WILLIAM C. (BILL) LANE
Patriot, Chapter 1919
Army Air Force, WWII, Europe
Bill Lane
was a WWII Glider Pilot who flew two combat missions into German held
territory. His tow planes were shot down both times when he was still short
of his landing zones and he was wounded when his glider was hit during the
second mission. His experience carrying 101st Airborne Division troops into
Eindhoven on Operation Market Garden closely mirrored scenes from the movie
“A Bridge Too Far.” This is his story.
William C. Lane
was born in Greer, in the middle of “the Upcountry” of South Carolina in
1920. He grew up and attended public schools there and then enlisted in the
Army, entering active duty May 27, 1938. He was assigned to the 4th Coast
Artillery Regiment, stationed on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal Zone.
When his initial 2-year term of service was about to expire, he re-enlisted
for the Army Air Corps; and the pace of his life picked up dramatically.
In July 1940 he was
ordered to Maxwell Field, at Montgomery, Alabama and then to Gunter Field,
also at Montgomery, for six months. In January 1941 he was sent to the
Airplane and Engine Mechanics School at Chanute Army Air Field at Rantoul,
Illinois where he graduated in September. He then was ordered to Cochran
Field at Macon, Georgia where he served several months as an instructor in
airplane mechanics for a group of British students in training as Royal Air
Force pilots.
From Macon, Georgia, he
was sent to Crookston, Minnesota for Primary Flight Training. The training
was done by civilian contractors at the city airport. Bill and the other
trainees were quartered in dormitories on the campus of Northwestern
Minnesota School of Agriculture. He graduated in August 1942, and then
spent a short time awaiting his next course assignment in the Holding
Detachment at Randolph Field, Texas, before being sent to Pittsburg, Kansas
for training in dead-stick landings. After that, he again briefly awaited
his next training assignment in a students holding pool in Stuttgart,
Arkansas before attending Basic Glider Training at Mobile, Alabama in late
1943. From there he was sent to South Plains Army Air Field at Lubbock,
Texas for schooling in Cargo Gliders, training on the CG-4A “Waco” glider.
William Lane graduated in February 1944, received his glider pilot wings and
his appointment as a Flight Officer.
His first assignment as a
glider pilot was at Bergstrom Field at Austin, Texas where he was an
instructor for six months. In August 1944 Bill was among a group of pilots
levied for overseas assignment, sent to Fort Wayne, Indiana and flown to
England, priority 1-A, by air transport.
The 9th Troop Carrier
Command had been formed within the 9th Air Force for the mission of
transporting Army personnel and equipment from England across the channel to
France in support of the invasion of the continent. F/O Bill Lane was
assigned to the 81st Troop Carrier Squadron, 436th Troop Carrier Group, 53rd
Troop Carrier Wing of the Troop Carrier Command, and they were stationed at
Membury in West Berkshire. Bill had arrived two months after the airborne
operation the night before the D-Day landings in Normandy, but it would be
only a few weeks before the next major airborne assault.
On September 17, 1944,
Operation “Market Garden” began and, for his part, Bill Lane was piloting a
glider load of thirteen men of the 101st Airborne Division. They had nearly
reached their Landing Zone (LZ) at Eindhoven in Holland when their C-47 tow
plane was hit by ground fire. Bill says, “I radioed the pilot that he
had been hit in the right wing tank and there were flames running the length
of his aircraft, engulfing the rear of the fuselage, including the towing
assemble and tow rope. He immediately ordered his crew to jump and told me
he would get me to the LZ by climbing from our normal altitude of 600 feet
up to 1,300 feet (with the “Waco’s” 8-to-1 glide ratio that would get me
into the landing zone). Quickly up to that altitude, we cut loose from the
tow plane and the pilot jumped from his burning aircraft. He pulled the
ripcord, but his parachute never opened and he “streamered in.” I could only
watch as he fell to his death. What seemed like only moments later, I
brought the glider down safely into the LZ.”
