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Good morning, welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning. We're here to help you take it all off. as the forecast calls for football all across the country.
Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening. We're getting back to all of it, and the best way to start is together. Watch The Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m. on NBC.
This is Bethany Frankl from Just Be with Bethany Frankl. You begged, they listened. After years of customers asking for it, Barkbox finally put together a collection of their most um questionable toys. The Bark After Dark collection is for all the booty sniffers, tail chasers, and leg humpers. Very spicy, deeply suspect, and one that you definitely can't open at work.
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But do you know that almost half of the homes on the Navajo Reservation do not have clean running water? With your support, St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School is ready to give water to Navajo families.
So we invite you to help provide this precious gift of life to those in need. Contrary to many average Americans, Navajo families survive on just 10 gallons of water per day. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org. And we return to our American stories.
Up next, a story from Steve Snyder. Author of a fantastic book. Shot down, the true story of pilot Howard Snyder. and the crew of the B 17 Susan Ruth. Today, Steve shares with us a story of survival.
Determination and America's efforts to beat back Nazi Germany from the skies. Let's get into the story. Here's Steve. Being a combat crewman in the 8th Air Force was the most hazardous, dangerous duty assignment in the United States military. During World War II, 26,000 men were killed.
That's more than the entire Marine Corps fighting in the Pacific. And another 28,000 men became prisoners of war after their bombers were knocked out of the sky by either German fighters or anti-aircraft fire. And it was dangerous from the time they took off to the time they they landed. Back then there was no air traffic control, there was no radar. Usually, the weather was socked in, and it was all based on visual sight, so you couldn't see.
anything until you got above the cloud layer.
So mid-air collisions were not uncommon on trying to form up. And then they had to face the elements. Uh these planes weren't pressurized back then, so above 10,000 feet you'd have to go on oxygen or else you'd pass out in a couple minutes and could die. Plus it was so cold at the altitudes they were flying, it was minus forty to sixty de degrees below zero, so frostbite was a huge problem. Then when they got close to the target, they would run into anti-aircraft fire or flak.
The flak was the German Or abbreviation for the German word for aircraft defense cannon. And even when they made it back to England, they faced many dangers. Again, the weather could be lousy and overcast and socked in, and they couldn't even find their bases. You could have planes that had. crewmen that had been killed or seriously Injured men who needed immediate medical attention.
These bombers could be running out of gas. They could have suffered a lot of battle damage, engines out, landing gear that wouldn't come down.
So it was especially bad in the early years of the war, 1942 and 1943, even though they implemented a mission limit of 25. In the spring of 1943, it was statistically impossible. To complete 25 missions in 1943, The average number of missions flown was only six before being shot down. It actually culminated in the fall of 1940 in what's referred to as Black Week. They lost 140 planes.
That's almost 1500 men. and four missions. The worst day was Black Thursday. the second Schweinfurt mission on October 14th. 291 B-17s were sent, and 60 of them were sent, shot down.
And it wasn't until the P-47 Thunderbolts were added. That these bomber formations finally had fighter planes that could escort them all the way to the target and back again. My dad, like most World War II veterans, he was a pretty humble guy about it. He didn't talk a lot about it.
So I don't think most people, except for the immediate family and friends, Members of his church really knew that he was in the 8th Air Force or he was a B-17 pilot or he was shot down.
Well, my dad and I had a great relationship. He was a very loving father and dedicated father. He was a tough guy. My two sisters and I, we always kind of compared him to John Wayne. He was that kind of guy.
He was six foot three, he was a big guy, was no nonsense guy, was a disciplinarian. You know, there was black or white, there was no gray areas. He was a devout Christian, had very strong morals. But he didn't talk a lot about the war. I knew the basics when I was growing up.
I knew he was a B-17 pilot. He was stationed in Europe with the 8th Air Force. His plane was named the Susan Ruth after my oldest sister. who was one year old at the time that he went overseas, And then he was shot down over uh Belgium, and he was missing in action for seven months. But it wasn't until 1989.
