The prologue was written last and drew upon all the research that came before. I interviewed dozens of Armed Services personnel about the experience of coming home from wartime and their feelings of unreality and disconnectedness from friends, family, and co-workers who couldn’t possibly understand what had happened overseas. Information about the production of sequences of It’s a Wonderful Life originated at Wesleyan University. My visits to Encino, California, grounded the narrative in the time and place, and multiple viewings of the motion picture helped as well.
Several biographies have been written about James Stewart, and there is little new ground to cover in his years before the war. Research for this chapter involved extensive investigation of the Stewart Papers housed at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, including the Civil War diaries of both Samuel Jackson and James M. Stewart. Jim talked about his love of flying in many interviews, most notably in an article entitled “A Thrill a Minute…” that appeared in Modern Screen magazine in February 1941. On The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1989, Jim discussed his first flight with the barnstorming pilot.
I visited Indiana, Pennsylvania, to understand the lay of the land, but then I grew up in a small southwestern Pennsylvania town very similar to Indiana. It even had a “normal school” just like Indiana’s. The result is an understanding of the largely blue-collar mind-set in a region almost exclusively a mix of white European Protestants and Catholics.
Stewart was and wasn’t a “choirboy.” Yes, he had a strong Presbyterian upbringing, but when he went off on his own to Princeton and then Broadway, he grew up fast, especially under the influence of cynical and worldly wise Henry Fonda. Brooke Hayward’s remarkable Haywire provided insight about Fonda, Margaret Sullavan, and Leland Hayward—and Jim’s relationship with all of them. Michael Munn’s access to Jim and Gloria Stewart as revealed in Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend helped in understanding Jim’s psychology at this point in his life. More than any other source, magazine interviews conducted with Jim upon his arrival in Hollywood about the days in New York City revealed the Stewart in his mid-twenties. Newspapers of the day provided context for American and European reaction to Hitler’s rise to power and what Jim would have been learning about the European situation via headlines and broadcasts. As noted in Stewart biographies, Guthrie McClintic was gay—did “exhaustive rehearsals” with Jim Stewart mean there was a sexual relationship here? I don’t believe so, based on evidence and Jim’s lack of cold-blooded ambition. Factual information about the Martin Bomber model airplane first appeared in print when Stewart hit Hollywood—both Stewart and Fonda used this story as the one best symbolizing their friendship, and neither felt the need to embellish it because the facts are funny enough on their own.
Do aviators catch the flying bug or are they born to fly? It seemed that many of the characters in the book were born with aviation in their blood, and since this was universal, the narrative needed a German protagonist who grew up like Stewart—not as a warrior but a red-blooded male interested in sports, cars, girls, and, of course, flying. I chose Adolf Galland because of his love of flight on a human level and because of his rise through the ranks of German military aviation to a point at which he was in direct opposition to the Eighth Air Force bomber stream that included Jim Stewart in front of numerous formations. The voluminous writings of Galland served as a foundation for understanding his character, and Fighter General: The Life of Adolf Galland by Toliver and Constable provided additional background. Galland’s introductory chapter also helps to flesh out post-World War I Germany and hints at the sinister master plan that began to manipulate young men like Galland while providing them with the outlet they needed to get up in the air and fly.
My visits to MGM studios and the Los Angeles area in general, including Evanston Drive, established the otherworldly place that Jim first saw in 1935. Articles from 1936 detailed Fonda’s early days in Hollywood, as did his autobiography, Fonda: My Life. Scott Eyman’s excellent Lion of Hollywood provided grounding in the kingdom of Louis B. Mayer and the power struggle with Irving Thalberg. Magazine articles began appearing about Stewart in the second half of 1936 as the MGM publicity machine sought to establish the studio’s new and unusual contract player. In these pieces Jim discussed his experiences to date as a studio player. For example, the December 1936 issue of Hollywood magazine ran the feature “He’s Unmarried but Willin’” to coincide with Stewart’s first starring role in the B-picture Speed. In it he compares and contrasts New York stage acting with his past year’s work on the screen. He also discusses life in Brentwood with his cronies and the ubiquitous cats.
