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HomeMy WebLinkAboutBrazos Valley Heroes - Edward QJ: iEhi E ,~ ~~, ~ ~i:o ~~ Q) ~Q) .,.c: j$ ~ Part 1 of 2 parts. Edward Kozlowski knew what he wanted to do with his life when an airplane landed at his family's farm in Wisconsin. The pilot asked to use the_ pasture "as a landing site to give rides to the locals. In exchange for use of the pasture at Ed~yard's home near Necedah, EdYlard received a free ride. That flight charted _. the direction his life would take, a journey that carried him to YJar and later as part of a team that sent man to the moon., After Kozlowski graduated from. high school in 1939, he enlisted. in the .ArmyAir Corp at Ft Sheridan. III. He was placed in the 'riir Cadet program and received Khls training in Santa Anna, Calif.. and at Thunderbird Reid. Ariz. "To be a pilot was my first choice and I almost made it but was .washed out" by my ipstructor on my check ride. He wantei:l me to do a spin and then pull out Appa~ently I didn't do it to suit him so he said, 'Let me show you hay):' He showed me how, all right except he caught the plane on fire. As the flames got - closer arid closer, I finally had to bailout Fortunately, the parachute openJd and I was able to land safely. The instructor also bailed out and the plane crashed. As I approached him, I saluted, but I still had my rip cord in my rIght hand. He didn't think too hIghly of our flame- out or my salute so he washed me out of the pilot pro- gram; So. instead ofa pilot;"' became a navigator: Kozlowski received his commission on Dec. 1, 1941, at Ellington Field in Houston, a place he would return to later in life. He was to go home to Wisconsin on leave, with leave to start on Dec. 10. But on Dec. 7. '1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his leave was ^; cancelled, "I was sent 10 North Carolina where the army was assembling navigators to go 10 'England. On Dee, 24, 1941, Christmas Eve, 27 navigators flew to Bangor, Maine, then Greenland and Iceland, finally landing in England. UAII 27 of us were sent immediately 10 navigation school at Oxford College to train with the Royal Air Force, which 'I'/aS bringing on line a new navigation tool called radar. We were in class from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for several weeks. I like to say that I studied at Oxford but I never got to see it in the daylight. We also participat- ed in tWo flights over Germany on RAF Lancaster bombers." With the arrival of American planes and crews, the American bombers started carrying out their own bombing runs in late 1942 an~earlY 1943. Kozlowski was assigned to the 3t8th .Bomber Group as a pathfinder navigator. "As a pathfinder navigator, It was my job to choose the route the mission was. to take and to change it, if necessary. I never changed ours. I was on the first B-17 bombing run over Cologne, Germ~ny, amI had my first taste of .combat. We were flying in the daytime and the German Messerschmitts and Fokkljrs - --,- ".. .~ - - > f ""'~'.-.. ! . ,JI! were all over our formation. Precision bombing was out of the question. OUf losses were pretty heavy. The originarB-17 was not,wflll equipped to defend against fighter planes as they didn't have good armament in the tail sestion. The Germans pounced on that fact real Quiett Sometimes the losses on some of the early bombing runs were as much as 60 percent:-" It became very apparent that the American air corp had to change its tactics of sending the bombers on missions on their own. The losses were just too great. They had to get fighter plane support. When the P-51 was brought Into the war, it could stay with the bombers for most of the flight and,that decreased sig- nificantly losses from German figliiers. . d "As the pathfinder navigator. I was always in the lead plane and the Germans knew if it was shot down. the mission might fail. The"'first time I was shot down was about one-half mile overthe German border into Holland. We belly-landed on a farm and after.'we got out of the plane, three of us were running to a barn when~a Dutch farmer came up waving his arms and pointing to a large manure pile. At the pile. he raked back the manure to reveal a large door that opened to a cellar. He opened it and shoved us in with 3 RAF pilots that were already there. "We soon heard Ihe Germans hunting for us but they never checked the manure pile. We stayed there for a day and smelled pretty ripe by then. That next night tv/a Dutchmen put us in a'truck and took us to the coast. We spent that night iLl the basement of a Catholic Church and were taken below deck of a fishing boat, which also had a strong odor. the next night. After about six hours'traveling out to sea, the boat stopped and we wera told to come up. That fresh air was wonderful. About then a British submarine sur- faced and we were exchanged for a load of fish for the Dutch to take back. When we got back to England, it took three days to get rid ofthe smell." The second time Ko.zlowski was shot down occurred atter a bombing run over the ball-bearing fac- tory at Schwelnfurt, Germany. The fighters were not allle to follow them to the target because of their range limitations. Of the 228 planes that made it over target, 60 were shot down. "My plane took a lot oUlak over target and began to lose altitude. We managed to cross the shore line over the North Sea and I had to figure where we VJere going to crash..! broke radio silence to. tell them about 'my estimated crash location. When we crashed, two of the men were dead and three others wounded. We only had 16 minutes before ,the plane sank so we took the wouriHed off and the 'dog tags" off the dead to take back with us. As the plane sank, we. saw a speck on the horizon. It was a British '0' boaf We had landed 40 miles from the English Co~t so theyw,~re able to get to us before the cold and th'e water drowned us all. ~ It was back to England and back .on the line. ';,& I' I .... ,, v P . 