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Monday, September 13, 2010
(This is my second post of David M. Jones, The first one was on June 8, 2010. I was asked to make a post on "The Great Escape". In doing so, I discovered many heroes and more information about David Jones who was an important part of the story as well as more information about him,)
Major General, United States Air Force
Major General David M. Jones was commander of the Air Force Eastern Test Range, Cape Kennedy, Florida. He also served as Department of Defense Manager for Manned Space Flight Support Operations.
David Mudgett Jones was born in 1913, at Marshfield, Oregon and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. Included in his early training was learning to ride on horseback. After graduating from the University of Arizona at Tucson, in 1936, he enlisted in the Arizona National Guard. After he served one year of active duty in the Cavalry, David Jones enlisited in the Army Air Corps and went to San Antonio for pilot training at what was then Kelly Field in 1937.
David Jones next served as a pilot with the 17th Attack Group and then the 95th Bombardment Squadron. In early 1942 he volunteered for the Doolittle Project a secret mission under Lieutenant Colonel James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle. During the training phase of this project, he flew the initial evaluation flights on the B-25 aircraft which were specially equipped for the mission.
The Doolittle's Raiders flew 16 B-25 bombers from the U.S.S. Hornet on a secret attack on Tokyo and four other cities. The raid, on April 18, 1942, gave a huge boost to a United States, still reeling from Pearl Harbor.
Captain David Jones had to bail out of his craft over China, but landed in friendly hands and returned to the United States safely. He spoke to the Express-News in 2001 about the experience of bailing out.
“I saw this big black hole,” Jones said. “I was scared, there's no doubt about that.”
The Chinese people assisted him in returning to the United States. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his participation as a flight commander in the planning, training and completion of the mission.
In September 1942, David Jones was assigned as Commander of the 319th Bombardment Group in North Africa. His belief in low-level bombing and his experience with the Doolittle Project resulted in an assignment to develop low-level bombing tactics and techniques.
On December 4, 1942, David Jones was shot down over Bizerte, Tunisia, North Africa, and spent two and a half years as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III prison camp in occupied Poland.
*****
Stalag Luft III was a German prisoner of war camp during World War II that housed captured air force personnel and was operated by officers of the German Luftwaffe. It was located near Sagan, now Żagań in Poland, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Berlin.
The camp is best known for two famous prisoner escapes that took place there by tunnelling, which were depicted in the films "The Great Escape" (1963) and "The Wooden Horse" (1950), and the books by former prisoners Paul Brickhill and Eric Williams from which these films were adapted.
The Stalag Luft III POW camp was one of six operated by the Luftwaffe for downed British and American airmen. When compared to other prisoner of war camps throughout the Axis world, Stalag Luft III was a model of civilized POW internment. The Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of prisoners of war was complied with as much as Possible, but it was still war, and it was still a prison. With Adolph Hitler on top, there was the ever-present threat that authority above the Luftwaffe could change things quickly, on the slightest whim. The prisoners always knew that they were living on thin ice.
Air Commodore Herbert Massey.
Air Commodore Herbert Martin Massey CBE DSO MC (19 January 1898 – c. 1976) was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during World War II. After being captured by the Germans, Massey became the Senior British Officer at Stalag Luft III.
Squadron Leader Phil Lamason.
Notable military personnel held at Stalag Luft III included Squadron Leader Phil Lamason RNZAF, who was also the senior officer in charge of 168 Allied airmen initially held at Buchenwald concentration camp.
Charles W. Sandman, Jr.
Charles W. Sandman, Jr. spent over seven months in Stalag Luft III. Sandman entered the camp weighing approximately 190 lbs. and left weighing 125 lbs. In his diary, Sandman describes the harsh winters and struggles to secure rations sent by the American Red Cross.
Commander David M. Jones
David M. Jones, Commander of the 319th Bombardment Group in North Africa, was an inmate at Stalag Luft III for two and a half years. According to his biography he led the digging team on the tunnel Harry.
Robert Polich, Distinguished Flying Cross Medal recipient.
