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By Al Zdon
Ken Dahlberg, a Minnesotan whose war record and business accomplishments can only be termed extraordinary, traces one of the great watersheds in his life back
to boot camp at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, in 1941.
The men had been assembled in a squad, and the squad leader, a corporal, asked for a volunteer to step forward.
"We were standing at attention
and we were very uncomfortable in our ill-fitting uniforms. We were making $21 a month," Dahlberg recalled. "Being unsatisfied with where I was at, I took one step forward."
The corporal barked out
again, "Men, look at Private Dahlberg. He's a leader, he's one step ahead of all of you." Looking back, Dahlberg said, "I learned a lesson from a $30 a month professor.
"It was a step into the
unknown, a response to curiosity, a response to be more confident. It was one of the great lessons in my life."
Dahlberg, who is now 88, has never stopped taking that step into the unknown. It has led
him from a farm in Wisconsin to a career in hotel management to being a pilot in World War II (and one of America's top aces) to one of the most successful business careers ever for a
Minnesotan.
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Kenneth H. Dahlberg was born in St. Paul in 1917, the son of a streetcar motorman. With a twinkle in his eye, Dahlberg tells a fable about
how, at age one, he convinced his father to move to Wisconsin. "He seemingly took my advice, and we settled on a small dairy farm in the little village of Wilson, Wisconsin."
Dahlberg studied in a
one-room school house in Wilson for his first 11 years of schooling, and then went to live with an aunt in St. Paul so he could graduate from an accredited high school, St. Paul Harding.
He graduated
in 1935 and got a job at the Lowry Hotel washing pots and pans. It was his introduction to the hotel business, but he didn't stay long on the lowest rung. By 1941, he was food and beverage controller for
the 23 Pick Hotels in the United States.
"I knew one thing from growing up on the farm was that quality is important. The beginning of good food in restaurants was good meat and good produce."
His
position meant that he was hiring many of the executives in the food and beverage department, including those with master's degrees. Dahlberg's only degree was from Harding.
"I was asked much later
about the difference between the MAs and the ones who came up the other way. I said it was the difference between being force fed and scratching for a living. It's just like free-range chickens cost
more. There's added value in their having had to scratch."
Dahlberg was drafted in 1941, before America entered World War II. It brought an end to his hotel career.
After Camp Leonard Wood, he was
sent to Virginia where he was assigned to a coastal battery. Again, he stepped forward and volunteered for cooks and bakers school. "I signed up with the idea that I'd be the first one at the
trough."
The process of going through that application exposed him to the headquarters building, and it was there he spotted a posting that said there were two openings for aviation cadets. The
candidates had to have two years of college, or pass an equivalency test, which Dahlberg did.
It also called for two letters of recommendation. "Along the way, I had been an assistant manager at the
Oliver Hotel in South Bend, which was the gathering place for the Notre Dame University elite." Dahlberg's two letters were from the president of Notre Dame and the head coach of its football
team.
"You have to have a little luck in life too. It turns out the interviewing officer on the selection board happened to be a graduate of Notre Dame."
Dahlberg beat out thousands of applicants
for one of the two spots and was sent to the West Coast for aviation training. "I had never been in an airplane in my life, but it sounded good. And I got to go to school."
He did six months ground
training at Santa Anna. One of the instructors there was a young officer named Barry Goldwater, and he and Dahlberg became good friends when Dahlberg helped out at the firearms course.
Dahlberg did
his first solo at primary training in King City, California, did his basic training at Chico, California, and took advanced training and earned his commission and wings in December 1942 at Luke Field in
Phoenix.
Like many other graduates early in the war, Dahlberg immediately turned around to become an instructor. He was sent to Yuma, Arizona, where they were just building a new base.
"On the
train going over, I got to sit next to my friend, Barry Goldwater. It turns out that he was going to head the new ground school. For the next six months, we lived in a two-man tent together on the
desert. We got to know each other well."
