Former Army flyer was part of important WWII history

  • Published
  • By Nick Stubbs
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MacDill AFB, Fla. --  With trademark corn-cob straight pipe clamped in his teeth, Gen. Douglas MacArthur's profile remains one of the enduring images of WWII history, and one Capt. JR "Bob" Normile remembers distinctly as a part of his personal history.
 
Mr. Normile, who will turn 91 Monday, served with Gen. MacArthur, as an Army Air Corps pilot and member of the general's flying staff. 

"Those were some times," said Mr. Normile, who was at MacDill Saturday to see his son, Michael promoted to Navy captain at a ceremony held at the Bayshore Club. 

Also honored for his service at the end of the ceremony, Mr. Normile joked to the crowd that he asked his son if he thought dad would have been able to achieve the equivalent rank of Navy captain (colonel) had he decided to remain in the service after the war. 

"He said I would if I had lived," Mr. Normile quipped. He was referring to his five aircraft engine failures, including one crash landing that easily could have killed him. 

"I flew a lot of different planes," Mr. Normile said in an interview after the ceremony, "but I
made a mistake when I was in a borrowed mosquito spraying type plane (single-engine L-5) and I let a guy who had just gotten out of a mental institution get in the back seat." 

They survived the crash on a small island off New Guinea, where as luck would have it his old division, the IL NG33rd was fighting the Japanese. Captain Normile's good fortune helped him survive the other flying incidents, which made it possible to go on and play a role in history, when he flew General MacArthur from the Philippines to attend the surrender of Japan. After landing in Japan, Captain Normile then drove the staff car carrying General Krueger, 6th Army commander, and General Jonathan Wainwright, a
senior field commander under General MacArthur, to the surrender signing. 

"I'm glad I was part of something so memorable," said Mr. Normile, who is humble about his military career, but gushes a little when he talks about flying. 

"I wanted to become a pilot so bad, I challenged my religion and said prayers every day,"
he recalled. His prayers were answered. 

Captain Normile ended up flying everything from PT-22 Ryan trainers to the C-46, C-47, C-54, B-17, B-24s and B-25s. He logged 1244 hours of flight time, 79 of those on combat missions in the Asiatic-Pacific theatre. 

As a pilot, he got to see a good deal of the world, flying the Pacific Ocean six times. He recalls General MacArthur as "aloof," and hard to get close to. 

"I think I only got to see him up close three times," said Mr. Normile. "But even his top officers didn't get to see him much; that's just the way he was." 

Despite being at a nerve center of the war in the Pacific, Mr. Normile said a lot of his time in the military was "pretty boring," which he said is the nature of being on a flying staff that spent most of the time on standby. 

"My only regret was that I never got a college education," Mr. Normile said. "I would tell any young military person today to get that degree."