VETERAN SCRAPBOOK: Eli Drapkin served as the lead navigator for bombing missions over Germany and German-occupied Europe as part of the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
By: Al Wicklund
MONROE As a member of the United States Army Air Corps in World War II, Eli Drapkin says he was "a survivor." Some would say he was quite a bit more.
Mr. Drapkin served as the lead navigator for bombing missions over Germany and German-occupied Europe.
His plane was forced down in Yugoslavia.
Mr. Drapkin also guided a damaged aircraft to safety over hundreds of miles of hostile country from an oil-refinery in Eastern Germany to his base in southern Italy and brought another bomber with two seriously wounded crewmen to safety while taking in 35 bombing runs.
An important part of the experience, according to Mr. Drapkin, is: "I’m still here. I was lucky. I came through it without a scratch."
While surviving, he acquired seven battle stars, an Air Medal with three clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Mr. Drapkin, who flew with the 782nd Squadron, 465th Bomb Group of the 15th Air Force, got the DFC on a mission to attack the oil refineries at Blechhammer in Eastern Germany, a long flight from his home base in southern Italy.
"It was Friday the 13th. You had to wonder about a bad-luck jinx," he said. It turned out to be harrowing but not fatal.
The anti-aircraft fire was intense, tore several holes in the plane and took out an engine, one of four the B-24 Liberator had. Then, a second engine on the same side went out. The plane was seriously damaged and in trouble, he said.
"We were still in German skies with three more German-occupied countries to cross," Mr. Drapkin said.
He twice asked his pilot if he wanted a course to the Russian lines, but both times the answer was to keep heading "home."
"With only two engines, our plane fell behind the rest of the formation. Flying with a group of 28 planes there were 280 machine guns to discourage an enemy fighter attack. Stragglers were prey for German fighter planes," he said.
Mr. Drapkin said the plane was losing altitude and the crew started throwing things out to lighten the load.
He said, "Out went flak suits, ammunition except for 10 rounds for the nose and tail guns radio equipment, as much of the upper gun turret as we could dismantle and everything else we could remove."
Then came a welcome sight, the U.S. planes of the Tuskegee Airman, black fighter pilots.
"What a wonderful sight. One Mustang (fighter plane) off the left wing and another off the right wing. They were hugging us so close I could see the mustache on the pilot. I threw kisses to those guys."
In those days of racial segregation, the black airmen lived apart from the rest of the airmen, but that didn’t make them any less effective as fighter pilots, Mr. Drapkin said. "They had a record of never having lost a bomber to Nazi fighter planes," he said.
Mr. Drapkin’s navigation skills helped guide the plane around known anti-aircraft gun sites while keeping an as-direct-as-possible course home. They were running low on gas.
"I sweated that one out, but we made it. In spite of our difficulties, we were only a half-hour behind the squadron formation."
In a letter to his wife, Ruth, that night he said, "If I say so myself, I earned my salary for the month."
His pilot had the same thought and recommended Mr. Drapkin for the DFC. The air corps agreed and gave him the medal for heroic and extraordinary achievement.
An added note is that the plane’s officers narrowly avoided a court martial for destroying government property.
In January 1945, while on a raid on heavily protected German rail yards, Mr. Drapkin’s pilot and radioman were hit and severely wounded.
To get the wounded to a medical facility as quickly as possible, after the bombing run was completed, the plane left the formation and Mr. Drapkin plotted a course as direct as possible while avoiding concentrations of enemy anti-aircraft guns.
After a rough landing with tires flattened by enemy ground fire the two wounded men were rushed to a military hospital where they recovered.
On a raid on Vienna, Mr. Drapkin’s plane was riddled with shells and shell fragments. On two occasions, 88mm shells ripped into the bomber, killing a crew member each time.
The pilot elected to take the damaged plane to Yugoslavia, hoping to link up with Yugoslavian Partisan guerrillas. As they approached the airfield controlled by the guerrillas, the remaining eight crewmen saw several other damaged Liberators explode in midair.
Mr. Drapkin saw a number of parachutes floating toward the ground. He later learned that about half were rescued by the Partisans while the others were captured by the Germans.
After enjoying the hospitality of the Partisans for a day and a half, Mr. Drapkin and his fellow crewmen were given a patched up plane they flew back to their base in Italy.
In April 1945, Mr. Drapkin flew in one of the war’s most effective air attacks. He said 1,233 planes armed with 20-pound anti-personnel bombs took part in saturation bombing of German positions in North Germany. After the bombing, British and American army units pushed forward through the remnants of the German army on their way to victory four months away.
After the war, Mr. Drapkin returned to the New York area and became a toy manufacturer, designing, producing and marketing toys. He retired in 1985 and has lived in the Concordia community since 1986.