Person:Milton Groban (1)

Milton Groban was born December 20, 1916 in Joliet. lllinois. His father taught him how to swim by throwing him into water over his head in a nearby quarry. When Milton was eight, the family left Joliet and moved to Lansing, Michigan. They lived on a lake. Milton and his brother Sidney used to row to school and then would catch fish on their way home. He would play baseball with his bare hands. When he asked his father for a baseball glove, his father thought it was a great extravagance. Later the family moved to Chicago. The Groban family moved frequently. When he was eight or nine, he began selling magazines: the Saturday Evening Post or Colliers. He would also sell vegetables in his neighborhood and give money to his parents. When he was 10 or 11 he began buying and reselling eggs. He and a friend Irvin Reifuss would buy 30 dozen eggs from a market at 74th and Colfax. candle them. and resell them. Milton was bar mitzvahed when he was thirteen. He thought Hebrew school where teaching was done by rote was a waste of time. He much preferred going to a library on the south side of Chicago. In high school he was editor of the Bowen Arrow. He would often pass the time by playing basketball with his friends at the S. Chicago YMCA. Milton attended Wilson Junior College for two years and then went to Kent Law School. There he became active in the Socialist Workers Party-a Trotskyite organization. He graduated from law school in July 1940. To make ends meet. he also sold dental supplies. He had a low draft number, and in April 1941 he was drafted--after three attempts to join the military. Adolph Hitler. the German Nazi leader, was extending his reach. "We felt historical pressure. We felt Hitler could win." said Milton. "Hitler could not be tolerated by a free people." he said. Milton went through basic training as a medic, but because he was a lawyer, he became part of the Army legal corps in Rockford, Illinois. He was still trying to get into the Air Force. He went to a Jewish doctor named Goldberg who told him. "Your nose is busted and you’ve got a deviated septum." "But I’m a Jewish boy, and I want to kill Hitler." Milt said. So Goldberg passed him through the physical. He was transferred to Fort Custer with the aviation cadets. In the spring of 1942 he was sent to Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, for preflight training. His wages went up from $21 to $75 a month a month as an aviation cadet. Milt was first classified as a pilot, but developed yellow fever from a contaminated batch of yellow fever vaccine. That affected his depth perception and he washed out of pilot school. He married Elinor Mendelsohn while he was at Ellington Field. The rabbi first made him sign a get, a divorce under Jewish law so if he was missing in action, his wife could remarry. He went to San Marcos for more training and then to Amarillo, Texas. for crew training. Then he was shipped to Norfolk, Virginia, en route to the war. In September 1943, he left for Africa first heading to Casblanca, Morocco, and then to an airbase in Tunisia. From Tunisia, he flew eight missions bombing Italy, southern France, the Ploesti oil fields in Romania and also Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria. On the first seven missions, nothing happened. But on the eighth mission the Germans counterattacked, and shot down the lead plane, Suddenly the war became much more real. After these eight missions. he was one of twelve guys selected to return to the U.S. to learn a new technology called radar which had become necessary because the Germans were smoking up targets, After training in Homestead. Florida. he flew back to the war taking a route that included Trinidad, British Guiana, Senegal, Tunisia and then to his squadron in Italy. Milt worked with his crew to devise a technique that combined radar navigation with visual navigation-a technique that they used successfully to bomb a huge synthetic oil refinery in Brux, Czechoslovakia. They had hit the tower--it was 90% destroyed. The news went all over the Air Force that coordination between visual navigation and radar was effective. They lost 11 aircraft one day. Their colonel did not get radio signal. Of 21 groups, 20 turned back but one kept going. They were forced down to 17000 feet. As they came into Budapest, they were jumped by fighters. They were getting flak at the same time they were facing fighters. Their left wheel and wings were riddled. One man was killed and five were wounded. On return the damaged plane was sent to a special field to land. Milt flew 38 missions out of Podgio. He and Hector McPherson were picked to train other navigators. Milt wrote the book on how to coordinate visual navigation and radar--for which Gen. Twining got the Legion of Honor. Milt got the bronze star, a lesser award. Assigned to 15th Army Air Force headquarters, Milt would help pick targets to bomb. They had intelligence reports every ; Upon learning that Hitler would be in his Twining said, "No, you can't do that. We've decided we want to try Hitler as a war criminal." Later Milt learned that Hitler was not in Saltzburg. Headquarters for the 15th was the nerve cener for 80,000 men, 21 bomb groups. They could put 1100 bombers over one place. Milt flew the first mission with night recon. They made simulated runs over Pilsen and Nuremburg. He spent 7 months in headquarters--all very interesting. It was the center of operations in the south of Europe. Near the end of the war, Milt's group had trouble with the Russians when they wanted to go to Ploesti to take pictures, but the Russians objected. The Russians also objected when Milt and his crew of five others tried to retrieve a damaged plane in Yugoslavia. The Russians--who numbered 200--would not let them fly the plane back.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Find A Grave
   42497754, 28 Sep 2009.

   Spouse: Elinor L Mendelsohn