Mission called for a number of different perspectives, including those of the enlisted men who flew behind the pilots in the bombers. The officers on the flight deck literally turned their backs on the men of the flight crews and yet relied on them for survival on every combat mission. So, who were these guys aft of the cockpit? Well, they were ordinary young men like Clem Leone, and many sought out the Army Air Corps because of a fascination with flight that began in childhood. Leone becomes the flip side of Stewart—someone whose luck ran out, resulting in a shoot-down and time in a POW camp. In-person and telephone interviews with Clem in 2014 and 2015 revealed details about his incredible life and wartime experiences, and since he’s an authority on the Eighth Air Force and Stalag Luft IV who continues to lecture on these subjects, he provided a wealth of documentation to verify his wartime story. Seeing the world through Clem’s eyes also reveals the state of commercial aviation in the United States during the 1930s when passenger service was just being established and bi-planes were still a common sight flying over the American landscape.
James Stewart became a ladies’ man in Hollywood, and by accounts Ginger Rogers was his first girlfriend and among his most serious. One biography claims that Jim lost his virginity to Ginger, but evidence goes in another direction. Walter Pidgeon’s observations were made to Stewart biographer Lawrence Quirk. Ross Alexander’s death by suicide was reported in newspapers of the day, and Henry Fonda detailed the friendship of Hank and Jim with Alexander in Fonda: My Life. Jim confided to one officer with whom he served at Tibenham that his relationship with Jean Harlow had been intimate—Jim was tight-lipped until he had downed a couple of drinks, at which point he would open up a little. He also mentioned Lana Turner as a hot number.
The story of Franz Siepmann going down with the Cöln was reported in Auf See Unbesiegt (Unconquered At Sea: 30 Individual Depictions from the War at Sea), published in Munich in 1921. Gertrud Siepmann—known in America as Trudy McVicker—was interviewed at length about her experiences in Germany before and during the war. She had chronicled her life in a series of short written pieces that she provided along with a diary kept by her father, Hans Siepmann, detailing his life at the end of World War II. German history is so tainted by the evils of the Nazi regime that the nation at peace in the mid-1930s is difficult to imagine.
James Reid became one of Stewart’s favorite reporters and generated some of the most insightful articles of this period. By mid-1938 Jim was growing weary of constant questions about his romantic entanglements, and no wonder: He was embroiled in a tempestuous affair with Norma Shearer that had become uncomfortable for him, and he remained in love with Margaret Sullavan, even mentioning her to Reid as the perfect girl. Various articles of the time and retrospective biographies yielded tidbits about his romantic escapades, and the near-casting of Gary Cooper in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was recounted in the Arthur Marx biography, Goldwyn. Did Stewart “go Hollywood” with a suitably swelled head at this period? Even Henry Fonda thought he did. But when his girlfriends are, in order, Ginger Rogers, Norma Shearer, Loretta Young, and Marlene Dietrich, a superiority complex might result. Insight into Dietrich was provided by Hollywood writer and actor Steve Hayes, who knew Marlene in the 1940s and ’50s.
Stewart and de Havilland became quite the couple in 1940—to fan magazines the perfect couple with marriage inevitable. My previous work, Errol & Olivia, provided ample background material on what made de Havilland tick; in fact, she and Jim were a lot alike, and this one could have won over Alex and Bessie back home except for one fact: Olivia’s career was her life at this time and she was even less matrimonially minded than Stewart.
These days, more than seventy-five years past the outbreak of World War II, global history has been disconnected from the making of classic pictures like The Philadelphia Story, but the shadows cast by world events were giant—especially for Bristol-born Cary Grant and for Jim Stewart, who had already made it his personal goal to join the Army Air Corps.
