Laurence Romeo Stevens

Laurence Romeo Stevens, known as Larry Stevens, is a resident of Los Angeles, California, United States. He was also a tail gunner on a B-17 part of the 95th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force of the USAAF during WWII.

The interview with Paul Sidle

https://archive.org/details/video1231530188

Paul: On 27 June 2024 at 2:08 pm in Los Angeles.

Larry: Name is Larry Stevens, born and raised in city of Alhambra, now lives in Temple City, but its about 5 miles from him. He's a century old in two more weeks. Graduated from high school in 1943, left one to two months early. But he had one of his teachers upgrade his time so that he could go into the service with his friends. They graduated in February and said that they were going in and Larry said:

If you guys are going in, I'm gonna go with you

He had a brother that was upstate going through training and he was eventually kileled in Massina Italy in Patton's 3rd army.

Paul: Tell me a little about Alhambra

Larry: He was born in the city of Alhambra in 1924 July 10th, and was the beginning of the centurty so to speak and half our roads were dirty, I mean lived right close to Atlantic and Valley, and there was railroad tracks right down the street, his street was just a short street called "Edith", 1102 South Edith.

Paul: DId you alwaqys live on Edit/same place?

Larry: We never moved always stayed there. I went there the 4 years and come out after the war in June 6, D-Day, was his 16th mission, so I ahve 35 missions and survived them with the 8th airforce. During the invasion we were flying 5 miles at 2500 ft over the invasion, never saw a german fighter plane, only plane shot down that day was an english planes, it was fully covered with clouds on D-Day, so never saw it, so the English plane came over under the clouds and someone decided they didn't know what it was and decided to shoot it down but didn't know that it was an English plane. The fellas bailed out and saved themselves.

Paul: Was it one of your crewmembers on your plane that did it?

Larry: Oh no we weren't anywhere near him. He was out in the channel? There was 10 men in the crew, pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombadier were all officers. The rest of us were just enlisted men, top turret gunner, the radio man, and the middle of the plane and the ball turret gunner, two waist gunners, and myself. Anyways we survived 35 missions guarenteed I shouldn't be here. You go over the target and they shoot target at you. They have two ways of shooting flak. They put up an imaginary box and shoot up at the box. And the other way is they track you. Our 3rd mission we were tracked and they started. Because we were brand new crew we were low with low (7:45). They started tracking us and shot 4 rounds of flak, and I told him, well I didn't know at the time, lot of things in training that you learn certain things but don't learn everything. When the pilot turns the plane, when we start a bomb run its a 2 minute bomb run and you don't deviate from the bomb run. We go straight in, and this we were going straight and level, they started shooting a series of 4 and then hesitation while they reloaded and then another series of 4. Well the pilot on the bomb run has to turn the flying over to the bombadier so he can ajust with mechanical parts to drop his bombs. Anyways I told the co-pilot (8:45):

Get us off the bomb run or they're gonna nail us

But I didn't know thats what was happening because it was the bombadier that was flying. Larry didn't get a response. Well the pilot in the meantime was trying to take the controls away from the bombardier but the bombadier somehow speeded up the plane so we slid underneath the whole (formation), there was 20 of us on the bomb run, and Larry looked up and they were right underneath everyone else with teh bomb bay doors open and coming to the last 8-10 seconds. So that was happening,, and Larry was still saying (9:45):

Get us off the bomb run or they're gonna nail us

All of the sudden the pilot took over the plane, and he kinda hid the controls, he didn't back up but it felt like he backed up, he slowed down the plane. We got out from under the open doors of the bomb bays above us, and he put the plane on a wing and as he put the plane on the wing, the first, and it had to be 100% actual timing, from 8 seconds, 6 seconds, 4 seconds, and the last 2 seconds before they shot them down, he turned the plane off the bomb run and we heard the last two WHOMPs. And then the co-pilot said (10:44):

Wow that was meant for us!

And Larry replied (10:45):

Thats what I was trying to tell ya

Paul: Where were you bombing on your third mission?

Larry: We were bombing submarine bases, thats where they had their best flak gunners were at submarine bases. But they had 18 feet of concrete.

Paul: What kind of Payload were y'all carrying for that?

Larry: well, we were, propellers weren't they were new in those days, we took off at 60,000 lbs, and in other words we had bombs, in this case I think they were, they were 500 pounders. 35,000 lbs I think it was. Pardon me 60k lbs. And we were flying 5 miles up at (12:30) 35,000 ft. (12:43)

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