That my dad finally started talking a lot about the war. In 1989, in August, the Belgium American Foundation in Belgium erected a memorial to my dad and his crew, and my dad and the three other crew members that were still living at the time went over for the dedication. and there he was reunited with all these Belgian people that hid him during the war, revisited these places where he was hidden, and that brought it all back. And after that he started talking a lot about it. Yesterday.
December 7th. Nineteen forty-one. A date which will live In infomy. The U.S., most of the people in the U.S. were against getting into a war that was brewing in Europe.
They didn't want to get dragged into another conflict involving the European nations like they did in World War I.
So there was strong sentiment about staying out of the conflict after Germany invaded. Poland in September of 1939. Back then, the US was very provincial. There was no TV, things by radio. You didn't get much news about things that were happening in other.
Parts of the world.
So that was a huge shock when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I mean, the general public had just no feeling or belief that that could happen, and the country was in total shock when it did happen. My mother at the time, Yeah, she was really scared. My dad was up in, he was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington at the time. And my mother decided to go up and visit him over Christmas that year after the bombing, because the future was very uncertain.
And that's when she got pregnant. And nine months later, Susan Ruth was born. The only reason that he went into the Air Force is because. You know, he had a new bride. baby on the way and he didn't think he could support him very well on a private's pay in the army.
So that's why he volunteered to join the Air Force where he could make more money, especially if he could make it through pilot training and become an officer.
So that's the only reason he really went into the Air Force rather than just staying in the Army. But it was a good decision. And pilot training was really rough. 40% of the cadets that entered pilot training washed out. It was it was rigorous.
During primary training, he was really unhappy. Just being a newlywed and away from his bride and away from his little baby daughter, he was really lonely. You know, he didn't care about training. Training, really, or the war, all he could think about is being away from my mother. But gradually uh You know, that passed and then it kind of became exciting.
you know, flying airplanes and getting ready to gear up to fight in the war.
So it became an adventure. When they were assigned overseas to the European Theater of Operations, my dad and his crew, they after. Dalhart, Texas, they went to Scott Field in Illinois, where they were given a brand new B 17 to fly over to England. B 17 had a ten man crew of four officers, uh first pilot, co pilot, navigator, and bombardier. But uh there were only uh Three of the crew were married at the time, but then my dad was the only crew member to have a child.
And so the crew came together, the four officers and the six enlisted men. That would be a good name for the plane after the pilot's little daughter.
So that's how it became the Susan Ruth. And you've been listening to Steve Snyder tell the story of the 8th Air Force. In which his father served. 26,000 men were killed in the 8th Air Force, more than all of the U.S. Marines killed in the Pacific.
This was hazardous duty. When we come back, more of Steve Snyder telling the story of his dad and more. Shot down is his book. We continue with it here on our American story. This Labor Day, say goodbye to spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with washable sofas.com, featuring Anibay, the only machine washable sofa inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly pricing.
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Now through Labor Day, get up to 60% off site-wide at washable sofas.com. Every order comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees, every penny back. Shop now at washable sofas.com.
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Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org. Good morning. Welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning, we're here to help you take it all on.
as the forecast calls for football all across the country. Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening. We're getting back to all of it, and the best way to start is together. Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m.
on NBC. And we return to our American stories and our story with Steve Snyder, author of Shot Down. Let's pick up. where we last left off. It was a mission on February 8th of 1944, Frankfurt, Germany.
The night before, the crew, my dad, the co pilot, navigator and bombardier, spent the night at the Falcon pub and they really tied one on. They said they had hangovers the next morning, but getting up to ten thousand feet and going on that pure oxygen sobered them right up. But it was a beautiful day to fly. My dad said it was clear blue sky. Visibility was great.
And they went through their bomb run and they dropped their bombs successfully. But during the bomb run, their bombay doors were hit by flak and they couldn't get them back up. And as a result, that caused a drag on the plane. They lost airspeed and they fell behind the bomber formation heading back to the bases in England. And they were singled out by two German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters.
Like lions or wolves coming down on prey, they swooped in and attacked the Susan Ruth. All of a sudden, everything just blows up. Oxygen tanks in the cockpit catch fire. My dad actually was knocked out for a brief period of time, came to. You know, he's.
