Oral History Interview with William Roche, October 15, 2012

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with William Roche. Roche was born on 24 November 1924. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces Aviation Cadet Program in June 1943. He completed basic training, armament and gunnery school, and was deployed to England in November 1944 as a B-17 waist gunner with the 452nd Bomb Group. During this combat tour, he was shot down twice, crash landing in France once and behind Russian lines in Poland following a February 1945 mission to Berlin. He spent several months interned with the Soviet Army in Poland until the war ended. Roche returned to the US and served a distinguished 32-year career in the military including assignments in intelligence, as a faculty member at the US Air Force Academy and Air Attaché postings in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia