Jimmy Stewart and the WW2 Mission That Almost Broke Him

James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in the 1930s about to fly in his Stinson Voyager plane

 

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

My big sister, who knows what a big Jimmy Stewart fan I am, sent me the link to the following essay by David Crow, which is based on Robert Matzen’s Jimmy Stewart biography, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe.

Jimmy Stewart and the WW2 Mission That Almost Broke Him

Jimmy Stewart rarely talked about his World War II experience after returning from the service, but intense air force battles over Europe left lifelong scars. By David Crow | May 21, 2021
Den of Geek

 

The sound of the impact is deafening. More than 18,000 feet above the German city of Fürth, the World War II B-24 bomber they call Dixie Flyer has just delivered its full payload onto a German manufacturer, devastating its ability to build military aircraft and turning the airfield into a scrap heap. But even before making the full turn out of Bavaria, Dixie Flyer’s copilot and the leader of this bombing group, Maj. James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart to his fans), is nearly lifted out of his chair.

 

Capt. Stewart newly arrived at East Anglia’s Tibenham in 1943

 

That’s because a German shell (or flak) has pierced directly through the center of his B-24 Liberator. The whiplash is so intense that only harnesses keep him in his seat. Still, Stewart rises in the air; pilot Capt. Neil Johnson’s hands are briefly shaken from the controls; and for a moment, the entire plane is consumed with smoke as it violently ascends. When Stewart finally gets his bearings, he’s able to look down and see the hole in the aircraft—the edge of it is inches from his boot. Almost two feet in width, the gap offers a clear view through the plane’s fuselage and straight on to the German landscape below.

 

Maj. Stewart circa 1944 waiting for his group to return at the Station 124 control tower in East Anglia

 

There is little time to worry though. The German ground defenses and their 88mm shells are rattling the sky with more flak, and out of the corner of his eye, Stewart can see one of his planes, and his crews, also get hit. They’re not so lucky as a wing comes off and the craft falls to the earth. Meanwhile, German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters are beginning to swarm.

 

Jim Stewart and the crew of the B-24 Liberator called Lady Shamrock

 

Stewart’s 445th Bombing Group only have each other and the tightness of their formation for protection—the Eighth Air Force and RAF fighters that accompanied the mission are spread too thin across the rest of Operation Argument’s ambitious list of targets to help—and they’re a long way from home.

 

Left: 2nd Lt. James Stewart before combat missions in 1942. Right: Maj. Stewart in 1944 after months of combat.

 

It was the fifth day of the Eighth Air Force’s Big Week in February 1944, and Stewart was on his 10th combat mission in the air as either a group, wing, or squadron leader. This is what he left Hollywood for, circumvented Louis B. Mayer to participate in, and felt a lifetime of obligation to fulfill. It would be his finest moment in the air. It also would be the one that almost broke him.

 

The Mission of a Lifetime

Long before he entertained the idea of movie stardom, James Maitland Stewart felt the call of military service. In many ways, it was viewed as his birthright. His father’s father, the original James Maitland Stewart, served in the Union Army during the Civil War, participating in the valley campaigns of Shenandoah and serving under Gen. Philip Sheridan and a young officer named George Armstrong Custer. His maternal grandfather was at Gettysburg and Fredericksburg (he would die before “Jimmy” was born). And as a boy in the 1910s, the younger James Stewart would sit on his namesake’s knee, hearing eyewitness accounts about the war that preserved the United States.

 

Best friends Jim Stewart and Hank Fonda in their ladies men era in 1930s Hollywood

 

N.S.: I posted the following comment at the essay:

Nice essay.

I learned to love Jimmy Stewart, the actor, when I was eight years old, watching pictures he’d made in the late 30s with the love of his life, Margaret Sullavan, on the local Million Dollar Movie feature in New York. (Not that he and Sullavan were ever lovers. They were never both in love at the same time.) My Hungarian-born Nana never said out loud, “Jimmy Stewart was the greatest actor in the history of pictures,” but the way she said his name, left no doubt.

While I always loved his work, it took me about 50 years to come to agree with Nana. On my list of the 100 Greatest Pictures, Stewart appeared in six (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harvey, Rear Window and Vertigo.) No other star came close.

And though I learned while young that Stewart had gone in harm’s way, it wasn’t until long after Nana’s death in 1976 that I learned just what a hero he was.

Two minor style criticisms. You appear to have yielded to the times, in writing a couple of redundancies: “the German Luftwaffe air force” and “his children Peter and Jane Fonda.”