Nick Clooney Interview
In the Company of Heroes · 1530 WSAI Cincinnati · July 11, 2002
Nick Clooney — Cincinnati broadcaster, journalist, and father of actor George Clooney — conducted this interview with General Burns in July 2002 for his WWII veteran series In the Company of Heroes on 1530 WSAI. Bob was 85 years old, two years before his death. The recording is one of the most complete first-person accounts of his career that exists.
The longform telephone interview is the primary historical document: Clooney and Burns work through the full arc of Bob's flying career with exceptional depth. The produced broadcast feature that follows is a four-minute compressed version, shaped for radio airtime, with Clooney's narration and selected excerpts. Notably, Clooney also discusses his own family's experience during WWII, making this a two-voice document as much as a standard oral history.
- Flying Cadet Program, 1938–1939 — why he joined, what the pay was
- Canal Zone and Guatemala, 1940–1942 — pre-war patrol assignments
- Pearl Harbor — where he was, the immediate aftermath
- Forming the 351st Bomb Group — Pueblo CO, the Atlantic crossing
- Polebrook, England — the 8th Air Force, daylight precision bombing, the cost
- Clark Gable — serving together at Polebrook, the Nantes mission
- The 10 Horsepower story
- Career reflections — what the experience meant, what he carried
- Nick Clooney's own family's experience in WWII
Part 1 — Longform Interview
47:00Part 2 — Produced Broadcast Feature
4:17The edited version as broadcast on 1530 WSAI. Nick Clooney narrates; Bob's voice is drawn from the longform interview above. Opens with Clooney's introduction of Bob as being from Ecru, Mississippi.