[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 125 (Friday, September 20, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H5793-H5794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1230
                     REMEMBERING RICHARD E. TUTTLE

  (Mr. GARAMENDI asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, I rise today on a sad note. Last week, 
a true American hero died, Richard Tuttle, at the age of 92. He was a 
gunner on a B-24 flying over Europe during World War II. He was shot 
down and spent 18 months in one of the prison camps. He was also a dear 
friend of my family.
  He and Sally Tuttle lived in Mokelumne Hill. He became one of the 
very first commissioners of the California Energy Commission and went 
on to become a judge. He was a dear friend. His loss will be felt 
throughout the community. Our condolences go out to his family.

                    [From the Calaveras Enterprise,
                             Sept. 3, 2013]

WWII Veteran Honored for Heroic Bombing Raid--Moke Hill Man Was a B-24 
                                 Gunner

                           (By Joel Metzger)

       Thousands of tracer bullets whizzed by as a battery of 
     anti-aircraft gunners targeted the B-24 Liberator in which 
     Mokelumne Hill resident Richard Tuttle was flying Aug. 1, 
     1943.
       Tuttle was a 22-year-old staff sergeant at the time and he 
     flew as a radio operator and machine gunner with the 44th 
     Bomb Group, nicknamed ``The Flying Eightballs.''
       ``The German flak gunners were just blasting away at us the 
     whole time,'' Tuttle, now 92, remembered. ``They came at us 
     with heavy firepower. Every plane took hits.''
       Tuttle's bomber was screaming along at more than 200 mph 
     only 20 feet above the ground. The operation's target was a 
     group of nine oil refineries in the area of Ploiesti, 
     Romania. These refineries were known as Adolph ``Hitler's gas 
     station,'' because they provided about 35 percent of the gas 
     and diesel fuel used by the Axis war machine.
       The mission turned out to be one of the costliest for the 
     United States Air Force--53 aircraft and 660 airmen were 
     lost. Never had the Air Force lost so many men on a single 
     mission, which is why the day was later referred to as 
     ``Black Sunday.''
       Seventy years later, Tuttle was honored at the National 
     Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, for 
     his participation on the mission, which was called Operation 
     Tidal Wave. He had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross 
     for his heroism and extraordinary achievement during the 
     mission. The gathering commemorated the most highly decorated 
     single military action in U.S. history.
       ``There were only 75 men who were on that raid who are 
     still alive,'' Tuttle said. ``They wanted to put on a little 
     something for us.''
       While in Ohio, Tuttle enjoyed activities at the Air Force 
     Museum, a celebratory dinner, big band music from the era, 
     meeting other veterans and a tour of a B-24.
       ``It was the first time I'd been in a B-24 since I was shot 
     down,'' Tuttle said with a big smile. ``I could see exactly 
     where I used to sit, complete with the little window looking 
     out. It was just as I remembered.''
       ``I enjoyed it to no end,'' Tuttle said of the event. 
     ``There's nothing like being treated like a hero.''
       Being treated like a hero was something Tuttle earned. 
     Surviving the harrowing mission of 1943 was no small feat.
       Dust filled the desert air as motors roared to life at 
     airfields around Bengazi, Libya, in the early morning hours 
     of Aug. 1, 1943. Tuttle gravely took his position as radio 
     operator and gunner in one of the 178 B-24s and prepared for 
     the longest mission flight of his life--more than 2,400 
     miles, round trip. He sent and received coded messages during 
     the missions. On occasion, he would man the top turret that 
     housed twin .50 caliber machine guns.

[[Page H5794]]

