Interview with Mr Morrison
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Interview with Mr Morrison
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Mr Morrison served in 416th Fighter Squadron. After joining in 1941, he completed officer basic training in Montgomery, Alabama; Avon Park, Florida; and Greenwood, Mississippi. Night fighter training ensued from September 1942 to March 1943. As Second lieutenant, Mr Morrison trained on A-20. In England, he retrained to Beaufighters before serving in Oran, Algiers, Bone and Bizerte. Later in the 12th Tactical Air Force, he participated in the invasion of Italy; also flying over the Apennines on patrols and night intruding operations to Taranto. Describes the strafing of targets of opportinity. Mr Morrison retired in 1965, as a lieutenant-colonel.
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AP: Good Afternoon, is Mr Morrison available please?
Unknown: Yes.
AP: Thank you.
CM: Hello.
AP: Hello Mr Morrison, this is Alan Perry from Penn state.
CM: Yeah.
AP: Well as I said I was going to call and I wanted to just let you know if it's okay, I've got the tape machine ready to start and I wanted to start that and ask you some questions about your involvement with the 416th during World War Two.
CM: Okay, well just a minute let me switch rooms, wife’s hogging the TV and I’d better get away from that.
AP: Alright.
CM: Okay.
AP: Well, first before beginning, I’d like to ask you some questions, I was able to find that information on nickels.
CM: No, I never did find it.
AP: I did, it’s on, you can barely read it unfortunately because the copy isn’t good, but it’s on page 124 in October of 1944.
CM: If I get through all these pictures I'll get to 124 in a minute. Well, that’s probably why I didn’t see it because that page on mine is messed up to where I can't hardly read it.
AP: Yeah, it’s pretty bad here on my copy, but this is what it...
CM: Yeah, I probably in my better days I could have read it, but I’m getting old.
AP: That’s okay, oh don’t worry, this is what it says for the 20th of October. It talks about by special order number, I believe that's 17, special courts martial was appointed. It talks about that but then it goes down, it says, the last two sentences, two of our aircraft dropped 40,000 nickels in the Bologna area. Lieutenant Coles, and I guess that’s Tucker? Something on landing, but escaped injury. So it says 40,000 nickels in the Bologna area that's one and then on day 21 it says, the last sentence, 80,000 nickels were dropped in the battle area near Bologna.
CM: Yep, I have no recollection of that whatsoever, that leaves me out completely out in left field.
AP: Yeah, it’s probably what you were thinking of, it’s probably, the allies are probably bombing Bologna and y’all dropped window, you dropped something with radar.
CM: I can’t help but think I'd be on the know on that, what’s the date on that?
AP: 20, 21, 22 and then there’s another one on the 24th.
CM: And what year was that?
AP: 1944.
CM: '44, I was in on just about everything we did back in those days, but there’s just no memory of it whatsoever.
AP: Yeah, could it have been propaganda leaflets?
CM: I doubt it seriously, but I just don’t know.
AP: Yeah.
CM: I can’t, I don’t have any memory because at that time we were flying Beaufighters, and they weren’t made [laugh], in other words it was difficult to drop anything out of them things. We didn’t have any, you know, so called place where you carried bombs or. And the only way they could have dropped anything, they'd have had to thrown it out of a very small hole they have up there, where... I don’t see how they could have gotten that much stuff out. I don’t think there’s any way, but like I say I’ll check into it all.
AP: Yeah.
CM: Call a couple of people that I know, that...
AP: Maybe Mr Simpson could help me? [unclear] Simpson?
CM: Red, he might, he was an RO and they'd be the ones dropping anything if it was dropped.
AP: Yeah, in the Beaufighter where did the RO sit? Right behind or right next to the pilot?
CM: Well, in the Mosquito was side by side, in the Beaufighter they were in the back. They was probably, I don’t know, 20 feet from us?
AP: Oh, really? That far back?
CM: Yeah, they were pretty much back. They could get up to me, I mean they could get up to the pilot, they could crawl through it, if for any reason, you know, they lost radio connection or something but they were back there quite a way.
AP: Well, why don’t I begin then if I can, asking you how it was that you got assigned, not necessarily right at the beginning to the 416th, but how was it that you became a night fighter? You accessed into the Army Air Corp when you were living in New Hampshire?
CM: Yeah.
AP: So, during the war when the Japanese bombed Pear Harbour you were in New Hampshire?
CM: That’s right, well that was the day I got my orders, was December 7th.
AP: So, you had already?
CM: I had already taken my physical and everything, and passed all the exams and was just waiting on being called and, that was the day I was called, December 7th.
AP: Had you already completed college?
CM: No, no I had only completed one year of college.
AP: Was that at the University of New Hampshire?
CM: No, that was Norwich University.
AP: Norwich, okay sure, I'm familiar with Norwich. Then where did you go for officer basic?
CM: We went from, when we got in, we started out at Montgomery Alabama and that’s when we basically, we just sat there and waited for places to open up where they could start the flight training. And went from there to Avon Park that's where I took primary.
AP: Avon Park?
CM: Avon Park, Florida. From Avon Park we either went to Greenwood or Greenville, Mississippi to take basic and be the reverse to take advanced, because that was all in Mississippi. And don’t ask me how we got into night fighters, there was 28 of us when we graduated, there was a sign to Orlando down here that said 'night fighters' and we all looked at each other and said, well what the devil are night fighters? We’d never heard of them.
AP: So, it was just, I guess luck of the draw, I say luck of the draw.
CM: It might have been the luck of the draw and it might have been because it was pretty much instrument flying, it might have been because this was the 28 best guys in instruments in the class. Now I don’t know which, I don’t ever remember anybody telling us.
AP: How long did the night fighter instruction take? How long did night fighter, your course in night fighting take, was it like 4 months was it, how long?
CM: Well, we got down here in September I believe, '43 and or '42, and then we was in training for about probably 4, 5, 6 months before we went overseas. Seems to me like we left somewhere along about in March of '43.
AP: And you all went to England?
CM: Yeah, went to England and got checked out in Beaufighters and their equipment which was somewhat different than ours, but ROs could tell you more about that.
AP: Sure. The plane... I'm sorry.
CM: And then we flew from there to Africa, and we went from Moran(?) to Algiers to Bone, [indecipherable] we invaded Sicily and Italy and then actually we flew into Italy right after the invasion because we was scheduled to go to a field just outside of Taranto. And I may not be pronouncing it right, but we got there and the Germans still had the field, so we had to go down south and land in a pasture and then the next day we got cleared and went back up to where we were supposed to be.
AP: And what was the, before you went to England, what was the aircraft that you trained on in Orlando?
CM: Yeah, we trained on converted A-20s, DB-7s and [chuckle] oh, lordy, the name of the other one just don’t come to me. But actually, they were just converted A-20s.
AP: A-20s.
CM: In other words, they put radar on ’em, that’s basically what they did. From that you could say you were flying an A-20.
AP: But you did transfer, transition into Beaufighters once you got to England?
CM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, right away.
CM: Yeah, we had, that was [laughs] that was really an experience, that first day when everybody flew the first time, because they were conventional landing gear and the A-20 was tricycle landing gear, and if you’ve ever done any flying, well there’s nothing to land in the tracks. Tricycle landing gear is very simple to fly because the torque doesn't get involved. But in a Beaufighter or Mosquito when you were landing or wanted to take it off, you better be very alert. Hoover should have told you about that.
AP: Yeah, he did, yeah, he did, he talked about that.
CM: He smacked one up.
AP: He even showed me the picture
CM: [laugh]
AP: Amazing.
CM: Yeah, he likes to talk about that.
AP: [laugh] What was your, what was your rank?
CM: Started out we was all second lieutenants, and we all I think basically, probably got promoted to first lieutenants before we went to Africa, and then it was a matter of just being at the right place at the right time. And when I was CO, I was a Major.
AP: When, ok, when you got to Italy you weren’t CO, Banks was, correct?
CM: Our CO was Major Banks at that time.
AP: Yeah, now I was talking with an enlisted man at the reunion, and he said that they called him Buster, they called him Bustin Banks or something? He was very hard on the enlisted, this guy said, everyone got busted and another got reduced in rank.
