Author Steve Snyder shares his father’s harrowing WWII story of survival after his B-17 was shot down over Belgium in 1944.
Announcer
00:11 – 00:32
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson.
Announcer
00:32 – 00:41
These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.
Kim Monson
00:44 – 01:02
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. The show began because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans to Normandy, France for the anniversary of the D-Day landings.
Kim Monson
01:02 – 01:25
and return stateside, realizing that these stories need to be recorded and broadcast and archived. And so here we are now with America’s Veterans Stories. And I’m really honored to have on the line with me Steve Snyder. And he’s written a book about his father, shot down the true story of pilot Howard Snyder and the crew of the B-17 Susan Roth.
Kim Monson
01:26 – 01:27
Steve Snyder, welcome to the show.
Steve Snyder
01:28 – 01:31
Oh, thank you very much, Kim. Thanks for having me on.
Kim Monson
01:31 – 01:39
Well, I’m so excited that our paths have met. And this is a fascinating story. So where would you like to start, Steve?
Steve Snyder
01:41 – 01:55
Well, I guess how I kind of came to write the book. Growing up, I knew the basics of my dad’s World War II history. He was a B-17 bomber pilot. He was stationed in England with the Eighth Air Force.
Steve Snyder
01:55 – 02:16
His plane was named the Susan Ruth, after my oldest sister, who was one year old at the time that he went overseas. And he flew bombing missions all over Europe. And in February of 1944, his plane was shot down and he was missing in action for seven months. But he evaded capture and eventually made it back to his base in England.
Steve Snyder
02:16 – 02:36
But it wasn’t until I retired in 2009 that I had the time to really delve into my dad’s history in more detail. My parents had kept a lot of material about the war years, and I just wanted to go through that and organize it and learn some more details. At that time, I had no intention at all of writing a book. And there were two items that were really significant.
Steve Snyder
02:36 – 03:02
One was a diary that my dad wrote while he was missing in action about his plane being shot down, which was just riveting, which is in the book. And the other were all the letters that my dad had written to my mother while he was stationed in England. And he was really candid in those letters. He talked about what bombing missions were like, what life was like in London and England at the time, what life was like on the air base, escapades of his crew and him.
Steve Snyder
03:02 – 03:39
After reading those letters, I just became fascinated with the story of my dad and his crew, and it became my passion. I started reading book after book about the air war over Europe, one on the internet, countless hours doing research, downloading declassified military documents. I went on a quest to find relatives of all my dad’s crew, to ask them for anything that they could give to me, letters, articles, pictures. And then three years into my research, I just came to the conclusion that the story of my dad and his crew was so unique and so compelling, people needed to know about it.
Steve Snyder
03:39 – 03:40
So I decided to write a book.
Kim Monson
03:42 – 04:01
Fascinating. And I’ve learned a lot over the years. I’ve interviewed about 150 World War Two veterans and veterans of the Korean War, Vietnam War or other wars and conflicts. But I didn’t really I hadn’t really thought about this on those bomber those old bombers.
Kim Monson
04:01 – 04:14
First of all, they were not pressurized cabins. They flew at significant altitudes. It was cold. I don’t think that everyday people today realize just what the conditions were like, Steve.
Steve Snyder
04:14 – 04:29
Oh, that’s absolutely correct. As you said, those planes were not pressurized. So above 10,000 feet, they had to go on oxygen or else they’d pass out in a couple of minutes and die. And it was exceedingly cold at the altitudes they were flying.
Steve Snyder
04:29 – 04:48
They would fly it around, you know, 20 to 25,000 feet, five miles above the ground. And the temperatures in those planes was minus 40 to 60 degrees below zero. So frostbite was a huge problem. And one of my dad’s waist gunners, John Pindrock, he was hospitalized for two and a half months.
Steve Snyder
04:48 – 05:16
with the serious frostbite injuries. So yeah, it was an arduous task just being in those planes, let alone when they were encountered by enemy fighters or the anti-aircraft fire over the target. So it was a grooming task and exceedingly dangerous. There were 26,000 men in the Eighth Air Force who were killed during the war, which is more than the entire Marine Corps fighting in the Pacific.
Steve Snyder
05:16 – 05:43
And another 28,000 men became prisoners of war after their planes were knocked out of the sky, either by German fighters or by anti-aircraft fire. So yeah, it was, and you never knew when the next mission might be your last. Some guys were killed on their very first mission, or other men were killed on their last mission before they could go home. So what you say is absolutely correct.
Kim Monson
05:43 – 05:46
How many missions did your father fly before he was shot down?
Steve Snyder
05:48 – 06:05
missions. Some of the crew had more missions than he did. Other crew members had fewer missions. The public, in general, thinks that these crews flew every mission together, but there were always guys getting sick or getting injured.
Steve Snyder
06:05 – 06:27
So you had a lot of replacement crewmen that would come on when these guys were sick or injured. Over those eight missions, there were only two missions where my dad flew with his entire crew. The last one and then the one prior to that. Also, they didn’t fly the same planes all the time on those eight missions that my dad flew.
Steve Snyder
06:27 – 06:30
He flew five different B-17s.
Kim Monson
06:31 – 06:58
Well, and I want to just mention that you said that his plane was named after your sister who was one years old or one year old. And he shot down your mom’s back at home with a little one. Your dad’s missing in action. I don’t think that, again, everyday people just realize what the kind of the human toll that this takes, the emotion and just what that would mean exactly for your mother.
