Someone was kind enough to send me a picture of my Dad in Radio School. The fellow’s father fresh out of small town high school was there with my Dad. He had a terrible time understanding some of the more complicated parts of radios, Dad took him under his wing and helped him pass the class. Dad was like a big brother to him, unfortunately they lost track of each other. Later in the war he was shot down and picked up by an enemy patrol, all he could think of was “What would Art do?” Helped him stay calm in a dangerous situation, later he was “liberated” by a resistance group and eventually returned to his Squadron. Dad would probably be surprised he was anyone’s hero.
Dad is in the foreground, I would know those ears anywhere.
While I don’t know yet where he took his Photo-Recon training I do have some of the training materials. And thanks to his nephew Ed, I have a picture of him in his flight jacket.
I don’t know when this picture was taken, I am guessing 1944. He has aged, no more the boyish looks, he has grown up. We knew from the patch on his jacket he was in the Jolly Rogers, also known as the original gangstas. I think I like the mustache, a lot of the guys in the Jolly Rogers had them probably as a homage to the Jolly’s namesake Col Art Rogers their commanding officer who also had a mustache. I will have to ask if he kept it after he got home.
One of the nephews told me he painted Nose Art on the planes while he was in New Guinea. There is supposed to be pictures of them and a book which I hope they find. The Nose Art artists were for the most part anonymous unless they were well known artists before they went in. By a happy coincidence I have always loved Nose Art, collected pictures for years and still do. He did Nose Art on the planes for extra money, usually $25 or a couple of bottles of booze and I painted Nose Art on bomber jackets for extra money. I did these for us so I still have them.
Privateer and Mistress Quickly are actually cockpit art from the two lead planes that searched for Amelia Earhart. No one remembers if flying was something Dad was interested in before the war.
The Jolly Rogers were rock stars of their day. They got a special visit from Bob Hope in August of 1944. He brought Carole Landis, Jack Benny, Joe E Brown and Jerry Colonna with him.
As you can see, the Jolly Roger's squadron got all the limelight. Bob Hope was at Biak on 25 August 1944 putting on a special show for the Air Corps. He is seen in the "Jolly Rogers" staff car holding a captured Japanese flag which was presented to him.
And it gets even better for the "Jolly Rogers" boys. Hollywood actress Carole Landis must've been a big hit with the boys of the 90th Bomb Group. Carole is standing in front of the tail of B-24J, #44-40340, "Buck Benny Rides Again" at Hollandia in August 1944.
Jack Benny in USAAF B-24 Liberator,
#44-40340, "Buck Benny Rides Again"
of the 90th Bomb Group
The 90th Bombardment Group was a Liberator group that took part in the campaigns in the south-west Pacific and the Philippines
The group was constituted on 28 January 1942 as part of the post-Pearl Harbor increase in the size of the US military. It was activated in April and trained with the B-24 Liberator, the aircraft it would use throughout the Second World War.
In September 1942 the group moved to Hawaii, where it expected to stay for some time, but in October MacArthur made an urgent plea for more support, and one of the units allocated to him was the 90th.
In November 1942 the group moved to Australia, where it joined the Fifth Air Force and immediately entered combat. The heavy bombers were used rather differently in the Pacific theatre - lacking the range to reach Japanese industry for most of the war the B-24s were instead used to attack Japanese troop concentrations, airfields, ground bases and shipping across large areas of the south-west Pacific theatre.
The group's B-24s were early models without a nose turret. During the winter of 1942-43 some of them were equipped with Consolidated tail turrets mounted in the nose. This work was carried out at Archerfield, Australia, and was considered to be a success. Thirty-five more turrets were requested in January 1943 and they arrived in March. More were requested in May. General Kenney, commander of the Fifth Air Force, also had the ball turret replaced with manually operated .50in machine guns.
The group began to make a major contribution to the fighting in January 1943. At this early stage its abilities were limited by aircraft serviceability, with on average fifteen of its sixty aircraft available at any one time.
The group officially moved to Port Moresby in February 1943 and it remained there for most of the year. This reduced the distances the aircraft were flying, and in turn improved availability.
While most of the group moved to Port Moresby the 319th Bombardment Squadron moved to Darwin, where it remained from February-July 1943. During this period it operated over the Dutch East Indies, attacking Amboina, Koepang, Makassar and Kendari. It was replaced in this role by the 380th Bombardment Group and joined the main part of the group at Port Moresby.
In March 1943 the group took part on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.
The group was awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation for an attack on Japanese airfields on Wewak in September 1943.
On 12 October it took part in the Fifth Air Force's largest attack to date, an attack on the harbour at Rabaul. The group claimed to have sunk a destroyer and damaged two tenders and two large merchant ships. Japanese fighters attacked the formation and two B-24s were lost.
