Col. Leonard Barrow, Jr., Jason Theriot, and Hewitt Theriot

-Appointed as a flying cadet in February 1938 at Randolph Field; flying school by March
-Randolph Field was in San Antonio and was the only flying school in the U.S.
-Went over to Kelly Field to specialize; Barrow was in the attack-aviation
-Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps Reserve, February 1, 1939
-Then went to Barksdale Field in Shreveport and was assigned to the 3rd Attack group; flew A-17A attack bomber

-Married in 1940 to a daughter of a WWI veteran
-Moved to Savannah when the war broke out later in October; flew A-20 light bomber, fastest plane at the time
-Went all over the U.S. for maneuvers; they could see the war was coming
-War did break out and Barrow's outfit was spilt 2-3 times
-First time Barrow went to the West coast and flew dive bombers

Remembering Pearl Harbor (6:27)
-Was having lunch with his father-in-law and wife, on a Sunday his father-in-law got a phone call and was excited to tell them that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor
-He went immediately to the air base and Barrow soon left too
-They were shocked that the Japanese were able to pull off such an operation

-Worked for several months on the anti-submarine dive patrol
-Flew about 200 miles over the Atlantic everyday
-Very poorly equipped, no depth chargers, just 500 lbs bombs that if dropped to close to the water would blow them up too
-Christmas Eve, Barrow did see a periscope lined up to a United Fruit Liner, between Georgia and Florida; strafed it as he was too low to bomb it

The 8th Air Force was activated in Savannah and Barrow was taken out and put into them (9:25)
-By March his old outfit went to Australia
-The first outfit was caught in the Philippines he stayed at the Headquarters and in early June flew Gen. Duncan, the Commander, to D.C.

Gen. Duncan found he had been reassigned to the Chief of Staff (10:57)
-Flew to Fort Dix, New Jersey for a week long training and then to New York
-In New York got on the Queen Elizabeth to go to Scotland by late June Went to the airfield of Chelveston
-Transferred to the operations office in the headquarters in London; eventually moved out to Bushy Park
-Operation officer for a B-17 wing and for training but had never been in one; sent back to the 8th Air Force later
-Put out training programs and mission trainings and was sent around to the British airfields

November 1942 (17:11)
-Was sent to Saint Eval, RAF station, to supervise the passage of airplanes that were going to the invasion in North Africa Heart of the British defense was the radar
-Could now spot airplanes before they got into earshot
-Had air-defense-centers along the coast looking for Germans and run the operations
-When they got there to Britain, the Battle of Britain of 1940 had already happened so attacks from the Germans on England were more nuisance attacks at night
-By the end of November (1942) Barrow's operation had ended

North Africa (24:40)
-His father-in-law took over a troop carrier wing and asked Barrow to transfer to him

-Wanted flying time so he asked to be transferred; went back to Bushy Park to be sent out to North Africa (funny story of killing a King's deer 26:36)
-Was transferred to North Africa but had to find his own way there; there were some P-38s in Ireland with no pilots

-Called the Fighter Command and asked he could fill a spot and was given the okay: had to get there himself by his plane (another story 31:40)
-Reaches Northern Ireland and was tasked with looking over the last 6 remaining planes until he could get over to North Africa
-Flew down to Saint Eval after the New Year and then followed a B-26 to Gibraltar and continued on to Oran (8 hours and 5 minute flight)
-Then went up to Tunisia to a P-38 base but didn't want to work there so caught a ride to Algiers
Met up with his father-in-law, who shipped him out Mostagenum to a troop carrier squadron of C-17s to drop paratroopers and gliders

Invasion of Sicily (52:40)
-Towed gliders from Tunisia to Sicily at night; strong winds, bad maps and the navy shot up everything
-Second night dropped paratroopers over Mount Etna; navy shot down 37 C-47s (friendly fire)
-On the first night Barrow led the group and was later awarded the DFC and the Air Medal
-It was an experience on joint amphibious operations; but bad communication
-Then spent the next 2 weeks flying in and out of Sicily
-Moved the outfit to Italy

Invasion of Italy (57:18)
-Landed on the Salerno beachhead with supplies
-Made serval trips for supplies (might have brought back wounded)
-Reassigned as the executive officer and 2 weeks later Barrow gets orders to go back to the U.S. (October 1943)
-Reported to Sedalia, Missouri to get his pilots; but no planes Moved to Alliance, Nebraska and stayed there till March 1944 and then to Pope Field at Fort Bragg, North Carolina
-Worked with the 13th Airborne Division dropping paratroopers
-Missed D-Day

