When the noise stopped, then it headed for the earth. “As long as you could hear that noise, you knew we were safe. “They sounded like a real freight train coming by, real loud,” he said. The Germans’ goal was to “hopefully, knock out something but (mostly) to frighten the population.”Īlthough buzz bombs hit his base once or twice, he said, the Americans’ morale was unaffected. The “buzz bombs,” as they were known, carried 1,000 pounds of explosives powered by a crude jet engine, Pohorilla said. Not long after his arrival in England, the Germans began sending V-1 flying bombs across the channel. After that, “the pot-bellied stove was red hot at times,” he said. Using a 30-gallon oil drum, some copper tubing and used motor oil, the men improvised a drip system to feed oil into the stove. It was equipped with a pot-bellied stove, which, he said, “never got us warm in England.” He and seven other men lived in a Quonset hut, a prefabricated structure made of corrugated steel. He was based with the 385th Bombardment Group, stationed about 40 miles east of Cambridge. He made his first solo flight at Souther Field near Americus, Georgia, and in May 1944 received orders to ship out for England. We had to toe the mark until we finally started to get into airplanes and start flying a bit,” he said. Military Academy at West Point, and “the discipline was pretty harsh. The training was patterned after the U.S. We also had a lot of air crews required for the Pacific area, as well,” Pohorilla said. “The future, of course, meant invading Europe. Next came the military’s aviation cadet program, designed to produce at least 100,000 pilots a year. “Separate drinking fountains and the like were kind of alien to you growing up and what you were used to,” he said. “The south was a bit of culture shock,” he said, because of a level of segregation he had not seen in Pennsylvania. I was interested in flying,” he said.Īfter training in Florida, he next was posted at several locations in the south. “Flying was the thing to do back in those days. His father was a World War I veteran, injured during a poisonous-gas attack in France, and his two brothers served in the Navy in World War II.Īt age 18, Pohorilla said, “I saw everybody around me was going” into the military. “You knew something was going on,” he said.Īn announcer soon told listeners the news that Japan had attacked Hawaii, Pohorilla said, “and that was it.”
The New York Giants were playing a Sunday afternoon home game at the Polo Grounds when Pohorilla heard background voices on the radio mentioning an unnamed general and the mayor. Pohorilla was a 17-year-old listening to a football game on the radio when he learned the Japanese had attacked the U.S.
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Long after the war, Johnson became famous portraying Professor Roy Hinkley in the TV comedy “Gilligan’s Island.” A bombardier and navigator in a B-25 Mitchell bomber, Johnson flew 44 combat missions in the Pacific. “It was a school far ahead of its time.”Ī fellow Girard student who was a year behind Pohorilla was Russell Johnson, who also became a bomber crewman. “The philosophy was, when you left the school, you could earn a living,” he said. The vocational classes covered such topics as carpentry, electrical work and printing. “I got a first-class education there,” he said, consisting of college-preparatory classes in the mornings and vocational classes in the afternoons. Pohorilla was born in eastern Pennsylvania and graduated from Girard College, a 12-grade school in Philadelphia that had about 1,600 students when he attended. “God was my co-pilot, no question about it.” Just a few microseconds in combat and you become very, very humble,” he said. “When you’re young, you think you’re invincible. The 10-man crew on his bomber ranged from 18 to 22 years old, “barely out of high school,” he said. He was based in Great Britain as a member of the U.S. Michael Pohorilla, 95, of New Albany flew 35 combat missions over German-held territory as a first lieutenant and Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress navigator in World War II.
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