       Along with Tuttle, another Calaveras County resident, 
     Joseph ``Topper'' Huberty, of San Andreas, was on the 
     mission. He later became a Calaveras County Superior Court 
     judge.
       The B-24s were equipped with extra fuel tanks in their bomb 
     bays to increase capacity to 3,100 gallons.
       Of the 178 planes that took off, only 88 would return--55 
     of which were damaged during the mission.
       The formation crossed the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas 
     and the Pindus Mountains in Albania before crossing into 
     Romania, where they dropped to low altitude to avoid 
     detection by German radar.
       Mission commanders ordered complete radio silence for the 
     duration of the flight. Despite these precautions, the 
     Germans became aware of the approaching American planes. Due 
     to an inability to communicate effectively, the formation of 
     planes had become scattered and flew off course. Even though 
     everything hadn't gone according to plan, the mission moved 
     forward.
       When nearing Ploiesti, a navigation error caused a group of 
     planes to follow the wrong railroad tracks toward the 
     objective. This caused the planes to fly through an extensive 
     air defense system around Bucharest before they even reached 
     the defenses protecting the oil refineries.
       ``It was supposed to be a surprise, but there was no doubt 
     they were ready for us,'' Tuttle said.
       The mission has been described as an ``aerial Gettysburg.'' 
     One pilot likened the raid to ``driving down the main street 
     of your hometown with everybody shooting at you.''
       ``In order to be on target, we followed railroad lines for 
     35 miles on the way in,'' Tuttle said. ``We were coming in on 
     a straight line, which made us sitting ducks for the flak 
     gunners.
       ``I was standing between pilot and copilot. The top turret 
     gunman was above me with his knees on my shoulders. I could 
     look out at the No. 3 engine through a little window. I saw 
     the tracer bullets going by, some making an impact.
       ``We were as low as we could get without crashing.''
       With so much anti-aircraft fire directed at his plane, 
     Tuttle said he didn't know if he was going to survive, but he 
     was sure of one thing.
       ``This was it, this was what I joined the war for,'' Tuttle 
     said. ``I spent three years in the goddamned military to do 
     some good.
       ``I was scared,'' he continued. ``But that's what courage 
     is--even when you're scared, you go on fighting.
       ``We had all 10 machine guns firing at once and the entire 
     plane was vibrating,'' he said, adding the continuous fire 
     was so intense the gun barrels were in danger of warping from 
     the heat. ``One formation went in with 13 planes and only six 
     came out. They hit us hard. I had a 20 mm cannon shell lodge 
     in my radio transmitter right by my toe. It came within about 
     three inches of my foot.''
       After running the railroad gauntlet, Tuttle's B-24 reached 
     the target refinery and he remembers seeing quite a few 
     cables holding up towers in the area.
       ``We snapped the cables with our plane,'' he said. 
     ``Unfortunately, sometimes the cables snapped the plane. See, 
     we lost a lot of planes. We dropped all the bombs right on 
     it. That's why we went in low--so we could be accurate. Some 
     of the bombs had delayed fuses so they went off maybe 20 or 
     30 seconds later.''
       After delivering the payload, Tuttle's plane peeled off and 
     ``got the hell out of there.
       ``We stayed down low. This made it much harder for fighter 
     planes to hit us,'' Tuttle said. ``If they made a pass and 
     missed, they'd hit the ground. We had a long way to go--over 
     the Balkans, across the Mediterranean and back to Libya.''
       A tally of the flight log totaled about 16 hours in the 
     air.
       Looking back on the mission, Tuttle said it was unlike any 
     other.
       ``It was the greatest air-to-ground combat in history,'' he 
     said. ``There's never been another one like it, because 
     everything has changed.''
       While it may have been one-of-a-kind, the mission was very 
     costly. During the mission, 310 airmen were killed and 108 
     were captured as prisoners of war.
       Tuttle flew 19 other missions during his time in the 
     service--well 18 and a half, because he was shot down on a 
     mission to Wiener Neustadt, Austria, on Oct. 1, 1943.
       ``I dropped bombs on Germany all over the place,'' he said. 
     ``I never got injured, but one time a bullet passed so close 
     to my big toe it raised a blood blister.''
       On the day he was shot down, the pilot had just dropped the 
     plane's complement of bombs on a German fighter plane 
     manufacturing plant.
       ``We dropped all the bombs, which was good because the bomb 
     bay was clear when it came time for me to bail out,'' Tuttle 
     said, adding the plane was at about 19,000 feet. ``The co-
     pilot gave me the thumbs-up and I rolled out of the bomb bay. 
     I was going to delay opening my chute, because it enhanced my 
     chances of surviving the jump.''
       Tuttle said he watched his plane spiral downward until it 
     crashed in a fireball into the Austrian countryside.
       ``Four guys went down with the plane,'' he said, shaking 
     his head at how quickly his world changed from thinking he 
     might die to having hope for survival after he jumped out of 
     the plane.
       ``All of a sudden I'm over an Austrian meadow, two or three 
     miles up, floating gently in the breeze looking around at the 
     peaceful countryside, and I thought, `Hell, I might survive 
     this war.' ''
       Tuttle touched down in the middle of a thicket, rolled up 
     his chute and concealed himself under bushes until enemy 
     soldiers started yelling nearby. Concerned they might begin 
     shooting into the thicket, Tuttle opted to surrender.
       ``I thought I better get out of there,'' he said. ``I came 
     out with my hands up and said, `You got me.' ''
       Tuttle was taken to the infamous Stalag 17 camp and spent 
     19 months there as a prisoner of war.
       ``We were not treated well,'' he said. ``I got down to 137 
     pounds from 175.''
       Tuttle remembers sleeping on burlap nailed to a wooden 
     frame without sheets or pillows. He and his compatriots 
     called the beds ``fart sacks.''
       ``We often ate what we called `wet dog soup.' It smelled 
     like a wet dog. It was a real favorite,'' he with a sarcastic 
     laugh. ``Sometimes we got a few turnips and potatoes. It was 
     not good.''
       The occasional book that was sent into the camp and a 
     secret radio smuggled to him by allied forces that kept him 
     up to date on the war were small comforts to which Tuttle 
     clung.
       When the war ended, Tuttle was released from the camp and 
     walked down a road in Austria. That's when he saw the first 
     American soldiers he had seen in many months.
       ``They were throwing German guns into piles. I was so glad 
     to see them,'' Tuttle said, his voice choked with emotion and 
     tears welling in his eyes. ``The war was over.''
       Tuttle was taken to a hospital in England to ``get fattened 
     up'' and later returned to the U.S., where he had a long 
     career serving as a distinguished attorney and superior court 
     judge.
       Just a few years ago, Tuttle wrote down his experiences at 
     Ploesti within the context of his autobiography, ``Nevada 
     City and Beyond, an Unscripted Life.''
       Tuttle plans to live out the remainder of his days in 
     Mokelumne Hill with his wife Sally.
       ``During the war, I gained a better understanding of life, 
     what it means and why some values are worth fighting for,'' 
     Tuttle said. ``Looking back, I'm proud of what I did. Damn 
     proud.''

                          ____________________