Robert M. Polich, Sr., also of the United States Army Air Forces, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross, later featured in the short film "Red Leader on Fire" which was submitted for the Minnesota's Greatest Generation short film festival in 2008.
Canadian Flight Lieutenant Gordon Miller tagged "Moose Miller", helped carry the Wooden Horse in and out each day under the German guns without faltering with the weight of two concealed diggers and a day's worth of earth. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for repairing a damaged Wellington in flight and allowing the crew to parachute to safety.
Flight Lieutenant George Harsh
Flight Lieutenant George Harsh, of the Royal Canadian Air Force was a member of the Great Escape's executive committee and the camp's "security officer". He was one of the 19 "suspects" transferred to Stalag VIIIC shortly before the escape. Born in 1910 to a wealthy and prominent Georgia family, Harsh, a medical student, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1929 for the self-confessed thrill killing of a grocer. He saved the life of a fellow prisoner by performing an emergency appendectomy for which Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge released him on parole in November, 1940 and finally granted him a full pardon. He then joined the RCAF as a tail gunner and after being shot down in 1942 was sent to Stalag Luft III. In 1971 he published his autobiography which has since been translated into German and Russian.
Paramasiva Prabhakar Kumramangalam
Another notable prisoner was Paramasiva Prabhakar Kumramangalam DSO, MBE of the then British Indian Army and the future Chief of the Indian Army.
Some held at Stalag Luft III went on to notable careers in the entertainment industry. British actor Rupert Davies had many roles in productions at the theatre in the camp; his most famous roles on film and TV may have been Inspector Maigret in the BBC series "Maigret" that aired over 52 episodes from 1960 to 1963 and George Smiley in the movie "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold".
The actor Peter Butterworth and the writer Talbot Rothwell were both inmates of Stalag Luft III; they became friends and later worked together on the Carry On films.
Flight Lieutenant Cy Grant
Singer Cy Grant, born in British Guiana, served as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF, and spent two years as a prisoner of war, including time at Stalag Luft III. After the war he qualified as a barrister, but went on to be a singer, actor and author. His was the first black face to be regularly seen on British television, singing tropical calypsos on television on the BBC Tonight programme.
Wally Kinnan, one of the first well known United States television broadcast meteorologists, was also in the
camp.
Stalag Luft III inmates also developed an interest in politics. Justin O'Byrne, who spent more than three years as a POW, represented Tasmania in the Australian Senate for 34 years, and served as President of the Senate.
Professor Basil Chubb, author and political science lecturer, spent 15 months there after being shot down over Germany.
Peter Thomas, later Lord Thomas after a political career as a Welsh Conservative politician, and cabinet minister under Edward Heath, spent four years as a prisoner of war including at Stalag Luft III.
Australian journalist Paul Brickhill was an inmate at Stalag Luft III from 1943 until release. In 1950 he wrote the first comprehensive account about "The Great Escape", which was later adapted into the famous film, and went on to chronicle the life of Douglas Bader in "Reach for the Sky" and the efforts of 617 "Dam Busters" Squadron. One of the "Dam Busters", who had successfully bombed the Eder Dam, Flying Officer Ray Grayston of the RAF, was also an inmate at Stalag Luft III from 1943-45.
The POWs in the German camp at Stalag Luft III, were all officers in an Allied Airforce. They all managed successfully to complete flight training, and engaged in combat flying as well as being a survivor of a traumatic experience in the air.
They were very resourceful and applied great skill to improve their living conditions and to conduct escape
attempts and other clandestine activities.
After the war, the majority of them later acknowledged that their experience as prisoners was not only an unpleasant waste of time, but that they came out of it with a clearer sense of values, a strengthened love of country, improved leadership skills, and an improved ability to live in harmony with others under difficult circumstances.
The German garrison of Stalag Luft III was composed of non-flying Luftwaffe officers and enlisted personnel who were generally not qualified for frontline duty. Many of the guards were old and uneducated. Some had been wounded in combat and wore the patches of famous battles on the Eastern Front against Russia. For the enlisted men, guarding prisoners was probably regarded as better than duty in the East, but for the officers it must have been one of the least desired assignments. Some officers and men of the camp's garrison were genuinely hated by the prisoners. Most of the others tried to be decent to the POWs, often under difficult circumstances and the threat of severe punishment if they were caught doing anything that could be considered contrary to Germany's war effort.