Went overseas in January of 1945 (01:03:59)
-Supported Patton; hauled fuel and supplies
-Then in May went over to England to pick up British men and flew to Copenhagen, Denmark
-Germans were still there at the airfield; wild experience--the Danish executing Quislings, Germans passing by in trucks, parties, etc.
-That night they found out the war had ended and flew back to France the next morning

War Ended (01:11:18)
-Part of the white project for Japan; went back to the U.S. first
-Went out to the west coast to California and had to wait 30 days till the planes could come in and then head out to Okinawa Bay
-While waiting, the war in Japan had ended
-Still had orders to go, but a friend that told Barrow to ignore the orders, as he had the only intact troop carrier group left, and things were too hectic
-Few days later sent to Austin, Texas for a year

-Stayed in the Air Force for 32 years, also serving in the Korean and Vietnam wars

Transcription:

Leonard Barrow, Jr.
Born: February 25, 1917
Retired Air Force Colonel
C-47 Pilot for the Invasion of Sicily
4104 Walnut Dr.
New Iberia, La. 70563
Interview conducted by Jason P. Theriot

I was appointed a flying cadet at Randolph Field in San Antonio on the 25th of February 1938. I started flying school in March. I spend eight months at Randolph learning to fly, then I went to Kelly Field on the other side of San Antonio for the last four months. I specialized in attack-aviation there. My starting class numbered three hundred and fifty, and roughly half finished. I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps Reserve on the first of February 1939. From there I went to Barksdale Field in Shreveport. I was assigned to the 3rd Attack Group, 90th Attack Squadron. We flew the A-17A attack bomber armed with six machine guns and bomb racks..

I was on active duty, but I was still in the reserves. I flew everyday practically. I got married at Barksdale in 1940. I married the daughter of a WWI major and we are still married today.
We moved to Savannah in October 1940, because the war in Europe had broke out. While we were there we transitioned to the A-20, light bomber—the fastest bomber in the world at that time. It was equipped with a Norden Bombsight. During that period we had maneuvers in Louisiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Connecticut; we could see the war coming.
We were shocked, however, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We knew that relations with the Japanese weren’t good, but we never dreamed that they would have the audacity to pull off an operation such as they did. In retrospect it was an absolutely magnificently planned and conceived operation, and it caught us with our pants down.

When the war broke out I was a first lieutenant. My group was split up. I spent the next several months on anti-submarine patrol over the Atlantic. We would fly out about 200 miles in the Atlantic. We were poorly equipped. We didn’t even have depth charges. All we had were 500-pound bombs; you drop one of those too low, and you would blow yourself up. I saw a periscope one time; he was lined up with a United Fruit Liner between Georgia and Florida in the Atlantic. I strafed the periscope and he went down.

I was subsequently taken out of my group and was transferred to 8th Air Force headquarters in Savannah. In early June, I flew General Duncan, Commander of the 8th Air Force, up to Washington D.C. When he arrived, he was reassigned as the Chief of Staff. We flew to Fort Dix in New Jersey for subsequent deployment to England.

We went to the port of New York and we boarded the Queen Elizabeth in June 1942. We landed in Scotland a few days later. We went down to an airfield that the British called Chelveston. Later on this was a base for our B-17s. The 8th Air Force headquarters was then in downtown London. I got a phone call to report to the operations section of 8th Air Force headquarters. We stayed in London for a week or two before we moved down to Bushy Park near Hampton Court Palace. I became an operations officer for a B-17 wing in July. I had never been inside a B-17 before in my life, but nevertheless, I was an officer in of the wing that was doing the training program for them. I stayed down there for a month. I made captain in February. Somebody who had more experience with the B-17 took over, and I was sent all around various British airfields to check out training programs for our airmen. It was a wonderful experience. The British were very casual people. I got to fly the Spitfire, the Hurricane, the Beau Fighter as well as several of their bombers. I flew a couple of missions with the British later on.

The Battle of Britain had taken place in 1940; that pretty much broke the back of the German’s attempt to shoot up England at will. By the time I got there in ‘42, the German attacks were limited to nuisance attacks at night. They were sending one or two airplanes at a time to drop bombs on London, primarily at night. The heart of the British homeland defense was radar. The success was that they could spot German planes coming before they got to within earshot. Before radar, the British used these giant “ears” to amplify the sounds made by the enemy. This was the method used during World War I; but it couldn’t tell you how high, or how fast the enemy planes were going. With radar you could tell how high the enemy was, how fast they were going, and how many miles away they were. They waited until the Germans got very close, then they released the Spitfires and Hurricanes, and they came in from above [the enemy planes] to attack. The British had these air-defense-centers near the coast, and they would run the defense operations from there.