While Dahlberg was an instructor, he performed what he calls, "the dumbest thing in my military career."
He was showing a new pilot how to do a dive bombing
run, bottoming out just over the tree tops. "The cadet was reticent about bringing it down to treetop level. So I took the stick and decided to demonstrate for him. I rolled over right at the treetops,
next to the beautiful Colorado River, which I stupidly decided to buzz from my backseat position.
"Suddenly there was a cluster of huge power lines in front of me. I was too low to get over them, and
I tried to get under them. I didn't. There was a blinding flash, and the power lines took off my antenna, my canopy and my vertical tail. The cadet was limp in the front seat."
Dahlberg managed to get
the AT-6 back to base, but he had visions of his flying career coming to a sudden halt.
Working in his favor was his prowess at gambling. "I was a pretty good poker player and I was reckless with the
dice. I had wound up with a $900 I.O.U. from the commanding officer in my billfold."
Dahlberg was ushered into the C.O.'s office shortly after his landing in the damaged trainer. "I casually took from
my wallet the IOU and I said, 'I guess I won't need this anymore.' He asked what I wanted, and I said I'd do anything to avoid a court martial."
Dahlberg's punishment was being grounded and confined
to base for a month, and he got the job being the police and prison officer. After reporting to the barbed wire prison on the base, he found out that the prison was equipped with two brand new
motorcycles equipped with red lights and sirens.
"I had fun for the next month riding around the base harassing my fellow pilots." The fun came to an end, though when he responded to an accident on
the runway.
"I sped out on the motorcycle with my lights and siren going, but before I could slow down I hit some loose sand. I had sand in every opening in my body, and I ended up in the hospital.
"The C.O. came to visit me, and said he was relieving me of my duties as police and prison officer. He also advised me that he was cutting me orders to send me into combat.
"He said it was better
that I go into combat before I killed myself."
Dahlberg had been picked out to be a fighter pilot at some point in his training. "There must have been something embedded in the system where they were
watching us to determine whether we should be fighter pilots or bomber pilots. Some were shunted one way, and some another. They never told me why I was a fighter pilot."
On his way to Europe, he made
a stop back at Luke Field where he trained Chinese pilots in aerial gunnery and ground strafing techniques. He also spent time in Florida in an overseas training unit where he was able to accumulate
about 40 hours flying time in a P-47 fighter.
In May of 1944, Dahlberg arrived in England on a troop ship and was assigned to the 354th Fighter Group. He arrived in his squadron on June 2, and flew
his first mission four days later on D-Day.
The only problem was that he had been practicing in a P-47, and the squadron he was assigned to flew P-51 Mustangs. His total training on the P-51 was a
half-hour orientation flight. "If the Federal Aviation Administration had been running the war, a lot of things would not have happened. But we didn't have those rules. We had to depend on our common
sense rather than the rules to survive. There's only one rule in combat, and that's to survive."
That first mission was escorting the paratroopers that landed in the early morning at Normandy.
In
August, Dahlberg had just returned from a three-day leave when he walked into the ready room of the 353rd Fighter Squadron. He was told that the squadron leader was sick, and they asked him to take a
flight over right away.
Dahlberg was still wearing his R&R clothes, including lowcut shoes, but he stepped forward and took the mission. "I didn't have my sidearm, my knife, my boots, my escape
kit. I didn't have any of this stuff.
"I volunteered because I had become used to volunteering, to taking one step forward, bypassing my own safety. Was it stupid? Yes, but we all do stupid things."
Dahlberg's group of eight P-51s jumped a pack of about 40 ME-109s over Paris. "It was every man for himself. I had shot down four of the 109s and I was going for my fifth when I got a little
careless. My airplane was on fire, and the cockpit was filling with smoke. I ducked into a little cloud and bailed out."
He parachuted down to the ground on a large French estate not too far from
Paris. It had a large chateau, riding stable and many other buildings. He landed right among them, and was soon approached by a French lady.
