Edward Biga
U.S. Army Air Corps
A close call thousands of feet above the ground is a lasting memory for Edward Biga of Signal Mountain. A navigator aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, he flew 40 combat missions and is credited with 50, since some of those missions were so dangerous they were counted double by the Air Corps.
“I’m not sure where that particular mission was going to, but our plane got hit by flak,” Biga recalls. “We were out of our regular helmets at the time, and I was wearing a steel doughboy helmet with a leather helmet underneath. A piece of metal hit me in the helmet and knocked me out. The bombardier got me up, and the steel helmet had a hole in it and the leather one was scratched. We saw the piece of metal that hit me lying on the floor of the plane, and I still have that piece of metal today.”
Originally from Stevens Point, Wis., Biga came to Chattanooga in 1985 and is now a resident of Alexian Village. Drafted in September 1942, he transferred from an armored division to the Air Corps in response to a call for volunteers. Serving with the 463rd Bomb Group, 775th Squadron, 15th Air Force, he was based in Foggia, Italy, and took part in hazardous raids on oil fields in Ploesti, Romania, and a German fighter aircraft manufacturing facility at Regensburg, Germany.
As a navigator, Biga was responsible not only for keeping the bomber on course, but also for operating .50-caliber machine guns during combat operations. Along with his combat service, he is particularly proud of his navigational skill exhibited when his B-17 flew over 2,000 miles of water from the U.S. to Bermuda, the Azores, Marrakesh and then to Foggia.
However, one other incident remains vividly etched in his memory. “I had a tooth that needed to be pulled, and the flight surgeon grounded me until that could be done,” he says. “My crew went up with a replacement on the next mission. They were shot down, and I am the lone survivor of my crew. My father had placed me under the protection of St. Michael the Archangel, and I suppose my attitude was to always leave things up to the Lord. I just accepted whatever was going to happen.”
Biga, who returned home from the war just in time for Christmas in 1945, worked in the insurance industry. Barbara, his wife of 63 years, passed away in 2009.
Biga’s family recently visited Chattanooga and he says he enjoyed showing them the city.
Charles Coolidge
U.S. Army
A native of Signal Mountain, Charles Coolidge was 20 years old when he entered the Army in June of 1942. He recalls the gathering of draftees on the steps of the Hamilton County Courthouse one day, with politicians making speeches and military trucks pulling up on Georgia Avenue to load the young men and take them to nearby Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., for processing.
As a young sergeant with the 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, Coolidge served in Italy for 11 months, enduring the disastrous attempt by two regiments of the 36th Division to cross the Rapido River during the advance on Rome.
“We lost 6,000 men – killed, wounded or captured,” he remembers. “Somebody took a rope across the river and tied it to the trunk of a tree for us to cross. My sergeant came up to me and asked if I was going to use my shovel. I gave it to him, and that was the last time I saw either him or the shovel.”
Coolidge also participated in the invasion of Southern France on August 15, 1944, and exhibited uncommon valor during operations in the Vosges Mountains in the autumn of that year. Another battalion of the 36th Division had become cut off from the remainder of the American units in the vicinity, and Coolidge’s machine gun section, attached to Company K of 3rd Battalion, was tasked with capturing a nearby hill to facilitate the withdrawal of the “Lost Battalion.”
“I called back to my battalion headquarters and asked, ‘What do we do?’” he remembers. “They said to dig in and defend the position.”
For four days, Technical Sergeant Coolidge and his small detachment of infantry did just that. Without an officer present, Coolidge took command and directed defensive fire. For his actions, Coolidge received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest decoration for bravery in combat.
His citation reads, in part: “Many of the men were replacements recently arrived; this was their first experience under fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge, unmindful of the enemy fire delivered at close range, walked along the position, calming and encouraging his men and directing their fire. The attack was thrown back.”
Later, Coolidge single-handedly held a superior German force at bay with his rifle and hand grenades as his unit was ordered to withdraw. The young sergeant was the last to leave the area.
After the war, Coolidge worked briefly for the Veterans Administration, but was eventually lured home to work for his family business, Chattanooga Printing & Engraving, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. His wife, the former Frances Marie Seepe, passed away in 2009.
In honor of his military service, Coolidge Park, along the NorthShore, and a local stretch of highway bear his name.
Beverly Sanders
Women Airforce Service Pilots
Growing up in San Diego, Texas, Beverly Sanders was already well-acquainted with aviation when World War II broke out. She had learned to fly as a young girl and wanted to do her part for the war effort. The only problem was that officials were not very receptive. That all changed soon enough.
“What they did was sort of turn us away when we asked if we could do anything,” Sanders remembers of her first attempt to offer her services. “Then they put out a feeler for women who already had pilot licenses, and they took the ones that passed the class. I grew up outside of San Antonio, and there were lots of airfields there. The closest one to where I lived was Brooks Field, and it was part of my life at that time.”
It seems that St. Mary’s University was offering a flight training class before the war. Sanders and a friend signed up to gain their pilot licenses and were promptly told that women could not participate in the class; however, Sanders pointed out that nowhere in the information about the program did it state that women were not allowed. She made her point, and the two women finished at the top of the class – in fact, Sanders was first in the class.
The job of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was primarily to ferry combat aircraft to ports of debarkation and repair facilities in the United States. During her service, Sanders flew some of the legendary combat aircraft of World War II, including the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers, as well as the P-51 Mustang, P-47 Thunderbolt and P-38 Lightning fighters. These women pilots also carried families to various airfields to visit their loved ones in the service. They contributed tremendously to the war effort, freeing male pilots to serve in combat areas and to train new pilots.
“We were kept so busy that we were just worn out,” Sanders recalls. “I wouldn’t say that it was dangerous duty, but we had eight fatalities among the hundreds of female pilots who flew. I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything.”
After the war, Sanders trained horses for the U.S. Olympic team because she had grown up on a ranch and was familiar with the animals. She also worked later as a court assistant. Now 88, she last piloted a plane 24 years ago.
Although their service was essential, the WASPs did not receive veteran status from the U.S. government until 1977.
Jack Spittler
U.S. Navy
Jack Spittler was already in the military at the time the United States entered World War II. He had actually left the U.S. Army Air Corps and gone to Canada to ferry aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force. By the summer of 1941, the Nebraska native had joined the U.S. Navy.
“I couldn’t pass the naval aviation eye exam and went to Ohio State for an aircraft recognition class,” he remembers. “At that time it seemed like we were shooting down more of our own planes than the Japanese were.”
As a recognition officer, Spittler was assigned to a destroyer squadron in the Pacific. The new Fletcher-class destroyers, sleek and well-armed, would be his home for most of the four following years. During that time, he earned 16 battle stars for participation in 16 major engagements during the Pacific war. He participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, in October of 1944, and served aboard destroyers during operations around the islands of Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Hollandia, New Guinea and Borneo.
“The destroyer USS Nicholas was our flagship,” Spittler recalls. “It was judged to be the fightingest ship in the U.S. Navy. I was transferred from ship to ship, making sure the lookouts had the training they needed in order to identify Japanese ships and aircraft.”
“One of the scariest things I experienced was coming alongside a damaged or sinking ship and taking off survivors,” says Spittler. “I was afraid one of those ships would blow up. When I was aboard the destroyer USS Hopewell off Corregidor, we were in a double column of destroyers and we went in to pick up survivors from a minesweeper that had been hit. We lost 24 guys that day, and I got bounced around. I was at my battle station on one side of the metal box that held the signal flags, and a shell hit directly on the other side. That ‘flag bag’ saved me.”
Spittler returned to the U.S. in the summer of 1945. After leaving the Navy with the rank of lieutenant, he graduated from law school in 1948 and practiced in Columbus, Ohio, and Miami, Fla. In 2001, Jack and his wife, Mary Jane, who passed away four years ago, relocated to Chattanooga.
Spittler has served as national president of the Navy League of the United States (NLUS), and the organization’s local chapter has been named in his honor.
“I’ve lived in Nebraska, Florida, Ohio and Tennessee,” Spittler reflects, “and the people of Tennessee are the most patriotic, generous and concerned people I have ever seen.”
Shields Wilson
U.S. Navy
When Shields Wilson moved to Chattanooga in 1946, it was the beginning of a long career in the legal profession. Still practicing today, his education as an attorney was placed on hold during World War II. Law school had to wait until the war was won.
Wilson was born in Boonshill, Tenn., and was a student at Vanderbilt University when Pearl Harbor was attacked. After Officer Candidate School, he was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Navy and trained on landing craft, which are small flat-bottomed boats that could carry up to 36 infantrymen and land them directly on a beach while under fire.
As a young officer, he made the long voyage across the North Atlantic to Great Britain, his large ocean-going LST (Landing Ship, Tank) pitching in heavy seas. Once in Britain, he became part of the build-up for the D-Day landings, which commenced on June 6, 1944. The assault on the beaches in Normandy would signal the beginning of the final campaign in the West against Nazi Germany.
Responsible for eight of the small landing craft, called LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle Personnel), Wilson remembers the organized chaos of D-Day morning. “We were off one of the British beaches, either Gold or Juno,” he recalls, “and we were to get instructions to load troops and look for a ship stationed off the shore with three lights either to port or starboard. That ship never got to where it was supposed to be.”
Each LCVP had a crew of four American sailors, and the morning was spent taking British, Canadian and Scottish troops to shore. The landing location was reckoned with as much accuracy as possible since the directional ship had failed to take up its proper station.
“We had bombarded the shoreline, but everything on the German side appeared to be intact,” Wilson remembers. “I could see the beach obstacles, and they looked like jacks with five or six big steel beams welded together with a mine on top of each one. Fire was coming from pillboxes on the shore, particularly from 88mm guns. We got shells splashing all around, and a number of our boats were sunk.”
Following the morning action, Wilson and his fellow sailors evacuated wounded soldiers to a waiting hospital ship. “I remember looking at these young guys,” he says. “Their eyes were blank, and they were trying to read what you thought about their condition – that is an image I will always remember.”
After graduating from law school and following a short period of employment with the Tennessee Department of Revenue, Wilson was approached by the late Raymond Witt and invited to relocate from Nashville to Chattanooga. Since 1952, he and his wife, Frances, herself a veteran of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services), the Navy’s female corps, have lived in Chattanooga.