CM: Well, he, he lived by the books, if you went by the books, he had no problem with you. But he was an old school, he was an older man, oh lordy I'd say the Major, well, I’m guessing but I'd say he was in his forties when he took our squadron out.
AP: Oh, wow.
CM: Now I may have him a little old as he might have been in his late thirties, but he was, compared to most of us he was up there.
AP: He was older.
CM: Most of us were just, you know, just a bunch of young kids 18, 19, 20 years old.
AP: Right.
CM: And, but he was, he was a tremendous pilot. He had more flying time than anybody in the Air Force, any pilot in the Air Force he had it, at that particular time and he graduated with all those so-called Generals, he knew them all by their first name. And actually, that’s how come I took the squadron over cos he got in an argument with, if I remember correctly, I think it was General Israel. And finally, Israel got mad and says, "well I'm CO of this outfit and you do it this way" [chuckle]. Banks came right back and said, "well you may be CO, but I run the damn ops" [chuckle]. That was the wrong thing to say to a General.
AP: Right.
CM: So, he got, well actually what the General did was just take him down and promote him to a Lieutenant Colonel and send him home.
AP: Wow, and so you took over, what, when, do you remember what time you took over from Banks?
CM: Oh, I’m gonna say it was somewhere in September of, probably 44.
AP: Yeah, and that’s right near the time, as best I can tell from looking at the book that you all began, well you continued your patrol missions but then you went to night intruding.
CM: Yeah, that was exact time, because when he left the squadron he came back in a few days, I don’t remember how many days it was, but he comes back [indecipherable] to fly the first mission. He wanted to be the first one up there.
AP: What did night intruding involve, and I know that we’ve talked about this, but to have it on record, what, what was the basic premise?
CM: Well, basically for the most part it was targets of opportunity, in other words we would have to fly over the southern Alps, and most of the time we'd go down, once we got over the Alps. We’d get down around 2,000 feet, 1,500 to 2,000 feet and fly the highways. And, when we spotted a target, most of the time convoys of some kind or another, occasionally we got a few trains and stuff like that, a few boats, but for the most part it was trucks. And you just went into your dive and strafed ’em and hopefully come back up.
AP: When you went into the dive and you began strafing, what was the armament, what were you firing with?
CM: What were we firing with?
AP: Yeah, what were you firing, was it 20 millimetre?
CM: [Indistinguishable] In the Beaufighter cause we had four 20 millimetre cannons in the nose and for the life of me, we had a bunch of .30 calibre machine guns, that’s what the British liked, was .30 calibre. And I don’t know, we had either three or four or six in each wing, and they would converge at about, if my memory tells me, around 900 feet and they made an awful smash.
AP: Right. Especially if everything I imagine was firing together, the four cannons in the nose and everything in the...
CM: Sometimes we’d turn one or the other off depending on what the target was, if it was, you know, one truck or any other vehicle of some kind, most of the time we’d turn the cannons off and shoot the machine guns to save ammunition for a better target. Cause those 20 mil high explosives were like a bomb hitting when they hit. And if you happened to hit the place where they all come together [chuckle], there was a truck there, now there’s no truck anywhere.
AP: Sure, now you talk about flying over the southern Alps, would that be the Apennines? Through the mountains? In other words, it's not the Alps in the northern part of...
CM: No, no it's not the Alps that you’d fly over to go up into Austria.
AP: Right, it's the mountain range in Italy... the Apennines.
CM: It’s what you call the southern Alps, I don’t know any other name. They weren’t that high, they went up to, I don't know, about seven, eight, nine thousand feet.
AP: So, you’d take off, well in September of '44 you had moved to near Pisa is that correct?
CM: Yeah, when I took over we were south of Livorno. Then shortly after that, we moved up to Pisa.
AP: Right, and so, you’d fly over those Alps, that mountain range, and you'd come down, you said to 2,000 feet and would you, would there be just one aircraft in the air, or would you have a wingman or...?
CM: No, no, we went alone.
AP: Alone.
CM: That was the bad part, when somebody didn’t return, it was months and months and months before you knew what actually maybe happened to them. But all the people we lost, after the war ended and sent people in there to investigate, we found ‘em all.
AP: Yeah, when you then would fly a patrol mission and you know, you would not find any aircraft, any bogey you would then transition into this role, would you have a certain vector or sector of the Po river valley that you had gotten as a mission beforehand, before you took off or was that just sort of left up to the pilot?
CM: No, sometimes we had an area in the inventory would give us an area. Or sometimes we’d get information that the Germans were using that airport up there in the northeast section. And those times we had certain areas and we’d just go up and fly. But otherwise, and normally when a plane would go up and fly airport duty, all we did was stay within sight of the airport and fly in a circle and you might fly around for an hour or so before another one would come up and relieve you. And when you got relieved, well then they normally went down and flew the highway looking for targets to shoot at before they come home.
AP: You said then, you would follow the highway, would these trucks have lights on?
CM: Yeah, well that’s why the dark of the moon ended up being the best time to go on these missions. Because they had to have lights, now they weren’t much lights, but you’d be surprised when everything is completely black, you light a match and you can see it for miles and miles. Stuff like that just stands out, that’s why we got the nickname of Blackout Wardens.
AP: Now, do you know where you got that nickname?
CM: I have no idea, I imagine, it sounds like something Paul Reeve, a pilot, Lieutenant Reeve, it sounds like something that he’d come up with. But no way I can check with him, he was a very brilliant young man, very rich, very rich family and French people, and his father owned newspapers or whatnot up in Paris. But he, after the war, the last time I saw him, he was fairly high up over here in the cape area on this, that type of work over there. The last time I saw him I didn’t even recognise him, 'cause he was a real small, small bones, just a small person. I don’t imagine he’s still over 5’8 or 5’9 at the highest and [chuckle] the last time I saw him he ballooned I believe, his way to almost 300 pounds. So, you can see why I didn’t recognise him.
AP: Right, well, can you describe, your first mission? Your first intruder mission, what that was like?
CM: Oh, I can't say it was the first one, all I can do is just tell you how I felt. When I went into these missions, flying over the Alps, we could always look down and we could see the infantry fighting down there. In other words, the tracers going back and forth between the mountains, and that was always halfway interesting and made us feel real glad we was flying and not down there. And, oh I guess the feeling, the best way I know how to explain it, is when you spotted a target, you went on down on a target is like kick-off on a football game, you were really revved up. And that’s why we, everybody did a little bit different, but most of us had the ROs looking at the altimeter, to yell at us when we were getting down pretty low, because you’d just get so involved you’d forget everything else. Once you’d done it two or three times it was like anything else, you still thought about it, but you know it was something you’d done before so there was nothing to it from that standpoint.
AP: Yeah, Do you remember the first target you went after?
CM: Yeah, I remember my first convoy I went after, yeah, I remember very distinctly, cause I was so pepped up I went down and I just completely missed it [chuckle]. Your needle and ball were supposed to be centred when you go in on attack and that’s the only way your guns are going to go where the sight says, and my needle and ball was not centred. And to this day, I can still remember it because I hit an Italian stone farmhouse and I always felt real bad about that. But after that, I mean it’s like anything else you do in life, you know what your job is and you do it.
AP: Sure, do you remember when you described in our, this... going after that convoy and the sight wasn’t lined up and you hit the house, do you remember where you were in Italy?
CM: No, I, my memory is no good on that. I would say that, oh I might have been 50 to a 100 miles from the Brenner Pass, it was probably the western end of Po valley. Cause that’s where we found most of the stuff, we find them when they came out of Brenner Pass.
AP: I see, did you ever happen to drop bombs? You know you were saying that the Beaufighter didn’t carry bombs?
CM: No, we didn’t drop them we just fired the cannons and machine guns.
AP: Yeah, you know the people in Italy remember this phenomenon of night fighting and it was really interesting because in the book that Hoover and [unclear] put together in one of the unit histories, I’m sorry in one the entries in the unit history, there was a mention of this name that the Italians used to describe you all but, the Italians say, and of course fascist propaganda has a lot to do with this, many Italians remember this aircraft had a specific sound, that they could pick it out in the night and...