I only recently discovered that my friend Trudy had been an eyewitness to the aftermath of Kristallnacht and had seen Hitler speak and had lived through RAF bombings at the beginning of the war. These experiences plus her later intersection with the Eighth Air Force in the Frankfurt area made her viewpoint critically important to the narrative. Gertrud was only five years old when she saw the Führer, so she remembers being frightened by Hitler but not details of the day. The account of what he said was drawn from various repositories of his major speeches and color newsreels documenting the launching of the Tirpitz. Among the items left on the “cutting room floor” were stories about Gertrud’s visits to the farm of Antje, her nanny, across the Dutch border, with Holland already under German occupation. When the Siepmanns fled from Wilhelmshaven, their first stop was that farm in Holland before they moved on to various places and finally arrived in remote Ottmannsdorf.
Jim’s was indeed a restless spirit from childhood on when he would grow bored with any routine. Acting gave him new people to become in a new setting and facing new challenges every couple of months. But by the second half of 1940, he could feel himself growing bored with vehicles like Pot O’ Gold, which he refused to see on first run and came face-to-face with only when it appeared on television a decade later. He called it “awful.” Military service began to look better and better, and he actually felt relief when he “won the lottery” and was drafted. His recounting of the solo flight from Kansas City back to Hollywood came from the James Reid Modern Screen piece of February 1941, in which Jim also plainly stated that he wanted to join the Air Corps. The Michael Bandler Papers at Brigham Young University proved extremely valuable in telling the story of Jim’s deferment, his father’s reaction, and the events that ensued. The official doctor’s statement about the biology of Jim Stewart was found in his personnel file.
Clem Leone provided remarkably accurate memories of life in South Baltimore in 1941 at a time when America remained isolationist even as the Japanese and Nazi empires were gobbling up territory around the world.
The Bandler Papers contained an account of Stewart’s “crack-up” in his Stinson 105 just days before he was to report for induction into the Army Reserve and detailed accounts of the crazy morning he reported to a street corner and was marched off to the induction station. Evidence that Louis B. Mayer and the War Department were working together to keep Stewart stateside can be found when coupling Jim’s memory of his conversation with Mayer and documents in his personnel files that state Jim was to report to Wright Field to make recruitment films for the Air Corps. From his earliest days at Fort MacArthur, it’s clear that Stewart would fight stridently to be allowed to serve on the front lines of Europe. Stewart’s Army personnel file runs hundreds of pages and provides details about his progression through the ranks and his battles to see active service in the war. The files also contain the endorsement letters written by his friends as Jim sought to earn his wings as a military pilot.
Clem described the experience of sitting in the high school auditorium listening to FDR’s December 8, 1941 speech, and the sudden shift in sentiment in America from isolationism to revenge. Even an A student two months from graduation was ready to run off and enlist, and only his mother’s insistence that he finish school kept him at home.
The story of Stewart caught between the worlds of the Army and Hollywood is hinted at in his personnel file and has been told in biographies. Winning Your Wings, one of the most successful recruiting films of World War II, is available for review. Owen Crump’s Oral History at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was a key document to help tell the story of Winning Your Wings production. (Owen Crump interviewed by Douglas Bell, pages 4 through 16 on October 22, 1991, ©1994 Academy Foundation.) My site visits to Moffett Field while a contractor for NASA provided insights into the place where Stewart spent his early military career. Research into the Academy Awards ceremony of 1942 was conducted at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Information about Stewart’s relationship with Dinah Shore was found in gossip columns of the day and in Stewart biographies.
Interviews with Clem Leone revealed his desire to volunteer for service to ensure he could choose the Air Corps. Research into changes to draft laws after the outbreak of war completed the story.
Stewart’s personnel file includes information on his transfers and responsibilities at each airfield. While his fame proved to be a hindrance in landing a combat assignment, his age was even more of a deterrent. He was much too old and much too tall to be fighter pilot material, and under normal circumstances all he could have or should have expected as a flying officer above thirty years of age was a series of assignments as a multi-engine instructor state-side training young pilots and copilots. Starr Smith’s book Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot provided some nice detail on Stewart’s time at Gowen, and military records filled in some blanks on the crashes of training flights. The two-part, in-depth article “Jimmy Stewart’s Finest Performance” that Beirne Lay, Jr., wrote for the Saturday Evening Post detailed the dangerous pace of training at this time. Nick Radosevich was quoted in a Charlotte Sun article by Don Moore dated October 22, 2006. Information about the formation of the 445th Bomb Group (Heavy) and Jim’s appointment as squadron commander of the 703 was found in the Records of the Army Air Forces volume, “History of the 445th,” a record compiled during the war by R.A. Kidwell, and a second, “History of the 445th Bombardment Group (Heavy),” compiled by Rudolph J. Birsic in 1947. Marina Gray, one of my researchers, created dossiers on each pilot under Stewart’s command.
