An Early Cold War Era Veteran Visits Mid America Flight Museum

The Mid America Flight Museum received a cherished visitor Saturday. Charles Campbell and his son, Carl Campbell, came to see the museum’s collection of war birds. The elder Campbell was a cold war era military veteran serving four years beginning in 1948.

While the hot embers of WWII were yet warm, the cold war was heating up about that time between the United States and former ally, the Soviet Union. Charles Camber had been assigned as a waist gunner on a Consolidated PB4Y also known as a B24 Liberator. The U.S. Navy used a couple of variants of the heavy bomber to perform patrols over Alaska and parts of the Soviet Union.

As Scott Glover gave Charles and Carl Campbell a tour of the museum’s aircraft, Charles told of how cold it was on the bombers patrolling the Bering Sea area. Campbell described the bulky flight suits the crews wore, which could be heated by electric means and said that often,

Condensation would form associated with the oxygen masks the crews wore. He said when it was shaken off, the condensate would become frozen droplets before it hit the floor of the bomber.

Campbell spoke of some extreme maneuvers in the bomber which caused him and the rest of the crew much angst and spoke of the dread they felt, should they ever have to ditch the large bomber at sea. Campbell said the fore and aft bomb bay doors were relatively weak and were known to collapse inward while ditching in water. He described how they were trained for ditching in the water; they move anything loose from the aft area near the front and strapped in a harness in the aft section designed to absorb some of the impact if ditching become necessary.

Campbell said his crew had flown the heavy bomber on three engines numerous times but said they knew if two engines failed, they could not maintain altitude and the first thing to go would be the fifty caliber machine guns which would be tossed over-board in the event of loosing two engines.

Campbell spoke of one incident of a near miss where his crew's pilot, named Porter, had to bank sharply to avoid a collision after breaking out of a low ceiling which caused him to have to hang and lay on his fifty caliber machine gun, looking nearly strait down.

Shuffling his feet and sheepishly grinning, Charles said if Porter ever told them they were going to have to do something extreme such as a ditching, they wanted Porter to be their pilot. After all these years his affection for his crew's pilot back then remained evident.

"We did not take notes but it seemed appropriate that we share some of what Charles Campbell shared with us," said Glover. "We have attempted to do so as accurately as we could."

"While Campbell was in awe of the collection of aircraft amassed at Mid America Flight Museum, we were in awe of him," continued Glover. "We hope Charles Campbell can visit us again during better weather and make a day of it with us."