Twin WWII gunners describe twin-tailed bombers

Eighty-two-year-old twin brothers, Everett and Ernest Stedman, were fresh out of high school in Modesto, Calif., when they found themselves high over Europe manning machine guns to protect their B-24 Liberators from enemy aircraft.

The twins shared their experiences with the Douglas County Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol on Tuesday.

"We were 18, just out of high school when we received our 'invitations,'" Everett said about his draft notice dated Feb. 11, 1943.

The brothers attended turret and gunnery school in Laredo, Texas. After training, Ernest was a tail gunner and Everett was a ball turret gunner in B-24 Liberators as part of the 329th Bomb Squadron. Each man was assigned to a different aircraft.

"At 18,000, the B-24 was the highest number of bombers made," said Everett. "Top speed was supposed to be 303 mph but we were lucky to get 273 mph. You couldn't do top speed with 8,000 pounds of bombs. We'd fly at 25,000 feet max. I wonder how many of them are left. Maybe two or three left flying."

After gunnery school, the Stedmans were sergeants and bound for combat. Ernest had issues to discuss with his commander when their war orders included one brother sent overseas while the other stayed in the states.

"I said, 'You'd better give me a pen because I'm going to write to President Roosevelt because you can't separate twins - brothers, but not twins,'" Ernest said.

In the black-and-white photos the Stedmans showed in their presentation, the brothers looked like fresh-faced boys when they went overseas with their orders.

"We were still 18 and didn't know any different," Ernest said. "It was still a game. There was nobody to kill yet."

"After four or five missions, I wondered how we were going to make it to 50," said Everett.

The Stedmans told of their travels around the United States, Puerto Rico, British Guiana, down the coast of South America, across the Atlantic Ocean to the Gold Coast of Africa, to Sicily and eventually to Europe.

"I flew 50 missions and spent 500 hours in the air - 17 of the missions I didn't get credit for because I didn't get over the target," said Everett.

The crew of the B-24 included six gunners and four pilots who worked in subzero temperatures with heated flight suits and five minutes' worth of bottled air. Everett said that at 5 feet, 4 1/2 inches, he was the shortest on the crew.

"After we were getting hit by flak, they wished they were my size," he said.

Everett said the plane had three crash landings but he never had to bail out.

"We were issued three-piece flak suits. I'd put one on each shoulder and thinking way in the future that I might have a family, I put one down here," the former ball turret gunner said as he pointed to his lap.

Ernest said he only had his helmet knocked off once but can only remember four or five missions.

"Some of our missions were 'milk runs,'" he said.

"I never got any milk runs!" said Everett.

After each completed 50 missions, the Stedmans went to Laredo instrument school and taught fire science. They became firefighters and both were battalion chiefs at the South Lake Tahoe fire department. After retiring 27 years ago, Ernest moved to Yerington and Everett to Carson City.

When the Stedmans were approached to speak at the meeting of the Civil Air Patrol, Everett had to talk his brother into telling stories about World War II.

Ernest said he stopped telling war stories 40 years ago because he forgot fact from fiction. He said he wasn't nervous about speaking in front of a group, but he thought people wouldn't be interested in what he had to say.

"I changed my mind and decided to speak when another veteran told me, 'What you did, people should know,'" Ernest said.