Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
7:14 | It was April in 1945 when B-17 navigator Fred Miller arrived in England. The Nazis were on the ropes and the handful of missions he flew helped ensure it was over.
Keywords : Fred Miller navigator Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Bordeaux France formation flying flak Ingolstadt Germany bombardier Swiss Alps Russian Army Pirna Linz Austria
He had enough ROTC to know that he didn't want to be in the infantry. Fred Miller was a good student and the Army Air Corps decided he would make a good navigator. After his training, he joined a B-17 crew and arrived in England in the spring of 1945.
After the war, Fred Miller didn't have nearly enough points to return home, so he was put in a unit that ferried people around the continent. There were no airlines at that point, so it was a badly needed service. He found some time to travel to England and even attended the University of Aberdeen for a while.
In post war England, Fred Mills was a security officer trying to regulate air traffic between there and the continent. There was a big problem with black market money exchange and he came up with a good idea to fight it, but it made him unpopular with the pilots.
B-17 navigator Fred Miller explains the variables he had to deal with while keeping the plane on course. It all happened so fast when you were on a mission that you had to be really sharp to do the job. He also had to toggle the bombs on certain missions without a bombardier.
Once the war in the Pacific was over and there was no threat of being shipped there, Fred Miller could enjoy England like a tourist. The English girls treated the Yanks like movie stars and this was great, until their boyfriends came home.
