GEORGE FOOTE
Age: 86
Born: Sept. 12, 1923
Hometown: Beverly Hills
Residence: Coachella
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 15th Air Force; 454th Bomb Group; 738th Bomb Squadron
Years served: January 1943 - October 1945
Rank: Staff sergeant
Family: Wife Marie (deceased); daughters Sharon Garcia of Coachella; Shirley Coy of Kingman, Ariz. and Georgia Gilbrith of Boone, Iowa; nine grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; two great-great-grandchildren.
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 veteran Bill Whiteley of Bermuda Dunes.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Ball turret gunner George Foote crammed his body into a 44-inch-wide aluminum and Plexiglass sphere or turret under the belly of a B-24 bomber on more than 50 combat missions over Europe.
Although Foote and his crew managed to survive their tours of duty, the young gunner watched as death and destruction swirled all around him, just inches outside his precarious position.
The May 18, 1944, raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania on was one of the most difficult missions.
The bombers of the 15th Air Force faced heavy anti-aircraft fire as the Germans fought doggedly to protect one of the most vital of all war assets.
“It was hell,” Foote said.
“You're flying, and you see all the smoke, and you think, ‘I'm glad I'm not going there,' then all of a sudden, the plane would turn,” in that direction, Foote said.
Flying towards the target, “Planes behind me would blow up,” he said.
“An 88 mm comes right up in the bomb bay and explodes,” he said. “The plane just disintegrates.”
On the ground, “I've seen a steam cleaner cleaning a rear turret out.”
The turret held the remains of a tail gunner who had taken a direct hit.
“Eighty-eight millimeter anti-aircraft fire,” he said. “It blew up in his turret. Just blood and guts,” remained.
From behind a pair of .50-caliber Browning machine guns, Foote protected the B-24 Liberator from enemy aircraft attacking from below.
On one mission, Foote wasn't wearing his flak suit.
“That's the day I got hit,” he said. “I didn't have any protection.”
Shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire pierced the ball turret and found its way into Foote's left shoulder.
One of his crew mates picked the metal out of his flesh — he has the pieces of shrapnel mounted in a frame with his war medals and ribbons — but he refused to go to the hospital.
“I couldn't move my arm,” he said. “It was like someone took a baseball bat and hit you.”
Although he was in pain, he wanted to remain with his crew, so they wouldn't have to fly with a replacement gunner.
Foote said he never worried about the plane going down. He knew it would somehow make it safely back to the crew's air base in San Giovanni, Italy.
“I had faith in our airplane and our pilot,” he said.
Foote said he didn't mind flying in the cramped quarters of the ball turret.
“I just accepted it as a part of my job,” he said.
He didn't know to what extent the plane had suffered damage until they got back on the ground.
“You hear the ‘boom, boom, boom' of flak going off, and the plane keeps flying,” he said. “You hear them trying to get the engines going.”
“We had 365 holes in the airplane at one time,” he said. “We lost two engines.”
To lighten the load on faltering aircraft, the men dumped all the nonessentials out of the plane.
“We threw out guns, ammunition, anything that had weight,” he said.
When Foote knocked an enemy fighter plane out of the sky, he was fęted at the air base.
“I was the first one to shoot an airplane down in our group — an Me-109 (Messerschmitt fighter plane),” Foote said. “We had a big parade, and I walked up to the commanding officer and he gave me $5.”
Foote usually skipped breakfast before going on a mission.
He enjoyed the hot coffee, but the food was not very appealing.
“Pancakes were gasket sealers,” he said. “Rubbery.”
Cheese sandwiches and water were packed for the crew for lunch, but at high altitudes, the temperature dropped to 55 degrees below zero and everything froze.
When the men came down after a mission, the Red Cross handed out rations of liquor, which the airmen promptly gulped down — on empty stomachs.
“We got snockered,” he said.
Foote could have walked away after completing his 50th mission, but stayed on for one more bomb run.
The rest of the crew was still one mission short of that milestone.
Foote had flown as a replacement on another crew, so he was one up on his buddies.
“My crew had to fly, and I didn't want to break 'em up,” he said.
Foote said the crew was one of the first to go to Cairo, Egypt, for rest and relaxation.
The men were given two weeks of leave at the beginning of June 1944 — four months after flying their first mission.
“Enlisted men stayed in the British officers' hotel,” he said.
The men rode camels, visited the pyramids and gave away their K-ration meals to nearby British anti-aircraft crews.
“We'd trade 'em for scotch,” Foote said.
While in Cairo, the men loaded up with lots of liquor for the boys back at the base.
“We had so much alcohol on that plane we could barely get off the runway,” Foote said, laughing.