Hermann Glemnitz
This general feeling of mutual respect is reflected in the fact that Gustav Simoleit and Hermann Glemnitz were
invited as guests to the 20-year reunion of the American Former Prisoners of Stalag Luft III. They were warmly received.
The escape tunnel "Harry" (click on picture for larger view)
As a result of David Jones' constant agitation and harassment of the German guards, he was selected for the "escape committee" by his fellow prisoners. The committee reviewed escape plans and directed escapes. According to David Jones' Air Force biography, he reviewed escape plans and directed escape attempts.
The stove which set over the shaft to the escape tunnel.
The shaft under the stove that descends to the tunnel.
Todays scene of a memorial to the Harry tunnel in Stalag Luft III.
The prisoners' actions formed the basis for the classic film, “The Great Escape.”
The Great Escape of March 1944 triggered a tragically severe reaction from the German Gestapo. On the night itself, all allotted escapees took up positions in hut 104. It was planned that the escapees would leave the camp in stages.
Everyone was very nervous and tense, a situation that was made worse by the discovery that the tunnel was about 10 feet short of the woods. This meant that the tunnel exit was on the path of a perimeter guard. By the time that a decision was made on how to signal when the coast was clear, it was around 10pm. Further delays were caused by some men panicking in the tunnel.
By 4am it was clear that it would be impossible for all 200 men to escape and the decision was made to close the tunnel at 5am. At around 4.45am a shot was heard at the tunnel exit. The tunnel had been discovered. 76 men had escaped through the tunnel. Of the remainder, those that were found waiting their turn in hut 104 were sent to the cooler - the camp name for the solitary confinement cells.
Manpower and resources were diverted from Germany's desperate war effort to recapture the 76 men who got away through the escape tunnel. Although only 3 men managed to reach safety, the escape caused havoc among the Germans. Thousands of police, Hitler Youth members and soldiers were diverted from wartime duties to search for the escapees.
Of the 76 men who escaped, 3 men made it home to England. 23 men were recaptured and sent back to Sagan. When the news of the escape reached Adolph Hitler, he personally ordered the execution of 50 of the recaptured men.
The commandant of Stalag Luft III, Lindeiner, was court-martialed by the Gestapo for not preventing the escape. The guards became very anxious. The prisoners were keen to make further escape attempts.
Memorial for the 50 (Click on picture for a larger view)
After the execution of 50 escapees during the Great Escape was known and the urns of their ashes were returned to the camp, the British POWs of North Compound built an impressive monument to their memory in the local Stalag Luft III cemetery. It remains to this day and the small cemetery is maintained by the local Polish people.
Most of the recaptured men were shot. Not collectively in a field, as portrayed in the film, but alone or in pairs, along quiet country lanes. Most were dispatched by a bullet in the back of the neck, a favourit Gestapo method.
Jack Harrison, at right, the veteran thought to be the last survivor of the World War II prisoner-of-war breakout from Stalag Luft III, is seen with other prisoners of war in this undated file photo. Harrison, an RAF pilot, has died at the age of 97 at his home in Scotland.
After this event, escape became more dangerous, but escape attempts continued. In the confusion in Germany as the end of the war approached, especially after the Stalag Luft III prisoners reached Moosburg, escape became easier and less dangerous. When it became obvious that the end of the war was near, even the most ardent advocates of escaping decided to wait it out.on the night of January 27, 1945. Col. Charles G. Goodrich, the senior American officer, strode center stage and announced, "The Goons have just given us 30 minutes to be at the front gate! Get your stuff together and line up!"
At his 4:30 staff meeting in Berlin that very afternoon, Adolf Hitler had issued the order to evacuate Stalag Luft III. He was fearful that the 11,000 Allied airmen in the camp would be liberated by the Russians. Hitler wanted to keep them as hostages. A spearhead of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev's Southern Army had already pierced to within 20 kilometers of the camp.
