Transcription:

Robert J. Adams    Interview: September 18, 2004
107 Hibiscus
Lafayette, LA
Born: March 11, 1922
Seaplane/Spitfire Recon pilot

I was born in Houma, but we moved around a lot because my father was a railroad man. He worked on the railroad in Alexandria, Mamou, Lafayette, New Iberia, and even Cypermont Point and Weeks Island.

I was going to school here at SLI when Pearl Harbor happened. I didn’t know much about what was happening because I was flying all day. I had taken up flying at SLI and I was in one of these small airplanes. That plane cost $999 and it came with instructions on how to fly it. 

I was fascinated with flying ever since I was a young boy. My father didn’t believe in flying. So I took up flying when I got to college. There was an old wood hanger at the airport here in Lafayette and we had this little plane; it was a civilian model Piper Cub. We’d have to pick it up by the tail and turn it around. You’d put it in the direction you wanted, started it up and took off. I found out about Pearl Harbor later that afternoon when I landed.

In January of 1942, me and a buddy of mine hitchhiked to New Orleans to join the Navy Air Corps. We were mad at the Japs for attacking Pearl Harbor and wanted to get back at them. We took our test in New Orleans and they sent us back to Lafayette to finish school; that’s when I met my wife.

I had wanted to fly the P-40, the plane with the Flying Tigers. That was the best plane that we had at the time. But when I got my wings, they put me in a SOC seaplane.

I was sent to LSU in Baton Rouge in the summer of ’42 to go to the ground school for navy warfare training. From there I went to Athens, Georgia. I went to school there and took half a day flight training. Then I was sent to Dallas, Texas to train in the N2S2 Steerman. From there so many were sent to dive bombers, some went to big bombers. I was sent to Corpus Christi where I was assigned to a seaplane.

I didn’t know anything about the seaplane before, nothing at all. I was very disappointed about that because I wanted to be fighter pilot. But that’s the Navy. They put you where they need you. And they just picked me for the seaplane.

I flew the OS2U. It had the interior of a small airplane. It had one wing and two machine guns. I had a radioman in the back. The plane could carry two 350-pound depth charges. We went after the submarines and mainly scouted for the heavy cruisers. We were four seaplanes on that cruiser. They would shoot you off of a catapult and you would land in the water. We trained to do everything that you could do at that time. When we finished, we got our wings.

I was sent to Portland, Maine in January of 1944 and was put on my ship, the USS Augusta. We flew patrol in the North Atlantic for three months hunting the submarines. Every once in a while you’d see something, but we never attacked an enemy sub. We flew ahead of the fleet at about six miles an hour. When you flew in a convoy you had to fly as fast as the slowest ship. 

The Augusta was the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet. The first American killed in World War II was on the Augusta (August 21, 1937, China Sea). His name was Falgout and he was from Raceland, Louisiana. The ship was in the China Sea and a shell came over the ship and exploded. The shrapnel killed him. They built a monument in Raceland to honor him. The Augusta was sort of a famous ship. Roosevelt and Churchill met on the Augusta during one of their conferences at the beginning of the war.

There were about 800 men on that ship. When I wasn’t flying I read books and wrote letters to my wife to pass the time. We sailed to England. They sent me down to the southern part of England to go to school to fly the Spitfire. I was on loan to the British.

The British were very nice people. Some people didn’t like the British, but I got along with them. I just didn’t like the food. But the beer was really good.

[Mrs. Adams: Bob didn’t like the food. He used to fly to American airfields to get some American food. My sister had dated a fellow from Alexandria, Louisiana and he was in the Air Force. He worked in the tower. One day Robert flew to this airport and wanted the land. The tower asked him his name and Bob said, “Bob Adams.” The tower said, “Oh! You wouldn’t be married to a girl named Maude Johnson would you?” He said, “Yes, that’s my wife.” So he told him to come on down and he and my sister’s boyfriend met in England; the only time they ever met.]

The Spitfire was a very nice plane and it kept getting better; more power, more speed. I really enjoyed flying it. See the Germans had some really good planes too—they were really fast—and our little old two-wing seaplanes could only go about 135 mph—and that was in a dive. So that’s why they put us in the Spitfire, because it was much faster.

Foreman, who created the Spitfire during peacetime, wanted a really good plane. The Spitfire was a very good airplane. It had six machine guns, three on each side. We trained in the cockpit that showed all the instruments and various equipment for flying the plane. We were going to be used to (foreward) spot for the gun ships at sea. We were especially trained in spotting the fire—the eyes of the fleet.

Before we left on D-Day we had designated targets that we were supposed to pick up. They had done reconnaissance before to pick out the various targets and briefed us on the locations before we left. We were given the coordinantes to go on and we’d go out to beat them up.

We trained for this before the invasion. They had put out these platforms in an area about as big as my house and covered it with different material that the Germans would use. We had to spot for the fire coming in to the targets.

