A very interesting, but lengthy, true WWII
story ..
Piggyback B-17 story....One of the fantastic
WWII stories being retold...

Glenn Rojohn and his crew.

by Ralph Kenney Bennett

Tomorrow they will lay the remains of Glenn
Rojohn to rest in the Peace
Lutheran Cemetery in the little town of
Greenock, Pa., just southeast of
Pittsburgh. He was 81, and had been in the air
conditioning and plumbing
business in nearby McKeesport. If you had seen
him on the street he would
probably have looked to you like so many other
graying, bespectacled old
World War II veterans whose names appear so
often now on obituary pages.

But like so many of them, they seldom talked
about it, he could have told
you one hell of a story. He won the Air Medal,
the Distinguished Flying
Cross and the Purple Heart all in one fell
swoop in the skies over Germany
on December 31, 1944. Fell swoop indeed.

Capt. Glenn Rojohn, of the 8th Air Force's
100th Bomb Group was flying his
B-17G Flying Fortress bomber on a raid over
Hamburg. His formation had
braved heavy flak to drop their bombs, then
turned 180 degrees to head out
over the /FNTNorth Sea. They had finally
turned northwest, headed back to
England, when they were jumped by German
fighters at 22,000 feet. The
Messerschmitt Me-109s pressed their attack so
closely that Capt. Rojohn
could see the faces of the German pilots. He
and other pilots fought to
remain in formation so they could use each
other's guns to defend the
group. Rojohn saw a B-17 ahead of him burst
into flames and slide
sickeningly toward the earth. He gunned his
ship forward to fill in the
gap. He felt a huge impact. The big bomber
shuddered, felt suddenly very
heavy and began losing altitude. Rojohn grasped
almost immediately that he
had collided with another pane A -17 below him,
piloted by Lt. William G.
McNab, had slammed the top of its fuselage into
the bottom of Rojohn's.
The top turret gun of McNab's plane was now
locked in the belly of
Rojohn's plane and the ball turret in the belly
of Rojohn's had smashed
through the top of McNab's. The two bombers
were almost perfectly aligned
-- the tail of the lower plane was slightly to
the left of Rojohn's
tailpiece. They were stuck together, as a
crewman later recalled, "like
mating dragon flies."

Three of the engines on the bottom plane were
still running, as were all
four of Rojohn's. The fourth engine on the
lower bomber was on fire and
the flames were spreading to the rest of the
aircraft. The two were losing
altitude quickly. Rojohn tried several times
to gun his engines and break
free of the other plane. The two were
inextricably locked together.
Fearing a fire, Rojohn cut his engines and rang
the bailout bell. For his
crew to have any chance of parachuting, he had
to keep the plane under
control somehow.

The ball turret, hanging below the belly of the
B-17, was considered by
many to be a death trap -- the worst station on
the bomber. In this case,
both ball turrets figured in a swift and
terrible drama of life and death.
Staff Sgt. Edward L. Woodall, Jr., in the ball
turret of the lower bomber
had felt the impact of the collision above him
and saw shards of metal
drop past him. Worse, he realized both
electrical and hydraulic power was
gone.

Remembering escape drills, he grabbed the
handcrank, released the clutch
and cranked the turret and its guns until they
were straight down, then
turned and climbed out the back of the turret
up into the fuselage. Once
inside the plane's belly Woodall saw a chilling
sight, the ball turret of
the other bomber protruding through the top of
the fuselage. In that
turret, hopelessly trapped, was Staff Sgt.
Joseph Russo. Several crew
members of Rojohn's plane tried frantically to
crank Russo's turret around
so he could escape, but, jammed into he
fuelageof the lower plane, it
would not budge. Perhaps unaware that his voice
was going out over the
intercom of his plane, Sgt. Russo began
reciting his Hail Marys.

Up in the cockpit, Capt. Rojohn and his
co-pilot 2nd Lt. William G. Leek,
Jr., had propped their feet against the
instrument panel so they could
pull back on their controls with all their
strength, trying to prevent
their plane from going into a spinning dive
that would prevent the crew
from jumping out. Capt. Rojohn motion left and
the two managed to wheel
the huge, collision-born hybrid of a plane back
toward the German coast.
Leek felt like he was intruding on Sgt. Russo
as his prayers crackled over
the radio, so he pulled off his flying helmet
with its earphones.

