John “Lucky” Luckadoo Tells of Bloody 100th Bomb Group
To fly in the Eighth Air Force during World War II was “to buy a ticket to your own funeral,” historian and author Donald L. Miller told a sold-out crowd at the George W. Bush Presidential Museum earlier this month.
A pilot was lucky to survive 11 missions, but longtime Dallas resident John “Lucky” Luckadoo, a member of the legendary Bloody 100th Bomb Group, somehow made it through 25 missions over France and Germany.
“I’m frequently asked how in the world after being all shot up and coming back and barely heading home, you knew you had to get in that airplane again the next day and go do the same thing, and as a 19-or 20-year-old, what kind of impact that had on your psyche,” Luckadoo said. “And I don’t know how we did it. I honestly don’t.”
Luckadoo and Miller spoke during an After Hours conversation at the Bush Museum in collaboration with National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. Signed copies of the book about Luckadoo’s experiences, Damn Lucky: One Man’s Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History and Miller’s book, Masters of the Air, were available for purchase. Jason Galui, Director for Veterans and Military Families at the Bush Institute, moderated the discussion.
Luckadoo told the audience that when untested pilots were confronted with the reality of what they were doing, they realized they had not one but several enemies, including fear and the freezing cold.
“We were literally scared to death, because we had no clue, no idea what opposition we were going to encounter. We only knew that we were going up against the most formidable air force in the world,” Luckadoo said. He continued that the pilots’ terror was so great that their hair could turn white in the space of a single mission.
The aircrafts were unpressurized, which meant pilots were dependent on oxygen at high altitudes, and that temperatures inside the cabin could reach 50 to 60 degrees below zero.
Luckadoo recalled being sent into battle unprepared and untrained, with the responsibility for the lives of his crew members on his shoulders. The British, he said, thought the air force’s strategy of daily flights in mass formation at a high altitude — and in daylight — was suicidal.
“You know what? They were right,” Luckadoo said, to laughter from his audience. He said that the Germans and Japanese miscalculated by assuming that the United States would not be able to withstand or replace its heavy losses.
Americans, galvanized by the attack on Pearl Harbor, managed to defy those expectations, Luckadoo said, and to “out produce the world.”
Near the end of the discussion, Luckadoo remarked that it was a sad commentary on mankind that people persist in settling their differences through armed conflict. “Wars are futile. Those of us who have participated know the futility of war.”
“But with warts and all, this country of ours is the greatest country on earth,” Luckadoo said in closing. “God bless America.”
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