“Learn how to deal with fear,” is the advice 101-year-old Dick Nelms has for today's military personnel, nearly 80 years after flying 35 missions over Nazi-occupied territories as a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber pilot.
“I'm going to get back into the fight for a second,” Nelms said in an interview with Navid Jamali, host of the Newsweek original series “Unconventional.” You can watch the full interview here.
“We were flying in formation and I think an 88mm shell exploded right in front of us,” Nelms said. “You could hear the shrapnel – steel fragments – punching holes in the aluminum exterior. It was a sickening sound.”
“My brain started to become my enemy. It was like, 'If it was one second slower, you would have crashed, today might not be the day you get home,'” she said.
“You know what I did? I said, 'It's going to explode then, so it's OK,' and that helped me get over my fear,” Nelms said.
“My pastor told me, 'You can't control where the shells go off up there, but you can control what's happening here,'” he said.
“And that helped a lot… Why be scared? If you're scared, you make yourself less important to the whole operation.”
Nelms decided to enlist after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, which entered the US war, but he had to wait until he was 19 and needed his mother's signature to join the Army Air Corps' Aviation Cadet Corps.
“I put that application in front of my mom every morning at breakfast. For three months. I stood up and said to her, 'Mom, look at me, I'm 5'7 1/2 and I weigh 135 pounds. Do you know what my chances are on the ground?' She signed it. I took the application out, passed the test and got into the pilot program.”
Nelms said he never initially planned to fly an airplane as big as the B-17 he co-piloted, saying he was more afraid of fighter planes than flak.
“Not only were they more accurate at taking down people, but it was a much more personal attack,” he said. “At least artillery fire is impersonal. You don't know where you're going to be hit.”
At age 21, he commanded a ten-man crew flying combat missions over France and Germany.
“By that time you had learned to overcome your fear, or you shouldn't have been there.
“And everything seemed to go well. I had never given this crew such advice…
“When you look at pictures like 'Conquerors of the Skies,' everyone is screaming at each other. You fly an entire mission and you don't say a word… you know why you talk?
“The only time we talk is when there's a fighter attack — 12 o'clock high, 3 o'clock low — so the gunners target that particular spot, but other than that we don't talk,” he said.
Dick Nelms, a decorated WWII captain and accomplished graphic artist, shares stories from his time flying a B-17. Dick Nelms, a decorated WWII captain and accomplished graphic artist, shares stories from his time flying a B-17. Newsweek
Nelms has flown 35 combat missions and said his final one will feel “not much different.”
“Thousands of us came home. Thousands are still over there. I have friends under the white cross right now. That's one of the reasons I'm here — I want people to know what the 8th Air Force did and that we lost nearly 30,000 soldiers in the process,” he said.
After the war, veterans had to decide whether to enlist in the regular Army Air Corps or become civilians.
“I asked the general who was interviewing me, 'Can I still fly a plane?' and he said, 'Yeah, sure you can, but you'll probably fly it with a pencil,'” he said.
“In other words, they wanted me to sit behind a desk so they could hire pilots. So I said, 'Thank you very much. You're right. I'm going to go to art school to be a commercial artist.'”
So Nelms moved to Seattle.
“I went to art school and after three years I was good enough to get a job, and then after about two years I went independent. I wanted to be a freelancer. I didn't want to be told what to do,” he said.
Nelms still gives back to the community by volunteering at Seattle's Museum of Flight almost weekly.
“I would say to other people who are as old as I am, if you ever feel lonely, volunteer. I have such wonderful people here who have saved my life. I'll be 102 in six months.”
