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The First Fifty Years By
Lt. Col. Frank O'Bannon On 29 May 1943 General Order No. 78, HQ 2nd Air Force, Ft. George Wright, WA assigned the 461st BG to the 2nd Air Force and activated the Group as of 1 July, 1943 at AAF, Wendover Field, Utah. Squadrons also activated for service with the 461st Group were: Headquarters Squadron 764th Bombardment Squadron 765th Bombardment Squadron 766th Bombardment Squadron 767th Bombardment Squadron On 29 July, 1943 the Group was moved, without personnel or equipment, to Gowen Field, Boise, ID. In August the "fleshing out" of the Group started. Men and equipment came from Gowen Field, Casper AAB, WY, Mt. Home AAB, ID, Kearns AAB, UT and Moses Lake AAB, WA. On 29 September the Group was reassigned to Wendover AAB, UT. It received its first airplane for training purposes in October. The majority of the air crews were transferred from Mt. Home AAB to Wendover AAB. The Morning Report strength for October 1st shows 67 officers and 402 enlisted men. By 31 October the Group strength had grown to 264 officers and 1070 enlisted men. During the month of October the Group trained at Wendover. Headquarters was housed in five tents in the middle of a tent area occupied by the enlisted men. Tents were also used by Operations personnel on the flight line. Officers occupied five wood barracks. These buildings plus a Group dispensary, a Group briefing and interrogation room and two mess halls for the enlisted men were the only buildings at the disposal of the 461st BG. Wendover is snuggled at the foot of the mountains on the state lines of Nevada and Utah where once the Great Salt lake ended. As far as the eye could carry not a tree nor a blade of grass could be found. From the air one could see nothing but mountains to the West and North and nothing but ditches of water running through the salt flats to the East and South. Naturally, the Officer's Club and the bowling alleys became the centers of attraction for the Officers. The service club, bowling alleys, theater, PX and beer parlor were rendezvous for the enlisted men. With one forty-eight hour pass every two weeks the personnel of the 461st settled into a routine of long hours and hard work. On 24 October 1943 Col. Frederic E. Glantzberg was assigned to the 461st Bomb Group and assumed command on 25 October. Col. Glantzberg reviewed the facilities and flying conditions at Wendover and then proceeded to Washington where he received permission to train the Group at Hammer Field in Fresno, CA. Orders were issued on 28 October for this move. The move to Hammer Field was made and phase training was intensified during the next two months. During training fourteen men lost their lives due to plane crashes and loss of oxygen during high altitude missions. The ground echelon moved from Hammer Field to Camp Patrick Henry, Newport News, VA on 31 December 1943 on three trains. On 12 January 1944 the ground echelon left Camp Patrick Henry for the port of embarkation and were loaded on four "liberty ships" (the "Arch Bishop Lamy", the "George S. Hanly", the "William Rawle" and the "John Jay"). Thirty-one days later the ships made it to Naples, Italy. It was not until 23 February that all the ground personnel were in place at the Group's final destination. On 13 January the air echelon started its move to Oudna, Tunisia, in North Africa. Taking the Southern route across the Atlantic from Brazil, this movement was completed on 8 February with the arrival of the main group of planes. By 24 February the air echelon was in place at Torretta, Italy. Italy was Italy! The morning report showed 376 officers and 1620 enlisted men. The Group had fifty-one B-24H planes. The facilities consisted of one large airdrome with over 100 "soft" hard stands, ample but unusable taxi strips and one gravel landing strip with a long stretch of mud holes on each end and a big hump in the middle. Training continued under questionable conditions. On 1 April 1944 the first combat mission was flown to the railroad marshalling yard at Bihac, Yugoslavia. The 461st Bombardment Group was stationed in Italy for sixteen months. Thirteen of these were spent flying almost daily combat missions against the enemy in ten Southern and Central European countries. For the first three months the Group, under the command of Col. Frederic E. Glantzberg, maintained the highest average bomb score in the entire Fifteenth Air Force. A mission to the Duna Repologepger Aircraft Components Factory in Budapest, Hungary on 12 April brought Group its first Distinguished Unit Citation. A second Unit Citation received in recognition of the 15 July mission to the Creditul Minier Oil Refinery at Ploesti, Rumania. The 461st dropped its bombs through heavy chemical smoke screen laid down by the Germans as protective cover. The attack was the first "Mickey" bombing done by the Fifteenth Air Force. Its success meant that in the future, neither smoke nor bad weather would protect targets from accurate instrument bombings. In all, the 461st planes visited Ploesti seven times. The 461st met its stiffest aerial opposition on 25 July when Maj. William Burke, 766th Squadron Commander, led the mission