B-25 training crew in Greenville, SC. From left to right front: Doe, Knauss, Stout; Back: Lile, Carney, Lowrey. KBL Family Collection.

March 7, 2014 — Using historical collections as inspiration can be both frustrating and a surprising delight. Early in the research process for THE TAIL GUNNER, I had the good luck to speak with Norm Doe. Norm had been a pilot who flew with Dad on the training crew in Greenville, North Carolina. He remembered Dad, but said they never flew together in combat. When I checked the mission reports, however, I found that wasn’t actually true. Norm, Dad, and all but one guy from the training crew had flown together in combat once. Once, on Dad’s Mission 17.

From that discovery, I pulled a key plot point and began to build a cast of characters. Each B-25 had a crew of six: Pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, radio operator, and tail gunner. In real life, the Greenville crew was Norm Doe (pilot), Reid Knauss (co-pilot), Chuck Stout, Daniel Carney, James Lowrey, and Keith Lile (tail gunner).  In their only combat flight together just one fellow, Chuck Stout, had been replaced by Philip Epstein. On a side note, the movie Casablanca was written by a Philip Epstein, but I’ve never been able to confirm whether or not it was the same man.

Combat B-25 crew from the 321st. From left to right front: Carney, Lile, Lowrey; Top: Doe, Knauss, Epstein. KBL Family collection.

With these discoveries, my assumption that the crews stayed together through the course of combat was sorely mistaken. Mission reports show that the men and planes rarely flew together with any consistency. But that’s not to say they didn’t develop lasting friendships. Reid Knauss and Dad remained friends, and there were envelopes of negatives in Dad’s stash for Doe and “Old Buddy” Cooper.

I also found a telegram from Betty saying that she had a week off and she was heading to Greenville from Kansas City on the train. It was, I deduced, their last visit before he shipped out in August of 1944. No wonder he had that little pale green Enlisted Man’s Pass (complete with an address to report to for STD shots) tucked away amidst his treasures.

All of these little facts congealed into a series of plot lines that worked their way into THE TAIL GUNNER. From the fateful Mission 17 to the last visit of Bish and Merrilee, these plot points wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t pulled them from hours of research. Sometimes, our role as writers is as much to find the story as invent it.

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