Steve Snyder
06:59 – 07:14
Absolutely. He was shot down on February 8th, 44. And on February 23rd, she received a telegram from the War Department saying that he was missing in action. And actually, my other sister, Nancy, was born while my dad was missing in action.
Kim Monson
07:14 – 07:14
So
Steve Snyder
07:14 – 07:49
here’s my mom back in Pasadena, California, with one-year-old Susan and infant Nancy, not knowing if she’d ever see her husband again. And there’s lots of excerpts in the book from letters written from my dad, my mother, other members of the crew. And really poignant letters are between the mothers, the wives, the sweethearts of the crew after they were shot down. Because as you said, boy, they were just scared to death and not knowing what happened to their loved ones or if they’d ever see them.
Steve Snyder
07:49 – 08:02
So it’s very moving, the excerpts from some of those letters that were exchanged between the women, so concerned and praying for the welfare of their husband or their son.
Kim Monson
08:02 – 08:10
It’s a remarkable generation. Let’s talk about the crew. Now I can’t remember. I think I flew on a B.
Kim Monson
08:10 – 08:20
17, I think, which was rather thrilling for me. But these planes were not huge. And so tell us about the crew. How many were on the crew?
Kim Monson
08:20 – 08:22
And what were their, their
Steve Snyder
08:22 – 08:38
responsibilities? You’re definitely correct when you talk about the plane. From a distance, they look like they’re fairly large, but a B-17, when you get in it, it’s really cramped. It’s just like a cigar tube.
Steve Snyder
08:38 – 08:49
It’s more cramped than a B-17 than it is in a submarine. So it was really hard to move around. You have to kind of crawl down into the nose of the plane. But a B-17 had a 10-man crew.
Steve Snyder
08:49 – 09:04
There were four officers, the pilot, which was my dad, and as such, the commander of the plane and the crew. Then you had the co-pilot, the bombardier, and the navigator. Those were the four officers. And then you had six enlisted men.
Steve Snyder
09:04 – 09:26
They’re non-commissioned officers who were mainly gunners. a flight engineer, a top turret gunner, two waist gunners, a radio operator, a ball turret gunner, and a tail gunner. And so they learned to operate as a team and became very close-knit and tight.
Kim Monson
09:27 – 09:47
Well, and let’s talk about the gunners. And so when they got to a point where they were going to man the guns, it was very cramped to get up into these areas where the guns were. And so explain what a waist gunner is, the top turret. Just explain what those gunners are exactly.
Steve Snyder
09:48 – 10:02
OK, well, the gunners, they were typically 18, 19 years old. The officers were in their early 20s. My dad was an old guy. He was actually 28, so they called him Grandpa or Pops.
Steve Snyder
10:04 – 10:49
But, you know, the positions, the gunner positions were very cramped, especially the ball turret gunner, which was underneath the belly of the plane. And he had These missions lasted six to 10 hours, so they were very arduous and tiring, but the Baltroid gunner was kind of curled up in a fetal position underneath the plane for hours on end, so that was very uncomfortable. Another really cramped position was the tail gunner kind of sat in that little bicycle seat that he would sit on, but then kneel on his knees, so that was uncomfortable as well. And the two waist gunners, they stood up on each side of the plane, there was a window.
Steve Snyder
10:49 – 11:20
In the early part of the war, the B-17, the windows were open, so you had that freezing cold air just pouring into the plane. And the later model, B-17G model, they put Plexiglas over that, so it wasn’t quite as bad. But it was really, stuff going in those. And then they always had to have their head on a swivel, as it were, to be looking for enemy planes that might appear.
Steve Snyder
11:21 – 11:51
Because another thing that was really dangerous about these missions is that at its peak, there were 40 bomb group bases in England. So on the day of a mission, you had hundreds of bombers taken off all at the same time. And back then there wasn’t any air traffic control, there wasn’t any radar, everything was based on visual sight. And usually the weather was socked in and you couldn’t see anything above you until you got above the cloud layer.
Steve Snyder
11:51 – 12:21
So mid-air collisions were not uncommon at all on these planes trying to take off, getting ready to cross the English Channel. And then when they crossed the English Channel, the Germans had radar stations set up along the continental coast of Europe, so they knew when these bomber formations were coming. And when they did, the Germans would send up their air force, the Luftwaffe, to intercept them. And then when they got close to the target, that’s when they’d run into anti-aircraft fire, called flak.
Steve Snyder
12:21 – 12:39
Flak was the abbreviation for the German word for aircraft defense cannon. And then if they made it through the bomb run, and then heading back to the bases in England, there they’d have to face the Luftwaffe again. Those gunners were busy both going into the target and going away from
Kim Monson
12:39 – 13:04
the target. Yes, most definitely. And before we go to break, Steve Snyder, my understanding was as early in the war, the bombers didn’t have fighter cover all the way into their targets because the fighters early in the war didn’t have enough fuel capacity to accompany them in. So they were like big sitting ducks in the air many times.
Steve Snyder
13:05 – 13:30
Oh, absolutely. In the early years of the war, 1942, 1943, just as you said, the fighters didn’t have the fuel capacity to escort the bombers deep into Germany. They could escort them across the channel, and then they’d reach continental Europe. They’d run low on fuel, so they’d have to turn around and go back to England, where the Luftwaffe would just wait until they turned around, and then they’d come in to attack.