Frightened. He looks over at George Icke, his co-pilot. He's in shock. He's motionless, he's frozen, he's so scared. The six enlisted men.
We're all behind the Bombay, so he doesn't know what's going on there.
So he has the other guys bail out, being the commander of the crew. He's the last one to bail out of the plane. And they have to remember that none of these guys had bailed out of a plane before. But my dad's coming down, and he can make out objects on the ground, trees and buildings, so he pulls his ripcord and he comes down. into some trees and his parachute got hung up on some branches and he dangling twenty feet off the ground and couldn't get down.
But fortunately for him, a couple young Belgian men, Henri Franken and Raymond Durvan, came to his rescue before the Germans got there. They saw his plight, went back to the farmhouse, got a ladder and a rope, and helped him down a tree. This occurred early afternoon, so they told him to stay put and hide till night time. as they thought it was too dangerous to try to move him in daylight with German patrols combing the area. That night, they came back and got him, took him to the Durvan farmhouse.
He had some minor shrapnel wounds in his left leg. The woman of the house. Raymond's mother treated his wounds. And uh he only stayed there one night. 'Cause again they thought it was too dangerous for him to stay there any longer than that with those German patrols still in the area.
So the second night, Belgium customs officer Paul Tealcan came on a tandem bicycle. to take my dad to a safer location. The Belgian people who hid my dad and other members of his crew, any downdeerman for that matter. were unbelievably brave people. They risked not only their lives, but the lives of their family and friends.
Because if the Belgium secret police, the Gestapo, found out about it, they'd be arrested. tortured and either sent to a concentration camp or shot. They're unbelievably strong people. From there, he was moved from place to place to place. How long he stayed in any given location depended on how brave the people were who lived there and how dangerous the Belgium Underground thought it was for him to stay there.
He might spend one night, he might spend six weeks. Finally my dad got tired of hiding. But word came that the Allies had landed at Normandy. On D-Day, June 6th, and he decided to get back in the fight. And he decided to join the French resistance.
He felt there were U.S. men out there dying, fighting and dying to win the war. And he felt it was his duty to get back into the fight. His Belgium helpers tried to talk him out of it because it was so dangerous. He could be killed fighting against the Germans.
or if the Germans captured him, he would have been shot on the spot as a terrorist. But he said, well that, you know, to find if you won't help me, I'll just go by myself.
So but one of his another one of his helpers, Amy Coules, escorted him. They rode bicycles over the Belgian border into France to hook up with a unit of the French resistance. French resistance was called the Macquis or Maquis. And they were made up of small independent ragtag guerrilla groups all across France. Their job was to, their mission was to harass the Germans.
They would sabotage railroad lines, disrupt communications, assassinate German officers, attack. convoys. Mackie group my dad joined with was led by a French lieutenant. Who had escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. They stayed in a farmhouse in Waller's Enfogne.
France just across the border. Seven months after being shot down, word came that there were U.S. troops in the Nearby village of Trelonne, France.
So on September 2nd, 1944, my dad walked into town in the town square. Walked up to an Army major, actually it was an element of Patton's Third Army, identified himself. They interrogated him to make sure he was who he said he was. and then he caught a ride on a convoy taking German prisoners to Paris, then hopped on a transport from Paris back to to England and went back to his base, where he sent a telegram to my mother, Western Union Telegram, saying, Fit as a fiddle, honey, bank the money. Because he had all that back pay coming.
We'll fly with a crew made at home. Five of them did not. Two of the crew were killed in the plane. Three of the crew. Uh Joe Musal, waste of gunner.
Richard Daniels Bombardier. And Roy Holbert, a flight engineer, were picked up immediately after they bailed out. Richard Daniels and Joe Musiol had extremely serious injuries. They all three became prisoners of war, but Joe Musiol and Richard Daniels were repatriated back to the U.S. before the war ended because of the seriousness of their wounds.
