Veterans share history of Lend-Lease

The night before Rex Tanberg was set to speak at the Warbirds Over the Falls event, he found some notes that his father had written while he was assigned to the 7th Ferrying Group at Gore Hill.

Tanberg, former commander of the 120th Fighter Wing and a pilot, said during Saturday’s ceremony that in his father’s notes he found stories he hadn’t known before.

His father had arrived in Great Falls 73 years earlier, in a convoy as the troops were setting up the base on Gore Hill.

Tanberg’s father, also named Rex, had enlisted in the Army Air Corps in October 1941.

Once in Great Falls, he became part of the Lend-Lease program that sent nearly 8,000 aircraft from the U.S. to the Soviet Union to help them defeat Nazi Germany.

Great Falls was the staging area for that program, with members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots bringing planes direct from manufacturers to Great Falls. From here, male military pilots would ferry through Canada and Alaska to meet Soviet pilots in Fairbanks. The Soviet pilots were waiting there to deliver the planes to the battlefront.

The elder Tanberg was a maintenance airmen and personally helped ferry 27 aircraft to Alaska during Lend-Lease.

He also helped ferry aircraft across Europe, was a chief flight engineer in India and flew missions over the Himalaya Mountains in China, Burma and India. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with four Battle Stars while flying on 99 missions and 743 flying hours.

After the war, he joined the Montana Air National Guard and retired as a colonel with more than 36 years of service.

The younger Tanberg said that many of the ferry pilots were flying with less than 40 hours of flying time and weren’t instrument rated, so they flew in groups, following a rated pilot.

During the 1940s, pilots used what’s known as the four-course range navigation. If they were too far on one side of the flight path, they’d hear Morse code for A, if they were on the other side of the line, they’d hear Morse code for N, and if they were on course, they’d hear an even tone, according to Jeff Geer, founder of Bravo 369 Flight Foundation.

Bravo 369 is a nonprofit that is tracing the Alaska to Siberia route from Lend-Lease and making a documentary about the program and those involved.

Tanberg said his father wrote of a day that was 72 below zero and some troops went to the hospital for frostbite but one died of frozen lungs when he tried to run from the Civic Center to the hospital.

“There’s a lot of history here,” Tanberg said. “Most of them gave everything they had, some gave their lives, to help the U.S. win the war.”

It’s those kinds of stories that Bravo 369 is looking for in their documentary. They’ve found some pilots and others who worked for 7th Ferrying Group, but are looking for more.

“We’re always uncovering new stories,” said Craig Lang, director of Bravo 369.

The project is also bridging some gaps between the U.S. and Russia.

The Bravo 369 crew is flying T-6s with a crew from RUSAVIA, a Russian aviation company, in their C-47s along the Lend-Lease route through Canada, to Alaska and then traveling to Moscow for a major airshow there in August where the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe will be commemorated.

“This project is the power of an idea, the power of a dream,” Geer said.

Sergey Baranov, president of RUSAVIA, said the crews from Russia, the U.S. and Canada were now a “united team.”

“It’s a great collaboration,” Baranov said. “Even in these uneasy times.”

Burt Talcott was a Stanford University graduate that became a B-24 pilot.

When he was shot down over Austria, he had to escape out of the top of the plane because there was a fire below, he said. The 95-year-old believes he’s the only one to have survived such an escape.

“I bailed out of the top hatch. It was almost impossible to get out of there. It was the only means of escape because the plane was on fire,” he said. “I was one of those pilots with more take-offs than landings.”

Talcott is the uncle of Brad Talcott, a local contractor and developer, and was in town for the Warbirds event. He was honored during Saturday’s ceremony at the airport.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here,” he said.

After escaping from his downed B-24, he spent 13 months as a German prisoner of war. During that time he lost 50 pounds and days were passed with “boredom and anxiety.”

After the war, the Billings native became a lawyer and was later elected to represent California in the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented one district for 12 years and another district for two years, before losing his seat to Leon Panetta, who later became the CIA director and Secretary of Defense.

Talcott never flew with Lend-Lease, but said it was interesting to talk to the other veterans at the ceremony who had.

“I was just one in the military, but in those days, everybody pitched in,” he said. “Everybody was pulling together a war response for the country.”

As for a U.S. group partnering with the Russians on the project, Talcott said “it could be an invitation for better relatiosn with our two countries, which is greatly needed.”

Mark Milkovich was assigned to the Air Corps/Army Air Forces Ferrying Command and was stationed at Galena Air Base. He worked in finance, so he was the one handling the money for the young ferrying pilots.

While there, he got to know the pilots and crews passing through and saw the Soviet crews, but couldn’t communicate with them because he didn’t know the language.

A translator asked Milkovich if he’d like to fly to Russia with them on a mission, but he said that with his Yugoslavian name, he was worried he’d be kept in Russia.

While stationed at Galena, the Yukon River flooded and the living quarters were flooded to the ceiling and the hangar had 13 feet of water, he said. He and other troops lived on top of the hangar for four days without food or water and when ice chunks starting bashing up against the hangar, Milkovich convinced people to open the doors so the ice could flow through.

“We were fearful it would tip over,” he said.

He turned 93 on Sunday and he had a happy story about one of the Lend-Lease pilots.

“I introduced a pilot to a young lady, and they got married,” he said.

The Bravo 369 and RUSAVIA crews are scheduled to depart Great Falls for Canada early Monday morning, weather permitting.