ADOLFO GONZALEZ
Age: 89
Born: Sept. 27, 1920
Hometown: Victoria, Texas
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 14th Air Force; 528th Fighter Squadron
Years served: Aug. 29, 1942-Dec. 19, 1945
Rank: Sergeant
Family: Wife Lydia; five children, Diana Anderson of Los Gatos, Edward Gonzales of Cathedral City, Emelyn Jenny and Orlando Gonzales of Rancho Mirage, and Alen Gonzales of Cathedral City; 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 Marvin Klapper of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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U.S. Army Air Corps Sergeant Adolfo Gonzalez was in charge of ordnance for a P-51 Mustang fighter squadron flying missions in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
“We delivered the bombs and ammunition to the planes,” Gonzalez said.
The aircraft flew cover over the front lines, bombing and strafing enemy positions ahead of Allied troops.
Gonzalez and his 10-man team assembled the bombs, set the fuses and armed the torpedo-shaped explosives once they were loaded on the bomb rack under the wings of the fighter plane.
“The most scary thing that happened — one plane came back with a bomb,” Gonzalez said. “When he landed, the bomb slid on the runway and didn't go off.”
He said the bomb apparently did not release when the pilot attempted to make the drop.
“We had to disarm it,” he said. “That was scary.”
Another incident also has haunted him all these years.
A plane had just landed and was taxiing when another fighter plane landed behind it “and crawled right up over the other plane,” he said.
Mechanics ran out as soon as the planes collided and tried to lift the plane off the back of the other fighter, to no avail. The fire caused the machine gun ammunition to explode.
“The pilot burned to death. It was so terrible we had to see all that,” Gonzalez said, shaking his head. “That was the worst accident.”
Gonzalez said he heard about other fatal accidents or saw them from a distance, but the military was quick to get them cleaned up and cleared out.
“All those times, they wiped them out as fast as they can. They don't talk about it. That's war.”
The accident involving the pilot “was cleaned as fast as possible. No funeral. We were just too busy. We were so rushed. We were just 20 miles behind the front lines.”
To get near the front, the men had to endure more than a month on the high seas on a long, slogging journey across the Pacific on the SS Brazil.
The men were at sea for 42 days before making a stop in Tasmania, Australia.
“It was terrible,” Gonzalez said. “One night, 90 percent of the guys got sick with food poisoning.”
Gonzalez was one of lucky few who didn't become ill.
With roughly 1,000 men on board, the conditions were miserable, he said.
“When we landed in Tasmania and got off the ship, the people were really nice — beautiful people,” he said. “They came out to bring us into their homes. The took us in, they let us shower, they fed us. It was a happy two days.”
After this brief reprieve, the men set sail for India, landing in Bombay.
“From there, we went across the desert to Assam, India,” he said. “There, we pitched camp.”
The squadron was in Assam for about six months, servicing the ordnance needs of the squadron's 15 fighter planes. The pilots and P-40 fighters of the Flying Tigers were also attached to Gonzalez' squadron.
The squadron pushed on into Burma, along the Stilwell (formerly Ledo) Road.
“The main fighting was in Myitkyina,” Burma, he said.
The heavily armed P-51s were used primarily for bombing and strafing missions.
“There were two machine guns on each wing and two 250-pound bombs — one under each wing,” he said.
On each mission, the fighters would drop their bombs, then come back around and strafe the target.
“The round trip was about 20 minutes,” he said.
“We were in Burma during the monsoons,” he said. “It rains every day for a month or two months. We had to load those planes and fight. It didn't matter” how bad the weather.
At one point, “I hurt my back lifting bombs,” he said.
The injury, caused by lugging the 250-pound explosives, landed him in the hospital.
“We had to carry them and put them under the wing of the plane. We couldn't drop 'em.”
Gonzalez, a member of the 250-man 528th Fighter Squadron, spent nearly 2
“We lived in tents all that time,” he said. “We had to cut into the jungle to build our tents. We used ammunition boxes for floors. We even dug a water well in the jungle.”
From Burma, the squadron was transported in cargo planes over “The Hump” of the Himalayan Mountains into India.
In India, the fighting was not as intense as in Burma, and later, they moved into China.
“We were driving the Japanese back. About that time, they dropped the bomb and the war was about over.”
“If I had to go over again, I would do it again,” Gonzalez said. “Serving for the country is a form of education. You learn about people and their cultures. You begin to really appreciate where we were raised.”