4 3 1 4 . - .+ ' .' n a series of tri y.;. . n �. Generation" who served our country during World War 11 .::,,. ............... '- - t . 4-1F-.., „. t ..air .i F i £ Z , . zq F . a a � .: : .r •� Q f a a s , S r��� �� Edwar• .i ozlows Part 2 of 2 parts. Belgium, she was in Holland and wh .n I got to Holland Edward Kozlowski, as a pathfinder navigator, was she was in Germany. sent in 1943 to North Africa to train for a low-level "What we discovered about four years after the bombing run over the German oil refinery at Ploesti, war was over, and after we were married, is that she Romania. It would be a 2,000 - mile -plus roundtrip, and had a picture of a plane that crashed near her hospital the men were told that if the refinery was destroyed after the Battle of the Rhine. When she showed me the and no planes made it back, it would be worth the sac- picture, it was my plane. It was the closest we would jj ` rifice. Not a great morale - building statement. be to each other but didn't realize it until then. A total of 177 B -24s took off from Libya and 108 Fortunately, I didn't have to go to her field hospital." were either shot down or damaged beyond repair. The By war's end, Kozlowski had flown 88 missions mission would become known as "the hell of Ploesti." over comb_ territory. Four planes he was in never flew "A colonel was the lead navigator of the first wing again. One plane literally had its wings fall off after and I was leading the second wing. We were to turn landing. He also had to parachute three times. Of the over target at a certain village but the lead wing made 27 navigators that left America on Christmas Eve 1941, a wrong turn. As a result, when we got over target and only seven survived the war, and three of them were ' were dropping our bombs, the first wing had now real- severely wounded. :Y. s ized their mistake and approached the target from Now he is the only one left. another direction but above us. "How 1 survived all that and without any wounds > a "They were dropping their bombs through our is still a mystery to me." formation. A lot of our losses were due to bombs hit- Kozlowski returned to the U.S. in August 1945. ting us from our own planes." He was scheduled to go to Japan when the war ended. : : Kozlowski was also involved in the D -Day inva- He, like so many other soldiers, started college under . sion. the GI Bill. He obtained an engineering degree from ° "My original assignment was to fly over France Marquette University. While in school he continued to and help locate areas that our paratroopers and gliders write Yolanda, eventually convincing her to marry him could land and locate those coordinates on maps for in 1947. Kozlowski obtained advanced degrees at Ohio '° everyone. On D -Day, I was leading the second wave of State and then worked in industry, becoming an expert -. planes carrying the 82nd Airborne. When we dropped in heat resistant materials. That work led to a job in them we turned around and went back to England, Houston with NASA. hooked on to gliders and pulled them over target. "In 19671 joined NASA and my job was to design "The gliders either held a jeep and six men or a and install the heat shield used on the Apollo missions. howitzer and eight men. A lot of them crashed trying to It was wonderful to be able to be part of helping put land over the hedgerows of France. The hedgerows Neil Armstrong on the moon and to be able to bring were taller than our on- the - ground intelligence had him home again. indicated. When a glider crashed, very few of those "And, yes, I was in the control room when Jim within were able to survive. Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, reported. "We had about three hours sleep during this Houston we have a problem.' The movie about the :. time, but when we returned to England our command- mission was very accurate to include showing all of the ing officer said, 'We're going to have a party.' Army engineers along with the astronauts conducting calcu- nurses who were about to depart following the inva- lations by pencil and paper. We were the computers *_> sion were at our base, so he set up this dance. When back then." the nurses arrived they looked like they were ready to Kozlowski eventually ended up at Texas A &M in turn and run, but fortunately they stayed. We visited 1973 as the physical plant director and it is here that he and danced with them for about four hours. That is and Yolanda have landed. �` where I met Yolanda, my future wife. The name of Edward and Yolanda Kozlowski can "I tell that I saved here from the clutches of a be found on the Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial. For glider pilot and she agrees. Before she left, I asked her more information, to make a contribution, or if you to write. She did, but she wrote as a friend. I tried to know a World War II veteran whose story needs to be see her as I followed her from England to France to told, contact the BVVM at www.veterans- Belgium, but she was always gone. When I got to memorial.org, or Bill Youngkin at 979 - 260 -7030.