Kim Monson
13:31 – 13:46
Yeah, it’s remarkable what those guys did. So we’re going to go to break. I’m talking with Steve Snyder, and he’s written a book about his father and his father’s crew. It’s called Shot Down the True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth.
Kim Monson
13:46 – 14:02
And a sponsor that I greatly appreciate for America’s Veterans Stories is Hooters Restaurants. They have locations in Loveland, Westminster, and in Aurora on Parker Road. And great specials Monday through Friday for lunch and for happy hour. Great place to get together with your friends to watch the sporting events and just have some great food.
Kim Monson
14:03 – 14:18
In particular, their fish and chips and their nachos are delicious. I hear that their fish tacos are quite good as well. So again, thank you to Hooters Restaurants for their sponsorship of the show. Join us at Grand Lake’s 14th U.S. Constitution Week, September 15th through September 21st.
Kim Monson
14:18 – 14:42
Grand Lake U.S. Constitution Week is the premier celebration in America of the world’s greatest governing document. The week-long event includes events that educate, promote, and celebrate the U.S. Constitution in picturesque Grand Lake. Constitutional expert Rob Nadelson kicks off the event with his discussion regarding ancient Rome and the Constitution. Nationally recognized scholar Jonathan Turley will deliver the keynote on Saturday, September 20th.
Kim Monson
14:42 – 14:48
For more information visit GrandLakeUSConstitutionWeek.com. That’s GrandLakeUSConstitutionWeek.com.
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14:49 – 15:16
Remak’s Realtor, Karen Levine, helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home.
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Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516. All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of the Kim Munson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com.
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15:42 – 15:46
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Kim Monson
15:46 – 16:10
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier and thank you for
Steve Snyder
16:10 – 16:14
listening.
Kim Monson
16:21 – 16:35
Welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And on the line with me is Steve Snyder, and he’s written a book, A Shot Down the True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth.
Kim Monson
16:36 – 16:53
And Steve, before we went to break, we were talking about early on in the war, the bombers did not have fighter cover as they were going in on these targets. And so they were big, lumbering bombers in the air, they were sitting ducks, and we lost so many airmen during that time.
Steve Snyder
16:55 – 17:14
Absolutely. As I mentioned, in the early part of the war, they didn’t have the fighter escorts that could take them all the way deep into Germany. And the losses were really piled up in 1943. At the beginning of the air war over Europe, there was no mission limits.
Steve Snyder
17:15 – 17:37
And the morale of these combat crews started going into the tank because they quickly realized that they would never make it home. They’d either be killed or be shot down and become prisoners of war. So in the spring of 1943, The 8th Air Force did implement a mission limit of 25. So if you made it to 25 missions, you could come home.
Steve Snyder
17:38 – 18:01
But it was statistically impossible in 1943 to complete 25 missions. The average number of missions flown before and being shot down was only six. And the losses culminated in the fall, October of 43, over a one week period. There were four missions where the 8th Air Force lost 148 planes.
Steve Snyder
18:02 – 18:22
That’s almost 1,500 men. It was referred to as a black week, with the worst day being Black Thursday on a mission to the ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt, Germany. where out of 291 planes, 60 were lost. And after that, the 8th Air Force was in shock.
Steve Snyder
18:22 – 18:50
There was absolutely no way they could continue taking losses like that. And they seriously considered discontinuing daylight bombing. It wasn’t until right at the end of 1943, in the beginning of 1944, with the introduction of the P-51 Mustang, that these bomber formations finally had escorts that could take them all the way deep into Germany to the target and then escort them back to their bases in England.
Steve Snyder
18:50 – 19:11
The P-51 Mustang was particularly effective. They basically won the air war over Europe. By the time D-Day rolled around June 6th of 1944, the Luftwaffe had been pretty much decimated. On D-Day, there was hardly a human plane in the sky over Normandy.
Kim Monson
19:12 – 19:38
Well, and the P-51, I was telling you in between the breaks here that several years ago, I interviewed Major Frederick Arnold, who was a P-51 pilot, and he loved that plane. It was quite the plane for sure. And so let’s go to February 1944. Anything else, Steve, you want to make sure our listeners know before we talk about your father being shot down?
Steve Snyder
19:39 – 19:41
I know we can go to talk about that. That’s fine.
Kim Monson
19:42 – 19:43
Okay. Tell us about that day then.
Steve Snyder
19:45 – 20:11
Okay. As I mentioned, it was February 8th, 1944. I was on a mission to Frankfurt, Germany, where my dad’s plane, the Susan Ruth, they dropped their bombs successfully, but the bomb bay doors got hit by slack or anti-aircraft fire and they couldn’t get them back up. As a result, that caused a drag on the plane, started losing airspeed, and it fell behind the bomber formation, hitting back their bases in England.
Steve Snyder
20:13 – 20:34
As a result, they were singled out by two German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters, like wolves or lions on prey, you know, swooped in for the kill. And in the ensuing air battle, the Susan Ruth was shot down. Two of the crew members, the Paul turret gunner and the radio operator, were killed in the plane. The other eight men were able to bail out successfully.
Steve Snyder
20:35 – 20:47
But both those German Focke-Wulf fighters were shot down as well. One was piloted by Siegfried Merrick. His plane crashed in Belgium and he was killed. And the other was piloted by Hans Berger.
Steve Snyder
20:48 – 21:00
who was able to bail out and he survived the war. And actually, the gunners on my dad’s plane shot down Hans Berger at the same time he was shooting them down. So they actually shot each other down. Wow.