CM: Yeah, they used to call the Beaufighter the Silent Death.
AP: Silent, the Beaufighter, Silent Death why was that?
CM: Cause they were real quiet you, it was coming at you, you’d have to be looking right at it cause you’d hear nothing. Now, once they went past you, yes, you’d get the engine sound but coming in to you, there was real quiet and you wouldn’t hear ‘em until they started shootin’. But they, I can remember that, they called, they called those Beaufighters Silent Death. They didn’t like them things and I can’t blame them. If I was sitting down there I’d kind of be a little bit upset too, cause all over this roadway there was buildings. If my memory tells me there was quite a few buildings all the way along it. There wasn’t many spells, where, you know, like, being out west where you wouldn’t see nothing for a 100 miles. I don’t remember any areas like that, most of the time they was around buildings and what not and actually at the point we started strafing any of the trucks, they could, they would dive into and try to get behind houses and buildings. Cause we, you know, if there was just one truck and a house there, we wouldn’t strafe them because we’d be hitting the house. Anyway, I’ll say this, we weren’t supposed to be, now maybe some of the guys did, who knows, you flew alone and nobody knew what was going on except you.
AP: Right, now you had standing orders in other words not to, not to attack civilians?
CM: We had, basically unwritten orders, to try, in other words we would try and stay clear of civilian targets. Now the Germans used the civilian buildings and what not, they hid their tanks in them and everything else and so at times when we found those things or when we had orders that that was going on, yeah, they’d get strafed.
AP: Yeah, what did you know about the curfew, the Italians say that, that this aircraft, you know the night fighter aircraft would, would if it saw a light it would dive outta the sky and strafe. Did you all have that understanding that if any light was on, that it was German, that it was a target?
CM: Any light went on, if it was in that range, it got strafed.
AP: Yeah, and that’s because, did you all think that the Italians were told not to keep anything on or...?
CM: Oh, yeah, I was second guessing, where, I mean it doesn't take long to learn, but that’s, that’s where we came up with the nickname of Blackout Wardens of the Po valley. Its unwritten orders were if the lights came on, well, then it gets strafed.
AP: That’s extremely interesting, the Italians also think that, that this aircraft, now see they think that it was just one aircraft and not many, that this one aircraft dropped explosive pins. Now I think that has a lot to do with fascist propaganda but, did you all, you were saying it was really tough to shove anything out the door, you know the, of the Beaufighter, but did you ever, to the best of your recollection, even when you transitioned to Beaufighter, excuse me, to Mosquitos, did you, did you, you know drop anything from the aircraft?
CM: To my knowledge we never dropped anything. I have no recollection of that. And I would have because basically from the time that we was doing night intrusions when I took the squadron on and if we was... now let’s face it, this is an old memory and maybe there's certain things I’ve forgotten [unclear]. Maybe it’s something we might have done once or something and that’s why there's no memory of it. But I have no memory and I’ve scanned the book where I could read and I just have no memory of us dropping anything and I’ve checked with other people and, but like I say, now the best ones for you to call would be people like Red that were our radar operators, and if anything was dropped they’d be the ones to drop it.
AP: Right, yeah, but I’ve also checked and I can’t seem to find anything, anything in the inventory of ordnance of U.S. Army Air Corps ordnance in World War Two that looks like an explosive pin. I mean that doesn't make any sense.
CM: No, no, they could have been other people, I mean there was other people that flew at night. The British flew at night up there too and I’m trying to think we had in Italy. We had B-17s that raided up there a lot, B-26s, and we might have had a squadron or two of B-25s, I can’t really remember.
AP: The tape here's about to stop, let me go ahead and stop it and turn it over in a bit. But what about the Germans that flew, were, did they, [unclear] when at Anzio, you all were patrolling and there were German aircraft?
CM: Yeah, we ran into, oh I say, a few maybe quite a few. Let's see, we were, we were on the restrictions in those days which really hindered us, we could make contact and try to close in, but we weren't allowed to go across the lines. In other words, we weren’t allowed to fly into enemy territory.
AP: Oh, wow that’s interesting, let me stop here.
[pause]
AP: why weren’t you allowed to cross into enemy lines?
CM: On account of the radar. At, at that time it was highly secret, of course we found out later that the Germans had better radar than we had anyway, so they probably wouldn’t have learned a whole lot if they’d gotten hold of it.
AP: So, the Germans, of course, were doing night fighter operations?
CM: They were doing some, it was basically what we run into the most was reconnaissance aircraft and they flew at night and they flew at very high altitudes and that’s one reason we got Mosquitos because Beaufighter was limited it wouldn’t get up there, whereas the Mosquito could get on up there with any of them if not higher than most of them. But now we did have a few raids on Anzio of a, oh boy, it was a German bomber, I think the number on it was a 177, it was a fairly large aircraft, and I can remember just one raid, they might a had six [unclear] aeroplanes involved in it and between the 414th and the 416th I think they got two or three or four of them, I don’t remember just how many, but that’s the only big raid, anything other than that was normally one aircraft.
AP: I think you were the one that told me about Bedcheck Charlie?
CM: Yeah, that, that was the high flying recon.
AP: So, it was the name you all gave to the German high flying recon?
CM: Yeah, Bedcheck.
AP: Bedcheck, I think [unclear] that’s a great name, did the German JU 88 or maybe if you could remember that 177 did they, did their engines the propellors sound different than allied aircraft?
CM: Can’t answer that question, I don’t remember ever hearing one, seen ‘em but when your in the air course you wouldn’t hear them. The 88 and 188 was a cut down of the, no, no it was a larger plane that was the two that we ran into the most. And at the beginning of it, down in Naples we used to run into a few Heinkel 111s I think it was. I think that’s what Jimmy was the first one to shoot one down and I think that was what it was, a Heinkel 111.
AP: And Jimmy is Jimmy Ursal?
CM: Yeah
AP: Yeah, did, I guess you were still in command when, oh I can’t remember the name of the pilot that got, recce Joe, towards the end of the war?
CM: Yeah, hang on a second, I don’t know if that was a reconnaissance aircraft or not, but anyway he was flying a Mosquito and he burnt out an engine cause he was flying on a single engine and caught and shot it down and I think it was a 188 if I remember correctly and then he had more engine problems on the good engine coming home and eventually he had to bail out.
AP: So, the, even though they weren’t flying in great amount how do I directly, a great amount the Germans still flew something even towards the end of the war.
CM: Well their, god help, the B-17 bombers is what knocked their air force out because they just couldn’t [unclear] and they just couldn’t get any production up. That last year of the war, they had so few aircraft it was, it was unusual to see one. You could hear about them and plus they had, they had run out of better pilots they had youngsters now flying that were not real good pilots.
AP: What about the number of aircraft in the 416th what was a normal squadron and did that, did your squadron differ as a night fighter squadron, you know?
CM: Oh, let's see, we normally had anywhere from twelve to twenty aircraft [unclear] day in and day out we’d have eighteen crews so that was two up and down most of the time we tried to keep them [unclear] where they were broken up into three flights. In other words, normal operations, one flight was on a night. And this is when, sky all night and another flight would be on the next night.
AP: So that’s about what six planes up each night?
CM: Yeah, as a rule [unclear] about six planes in each flight, about six planes. On a normal night six planes covered the dark hours.
AP: And so, these six planes were flying intruder missions, they were going on patrol and then intruder missions and it’s amazing to read these reports because you all really knocked out a lot of transport, motor transport.
CM: Oh, yes, I don’t know what our numbers were, but it was way up there, we had sometimes, I can remember reporting [unclear] thirty, forty, fifty trucks [unclear].
AP: Yeah, yeah, it is, a lot.
CM: Well, that’s what, one of the big reasons we whipped them in Italy was because they couldn’t get their supplies, once, before that, before we started landing troops it was touch and go in Italy. I mean [unclear] troops it was just [unclear] mountain and crashed through, they was running out of ammunition and replacements for everything else so we, the air force was [unclear] which was brought right up to today, that all pilots today [unclear] back in World War Two this would be about the only real [unclear] pilots they had were night fighter pilots.
