WATSON JOURNAL | Robert H. Willis, Jr., World War II Pilot, Watson Farmer & Teacher

[Note: The following is a tribute to her father written by Delta Willis, posted here with her permission.]

Chief pilot of a “Flying Fortress” group praised by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for bombing strategic sites in Germany during World War II, Robert Hamilton Willis, Jr. of Watson AR (Desha County) died June 17 after complications following surgery at Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Pine Bluff.

Willis was a 1942 graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Born December 26, 1920 in Snow Lake, "Bobby" Willis was an avid outdoorsman and sportsman. In 1948, the Watson Baseball Team benefited from 14 innings of pitching by Mr. Willis.

Both Mr. Willis and wife Margaret Willis were Watson High School teachers fondly regarded by three generations of students. After his retirement from teaching agriculture and science, Willis continued to farm, freelanced as a tree spotter for timber companies, and served as an expert witness on the boundaries of the lower Arkansas River, hunting grounds since childhood.

His father, Robert H. Willis, Sr., helped develop Watson, home to a cotton gin partly owned by the senior Mr. Willis, who also built the local branch of the McGehee Bank, the local U.S. post office, apartment buildings and several stores on Watson’s main street. His mother, Mae R Willis, served as Watson postmistress, and was a world traveler. During the 1927 flood, young Willis helped rescue local people, livestock, and his mother's piano.

Enlisting in the Air Corps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Willis learned to fly solo in Oklahoma, then trained at Muroc Air Force Base, located in California's Mojave Desert. Muroc became famous for test pilots profiled in Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff,” including Chuck Yeager and early astronauts. Now Edwards Air Force Base, the 6-by-12 mile expanse of dry lakebed and clear, un-congested skies were ideal for student pilots in B-24s.

Willis was part of the Eighth Air Force based in Eye, near Norwich, England. Flying with Captain Willis was co-pilot Jeff Burnett, formerly of Dumas, and a University friend who enlisted at the same time. Willis and Burnett were part of the 490th Bombardment Group sent to England in April of 1944. They traveled on the converted Queen Elizabeth Cunard liner out of New York harbor.

Their first mission was two days after the invasion of Normandy. Willis recalled “I went in very low over the tree tops, right behind Ken Kavanaugh,” the LSU champion quarterback who flew 30 missions during WWII. When Kavanaugh dropped his bomb, Willis’s plane picked up a piece of concrete. “We were too close,” he said, which had a double meaning. When the planes returned to the U.S. Air Force base in England, the air strip was dark. Mr. Willis believed the mission was so dangerous, they had not expected the planes to return. The 490th Bombing Group continued to hit bridges, rail lines, vehicles, road junctions, and troop concentrations in France. Willis’ tenth mission in the B-24 was over Noball, France. Selected by his commander to deliver maps to General George S. Patton, Willis flew a C-54 “to a designated spot in France where the packaged maps were tossed out the plane door, and later collected by Patton’s men on the ground,” Willis recalled during an interview with his granddaughter, Jennifer Willis, a junior at Wellesley College, who recorded his remarks for a school report.

Fatality odds for bomber pilots were exceptionally high, and the B-24s had few of the navigational advantages of modern aircraft. Cockpits were noisy and cold. After September 1944, and 10 successful missions in the B-24, Willis flew 25 missions in Boeing’s B-17. His bomber named “Shiloskilofras” was part of strategic missions during the Battle of the Bulge, and struck enemy oil plants, tank factories, and airfields in such cities as Berlin, Hamburg, Munster, Kassel, Hanover, Cologne, and Merseburg.

It was during an attack on German oil supplies over Merseburg in December of 1944 when his plane became the 57th American plane struck by anti-aircraft. According to news reports, 56 bombers and 30 fighter planes were downed that day in flak so heavy that surviving pilots could not see their formation. With holes all over the plane as well as in the Plexiglas nose and top turret, Captain Willis went into a steep dive to avoid hitting another crippled B-17. After that, “It was just impossible for us to get any altitude.” At 12,000 feet, they were losing 400 feet a minute. With his “Flying Fortress” so badly damaged it could scarcely reach the speed of a fast car, Willis and his co-pilot took turns nursing the aptly-dubbed Heavy plane home using only one engine.

“The trouble began when flak hit the left wing between the Number 1 and Number 2 engines,” Willis told a reporter during the War; “Flak got the Number One engine over the target and we lost Number Two west of the Channel.” They were quickly joined by two Fighter planes, escorting the B-17 to protect her it in its vulnerable state. Willis told the Fighter pilots, “not to get below us or behind us, because we were going to throw stuff out.”

“Then I said [to my crew] ‘Throw everything out, all your guns, the ammunition, anything that weighs a pound. Throw out everything but your parachute.’”

After ballast was tossed, they encountered more problems. Because of damage to the rudder controls, it was impossible to turn the plane to the left. By the time they crossed the so-called Siegfreid line, (the German wall of defense, located on the German/French border;) the plane was making only 90 miles per hour.

The crippled bomber was the last of its group to return, to an airfield so littered with other damaged planes (“Many crash-landed;”) that bull-dozers were needed to clear the strip, illuminated only by flares. Down to 400 feet and still sinking, the bomber came in so low on approach that a high tension wire was sliced, sending up a flash the control tower misread as a fatal crash. Willis circled again and landed successfully. “I didn’t put my landing gear down until the last ten seconds,” Willis said. A Boeing official, told that a B-17 had returned from Germany on one engine, initially dismissed the feat, saying it was impossible.

In addition to citation letters from FDR, Willis was awarded the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters and promoted to Captain. He finished his Air Force service as a flight instructor at Drew Field near Tampa, FL.

Teaching agriculture at Watson High School, Willis also served as a Vocational Agriculture instructor to many veterans of the Korean conflict. In that role he guided Sergeant Shriver on a muddy "buck shot" tour to a remote farmhouse off the levee near Yancopin, to show how young men were learning skills to improve their own homes and farms.

The birth of his first grandchild in Honolulu inspired Mr. Willis to board a plane in 1988 for the first time since his service in the Air Force. For four decades after the War he had refused to fly. Like many surviving pilots, Willis felt his luck aloft was overdrawn.

The longest surviving member of his 8-man flight crew, Robert H. Willis is part of what Tom Brokaw deemed “The Greatest Generation,” because of their service, and sacrifice. “It is a generation of towering achievement,” Brokaw wrote, “... witness to sacrifices of the highest order. They know how many of the best of their generation didn't make it….”

Robert H. Willis is survived by his wife, Margaret Lee Willis; two sons, Robert H. Willis III, of Napa CA and Mickey Willis of Watson; daughter Delta Willis of New York, NY; three grandchildren and one great grandchild.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Ducks Unlimited www.ducks.org