HOME MADE STOVE
As told by the flight engineer of Lt. Elvin Severson's crew- Wesley "Red" Baker.

The following incident could have been tragic, but without a tragedy it was rather humorous.

We slept in pyramidal tents, and in Southern Italy in the winter they weren't exactly warm. To heat the tent we had a home made stove fabricated in the sheet metal shop. We had a copper line under the floor bringing  100 octane gasoline from a drum outside the tent. The draft in the stove was never right, so we took the stove to the sheet metal shop to have it modified for better draft.

After we had the stove set back up, Clarence Wintermeyer, our nose gunner decided to try it out. He turned on the fuel valve and fuel dripped on some rocks inside the stove. He then lit the fuel, and it burned properly, and draft was perfect. He turned it off, and then decided to try it again. What he didn't realize was that fuel dripping on hot rocks had vaporized. When he lit the fuel there was a loud explosion that blew him out the door and landed him on his posterior.

When we realized he wasn't hurt we all burst into laughter. Wintermeyer had the most surprised look on his blackened face. He looked like a minstrel man and should burst forth into song like Al Jolson singing "Mammy".

Needless to say, the stove had to go back to the shop. The stove and pipe had split wide open and the damper had dropped into the stove.


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