Booting bombs made Spokanite a hero

The B-17’s bomb racks freeze up at the worst possible moment – while nearing a bombing run over Nazi Germany’s highly industrialized Ruhr Valley.

The call goes out for someone to get back to the bombs pronto and get them out of the plane.

A 21-year-old radio operator/ waist gunner volunteers. With flak chewing up the airplane, the man makes his way to the jammed racks and kicks out the bombs.

But while finishing the job a malfunction cuts off his oxygen supply. The gunner blacks out. He slumps forward. The gunner’s flight jacket catches on a piece of the plane, sparing him from following the payload down onto the Third Reich.

This sounds like a flight of fancy from some old cornball war movie, right?

Spokane’s Mary Ellen Tee swears it’s all true.

That young bomb-booter was her late-husband – Winfred L. “Don” Tee.

He was Technical Sergeant Tee during World War II. Tee was one of thousands of young Americans who took part in perilous daylight bombing runs over Europe.

They flew aptly named Flying Fortresses. Many of them never made it back.

Tee, who served aboard the Piccadilly Lilly II, completed 25 missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters.

“I’m so proud of him,” says Mary Ellen, 83, whose marriage to Tee lasted 58 years. “He was just the greatest.”

Tee died last August from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83.

“I told everybody he went AWOL,” she adds. “He had to have a break.’

I wish I could have talked to him. Unfortunately, Tee was gone by the time I learned of his amazing story.

A reader sent me a 60-year-old newspaper account about Tee’s heroics. The headline was a grabber: “Sergeant Tee Kicks Bombs Out of Rack and They Fall Dead Over German Target.”

This week I got lucky. After months of trying I finally caught up with Mary Ellen, who was more than happy to tell me about her man.

Warriors like Tee routinely risked their hide. On one particular day in 1944, for example, 60 American bombers were lost. “I saw German fighters going down like flies and blowing up in the air,” Tee said in the news story. “I also saw a lot of friends going down that day.”

The Ruhr Valley was so dangerous it was dubbed “Flak-Happy Valley.”

Mary Ellen says a hole was torn in her husband’s flight jacket when he fell forward after releasing the bombs. She gave the prized possession to a grandson.

Tee regained consciousness to learn that he had successfully hit the target – a ball bearing factory.

With the B-17’s “oxygen system shot out,” the news story states that the Piccadilly Lilly II limped back to England with 270 flak holes in it.

Tee was honorably discharged from the Army Air Corps in the fall of 1945. He returned to the Spokane area where he met Mary Ellen. They took up farming in Latah and raised three kids – Ron, Mary Beth and Sally.

Like many veterans, Tee was humble about his wartime exploits. But the emotions weren’t too far from the surface.

Mary Ellen remembers talking her husband into seeing “Twelve O’Clock High.” The 1949 war film actually used the same B-17 Tee had flown in, renaming it the “Piccadilly Lilly.”

The movie had barely begun when Tee got up. He told his wife “I can’t handle it” and left. The memories were too fresh.

As the years passed, however, Tee grew more comfortable with his service.

But the story he told and retold was not of bombs or battles. It was about the day he volunteered to take fresh oranges to a London orphanage.

“Don was such a sweetheart,” says Mary Ellen. “I picked a good one.”