Joe Shannon is a man whose head is in the clouds. Every chance he gets, the 82-year-old World War II veteran climbs in the cockpit of his Cessna 140, vintage1946, and heads for the wild, blue yonder.
Shannon has been flying for 64 years, having obtained his pilot's license in 1940 as a senior at Fairfield High School. His interest in flying was sparked at the age of 6, when his father took him to Roberts Field, the original Birmingham airport, to see Charles Lindbergh, who was touring the country.
"I spent a lot of time around the airport," Shannon said. "I tried to help the mechanics by doing things like washing dirty parts."
Joe donated his 1941 Culver Cadet to the
Southern Museum of Flight but still flies
his Cessna140 every weekend.
Photo special to Alabama Aviator
Shannon on the tail of a P-38 he flew as part
of the 97th Fighter SQDN and 82nd Fighter
Group in North Africa during 1943.
Photo special to Alabama Aviator
Shannon still spends a lot of time around airports. In addition to flying every weekend, he is an active member of the Birmingham Aero Club, a group of aviation enthusiasts, and has served as a director of the Southern Museum of Flight, where a plaque with his name and likeness is on the wall of the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame.
Even as a teenage Shannon was learning to fly in a J-3 Cub, the skies in Europe and the Far East were darkening under the threat of war. He was soon caught up in the winds.
"I joined the National Guard while I was still in high school," Shannon said. "More than a year before Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt activated most of the Guard. I had already been accepted to (military) pilot's training in December, 1941."
With the attack on American forces in Hawaii, the United States was now involved in the world war. Shannon started flight school at Maxwell Field in Montgomery in January and became a pilot in the Army Air Corps as a noncommissioned officer in October. A month later, he shipped out to England to learn to fly the British Spitfire, the aircraft that staved off the Nazis in the Battle of Britain.
The British were importing pilots because "they were building Spitfires faster than they could train pilots," Shannon explained.
But before he was combat-qualified in the Spitfire, Shannon was reassigned to North Africa, where he flew the P-38 fighter plane, " Fork-Tailed Devil" beloved of American pilots in World War II.
"The P-38 was fast, powerful and had two engines," Shannon said. "I was lucky to fly an airplane with a distinctive profile. We just shot at anything that wasn't a P-38."
Initially Shannon's unit was tasked with escorting bombers seeking targets in the Mediterranean.
"We escorted bombers on sea sweeps to stop shipping to Rommel's forces," Shannon said. "Rommel was moving from east to west, primarily opposed by the British 8th Army."
Later, Shannon flew in support of the invasion of Italy. Shannon flew 50 combat missions in the P-38, and earned the Air Medal with clusters and a Distinguished Flying Cross. He also received a battlefield promotion, becoming a commissioned officer.
During his time in the Mediterranean theater of operations, Shannon had the sorts of experiences that are exciting in movies, such as losing an engine in a fight with a German F-W 190, spinning to earth about 5,000 feet before pulling out and long flight over enemy territory, staying low to avoid enemy aircraft, to return to base. He also experienced the frightful destruction of war.
"I lost all my tentmates," Shannon said. "In one day we lost 22 airplanes."
After several months stateside, Shannon was given a different mission: flying B-25s over the Gobi Desert in China and the Indian Ocean in search of atmospheric data instead of enemy targets.
"It was the only weather reconnaissance squadron," Shannon said. "We traced weather systems for the troops in the Pacific. We would go where there were no reporting stations and take measurements. When forces were getting ready for a major invasion of an island, oceanographers flew with us and analyzed the information."
That tour lasted about eight months and Shannon returned to the States to train pilots until the war's end.
Shannon returned to Birmingham to be part of the initial cadre forming the post-war National Guard. He held a number of positions, including commanding a tactical squadron, but most of his career involved the training of pilots. Shannon was called to active duty during the Berlin Crisis in 1948, and again during the Korean Conflict, flying B-26s.
Shannon's experience with the B-26 medium bomber was the catalyst for his participation in one of the most famous incidents of the Cold War. In December 1960, Shannon was recruited by the CIA to train Cuban exiles to fly the B-26.
"I had more experience (with the B-26) than anybody in the Air Force," Shannon said. "The Alabama Air National Guard was one of the last units to operate that airplane. We had a reservoir of people qualified to train the Cubans to fly it."
The Kennedy administration had given a green light to a plan to send a small invasion force, composed of Cubans who had fled the island after Castro's takeover, to Cuba. Supporting the invaders would be B-26 bombers that had been taken out of mothballs in Arizona.
Shannon and his unit's operations officer went to Guatemala to conduct the training.
"The pilots came from various places in the world," Shannon said. "When word (of the mission) came through their underground, they found their way to the training camps. Most were former airline pilots, and one had been Castro's personal pilot."
On April 15,1961, bombers attacked Cuban air bases and two days later the invasion began.
"We were based in Nicaragua for support of the invasion," Shannon said. "It was seven hours round trip. The Cubans flew two missions a day, so that after three days they were pretty much exhausted."
After three days, it was clear as well that the invasion had failed and hundreds of men were doomed to capture or death.
"Four of us (Americans) volunteered to fly (a mission) to let the poor fellows on the beach know they weren't forgotten," Shannon said. "We knew it was over."
This quixotic mission was as ill fated as the invasion. Two of the four planes were shot down.
"My operations officer was flying my wing," Shannon said. "He crashed into the water. The other plane managed to land and the pilot was executed."
For Shannon, the dispiriting part of the experience was the knowledge that politics had trumped military considerations in the plans for the operation, essentially ensuring its failure.
"We were pretty bitter," Shannon said. "Our government let the Cubans down."
Shannon said that the initial plan called for the invaders to land at Trinidad-Casilda, about 90 miles east of the Bay of Pigs.
"It had a good harbor and a good airfield," he said. "(That area) was a hotbed of anti-Castro activity and there were 6,000 political prisoners who were to be liberated and equipped. The invasion was to be the nucleus of an uprising. (The invading force of) 1,200 Cubans couldn't overthrow Castro."
The invasion site was changed to the less favorable one at the Bay of Pigs in order to obscure the plan's American origins.
"The White House thought (the original plan) was too much like World War II," Shannon said. "Kennedy didn't want it to look like an American operation."
The new invasion site was swampy and the invaders had trained for fighting in the mountainous area around the original site.
"There they if things went sour, they could disappear and join the (anti-Castro) guerrillas in the mountains," Shannon said.
The change in site was not the only alteration to the military strategy that weakened prospects for success.
"We knew we had to destroy Castro's air force to succeed," Shannon said. "We planned (as bomber force of) 16 planes. The White House reduced that to eight at dawn, followed by eight at dusk to follow up. Then they canceled the follow-up mission.
"(The invasion plan) was a compromise between political and military considerations," Shannon said. "The invasion was doomed before anyone set foot on Cuba. It was a disaster because of political decisions."
Shannon retired from the Air Force in 1972 and began a new career as a corporate pilot. He finally retired altogether when he realized that work interfered with his travels, much of which involves flying in air shows.
"I've been to the U.K. nine times since retirement and I'm going again in June," he said. "Half of those trips are to air shows. I went for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. We had a 168-airplane flyover of Buckingham Palace."
Shannon was inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 1999.
Copyright: Reprint permission from the Over The Mountain Journal Nov 2004- Maury Wald, Publisher