Steve Snyder
21:02 – 21:10
OK, and the first half of the book builds up to the day that the plane was shot down, and then the second half of the book is all about what happened afterwards.
Kim Monson
21:11 – 21:30
Okay, so first of all, I just want to mention for the ball turret gunner that it would be difficult to get out and get your parachute on and get out when you’ve been hit. So that was a very difficult position to be in for sure.
Steve Snyder
21:31 – 21:52
Well, actually, none of the crew wore their parachutes in the plane because it was too cramped. So they had to have their wits about them to find their parachute. They had a harness, a parachute harness with hooks on it. So if they needed to bail out, they had to find their parachute, clip it on the hooks of the harness, and then bail out of the plane.
Steve Snyder
21:53 – 22:11
Which, you know, you can imagine if you’re attacked and your plane’s on fire, and there’s injured or killed men, you’re panicked, you’re just frightened to death, and you’re trying to find that parachute and click it on the hook, that can be a task all in itself.
Kim Monson
22:12 – 22:18
Well, and the other thing is, is these guys didn’t, they weren’t paratroopers. They didn’t practice this. So can you- Exactly.
Steve Snyder
22:18 – 22:32
That’s an excellent point. They had some classroom instructions, but they never ever practiced jumping out of a plane. You know, when they had to bail out, that’s the first time they ever jumped out of a plane. So they really didn’t know what to expect.
Steve Snyder
22:33 – 22:42
So that was a scary experience right there, unlike a paratrooper, like you mentioned, that would practice jumping and knew how to jump and what to do.
Kim Monson
22:42 – 22:59
And yeah, I just can’t even think about what that really would be. And I hadn’t thought about the other things, that they were injured, the plane was on fire. Oh my gosh, I would be so frightened doing that. But they did it, they did it.
Kim Monson
22:59 – 23:03
So okay, so the plane is hit, it’s going down, then what
Steve Snyder
23:03 – 23:14
happens? You know, they bailed out at different times. My dad was the last one to bail out. He put the plane on autopilot.
Steve Snyder
23:15 – 23:37
So actually, my dad and the plane, they came down in Belgium, but the other men who bailed out all came down in northern France. And my dad was separated. He didn’t know what happened to any of his crew until he got back to England. But something happened different to each guy.
Steve Snyder
23:37 – 24:08
Of the 10-man crew, five of them made it home, but five of them did not. After my dad bailed out, he came down in some trees right at the French-Belgian border, and his parachute got hung up on the branches of the tree and he was dangling 20 feet off the ground and couldn’t get down. But fortunately for him, a couple of young Belgian men, Henri Franken and Ramon Duvin, came to his rescue before the Germans got to him. This all occurred early in the afternoon, just a little past noon.
Steve Snyder
24:10 – 24:39
So they went back to Duvin’s farmhouse, got a ladder and a rope, and helped him down this tree. And they told him to stay put and hide, because they thought it was too dangerous to try to move him during daylight, with German patrols combing the area. That night, they came back, they picked him up and took him to the Durban farmhouse. This is Durban, Durban, kind of a bandit, just his wounds, he had some shrapnel wounds from, some minor shrapnel wounds.
Steve Snyder
24:40 – 24:59
But they thought it was too dangerous for him to stay there any longer than one night. Again, because those German patrols were still in the area. So the next night, a Belgium customs officer, Paul Chotin, came on a tandem bicycle to take him to a safer location. So they headed out that second night.
Steve Snyder
25:00 – 25:13
It was, my dad said, it was pitch black. It was a drizzling, kind of a dreary evening. And they came to a hill, and they weren’t able to pedal the bike up the hill, so they started pushing it up the hill. And when they got to the top of the hill, there was a little cafe there, a cabaret.
Steve Snyder
25:13 – 25:29
The lights were on, music was playing, people were laughing. And all of a sudden, two German officers come walking out with their arms around these young French girls. One of them comes up to my dad and asks him for a light for cigarettes. My dad’s petrified.
Steve Snyder
25:29 – 25:51
He can’t speak German and doesn’t know French at that time. But fortunately, Paul, you know, knew what they wanted and pulled out a match and lit the Germans cigarette. And they let them continue on their way. My dad said they were too drunk and too interested in these young girls to pay much attention to a couple of guys pushing a bike up the hill in the middle of the night.
Steve Snyder
25:52 – 26:13
So that was a pretty harrowing experience. And after that, my dad was moved from place to place to place. How long he stayed with any given location depended on how brave the Belgian people were who lived there and how dangerous the Belgian underground thought it was for him to stay there. He might spend one night at a location or six weeks at another location.
Steve Snyder
26:13 – 26:35
But many, many Belgian people helped him, and the people who helped my dad or any down there men for that matter, were unbelievably brave and courageous people. Because they risked not only their lives, but their lives of family and friends. They were discovered by the German secret police, the Gestapo. They’d be arrested, tortured, and either shot or sent to a concentration camp.
Steve Snyder
26:36 – 26:40
Some of the people who helped my dad and other members of his crew did meet that fate.
Kim Monson
26:41 – 27:03
Well, and you mentioned one other thing, and that is, is the way that the Gestapo, they would injure family members instead of, I think, you know, many of us say, well, I could, you know, I could take it. But by gosh, if you saw somebody trying to hurt your children, your grandchildren, that’s a whole different ballgame. And it’s a whole different kind of cruel as well, I think, Steve.
Steve Snyder
27:06 – 27:17
Oh, yeah, the Nazis just had no mercy whatsoever. Yeah, which we’ll talk about a little further in the interview.
