Earlier this year, actor Austin Butler appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and said the best part of starring as “Buck” Cleven in Masters of the Air was getting to meet John “Lucky” Luckadoo. “I’m sorry—what’s his name?” asked Colbert. 102-year-old Luckadoo flew 25 missions as pilot and co-pilot of B-17 in the Bloody 100th Bomb Group in World War II and served as technical advisor on Masters of the Air. Having Lucky join us to talk about what he thought of the series and recount some service stories was a highlight for the Veterans Breakfast Club also. Below is an excerpted transcript of what he said.
I would point out to you that when you lose a crew, when a crew goes down, there’s no memorial. There’s no funeral. There’s no recognition of the fact that they’re gone. You just have empty bunks, which you have to refill immediately with replacements. So it’s a terribly maturing and bitter experience.
We don’t have time to grieve. We don’t have time to even, ponder, what the loss of that particular crew is going to mean to the success of the whole outfit. And so you just go out and do your job and keep doing it, keep your nose to the grindstone.
Many of the things that Glenn has talked about as far as the strategy of the bombing and the utilization of the bomber forces was all done behind the scenes. We were not privy as crewmen to any of that.
We weren’t aware that the British were strongly objecting to our going out in the daytime and advised against it. We were just guinea pigs. We were trying to prove a strategy that had been devised by the “[Bomber] Mafia.” They were convinced that it would work and wanted to prove that it could.
But it was flawed.
It was badly flawed.
The concept of fighter escort was flawed.
The concept of the Norden bomb site was flawed.
It was a myth. Theoretically, it could drop a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 feet in ideal conditions.
But what it completely ignored was that a free falling object from five miles up goes through all types of air currents, which will throw it off. And if you hit the target, it’s an accident.
We were very much kids and very immature and gullible.
And I’m very interested to see whether or not this series is going to document the fact that 40 of my classmates and me from flying school were taken directly to Kearny, Nebraska and replaced all the copilots in the group.
And we’d never been in a B-17.
So, it’s one thing for a navigator or a bombardier not to be thoroughly trained in their trade. But for a co-pilot not have ever been on a B-17 before!
[The co-pilot] is second in command of the crew. And if any for any reason the pilot’s incapacitated, he has to take over. And the only training that we got before we went overseas was from our pilot as to how to fly the airplane. How complicated it was to fly four engines! We’d only flown two-engine trainers. And this [lack of training] seriously impaired the integrity of each individual crew in the 100th Bomb Group.
And that never happened in any other group, And nobody has ever explained why that was done because it was absolutely ridiculous. It put us all in jeopardy.
And I remember that the commanding officer then, who was [COL Howard M.] Turner, called us up and he said:
“Now, look to your right and you look to your left. Only one of you is coming home. You’re going to be killed, and you might as well accept it.”
And that’s the way we went to war.