06/12/2026
My Dad, Lewis (Pop) Newman, was ARC class of 1937. Before he was a businessman and Mayor of Augusta, he served in the Army Air Corps as a 1st Lieutenant. This is his interview quotes about WWII and his service. The Book is: 'In their Own words" by Garvey, Higbee, and Van Tuyll "Augusta and Aiken Area Veterans Remember World War II"
https://www.amazon.com/Their-Own-Words-Veterans-Remember/dp/0937044040
Thank you Gail and Bert
This is my fathers interview/entry:
Lewis (Pop) Newman, who would become mayor of Augusta, GA in 1973, saw most of his combat early in the war in North Africa. He flew missions out of Oran in the B-17 he piloted. (this is incorrect as he was the navigator). Quotes from Pop (my dad).
"We fly in formation and that's one of the things that you have to learn is not to run into the people on each side of you. But we would have anywhere from 12 to 36 B-17s on the mission that we were on. The lead plane basically would find the target and give the word and all you do is open those bomb doors and let go when the time comes and then head for home as fast as you could.
Well, there are 36 in a group at that time. Twelve in a squadron. We had three squadrons. A B-17 had a 10-man crew. You had a pilot, copilot, bombardier, navigator and the rest - I guess the rest were gunners. We had one crew chief. We didn't call him a gunner, but he'd get on a gun if you wanted him to. but a B-17 had a lot of firepower. We had .50 caliber, and 10 of them I think, from the front to the tail gunner, to the side gunners. And the German pilots were very aware of B-17s and they were very careful with them. And they knew they were dangerous. So they'd rather attack B-24s to tell you the truth and other planes than a B-17. But they would, of course, attack them. But what you do is you try to keep in as close a formation as you can, so you have the most guns you can aimed, so he'll stay away. And that's what they would do. They'd get way out and they'd try to whip through your nose. And they weren't very accurate when they did that. But my plane got hit a couple times, but just very minor. We lost about three planes in the whole time I was there out of my group and I think most of them were captured as prisoners, so I don't think we had too many that got killed. they bailed out.
And, you know, when you're bombing from 20,000 to 25,000 feet, you're not really accurate, although we had the good bombsight (the Nordan) But you just try to keep it steady while we're dropping the bombs or even keep it steady when you're being attacked because the closer you had your formation and the more planes you had, the farther away those fighters would stay Because they knew it was dangerous to come in with, you know, 30 or 40 guns aiming at them and stuff instead of just one plane.
It gets cold up there, and we didn't have much heat either. Of course, North Africa is not a cold country, but at 20,000 to 25,000 feet it gets cold. and you have to open those doors for the gunners, you Know, when you're on a mission, and so you have to open those doors for the gunners, you know, when you're on a mission, and so you can't keep it closed up. But we had heavy garments. We had full-lined leather jackets and pants and hats for the high altitude stuff."
After completing 50 missions, Newman was sent to Louisiana, where he spent the rest of the war training pilots and navigators. On the ship to the Stated, he remembered everyone was happy--and no one more so than the Italian POW's.
"I guess we had about 700 or 800 Americans coming home who had done their missions or whatever. We had some that'd been wounded, this that, and the other, be we had about 1200=1400 I Italian prisoners on the ship and you're talking about a happy bunch to be coming to the United States. They were tickled to death to be getting out of that war and coming home." (coming to the US).
