100-Year-Old Vet Talks WWII, Secret Missions, and Betty Grable

John Gleeson (bottom row, far L) with the Blonde Bomber crew. Courtesy of John Gleeson

On the wall in the closet where John Gleeson slept was an image of disaster and tragedy. On May 6, 1937, the German zeppelin, Hindenburg, burst into flames before a New Jersey crowd of curious onlookers. When the local newspaper in Long Beach, California, covered the story, the photo of the Hindenburg engulfed in flames was plastered across the front page. The 12-year-old Gleeson cut out the image and pinned it to his wall. For the young Gleeson, the image never conjured a fear of flight; if anything, the image had the opposite effect.

“I’ve never been a fearful person,” the now-100-year-old Gleeson said.

Perhaps the zeppelin in flames provided a constant reminder of the risks that came with flying. A reminder that would rear its head every so often during Mr. Gleeson’s decades of flight, starting with his very first time in a plane.

1st Flight

When he was a sophomore in high school, a local friend asked if he wanted to fly in his airplane. Mr. Gleeson readily agreed.

“He said take your bike up to North Long Beach and I’ll chase the cows out of the pasture and take you up and we’ll go flying,” Mr. Gleeson said.

Once his friend had “buzzed the field” to drive the cows to the far end, the plane landed and Mr. Gleeson hopped in.

“We took off and we went around a little bit. Then he said, ‘Do you want to do a loop?’ I didn’t really know what a loop was, but I had an idea. I said, ‘Sure,’” he recalled.

As the plane reached the halfway point of its reverse loop, Mr. Gleeson recalled hearing a loud crack, like “what you hear when you break kindling when you make a fire.” The young pilot asked Mr. Gleeson if he knew what the sound was.

“I said, ‘I don’t know, you’re the pilot. But you better take this thing back because I think we’re in trouble,’” Mr. Gleeson said. “We came back, buzzed the field, chased the cows away, and we landed. That was the last I ever heard about it.”

Joining the CCC

That same year, Mr. Gleeson was pulled from school and was sent to work with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an organization created from the New Deal program to provide jobs and meals for young unmarried men. According to Mr. Gleeson, the CCC was for young men who were getting into trouble and was a place that would “straighten you out.”

He helped fight forest fires, plant trees, and build and maintain campgrounds. The CCC was a necessity for Mr. Gleeson for several reasons. He and his sister were not just products of the Great Depression.

“We were very poor. We were on government help for a while,” Mr. Gleeson said. “My father was an alcoholic. I don’t know how my mother managed. She was an angel. I don’t know how she fed us. We just had a very difficult life.”

It explains why Mr. Gleeson slept in a closet during his childhood. It explains why he was pulled from school. To an extent, it also helps explain his decision on Dec. 8, 1941.

Joining the Army Air Corps

On Dec. 7, 1941, Gleeson took a Sunday drive with his girlfriend to the local drive-in where his best friend worked as a dishwasher. Upon his arrival, his friend apprised him of the recent Japanese attack, explaining further that his brother-in-law was a sailor stationed in Pearl Harbor.

“He was very adamant that we should join,” Mr. Gleeson recalled. “I didn’t have anything I was doing particularly, so I said, ‘OK, we’ll go down and join.’ I enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor.”

His friend failed the physical exam and was unable to enlist. Gleeson passed and hoped to join the United States Army Air Corps. He had always wanted to fly and, although he lived on the coast, the sailor uniforms proved enough of a deterrent to keep him from joining the U.S. Navy. His poor education in mathematics, however, nearly kept him out of the Air Corps. But Mr. Gleeson found ways around the math problem.

“I was pretty weak at math,” Mr. Gleeson admitted. “But my friend was good at math, so I gave my test to him to do the math, and he gave me his to do the English and that’s the way I got into the Air Corps.”

John Gleeson as an airman in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1944. Courtesy John Gleeson

Early into his enlistment, Mr. Gleeson was sent to the Boeing School of Aeronautics in Oakland where thousands of Air Corps mechanics were being trained. Training at the school took up only a portion of his time. As he recalled, most of his days were spent moving, gassing, and washing airplanes. He did, however, make time for extracurricular activities. It was during this time that he had one of his memorable experiences that could have easily gone south.

A Dance at the Hollywood Canteen

By some kind fate, Mr. Gleeson had an appointment with Irving Berlin at the San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. Mr. Gleeson assumed it must have been for the upcoming movie “This Is the Army,” for which Berlin was composing the music. Since he was already going to San Francisco, he was asked to transport a U.S. Army prisoner. Mr. Gleeson agreed to the transport, but apparently didn’t see the rush.

