Life and Career of Brigadier General James Kemp McLaughlin.

James Kemp McLaughlin was all of 23 years of age 

when he flew his first combat mission during World War II.

McLaughlin, a B-17 co-pilot, and his fellow crew members had just bombed an airfield in Lille, France, when they encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire and took a direct hit to the number two fuel tank in their left wing. While flames streamed well beyond the tail of the plane, another burst sent shrapnel through the centre of the aircraft, wounding the radio operator.

The waist gunner bailed out. Unnerved, the pilot left the cockpit, strapped on a parachute, and camped out on the escape hatch, ready to jump before the plane exploded. It was up to Second Lieutenant McLaughlin to return the plane and its crew to safety at the base, Bovingdon Aerodrome north of London, England. This he managed to do while under heavy fire from German aircraft.

The campaign over France that cool morning in October 1942 was a prelude to further dangers the recent West Virginia University graduate would face while flying with the U.S. 8^th Air Force as part of the Allied effort to break the Axis grip on Europe.

With the type of resolve and fortitude that ultimately earned McLaughlin and his peers their nation’s respect as “The Greatest Generation,” McLaughlin would survive the war and go on to organise the West Virginia Air National Guard, raise a family, and retire from the service as a brigadier general.

If you believe in signs and omens, it might seem that Kemp McLaughlin was destined for a military career. The boy who would become a World War II bomber pilot was born on December 7^th, 1918, in Braxton County. December 7^th a date that, after 1941, would forever be etched in American consciousness.

McLaughlin’s childhood was spent in rural surroundings. His parents, James and Almira McLaughlin, owned farms in Braxton, Berkeley, Kanawha, and Putnam Counties. Kemp grew up in Charleston, but spent his formative years working on all of the family’s farms.

“My father was a farmer his whole life and served as agricultural commissioner from 1932 until his death in 1955,” McLaughlin recalled.

“I grew up in the agricultural business through high school. I still have the farm in Berkeley County.”

In 1937, McLaughlin left the farm for the city of Morgantown to attend WVU. “It was a small school back then, between 3,000 and 3,500 students, and I knew just about everybody there,” he said. “You could almost throw a rock across the campus, it was so small. But it was a very enjoyable place-and inexpensive, with tuition at $35 a semester.”

“There were no parking problems on the campus,” he added. “I was a member of Beta Theta Pi, and only one member had a car. Comuntzis’ and a place called The Rendezvous were the big meeting places back then.”

WVU’s sports teams posted winning seasons during McLaughlin’s four years in Morgantown. The football team went to the Sun Bowl in 1937, and the basketball and boxing teams made good names for themselves as well, he said.

McLaughlin graduated from WVU in 1941 with a bachelor’s degree in history.

“University life was very good,” he said. “I have no complaint about that part of my life at all.”

McLaughlin considered joining the military halfway through college, when an Army Air Corps testing team visited the WVU campus in April 1938. McLaughlin took the test and passed, but he wasn’t yet 21 years old and his parents refused to sign the necessary papers allowing him to join the service.
Consequently, he remained at WVU, completing the primary and advanced phases of the College Pilot Training Program offered at the school before graduating. He then took and passed the Army Air Corps test a second time and began training in the fall of 1941.

For training, which lasted seven months, McLaughlin was stationed at Maxwell Army Air Corps Field in Alabama and the Army Air Corps training schools in Greenville and Columbus, Mississippi.

While in Greenville, he celebrated his 23^rd birthday with friends in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his girlfriend was attending the University of Arkansas. The base operated only five days a week, and cadets could sneak out through a back fence and go to town on weekends. When the AWOL Cadet McLaughlin returned to the barracks from his birthday visit to Arkansas, he learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour. After December 7^th, 1941, all military bases began operating 24/7.

McLaughlin arrived in England as a second lieutenant and co-pilot in the Mighty Eighth’s 92^nd Bombardment Group, later nicknamed “Fame’s Favoured Few.”

The crews flew the B-17 bomber, called the Flying Fortress. The planes were 100 feet long and had a 98-foot wingspan; they were painted in camouflage, with the exception of the undersides, which were light grey to blend in with the sky. Each plane accommodated a crew of 10: pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, flight engineer/top turret gunner, belly turret gunner, two waist gunners, tail gunner, and radio operator/gunner.

“The B-17 was the first bomber we ever had with so many guns,” McLaughlin recalled. “It was very well built. You could shoot it full of holes, and it would still fly as long as you didn’t hit a fuel line.”

The plane’s durability was critical for the success and survival of the 92^nd Bomb Group, which would participate in some of the war’s most dangerous air battles.

Captain McLaughlin...(back row 3rd from left) and his crew in 1943

McLaughlin himself would have several near-death experiences:

He piloted the mission command plane during the second raid on Germany’s primary ball-bearing factory in Schweinfurt. Allied planes were under constant attack for six hours from enemy air and ground fire during the October 14^th, 1943, raid, which military historians have called the greatest air battle of the war. The Mighty Eighth destroyed 70 percent of German ball-bearing production, but lost 25 percent of its bombers.

