JACKSON MAN HONORED FOR WARTIME SERVICE

James Smith of Jackson, top left, poses with other members of the Horsham St. Faith caravan crew. The other soldiers are, clockwise from lower left, Lou Freiberg, Jim Graham and Wes Huntress.

James Smith and the other caravan crew members were responsible for guiding B-24 Liberator bombers like "Final Approach," shown here in a photo taken by Smith during his service at Horsham St. Faith.

A Jackson native has been honored for his military service during World War II.

Today, as Americans mark the 50th anniversary of Germany's World War II surrender, visitors to the 8th Air Force Memorial Museum in Dayton, Ohio, will learn a little about the wartime contributions of lifelong Jackson area resident James Smith. Smith is among four U.S. Army Air Force soldiers being honored for their performance of a very unique and vital function during the war.

James Smith of Jackson and wartime compatriots Wes Huntress, Lou Freiberg and Jim Graham are honored in a special display devoted to World War II flight control. The display is housed inside a full-scale replica of the kind of control tower used at American and British air bases in England. From such towers, innumerable heavy bombing runs were directed against Germany during the final years of World War II. The replica tower was dedicated during a ceremony held April 22.

During their service in World War II, the four manned a so-called "caravan" at Horsham St. Faith Air Base near the Norwich, England.

The caravan was a small, four-wheeled trailer set on wheels which could be moved from runway to runway depending upon weather and runway conditions. England's infamous weather regularly obscured runway visibility for those in the main control tower. To overcome this problem, Britain's Royal Air Force, and later American forces, began placing caravans at the end of the runways at each of the many air bases which peppered the countryside of northern England during the war. The caravans allowed the ground crew to see the returning airplanes on their approach to the airstrip and warn them if a landing gear or other problem existed.

Smith and his fellow soldiers were selected to be honored in the museum after Graham wrote an essay titled "The Caravan" which described the job he, Huntress Freiberg and Smith did during the war.

The essay apparently impressed members of the 8th Air Force Memorial Museum Foundation, which elected to reprint an enlarged version of the essay on one wall of the museum, along with a photo of the four standing near their caravan.

"When I found out about this, I told my wife Georgia, 'This is something that is going to be here forever and now I'm going to be a part of it.'" said Smith. "I feel like it was just a lucky break that they selected this story."

Caravans were placed at the end of the active runway and connected to the main tower with a telephone line. The cramped quarters were also equipped with a radio, which was only to be used if the main tower's radio was out, and a variety of signals and flares.

The caravan was manned by two non-commissioned officers whose primary responsibility was to watch as bombers returned from their missions. These two soldiers had what was called the "power of override." While the main control tower still determined the priority in which airplanes would land (depending upon individual plane's fuel level and whether they carried wounded airmen), the vantage point of the caravan crew at the approach of the runway allowed them to see the planes very clearly before a landing. If a bombing made its approach with a landing problem it could not see -- such as landing gear stuck in the up position or a damaged plane stalled on the runway -- the two men had the power to override the tower's orders and direct the plane's crew to circle back and try landing again when the problem was rectified or after all other planes had landed.

A 1939 graduate of Fruitland High School, Smith volunteered for military service in January 1941. He worked in a variety of military jobs until the fall of 1943, when he was ordered to Columbus Air Base in Columbus, Ind. There he became a part of the 8th Air Force, then the largest fighting force every assembled in wartime.

Smith's squadron, the 60th Station Compliment Squadron, was ordered to Horsham St. Faith to support the American B-24 Liberator bombers being dispatched from the Norwich base.

After three weeks of training with the Royal Air Force, the four returned to Horsham St. Faith where they began constructing their caravan.

"We had to construct it ourselves from 'confiscated' materials," Smith laughed, explaining that scrap materials collected and "borrowed" from throughout the base were used to build the much-needed trailer.

The caravan is best described by Graham in the essay "The Caravan" now printed on the 8th Air Force memorial's walls.

IN ITALIC

The caravan at Horsham St. Faith was a truly unwieldy beast constructed of heavy gauge steel with a tubular trailer hitch which we hooked up to a truck or jeep to be towed to wherever the active runway was on that day.

Sometimes it was moved during combat landings when a damaged B-24 made the primary runway unusable. This gave the caravan team a heart-stopping, high-speed trip to an alternate runway while fuel-starved bombers circled the field and two [non-commissioned officers] held on to the radios and the signal lamps for dear life.

END ITALIC

Although the crew was not stationed on the front lines, there were dangers in working the caravan. However, Smith downplays the peril.

"I didn't feel in danger too much," he said, "but I was young and full of vitality."

The perils -- and tribulations -- of working a 24-hour shift in the caravan are again best drawn from Graham's "The Caravan."

The caravan crew enjoyed moments of sheer exultation, as when the tower told the leader of a squadron of Polish RAF fighters to be guided by the visual signals from the caravan in landing his battle-scarred planes. He was the only one who spoke English, and his squadron was on fumes and couldn't make it back to their base. Everyone got in safely, including the squadron leader whose Hurricane (a British fighter-bomber) coughed its last gasp of petrol as his wheels touched down.

And there were moments of sheer terror, as in the dark of night trying to land a flight of British Mosquito Bombers and knowing that the flashing lights on final approach were the muzzle blasts of the Luftwaffe fighters' machines guns chasing the British planes in.

Was there heroism? I guess the brass didn't think so -- no medals were awarded!

But, was there courage? Oh, yes! The same kind of courage that compelled a bomber crew to fly straight and steady through withering fire to get the job done. So it was with the caravan crews -- the kind of courage that kept you in place directing a disoriented B-24 to the runway until seconds before its landing gear tore the 18-foot radio mast from the roof of the caravan. The kind of courage that kept you directing B-24's out of danger on the taxi strip after the pathfinder plane was going up in flames from an accidentally discharged flare gun -- when every instinct said to get the hell out of there before the tanks blew. And the kind of courage to stay in place and do your job when Hitler's V1's and V2's were rumbling over the horizon just prior to a major landing."

Smith's wartime service ended on May 7, 1945, when German representatives signed the instrument of surrender.

He remained in England until July 4, 1945 when he and other soldiers boarded the Queen Mary to return to the United States. There they would enjoy a 30-day leave before being rotated to the Pacific Theatre to fight the Japanese.

The Jackson man never made the trip to the South Pacific. The dropping of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan ended World War II in early August 1945.

Though the war has long since ended, the contributions of Smith and the countless others who played an important, behind-the-scenes roll in ending the fighting will be remembered for many years to come.

"Do caravans deserve a place in U.S. Army Air Corps history?" Graham asks in "The Caravan." "Just ask any pilot, or any member of a WWII bomber crew who signaled thumbs up as they touched down safely -- thanks to the caravan."