Radio Operator · 328th Squadron · Of Bridgeville, PA.
The missions below are those we have been able to document for this airman, drawn from flight logs, mission records, and archival sources. It is not necessarily a complete account of every mission flown; gaps may reflect missing documentation, transferred assignments, or records lost to time.
On their last mission with pilot Cook, a badly damaged plane and lost airspeed forced the crew to put down on a captured Luftwaffe field outside Antwerp. A Belgian civilian found them first, warned them Germans were still in the area, and drove them into the liberated city.
While working a stuck bomb in the open bay, Orient found himself face to face with a ME-109 flying directly beneath the aircraft. The ball turret was useless. The wrench missed. That left one option.
It was the radio operator's job to go into the bomb bay and free any bombs that hadn't released. You'd work them loose by hand or wrench while the rest of the formation flew on around you. One day I was down in the bay working a stuck bomb when a ME-109 came straight up underneath us. They'd do that sometimes, fly right up under a bomber to get an accurate read on our heading, altitude, and airspeed, then radio it ahead to the flak batteries waiting for us. He was close enough that we could see each other clearly. Just looking right at one another. I grabbed my wrench and threw it at him. Missed by a mile. Then I reached inside my flight jacket for my service pistol. The moment that pilot saw me go for it, he peeled off and was gone. I don't know what I thought a pistol was going to do. But I suppose he didn't want to find out either.
William Orient enlisted in April 1942, met Phyllis during B-24 training at Davis-Monthan — six weeks before he shipped out. Assigned to the 93rd Bomb Group's "Ted's Traveling Circus," he flew combat across North Africa and Europe, including a punishing nine-hour oxygen mission to Stettin, Poland.
With 125 points against the 85 needed for discharge, William Orient was among the first to qualify when the war ended. He flew home with the 93rd Bomb Group, rendezvoused with the Eighth Air Force in Salt Lake City, collected his discharge papers, and rode the bus to Tucson that same night.
When pilot Mac was shot mid-mission, William Orient reached across the cockpit, lifted the large man bodily over the control panel, and laid him on the floor. Bombardier Phil was called up, a tourniquet applied, and Mac survived. Phil later said the luckiest day for the crew was the day Orient joined — a late assignment just before they left Tucson.
A colonel at Salt Lake City sought out William Orient by reputation to serve as radio operator on a flight east. Orient was under a shade tree sharing a bottle and never answered the call. The plane was the B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 — and his high school date Rosemary Welch was on the other side of the building when it hit.
Shortly after de Gaulle's forces liberated Paris, William Orient crewed two wing colonels over from England. Given a few hours free, he and the crew toured the city — but the Germans had looted it clean. The only souvenir he could find was a small poodle lapel pin.
The crew's assigned plane — "N-Nan" — came back from one mission with 42 fist-sized holes and was back in the air within weeks, ground crews working nights under spotlights. On another mission, with pilot Mac shot and the plane low on fuel, Orient shot red flares on approach so medics could find them on landing. A chunk of flak pulled from his radio receiver afterward would have hit him in the head had he been sitting in his usual position.
On their 28th mission, violent wind drafts threw the B-24 inverted and spinning. Orient jettisoned the bombs, hit all four throttles, and struck the vertigo-stricken copilot Frank Semple hard on the shoulder to bring him back. They put down at Woodridge, where Orient went through the RAF rum line twice. Semple climbed off the plane, declared he would never fly again, and kept his word.
As the war wound down, the 93rd flew trolley missions — low-level runs over France and Germany carrying ground personnel who'd never seen the destruction from the air. Flying over Antwerp at rooftop level, Orient could look down into the basement of the hotel where his crew had once stayed and see the chairs in the movie theater. The Battle of the Bulge had been made possible by a week of solid overcast that grounded every Allied aircraft — giving the Germans the cover they needed to launch thei
A young crewman — his name mangled by Murray Muscatel until a postwar reunion set it right — was cleaning his .45 the night before a weapons inspection, reassembled it, and pulled the trigger out of habit. The round passed over William Orient's head and punched a hole in the metal barracks wall. He hit the floor and drew his own weapon before George McNulty came running to convince him it had been an accident. On the bomb run, Orient's job was to keep his foot on the lever holding the bomb bay d
As radio operator, William Orient was largely footloose during the flight — his job on the bomb run was to stand at the bomb bay doors, holding them open with his foot and sitting on his flak vest against flak coming up from below. On one mission a bomb hung on its shackle after release, already armed — impossible to land with. Orient strapped on a walk-around oxygen bottle, grabbed a screwdriver, and made his way out into the open bomb bay at altitude. One well-placed strike knocked it loose. H
When pilot Cook called a routine local flight and neither the engineer nor copilot showed up, William Orient climbed into the copilot seat. He started the engines, called off the takeoff checklist, and after reaching altitude synchronized all four propellers by watching their shadow patterns through the side windows and working the toggle switches until they ran smooth. He figured the more he knew about the B-24, the better off he and the crew would be.
During primary flight training in a PT-13 biplane, William Orient was assigned an instructor he described as a California dandy — short, curly-haired, scarf at the neck, flying boots. There was an immediate personality clash. On one approach the instructor never communicated that Orient was supposed to be landing; they hit the ground, swerved, and clipped a wingtip. He was washed out of pilot training. In later years he concluded he'd been better off — a B-24 crew suited him far more than sittin
Combat flying forged a kinship William Orient said could never be created any other way. He found crewmates after the war through reunions and chance — Semple in a Los Angeles phone book, Farnham in Boston, engineer Paul Harwood still in regular contact decades later. Not every reunion was sentimental: word came back through the reunion circuit that Murray Muscatel, the barracks hustler who ran dice games in the officers' day room and left England with a barracks bag full of British pound notes,