Insights on the 703rd Squadron were provided by Bill Minor, copilot of Gremlins Roost, and Barry Shillito, copilot of Pissed Off/Our Baby. Minor’s account of the Warrior Hotel incident was told to me in my interviews with him. Also, Minor forwarded documents pertaining to the copilots of the 445th who had formerly been fighter pilots. Otis Rhoney was quoted speaking about the fighter pilot conflict in the article “From Hickory to Normandy” in the Hickory Daily Record, September 27, 2010. Information about the B-24 was provided by Minor and Shillito, two men who flew the Libs, with corroboration by Ralph Stimmel as quoted in the online piece “Liberator Explosion” by Colin Schroeder (http://www.39-45war.com/liberator.html). Martin W. Bowman’s book B-24 Combat Missions is one of the best sources for understanding the Liberator and the men who flew them. The incident with the failed practice bombing mission and Gen. Streett’s reaction was related by Barry Shillito. Jim Myers’ feelings about the B-17 were made known in the article “He Flew with Jimmy,” published online by Don Moore.
My flights in the cockpits of both the B-17 and the B-24 and in-air exploration of the forward navigator and bombardier positions, catwalk and bomb bay, waist guns, and tail turret positions of both ships provided helpful background regarding the feel of the planes on the ground and in the air. Information about the 703rd Squadron was found in the Records of the Army Air Forces set of documents entitled “Individual History of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron.”
My interviews with Clem Leone provided detail about his grueling half day of basic training on the beach in Miami and then his meteoric rise to technical sergeant. Key events in Leone’s military career were related in the Baltimore Sun. Leone’s experience mirrored that of the many thousands of men selected for service on heavy bombers.
Information on the Norden bombsight was found in multiple sources, including B-24 Bombing Missions by Bowman and Consolidated B-24 Liberator by Graham M. Simons. The early history of the Eighth Air Force, including Ploesti, was detailed in Army Air Forces in World War II, published by the Office of the Air Force. Information also was drawn from The Mighty Eighth by Gerald Astor, who covered the diverging strategies of the RAF (carpet bombing German cities and killing indiscriminately by night) and United States Army Air Forces (bombing strategic targets by day).
The passage of the 445th to the United Kingdom was detailed in the “History of the 445th” by Kidwell and “History of the 445th Bomb Group” by Birsic. The loss of Albert Poor’s ship, Sunflower Sue, was mentioned in Kidwell, but details appeared in John Harold Robinson’s A Reason to Live. Robinson also provided additional details in correspondence with Bill Minor. Barry Shillito described the renaming of Pissed Off in an August 2015 interview. Descriptions of Tibenham and Station 124 were based on my visits conducted in late November in damp, cold, rainy weather identical to that first experienced by the men of the 445th in November 1943. Supplemental facts about Station 124 and surrounding bases were found in Roger A. Freeman’s Airfields of the Eighth: Then and Now. Information about the “schooling” of bomb group personnel was related by the interview subjects and supplemented by B-24 Combat Missions. Pete Abell’s shakedown flight with Stewart and Leone was described by Clem Leone, with additional details about the Abell crew found in The Erwin Nine by Hilda Padgett.
Galland’s own writings detail his rise to prominence among German fighter aces and his conviction that the Me 262 could win the war for Germany. Fighter General provided additional insights, as did Fighting the Bombers, edited by David C. Isby. Statistics about the number of German fighters in production in 1943 were found in Death from the Heavens by Kenneth P. Werrell.
