Barbo Serves As WWII Tail-Gunner

Samuel Vic Barbo enlisted in the United States Navy July 1, 1943. He was barely 17 years old, having just turned 17 the month before. Now 96, he and his wife, Millie, reminisce about his experiences while serving during World War II.

“He enlisted on his 17th birthday and went in the first part of July,” Millie said. “He was sitting in the tail-end of a fighter airplane when he turned 18. He didn’t know how dangerous it was.”

Barbo enlisted following the death of his father.

“His father had just died in 1943 when he was 57 of leukemia,” Millie explained. “His sister and him found him when they came home from school. (Vic) took off and joined the Navy. His dad defected here from Poland right about the time the war started.”

Millie said they discovered later that Vic’s father had been born in Russia, rather than Poland.

“They found train ticket stubs where he (Vic’s father) came into the United States from Canada,” she said. “They ended up in Saedro Woolley, Washington where Vic was born.”

Three short months after losing his father, Vic’s family would be faced with a second loss.

“My mother died in 1943 - she was 47,” Vic said. “She had a brain tumor. She hit her head on a windshield in an auto accident and it caused a brain bruised which then became a brain tumor. It caused her to go  blind.”

Vic was sent to boot camp in training in Fargot, Idaho and then at Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois.

“I went to Navy Aviation School for six months and studied aviation machinist for aerial gunner,” Vic said. “After graduation there was a note posted requesting volunteers on TVM. I found out that was the most dangerous job.”

Vic then went to Hollywood, Florida for aerial gunners training.

“I  was ranked number one out of 30 in my class at the age of 18,” he said. “I received a number one rating and three stripes. From there I was part of a squadron of three: a pilot, me and one other guy. We went down to the dock for a mission and the pilot never showed up. To this day I have never found out what happened to the pilot. I was then sent to the West Coast.”

The unanswered questions surrounding the sudden departure of the pilot have weighed on Vic’s mind.

“All of Vic’s records were burned,” Millie said. “The (government) was getting it all rebuilt. There has to be a way to check who that pilot was and what happened to him.”

After the West Coast, Vic was sent to different air fields in the East Coast.

“And then finally I went to squadron VC55 and was on the CVE carrier US425 flight deck which is barely longer than a football field,” he said. “While I was stationed there I went on quite a few missions searching for German submarines.  When Germany surrendered, I started to the West Coast. Then the bomb was dropped and the war was over. I then went to Hutchinson, Kansas to a Navy Air Station and started flying PB4Y2 before going to the reserves. I was stationed in Guam until the end of my service.”

Vic was discharged from the service July 1, 1947.

One of the things he remembers most about his time in the service was the takeoffs and landings.

“We had to be completely in the dark so we wouldn’t be observed by the enemy,” he said. “When we would take off at night there were only three or four red lights down the side of the deck. We had to land back on at dark too, so we started in the dark and landed in the dark. We could see a white cap (on the ocean) in the North Atlantic - we never got higher than 1,000 feet. If we  didn’t get up like we were supposed to, we would go in the ‘drink’ (ocean).” 

He also remembers when they were right off of shore and took over a hotel to use it for a base.

Vic says he never really “got in to the war”.

“I was there at the tail end of things,” he said.

His job as a tail gunner was an important one. A tail gunner or rear gunner is a crewman on a military aircraft who functions as a gunner defending against enemy fighter or interceptor attacks from the rear, or “tail”, of the plane.

“Our taking off and landing on the carrier, which was about the size of a football field was important,” he said. “I was there shooting the gun out of the back of the plane. There was a pilot and one other guy in the plane with me. We only had a little military assigned pocket watch that we did everything off of, because we didn’t have any other device for radar or anything.”

Statistics have estimated that as many as 20,000 air gunners were killed during WWII.

When asked what he thought about the war, Barbo touched on more than one.

“I can’t see how Hitler was thinking about taking the whole darn country,” he said. “He made a mistake when he started against Russia, if he had kept them out of it he could have taken over Britain. He was on too many fronts. And, the Japanese about had us down there for awhile.... But, I’ve never seen the United States change from protection of cars to airplanes so fast. They built a many of them and ships - they could build one every three to four days..... Some of those boys on the islands - the Marines - they had it rough. I never had it rough, but it could have been. Some of the guys who went to gunnery school with me - we could have been over there too.”

Vic’s brother, Walt, also served.

“He served in the Army,” Vic said. “He went in 1942 and served until 1946. He was a P38 fighter pilot. He went in to the Army Air Corps before I went in to the Navy Air Corps. I was showing him I could do it too. He is 98 years old now and is still flying. He is about the only one in the United States still flying at that age.”

Vic’s brother has received a number of awards and accommodations.

“He flies a high performance turbo,” Millie said. “He has always been one to excel. He is pretty famous in Colorado. Walt built a simulator and he started some organization for kids to get them to learn to fly and interested in aviation. He wanted to keep aviation going. He has spent endless hours on it all of his life.”

Vic’s great-grandson, Brandon, had wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.

“(Brandon) enlisted in the Army when he was 17,” Millie said. “He had taken his oath and would have been graduating (from high school in Ulysses) in 2018. Then just six days after graduation he was supposed to leave. Three months after he took his oath he started having epileptic seizures. He got a letter from the military and said they could no longer retain his eligibility. Brandon finished high school. He had a seizure and was killed in 2019 in an automobile accident. It was a shock to this family. Our family fell apart after losing him. I know he was going in to the military because of his grandpa.”

Brandon’s life-long dream and his greatest passion was to become a member of the United States Army, Air Borne division.

Vic believes the military is a good idea for more than one reason.

“I think these young kids ought to go in to the service,” he said. “They will get ‘growed’ up good. It is a good opportunity for them to get an education. I didn’t finish high school, but they gave me my certificate when I got back. Some of these wild kids should go to the service and see what life is really like. If we didn’t have a military they (other countries) would be tromping all over us. And if we don’t keep it up - I hate to see the next world war. There probably wouldn’t be much left, because they will use those atomic bombs. Someone might pull the wrong switch.”