Kim Monson
27:17 – 27:18
OK.
Steve Snyder
27:19 – 27:21
Time to go for a break.
Kim Monson
27:21 – 27:28
Yeah. Why don’t we go ahead and go. This is probably a good time for a break. So I’m talking with Steve Snyder about his father, who was a B-17 pilot.
Kim Monson
27:29 – 27:44
He’s written a book, Shot Down the True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth. And so we’re going to go to break. We’ll be right back with Steve Snyder. Join us at Grand Lake’s 14th U.S. Constitution Week, September 15th through September 21st.
Kim Monson
27:44 – 28:08
Grand Lake U.S. Constitution Week is the premier celebration in America of the world’s greatest governing document. The week-long event includes events that educate, promote, and celebrate the U.S. Constitution in picturesque Grand Lake. Constitutional expert Rob Nadelson kicks off the event with his discussion regarding ancient Rome and the Constitution. Nationally recognized scholar Jonathan Turley will deliver the keynote on Saturday, September 20th.
Kim Monson
28:08 – 28:14
For more information, visit GrandLakeUSConstitutionWeek.com. That’s GrandLakeUSConstitutionWeek.com.
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Kim Monson
28:56 – 29:20
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier and thank you for
Steve Snyder
29:20 – 29:22
listening.
Kim Monson
29:28 – 29:49
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website, that is americasveteranstories.com. Talking with Steve Snyder about his father. His father was a B-17 pilot and the book that Steve has written is Shot Down, The True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth.
Kim Monson
29:50 – 30:07
So your father is now in Belgium and many people were risking their lives to help him. And again, the Nazis were so cruel, we can’t quite fathom exactly what was going on at that time. So continue on, Steve. What happens after that?
Steve Snyder
30:08 – 30:46
OK, well, normally when the underground, whether it’s in the Netherlands or Belgium or France, came across a downed airman, they tried to get him back to England through various escape routes, down through France, over the Pyrenees into Spain and then out through British controlled Gibraltar. And there are four different occasions where my dad would, it looked like he would get into these networks and be able to make it back to England. But all four times, something happened. These networks would get compromised, that the infiltrators, members in the escape line would be killed.
Steve Snyder
30:46 – 30:57
So he really got frustrated. And you can imagine, now here, To begin with, you know, he’s playing with a pack that’s on fire. He has to bail out. He comes down in a foreign country.
Steve Snyder
30:57 – 31:10
He has no idea where he is. Doesn’t know what happened to his buddies on the crew. Can’t communicate with the U.S. military. He’s being helped by total strangers who, at the beginning, really couldn’t communicate with one another.
Steve Snyder
31:10 – 31:23
My dad had a little French-English dictionary in his escape kit that he could refer to. And any of these people helping him could be a collaborator. turn him over to the Gestapo. So it was very frustrating.
Steve Snyder
31:23 – 31:47
And there’s several times where he was almost discovered by the Germans that are described in the book. And finally, he got tired of hiding. Word came that the Allies landed at Normandy on June 6th, D-Day, and he decided to get back in the fight. Unlike most airmen, before he went into the Air Force, he was in the Army for a year in the infantry.
Steve Snyder
31:48 – 32:07
and was trained as an infantryman, so he knew how to fight on the ground. So he decided to join the French resistance and fight against the Germans. And his helpers tried to talk him out of it because it was much too dangerous. He killed fighting against the Germans, or if the Germans caught him, they would shoot him right on the spot as a terrorist.
Steve Snyder
32:08 – 32:28
But he thought it was his duty to get back into the fight and help with the war effort. So he talked to one of his helpers, Amy Cools, and accompanied him. They rode bicycles from Belgium into France, and he hooked up with a unit of the French Resistance. They were called the Macri.
Steve Snyder
32:29 – 32:50
And the Macri were independents, ragtag guerrilla groups, small groups, located all across France. The group he joined was led by a French lieutenant who had escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. There were some Frenchmen, some Belgians, some Algerians in his group. And they basically, the Mackey harassed the Germans.
Steve Snyder
32:50 – 33:18
They would attack convoys, sabotage railroad lines, disrupt communications, assassinate German officers. They got their instructions over the BBC from the British through coded messages. And my dad said the information that they gave to him was unbelievably accurate. If they were told that there would be a German convoy coming down this road on this day at this time, sure enough, they would be there.
Steve Snyder
33:18 – 33:42
And that was a result of the British cracking the Germans’ Enigma code and knowing everything that the Germans were up to. And then they were also supplied by the British through airdrops. So my dad fought with the Mackey for about two and a half months. And there’s several encounters described in the book that the Nike group had, attacking the German convoys that are quite exciting.
Steve Snyder
33:42 – 34:04
And then finally, seven months after being shot down, word came that there were U.S. troops in the nearby village of Trelon, France. So my dad walked into the town square, went up to an army major, actually it was an element of Patton’s Third Army, which had come up through France after D-Day. He identified himself. They interrogated him to make sure he was who he said he was.
Steve Snyder
34:05 – 34:38
And then he caught a ride on a convoy taking German prisoners to Paris. And then in Paris, he hopped on a transport to make it back to his base in England, where he sent a telegram to my mother saying he was as fit as a fiddle. And he would write soon in the bank the money, because he had all that back pay coming from those seven months of missing in action. So that obviously was a wonderful, happy day for my mother and her parents and my dad’s parents and other relatives.
