Sept. 10, 1944: Toll of the High Road

“Back in the Central Pacific, the other two 7th AF Liberator groups were carrying on business as usual, and a couple of 30th bomb group Libs became symbols of just how much the aircraft could withstand. One of them was called “Bombs Lullaby”; she had been in the “Pathfinders” 392nd Bomb Squad for awhile before Lt. Bob Nelson and his crew got her. The fact was that nobody else wanted the ship — she was heavy in one wing and almost impossible to trim. They said that firing the guns or shifting a wad of gum to the other side of your mouth would knock her out of trim, but after a while they grew “kind of fond” of the old girl. Her first crew had named her and taken her on 10 missions, and although Nelson’s crew was unhappy with the title they left it for luck. From her 28th mission with her new crew, on Sunday, Sept. 10th, 1944 she brought back over 400 bullet and shrapnel holes, a dead engine and two dead crewmen.

The target was Iwo Jima, and Bombs Lullaby was flying through a curtain of flak, about a thousand feet below a veil of light cloud. Suddenly the clouds expelled a hail of cannon and machine gun fire. Bob Nelson from Brooklyn, a little fellow who had trouble reaching the control pedals of the B-24 without a cushion under him, saw the tracer fire but not the fighter.

As shells thumped into Bombs Lullaby the tail section became a shambles. Danny Keyes, the tail gunner, was killed. An incendiary bullet hit one of the tail guns and burned through, another hit an ammo rack and set off 150 rounds of .50 caliber. The crews beer ration, stowed over the gunner’s position to cool it, was shattered into broken glass and foam.

Photographer Milo Hockett, who had traded places with another to fly with Bombs Lullaby’s crew, crumpled with a machine gun bullet through his heart. Wash Warshavsky, the waist gunner, was squirming on the bloody floor of the aircraft, badly wounded in the head and shoulder. Next to him Joe Scaro, the other gunner, had somehow survived the stream of gunfire. A cannon shell had exploded above his head, but the heavy waist window frame had fallen down in front of him and probably saved his life. Another Zero streaked in on Scaro’s side and he held the window up with one hand and fired his gun with the other, scaring off the attacker. By then Bombardier Mike Bartow and Navigator Chuck Hall made their way back through the ship to help them. Bartow thought Hackett didn’t look dead, maybe shocked. There was no blood and he didn’t see the hole through the heavy sheepskin jacket. Keyes had obviously been killed, a six inch black hole in his chest, and fragments of incendiary still burning inside.

There was no oxygen supply, Hockett’s lifeless body having disengaged the lines when it fell. A dozen fighters were ganging up on the B-24 and the three turrets still working were roaring back at them. Up front Lt. Bob Nelson and his co-pilot Lt. Clem Claflin, were trying to keep up with the formation. The control surfaces of the elevator were shredded and the throttle control on the number 4 engine had been shot away, jamming it at high speed.

When the fighters finally broke off, Nelson was able to drop down to solve his oxygen problem and Mike Bartow was attending to Warshavsky, attention which saved the gunner’s life. Wash would be returned stateside (EUS) and would not see his crewmates until 50 years later at a reunion in CA. They were eventually able to bring the battered “Lullaby” back with a crash landing at the airfield.

Of the seven remaining members of the crew 5 would go on to serve in the Korean War, Robert Nelson also served in Vietnam. In late 1945, Co-pilot Chester Claflin would die, KNB along with a flight engineer in a ferry flight crash back in the States. This was after the crew had finished their 40 missions and gone their separate ways.

Pilot - Lt. Robert L. Nelson RTD

Co pilot - Lt. Chester “Clem” Claflin KIA / Dec. 1945 -later crash

Navigator - Lt. Charles Hall RTD

Bombardier - Lt. Mike Bartow RTD

Wash Warshavsky - waste gunner EUS / wounded head & shoulder

Danny Keyes- tail gunner KIA / incendiary bullet in chest

Joe Scaro - radar op / waste gunner RTD

James Laney RTD

Edwin Copeland RTD

Milo Hockett- photographer attached to crew KIA / bullet in chest

Kenneth R. Batson- Gunner

Williams -

++Log of the Liberators ++Page 288

B-24J-1-CO "Bombs Lullaby"

Chester W Claflin