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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home JUNE 3, 2021 | The Jewish Home
A Humble Hero Captain Harold Musikoff Speaks About His Experience Bombing Nazi Germany BY SUSAN SCHWAMM
Captain Musikoff, thank you for sharing your experience with us. Can you give us a little background on your life before the war? I was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1924. I will be 97 in July. I was probably around three years old when my parents moved to Brooklyn, NY. I think my father’s brother had a job for him, and that’s why we moved. I still had relatives in Ohio, though, and I went back a number of times. I lived in a kosher home when I was growing up. My mother was kosher. Unfortunately, she passed away when I was about 14. I was just about ready to start high school when she died. My mother’s sister lived across the street from us in Brooklyn. I spent most of my time at my aunt to begin with because she had children and it was a more lively house. With my father working long hours, I went to live there after my mother died. I graduated high school when I was 18. When a young man was 18 at the time – in 1942 – he had to regis-
ter for the draft. I didn’t register for the draft because I enlisted in a program that was part of the Army Air Corps. The Air Force wasn’t in existence until after World War II, and so the Air Corps was a branch of the army. In that Air Corps, there was a program called The Aviation Cadet Program. I enlisted in that. What made you decide to enlist in the Air Corps? My cousin had gone through that program before. He was four years older than me. When he went through, you had to have two years of college before you went. But of course, when the war was on, they needed people, and so they accepted high school graduates. The Aviation Cadet Program was, I’d say, about 16 months. The first eight months was just classes. Initially, you went into what they call basic training. Everybody that goes into the military has to go through basic training. That was about four weeks. That’s to introduce somebody to the military, and everybody gets a uniform so everybody looks
the same. You get a lot of vaccines, too. You get what you are supposed to have in the United States. And of course, at that time, they didn’t know if you were going to go to Europe or the Pacific, so you got shots for both. You got all those shots in one day. Some boys fainted, but they expected that. I guess there are people who can’t stand needles. You also have to have on your record that you shoot guns. There were two kinds of rifles. There was a handheld machine gun on a tripod and a pistol. And you have to throw a hand grenade. And so we did all that. What were your feelings when you were trying out that gun that first time? Yeah, well, I had never [held one before]. One of the things that was interesting is, I couldn’t hit anything with a gun. Luckily, I was not in a part of the army where I had to use a gun. You’re not a sharpshooter. Yes. After that, I went to Syracuse University for about four months tak-
ing classes, many that pertained to flying, like topography, map reading, celestial navigation, meteorology, communications, and other things. In addition, we learned about why we were in the war to begin with, the history of Germany going back and Japan going back and the history of many other countries. And of course, you had to exercise every morning, and every Sunday was a parade. You had to learn to march in unison, and you learned military protocol, like saluting officers. After that, I went to a base in Nashville, Tennessee, that was a classification center. You went through a battery of written tests, physical tests, and dexterity tests to determine if you were going to be on the program for a pilot or a bombardier or a navigator. One of the most stringent part of the physical tests is for your eyes. For a pilot, they’re not only concerned with 20/20 vision, but also about your peripheral vision and depth perception. They’re very strict. And all through training, they would al-
