys that finish their tour
and sign up for another one,

I wasn't them kind of heroes.

But I want it clearly known:

I do not profess myself
to be a hero.

I was the pilot;

The heroes are buried in
England, Germany, and France.

The boys didn't make it,
they're the heroes.

I was just a normal pilot.

This is called pattern bombing.

No offense,
but you guys aren't getting any younger.

Why do you think it's important

that people know
what you guys did?

Well, for one thing,

we don't want it
to to happen again,

in fact or in fancy.

We just don't want it
to happen again,

for my grandson,
my granddaughters and their husbands.

I don't want to see them
have to face what we did.

I cannot say it
much more eloquently...

It was a hazardous profession.

OK, up at altitude and,
of course, bombs away and all,

and you got this on,

I think fear more than anything,

you'd perspire and sweat.

You got this on.

Ice would form,
and you'd take a deep breath

and break the ice
out of the oxygen mask.

And then put it back on.

This is Bud
trying to get down on the floor.

This is the Mae West.

Remember I told ya
about the oxygen?

I mean, the CO2 cylinder?

This is it. There it is.

CO2 cylinder.

This was before underarm
deodorant, hair spray...

I think this was the birth
of aerosol containers.

And if guys bailed out,
they didn't want it totally inflated

couple hundred feet up,

because if they hit the water,
they could break their backs.

So it wasn't that easy.
I never did it.

This is a throat mic.

This is how I talked to Eric.

And this plugged in.

And as I showed ya
on the helmet,

this is how I heard.

So we had
our communication system.

But, Bud, to be clear,

this should have been returned
to the government in 1945.

Come and get 'em, baby.

What we just did with you

might be the credit roll
to our movie,

so you have any messages
for people

that just watched this movie?

Well, I'm just so glad
that people in America,

or anywhere,
can get an idea what 19 and 20

and 21-year-old kids
went through,

and as I tell kids
when I get done with my talk,

"I'm gonna ask you guys
a favor now."

"What's that, Bud?"

"When you go home tonight,"

you say a prayer of thanks
to God

for those 28,000 guys
that gave their lives

"so that you got
the life you got today."

Well,
thank you for your service, Bud.

Not at all. Not at all.