AP: Yeah, did you personally like the Mosquito more than the Beaufighter?
CM: I liked it to fly yes, the Beaufighter was like driving a two-ton truck. I mean you had to really put your weight behind it [unclear] whereas some people used to fly it with one finger. But now in combat [unclear] cause that was a disadvantage, but it was fast and very manoeuvrable it could get way on up there [unclear] just to see how, you know, how high it could get, memory tells me I got up to around 46 but I don’t...
AP: Now the, the engines in the Mosquito were inline and the engines in the Beaufighter were radial so they definitely sounded different.
CM: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah [unclear] I think the beaufighter was the one [unclear] because we actually by the time we got to Mosquitos, not that much worse, up there in 92, 95, oh that was [unclear] in France and the Beaufighter didn’t draw it out [unclear] for strafing the Beaufighter was a better aircraft because it was never [unclear] it didn’t go near [unclear] but it did the dirty work.
AP: Right, it had incredible punch, yeah, did you all ever have P-61s?
CM: [unclear] at the end of the war [unclear] we might have got them or we [unclear] cause I remember I had a [unclear] really upset about that now [unclear] United States government was paying and I got to pull the figures outta my ear, I can’t say exactly but probably around 250,000 dollars [unclear].
AP: Sure, sure.
CM: And when the war ended [unclear] I had to turn back for a dollar a piece [unclear] so much so [unclear] and I buy one of these [unclear] I’d like to buy one off you, got nowhere with that.
AP: [chuckle] that’s great! Were you under the Twelfth Tactical Airforce what was your?
CM: In Italy we was under Twelfth Tac and they were under the Twelfth Air Force.
AP: Okay and the Twelfth Tac was commanded by General Israel?
CM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, and the Twelfth Air Force headquarters if I’m, no not the Twelfth Tac but the Twelfth Air Force was also based was it not in Foggia?
CM: [unclear] I can’t even remember being [unclear] that was always in the [unclear] for one reason or the other [unclear] my memory [unclear].
AP: After the war you came back to the United States, and you continued your career in the Air Force or?
CM: I stayed in the Air force but had an awful lot of leave time [unclear] in 1946 which was [unclear] anniversary [unclear] and then I went back and I was stationed in [unclear] base and I was planning at that particular time to stay in [unclear] after two or three months [unclear] all of a sudden [unclear] his name on over these ships and back in those days [unclear] take your wife with you [unclear] getting flying time for everybody on that particular day [unclear] cause it was loaded with pilots [unclear] what’s my name, who is that [unclear] my wife needs to board here [unclear] three years after we got back and he was [unclear] and just hit me wrong [unclear] could I use your telephone [unclear] very short sentences that I wasn’t very happy and I’m no longer there and he let me use the phone and I called somebody I knew at the pentagon and in a weeks' time I was out.
AP: Where did you go from there?
CM: Oh, like most people [unclear] while in New Hampshire and I went down on Cape Cod every, lived down there for a while, my first child was born there and then I came to Florida that was probably along about 47 or 48 and I’ve been down here ever since.
AP: Did you stay in the reserves?
CM: Yeah, yeah, I retired from the reserves.
AP: With the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel?
CM: Yeah.
AP: How long have you been retired?
CM: Oh, boy I retired, I’m guessing, I, probably I retired around 1965.
AP: Okay, about 36 years.
CM: Yeah, I maybe now, oh boy, I probably be [unclear] haven’t been in the reserves for a lot of years [unclear] all through the late forties and fifties an into the sixties. So, I guess I was in the reserves for about twenty years.
AP: The reunions of the night fighters began in 1976, and did you participate in those reunions?
CM: Yeah, [unclear].
AP: Was that Dayton, no?
CM: [unclear] out west, I didn’t even know about that, [unclear] I want to say some kind of springs?
AP: Hot Springs, Arkansas?
CM: Yeah, that might have been it, in 1982 I put it on in Orlando that’s one of the first big [unclear] we had a bunch of people [unclear].
AP: That’s a lot of people.
CM: I didn’t go to this last one up there cause my wife was [unclear] she can’t drive anymore, or I have to drive her to the hospital every day for radiation [unclear] I was planning to go but I knew there would be [unclear].
AP: Getting back to the wartime, did you or after the war, shortly after, did you ever fly the P-61? Did you qualify to fly the p-61?
CM: Yeah.
AP: what did you think about flying the p-61?
CM: [unclear] it was a great aircraft to fly [unclear] it was, safest thing we ever flew [unclear] wouldn’t stay up long cause they burn an awful lot of gas [unclear] and so they weren’t totally successful, they could get upstairs where the recce was, we got a squadron of them in Italy [unclear] high flying recce [unclear] 30 to 35,000 feet and then after that they’ll come back or crash [unclear] start flying [unclear] they had a slow landing speed [unclear].
AP: Yeah, really fast.
CM: And of course they had tricycle landing gear, you didn’t worry about ground clearance [unclear].
AP: Back during the war could you know I’ve never flown and, I’ve flown, I mean that’s, I mean I’ve never piloted a plane I’m not a pilot. I’ve flown at night and of course, you know from a commercial jetliner I’ve seen what it looks like, what the ground looks like with the lights, you mentioned something that was really interesting to me, that you know, this notion of lighting a match that you could see for miles around, what is it like to, you know to fly at night when you did these missions, did you, how did you face flak? Did you see tracers coming up at you know from these, I don’t know maybe even convoys that, that had anti-aircraft patrols with them or?
CM: [unclear].
AP: Right, [unclear], my god and you always would have the radar, your radar operator tell, check the altimeter he was the one that was calling out to you how high you were so you knew exactly when to pull up?
CM: [unclear].
AP: How many would you say of these missions you flew?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Yeah, how many, yeah, about?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Yes, it was, September 44 till May until not even May till April, I of course know what the 416th did in April was it the 22nd? With the order that you got down from whoever, to fly it in the day and of course, you know the Mosquito isn’t a good aircraft to do a ground interdiction because it’s very light and it’s good target [unclear] you target you hit and if you hit, you know, if you hit it, it’s going down. I know that you all lost, what is it, two or three that day?
CM: [unclear] bad day [unclear] I woke him up and I got up [unclear] stay off the ground [unclear] and he didn’t stay off the ground [unclear].
AP: What was it like for you with the Italian people in, there in Pontedera or Pisa? Did, you said the other day something interesting that you had a couple pilots that were living in villas or they, they found apartments on their own or something?
CM: [unclear] I didn’t know it at the time [unclear] but I found out afterwards [unclear].
AP: Did you, during the war did you have any encounters with Italians, were they happy that you were there, were they, were they?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Right, cause of the fascists.
CM: [unclear]
AP: You never had any encounters or did you with Italian partisans?
CM: [unclear]
AP: But would you, when you were not flying, were there certain bars, were there restaurants that pilots would often go to and...
CM: [unclear]
AP: Mess facility? Yeah.
CM: I remember [unclear].
AP: Now the, the pilot in the 416th that, that had the, would you say, the most action, was that Urso? {check spelling25:40} or you pretty much had the same action across the board? The number of sorties the number of...
CM: [unclear]
AP: Right, and you?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Would you, were you operating, was the 416th pretty much operating autonomously or did you do missions maybe in tandem with 414th?
CM: No [unclear] Anzio [unclear].
AP: Did you ever have any interaction with the British units in Italy that flew the Mosquito?
CM: [unclear]
AP: And of course there are no Italian pilots, this is, these are Italians that weren’t fighting for Mussolini, but there were no Italian pilots that ever flew for you [unclear].
CM: [unclear]
AP: Well, you know asking you these questions I know a lot of the answers of course but I, I have to, you know I have to ask you this to have them down, so you know just verify and have them down for records. But Mr Morrison I sure appreciate you taking time out today and answering my questions, this is really valuable for the research that I’m doing and it’s a fascinating narrative of the times came up with, the story they had in order to explain what you all were doing and of course fascist propaganda really got involved with that and played upon their fears, but the information that your helping me, that you are providing is going to help them be able to better understand what really took place and I certainly appreciate it and I, you know...