"Are you American?" she asked, and he assured her that he
was. "Then you'd better go hide down by the pond. There are Germans all over the place."
Dahlberg took her advice and hid among the bulrushes in the water. "I just had my head sticking out, but sure
enough, not long after I got there, the German soldiers came looking for me. They must have seen my parachute coming down.
"I snapped off a dry reed, and I was able to get completely submerged and
breathe through it like a snorkel. It worked.
"That night, a little Frenchman, who turned out to be the owner, came down. I decided he looked friendly, and so I talked to him. He told me to stay down
by the pond because the Germans were all over. He came back later with a trenchcoat to keep me warm. The next morning, he brought me bread and wine."
The Frenchman asked Dahlberg for his sidearm to
give to the resistance movement, but he didn't have one because of the last-minute departure. In fact, all he had in his pockets were three prophylactics that had been issued him before his three-day
pass.
"It was kind of a policy in the Army. If you had a three-day leave, they gave you three prophylactics. But being a good Lutheran from the Midwest, I never used mine."
Later on, when the
Frenchman and Dahlberg were reunited after the liberation of Paris, the French nobleman took great delight in telling the story of how he had asked Dahlberg for his sidearm for the resistance, but had
only got the three prophylactics.
On the estate, Dahlberg learned from the French that the American lines were only 40 miles away. He and his French comrades devised a plan to work their way toward
the lines.
"I broke the first rule of a downed airman, and I changed into civilian clothes. We were told never to do that because if you were caught, you could immediately be shot as a spy."
The
French tied what looked like a bloody towel around his head, and he and another man set off on bicycles toward the front.
"You have to understand that the countryside was in chaos. There were refugees
and ox carts and jeeps and military vehicles and tanks. The Germans were retreating, but they were still very formidable at that point."
The two had to cross several check points along the way, but in
the end Dahlberg was able to cross back into American lines and make his way back to his squadron.
The second time he was shot down was during the Battle of Bulge in late December, 1944. Dahlberg was
leading a squadron of 16 P-47s on a dive bombing mission in the Ardennes Forest. The weather had just cleared before Christmas, and the fighters were seeking German tanks.
"As we dove down, I
recognized that what we had spotted were not German tanks, but American tanks. I called off the run, but in seconds all hell broke loose. I don't know if it was German fire or American fire, but I lost
my engine and my electricity."
Too low to bail out, Dahlberg had no choice but to try and land the disabled plane. "I couldn't crash land just yet because I still had those two 500-lbs. bombs. So I
did an abrupt 180, jettisoned the bombs, and cut through the ground fire. I crash landed at the edge of a forest, but I cut a swath of about 200 yards through some sapling trees."
Dazed and hurt,
Dahlberg crawled out of his cockpit and stood on the wing, holding his 45 pistol in one hand and holding his ribs with the other hand. Within minutes, an American tank appeared, even though Dahlberg had
crashed behind enemy lines.
"We had been warned about Germans imitating Americans, and so as I stood there weaving on the wing of the plane, I asked the tank commander what the code word of the day
was. He said, 'I don't know any code word, just get your ass in the tank.' And so I did."
(Part two of that story comes later.)
Six months into his flying career with the Army Air Force, Dahlberg
had crashed two planes and escaped enemy capture on both occasions. On his third crash, he wasn't quite so lucky.
He had shot down 15 and one half aircraft in his combat career, placing him 23rd on
the list of all the fighter aces in Europe during the war and making him a triple ace. (The Army Air Force later listed him with 14 and one half kills. Oddly enough the disputed victory was included in
his official Army citation for his Distinguished Service Cross. Dahlberg himself is not troubled by the discrepancy. "I know how many there were.")
His fellow pilots often joked that he should only
have 12 kills if you subtracted the number of American planes he lost along the way.
On Feb. 2nd, 1945, after leading a successful dive bombing mission near Metz, Germany, Dahlberg was
reassembling his 12-plane formation.
