DATE: Sunday, September 14, 1997            TAG: 9709120191

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 04   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KEVIN ARMSTRONG, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   93 lines

LIVING LEGEND OF MEMPHIS BELLE SPEAKS TO NAVY AVIATORS THURSDAY

Thousands of American airmen sacrificed their lives during World War II. Col. Robert K. Morgan was among the few who survived and became a living legend.

While his name might not come to mind so easily, the B-17 he flew over Germany, France and Belgium during the war's early years has been enshrined forever by Hollywood.

The retired Air Force colonel set an unequaled standard among B-17 pilots that remains no less remarkable today, a half-century later.

Morgan piloted the Memphis Belle, the subject of a 1990 film by the same name.

While such acclaim has followed the 79-year-old veteran through the years, he is quick to shed such heroic labels.

The Asheville, N.C., resident tells audiences wherever he goes that he had no more or no less training than most other pilots who fought so valiantly in the skies over the European theater. He just got lucky.

It's a message he will deliver locally Thursday at the Association of Naval Aviators dinner at the Oceana Officers Club.

``It was all trial and error in those days,'' Morgan recalled in a recent phone interview.

Morgan and the Memphis Belle were part of the 8th Air Force, the first to arrive in Europe in October 1942. What set the plane and its crew apart was its completion of 25 combat missions.

When the Belle arrived in Bassingbourn, England, she became the 48th heavy bomber in the 324th Bomb Squadron, 91st Bombardment Group. Their mission was to destroy manufacturing plants, supply depots and other targets supplying the Germans' war machine.

Seven months after they arrived, only four of the original B-17s were still flying.

Losses were so great among combat crews that the War Department decided to send home anyone who completed 25 missions.

The Belle was the first B-17 to achieve that milestone. Most incredibly, though, all 10 original crew members survived.

The Belle flew home to the States for a three-month publicity tour from coast to coast to boost morale during a critical period.

The 27-city tour criss-crossed the country from Los Angeles to Boston, but the first stop was the Tennessee city from which the plane borrowed its name.

Morgan was personally responsible for the namesake, thanks to the sweetheart he had left behind.

His flight training included a stint at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, where he qualified for the Army Air Corps. About a year and several flight schools later he was sent to Walla Walla, Wash., for advanced training. It was there that he met and fell in love with Margaret Polk.

She was a Memphis native and the sister-in-law of a flight surgeon stationed at the base.

Shortly before he left for England, Morgan got engaged and dubbed his plane the Memphis Belle as a tribute to his fiancee.

Polk's photo graced the Belle's cockpit on each mission, but the couple never married.

After the Belle's publicity tour in 1943, the crew members were given a choice of staying home or naming their next assignment.

Morgan chose to head back into the fray, this time to the Pacific behind the controls of the then-secret B-29. That decision ended the wartime romance that forever would be immortalized.

As if the Belle's aerial accomplishments weren't enough to position it in the history books - more than 60 tons of bombs dropped in nearly 149 combat hours and more than 20,000 miles - a Hollywood producer preserved the plane's exploits for generations to come.

Filmmaker William Wyler was assigned by the War Department to create a documentary and actually flew aboard five of the Belle's 25 combat missions.

His hourlong tribute, released in The Warner Brothers film, which recaptured the crew's exploits 40 years later, wasn't quite true to life, Morgan said. But then it wasn't meant to be, he added. It was a composite of many flights edited into one.

Morgan also had achieved fame during his Pacific tour of duty in 1944 and '45 when he led the first B-29 bombing raid on Tokyo, the first such raid since Doolittle's April 1942 assault in B-25s.

Morgan completed 25 missions against the Japanese piloting the Dauntless Dotty before returning home in April 1945. But she never measured up to the Belle's notoriety.

``It wasn't anywhere near as rough,'' Morgan said. ``The Japanese were getting down to the bottom of the barrel.''

He spent 20 years on inactive duty before retiring from the Air Force Reserve in 1965 with the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal.

He had earned a business degree from the University of Pennsylvania before the war and after leaving the military he joined the family furniture manufacturing business in Asheville.

Morgan later left for a career in real estate, which he still pursues.

For information about Morgan's talk at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Oceana Officers' Club, call 481-2656. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Robert Morgan, fifth from left, was the pilot of the Memphis Belle.

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