The 101st Airborne troops
soon secured the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal, and held it until the
British 30th Corps reached them the next day on their drive toward the Rhine
River Bridge at Arnhem. Glider pilots in the LZ take their orders from the
ground commander until the tactical situation allows for their evacuation,
and Bill got to spend two days guarding German prisoners before being
evacuated to Brussels and then flown back to England to his base at Membury.
Flight Officer William
Lane was wounded on the U.S. Army’s last combat airborne operation of the
war, the daylight insertion of the 17th Airborne Division across the Rhine
River on March 24, 1945. Again, he had his tow plane shot down when
approaching the objective. Bill says, “When we were crossing the Rhine
River my C-47 tow plane was hit by 20mm and then a 20mm shell hit the nose
of my glider. I took a fragmentation wound to my right foot and the co-pilot
was wounded with blood streaming down his face. Much of the front of the
glider had been blown away and one of the structural members was broken, but
it still held together and still responded to the controls. The C-47 had
lost an engine and was losing altitude rapidly, so we cut both gliders loose
from the tow plane sooner than planned. The tow plane then turned and was
able to get back across the Rhine and land at an airstrip in friendly
territory. Meanwhile, I managed to bring the glider down into the landing
zone north of Wesel, Germany with no one on board injured except for myself
and the co-pilot being wounded.”
His was one of two glider
loads of troops that quickly seized the bridge in their LZ. Hours later,
after the situation had developed further, Bill was making his way down an
irrigation ditch toward an Aid Station when he ran upon the troops that had
been aboard his glider. The lieutenant in charge told him there were four
Tiger Royal Tanks on the far side of a nearby farmhouse and they were
waiting for them to make a move. The glider infantry troops subsequently
destroyed three of the German panzers. Earlier, back at the airfield when
they had been loading his glider, Bill had asked the lieutenant about two
unusual looking equipment bags and was abruptly warned that was classified.
Now he found out they had been carrying new “super bazookas” into battle for
the first time and they proved to be deadly against the heavily armored
Tiger tanks. Some time later Bill had reached the Aid Station where his
wound was treated. There was an IPW (interrogation-prisoner of war) cage
that was collocated with the Aid Station and several of those surviving
German tank crewmen had been brought in for interrogation. The bewildered
POW’s kept asking what new artillery the airborne had that could knock out
their Tiger tanks.
Because the entire
airhead was under enemy observation and subject to coming under fire, the
wounded had to be held at the Aid Station all through the daylight hours.
After darkness fell Bill was sent back across the Rhine on a “duck,”
amphibious vehicle and was further evacuated to a hospital in Belgium.
After brief hospitalization, he was returned back to the 81st Troop Carrier
Squadron which was now based on Airfield A-55, at Melun / Villaroche, about
20 miles outside Paris. When he got back to base, Bill’s Operations Officer
told him that the tow pilots had voted and they considered him a jinx. He
had been on two missions, his tow planes had been shot down both times, and
they would not tow him again. To that he said, “I never argued, but
wondered what they thought they were there for.”
The war was rapidly
nearing its end and with no more deep penetration airborne operations likely
for the glider force, Bill volunteered for the transport planes. He then
flew a number of missions as co-pilot of a C-47. He says, “We hauled gas
up to General Patton in the forward area and then brought out wounded on the
flight back. On one mission we were so far forward that the landing field
was still under fire. German prisoners were being used to unload the plane
and they told us there were some gliders in one of the buildings there. We
found three gliders still in their packing crates with markings as property
of the Luftwaffe. Actually, it would be more accurate to describe them as
sport model sail planes rather than military gliders. With some difficulty
we loaded them into our plane and brought them back to our base at Melun.
They were assembled and the pilots enjoyed using them for recreational
flying. All us glider pilots knew to use up excess altitude circling near
the airfield, but the C-47 guys often tended to stray too far from the field
and would have to land someplace and then find their way back home.”