In the barracks following Colonel Goodrich's dramatic announcement, there was a frenzy of preparation - of improvised pack-sacks being loaded with essentials, distribution of stashed food, and of putting on layers of clothing against the bitter winter winds.
As the men lined up outside their blocks, snow covered the ground six inches deep and was still falling. Guards with sentinel dogs herded them through the main gate. Outside the wire, prisoners waited and were counted, and waited again for two hours as the icy winds penetrated their multilayered clothes and froze stiff the shoes on their feet. Finally, the South Camp moved out about midnight.
Out front, the 2,000 men of the South Camp were pushed to their limits and beyond, to clear the road for the 8,000 behind them. Hour after hour, they plodded through the blackness of night, a blizzard swirling around them, winds driving near-zero temperatures.
At 2:00 a.m. on January 29, they stumbled into Muskau and found shelter on the floor of a tile factory. They stayed there for 30 hours before making the 15.5-mile march to Spremberg, where they were jammed into boxcars recently used for livestock.
With 50 to 60 men in a car designed to hold 40, the only way one could sit was in a line with others, toboggan- fashion, or else half stood while the other half sat. It was a 3-day ordeal, locked in a moving cell becoming increasingly fetid with the stench of vomit and excrement. The only ventilation in the cars came from two small windows near the ceiling on opposite ends of the cars. The train lumbered through a frozen countryside and bombed-out cities.
Along the way, Colonel Goodrich passed the word authorizing escape attempts. In all, some 32 men felt in good enough condition to make the try. In 36 hours, all had been recaptured.
The boxcar doors were finally opened at Moosburg and the prisoners from the South and Center Compounds were marched into Stalag VIIA.
Stalag VIIA was a disaster. It was a nest of small compounds separated by barbed wire fences enclosing old, dilapidated barracks crammed closely together. Reportedly, the camp had been built to hold 14,000 French prisoners. In the end, 130,000 POWs of all nationalities and ranks were confined in the area. In some compounds the barracks were empty shells with dirt floors. In others, barracks consisted of two wooden buildings abutting a masonry washroom with a few cold-water faucets. Wooden bunks were joined together into blocks of 12, a method of cramming 500 men into a building originally intended for an uncomfortable 200. All buildings were hopelessly infested with vermin.
As spring came to Bavaria, some of the more enterprising Kriegies moved out of the barracks into tents that had been erected to accommodate the stream of newcomers still coming in from other evacuated stalags. Some men chose to sleep on the ground, setting up quarters in air raid slit trenches. The camp resembled a giant hobo village.
On the morning of April 29, 1945, elements of the 14th Armored Division of Patton's 3rd Army attacked the SS troops guarding Stalag VIIA. Prisoners scrambled for safety. Some hugged the ground or crawled into open concrete incinerators. Bullets flew seemingly haphazardly. Finally, the American task force broke through, and the first tank entered, taking the barbed wire fence with it. The prisoners went wild. They climbed on the tanks in such numbers as to almost smother them. Pandemonium reigned. They were free!
Two days later, General George Patton arrived in his jeep, garbed in his usual uniform with four stars on everything including his ivory handled pistols.
The reality of liberation was a very emotional experience for the tens of thousands of men in the POW camps. Many had had a dreadful experience in the last four months of the war as they were marched or transported as far as possible from advancing Allied forces.
After his liberation in April 1945, David M. Jones was commended for leadership among his fellow prisoners.
In the case of the thousands of former POWs at Moosburg, liberation also brought frustration and disappointment. Initially all support of the camp stopped. The Germans who ran the camp had all been taken off to prison camp and there was a serious delay before a U.S. Army support battalion was pulled out of the line to provide all necessary support for the camp. Then, the hundreds of French prisoners packed up and were flown out. General Charles de Gaulle had obtained first priority for their return from General Dwight Eisenhower.
The American POWs waited and then, against the orders of their keepers, many quietly departed and hitched a ride to Paris.