"We were at about 10,000 feet, when I took a direct hit from a German .88 millimeter cannon. The P-47 has protective armor behind the pilot, and that's what must
have saved me, because the airplane just blew up.
"I fell about 9,500 feet before I regained consciousness. I pulled the rip cord at about 500 feet and had a very hard landing."
Dahlberg's fellow
pilots thought he was a goner, and reported him as probably killed in action. That's usually the case with a direct hit from an .88. "They said later all they saw were bits and pieces and no parachute. I
must have been either a bit or a piece."
With a bleeding head wound, Dahlberg tried to escape. He headed west toward the American lines, but his progress was impeded by a river. He took off his shoes
and crossed the river, but lost his escape kit and compass during the crossing.
"I had no sense of direction. I crawled through the woods all night and ended up back at the river.
"My option was
to hide during the day and travel at night, which was the safest. But my head wound was still bleeding and I didn't know if I'd make it, so I tried to travel during the day. They captured me right
away."
Dahlberg wasn't done yet, though. When his guard stopped to take a drink at a fountain, Dahlberg grabbed his gun and hit his captor on the head. He dashed into a little French town.
"I found
a little French vehicle that had German medical insignia on it. I stole the car, and headed west. I got through all the checkpoints but the last one. Even though I had my red light on, they still stopped
me. I tried to go around the extended log, but I crashed the car. They captured me again."
Despite his wound, Dahlberg was marched over 100 miles to a Stalag 7a at Moosburg in the area around Munich.
"I always say that was my first experience of suburban living."
Dahlberg said he learned a lot at the German prison camp. "I learned about economics and I learned about inflation. The first time I
traded a cigarette to a German guard, I got a turnip. The second time, a few weeks later, it cost me two cigarettes for a turnip. The third time, it took two cigarettes for a half a turnip. That was 100
percent a month inflation. Finally, the guard had no turnips at all. My currency was worthless. It was hyper-inflation."
Patton's Third Army liberated the POW camp in May, but they instructed the
prisoners not to try to find their own way back to their units. "They wanted us to stay together in the camp and wait, because after the German Army left, it was chaos. There were literally millions of
Eastern Europeans who had been slave laborers, and they were loose, pillaging and raping. They told us it was more dangerous than when the fighting was going on."
"But another guy and I didn't want to
wait, so we snuck out of the camp on a garbage truck or something, and began hitchhiking back toward France."
As the duo hitchhiked through Munich, a German lady came out and offered them food and a
place to stay for the night. Dahlberg and his friend were amazed that a German woman would offer them help, but they learned that she had a 16-year-old daughter and was more afraid of the refugees than
the Americans.
"It taught me a basic lesson on the value of freedom. It showed me the intensity of fear that the lack of freedom reveals. It has stayed embedded with me. I've never ever forgot the
look in that lady's eyes. She was helpless."
Dahlberg did manage to work his way back to the Atlantic coast, and he was able to talk his way onto a troop ship heading for the United States. "The day
before the ship pulled into New York, someone lent me a racy book. I was so engrossed reading it that I didn't realize what the sun was doing to me. My first night back in America I was in a hospital
recovering from a severe sunburn."
Dahlberg was put on a 90-day terminal leave, sort of a transition period for soldiers when they are allowed to keep wearing their uniform. He found his way back to
St. Paul, and he was assured a good job with his former employer. He went to a party that night with some of his old friends.
The party merged with another party at the hotel, and ended up at the
spacious home of man who owned an electronics firm. A week later, Dahlberg was still a house guest. Eventually the man hired him as his assistant at his business. Dahlberg knew nothing about electronics,
and was heading back to the hotel business, but he decided to take that step forward.
The business was Telex, a maker of hearing aids and hospital communications equipment. Dahlberg joined up shortly
thereafter with a National Guard unit in Duluth, and he suggested that Telex try using its hearing aid expertise in making military helmets. The company became a leader in making headsets.