An earlier mission of
another type had led to my biggest adventure in France. The Army’s light
planes, the liaison aircraft, arrived by ship in England where they would be
assembled. Glider pilots would fly those planes across the channel to an
airfield at Chartres, France where Army liaison pilots would come to pick up
replacement aircraft. When piloting one of those planes to France another
plane clipped the rudder of my plane and also damaged the left wing of
another aircraft upon making an unscheduled landing at Le Harve. We would
have been stuck there, but; being a trained aircraft mechanic, I got special
permission to remove the rudder from F/O Reed’s plane and install it on my
own. Repairs completed, we continued on to our destination in Chartres.
There was six inches on snow and ice on the airstrip at Chartres and I was
lucky to have landed safely (the way bush pilots do it, by locking the
brakes before touching down and skidding to a stop). There was absolutely
no possibility for planes to take off from there again for a very long time.
Luckily for us, the Red Ball Express was then running through there so we
went up to the main highway, got one of the trucks to stop for us, and
caught a ride into Paris. We really were not supposed to be in Paris, as
Paris was Off Limits to American military personnel at that time, and we
nearly had an unfortunate encounter with a Colonel who introduced himself as
Provost Marshall of the Paris Area. However, we were in our flight suits,
those all looked the same, and he was impressed by our claim that we were
P-51 pilots who had been shot down and were making our way back to England.
He directed me to a British Pay Officer who advanced me $100, a handsome sum
on the pay scale of a Flight Officer at the time. We lived well on that
money for three days, while awaiting the weather to clear so that we could
get back to England. Upon reporting back, it first appeared that we were in
deep trouble with my Commander, but as he was speaking I placed a bottle of
Chanel No. 5 in the middle of his desk. That perfume had been hard for me
to get in Paris and it was impossible to get anywhere else at the time. He
looked down at the bottle and stopped talking. We were dismissed without
further comment, and they never did catch up to taking the $100 out of my
pay either.
After V-E Day, I was
not about to volunteer to remain in the service. Having seven years of
active duty I had plenty of points and in August 1945 it was my turn to go
home. I was sent to Le Harve by train and scheduled to go out on a Victory
Ship that had been fitted out as a troop transport. The captain of that
ship was determined to set a new speed record for that class of vessel in
crossing the Atlantic, but that was not to be. The weather turned bad,
slowing us down and it turned out that it took us more than a week. I was
sent to the Eastern Overseas Replacement Depot in Greensboro, North Carolina
for separation. The Greensboro installation was crowded with a backlog of
men all impatiently awaiting their turn to be discharged, so an offer was
made that anyone having an automobile would be permitted to transport
themselves to a less-populated installation where the separation process
could be speeded up. I had my own car and I took three other men with me
and drove up to Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. After just a couple of days
there I had my discharge and was on my way home to Arkansas.
After three years of
civilian life in North Arkansas (while remaining in the reserves), William
Lane decided to return to the military. He says, “I went back in as an
enlisted man, I had 7 years in and could retire with only 13 more. Being a
MSgt Maintenance Supervisor had been my life-long ambition. I guess you
could say I would rather work on planes than fly them. I was based in Japan
during the Korean War, maintaining C-46s that provided courier service and
hauled freight in and out of Korea. During Vietnam, I was the maintenance
supervisor for a squadron of F-4s that did battle over North and South
Vietnam. My last assignment, for years 26 to 30, was as Chief Master
Sergeant and Maintenance Supervisor of the Field Maintenance Squadron at
Little Rock, Arkansas. I retired from there in 1971 (and at the same time
was retired from the reserves in the grade of Major, having declined
consideration for promotion to Lt Col). I had loved every minute of it and
was not ready to retire when I did. The Army and Air Force were good for
me, but it (the military) is not for everyone.
Bill moved to Texas in
1974. He is an active member of the National World War II Glider Pilots
Association and has recently served as the North Texas State Commander of
that organization of distinguished veterans of WWII. He devoted much work
to one of the goals of the association; that of establishing a permanent
home for a museum telling the story of the WWII glider force. That was
accomplished with the opening of the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock, Texas
in 2002 on the site of the former South Plains Army Airfield where CG-4A,
“Waco” glider training had taken place – go and see it for yourself. He
has also been a Life Member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart since
1994, and Texas Capital Chapter 1919 now proudly salutes
Patriot William C. Lane.
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