One other crewman, the tail gunner, Bill Schlinker, he was also hidden and missing in action for seven months and invaded capture. But unlike my dad, he was moved from place to place to place and ended up joining the French resistance. Bill Schlenker stayed with one place the entire time. The other three members of the crew, George Icke, the co-pilot, Robert Benninger, the navigator, and John Pendrock. Another way scunner.
They evaded capture for a couple months, and they were hiding in a makeshift hut. in the woods just outside of Chemais, and a Belgium collaborator ratted him out to the Germans. They took him into the Chemet schoolhouse, which is still there to day. interrogated him and drove him back out in the woods. and murdered all eight of them.
So there's tragedy and triumph in the story involving the Belgium people of the underground and members of my dad's crew and other eight Air Force B-17 crews. Of all the people that are involved in the shotdown story. The only person who's still alive is Hans Berger. the Luftwaffe pilot that shot down my dad's plane. That was a thrill finding haunts, I can tell you.
During my research, my wife Glenda said, Well, why don't you try to find the German pilot that shot him down? And I'm thinking, oh, she's naive, she has no idea what she's talking about. It's a ridiculous idea. But like I could like a good husband, I did what she told me to do, and I found Hans Berger. And the man.
Michael Mombeek is his name in Belgium, who had contacted me, was a Luftwaffe historian, had written a number of books about the Luftwaffe and knew Hans, and he asked Hans if I could contact him to talk to him, which Hans said okay. But unfortunately my dad died in 2007, so no, my my dad never met him. World War II was the defining moment in my dad's life. And at one point in time, Hans's path and my dad's path crossed, And so Hans is a part of my dad's life, a part of his part of his story. And in 1988, The Belgium American Foundation built a memorial in the village of Monsault-Embers.
and ask him if he would come to the dedication ceremonies uh for this memorial. And my dad and my mom were talking about it and goes, you know, I don't know. I don't even know this guy. I just get a letter from out of the blue and they were debating whether or not going or not. Then Paul Delahaye sent him a second letter and in this one it had the program for the event, which listed my dad as the keynote speaker.
So, my dad says, My mother and I go, Well, I guess we gotta go now. I probably wouldn't have written the book if it wasn't for two Belgium gentlemen, Dr. Paul Delahaye. and Jacques Lalo. During the war, they were young boys and greatly affected by it.
They saw firsthand atrocities committed by the Nazis against their family and their friends. and later in life they became local historians and they interviewed all these Belgian people and members of the Belgium Underground about events that took place involving my dad and his crew and they documented their testimony and they gave me unbelievably detailed information. about events that took place involving my dad and his crew that would have been lost forever. without their dedicated research.
so I owe them a a huge debt. And we owe him a huge debt as well. A special thanks to Monty Montgomery and to Jim Watkins for putting this story together. And also for Steve Snyder for writing this book about his father. The book is shot down: the true story of pilot Howard Snyder and the crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth.
The story of Steve Snyder's dad: a love story between father and son, between troops and pilots and aviators. In the end, the love story of our American GIs. many of them paying the ultimate price to defend freedom against the Nazi menace. His story here on Our American Stories. This Labor Day, say goodbye to spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with washable sofas.com, featuring Anibay, the only machine washable sofa inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly pricing.
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Now through Labor Day, get up to 60% off-site-wide at washablesofas.com. Every order comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a Full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees, every penny back. Shop now at washable sofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. This is Bethany Frankl from Just Be with Bethany Frankl. You begged, they listened. After years of customers asking for it, Barkbox finally put together a collection of their most um questionable toys. The Bark After Dark collection is for all the booty sniffers, tail chasers, and leg humpers.
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So, however, your dog likes to play, there's no judgment here. Join Barkbox now to get the Bark After Dark collection delivered discreetly to your door and let the panting begin. Subscribe today at bark.co and get double the bark after dark goodies in your first box. Chances are you've been to the doctor recently and you probably handed over your insurance, your ID, and even your social security number. Your doctor is just one of many places that has your personal info.
And if any of them accidentally expose your details, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LifeLock and use promo code iHeart or go to lifelock.com/slash iHeart for 40% off.
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