Rojohn, immediately grasping that crew could
not exit from the bottom of
his plane, ordered his top turret gunner and
his radio operator, Tech
Sgts. Orville Elkin and Edward G. Neuhaus to
make their way to the back of
the fuselage and out the waist door on the left
behind the wing. Then he
got his navigator, 2nd Lt. Robert Washington,
and his bombardier, Sgt.
James Shirley to follow them. As Rojohn and
Leek somehow held the plane
steady, these four men, as well as waist
gunner, Sgt. Roy Little, and tail
gunner, Staff Sgt. Francis Chase, were able to
bail out.

Now the plane locked below them was aflame.
Fire poured over Rojohn's left
wing. He could feel the heat from the plane
below and hear the sound of
.50 machine gun ammunition "cooking off" in the
flames. Capt. Rojohn
ordered Lieut. Leek to bail out. Leek knew that
without him helping keep
the controls back, the plane would drop in a
flaming spiral and the
centrifugal force would prevent Rojohn from
bailing. He refused the order.

Meanwhile, German soldiers and civilians on the
ground that afternoon
looked up in wonder. Some of them thought they
were seeing a new Allied
secret weapon -- a strange eight-engined double
bomber. But anti-aircraft
gunners on the North Sea coastal island of
Wangerooge had seen the
collision. A German battery captain wrote in
his logbook at 12:47 p.m.:
"Two fortresses collided in a formation in the
NE. The planes flew hooked
together and flew 20 miles south. The two
planes were unable to fight
anymore. The crash could be awaited so I
stopped the firing at these two
planes.

In the cockpit Rojohn and Leek held grimly to
the controls trying to ride
a falling rock. Leek tersely recalled, "The
ground came up faster and
faster. Praying was allowed. We gave it one
last effort and slammed into
the ground." The McNab plane on the bottom
exploded, vaulting the other
B-17 upward and forward. It slammed back to the
ground, sliding along
until its left wing slammed through a wooden
building and the smoldering
mess of came to a stop. Rojohn and Leek were
still seated in their
cockpit. The nose of the plane was relatively
intact, but everything from
the B-17 massive wings back was destroyed. They
looked at each other
incredulously. Neither was badly injured.

Movies have nothing on reality. Still perhaps
in shock, Lee crawled
through a huge hole behind the cockpit, felt
for the familiar pack in his
uniform pocket pulled out a cigarette. He
placed it in his mouth and was
about to light it. Then he noticed a young
German soldier pointing a rifle
at him. The soldier looked scared and annoyed.
He grabbed the cigarette
out of Leak's mouth and pointed down to the
gasoline pouring out over the
wing from a ruptured fuel tank.

Two of the six men who parachuted from Rojohn's
plane did not survive the
jump. But the other four and, amazingly, four
men from the other bomber,
including ball turret gunner Woodall, survived.
All were taken prisoner.
Several of them were interrogated at length by
the Germans until they were
satisfied that what had crashed was not a new
American secret weapon.

Rojohn, typically, didn't talk much about his
Distinguished Flying Cross.
Of Leek, he said, 'in all fairness to my
co-pilot, he's the reason I'm
alive today."

Like so many veterans, Rojohn got
unsentimentally back to life after the
war, marrying and raising a son and daughter.
For many years, though, he
tried to link back up with Leek, going through
government records to try
to track him down. It took him 40 years, but in
1986, he found the number
of Leeks' mother, in Washington State. Yes,
her son Bill was visiting
from California. Would Rojohn like to speak
with him? Some things are
better left unsaid. One can imagine that first
conversation between the
two men who had shared that wild ride in the
cockpit of a B-17. A year
later, the two were re-united at a reunion of
the 100th Bomb Group in Long
Beach, Calif. Bill Leek died the following
year.

Glenn Rojohn was the last survivor of the
remarkable piggyback flight. He
was like thousands upon thousands of men, soda
jerks and lumberjacks,
teachers and dentists, students and lawyers and
service station attendants
and store clerks and farm boys who in the prime
of their lives went to
war.

He died last Saturday after a long siege of
sickness. But he apparently
faced that final battle with the same grim
aplomb he displayed that
remarkable day over Germany so long ago. Let us
be thankful for such men.

"Monk"