Details of the December 2, 1943, London press conference were found in the Michael Bandler Papers at Brigham Young University. The best-detailed look at a mission briefing was found in the November 29, 1943, issue of Life magazine in an article entitled “Target: Germany.” Details of mission number one of the 445th Bomb Group to Kiel, Germany, were found in World War II Combat Operation Reports 1941–1945, 445th Bomb Group, Box 2229. These reports on each mission detail the personnel on the planes, the position of the planes in the formation, the ordnance dropped, weather reports, the route to and from target, summaries of flak and enemy aircraft encountered, and intelligence interrogation reports compiled with each crew during post-mission debrief.
The pilot’s checklist was covered in the War Department training film Flying the B-24D 4-Engine Land Bomber. Hal Turell’s account of B-24 takeoffs was found on the 445th Bomb Group web site at 445bg.org. Of historical note, the December 20 mission to Bremen resulted in the incident detailed in A Higher Call by Adam Makos and Larry Alexander, in which the B-17 Ye Olde Pub was shot to pieces and barely able to stay in the air; the crippled bird was escorted over flak batteries and back to the safety of the North Sea by German fighter ace Franz Stigler in one of the most compassionate incidents of World War II.
The “History of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron” contains details about life at Tibenham. Combat Mission Reports provided detail on the December 16 mission to Bremen. Robinson’s A Reason to Live described Stewart’s order to provide a late breakfast for the fliers of the Bremen mission.
The combat mission report for Bremen provided all necessary details and was supplemented by Robinson’s account in A Reason to Live. This was the first mission for Harold Eckelberry, waist gunner of Lady Shamrock, who wrote a diary entry for each mission, and for December 20 he mentioned Captain Stewart by name as his copilot. Bill Minor’s temper tantrum on the Christmas Eve mission was related by Minor along with the story of his apology to Gil Fisher. Stewart’s quote about being happy in the service was found in Quirk’s James Stewart: Behind the Scenes of a Wonderful Life.
Clem Leone recounted the story of the Hansen flight in a 2014 interview, and a year later I learned from Bill Minor that Hansen had been one of the P-40 fighter jocks reassigned to copilot status aboard Liberators. Minor called the death of Hansen “an emotional ordeal” made all the more frustrating by B-24 aircraft that weren’t up to the rigors of daily operation. Said Minor, “Our single-engine training was better suited to the fighter pilot’s job than the multi-engine training had been for bomber multi-engine pilots.”
Details of the December 30 mission were found in the Combat Mission Reports, and Barry Shillito recounted for me the fact—not documented elsewhere—that when Sharrard and Stewart pulled Tenovus out of formation and returned to base, Saunders and Shillito in Liberty Belle took that spot, and shortly thereafter were shot down. Robinson saw Liberty Belle go down as related in A Reason to Live. After two-and-a-half weeks of combat operations, the stress on Stewart was beginning to mount, whether he flew on a particular day or not. Examples of Stewart’s letters home to relatives of downed fliers from the 703 survive and reveal the pressure on a leader in these circumstances. The buzzing of Tibenham by buddies of the waylaid fighter pilots was chronicled in the “History of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron” in the Air Force archives. Details of Jim’s relationship with Bill Minor were related by Minor in interviews. Information about Stewart’s liaison with a woman in Tibenham was revealed by Gloria Stewart to Michael Munn and appeared in Munn’s Stewart bio.
Details on the January 7 mission to Ludwigshafen were found in the Combat Mission Reports, with additional descriptions by Robinson in his book and Eckelberry in his diary. The erroneous compass heading of the 389th was covered in Starr Smith’s book and mentioned in intelligence interrogation reports. It was also described in the commendation Stewart received for his conduct that day.
Gertrud Siepmann wrote about the move to Eppstein and its close proximity to Frankfurt, where she would soon intersect with the Eighth Air Force as she watched the massive bomber stream fly overhead. An understanding of Eppstein with its ancient castle resulted from my site visit in November 2015. Old Town Frankfurt has been reconstructed to its pre-war appearance. I spent two days at the 2015 Christkindlmarkt celebration of German food, music, and Christmas that reaches back a couple of centuries. This close-up experience with German culture reminded me that most of these people were descendants of combatants and civilians of World War II, and that many citizens of Frankfurt and of Germany as a whole were caught in the crossfire of the war and just wanted it to end.