CM: Fine [unclear].
AP: Yeah, I will and again thank you so much and have a, have a good evening I appreciate it.
CM: [unclear]
AP: Thank you Mr Morrison Bye Bye.
Unknown: Yes.
AP: Thank you.
CM: Hello.
AP: Hello Mr Morrison, this is Alan Perry from Penn state.
CM: Yeah.
AP: Well as I said I was going to call and I wanted to just let you know if it's okay, I've got the tape machine ready to start and I wanted to start that and ask you some questions about your involvement with the 416th during World War Two.
CM: Okay, well just a minute let me switch rooms, wife’s hogging the TV and I’d better get away from that.
AP: Alright.
CM: Okay.
AP: Well, first before beginning, I’d like to ask you some questions, I was able to find that information on nickels.
CM: No, I never did find it.
AP: I did, it’s on, you can barely read it unfortunately because the copy isn’t good, but it’s on page 124 in October of 1944.
CM: If I get through all these pictures I'll get to 124 in a minute. Well, that’s probably why I didn’t see it because that page on mine is messed up to where I can't hardly read it.
AP: Yeah, it’s pretty bad here on my copy, but this is what it...
CM: Yeah, I probably in my better days I could have read it, but I’m getting old.
AP: That’s okay, oh don’t worry, this is what it says for the 20th of October. It talks about by special order number, I believe that's 17, special courts martial was appointed. It talks about that but then it goes down, it says, the last two sentences, two of our aircraft dropped 40,000 nickels in the Bologna area. Lieutenant Coles, and I guess that’s Tucker? Something on landing, but escaped injury. So it says 40,000 nickels in the Bologna area that's one and then on day 21 it says, the last sentence, 80,000 nickels were dropped in the battle area near Bologna.
CM: Yep, I have no recollection of that whatsoever, that leaves me out completely out in left field.
AP: Yeah, it’s probably what you were thinking of, it’s probably, the allies are probably bombing Bologna and y’all dropped window, you dropped something with radar.
CM: I can’t help but think I'd be on the know on that, what’s the date on that?
AP: 20, 21, 22 and then there’s another one on the 24th.
CM: And what year was that?
AP: 1944.
CM: '44, I was in on just about everything we did back in those days, but there’s just no memory of it whatsoever.
AP: Yeah, could it have been propaganda leaflets?
CM: I doubt it seriously, but I just don’t know.
AP: Yeah.
CM: I can’t, I don’t have any memory because at that time we were flying Beaufighters, and they weren’t made [laugh], in other words it was difficult to drop anything out of them things. We didn’t have any, you know, so called place where you carried bombs or. And the only way they could have dropped anything, they'd have had to thrown it out of a very small hole they have up there, where... I don’t see how they could have gotten that much stuff out. I don’t think there’s any way, but like I say I’ll check into it all.
AP: Yeah.
CM: Call a couple of people that I know, that...
AP: Maybe Mr Simpson could help me? [unclear] Simpson?
CM: Red, he might, he was an RO and they'd be the ones dropping anything if it was dropped.
AP: Yeah, in the Beaufighter where did the RO sit? Right behind or right next to the pilot?
CM: Well, in the Mosquito was side by side, in the Beaufighter they were in the back. They was probably, I don’t know, 20 feet from us?
AP: Oh, really? That far back?
CM: Yeah, they were pretty much back. They could get up to me, I mean they could get up to the pilot, they could crawl through it, if for any reason, you know, they lost radio connection or something but they were back there quite a way.
AP: Well, why don’t I begin then if I can, asking you how it was that you got assigned, not necessarily right at the beginning to the 416th, but how was it that you became a night fighter? You accessed into the Army Air Corp when you were living in New Hampshire?
CM: Yeah.
AP: So, during the war when the Japanese bombed Pear Harbour you were in New Hampshire?
CM: That’s right, well that was the day I got my orders, was December 7th.
AP: So, you had already?
CM: I had already taken my physical and everything, and passed all the exams and was just waiting on being called and, that was the day I was called, December 7th.
AP: Had you already completed college?
CM: No, no I had only completed one year of college.
AP: Was that at the University of New Hampshire?
CM: No, that was Norwich University.
AP: Norwich, okay sure, I'm familiar with Norwich. Then where did you go for officer basic?
CM: We went from, when we got in, we started out at Montgomery Alabama and that’s when we basically, we just sat there and waited for places to open up where they could start the flight training. And went from there to Avon Park that's where I took primary.
AP: Avon Park?
CM: Avon Park, Florida. From Avon Park we either went to Greenwood or Greenville, Mississippi to take basic and be the reverse to take advanced, because that was all in Mississippi. And don’t ask me how we got into night fighters, there was 28 of us when we graduated, there was a sign to Orlando down here that said 'night fighters' and we all looked at each other and said, well what the devil are night fighters? We’d never heard of them.
AP: So, it was just, I guess luck of the draw, I say luck of the draw.
CM: It might have been the luck of the draw and it might have been because it was pretty much instrument flying, it might have been because this was the 28 best guys in instruments in the class. Now I don’t know which, I don’t ever remember anybody telling us.
AP: How long did the night fighter instruction take? How long did night fighter, your course in night fighting take, was it like 4 months was it, how long?
CM: Well, we got down here in September I believe, '43 and or '42, and then we was in training for about probably 4, 5, 6 months before we went overseas. Seems to me like we left somewhere along about in March of '43.
AP: And you all went to England?
CM: Yeah, went to England and got checked out in Beaufighters and their equipment which was somewhat different than ours, but ROs could tell you more about that.
AP: Sure. The plane... I'm sorry.
CM: And then we flew from there to Africa, and we went from Moran(?) to Algiers to Bone, [indecipherable] we invaded Sicily and Italy and then actually we flew into Italy right after the invasion because we was scheduled to go to a field just outside of Taranto. And I may not be pronouncing it right, but we got there and the Germans still had the field, so we had to go down south and land in a pasture and then the next day we got cleared and went back up to where we were supposed to be.
AP: And what was the, before you went to England, what was the aircraft that you trained on in Orlando?
CM: Yeah, we trained on converted A-20s, DB-7s and [chuckle] oh, lordy, the name of the other one just don’t come to me. But actually, they were just converted A-20s.
AP: A-20s.
CM: In other words, they put radar on ’em, that’s basically what they did. From that you could say you were flying an A-20.
AP: But you did transfer, transition into Beaufighters once you got to England?
CM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, right away.
CM: Yeah, we had, that was [laughs] that was really an experience, that first day when everybody flew the first time, because they were conventional landing gear and the A-20 was tricycle landing gear, and if you’ve ever done any flying, well there’s nothing to land in the tracks. Tricycle landing gear is very simple to fly because the torque doesn't get involved. But in a Beaufighter or Mosquito when you were landing or wanted to take it off, you better be very alert. Hoover should have told you about that.
AP: Yeah, he did, yeah, he did, he talked about that.
CM: He smacked one up.
AP: He even showed me the picture
CM: [laugh]
AP: Amazing.
CM: Yeah, he likes to talk about that.
AP: [laugh] What was your, what was your rank?
CM: Started out we was all second lieutenants, and we all I think basically, probably got promoted to first lieutenants before we went to Africa, and then it was a matter of just being at the right place at the right time. And when I was CO, I was a Major.
AP: When, ok, when you got to Italy you weren’t CO, Banks was, correct?
CM: Our CO was Major Banks at that time.
AP: Yeah, now I was talking with an enlisted man at the reunion, and he said that they called him Buster, they called him Bustin Banks or something? He was very hard on the enlisted, this guy said, everyone got busted and another got reduced in rank.
CM: Well, he, he lived by the books, if you went by the books, he had no problem with you. But he was an old school, he was an older man, oh lordy I'd say the Major, well, I’m guessing but I'd say he was in his forties when he took our squadron out.
AP: Oh, wow.
CM: Now I may have him a little old as he might have been in his late thirties, but he was, compared to most of us he was up there.
