“We were bitter about it that night”
- Mike Croissant
- Nov 11
- 3 min read
I interviewed more than fifty veterans for Bombing Hitler's Hometown, but I inevitably had to leave some material on the cutting room floor. I hope you enjoy this story about Lyle McConaughy to mark Veterans Day.
By 1945, the steady pace of the air war, significant combat losses, and the rapid turnover of skilled hands brought quick elevation to new responsibilities for many crewmen. One of those men was Lyle McConaughy, who nearly found himself in command of the Liberators of the 456th Bomb Group’s 745th Bomb Squadron over Linz on 25 April 1945. The squadron had a serious shortage of bombardiers, so when McConaughy and his crew reported for duty in Italy, the commanding officer had told him, “We don’t like to break up crews, but we need to take your bombardier.” Not to worry, the major had added, for he was going to promote both McConaughy and bombardier Vernon Schumacher, and they would go into battle as lead pilot and lead bombardier. They were also the best of friends.
On a mission to Vienna, flak put nearly three dozen holes in McConaughy’s Liberator and wounded Schumacher in the kneecap. When they got back, Schumacher’s nerves were shot. He convalesced and returned to duty, but on Schumacher’s first mission after the injury, McConaughy could tell he was just not up to it. It broke his heart, but McConaughy approached the commanding officer and told him that the bombardier should be removed from flight status. The flight surgeon examined Schumacher and agreed, and the young bombardier was sent back to the States. “That was the end of our being a lead crew,” McConaughy recalled. Henceforth, he flew whichever position in the formation the outfit assigned him.
McConaughy hailed from Marion, Iowa, the childhood home of Bill Reed of the storied Flying Tigers. Reed’s exploits in the China-Burma-India theater inspired Lyle, and when an AAF recruiter came to the college where McConaughy was studying, it didn’t take much of a sales pitch to get the young man to sign up. He was sworn in on the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and, nearly two and a half years later, McConaughy had amassed a combat record that his hero Bill Reed could be proud of.
On 25 April, McConaughy, now a captain, flew the number three aircraft in Dog Box, and he had to struggle just to get his Liberator to the target. No matter what the pilot did, the Liberator just couldn’t keep up with the rest of the formation, so the only option left was to lighten the plane. On McConaughy’s command, the bombardier salvoed two five hundred-pound bombs over an unpopulated area. It did the trick, and McConaughy caught up with the rest of the formation and finished the mission without incident. “We were bitter about it that night at the officers’ club,” he recalled, “because we thought the war was supposed to be ending, and yet the mission was so rough.”
In 2024, McConaughy's family honored him on his 100th birthday. One of his nephews contacted the Canadian Club whiskey company and told them of his uncle's eight-decade affinity for the brand, adding that he had packed four cases of the whiskey onboard his B-24 Liberator and flew it to Europe. As a birthday gift, the company sent him a bottle of 43- and 45-year-old whiskey and also a decanter with his WWII photo etched in glass.
Sources:
Lyle McConaughy interview with Mike Croissant, 17 June 2013.