The Glenn Miller visit to Tibenham was mentioned in Airfields of the Eighth and also by my on-site guide in explorations of the lands comprising the old base, Eric Ratcliffe, 445th Bomb Group historian. Details of the January 21 mission to Bonnières and the January 29 mission to Frankfurt were obtained from the Combat Mission Reports. The Beirne Lay, Jr., quote was found in his Saturday Evening Post two-part article about Stewart’s war service. The collision of B-24s near Tibenham’s runways was mentioned in “History of the 445th” by Kidwell and in Robinson’s A Reason to Live. Additional details were provided by Eric Ratcliffe. Wright Lee’s quote was taken from his excellent book, Not As Briefed.
The Frankfurt mission of January 29 provided an intersection of three characters, Stewart, Leone, and Siepmann. It was a memorable first mission for Clem, who watched a falling bomb shear off engine No. 3. My interviews with Leone provided details about the Frankfurt mission, which were corroborated by the official records. The bomb group’s public affairs officer wrote a feature story on the last flight of the Shirley Raye from the perspective of the Blomberg crew’s engineer, Richard McCormick. This document was found in the “History of the 445th.” I had hoped to develop the character of Princess Marie Alexandra of Baden, a granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I, who was working as a volunteer aid worker in Frankfurt and was killed at the age of forty-one in the bombing that day, but felt I had to let her go because of the other German characters that had emerged.
Accounts of life at Tibenham were drawn from all the men I interviewed as well as from “History of the 445th,” and from letters from Tech. Sgt. Bob Springer, a radio operator in the 702nd Squadron. My understanding of the village of Tibenham and the layout of the base, including Site 7 and Stewart’s quarters, were the result of onsite visits in 2015. Jim’s disdain for the press was noted throughout the war and cited specifically in the article “Stewart Said Loneliest Man,” which appeared in his hometown newspaper, the Indiana Evening Gazette, on Monday January 10, 1944.
No trace of Earle Metcalf, his crew, or Billie Babe was ever found. The New Testament that Metcalf had carried to Tibenham from the States turned up in 2015; apparently he had loaned it to a crew member grounded by frostbite. Somehow the Bible ended up as a listing on eBay, where it was purchased by a World War II buff and returned to the family. The Rüsselsheim mission was documented in the Combat Mission Reports, as was the mission to Gilze-Rijen six days later. Winter was proving to be relentless, especially four miles up, and causing all manner of malfunctions in the planes and frostbite in the men.
Galland wrote about his day chasing the bomber formation, shooting down a B-17, and then learning firsthand the danger of the new American P-51 Mustang and barely escaping with his life. “I simply fled,” was the way Galland phrased it.
Volume three of the Army Air Forces in World War II, Europe: Argument to V-E Day, published by the Office of the Air Force, provided perspective on the Pointblank Directive and Operation Argument (although I avoided direct use of Pointblank because I didn’t want to overwhelm the reader with code names.) Gerald Astor’s The Mighty Eighth and Bill Yenne’s Big Week were instrumental in gaining perspective on Operation Argument, and Astor documented the predictions of meteorologist Irving Krick that proved accurate enough to allow Argument to commence. The exchange between Hodges and Timberlake was recounted in part two of Beirne Lay’s Saturday Evening Post series on Stewart. Combat Mission Reports provided the detail on Brunswick, with support from Eckelberry’s diary—including the kiss Eck received from Killer Manning when Conley’s crew arrived back at Tibenham.
Combat Mission Reports provided details on the scrubbed February 22 mission to Gotha and the redo two days later. Interviews with Clem Leone brought to light the sudden chaos when an Fw 190 hit Wacky Donald with incendiaries as she approached the target, part of the giant running air battle that ensued when Galland’s fighters jumped the Second Combat Wing formation in repeated attacks.