Kim Monson
34:39 – 34:41
So what about the other crew members?
Steve Snyder
34:43 – 35:30
Okay, well, three of the crew members were picked up immediately by the Germans, and they became prisoners of war. Two of them were severely injured, Waste Gunner Joe Musial, who had his left foot shot off, and the bombardier, Richard Daniels, who almost had his arm blown off. And they were so seriously injured that they were repatriated back to the U.S. in February of 44, before the war ended. And then my dad’s flight engineer, top turret gunner, Roy Holbert, he spent the entire war as a POW and was liberated right at the end of the war.
Steve Snyder
35:32 – 36:02
One other man, Joe Schlenker, the tail gunner, he also evaded capture and was missing in action for those seven months. But unlike my dad, who was moved from place to place to place, he was hidden the entire time at one house in Chabais, Belgium. It was Josephine Calais and her two daughters, Paulette and Giselle. So he was liberated when the US armies came up through France after D-Day.
Steve Snyder
36:03 – 36:44
And the remaining three crewmen, they evaded capture for two months and they actually joined up with five other downed airmen from three other B-17s. And they were, with the help of a couple of Belgium, members of the Belgium Underground, they built a hut in the forest outside of Chimay, where they were hiding, waiting to get into escape routes to get back to England. But that kept getting delayed. And unfortunately, a Belgium collaborator told the Germans about these eight airmen hiding in the woods.
Steve Snyder
36:45 – 37:28
And on April 22nd of 1944, hundreds of German troops, both army and different police units, surrounded the hut and they captured the eight airmen, took them back into Chimay to the schoolhouse, interrogated them. And then they drove all eight back out in the woods in Chimay and they shot all eight of them, murdered them. So that was, there’s a lot of tragedy in the book. It was these five guys who did not make it from my dad’s crew and then five from the different, from other crews that did joy on the guys that did make it.
Steve Snyder
37:29 – 37:35
It was about anything that could happen to a bomber crew happened to my dad’s crew.
Kim Monson
37:36 – 37:52
I’m thinking about, you said early on when they were all missing in action, that many of the wives and sweethearts were communicating with each other. It had to be difficult when half came home and half didn’t. That had to be really difficult.
Steve Snyder
37:53 – 38:17
Oh, absolutely. The three guys who became prisoners of war, they were able to write home. So they were the first news that the relatives had that they were safe. And they also told the families that the two guys that died in the plane, Lewis Colbert and Ross Kaler, had been killed.
Steve Snyder
38:18 – 38:50
So the families did find out what happened to five members of the crew, but they didn’t know what happened to the other five. My dad, who actually was the first one to come back to England, and that’s where he learned that Three of his crew became prisoners of war, and two of them were killed in the plane, but he didn’t know what happened to the other four. And then Bill Slinker, who evaded capture, showed up. But no one knew what happened to the final three crewmen.
Steve Snyder
38:52 – 39:12
At the end of the war, the War Department just told the families of those three that they were presumed dead. Well, the father of the co-pilot, the co-pilot was George Ike. His dad, Derwood Ike, did not accept that. So he went to his senator.
Steve Snyder
39:12 – 39:42
He lived in Rochester, New York. And the senator got the government to do a war crimes investigation. And that’s when they discovered what happened to these eight men that were hiding in the woods and were interrogated and shot and then all buried in a common grave in an airport north of Chivay. But that didn’t occur until 16 months after the war.
Steve Snyder
39:42 – 39:57
So, you know, it was like a year and a half after the war before the families actually knew what happened to those three members of the crew that were that were murdered by the Nazis. So you can imagine how hard that was on those families.
Kim Monson
39:57 – 40:25
Oh, my gosh. And this is a subjective question, but OK, I’m thinking April 1944. Hitler knows that the Allies are planning to get a toehold on Western Europe and that they were going to attack Hitler. It just seems so cruel to me to take them out and shoot them instead of putting them as a prisoner of war.
Kim Monson
40:25 – 40:28
Any idea why that occurred?
Steve Snyder
40:29 – 41:07
Yes, that actually was a very rare occurrence. The majority of the men who were shot down and survived became prisoners of war. Really, the only time that it was really dangerous for downed airmen was when they were shot down and bailed out over Germany. because there were a number of instances where, you know, civilians, farmers did kill downed U.S. or British airmen because they had many relatives that were killed in, you know, the bombing missions.
Steve Snyder
41:08 – 41:39
So there were instances of civilians shooting or hanging or clubbing to death downed airmen because they were so angry about, you know, Germany being bombed They’re losing loved ones. But in occupied countries, that was very rare because they were occupied by the Germans. The Germans typically picked them up and they became prisoners of war. We’ll never really know for sure why the Nazis killed these eight airmen.
Steve Snyder
41:40 – 42:01
One theory was that they did have three guns in the hut. They had a couple rifles and a handgun. And one theory is that because they were armed, that the Germans considered them terrorists, and that’s why they shot them. But we’ll never know for sure.
Kim Monson
42:01 – 42:14
Wow, okay. Let’s go to break. I’m talking with Steve Snyder, and he’s written this book about his father, and it’s absolutely fascinating. The book’s called Shot Down the True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth.
Kim Monson
42:14 – 42:38
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Kim Monson
42:39 – 42:50
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Kim Monson
43:54 – 44:18
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Kim Monson
44:19 – 44:33
Nationally recognized scholar Jonathan Turley will deliver the keynote on Saturday, September 20th. For more information visit GrandLakeUSConstitutionWeek.com. That’s GrandLakeUSConstitutionWeek.com. Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories.