McLaughlin was deputy air commander on a bombing raid in Norway in November 1943 when his plane lost oil pressure in the number three engine, causing the engine to overheat. The crew carried out the raid despite the mechanical problem. On its way back to England, the B-17 came under attack from an enemy plane and could not return fire because the crew had thrown all the guns overboard to lighten the load. The overheating engine caught fire as the plane landed at an airfield in England. McLaughlin called this his ‘Longest Day.’

Commanders and Staff of the 92nd Bomb Group October 1944

Major James Kemp McLaughlin …4th from the left.

McLaughlin was air commander on a bombing raid during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The Allies had decimated German air power by this time, but their planes unexpectedly encountered fire from enemy tanks. A piece of shrapnel went through the side of McLaughlin’s plane and pierced his metal seat. He was uninjured.

“I had flown about 40 missions all over the continent by this time without being hit, and here, on what I would call a ‘Milk Run,’ I’d nearly bought the farm,” he said. Not all of McLaughlin’s missions were fraught with peril, though. He spent almost five months ferrying high-ranking military officials around Gibraltar and North Africa in a B-17 outfitted with lounge chairs, a folding table, and windows in the bomb bay. The one close call during this period came on the return trip to England. The plane ran low on fuel, and the crew had to crash-land in Ireland with the commander of American forces in the European Theatre of Operations on board.

McLaughlin and his fellow pilots staged air battles with a Hollywood director, Major William Wyler, and his crew on board filming the action. Wyler included the footage in such movies as Twelve O’Clock High and Memphis Belle.

He transported performers sent to entertain Allied troops and once ate lunch with comedian Bob Hope.

He found time to marry his long-time girlfriend, Constance Bailey, also a WVU graduate. The two were wed May 11^th, 1944, in the interim between McLaughlin’s first and second tours of duty. McLaughlin was nearing the completion of his second tour in the spring of 1945. After flying 40 combat missions and spending more than 31 months in England, he was ordered back to the States. He accepted a commission as a lieutenant colonel following the war and finished his service in June 1946 at Gulfport Army Air Field in Mississippi. After that, he and his wife returned to Charleston.

Of his war years, McLaughlin said he has both good and bad memories.

“I think of all the combat I went through, which are the bad parts,” he said. “Of course, I remember the good times as well. All my comrades were boys just like I was, just out of college. We were all single, and we all got along great together. There were lots of happy times.

“The missions were pretty tough times,” McLaughlin added. “The tough part of flying combat during war was not only the mission you fly today, but the one you would have to fly tomorrow. None of us ever thought we were going to make it through the war. Our losses were just too great.”

When McLaughlin and his wife returned to Charleston, he considered the military chapter of his life closed. He had landed a job selling construction equipment and was beginning the process of moving on with his life.

Three months later, though, the adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard asked McLaughlin to serve as commander of the state’s first Air National Guard squadron. He accepted, and in 1947 he began organising the unit.

“We were going to get 40 aeroplanes for the squadron,” he said. “It was supposed to be a part-time job. The next thing, we got nine boxcars full of squadron equipment. The Air Force had shipped equipment for a complete fighter squadron, and I had to go to work full-time.”

Highlights of McLaughlin’s 30-year tenure as commander of the West Virginia Air National Guard included service during the Korean War and organising a second unit based in Martinsburg. The West Virginia Air Guard started out with 360 members and went through its share of growing pains, including a tumultuous relationship with the Air Force.

“The Air Force decided they really didn’t want us because they couldn’t control the money,” McLaughlin said. “We were kind of like bastards at the family reunion. During the Korean War, we were stationed in World War I barracks at Godman Field, Kentucky, that had no operating heating systems.” Fortunately for all involved, those days are over, McLaughlin said. “The Air Guard is fully accepted now,” he said. “We have 2,500 members, with people on duty all over the world. The unit performed well during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.”

McLaughlin retired as commander in 1977

as a Brigadier General.

“I thought it turned out to be a very worthwhile organisation,” he said of his years with the Guard. “You can operate a reserve unit where the members live at home and operate on a civilian airport for a quarter of what it costs to keep an Air Force squadron on active duty.”

At the same time he was commanding the West Virginia Air National Guard, McLaughlin began dabbling in politics and real estate. He served on the Kanawha County Commission from 1963 to 1969 and in the West Virginia House of Delegates from 1974 to 1976 as a Democrat.

“I’m one of the few conservative Democrats left in West Virginia,” he said.

His real estate ventures have centred around development. In 1963, he developed a public cemetery in the north-east section of Charleston. He completed a housing development in the Martinsburg area in 1999, and is exploring another similar project in Berkeley County.

He and his wife, Constance, also raised three children:

Kemp Jr. and Mary, both WVU graduates, and Laura.

A granddaughter, Elizabeth McLaughlin, currently attends WVU.

His wife died in 1993.

McLaughlin now resides in Lake Wales, Florida, but returns to Charleston and his farm in Berkeley County every summer. Although he is retired, he shows no signs of slowing down.

“I’m still looking over parts of my business,” he said. “I still have my hand in two or three real estate projects, both in West Virginia and Florida. I also have the farm in the Eastern Panhandle.”

Also in 2000, McLaughlin married Elizabeth W. Hartman, who is from the Charleston area.

Kemp has also written a compelling memoir of his war years.

The Mighty Eighth in WWII:

The University Press of Kentucky published a Memoir in 2000.

Courtesy: Jim Davis West Virginia University Alumni Magazine