In September 1979 during the construction of new housing near the city of Hardenberg, Holland, the nose turret of Wacky Donald was unearthed. When the plane had crashed, killing Blomberg, McCormick, and Cooper (with Sheppard and Gunning already dead), she had destroyed the home of a farmer named Reinders, and the nose had bored into the earth. Located in 1979 with the twin .50 caliber machine guns was an unopened aluminum box containing belts of ammunition. The Explosive Clearance Service of Culemborg was called to secure the scene.
The loss of the ships of Skjeie and Abell was documented in the Combat Mission Reports, with additional information on the Abell crew contained in The Erwin Nine. Wright Lee described his experiences on the Gotha mission in his book, Not As Briefed. The battle over Gotha was so bloody that a special narrative was created by the 445th to help explain what had happened, portions of which were reprinted in this chapter. Jim’s sleepless night prior to the February 25 mission and his quotes were taken from Starr Smith. Combat Mission Reports detailed the mission to Fürth, which was also flown by Robinson of the Wright Crew and described in A Reason to Live, and by Eckelberry on the Conley crew and captured in his diary. Robinson described the anti-aircraft hit to Dixie Flyer that almost knocked Stewart out of the ship. The direct flak hit to Nine Yanks and a Jerk was covered in Scott E. Culver’s book of the same name. It was a miracle that both planes and crews made it home under those conditions. Jim Myers described Stewart’s post-mission condition in the newspaper article “He Flew with Jimmy Stewart.”
Fliers sometimes awakened in a free-fall after being concussed by an exploding plane. Wright Lee described a similar experience in Not As Briefed. Interviews with Clem Leone brought to light the moments after Wacky Donald exploded under him. He parachuted to earth far enough south of Hardenberg that German authorities didn’t spot him. But then they had their hands full with Varga and McKee from the Blomberg crew, both of whom had come down in the village of Gramsbergen. I visited all these sites to understand the terrain where Leone landed to begin his months on the run.
Stewart’s displeasure over the performance of his pilot on the March 15 mission was recorded in the Combat Mission Reports. His temper was growing short now after becoming a little “flak happy” with the February 25 direct hit. Reports for the March 22 mission detailed the primary and secondary targets and decision to bomb Berlin as a general target. A character that appeared in rough drafts of Mission was Selma Lesser, a German Jew who spent the war hidden in a basement in Berlin. After she had lost everything, Allied bombing even destroyed the building in which she was hiding. Selma’s diary touched me, but I felt that the story of the Siepmanns was as far as I could delve into the German civilian viewpoint without too much disruption to the Stewart storyline.
Biographical information for Ramsey Potts was found in his Washington Post obituary and in The Mighty Eighth, among other sources. Stewart’s transition to the 453rd was detailed in Starr Smith’s book and in An Emotional Gauntlet by Stuart J. Wright. I consulted Combat Mission Reports for Stewart’s early work with the 453rd and especially for his first mission flying to Wessling and the Dornier factory. Supplementary information was found in the online article “Short Snorter Linked to Movie Star,” by Kerry Rodgers at numismaster.com.
Clem Leone detailed his life on the lam in Holland to me in a series of interviews. His collection includes many photos and letters from people who helped him elude German authorities along the way. His false identify as a “deaf and dumb Sumatran” got him through close scrapes until his luck finally ran out in Antwerp. Leone’s experiences are intended to remind the reader just how close Jim Stewart was to a similar life on the run or to death like Blomberg or Skjeie in a flaming Liberator.
The “History of the 453rd Bombardment Group” found in Air Force records provided a running narrative about the days preceding invasion and conveys the excitement men like Stewart felt as D-Day was at hand. The East Anglia bomb groups might have played a prominent role in the success of the landings had it not been for the weather. The May 25 mission had been a near disaster and revealed an air commander coming apart at the seams. He didn’t fly for the next fifty-six days. Beirne Lay’s assessment of that mission was found in part two of the Saturday Evening Post series.
Gertrud described the dogfights she witnessed in autobiographical pieces written in the 1990s. Interviews with me shook loose her dark memory of seeing the American aircrew paraded through Eppstein and assailed by her neighbors. She vividly recalled the strafing attacks by groups of P-47s.