About this time, in 1942, the B-17 bombers began arriving in England, and they were flying their “freshman” missions. I was sent back to 8th Air Force headquarters. In November 1942, I was sent to a place called Saint Eval, a RAF station, to supervise the passage of the airplanes that were then going down for the invasion of North Africa. We had C-47s coming through; we had B-17s, P-38s—all American planes. I got to fly a P-38. The airplanes for the invasion flew 1,600 miles from Saint Eval to Oran. Most of the big planes—the bombers and twin-engine fighters—had auxiliary fuel tanks to make the trip. The smaller fighters, like the P-40s, were brought over on a carrier.

My father-n-law took over a troop carrier outfit. He asked me to come over. I had been wanting to get out of headquarters; I wanted to fly—the hell with this paper work! I had been promoted to major in August. Headquarters approved the move, and I was walking up to the gate back at 8th Air Force headquarters at Bushy Park, and low and behold there was an infantryman standing guard with his M-1 rifle. I walked by and he “pooped to.” And he’s grinning like a jackass eating fries. He comes to the rifle salute and I saluted him…I looked at him and it was Harold Courtois from New Iberia. I go over and I said, “Harold, what in the hell are you doing here?” He said he was in the National Guard and they had been federalized and sent to England in October. He said, “Man, you better come eat with us today.” The British food was terrible, and I hadn’t had a good meal in a long time. He said that one of the guys had killed a deer and they were cooking up some venison. You see, there was deer all over the place, and this guy was standing guard one night and he hear a noise, so he challenged…three times…no response, so he shot, and killed a deer. That was not good. Killing the King’s deer was almost as bad as making a pass at one of the princesses. So, his commander went through the channels to report this to the King, who in turn presented the deer to the mess hall. So, they had venison that day and Marion Broussard was the cook. Boy it was good!

I found out that I’m to be transferred to North Africa, but I had to find my own way. Most of the planes had already left for the invasion, but I found out that there was still about six P-38s somewhere in Ireland. So, there was a Colonel Bob Landry from New Orleans who I had known at Barksdale. He was in Fighter Command. I called him up and said, “I had heard that you were short on fighter pilots, and that you still had some planes left to go down.” I told him, “I checked out a P-38 about two weeks ago.” It was only one flight, actually, for about thirty minutes: “I’d sure like to help you out.” He said, “Oh, sure that’s what we’re looking for. We’ll cut some orders assigning you, and we’ll give you all the information you’ll need.” My airplane was in a depot in England still. I got in it and I flew it over to Ireland. I had the hell scared out of me. I’m passing over the Irish Sea, and I got challenged by a ship. They signaled, and I was supposed to respond with a red light or a green light. Well, the P-38 was different. It had a row of switches down low. I thought that I had the right button, but I didn’t. I was doing about 250 miles per hour and all of a sudden the wings start flapping. I slowed to about 180. I got close to the airfield in Ireland, Langford Lodge, and everything was normal on the plane. I come down on this airfield and landed. I check out my plane and low and behold, my landing lights were extended. They’re not supposed to be on at the speed that I was flying; that’s why the wings were flapping. I had hit the wrong button, and I gave that ship the wrong signal. Luckily he didn’t shoot me down.

So, I land in Northern Ireland and I meet up with Lt. Col. Roy Lowe from Alexandria. He was the executive officer of the 82nd Fighter Group. Most of his planes had gone, and there were a few left. He told me that he was taking off in a couple of days, and he would leave me behind to take over the remaining six planes. So, I met with those pilots, and I got to fly up a few times in the P-38, and I shot the guns. I spent the most miserable Christmas up there that year. We fixed up those planes and we flew them back down to Saint Eval. We followed a B-26 to Gibraltar—an eight-hour flight. We went through the Straits of Gibraltar and the damn Spanish open up on us from Spanish Morocco. They were neutral, but very pro-German. We continued on and landed in Oran finally. We refueled and flew out the next day to Tunisia, near Constantine—at a P-38 base. I signed off on my airplane and I went looking for Col. Lowe. I finally found somebody and they told me that he hadn’t come back from his last mission. They said that he had dropped back in formation and that was the last time anybody saw him; a German had shot him down from behind. So, I caught a ride on a French airplane to Algiers. I was a major then, and they had given me latitude with my orders. I was actually looking for a P-38 squadron, but I reported to Algiers, and then in turn, met up with my father-n-law. He assigned me to Mostagenum, near Oran. It was a former French airbase.