AP: He was older.
CM: Most of us were just, you know, just a bunch of young kids 18, 19, 20 years old.
AP: Right.
CM: And, but he was, he was a tremendous pilot. He had more flying time than anybody in the Air Force, any pilot in the Air Force he had it, at that particular time and he graduated with all those so-called Generals, he knew them all by their first name. And actually, that’s how come I took the squadron over cos he got in an argument with, if I remember correctly, I think it was General Israel. And finally, Israel got mad and says, "well I'm CO of this outfit and you do it this way" [chuckle]. Banks came right back and said, "well you may be CO, but I run the damn ops" [chuckle]. That was the wrong thing to say to a General.
AP: Right.
CM: So, he got, well actually what the General did was just take him down and promote him to a Lieutenant Colonel and send him home.
AP: Wow, and so you took over, what, when, do you remember what time you took over from Banks?
CM: Oh, I’m gonna say it was somewhere in September of, probably 44.
AP: Yeah, and that’s right near the time, as best I can tell from looking at the book that you all began, well you continued your patrol missions but then you went to night intruding.
CM: Yeah, that was exact time, because when he left the squadron he came back in a few days, I don’t remember how many days it was, but he comes back [indecipherable] to fly the first mission. He wanted to be the first one up there.
AP: What did night intruding involve, and I know that we’ve talked about this, but to have it on record, what, what was the basic premise?
CM: Well, basically for the most part it was targets of opportunity, in other words we would have to fly over the southern Alps, and most of the time we'd go down, once we got over the Alps. We’d get down around 2,000 feet, 1,500 to 2,000 feet and fly the highways. And, when we spotted a target, most of the time convoys of some kind or another, occasionally we got a few trains and stuff like that, a few boats, but for the most part it was trucks. And you just went into your dive and strafed ’em and hopefully come back up.
AP: When you went into the dive and you began strafing, what was the armament, what were you firing with?
CM: What were we firing with?
AP: Yeah, what were you firing, was it 20 millimetre?
CM: [Indistinguishable] In the Beaufighter cause we had four 20 millimetre cannons in the nose and for the life of me, we had a bunch of .30 calibre machine guns, that’s what the British liked, was .30 calibre. And I don’t know, we had either three or four or six in each wing, and they would converge at about, if my memory tells me, around 900 feet and they made an awful smash.
AP: Right. Especially if everything I imagine was firing together, the four cannons in the nose and everything in the...
CM: Sometimes we’d turn one or the other off depending on what the target was, if it was, you know, one truck or any other vehicle of some kind, most of the time we’d turn the cannons off and shoot the machine guns to save ammunition for a better target. Cause those 20 mil high explosives were like a bomb hitting when they hit. And if you happened to hit the place where they all come together [chuckle], there was a truck there, now there’s no truck anywhere.
AP: Sure, now you talk about flying over the southern Alps, would that be the Apennines? Through the mountains? In other words, it's not the Alps in the northern part of...
CM: No, no it's not the Alps that you’d fly over to go up into Austria.
AP: Right, it's the mountain range in Italy... the Apennines.
CM: It’s what you call the southern Alps, I don’t know any other name. They weren’t that high, they went up to, I don't know, about seven, eight, nine thousand feet.
AP: So, you’d take off, well in September of '44 you had moved to near Pisa is that correct?
CM: Yeah, when I took over we were south of Livorno. Then shortly after that, we moved up to Pisa.
AP: Right, and so, you’d fly over those Alps, that mountain range, and you'd come down, you said to 2,000 feet and would you, would there be just one aircraft in the air, or would you have a wingman or...?
CM: No, no, we went alone.
AP: Alone.
CM: That was the bad part, when somebody didn’t return, it was months and months and months before you knew what actually maybe happened to them. But all the people we lost, after the war ended and sent people in there to investigate, we found ‘em all.
AP: Yeah, when you then would fly a patrol mission and you know, you would not find any aircraft, any bogey you would then transition into this role, would you have a certain vector or sector of the Po river valley that you had gotten as a mission beforehand, before you took off or was that just sort of left up to the pilot?
CM: No, sometimes we had an area in the inventory would give us an area. Or sometimes we’d get information that the Germans were using that airport up there in the northeast section. And those times we had certain areas and we’d just go up and fly. But otherwise, and normally when a plane would go up and fly airport duty, all we did was stay within sight of the airport and fly in a circle and you might fly around for an hour or so before another one would come up and relieve you. And when you got relieved, well then they normally went down and flew the highway looking for targets to shoot at before they come home.
AP: You said then, you would follow the highway, would these trucks have lights on?
CM: Yeah, well that’s why the dark of the moon ended up being the best time to go on these missions. Because they had to have lights, now they weren’t much lights, but you’d be surprised when everything is completely black, you light a match and you can see it for miles and miles. Stuff like that just stands out, that’s why we got the nickname of Blackout Wardens.
AP: Now, do you know where you got that nickname?
CM: I have no idea, I imagine, it sounds like something Paul Reeve, a pilot, Lieutenant Reeve, it sounds like something that he’d come up with. But no way I can check with him, he was a very brilliant young man, very rich, very rich family and French people, and his father owned newspapers or whatnot up in Paris. But he, after the war, the last time I saw him, he was fairly high up over here in the cape area on this, that type of work over there. The last time I saw him I didn’t even recognise him, 'cause he was a real small, small bones, just a small person. I don’t imagine he’s still over 5’8 or 5’9 at the highest and [chuckle] the last time I saw him he ballooned I believe, his way to almost 300 pounds. So, you can see why I didn’t recognise him.
AP: Right, well, can you describe, your first mission? Your first intruder mission, what that was like?
CM: Oh, I can't say it was the first one, all I can do is just tell you how I felt. When I went into these missions, flying over the Alps, we could always look down and we could see the infantry fighting down there. In other words, the tracers going back and forth between the mountains, and that was always halfway interesting and made us feel real glad we was flying and not down there. And, oh I guess the feeling, the best way I know how to explain it, is when you spotted a target, you went on down on a target is like kick-off on a football game, you were really revved up. And that’s why we, everybody did a little bit different, but most of us had the ROs looking at the altimeter, to yell at us when we were getting down pretty low, because you’d just get so involved you’d forget everything else. Once you’d done it two or three times it was like anything else, you still thought about it, but you know it was something you’d done before so there was nothing to it from that standpoint.
AP: Yeah, Do you remember the first target you went after?
CM: Yeah, I remember my first convoy I went after, yeah, I remember very distinctly, cause I was so pepped up I went down and I just completely missed it [chuckle]. Your needle and ball were supposed to be centred when you go in on attack and that’s the only way your guns are going to go where the sight says, and my needle and ball was not centred. And to this day, I can still remember it because I hit an Italian stone farmhouse and I always felt real bad about that. But after that, I mean it’s like anything else you do in life, you know what your job is and you do it.
AP: Sure, do you remember when you described in our, this... going after that convoy and the sight wasn’t lined up and you hit the house, do you remember where you were in Italy?
CM: No, I, my memory is no good on that. I would say that, oh I might have been 50 to a 100 miles from the Brenner Pass, it was probably the western end of Po valley. Cause that’s where we found most of the stuff, we find them when they came out of Brenner Pass.
AP: I see, did you ever happen to drop bombs? You know you were saying that the Beaufighter didn’t carry bombs?
CM: No, we didn’t drop them we just fired the cannons and machine guns.
AP: Yeah, you know the people in Italy remember this phenomenon of night fighting and it was really interesting because in the book that Hoover and [unclear] put together in one of the unit histories, I’m sorry in one the entries in the unit history, there was a mention of this name that the Italians used to describe you all but, the Italians say, and of course fascist propaganda has a lot to do with this, many Italians remember this aircraft had a specific sound, that they could pick it out in the night and...
CM: Yeah, they used to call the Beaufighter the Silent Death.
AP: Silent, the Beaufighter, Silent Death why was that?