Eventually all American former POWs were moved out to nearby German airfields and transported by C-47 aircraft to the vast but now empty Combat Personnel Replacement Depots on the French Channel Coast.
The former POWs continued their comradery by staging many heart-warming reunions and by establishing at the Air Force Academy Library a central location for the preservation of their memorabilia and the records of their imprisonment.
***
When news of the atrocity of the execution of 50 escaped prisoners reached London, there was outrage. The British government learned of the deaths from a routine visit to the camp by the Swiss authorities as the Protecting power. As escaped prisoners of war, these men should have been protected by the Geneva Convention. They should have faced solitary confinement, not execution. The British government vowed to find the men responsible, promising 'exemplary justice'.
The Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden announced the news to the House of Commons on May 19, 1944.
Shortly after the announcement the Senior British Officer of the camp, Group Captain Herbert Massey, was repatriated to England due to ill health. Upon his return, he informed the Government about the circumstances of the escape and the reality of the murder of the recaptured escapees. Amthony Eden updated Parliament on June 23, promising that, at the end of the war, those responsible would be brought to exemplary justice. When the war ended, a large manhunt was carried out by the Royal Air Force's investigative branch
The man charged with delivering that justice was a 38-year-old former Blackpool detective called Frank McKenna.
Frank McKenna had served as a flight engineer on Lancaster bombers during the war and survived 30 missions over Germany. He had been friends with one of the executed escapees, Edgar Humphreys, and was utterly determined to track down their killers.
Perhaps surprisingly, some Germans volunteered to help him. Key evidence, for example, came from Stalag Luft III's Kommandant, Wilhelm Von Lindeiner, who had been appalled by the murder of his prisoners and said that if he had been ordered to shoot the men, he would have killed himself instead. His statement revealed to Frank McKenna that the bodies of the airmen had all been secretly cremated - and the urns containing their ashes sent back to the camp.
Frank McKenna spent months scouring crematoria across Germany looking for records. But the Gestapo had been careful to cover their tracks, so McKenna interrogated Gestapo suspects held in prisons instead. Progress was desperately slow.
The war was over, but Germany was still a dangerous place for the British, especially for those men wearing the uniform of the RAF. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians had been killed in British bombing raids and there were plenty who wanted revenge on the men they called "terror flyers".
Someone tried to kill Frank McKenna by stringing a wire across a road in front of his Jeep - a popular tactic of the Nazi underground. He wasn't helped by the fact that post-war Germany was divided into four zones of occupation - and the increasingly hostile Soviets were reluctant to assist him.
From the testimony of other German prisoners, he began to piece the story together and discovered that Roger Bushell and his escape companion Bernard Scheidhauer had done incredibly well. Posing as Frenchmen working in Germany, they had managed to buy a railway ticket and had travelled more than 400 miles in under ten hours.
Once they arrived in the town of Saarbrucken, the French border and the relative safety of the French Resistance was only 20 miles away. Tragically, however, this is where the German policeman caught them out.Frank McKenna's team combed the city for anyone who had worked for the Gestapo, and eventually discovered a driver who had ferried German officers around town. He recalled that two men had been shot just outside Saarbrucken and that their bodies had been taken in secret to a local cemetery for cremation. He believed one of them had been important.
Frank McKenna went looking for the Gestapo chief in that area. a Dr Leopold Spann; but found he was already dead, killed in an air raid. Instead, the driver named a minor Gestapo official called Emil Schulz.
Emil Schulz (right-center) was one of 18 members of the German Gestapo put on trial for the murder of 50 RAF and Alllied airmen.
At the end of his interrogation, Emil Schulz turned to Frank McKenna in despair and said: 'If I had refused, I would have been shot. What else could I do? What else could I do?'
Emil Schulz was right. Had he refused a direct order to shoot Bushell then he would have been put in front of a firing squad himself, and his family would probably have been taken off to prison. Almost all of the men rounded up by Frank McKenna's team gave a version of the same excuse. This was a 'Fuhrer Command' direct from Berlin. To disobey was suicide.