I reported to the troop carrier squadron there as a squadron commander, and they were training in the C-47s to drop paratroopers and to pull gliders. We were flying supplies up to Tunisia. We were there during the German breakthrough at Kasserine Pass. We were flying wounded troops back. In between flying evac and supply missions, we would train the paratroopers for the invasion of Sicily.

We eventually moved into an area in Tunisian. (Photograph of tent for the book) It was lousy; the food was canned rations. The invasion of Sicily came. We towed gliders from Tunisia to Sicily at night. We were towing British troopers in those gliders. Sicily was the first mass-attempt to use paratroopers and gliders in combat. The first night of the invasion, I led the whole group of C-47s, and I was awarded the DFC and the Air Medal for that, because I was the lead plane. The second night, I dropped British paratroopers over Mount Etna. They were both night operations; the winds were strong, the maps were not good, and the Navy shot the hell out of everybody in sight. We even got shot in the fuel tank. (Has a picture) Between those two nights, the Navy shot down about thirty C-47s—friendly fire. All of us had a lot to learn about joint-amphibious operations, and we did. I think the invasion of Normandy was a testament to that.
For the next few weeks we spent flying in and out of Sicily; hauling ammunition and taking out the wounded. I was promoted to Lt. Col. In July 1943.

Eventually, I took part in the invasion of Italy. I landed on the Salerno beachhead with supplies. We flew into the ancient city of Paestum; I saw bodies stacked up like card-wood—American bodies. It was the damndest thing that I ever saw. I flew several supply runs and transported wounded for a while. Then I was transferred to be the group executive officer. It was another pencil pushing job. After about two weeks—out of the clear blue sky—I was reassigned back to the United States. I packed up my stuff and caught a plane to Brazil and to Miami. I then reported to Indianapolis. This was October 1943. I had been overseas for a year and a half. I came home for a month on leave and spent time with my wife and family.

We were sent to Sedalia, Missouri. I had about ten or fifteen pilots, and no airplanes. Eventually we got a dozen planes. They ordered us out to Alliance, Nebraska. My god. I never saw the ground the whole time I was there. It was January of 1944, up in the hills of Nebraska, almost in Colorado, and there was nothing, I mean nothing up there. The only good thing about that place was that it was the most fabulous pheasant hunting that I’ve ever seen in my life. They were everywhere. We stayed there till March of 1944, before we were ordered to Pope Field at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. It was a nice place.

We received our contingent of sixty-four airplanes and we were training with the 13th Airborne Division, dropping paratroopers and pulling gliders. In the fall of ’44 they gave us the biggest twin-engine airplane in the world—the C-46, called the Curtis Commando.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<European experience>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We missed out on the invasion of D-Day, but we ended up flying overseas across the Atlantic in January 1945 to support Patton and his army. We hauled gasoline, ammunition, and evacuated the wounded for Patton. We were flying from France and into Germany. I was promoted to Colonel in March.

Then, we got a very secret mission on the sixth of May. We went over to England, picked up a bunch of British men, and flew to Copenhagen in Denmark. Copenhagen was still under German hands and they were running the airfield. The war hadn’t ended yet. We flew in. German planes were landing at the same time that we were landing; it was quite and experience. I spent the night in Copenhagen that night, and it was one of the wildest experience that I ever had in my life. Hundreds of Germans were coming by in trucks with food and what not, with their rifles. The Danish were executing the Quislings—the turncoats from Norway. We got to the hotel and these civilian-armed guards would not let us leave. Shortly after, this Mercedes drives up and this woman comes dashing out, and right behind her is this important looking man. Within moments, they opened fire on him. He was a high-ranking Quisling and they didn’t want us to get in the middle of it all. This woman had set him up. And they killed. Sometimes when you lose the war, the losers don’t fair so good.

We found out that the war had ended! We ran into some Danes that night, and we couldn’t pay for a thing; they were pumping drinks down us, really celebrating you know.
I flew to the States and ended up in California where my wife was living. I was assigned to pickup new airplanes as we were headed to Okinawa for the invasion of Japan. While I was on leave the war in Japan ended. I finally retired from the Air Force after 32 years having also served in Korea and Vietnam.
[What qualifications did you possess to get promoted to a higher rank during the war?] The number one qualification for getting a promotion is staying alive.