World War II veteran writes memoir about his flying days
When Raymond F. Schaaf landed from his first combat mission during World War II, he counted over 130 hits from enemy fire sustained by the bomber he was flying.
“I was all shook up,” Schaaf, 93, recounted from his neighbor’s home in Round Rock. “But it was part of the mission, and something that had to be done.”
The account of Schaaf ’s first combat mission, along with many others, can be found in his recently published memoir, “Time Flies: Memories of One of the Last Veterans of World War II.”
Schaaf, a longtime Round Rock resident and retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, flew 35 missions between 1944 and 1945.
Schaaf said family encouraged him to write the book, as they had enjoyed listening to his military stories over the years. He also said the grim reality of a declining population of World War II veterans motivated him to commit his memories to paper, so they could be preserved.
“We are dying every day,” Schaaf said. “I want my grandchildren and future generations to know these stories.”
About 558,000 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II were alive in 2017, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. About 362 World War II-era veterans die each day.
Born in Animas City, Colo. — now part of Durango — in 1925, Schaaf lived an austere-but-pleasant childhood. When he was 16, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and, like many of his peers, Schaaf knew he wanted to enlist for military service as soon as possible.
Two years later, Schaaf would join the U.S. Army Air Corps — the predecessor to today’s Air Force — where he was eventually assigned to Capt. Charles E. Ackerman’s crew for aerial combat missions. Schaaf would spend time operating the tail gun on B-17 bombers and working as an engineer to repair aircraft midflight, along with other roles as the need arose.
One of Schaaf’s many close calls occurred on a bombing run to support the Army during the Battle of the Bulge, which took place on the Western Front from December 1944 to January 1945.
On this mission, one of Schaaf ’s duties was to make sure the aircraft’s bombs were successfully dropping from the payload cargo area. During a routine check, Schaaf noticed several of the plane’s 50-pound bombs were piling up in the cargo area. Something was preventing the bombs from dropping, and it was Schaaf ’s job to fix it.
After some investigation, Schaaf found that one of the plane’s 100-pound bombs was blocking a “vein” — essentially, the path bombs flowed through to exit the plane — and causing the pile up. Schaaf knew, somehow, he had to dislodge the bomb.
“I was straddling the bomb bay door without a parachute,” Schaaf said, “beating on a live bomb with a crank to dislodge it.”
Eventually, Schaaf was able to free the bomb causing the blockage, but he was forced to carry the heavy payload to the plane’s radio room, where it could be stored for the remainder of the flight.
Schaaf retired from military service in 1970 as a lieutenant colonel. Nine years later, he moved to Round Rock, where he still lives across the street from Carolyn Stark, his longtime friend and traveling companion. Together, the pair spent over two years working on the memoir.
“Time Flies: Memories of One of the Last Veterans of World War II” can be purchased on Amazon.com.