Clark Gable Joins the Group
By late December 1942, the 351st Bomb Group had settled into Biggs Field on the edge of El Paso, Texas, in the shadow of the Franklin Mountains. Colonel Hatcher was pushing the group hard — formation flights, night practice missions, anything to build proficiency before the Atlantic crossing. The group would be in England by spring; they needed to be ready.
In the last week of December, a celebrity arrived.
"Gable joined us at Biggs during the last week of Dec. Willie flew out to L.A. and brought him back."
Clark Gable — Oscar-winning star of It Happened One Night and, already, the biggest name in Hollywood — had enlisted after the death of his wife, Carole Lombard, in a January 1942 plane crash. He was determined to fly combat, not to sit out the war making training films. Hatcher's 351st was his path to the front.
At Biggs Field in December 1942, Gable was learning to be an aerial gunner. He lived with the officers, ate in the mess, and spent New Year's Eve in the Officers Club like everyone else.
The Gas Mask
"My sharpest memory of that time was New Years Eve. Gable and I, along with a lot of others, were in the Officers Club making merry. I was scheduled to fly at midnight to give a bombardier a go at a nighttime target. I was well into getting up to bombing altitude when I discovered that I had brought my gas mask along instead of the oxygen mask. We finished the mission but I didn't get above 16,000 feet. And I didn't get a snoot full again when I had a flight scheduled. Fortunately for me, no word of this got out."
The practical consequence of flying a B-17 without an oxygen mask was simple: you could not safely climb above roughly 12,000–14,000 feet. Above that altitude, hypoxia sets in within minutes. Bob got his bombardier some target practice, but not at combat altitude. The mission was technically completed; no one was hurt. But it was not the night's finest performance.
"Fortunately for me, no word of this got out" — until sixty years later, when Bob told his grandchildren.
Clark Gable and the 351st — Gable flew five combat missions with the 351st Bomb Group over Europe in 1943, serving as an aerial gunner and observer. He was promoted to Major and awarded the Air Medal. The film footage he shot over Europe was never released publicly, reportedly at the request of the War Department. He was present at Polebrook during Bob's entire early combat period.
A Lesson Learned
Bob's self-correction — "I didn't get a snoot full again when I had a flight scheduled" — is characteristic of how he processed his own mistakes. No drama, no guilt, just a clear-eyed decision to not repeat it. He wasn't the first military aviator to make a poor judgment call the night before a flight, and he wouldn't be the last. He simply stopped doing it.
The group moved on from Biggs to Pueblo, Colorado, in late February 1943, then across the Atlantic to England in the spring. The formation flying, the night practice missions, the New Year's Eve gas mask incident — all of it had been preparation for what came next.
From the Flight Records
From the recordsThe January 1943 Form 5 covers the Biggs Field period. Bob's December 31, 1942 flight is almost certainly recorded in that form — the night training sortie he flew while the Officers Club party continued without him.
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