Air Crew: 25 Missions. The Story of the Memphis Belle - Radio Operator.

TECHNICAL SGT. ROBERT J. HANSON
Radio Operator

Sergeant Hanson was a construction worker in Spokane, Wash., before joining the Army in September, 1941. He is 23 years old, married.

HIS STORY

IF you are in a new combat crew, you would do yourself a favor to sit down and have a good bull session with men who have been through it. Talking to them, hearing what they did and how they did it, you can pick up things it would take you a long time to learn for yourself.

Also, you should get accustomed to talking over your interphone. Learn not to talk in an excited, high-pitched voice. A little noise on the interphone going over always helps, because everybody is nervous. When you are in combat, use the interphone to keep the rest of the crew informed about what you can see. In a fight, the interphone is one of the most important things on your ship.

You will find that Jerry is fond of putting out false signals and false beams to confuse you. You have to be careful.

There should be others on the crew besides the radio operator who can take code. There is always a chance that somebody will be hit, and it may be the radio operator. The ball turret gunner or the tail gunner should be able to take messages by blinker code if the radio operator can't see them.

Practice wearing your helmet before you go over. If it doesn't fit, get it fixed. You probably won't be able to get it fixed over there. At best, our helmets aren't satisfactory. The wind whistles in, and if you pull them tight they hurt your ear-drums. The British helmet is far superior to ours.

WE have been in some pretty tight spots. There was the time that six Focke-Wulfs appeared from nowhere, and all six cut loose on us. We could see cannon shells bursting around us and had to slug it out with them. One of the fighters started smoking and went down. We headed in the direction of another, and after that they left us alone.

The radio operator's position is a good one, but it's a rough place to ride. In the Lorient raid, when we got the tail shot off, Captain Morgan put the ship into a terrific dive and we dropped two or three thousand feet. It pretty nearly threw me out of the airplane. I hit the roof. I thought we were going down and wondered if I should bail out. Then he pulled up again and I landed on my back. I had an ammunition box and a frequency meter on top of me. I didn't know what was going on.

Captain Morgan didn't have time to tell us and I couldn't have heard him if he had.

American morale in England is very high, and the boys are really on the ball. The fellows would enjoy more current magazines. About the only one we got was Readers Digest. By the way, the Red Cross does a swell job. If it weren't for them, we couldn't have gone to London because we wouldn't have had any place to stay.