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WW II combat pilot talks to East Side group
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- By Kate Cole
- Wednesday, November 09, 2011
- Hits: 424
While talking to a group of advanced high school students during a history class, Bob Keel asked the question, "How many of you know what happened on Dec. 7, 1941?"
A lone hand was raised. The rest of the class had no recollection of Pearl Harbor Day.
"That's why I'm telling my story today," said Keel, who told the East Side Business Association Nov. 9 about his experience as a fighter pilot during WW II.
Keel talked about the urgency of telling his story.
"Of the 16 million veterans who served in WW II, there are fewer than 2.5 million of us alive today. It is projected that by 2024 there will only be 311,000 of us alive. If I am, I will be 104 years old," Keel said smiling.
He was born in Abilene, Kan., and attended Kansas State University.
"At that time tuition cost $16 a credit hour and my room and board was $50 a month," Keel said.
But the war interrupted his education. Keel joined the army and was sent to Phoenix to learn to fly. His aircraft was a P-38, a twin-engine fighter.
"We had only a couple of days to memorize the cockpit instruments and then we took off to the West Coast because at that time another Japanese attack was anticipated in California," Keel said.
During those years the army moved quickly. After graduating from flight school in May 1942, Keel took a train to New Jersey and was shipped out to England on the Queen Mary.
"Eight days before shipping out, I got married," Keel said. The rest of the romance was via V-mail, the only means of communication with his new bride.
In England, Keel joined the Allied troops. He flew 50 missions in North Africa.
"I flew strafing missions against enemy railways and transportation lines, dive bombed enemy airports and ran escort missions for larger bombers," Keel explained.
He remembers the successful invasion of Sicily by the Allied troops and the demolition of a Nazi airbase in southern Italy. His 50th fighter mission began in Libya where his commanding officer shot down 27 enemy aircraft in one day.
"That was the most any pilot had done on a single mission," Keel said.
After his 50th mission he was sent back to the states to a new assignment flying large cargo planes into the Pacific arena to pick up wounded soldiers and take them back to the United States for treatment. Keel remembered a close call when returning to the U.S. with three cargo decks of wounded soldiers inside his cargo plane. The plane lost two of its four engines.
"They foamed the runway for us in Sacramento, but we landed safely," Keel explained.
Keel also remembered his second lieutenant paycheck at that time was a whopping $370 a month.
After the war Keel found that there were more pilots looking for jobs than there were aircraft to fly. He returned to college, majored in retailing. He worked at Smith-Bridgman's Department Store in Flint. After the store was sold by the C.S. Mott Foundation to L.S. Good Co. in 1970, Keel got a job with the Flint School System. For the next 23 years he ran a number of educational programs until his retirement.
Keel lives in Grand Blanc.
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