The instructors at the school were all British and they were all good soldiers. We bunked at a boarding school in Sheffield (?) Park. Each pilot had an enlisted man, called a batboy, who took care of your clothes, food, shoes and all that—protocol!

We knew that something big was coming. It had to be. And we knew that it was going to be dangerous, but you just had to go and do it. We were all ready, all excited to go. Actually, D-Day was supposed to be on the 5th of June. But they called it off until the 6th because of bad weather. I wasn’t supposed to fly on the 5th. I had got grounded from a bad sinus infection. When Eisenhower decided, “let’s go” on the 6th, I was well enough to fly. 

We studied on the German Luftwaffe operations. They had good planes, but we had better planes. The Spitfire was one of the best.

We were stationed in Southern England at Lee-on Solent, right across from the Isle of Wight. The morning of the invasion we got up before daybreak and went to our planes. We started out towards the Isle of Wight early that morning. It only took about 15 minutes to fly across the Channel. It was about 90 miles to the target area behind Omaha beach. Flying over the invasion fleet, I saw thousands of different kinds of ships. I was thinking, I’m glad I’m in the air.

We flew in pairs: one pilot would concentrate on the target and direct the fire; the other pilot would hover over him to protect him against enemy fighters and to let him know if he had an enemy on his tail. If we saw an enemy aircraft approaching our wingman, we were instructed to radio him, “break left,” or “break right.” They had sharpened our wing tips so we could break quickly. If he got involved in a dogfight, then I was supposed to take his place and continue spotting the fire. But thankfully, the Luftwaffe never came.

We had two targets on that first mission on D-Day. At Travieres, they didn’t have any Germans there, so I radioed back asking them not to shot up the town. Hell, it was just a little bitty old town. Traviers had a communications center and there was a spotter in a church steeple. He was way up high and could see the invasion beaches. I took a few shots at the steeple, although we weren’t supposed to do that. After we spotted it, our big guns neutralized it until they couldn’t use it anymore.

The naval guns ships would shoot three shots about 200 yards apart. And you would walk the middle shot up to the target and then report back to ship, “fire for effect.” Every gun on that ship would track the same shot and destroy the target.

My other target was the big guns at L-15 in Insigny. It was pretty well camouflaged. We spotted for that and our guns took it out. We had radio contact between the two pilots and the ship offshore.

The Germans were sending up a lot of anti-aircraft fire. I tried to dodge the incoming fire. One of the guns must have hit my plane because I started loosing fuel. I knew that I couldn’t return to England so I had to land it somewhere. I told my wingman that I was hit and I was going to land. I had a parachute, but I wasn’t gone to ditch the plane and jump out. I didn’t want to risk landing it and getting captured either. So I flew out to the Utah beach area where I knew I could land. The sand there on the beach was very smooth. So when I got there I looked down and saw an opening where the bulldozers had cleared a path for planes to land. I signaled them as best I could and that’s where I landed; I didn’t have a choice. It was a smooth landing and I had no problem getting her down. I was the first pilot to land in France on D-Day.

I think a bullet had torn my fuel line. So these boys fixed me up, gassed me up, and I took off heading back to England. (Distinguished Flying Cross)

I got back to base, checked in and was briefed for my second mission that afternoon. This mission was further inland from the beach. There were a lot of ships and a lot of smoke on that beach that afternoon. We flew missions from June 6 to June 24, everyday. 

The Germans didn’t have very many planes, but we didn’t know that. I was lucky; I never ran into enemy aircraft, although we lost one of our guys that day.

After the 24th of June, I got back on the Augusta and went to Algeriers in North Africa for three days. All we did was sit around a table and drink wine. Then I got on the Tuscaloosa and went to Sicily. From there I got on the USS Philadelphia and went on the invasion of Southern France (Operation ANVIL/DRAGOON).

I got back on the seaplane for the Southern France invasion. My first mission was to fly to this minesweeper out in the Gulf of Fos. I picked up this guy from the minesweeper and flew him ahead of the fleet to spot for mines. We could see the mines from the air and he took the compass reading of the minefield and radioed back to the minesweeper the location. I flew about 13 missions on that invasion. We lost another guy on that invasion.

I stayed on the Philadelphia until the end of August. Then I got back on the Augusta. Eventually we made it back to the States. My son was born on August 18. When I got back to Lafayette, he was just four weeks old.

All together, we were 17 pilots. We lost two during the war.

I went on to practice law here in Lafayette and I still fly with the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

Every other night, over England, the skies would light up, and rumble from the violent screams of the fast approaching German ‘Buzz bombs.’ The V-1 and V-2 self-propelled rocket bombs—vengeance weapons as Hitler referred to them—were launched from sites in France, Holland, and Belgium. The bombs were fired over the English Channel, and were sent crashing down on unsuspecting victims, killing and wounding tens of thousands of helpless civilians in the battered British cities. London, Hitler’s favorite target, was practically leveled from the daily visits of the unmanned Nazi terror bombs.