CM: Cause they were real quiet you, it was coming at you, you’d have to be looking right at it cause you’d hear nothing. Now, once they went past you, yes, you’d get the engine sound but coming in to you, there was real quiet and you wouldn’t hear ‘em until they started shootin’. But they, I can remember that, they called, they called those Beaufighters Silent Death. They didn’t like them things and I can’t blame them. If I was sitting down there I’d kind of be a little bit upset too, cause all over this roadway there was buildings. If my memory tells me there was quite a few buildings all the way along it. There wasn’t many spells, where, you know, like, being out west where you wouldn’t see nothing for a 100 miles. I don’t remember any areas like that, most of the time they was around buildings and what not and actually at the point we started strafing any of the trucks, they could, they would dive into and try to get behind houses and buildings. Cause we, you know, if there was just one truck and a house there, we wouldn’t strafe them because we’d be hitting the house. Anyway, I’ll say this, we weren’t supposed to be, now maybe some of the guys did, who knows, you flew alone and nobody knew what was going on except you.
AP: Right, now you had standing orders in other words not to, not to attack civilians?
CM: We had, basically unwritten orders, to try, in other words we would try and stay clear of civilian targets. Now the Germans used the civilian buildings and what not, they hid their tanks in them and everything else and so at times when we found those things or when we had orders that that was going on, yeah, they’d get strafed.
AP: Yeah, what did you know about the curfew, the Italians say that, that this aircraft, you know the night fighter aircraft would, would if it saw a light it would dive outta the sky and strafe. Did you all have that understanding that if any light was on, that it was German, that it was a target?
CM: Any light went on, if it was in that range, it got strafed.
AP: Yeah, and that’s because, did you all think that the Italians were told not to keep anything on or...?
CM: Oh, yeah, I was second guessing, where, I mean it doesn't take long to learn, but that’s, that’s where we came up with the nickname of Blackout Wardens of the Po valley. Its unwritten orders were if the lights came on, well, then it gets strafed.
AP: That’s extremely interesting, the Italians also think that, that this aircraft, now see they think that it was just one aircraft and not many, that this one aircraft dropped explosive pins. Now I think that has a lot to do with fascist propaganda but, did you all, you were saying it was really tough to shove anything out the door, you know the, of the Beaufighter, but did you ever, to the best of your recollection, even when you transitioned to Beaufighter, excuse me, to Mosquitos, did you, did you, you know drop anything from the aircraft?
CM: To my knowledge we never dropped anything. I have no recollection of that. And I would have because basically from the time that we was doing night intrusions when I took the squadron on and if we was... now let’s face it, this is an old memory and maybe there's certain things I’ve forgotten [unclear]. Maybe it’s something we might have done once or something and that’s why there's no memory of it. But I have no memory and I’ve scanned the book where I could read and I just have no memory of us dropping anything and I’ve checked with other people and, but like I say, now the best ones for you to call would be people like Red that were our radar operators, and if anything was dropped they’d be the ones to drop it.
AP: Right, yeah, but I’ve also checked and I can’t seem to find anything, anything in the inventory of ordnance of U.S. Army Air Corps ordnance in World War Two that looks like an explosive pin. I mean that doesn't make any sense.
CM: No, no, they could have been other people, I mean there was other people that flew at night. The British flew at night up there too and I’m trying to think we had in Italy. We had B-17s that raided up there a lot, B-26s, and we might have had a squadron or two of B-25s, I can’t really remember.
AP: The tape here's about to stop, let me go ahead and stop it and turn it over in a bit. But what about the Germans that flew, were, did they, [unclear] when at Anzio, you all were patrolling and there were German aircraft?
CM: Yeah, we ran into, oh I say, a few maybe quite a few. Let's see, we were, we were on the restrictions in those days which really hindered us, we could make contact and try to close in, but we weren't allowed to go across the lines. In other words, we weren’t allowed to fly into enemy territory.
AP: Oh, wow that’s interesting, let me stop here.
[pause]
AP: why weren’t you allowed to cross into enemy lines?
CM: On account of the radar. At, at that time it was highly secret, of course we found out later that the Germans had better radar than we had anyway, so they probably wouldn’t have learned a whole lot if they’d gotten hold of it.
AP: So, the Germans, of course, were doing night fighter operations?
CM: They were doing some, it was basically what we run into the most was reconnaissance aircraft and they flew at night and they flew at very high altitudes and that’s one reason we got Mosquitos because Beaufighter was limited it wouldn’t get up there, whereas the Mosquito could get on up there with any of them if not higher than most of them. But now we did have a few raids on Anzio of a, oh boy, it was a German bomber, I think the number on it was a 177, it was a fairly large aircraft, and I can remember just one raid, they might a had six [unclear] aeroplanes involved in it and between the 414th and the 416th I think they got two or three or four of them, I don’t remember just how many, but that’s the only big raid, anything other than that was normally one aircraft.
AP: I think you were the one that told me about Bedcheck Charlie?
CM: Yeah, that, that was the high flying recon.
AP: So, it was the name you all gave to the German high flying recon?
CM: Yeah, Bedcheck.
AP: Bedcheck, I think [unclear] that’s a great name, did the German JU 88 or maybe if you could remember that 177 did they, did their engines the propellors sound different than allied aircraft?
CM: Can’t answer that question, I don’t remember ever hearing one, seen ‘em but when your in the air course you wouldn’t hear them. The 88 and 188 was a cut down of the, no, no it was a larger plane that was the two that we ran into the most. And at the beginning of it, down in Naples we used to run into a few Heinkel 111s I think it was. I think that’s what Jimmy was the first one to shoot one down and I think that was what it was, a Heinkel 111.
AP: And Jimmy is Jimmy Ursal?
CM: Yeah
AP: Yeah, did, I guess you were still in command when, oh I can’t remember the name of the pilot that got, recce Joe, towards the end of the war?
CM: Yeah, hang on a second, I don’t know if that was a reconnaissance aircraft or not, but anyway he was flying a Mosquito and he burnt out an engine cause he was flying on a single engine and caught and shot it down and I think it was a 188 if I remember correctly and then he had more engine problems on the good engine coming home and eventually he had to bail out.
AP: So, the, even though they weren’t flying in great amount how do I directly, a great amount the Germans still flew something even towards the end of the war.
CM: Well their, god help, the B-17 bombers is what knocked their air force out because they just couldn’t [unclear] and they just couldn’t get any production up. That last year of the war, they had so few aircraft it was, it was unusual to see one. You could hear about them and plus they had, they had run out of better pilots they had youngsters now flying that were not real good pilots.
AP: What about the number of aircraft in the 416th what was a normal squadron and did that, did your squadron differ as a night fighter squadron, you know?
CM: Oh, let's see, we normally had anywhere from twelve to twenty aircraft [unclear] day in and day out we’d have eighteen crews so that was two up and down most of the time we tried to keep them [unclear] where they were broken up into three flights. In other words, normal operations, one flight was on a night. And this is when, sky all night and another flight would be on the next night.
AP: So that’s about what six planes up each night?
CM: Yeah, as a rule [unclear] about six planes in each flight, about six planes. On a normal night six planes covered the dark hours.
AP: And so, these six planes were flying intruder missions, they were going on patrol and then intruder missions and it’s amazing to read these reports because you all really knocked out a lot of transport, motor transport.
CM: Oh, yes, I don’t know what our numbers were, but it was way up there, we had sometimes, I can remember reporting [unclear] thirty, forty, fifty trucks [unclear].
AP: Yeah, yeah, it is, a lot.
CM: Well, that’s what, one of the big reasons we whipped them in Italy was because they couldn’t get their supplies, once, before that, before we started landing troops it was touch and go in Italy. I mean [unclear] troops it was just [unclear] mountain and crashed through, they was running out of ammunition and replacements for everything else so we, the air force was [unclear] which was brought right up to today, that all pilots today [unclear] back in World War Two this would be about the only real [unclear] pilots they had were night fighter pilots.
AP: Yeah, did you personally like the Mosquito more than the Beaufighter?
CM: I liked it to fly yes, the Beaufighter was like driving a two-ton truck. I mean you had to really put your weight behind it [unclear] whereas some people used to fly it with one finger. But now in combat [unclear] cause that was a disadvantage, but it was fast and very manoeuvrable it could get way on up there [unclear] just to see how, you know, how high it could get, memory tells me I got up to around 46 but I don’t...