The famous British hero, prisoner of war Roger Bushell was shot by Gestapo agent Emil Schulz in 1944 after being captured, following his escape from Stalag Luft III.
Emil Schulz made one last plea - he asserted that he was not a criminal, but a normal POW, like thousands of other German prisoners who had shot British soldiers but were now being released. Unfortunately for Emil Schulz, he had killed a prisoner of war, who was genuine war hero. With more evidence of Nazi atrocities still coming to light, the British authorities were in no mood for mercy and the Gestapo prisoners were sentenced to death.
Frank McKenna, himself, had arrested more than 20 former Gestapo officers, the largest single total out of 69 men brought to justice. A few committed suicide, but most were convicted of murder and imprisoned or executed.
In 1948, when the Government decided not to prosecute any further war criminals, the investigation was wound down.
*****
David Jones graduated from Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1946. David Jones served successively from July 1946 to February 1952 as air inspector at Headquarters Air Training Command
David Jones attended the Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia, in 1948. He was director of war plans, Tactical Air Command Headquarters; director of combat operations, Ninth Air Force; and commander, 47th Bombardment Group.
From February 1952 to July 1955 he was commander of the 47th Bombardment Wing (a jet-bomber wing) at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, and Sculthorpe, England. He graduated from the National War College, Washington, D.C., in 1956.
He started his research and development work in 1956 while assigned as deputy chief of staff for operations for the Air Proving Ground Command at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.
David Jones' experience in bombardment-type aircraft and previous command staff assignments in research and development resulted in his being selected director of the B-58 Test Force, organized in February 1958 at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas.
B-58 Hustler
The B-58 Hustler was the first operational jet bomber capable of Mach 2 supersonic flight. During this time, Jones continued to maintain his flight status in the B-58, TF-102, and T-33 aircraft; participating in design speed dashes, low-level penetrations, night, weather, formation and inflight refueling missions. He had more supersonic time testing the B-58 than any senior United States Air Force pilot.
When he was transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in September 1960, as Vice Commander of the Wright Air Development Division, David Jones had flown more supersonic time testing the B-58 than any senior U.S. Air Force pilot. In October 1961 he was named program manager of the GAM-87 "Skybolt" at Aeronautical Systems Division. When that project was cancelled, he became ASD Deputy for systems management and later Vice Commander.
In August 1964 he was assigned as Deputy Chief of Staff for Systems at Headquarters Air Force Systems Command, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.
In December 1964, Jones became Deputy Assistant Administrator for Manned Space Flight with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In July 1965, he was given responsibility for development of the S-IVB Orbital Workshop and spent-stage experiment support module (SSESM) and spent-stage experiment support module (SSESM) — a concept of "in-orbit" conversion of a spent S-IVB stage to a shelter. In August 1965, he took on the additional duties as of the Saturn/Apollo Applications (SAA) Acting Director.
In May 1967 he assumed duties as commander of the Air Force Eastern Test Range, Cape Kennedy, Florida.
In his last assignment with the Air Force, Jones was the Commander of the Air Force Eastern Test Range in Cape
Kennedy, Florida as well as the Department of Defense Manager for Manned Space Flight Support Operations. He retired from the Air Force after 37 years of distinguished service.
General David Jones retired in Florida, on June 1, 1973. Since 1999, he made his home in San Antonio and in Tucson.
His military decorations and awards include the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, Air Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster, Purple Heart, Yum Hwei from the Chinese Government, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal with device, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.
Although the military career of Major General David M. Jones took him all over the world, he was best known as a pilot with Doolittle's Raiders.
He was most proud of his participation in the Doolittle Raid on Japan.
General David M. Jones died on November 25, 2008, at age 94, at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He was preceded in death by his first wife Anita Maddox Jones.
He is survived by his wife Janna-Neen J. Dingell-Cunningham-Jones, and hid daughter and two sons.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetary along with his first wife Anita Maddox Jones wife. Section 3-FF Row 27 Site 4
At the time of his death, out of the eighty men who participated in the Doolittle Raid, there were ten remaining survivors.
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