The first B-24 that took off on this raid on Rabaul, #41-11902 "Punjab", vanished without a trace on this mission. It was piloted by the Commanding Officer of the 320th Squadron, Major Raymond S. Morse. Also on board was the Group Commander, Colonel Arthur W. Meehan, who was co-pilot. This loss in combination with a crash at take off killing eleven crew members and damaging four planes, caused some significant morale problems amongst the men of the 90th Bomb Group.
In November 1943 the group attacked Japanese targets around Arawe, in preparation for an allied landing which took place on 15 December. In December the group attacked targets at Cape Gloucester, again in preparation for an Allied invasion.
In December 1943 the group moved forward to Dobodura.
This is probably the earliest my dad could have been there and from mid 1944 forward the planes were finished in natural polished metal like the silver B29s. They must have been quite a sight flying in formation with the sun dancing off the shiny silver.
In February 1944 the group made its final move on New Guinea, to Nadzab. The same month saw the Fifth Air Force concentrate its efforts against Kavieng. The 90th took part in a large attack on 11 February, catching Japanese aircraft on the apron preparing to take off. The group returned on 13 February and the airfield was knocked out of service.
At the same time the group made a series of attacks on the Admiralty Islands, attacking Momote on 26 January and Madang on 6 February.
On 28 April 1944 the group took part in the first large scale raids on Biak. June saw the group attack airfields on Vogelkop, in an attempt to divert attention away from a planned invasion of Noemfoor, as well as attack Noemfoor directly.
In August 1944 the group moved onto a newly completed base at Biak. This had been a rather stretched out move - on 22 June part of the air echelon moved to Wakde, while some of the ground personnel were already onboard ships waiting to sail for Biak.
The focus of Fifth Air Force operations now moved towards the Philippines. On 1 September the group took part in an attack on Japanese airfields on the islands. Barracks at Likana were the target on 2 September and the Santa Ana docks on Mindanao were attacked on 6 September. Oil tanks at Davao were the target on 18 September.
In September and October 1944 the group carried out long range attacks on the vital oil refineries at Balikpapan on Borneo. The first attack was carried out on 30 September but the 90th arrived last, after clouds had obscured the target and only one of its squadrons was able to bomb the target. On 14 October the 90th led the attack, the most successful in this series of five attacks on the oil refineries.
First Hand recollection
On 30 September 1944, 64 B-24s of FEAF’s Thirteenth Air Force’s 5th and 307 Bomb Groups (BG) and Fifth Air Force’s 90th BG struck oil installations at Balikpapan dropping 85-tons of 1,000 lb bombs. The 5th BG’s bombers damaged the Pandarsarii refinery and set afire an oil tanker at dock. Fifth Air Force’s 90th BG “Jolly Rogers” and the 307th BG arrived late, found the target obscured by cloud cover and did not put bombs on target.
To reach the gasoline and oil refineries at Balikpapan, the "Liberators" had to fly a round trip of 2,610 miles entirely over water and Japanese held territory, the longest daylight mass formation bombing missions ever flown by B-24 aircraft.
Lt. Edgar H Wittman (pilot) and crew went down in the South Pacific and were never recovered.
This was all the more impressive because the range of the B24s was about 3,000 miles. That mere 400 mile cushion could be easily used up with wind changes or weather. Having to ditch in open water behind enemy lines had a survival rate of zero. This kind of daring helps explain why they suffered an 80% loss rate on planes and 800 of the Jolly Rogers crew members during 1943-1945.
In January 1945 the group moved onto Mindoro. It was used to support the troops fighting on Luzon, and also gained a more traditional strategic role, attacking Japanese industries on Formosa and railways, harbours and airfields on the Chinese mainland. During this period the group had a number of aircraft equipped with H2X navigational radar, which were used for night missions, especially over Formosa, and as pathfinders on day missions.
Saigon was attacked in April, with the naval yards and Japanese ships the main targets. Rail targets across Indo-China were attacked in May. In June 1945 the group made a series of attacks on Borneo, in preparation for the invasion of Brunei on 10 June 1945. Canton was the target twice during July.
In mid-August 1945 the group moved to Ie Shima, a small island off the coast of Okinawa.
After the end of the war the group flew reconnaissance missions over Japan. My Dad flew the first such damage assessment over Nagasaki since the bomb was dropped. It was also used to transport liberated prisoners of war from Okinawa to Manila. The group moved back to the Philippines in December 1945 and was inactivated in the next month.
This is a quick history of their air combat and bombing, although not all by any means. Before any of this could happen the Photo Recon and Mapping crews were up providing vital information on what the bombers would find when they got to the targets and they accompanied some bombers to document the actual raid. After the bombing Photo Recon returned to take pictures of the damage to insure all the targets were hit or the target was sufficiently damaged for ground troops to move forward based on maps these squadrons provided.
This photo was taken the day after my Dad was forced to bailout 10 miles away from home while on the same target. Because I won’t have more information on specifically what he was doing until sometime in August I am going to jump ahead to what he was doing after he got home. I will come back to the Jolly Rogers, there is still much to tell.