Air Force veteran recalls memories of World War II
BUTLER TWP — When Stan Lantz was 5 years old, his dad brought him to see a Ford TriMotor plane made in 1920 that came to visit his hometown Mount Jewett, and got to sit in the cockpit when his dad paid its pilot about $5.
That was about 95 years ago, and Lantz still isn’t tired of airplanes.
Lantz recently turned 100 years old, and still lives in his own house in Butler Township, which has become crowded with memorabilia he collected through his careers and passions throughout the years. An Air Force veteran, Lantz has models of airplanes suspended from the ceiling of his basement, which hang among photos, archaeological molds and documents he compiled.
Lantz started flying when he was 16 years old, and took a test to join the Air Force, becoming one of only 10 people in his area to pass the year he took it.
Lantz, an Air Force veteran, said he is lucky to have even made it out of training alive, because flying drills and exercises in the 1940s were dangerous and resulted in some casualties — himself nearly included. Lantz explained that he was once manning a turret situated on the underside of an airplane, and the equipment got stuck, preventing him from getting to a place on the plane that would allow it to land safely.
“To get out of turrets, you have to put the gun down and open the door. So what happened, the door got stuck for five hours. The guns were down, so he couldn't land,” Lantz said. “If they land the guns hit the runway, so that would kill you.
“They used up all the gas for five hours and said we've got to land. They didn't know if the wheels were going to collapse or not. They had to make the landing with me in the turret.
There was only one inch, he continued.
“If that would have been a rough landing, the turret would have dropped down and it would have wiped me out,” he said.
Nevertheless, Lantz made it through training and shipped off to Germany in September 1944. By Christmas, he flew 25 missions, with some of those missions lasting up to about five days in length.
On some of these missions, Lantz and his crew went up against the German Luftwaffe, which managed to take out several U.S. aircraft every mission. Lantz said the soldiers who survived those missions mainly survived out of luck — it just depended who German planes “picked on.”
Most of the missions Lantz flew he would only be alerted to in the hours before his crew would depart.
“They would come and wake you up at 3 o’clock in the morning,” Lantz said. “They would come in with a flashlight.”
Lantz would fly bomber missions as a support plane, mainly over Cologne, Germany. He said he once flew right through the wreckage of a bomber plane that had dropped a bomb moments prior.
“We had one plane blow up right in front of me,” Lantz said. “When he dropped his bomb, everyone else dropped theirs. He was hit direct, he blew up right in front of us, and I flew right through the crap.”
Lantz finished his service in the Air Force in December 1944. In the years since, he maintained a love for airplanes and flying, and opened grocery stores in Western Pennsylvania while also working on archaeological digs as a career. Lantz was recognized with a Pennsylvania historical marker, which he earned by excavating a precontact village on Mead Island in 1967.
“This Native American culture was first identified in 1967 by Carnegie Museum archaeologist Dr. Stanley Lantz when his team excavated a precontact village on Mead Island,” the marker says. “These groups were among the region’s first farmers, representing a distinct culture that dominated this area in the late Woodland period, 960-1360 AD.”
For his 100th birthday on April 12, Lantz received a letter from Gov. Josh Shapiro, which also commends Lantz for his service in the Air Force and with the Carnegie Museum.
Tom Menchyk drives for Meals on Wheels, and became friends with Lantz after speaking to him and realizing his father shared a military history with Lantz. Menchyk said Lantz has shown him numerous photos and documents from his time in the Air Force, but also from his days opening and operating grocery stores and working in archaeology, which he got into later in life.
“I come to talk to Stan every once in a while and every time I do I learn something new about this man,” Menchyk said.
