Flak Happy
by
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One of the most skillful B-17 pilots I ever flew with collapsed on the field one day at Bassingbourn, home of the 91st Bombardment Group. “Combat Fatigue,” they called it, and they sent home back to the United States, his combat career finished, to instruct fledgling pilots who, in the turn, would go off to fly combat missions.
One war earlier, in 1918, his condition might have come under the “shell shock” umbrella. Today, in 2011, young men who return from Afghanistan or Iraq with shattered nerves are diagnosed with “PTSD,” post traumatic stress disorder.
We who flew repeatedly through flak—exploding anti-aircraft shells—called it “flak happy.” Most of us who flew more than a very few missions over Adolph Hitler’s Festung Europa were probably flak happy in greater or lesser degree.
We’d see a young man –most of us were between 20 and 25—gazing unblinking off into space, a grim look or a blank look on his face, and we recognized it as a symptom.
Some had recurring nightmares. When we returned from a mission and went to debriefing—our report, as an entire crew, of the mission—we were served two ounces (sometimes a very generous two ounces) of whiskey in a water glass,. Some of us swallowed our two ounces in a gulp or two and reached for the glass of a crewman who didn’t drink.
Some drank enough in the officers’ club every night to help them go to sleep. A fine pilot I flew with would burn half his cigarette on the first drag, some observers said, taking in as much smoke as his lungs would hold, then retaining it for as long as he could before exhaling.
Some men, judged unfit for further combat, were relieved of flying duty and sent back to a United States base. Sometimes a week’s R & R, rest and rehabilitation, in a peaceful, comfortable locale remote from the cluster of air bases in East Anglia, would restore a nerve-wracked flyer to flying condition.
But these overt symptoms aside, most of us laughed and joked, as young men will, and went on flying, doing our assigned jobs competently—sometimes superbly.
These pages detail the author’s flirtation with flak-happiness as he navigated several different B-17s through sixteen and a half missions—shot down on the 17th.
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About the Book
Flak over the target only stopped-or slowed-when Nazi fighter planes attacked the bombers of the 8th Air Force in World War II. Flak was anti-aircraft fire, and some 8th AF airmen hated it worse than fighters- "You can fight back against the fighters," they said, "but not the flak; we're just sitting ducks." Like many others, Lt. Frank Farr, B-17 navigator, experienced both and fell victim to both. "Flak Happy" tells the story of his sixteen and a half bombing missions over Nazi Germany. And it describes the mind-numbing consequences of flying repeatedly through that flak and how he and others dealt with them.
About the Author
A graduate of San Jose State University, Frank Farr spent 50 years as an educator—teacher of languages and journalism, counselor, vice principal, principal in California and new Mexico. Before that, though, he volunteered late in 1942 for service in the Army Air Corps. In April 1943 he graduate from navigation training school at Ellington Field, Texas—a 2nd lieutenant and navigator. Assigned to the 91st Bombardment Group in England, he served as navigator on several different B-17s through 16 bombing missions over western Europe. He was shot down on the 17th and spent the last six months of the European war in German prison camps. Years later he earned his M.A. degree in secondary school administration at Chapman College, California. Still later he served as city councilman and mayor of the City of Gustine, California.