Wright’s An Emotional Gauntlet contained the Eagleson quote. The Radosevich episode was found in a 2006 Charlotte Sun article by Don Moore. The Kassel raid that decimated the bomb group at Tibenham was described by Kidwell in the “History of the 445th.” Combat Mission Reports provided detail about the Reisholz raid and included many quotes by Stewart about the effectiveness of the six-ship sections. Combat Mission Reports also were consulted for the raids on Homburg and Halle.
Galland’s writings were an invaluable reference for the German perspective on the relentless American bombing campaign, with supporting information found in Fighter General, Fighting the Bombers, and Hitler’s Eagles: The Luftwaffe 1933–45. Hans Siepmann’s diary spoke numerous times of the “secret weapon” that would save the day for Germany; indeed, if Galland had been able to use twin-engine jet aircraft as fighters in 1944 when German industrial production was still formidable, the course of the war would have been changed. But his two jet fighter groups were formed much too late to stem the tide.
Combat Mission Reports chronicled Stewart’s last mission to Achmer. As had happened on the way to Troyes, Jim no longer had the confidence and quick decision-making skills that had made him a success in his first two-plus months leading attacks. Starr Smith touched on the circumstances that led to Stewart’s grounding, and Barry Shillito had heard anecdotal information about it. By then, Stewart didn’t have any reason to fly; the war had been won.
Multiple interviews with Clem Leone provided the basis for this chapter, supported by his own files collected in an attempt to understand what he had endured. Government records described conditions at Stalag Luft IV; a government investigation was conducted about the death march, and testimony of survivors found in those hearings was used to supplement descriptions of the experiences of Leone and the others. Information about the march is easily obtained on the Internet and makes for compelling reading.
It was quite a juxtaposition, writing the chapter about Leone and his lice one day, and then transitioning to Stewart at the Savoy the next. Such were the fates for fliers on the same mission—most made it home and lived one life; some didn’t and lived another, if they lived at all. My interviews with Barry Shillito included his description of returning to Hethel and meeting up with a greatly changed Jim Stewart. Starr Smith discussed Jim’s last days of active service, as did Quirk and Munn. Jim provided his own eyewitness account in Haywire of seeing Leland Hayward at the bottom of the gangplank. In particular, Munn quoted Jim in nice detail about the afternoon spent at the Queen Elizabeth. Newspaper accounts described Stewart’s appearance and demeanor as he returned home, and Life did the cover story and photo essay in which Jim represented the millions returning home from the war. The September 4 issue of the Indiana Evening Gazette covered Jim’s homecoming; another article in the Chester Times mentioned Jim’s intention to “loaf” in Indiana for a while. John McElwee, always a go-to source for perspective on cinema history, provided context for the Hollywood to which Stewart returned, with supporting quotes supplied by Hank in Fonda: My Life. Various news articles quoted Jim on his frame of mind and doubts that there was still a place for him in Hollywood as a leading man.
The Last Mogul by Dennis McDougal proved to be an excellent source for background on Lew Wasserman, with support from When Hollywood Had a King by Connie Bruck. Fonda: My Life described Stewart’s habitation of Peter and Jane’s “playhouse.” The emergence of It’s a Wonderful Life as the first Stewart post-war picture was covered in various Capra biographies and documented in the Frank Capra Archives at Wesleyan University. The conversation about Stewart accepting the role became a favorite story for both men and grew in scope over the years. This version was recorded soon after it had taken place and published in Motion Picture magazine in conjunction with the release of It’s a Wonderful Life at Christmas 1946. Visits to the Margaret Herrick Library unearthed details about the film’s production. My understanding of movie sets results from a quarter-century in film production and many visits to Hollywood studios and movie locations, including Encino.
It’s always a challenge to take characters to their twilight years and death. I was aided in this task by Marina Gray, whose research on the pilots proved invaluable throughout the project. The Stewart Papers at BYU shed light on hidden aspects of Jim’s post-war acting career. The reminiscences of Clem Leone and Trudy McVicker detailed their lives up to today, and Hans Siepmann’s unpublished diary, provided by Trudy, offered a fascinating look at the fall of the Reich as seen by a German officer.