Hunting subs from a flying boat [The Buffalo News, N.Y.]

Jan. 23--Inspired by a family tradition of military service, Walter J. Floss Jr. enlisted in the Naval Reserve on his 17th birthday, Feb. 13, 1940. "I had my dad drive me over to the Connecticut Street Armory. The Navy had some rooms on the third floor there during the winter," Floss said.

His father had served in the Army's106th Field Artillery in France during World War I, and before that, one of Floss' grandfathers had fought for the North in the Civil War.

During Floss' junior and senior years at Buffalo'sTechnical High School, at the time an all-boys engineering school, he drilled on the weekends with the Reserve.

"One week before graduation in June 1941, I came home, and my mother said I had a telegram. It was from the Navy, saying that I was going into active duty in two days.

"The next day, I took the telegram to the principal's office, to Mr. Richard Dry, and showed it to him," Floss recalled.

"He rang the school alarm bell and had everybody go to the auditorium to wish me goodbye. He saw to it that on the basis of my marks, I got a high school diploma."

From there, it was on to Navy base in Norfolk, Va., where Floss trained to be a crew member on a PBY Catalina, a flying boat that was originally manufactured by Consolidated, a Niagara Falls company that later relocated to San Diego.

(Historical note: Lawrence D. Bell, a vice president at Consolidated, stayed behind and formed Bell Aircraft.)

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the Navy's flying boats, whose broad underbellies served as landing and takeoff gear on water, were dispatched to the Panama Canal to make sure German submarines did not destroy the strategic waterway.

"With most of our Pacific Fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor, we were getting some of the Atlantic Fleet over to the Pacific Ocean, and that is why we needed to preserve the canal," Floss explained.

During the intense effort to deploy to the canal, Floss suffered a severe injury when the treads of a tractor rolled over his left foot and crushed every bone in it.

"I was taken to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where I was diagnosed with gangrene on the left foot, so I was scheduled for amputation on Dec. 12," he said. "My ward nurse went to the chapel every evening before mess to pray for three of us in her ward. All three of us eventually walked out of there."

But Floss had extra prayers being said for him back home.

"My aunt was the mother superior at the Convent of the Good Shepherd on Best Street, and she had all the nuns praying for me," he said. "The prayers worked because on the day set for amputation, the surgeon left for Christmas leave."

A new doctor was assigned to his case. "Dr. Hyde had just heard of the new sulfa drug, which he started me on as well as bandages saturated in saline solution," Floss recalled. "He put my foot into a thermal tent so it wouldn't close up with the poisoned blood."

He experienced a miraculous recovery and was eager to return to duty.

Not so fast, members of Navy medical review board said.

"I appeared before the board, which decided that I should receive a medical discharge," he said. "I argued the point that I flew, not marched, and I could do my duty as a flight engineer. I won the argument and was returned to my original squadron."

By May 1942, he was assigned to Kings Point Naval Station in Bermuda, where the PBYs patrolled the Atlantic in search of German submarines seeking to sink U. S. troop ships headed to England.

"We got a few of the subs until the Germans realized our depth charges hung on racks under our wings," he said. "Our depth charges were set to detonate at 100 feet underwater, but we couldn't change the setting of the charge while in flight.

"The Germans then stayed on the surface, and we were horribly outgunned by the subs. Three of our planes were shot down. We switched to a Navy version of the B-24 bomber, and the ordnance men could set the depth charges to whatever was required inside the plane's bomb bay."

Floss eventually ended up flying above the Mediterranean--from Port Lyautey in Morocco</location> to the Rock of Gibraltar--to fight off German subs trying to sink troop ships preparing for the Allied invasion of Italy.

After that invasion, he was sent to England in preparation for the invasion of northern France on D-Day.

But the handsome young warrior got sidetracked.

"The first night there, I met an English girl just out of an all-girls private school," Floss said. "I started dating her and finally asked my commanding officer for permission to marry her.

"My commander, in good wisdom, said he was sending me home on leave to give me time to think it over. This was fortunate on my part, because during the ensuing raids, several of my squadron's planes were shot down."

Back home, he met his true love, Grayce Thornberry. But before they could marry, he was sent to the West Coast to join a new squadron, where he was scheduled to serve as a chief petty officer.

"The day I flew out to San Diego is when Japan surrendered," Floss said.

With that development, the new squadron was scrapped, along with his opportunity to advance in rank. Floss decided that it was time to leave the military.

"I married Grayce in 1946, and we went on to have 10 children. I went into the insurance business, and when times were slow, I worked out at Bell Aerospace during the day and sold insurance at night."

That was not all. He pursued a political career, first serving as a Clarence town councilman for four years, then rising to Erie County legislator for 11 years, before winning a seat in the State Senate, where he served for a decade.

Does he ever wonder what might have happened if he had married his British sweetheart?

He doesn't even recall the young lass' name, he promptly responded.

"I married the best," Floss said. "Grayce has been gone five years now, but we have 30 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren."

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