In 1948,
Dahlberg and his brother began their own business, mainly making hearing aids. In 1959, it became part of Motorola, but in 1964 Motorola divested itself of all consumer projects, and Dahlberg bought back
his own company.
Over the years, Miracle Ear became the largest selling brand of hearing aids in the United States. In 1994, Dahlberg sold it to Bausch and Lomb and began a venture capital company
called Carefree Capital.
Dahlberg currently serves as a director for Buffalo Wild Wings Inc., The Allant Group, the Air Force Academy Foundation, and the American Fighter Aces Association.
In
addition to his business career, Dahlberg also got involved in politics along the way. His wartime friendship with Barry Goldwater led him to be a deputy chairman of fundraising for Goldwater's
presidential campaign in 1964.
In 1971, he was Midwest chairman of fundraising for Richard Nixon's campaign, working under Maurice Stans. It was during this time that he became a footnote in the
history books during the greatest political scandal of the 20th Century.
Dahlberg had received a donation of $25,000 in cash from a Minnesota Democrat, Duane Andreas, and had brought the money to the
Committee to Re-Elect the President – located in Washington D.C. Andreas didn't want his contribution made public knowledge, and, in those days, the law allowed for confidential
donations.
Somehow the money, which Dahlberg had converted into a cashier's check with his name on it, ended up in the hands of a Cuban businessman in Miami. The man was later identified as one of the
Watergate burglars. The money was the only direct link between the President and the Watergate thieves, and so Dahlberg became an object of intense scrutiny for a time as the federal investigators tried
to pry out of him the source of the donation.
Dahlberg refused, and he was subpoenaed to Florida to undergo a grilling by federal agents. "They sent this state's attorney, this goon, down to pick me
up at the Doral Hotel. The interview was two hours of first class intellectual torture, but I told them the law, and I said it was none of their business."
Afterward, the same "goon" drove Dahlberg
back to the hotel. As was common among men of their age, the two began talking about their war service. Dahlberg allowed that he was a fighter pilot.
"I was a tank commander during the war," the
attorney said. "And in the whole five years I was in, I only saw one fighter pilot, and he was the dumbest son of a bitch I ever met."
Dahlberg asked why.
"It was during the Battle of the Bulge,
and my driver saw a fighter plane go down. He told me thought he knew where it was. I told the driver, 'Let's go for it.'
"When we got there, the pilot was standing on the wreck of his P-47. He was
holding his pistol in one hand and holding his side with his other hand, and he was shouting at us for the code of the day."
Dahlberg turned to the attorney and asked, "And how is your driver,
Charlie, doing these days?" The attorney was flabbergasted, but the two had made a connection from a wartime incident 26 years earlier.
Dahlberg and the attorney, Martin Dardin, became friends and
still communicate at least once a month. "It turns out there was a lot of mutual respect."
Another incident after the war helped Dahlberg celebrate his wartime experience. In 1967, he was notified by
the Department of Defense that he had earned the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945, but he had never collected it because he was in a prisoner of war camp.
The military wanted to know if they should
mail it to him or if he'd like it presented. In the end, the medal was presented in Washington D.C. by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a close friend of Dahlberg's, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the
entire Minnesota Congressional delegation present.
In addition to the DSC, Dahlberg also earned two Purple Hearts, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross with cluster, the Bronze Star, and 15
air medals.
At 88, he still flies his own jet aircraft as a co-pilot, and he works every day at his venture capital business in a corner office of a large Minneapolis office building.
He and his
wife, the former Betty Jayne Segerstrom, have been married for 58 years and have three children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
Ken Dahlberg, when he takes a moment from a busy day,
can look back on a life that has included a political record that earned its way into the history books, a business record that has put him in Minnesota's Business Hall of Fame, and a war record that
very few can equal for bravery and accomplishment.
And it was all because he was never afraid to take that one step forward.
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