LONGMONT, Colo.—When James Force spotted a 4-foot-long olive drab pipe lying in a junkyard, he immediately recognized it as the casing from a 500-pound World War II bomb. “In my heart, I knew what it was,” said Force, a retired Air Force captain who served during World War II and the Korean War. “It was a bomb. It had fins on it and everything.”
Force paid $10 for the casing in the early 1960s.
He planned to polish the shell, give it a new coat of paint and restore its yellow tip as part of a WWII monument he wanted to create.
But he never found time to do it, and the shell sat in his garage, covered by a blanket, for nearly 50 years.
Now 90 years old, Force said he has finally found a home for it.
Last month, he donated the casing to Boise City, Okla., where it will be part of a military display at the city’s museum.
Force wrote a letter to the mayor of Boise City, and his note eventually made its way to the Cimarron Heritage Center there.
“We thought it would be an addition to our extensive veterans’ display that we have in the display building,” museum director Jody Risley said.
Boise City, about 100 miles south of Lamar, Colo., bears the distinction of being bombed by an American warplane during World War II.
Shortly after midnight July 5, 1943, an American B-17 pilot accidentally dropped six 100-pound bombs on the sleeping city. Although no one was hurt and no buildings were damaged, the bombing became part of the city’s legacy, Risley said.
At 4 feet long and 8 inches in diameter, Force’s casing is a little larger than the bombs dropped on Boise City, Risley said.
But how do you get a bomb—even a harmless, defused one—across state lines?
“The railroad wouldn’t take it. UPS wouldn’t take it. Postal Service wouldn’t deliver it. So what did I have to do? Drive it there myself,” Force said.
On Sept. 21, he and his wife, Mary, 85, drove about 350 miles to Boise City to visit Mary’s sister, Vivian Hughes, and drop off the casing.
“It was a relic to me, just like a picture hanging on the wall,” he said. “It’s a reminder of where I’ve been and the way I am today.”
Force was a B-17 bomber pilot who flew 42 missions—35 accredited and seven aborted—over Europe from November 1944 to March 1945.
“I dropped many of those kinds of bombs on targets in Germany, and that made it a relic for me,” he said.
The Wyoming native flew with the 359th Squadron of the 303rd Bomb Group of the 8th Army Air Corps, a unit dubbed “Hell’s Angels” that was stationed at Molesworth, England.
Force said the bombing of Dresden, Germany, in February 1945 was an eye-opener because thousands of refugees had inundated the city.
“That one really hurt. … That’s when you realized that you’re killing innocent people, decent people. They’re no different than us,” Force said.
After returning to the U.S., Force served in a weather reconnaissance squadron before deploying in February 1952 on a 14-month mission to Korea, where he served as a staff engineer.
He was honorably discharged from military service in 1954 and worked as an electric engineer, eventually joining Rocky Flats, where he worked for 20 years before retiring in 1986.
Force said he is glad the bomb casing is finally where it belongs.
“It’s found its place at the museum,” he said.
