World War II Veteran; Dewayne Phelps

Air Force Veteran Dewayne Phelps literally can say he knew the fighter planes and bombers used in World War II inside and out even before he was an enlisted man.

Prior to going into the service Phelps said he worked for the company in California, that built the planes used overseas.

“We were building Air C Planes and the bombers b-24 in that plant,” Phelps said to name a couple planes the company built.

“I mostly worked with the Air C Planes. The bombers were built in a different department, but they did tell me I could go any place in the plant I wanted to, when I quit.”

When he opted to quit working at the plant, not only did he come back home to Nebraska but he was soon drafted, however not to his dismay.

“I was home for a couple months or so and the draft board didn’t call me. So I went to the draft board and asked them if they were going to call me,” Phelps said. “My draft board was 50 miles from my home but they were real good to me.”

His experience in the plant, building planes,made him a natural choice for the Air Force and the mechanics schooling he received prior to being stationed overseas as a carburetor mechanic.

He recalls the trek to what would be his first experience in the war and his first experience in what combat could be like.

“We were on the boat for a couple weeks,” he began speaking about a town near the drop off place, one he couldn’t recall the name of, but was littered with evidence of recent fighting.

“It was the last place the Germans and Italians had, what was left of it was pretty well shelled, though we never went into it.

“When we unloaded we all went out there to bivouac,” meaning building an improvised camp. “Well some of the guys started digging fox holes and stuff and ran into some German canned food. The Germans had been there, but they had left and left some of their canned food there. I didn’t want anything to do with that myself.

“We had a raid the first night we were there. But Australians were up not too far from us and keeping them (Germans) kind of away from us.”

He laughed as he talked about how two soldiers with a higher rank than himself were shooting at the planes thousands of feet in the air with Tommy Guns.

“They were marking right where we were, and the planes dropped parachutes with flares on them, they had us marked, right where we were because the Germans had been there before,” he said.

Phelps said he took note of the line of ships in the ocean, and said he didn’t quite understand why they were in the formation they had been in, but his answers would come quickly.

To confuse things more for the soldiers the Australian soldiers were above the drop off location protecting the American soldiers without the American soldiers knowing what was happening.

“Everything turned out okay. okay. Nobody got hurt or anything, because they (Australians) didn’t let them get close enough to do anything to us. We were scared, I know I was. We didn’t have any sense but to be scared.”

Once the raid was over and the soldiers were able to move on to their base, Phelps was taken to his first base.

However, because of the location of the air-base Phelps said they were not encouraged to go into town but rather stay on the base.

“My first Air Force base over there was in Algiers,” Phelps said.“It was off from the town a little bit. It was a big outfit, but we were a small outfit so we were separate. It was where we worked. It was where they would bring planes over from the states. Our fighter planes on the boats, they would bring them in and bring them to the depot and then to the base.”

Despite Phelps not working on the assembly aspect of the base, he referred to the base as an assembly base – even though he “didn’t get in on that part, because I was in the carburetor shop.

“I was lucky to get into the carburetor shop, it was a good shop. The guys in charge of it were good.”

When it came to where Phelps would work, he said, “They pulled us on the side and started naming different branches,” of areas in which a mechanic could fix or repair planes, Dewayne said. “We would step out, and when they came to carburation for some reason I stepped out. We did have some carburation at the school and that is what I got when I went overseas.”

According to Phelps the Tech Sergeant in charge of the department he worked in picked Phelps out to “test the carburetors for any aircraft.”

He said the Air Force provided him with a book that had every carburetor he may encounter while working in that department to aid him in testing each one he would come in contact with.

“Of course that was simple, because it told me what to do,” Phelps remembered with a laugh. “I guess I did pretty fair because they kept me on that (flow bench).”

From there on out Phelps said he was counted on to ensure the proper working order of each carburetor after it was worked on, even if it was a newer model.

Modestly he said, “It was just because they took a liking to me I guess. I tried to do my best. I’m an old farm boy, my folks were poor, they didn’t have any money and I learned the hard way. But I tried to do what everybody told me to.”

From being stationed in Algiers, Phelps was transferred to Cassia Blanca, which he said was “just across from the Rock of Gibraltar,” and from there they went by train.

“The small track, like the ones we have in Colo., is like the ones they have over there. And when they moved us they got to a hill that they couldn’t go up, they had this small engine on there, and they unhooked half of the train and the back half had to go up and help push the train up over the hill and then they came back and got us afterwards. But everything turned out real good,” Phelps remembered.

Phelps said he served almost four years in the Air Force during World War II, that he spent working on aircraft.