Kim Monson
44:33 – 44:54
We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier and thank you for
Announcer
44:54 – 44:59
listening.
Kim Monson
45:00 – 45:11
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. On the line with me is Steve Snyder, and we’re hearing the story of his father.
Kim Monson
45:11 – 45:25
It’s fascinating. He’s written a book. It’s called Shot Down, the true story of pilot Howard Snyder and the crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth. So your father, we get to the end of the war and we found out now what has happened to everyone.
Kim Monson
45:26 – 45:28
Your father, when did he pass on?
Steve Snyder
45:29 – 45:42
My father died in April of 2007. He wasn’t the last crew member to die, but he was the oldest at 91. So he had a good life. My mother actually passed away five months later.
Steve Snyder
45:43 – 45:50
They had been married for 65 years, and after she lost my dad, there was nothing to live for. He just kind of wasted away.
Kim Monson
45:50 – 45:52
A broken heart, huh?
Steve Snyder
45:52 – 45:53
Yep, absolutely.
Kim Monson
45:54 – 45:59
Did he talk with you? Did he talk much about it at all?
Steve Snyder
46:00 – 46:20
Yes. Like most World War II veterans, my dad didn’t talk a lot about the war until 1989. In August of that year, in Belgium, they erected a memorial to my dad and his crew. And my dad and the three other crew members that were still living at the time went over for the dedication of the memorial.
Steve Snyder
46:20 – 46:37
And there he was reunited with all these Belgian people who hit him during the war visited these places where he was hidden. And that brought it all back and he started talking about it after that. Five years later in 1994, I made my first trip to Belgium. I’ve been there six times now.
Steve Snyder
46:38 – 47:08
But I accompanied my wife and I and my sister Nancy accompanied my parents. to the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Belgium, and my dad’s plane being shot down, and that’s when it became personal for me, because I went around to all these places with my dad and saw where the events took place, and it’s amazing how many buildings, farms, the schoolhouse there in Chimay, and locations where the hut was located in the woods, that is there today, and you can go visit where history took place. I just got chills.
Steve Snyder
47:08 – 47:09
It’s wonderful.
Kim Monson
47:10 – 47:30
It’s remarkable. What I found so interesting when we were in Normandy in 2016 was how the people of Belgium and the Netherlands and Normandy revere these World War II veterans. It was like being with Elvis in Memphis or something. It was just amazing.
Steve Snyder
47:32 – 47:50
Oh, absolutely. To this day, those people are still so thankful. for the U.S. and the allies coming to rescue them from four years of Nazi occupation and Nazi oppression. And they do a great job of educating the younger generation as well.
Steve Snyder
47:51 – 48:03
Like you mentioned, in 1994, when I was there with my dad, they treated him like he was the president of the United States. It was amazing. I get chills just remembering, just thinking about it.
Kim Monson
48:03 – 48:04
Yeah. And
Steve Snyder
48:04 – 48:05
wonderful people.
Kim Monson
48:05 – 48:24
They are. And as you mentioned, they still teach their kids about what happened. And and in fact, a friend of mine was from the Netherlands that traveled with us. And he has actually adopted graves of several of our American servicemen.
Kim Monson
48:24 – 48:40
And I think his grandfather had adopted a grave, and then they pass it down to his father, to him. And then school children, they will go out and they’ll learn the names, they’ll learn the stories of the men that are buried there. We need to take a lesson from them, I think, Steve.
Steve Snyder
48:41 – 49:04
Well, absolutely. Two of my dad’s crew members, Lewis Colward and John Pendrock, are buried in Europe, one in Belgium, one at Margraten in the Netherlands. And three of the other men that were killed, who were hiding in the hut, are buried at Margraten as well. And I’ve met the grave adopters of those men and become friends with them.
Steve Snyder
49:04 – 49:07
Yes, as you say, they’re wonderful people.
Kim Monson
49:07 – 49:17
Well, and you’ve been back then, you said six different times. So you’ve gotten to know many of these people that helped your father or their descendants. And there is a bond between all of you, isn’t there?
Steve Snyder
49:18 – 49:33
Oh, absolutely. Yes. We become like family, you know, either, you know, grandsons or great granddaughters or people who helped my dad. who had my dad, yeah, it’s really a blessing.
Steve Snyder
49:33 – 49:47
And so it’s, we have that connection because their, you know, grandmother or grandfather, you know, told stories and it’s been passed down. And that was, you know, the most significant time in their lives and
Kim Monson
49:47 – 49:47
my
Steve Snyder
49:47 – 49:48
dad’s
Kim Monson
49:48 – 50:00
life. Life and death. I’ve interviewed a number of combat veterans. And those kinds of things, when your life is on the line like that, it’s seared in your heart, it’s seared in your brain, for sure.
Kim Monson
50:00 – 50:12
There’s something very fascinating that has happened, though, is you actually met the German pilot who shot down your father’s plane. So tell us about that.
Steve Snyder
50:13 – 50:29
Yes, amazing story in itself. And it’s interesting of all the people that are involved in the shot down story. Hans Berger is a Luftwaffe pilot that shot down my dad’s plane and the gunners on my dad’s plane shot him down. He’s the only one that’s still living.