against the Herman Goering tank works at Linz, Austria. More than 150 fighters of Goering's own crack "yellow nose" Staffel attempted to protect the factory. Aerial gunners of the 461st destroyed 36 enemy aircraft. Of this total, the crew of the Liberator "All American" was credited with 14 aircraft destroyed. On another bomber a single gunner shot down four enemy aircraft. The "All American" has the distinction of destroying the most enemy aircraft on a single mission by a single aircraft in all the air wars to date. During the Southern France campaign, the Group hit gun sites and fortifications before and on D-Day. Before this, on 2 August, bombers pinpointed the narrow span of the Avignon Rail Road Bridge with such accuracy that the Group received a special commendation from Major General Nathan F. Twining, Commander, Fifteenth Air Force. When the rapid advance of the Seventh Army strained supply lines almost to the breaking point and threatened to ground air support for the lack of fuel and munitions, the 461st ground crews stripped their bombers of ball turrets and waist guns and installed extra fuel tanks in the bomb bays. For two weeks the heavies flew fuel, bombs and munitions to an advanced air base at Lyons, France. When normal supply lines were established and the crisis past, the heavies went back to flying combat missions. As their early targets fell, one-by-one, to the fast moving Allied Armies, the 461st bombers, then under the command of Colonel Philip R. Hawes, began to concentrate their precision bombing on the oil refineries of Blechhammer and the communications centers of Vienna. In the first 200 missions flown by the Group, 25 were flown to targets near Vienna and Moosbierbaum. Beginning its second year of combat, the Group, then commanded by Colonel Brooks A. Lawhon, achieved the highest bombing score against the armament works at Brescia, Italy, 6 April 1945. The score of 95.5 % was the highest ever made in the Wing. Under command of Col. Craven C. Rogers, the 461st flew five missions in direct support of the Fifth and Eighth Armies in Italy. They were beginning the closing drive of a long Campaign. In 13 months of combat, the 461st had dropped 10,885 tons of bombs in nine countries:
Losses sustained by the group were:
Since activation of the 461st Bombardment Group, over 5300 men served within its squadrons. During its tour the Group lost 99 B-24's to Enemy aircraft, flak and weather. Gunners downed 129 enemy fighters, probably destroyed 44 more and damaged 16. Group personnel were awarded the following military decorations: 4 Legions of Merit 11 Silver Stars 319 Distinguished Flying Crosses And 28 Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters 66 Bronze Stars with one Oak Leaf Cluster 15 Soldier's Medals 2,806 Air Medals with 29
Silver Oak Leaf Clusters and 271 Purple Hearts with 8 Oak Leaf Clusters On 17 May 1945 the Group was ordered to prepare for movement to the United States on 4 July. Work was immediately begun to clear the area, put all records, equipment and personnel in position for shipment. Actual movement to the Naples staging area was made on 29 June. On 8 July the men boarded the transport USS Mt. Vernon and arrived at Hampton Roads on 19 July. All officers and enlisted men were sent to various reception centers for processing and sent on 30 day furloughs. Men with high service points were scheduled for discharge and the remainder were ordered to Sioux Falls AAF for retraining into B-29's and deployment to the South Pacific. The Group was inactivated 27 August 1945. All personnel were sent either to separation centers or to bases in the 2nd Air Force. The 461st Bomb Group was called back to active duty to defend our country during the Korean War and the Vietnam War. During the Korean War the unit was known as the 461st Bombardment Group (L) while for the Vietnam War it was known as the 461st Bombardment Group (H). Epilogue In 1980 a small group of men from the 461st and the 484th Bomb Groups decided to form a joint group for the purpose of remembering our lost comrades and to bring the survivors together once more. Joint reunions were held in Torrance, CA (1981), Dayton, OH (1982), Williamsburg, VA (1983) and Orlando, FL (1984). Attendance by members of the 461st were not recorded for these meetings. In 1984 Members of the 461st felt the need for having a separate reunion for members of the Group. As a result of a survey, sent to all known members of the group, it was decided to have separate reunions every two years. In 1989 the Group elected to have reunions each year since we were all getting a bit older and might not make it through the next two years. Attendance has been outstanding since 1984. The cities hosting our reunions and the attendance at each have been:
Memorial plaques have been placed in the U.S. Air Force Academy Cemetery in 1985 and in the Memorial Park, Wright-Patterson AFB in 1992. These plaques are in memory of all deceased members. The group is working with Blind Centers of the V.A. to aide them in training legally blind vets. We have donated an extra large TV set to one unit and two exercise machines to another. |
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