AP: Now the, the engines in the Mosquito were inline and the engines in the Beaufighter were radial so they definitely sounded different.
CM: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah [unclear] I think the beaufighter was the one [unclear] because we actually by the time we got to Mosquitos, not that much worse, up there in 92, 95, oh that was [unclear] in France and the Beaufighter didn’t draw it out [unclear] for strafing the Beaufighter was a better aircraft because it was never [unclear] it didn’t go near [unclear] but it did the dirty work.
AP: Right, it had incredible punch, yeah, did you all ever have P-61s?
CM: [unclear] at the end of the war [unclear] we might have got them or we [unclear] cause I remember I had a [unclear] really upset about that now [unclear] United States government was paying and I got to pull the figures outta my ear, I can’t say exactly but probably around 250,000 dollars [unclear].
AP: Sure, sure.
CM: And when the war ended [unclear] I had to turn back for a dollar a piece [unclear] so much so [unclear] and I buy one of these [unclear] I’d like to buy one off you, got nowhere with that.
AP: [chuckle] that’s great! Were you under the Twelfth Tactical Airforce what was your?
CM: In Italy we was under Twelfth Tac and they were under the Twelfth Air Force.
AP: Okay and the Twelfth Tac was commanded by General Israel?
CM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, and the Twelfth Air Force headquarters if I’m, no not the Twelfth Tac but the Twelfth Air Force was also based was it not in Foggia?
CM: [unclear] I can’t even remember being [unclear] that was always in the [unclear] for one reason or the other [unclear] my memory [unclear].
AP: After the war you came back to the United States, and you continued your career in the Air Force or?
CM: I stayed in the Air force but had an awful lot of leave time [unclear] in 1946 which was [unclear] anniversary [unclear] and then I went back and I was stationed in [unclear] base and I was planning at that particular time to stay in [unclear] after two or three months [unclear] all of a sudden [unclear] his name on over these ships and back in those days [unclear] take your wife with you [unclear] getting flying time for everybody on that particular day [unclear] cause it was loaded with pilots [unclear] what’s my name, who is that [unclear] my wife needs to board here [unclear] three years after we got back and he was [unclear] and just hit me wrong [unclear] could I use your telephone [unclear] very short sentences that I wasn’t very happy and I’m no longer there and he let me use the phone and I called somebody I knew at the pentagon and in a weeks' time I was out.
AP: Where did you go from there?
CM: Oh, like most people [unclear] while in New Hampshire and I went down on Cape Cod every, lived down there for a while, my first child was born there and then I came to Florida that was probably along about 47 or 48 and I’ve been down here ever since.
AP: Did you stay in the reserves?
CM: Yeah, yeah, I retired from the reserves.
AP: With the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel?
CM: Yeah.
AP: How long have you been retired?
CM: Oh, boy I retired, I’m guessing, I, probably I retired around 1965.
AP: Okay, about 36 years.
CM: Yeah, I maybe now, oh boy, I probably be [unclear] haven’t been in the reserves for a lot of years [unclear] all through the late forties and fifties an into the sixties. So, I guess I was in the reserves for about twenty years.
AP: The reunions of the night fighters began in 1976, and did you participate in those reunions?
CM: Yeah, [unclear].
AP: Was that Dayton, no?
CM: [unclear] out west, I didn’t even know about that, [unclear] I want to say some kind of springs?
AP: Hot Springs, Arkansas?
CM: Yeah, that might have been it, in 1982 I put it on in Orlando that’s one of the first big [unclear] we had a bunch of people [unclear].
AP: That’s a lot of people.
CM: I didn’t go to this last one up there cause my wife was [unclear] she can’t drive anymore, or I have to drive her to the hospital every day for radiation [unclear] I was planning to go but I knew there would be [unclear].
AP: Getting back to the wartime, did you or after the war, shortly after, did you ever fly the P-61? Did you qualify to fly the p-61?
CM: Yeah.
AP: what did you think about flying the p-61?
CM: [unclear] it was a great aircraft to fly [unclear] it was, safest thing we ever flew [unclear] wouldn’t stay up long cause they burn an awful lot of gas [unclear] and so they weren’t totally successful, they could get upstairs where the recce was, we got a squadron of them in Italy [unclear] high flying recce [unclear] 30 to 35,000 feet and then after that they’ll come back or crash [unclear] start flying [unclear] they had a slow landing speed [unclear].
AP: Yeah, really fast.
CM: And of course they had tricycle landing gear, you didn’t worry about ground clearance [unclear].
AP: Back during the war could you know I’ve never flown and, I’ve flown, I mean that’s, I mean I’ve never piloted a plane I’m not a pilot. I’ve flown at night and of course, you know from a commercial jetliner I’ve seen what it looks like, what the ground looks like with the lights, you mentioned something that was really interesting to me, that you know, this notion of lighting a match that you could see for miles around, what is it like to, you know to fly at night when you did these missions, did you, how did you face flak? Did you see tracers coming up at you know from these, I don’t know maybe even convoys that, that had anti-aircraft patrols with them or?
CM: [unclear].
AP: Right, [unclear], my god and you always would have the radar, your radar operator tell, check the altimeter he was the one that was calling out to you how high you were so you knew exactly when to pull up?
CM: [unclear].
AP: How many would you say of these missions you flew?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Yeah, how many, yeah, about?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Yes, it was, September 44 till May until not even May till April, I of course know what the 416th did in April was it the 22nd? With the order that you got down from whoever, to fly it in the day and of course, you know the Mosquito isn’t a good aircraft to do a ground interdiction because it’s very light and it’s good target [unclear] you target you hit and if you hit, you know, if you hit it, it’s going down. I know that you all lost, what is it, two or three that day?
CM: [unclear] bad day [unclear] I woke him up and I got up [unclear] stay off the ground [unclear] and he didn’t stay off the ground [unclear].
AP: What was it like for you with the Italian people in, there in Pontedera or Pisa? Did, you said the other day something interesting that you had a couple pilots that were living in villas or they, they found apartments on their own or something?
CM: [unclear] I didn’t know it at the time [unclear] but I found out afterwards [unclear].
AP: Did you, during the war did you have any encounters with Italians, were they happy that you were there, were they, were they?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Right, cause of the fascists.
CM: [unclear]
AP: You never had any encounters or did you with Italian partisans?
CM: [unclear]
AP: But would you, when you were not flying, were there certain bars, were there restaurants that pilots would often go to and...
CM: [unclear]
AP: Mess facility? Yeah.
CM: I remember [unclear].
AP: Now the, the pilot in the 416th that, that had the, would you say, the most action, was that Urso? {check spelling25:40} or you pretty much had the same action across the board? The number of sorties the number of...
CM: [unclear]
AP: Right, and you?
CM: [unclear]
AP: Would you, were you operating, was the 416th pretty much operating autonomously or did you do missions maybe in tandem with 414th?
CM: No [unclear] Anzio [unclear].
AP: Did you ever have any interaction with the British units in Italy that flew the Mosquito?
CM: [unclear]
AP: And of course there are no Italian pilots, this is, these are Italians that weren’t fighting for Mussolini, but there were no Italian pilots that ever flew for you [unclear].
CM: [unclear]
AP: Well, you know asking you these questions I know a lot of the answers of course but I, I have to, you know I have to ask you this to have them down, so you know just verify and have them down for records. But Mr Morrison I sure appreciate you taking time out today and answering my questions, this is really valuable for the research that I’m doing and it’s a fascinating narrative of the times came up with, the story they had in order to explain what you all were doing and of course fascist propaganda really got involved with that and played upon their fears, but the information that your helping me, that you are providing is going to help them be able to better understand what really took place and I certainly appreciate it and I, you know...
CM: Fine [unclear].
AP: Yeah, I will and again thank you so much and have a, have a good evening I appreciate it.
CM: [unclear]
AP: Thank you Mr Morrison Bye Bye.
Collection
Citation
“Interview with Mr Morrison,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed August 12, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/27857.