Before making their way to San Francisco, Mr. Gleeson decided to stop in Hollywood at the famous Hollywood Canteen, which had been started by stars Bette Davis and John Garfield to serve soldiers and boost their morale. The restaurant was staffed by celebrity volunteers.

Mr. Gleeson and his prisoner stepped inside. The two could not have been a more disparate match. His prisoner was disheveled and unshaven. With a fresh haircut, Mr. Gleeson, except for the uniform, practically matched the celebrities. George Burns and Gracie Allen came up and served him coffee and a doughnut. Mr. Gleeson was taking in the scenery when he spotted a beautiful blonde on the dance floor. It was Betty Grable.

“I went out and cut in on her and told the guy dancing with her to take a walk,” he said. “I started dancing with her. We were dancing good. I was a good dancer. I got along very well with Betty Grable.”

But then a military police (MP) officer walked up and asked if he was with the disheveled soldier in the corner of the room. He said he was.

“He said, ‘Let me see your pass.’ He could see I was AWOL for about six days,” Mr. Gleeson said. “He arrested me and the guy I was with for being AWOL. That was kind of embarrassing. This MP arresting me in the middle of the dance floor in front of Betty Grable.”

The next day, he was taken to the stockade at San Bernardino. An officer, however, noticed how Mr. Gleeson, with his uniform still neat and clean, stood out from all the others. The officer asked why he was there and Mr. Gleeson explained.

“He asked, ‘If I turn you loose to run to San Francisco, will you go?’ I said, “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Gleeson went straight to San Francisco. He never did meet with Berlin. Meeting Burns and Allen, dancing with Grable, and getting out of a bad jam, however, more than sufficed.

Eluding Disasters

Upon graduating from the Army Air Corps Gunnery School in 1944, he was sent to Georgia. He was assigned to a combat crew as a flight engineer, which came with numerous responsibilities, such as ensuring the plane maintained its flight capability and manning the plane’s top turret. His time at the Boeing School paid off immediately.

“The planes we had to fly in Chatham Field, [Georgia,] were pretty old junk aircraft. On our first training flight, our aircraft caught on fire and we had to declare an emergency,” Mr. Gleeson said.

Shortly after takeoff, the pilot, Sam Webb, noticed the landing gear was not retracting. Webb asked Mr. Gleeson what they should do, and he suggested applying the brakes to keep the tires from turning and creating airflow. The brakes were applied, but then two of the plane’s four engines caught fire. Mr. Gleeson supposes there must have been an oil leak in the old engines, which started the fire. Trying to avoid a Hindenburgian tragedy, Webb conducted an emergency landing.

“When we touched down, the guys in the back were jumping out of the airplane, landing on the runway. I thought that was pretty exciting,” Mr. Gleeson said. “But in the excitement of the fire, we forgot to take the brakes off and so when we landed, the tires blew and we landed on the metal landing gear and tore up the runway. They had to close the airport down.”

Mr. Gleeson said the commanding officer at Chatham Field was irate and restricted the pilot, the copilot, and Mr. Gleeson to the air base. Mr. Gleeson, however, already had a date lined up for the night. So he went on his date. Apparently no one discovered he had left and came back.

Toward the latter part of 1944, Mr. Gleeson and his 10-man B-24 bomber crew were flown from New York to Labrador, Canada, then to Iceland, and finally to Wales. Mr. Gleeson and his crew of the B-24 Liberator named Midnight Prowler, conducted bombing runs throughout Europe. On several occasions, Mr. Gleeson identified what he viewed as “divine intervention,” such as when all four engines went out simultaneously at 10,000 feet. After several seconds of free fall, plummeting around 5,000 feet, he somehow got the engines going again.

“It was an absolute miracle I got them started so quickly,” he said. “We were headed down to the icebergs in the North Atlantic Sea. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t.”

A Different Kind of Mission

From the beginning, it appears Mr. Gleeson had enjoyed the results of divine intervention, from his first flight with his friend to the first training flight that resulted in the bomber engines catching fire. Perhaps one can posit the moment at the stockade in San Bernardino as well. He would need many more moments like that when he was told he had an appointment in London at the U.S. Embassy.

When he arrived, he was given a passport that identified him as an employee of a Swedish airline. He was being recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as part of its covert operation called Carpetbagger. This operation, which continued from January 1944 to May 1945, was established to drop supplies to resistance fighters throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.

