WILBUR ‘BILL' EATON
Age: 90
Born: May 21, 1919
Hometown: Puyallup, Wash.
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 8th Air Force, 7th Photo Reconnaissance Group, 14th Photographic Squadron; 4th Fighter Group, 335th Fighter Squadron.
Years served: 1940-45
Rank: First lieutenant
Family: Wife Letha; two children, Nancy Weber of Salem, Ore. and Arthur Thomas Eaton of Medford, Ore.; six grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; four great, great-grandchildren.
LEARN MORE
Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Bill Podell of Palm Springs.
More
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Wilbur “Bill” Eaton's early military career included a stint delivering movies to stateside air bases — but it was just a stopover on his journey to becoming a fighter pilot.
“I worked for a man that ran the theater at the bases,” Eaton said. “All I had to do was deliver film every day.”
Because Eaton, an enlisted man, didn't have the requisite two years of college to be a pilot, his plans were grounded.
“I wrote a letter to President (Franklin) Roosevelt,” Eaton said. “I felt I was discriminated against.
Two months later, he was summoned to the colonel's office, who produced a letter from a high-ranking general.
“The letter said that, ‘Sgt. Wilbur B. Eaton is assigned to a new sergeant training program set up by Congress,'” Eaton said.
As it turned out, the military was not getting enough volunteers from the colleges to take up flight training, so the training program was opened up to enlisted men with the rank of sergeant.
Eaton said 2,500 “flying sergeants” entered pilot training — those who survived the tough training graduated as staff sergeants, he said.
Eaton was assigned to the 7th Photo Reconnaissance Group at Colorado Springs, Colo.
Once overseas, the staff sergeant pilots were granted equal standing with their college counterparts.
“Before we went on missions, we were made second lieutenants,” Eaton said.
Eaton flew the F-5 — the photo recon version of the P-38 fighter plane — on missions over Europe as a member of the 14th Photo Squadron.
“We were the eyes and the ears of the 8th Air Force,” he said. “We would go out and take pictures of possible targets for the bombers.”
Eaton was hit by flak on his 12th mission, knocking out his oxygen supply. He had to descend quickly.
Eaton, who had been taking pictures at 30,000 feet, went down so fast — putting so much pressure on his ear drums — he couldn't hear anything when he landed on the coast of England.
“They grounded me from flying high altitudes,” he said. “I was in the hospital for two weeks.”
Since he was ordered not to fly over 5,000 feet, he was temporarily assigned to Col. Elliot Roosevelt's group.
The colonel's father was President Franklin Roosevelt.
“I told Elliot about my letter to the president and he laughed and said, ‘Mom got that letter. Mom handled all of that stuff.'”
“In an article written much later in the staff sergeant's magazine, it was reported that Mrs. Roosevelt assisted the president in responding to letters written to him by service personnel,” Eaton said.
“When the problem of shortages of college applicants became evident, Mrs. Roosevelt was involved in an informal discussion among Gen. (Jimmy) Doolittle, Gen. (Hap) Arnold and the president regarding possible solutions. She had mentioned letters from a number of enlisted men inquiring about the possibilities of pilot training. I'm glad in some small way that I participated in the decision process.”
After about four months, Eaton was allowed to fly at high altitudes again.
At that point, he decided he wanted to fly fighter planes. He was assigned to the 4th Fighter Group, where he became a P-51 fighter pilot, escorting bombers.
The P-51s not only protected the bomb-laden behemoths from German fighter attacks, but also provided fire power on the ground, strafing enemy targets.
“We would go down on the deck and strafe anything that walked or moved or flew,” he said.
“We lived the high life, but you never know if you're going to come back alive the next day.”
Glenn Miller's band came to play. Johnny Desmond, the band's singer, was unable to perform.
“The colonel said (to Miller), ‘We've got a guy that sings your kind of stuff,” Eaton said. “He knows all the words.”
While performing, Miller stopped in the middle of a number and called Eaton to the stage.
“He said, ‘Bill Eaton, come on up here, I understand you sing,'” Eaton said. “I sang three songs with him — Sweet Lorraine, White Cliffs of Dover and Dream. The sad thing is, the next day, Glenn Miller was killed.”
Miller was thought to have gone down while flying in a single engine plane over the English Channel.
One day, out of the blue, Eaton was released from combat duty.
“The flight surgeon said, ‘By the way, you're going home tomorrow,'” Eaton said.
“I said, ‘Why?' and he said, ‘You've done a good job for us (and), they tell me you're taking too many chances out there now. We don't want anything to happen to you,'” Eaton said.
“It was the strangest feeling,” he said. “They get rid of you so quick you wouldn't believe it.”
As he watched his squadron prepare to take off on its next mission, Eaton longed to be with them.
“I had the weirdest feeling in my stomach,” he said. “I felt lost. I thought, ‘Why me? I should be up there doing that.'”
