- Filed Under
ED GROSSMAN
Age: 87
Born: May 13, 1923
Hometown: Chicago
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 15th Air Force; 463rd Bomb Group; 772nd Bomb Squadron
Years served: February 1943-December 1945
Rank: First lieutenant
Family: Wife Sue; two children, Eliot Lee Grossman of Alhambra and Janine Tarkow of San Diego; two 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 George L. Madden of Cathedral City.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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“Bombs away!”
The bombardier yells the alert when the massive explosives — weighing 100, 500 or even 1,000 pounds each — are released over the assigned target.
Occasionally, a bomb won't budge from the belly of the plane.
That's what happened to B-17 bombardier Ed Grossman on his first combat mission over Europe during World War II.
To add to the excitement, the navigator passed out and Grossman rushed to his rescue.
Notes from first mission, Oct. 23, 1944: “No flak, no fighters. Navigator lost consciousness because of oxygen failure. Brought him to. Went back to bomb bay to kick out bomb which hung up.”
When a bomb got stuck, Grossman would walk on a catwalk over the open bomb bay doors and unhitch the explosive using a screwdriver.
There wasn't much to keep Grossman from tumbling out of the aircraft.
“One time I was in the bomb bay kicking out a bomb and there was no parachute on my chest,” he said. “I forgot it. I knocked on the radio operator's door and he brought me another one.”
Grossman, who attained the rank of first lieutenant, flew 35 combat missions, bombing targets including oil refineries and railroad yards in Austria, Germany and northern Italy.
Most of Grossman's air time was spent at the Norden bomb sight controls, lining up the vertical and horizontal scratches in the glass until they met at just the right spot, signaling they were on target.
Then it would be “Bombs away!”
Although he didn't always see what damage his bombs caused, “I hit a bridge one time in Linz, Austria,” he said. “I was the only one that hit the bridge.”
Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots — the country's first African-American military airmen — sometimes flew cover for Grossman's squadron.
“The P-51s with the red tails - they would wave at us and go down and see what they could find down there to hit,” he said.
Grossman received a special assignment during his tour of duty.
“They decided to send some people on secret missions,” he said. “One radar ship (was assigned) to each squadron.”
Radar, a relatively new technology, was being tried out on night bombing missions.
“We took off at 9 o'clock at night and we flew all night long,” he said.
“We flew five secret missions,” he said. “You went on your own. When we got near the target it turned out that half the time the radar wouldn't work,” he said.
In Foggia, Italy, where the squadron was stationed, “The enlisted men were all in one big tent,” he said. “It was all set up when they came. We had to build ours. My co-pilot was so handy, he fixed up a surplus gas tank and he could heat the water. He joined that to the sink and we had hot water.”
Long before writing and producing hit TV shows including “All in the Family,” “Good Times,” and “One Day at a Time,” Norman Lear, who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, organized some entertainment at the air base in Foggia.
“Norman Lear was an enlisted man in our group,” Grossman said. “He put on a comedy show for us one time — people singing and dancing. He got a hold of some people who had talent.”
Once, when Grossman was filling in on a bomber crew — which happened to be traveling without a navigator — the pilot got confused around a target covered with clouds.
“He said, ‘Pilot to bombardier, give me a heading home,'” Grossman said.
Grossman looked down at the ground, recognized a marshalling yard and used his instruments to navigate the bomber back home — just a half-mile off target.
Grossman flew his final mission — target: Fortezza, Italy — on April 20, 1945.
Grossman was in Naples, Italy, waiting to catch a ship home when the war ended.
“A window opened up and all kinds of confetti came out in the heart of downtown Naples,” Grossman said.
Grossman and his wife, Sue Grossman, moved to Palm Springs in 1957. Their children graduated from Palm Springs High School.
Sue Grossman worked at Palm Springs Unified School District for 25 years — the last five years she served as the assistant superintendent for business services.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Ed Grossman worked as an announcer and statistician at Palm Springs High football and basketball games.
“We used to have a lot of fun,” he said.