“They took me out to a big warehouse with civilian clothes. They said to pick a couple of coats and jackets and pants and stuff because you’re going to fly as a civilian,” Mr. Gleeson said. “They would come and get me when they had a plane ready.

“We were single bombers. We didn’t have any fighter protection. When I flew the covert stuff, I didn’t know who I was flying with. I would just introduce myself as the flight engineer. Everyone was dressed in civilian clothes. None of us carried any weapons.”

Armed only with their passports and the cover of darkness, these black-painted bombers flew across the North Sea, but far enough outside of Nazi-occupied Norway to remain relatively safe from the German night fighters. Their destination was Stockholm. Gleeson said he noticed something very interesting when nearing the capital city of Sweden.

“When we flew over England, it was a blackout. In Norway, it was a blackout. Every place was blacked out except Sweden and it was lit up like a torch. We thought that was beautiful to see,” he recalled.

The blacked-out bomber would land at the Bromma Airport. Mr. Gleeson and his fellow operatives would head into Stockholm for several days, giving the Motstandsbevegelsen (Norwegian resistance fighters) enough time to reach the plane and retrieve the supplies. The supplies, held in a secret compartment, were boxes of high explosives. While resistance fighters were smuggling out explosives, Mr. Gleeson was roaming the peaceful city streets of a neutral country.

“On our first mission there, the radio operator and I had lunch at Berns Restaurant,” he recalled. “They had an orchestra playing for lunch. That was pretty classy. A lot classier than I was ever used to.”

Love and Home

When the war ended, Mr. Gleeson came home, though it was a winding road. He arrived in the New York harbor, took a train to Arizona, and hitchhiked in uniform all the way back to Long Beach. Hitchhiking in uniform proved a sure way to catch a ride. In a sense, it was a small way for American civilians to thank a young airman.

John Gleeson poses in front of the Blonde Bomber during his return trip to the United States. Courtesy John Gleeson

Shortly after returning home, his friend invited him to a party on Huntington Beach. He said that he and his girlfriend had a blind date set up for him. Mr. Gleeson, a man who had cut a rug with Betty Grable, hardly needed help getting a date and was skeptical about the proposition. But he went anyway, and he was happy he did.

“Here was this beautiful girl standing with a bunch of guys standing around her,” Mr. Gleeson said, recalling the first time he laid eyes on Barbara Jeanne. “I was like, ‘Whoa!’ And that was my blind date. I could see I had a lot of competition, but I was good. So I beat them all out.”

The two were married not long after and had three daughters. John and Barbara were married for 72 years. Over time, Mr. Gleeson worked the oilfields, reenlisted in the Air Corps (which was by then called the Air Force), served during the Korean War, and worked as a project engineer for mechanical companies. All the while, he continued his love of flying. When he and his wife flew to Hawaii for vacation, the couple decided to stay.

John and Barbara met soon after he returned from war. Courtesy of John Gleeson

“We were sitting at the new Sheraton. The trade winds were blowing gently. We could smell the plumeria flowers in the air. The hotel next to us was playing Hawaiian music. It was magic,” Mr. Gleeson said, recalling the moment. “Barbara said, ‘This is nice.’ I said, ‘You want to live here?’ She said, ‘You think you could find a job?’ I went out the next day, I called on four companies and got four job offers, so we moved over here.”

The Gleesons moved to Hawaii in 1972, and even after her recent passing, he resides in Honolulu, close to where it all started: Pearl Harbor. In fact, Mr. Gleeson was one of the founding members of the Pacific Aviation Museum, which was recently renamed the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.

“Every man in the world would like to have the life that I’ve had,” he said. “I’ve had nothing. I’ve had anything I want. I had a wonderful, wonderful marriage. I can still fly at 100 years old. I’m going to be flying an airplane next week. It’s just a great life.”

John Gleeson, 100, at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum. Courtesy of WWII Beyond the Call

When asked why he still flies, he retorted, “Why wouldn’t I?”

For Mr. Gleeson, flying has become his life’s philosophy. “When you fly, you either do things right or you don’t. If you don’t, then you’re in big trouble,” he said. From the moment he placed the photo of the flame-engulfed Hindenburg on his wall, he always knew the risks. The risk, though, is what makes it all worthwhile.

“You’ve got your life in your own hands and there’s a certain feeling. ... I can’t put it into words, I just like to fly.”