Steve Snyder
50:29 – 50:52
He’ll be 99 years old in October. He lives in an apartment in Munich, Germany, and I have gone, my wife and I have gone over there and visited him a couple times, and we’ve become friends. And actually, I owe it all to my wife that I found Hans Berger, because it didn’t even dawn on me to try. But one day during my research, my wife, Glenda, said, well, why don’t you try to find the German pilot that shot him down?
Steve Snyder
50:52 – 50:59
And I’m thinking to myself, oh, she’s naive. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. That’d be impossible. But like a good husband, I did what you told me to do.
Steve Snyder
50:59 – 51:18
And I found Hans Berger. And fortunately for me, he became a translator after the war and speaks perfect English. Everything just fell into place. Because not only did he survive the war, but it was over 70 years later, he was still living and he speaks English.
Steve Snyder
51:18 – 51:57
So I can’t tell you how excited I was when I found him, because all my dad knew and all the Air Force knew was that his plane was attacked by two Focke-Wulf German fighters, and that’s all I thought I’d ever know. And then finding him and listening to his story, most all his friends were killed in the war, and he was actually shot down three times during the war. uh… they survived he shot down seventy seven teens and one spitfire he gave me some wonderful insight into the book about what it was like to go up against the eight air force so it’s very thrilling and having a chance to uh…
Steve Snyder
51:57 – 52:14
to meet him and i went over to the film crew actually you know you know we filmed an interview uh… with him that uh… in a little documentary that i made uh… clips from that but i plan to make a little broader video of that interview.
Steve Snyder
52:15 – 52:35
And a lot of people say, well, how can you be friends with this German pilot that shot down your dad’s plane? But pretty much it was just like the American fires. He was a young guy, 19, 20 years old, you know, fighting for his country, you know, trying to do a job and trying to stay alive. And as he said, it was unfortunate that they had to be shooting at each other, but that was war.
Kim Monson
52:37 – 52:54
Yes. So he wasn’t part of it. And I think it’s important that people understand there that the Nazi, the Gestapo, that was a little, little different animal, if you will, from all of the other people that were serving in the German military. Correct.
Steve Snyder
52:55 – 53:15
Correct. There were really two factions in the German military. One was the regular army, the regular Wehrmacht, that Hitler formed the SS. And the armed division of the SS, called the Waffen-SS, those were the really bad guys.
Steve Snyder
53:15 – 53:35
The SS were the ones who operated the concentration camps and committed the vast majority of the atrocities. It wasn’t the regular army or the air force. And like Hans says, they weren’t all evil Nazis. You have to make that distinction.
Kim Monson
53:35 – 53:56
Well, I think that is very important. This is a fascinating story. And don’t you feel, after I came back from Normandy, it just has opened up a whole new appreciation for who we are as Americans, as I’ve gotten to talk with these men. And we’ve got just a couple of minutes left.
Kim Monson
53:57 – 53:59
How would you like to wrap this up, Steve Snyder?
Steve Snyder
54:01 – 54:30
Well, absolutely. Actually, Since writing that book, it’s changed my life. My life is really dedicated to keeping the memory alive of, you know, not just my dad and his crew, but the 8th Air Force and all the men who fought in World War II. And educate the public, especially younger generations, about the sacrifices that those men made and all of, actually the country, you know, all the people who supported the war effort.
Steve Snyder
54:30 – 54:51
I spend hours every day on social media, promoting the memory. I travel to air shows all around the United States, signing copies of my book, talking to people about the air war and the veterans. I make PowerPoint presentations to all sorts of groups. It’s really become my life work.
Steve Snyder
54:51 – 55:18
to make sure that we appreciate what these guys did to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy today. Unlike these people in occupied countries, they lost their freedoms for four years. So they really, you know, know what it’s like to lose freedom. You know, so many people in the United States, you know, just enjoyed these freedoms and we don’t really don’t appreciate how fragile those freedoms are.
Steve Snyder
55:18 – 55:29
You just look at what happened in Ukraine today. So it’s important, you know, World War II was 75 years ago and it’s fading in people’s memories and we can’t let that happen.
Kim Monson
55:29 – 55:36
Well, that’s why you do what you do. That’s why we do what we do here as well. Where can people buy the book?
Steve Snyder
55:37 – 55:47
Well, most people get it on Amazon. It’s available as a print book, both hardcover and softcover. Also in all formats of audiobooks. Also, I mean, e-books.
Steve Snyder
55:47 – 56:21
And also, it’s an audio book. If anyone wants an autographed, signed copy, they can go to my website, which is stevesnyderauthor.com, S-N-Y-D-E-R, stevesnyderauthor.com, and they can purchase a book there. There’s also a great deal of information about the era over Europe and World War II on my website. It’s just not about my book, but there’s a lot of links to veteran interviews, research sites, So, if somebody wants to get an overview and learn more about the air war, they can go to my website.
Kim Monson
56:21 – 56:28
And again, that’s stevesnyder, S-N-Y-D-E-R, author.com, correct? Is that what you said? Correct. Okay.
Kim Monson
56:29 – 56:34
Steve Snyder, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much. It’s been just a great honor to have this conversation.
Steve Snyder
56:35 – 56:40
Well, thank you very much, Kim. Again, I appreciate you having me on your show and I’ve enjoyed a lot.
Kim Monson
56:40 – 56:47
OK, indeed. And my friends stand on the shoulders of giants. And so God bless you and God bless America.
Announcer
56:48 – 57:11
Thank you for listening to America’s veteran stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, three to four p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7. The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers.
Announcer
57:11 – 57:19
They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
