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WWII Officially Named AAF DFC's and Air Medals to POW's


KASTAUFFER
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Is it a cruel twist of fate that both Quigley's and Warford's Silver Stars are missing?!

 

Both groups are awesome! I used to own Warford,

 

Kurt

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Is it a cruel twist of fate that both Quigley's and Warford's Silver Stars are missing?!

 

Both groups are awesome! I used to own Warford,

 

Kurt

 

 

No kidding! Yes, I was going to mention that I picked up the Warford medals from you. Regarding the Quigley set; I have the Silver Star Shipping carton, box, ribbon, citiation but no medal. I have a feeling it was buried with him?? It's a real nice group though with alot more items that I need to post at some point, but I sure wish I had both Silver Stars!!!

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Here is a set I forgot to add to this thread

 

This is a named Pacific AAF POW DFC / Air Medal pair . Most Pacific POWs were captured in the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, ETC. The Japanese didnt take many airman as POWs.

 

S/Sgt Hastings was a gunner on a B-24 with the 7th Bomb Group , 10th AAF . The B-24 he was serving took off from Pandaveswar Airfield in India on a bombing mission against Insein in Burma. The plane was shot down in a running battle against Japanese fighters 30km west of Ma-ubin in Burma. Five died in the crash. The rest of the crew were captured and ended up in the Jail at Rangoon Burma . Four of the crew were liberated from Rangoon at the end of the war.

 

Both medals are officially engraved and the DFC is numbered.

 

 

 

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Hey JDK

 

Your trio to Quigley is only the 2nd POW officially engraved DFC/AM pair from the Pacific I have seen. I just posted the first!

 

Kurt

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Hey JDK

 

Your trio to Quigley is only the 2nd POW officially engraved DFC/AM pair from the Pacific I have seen. I just posted the first!

 

Kurt

 

 

Hey Kurt,

 

Very Nice set of medals you have there!

 

 

 

I remember you saying in a different thread that they are very tough to find.

 

Here's a link to info on his time as a POW. He was part of a group of airmen known as "The Diddled Dozen"... so there has to be a few more medal sets out there somewhere.

 

http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/hokkaido/sapporo/pow_pic_2.html

 

 

Diddled Dozen Photo

 

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  • 2 years later...

Here is a nice POW AM I posted in another thread: http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/200445-first-over-germany-306th-bg-pow-and-evader/

 

He was shot down April 5, 1943 on a mission to Antwerp while a crewman of a B-17 named L'il Abner . The entire crew made it out alive and most attempted to Evade. S/Sgt Sanders evaded for 3 months from April 1943 until July 1943 when the Gestapo picked him up in Paris. He spent a few weeks in a prison in Paris as a guest of the Gestapo and went from there to Stalag VIIA , XVIIB , and then to his permanent camp Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan.

 

 

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  • 6 months later...

This is a nice early AAF group to co-pilot with the 96th Bomb Group who saw some of the ugliest missions the 8th AAF had against the Germans between Nov 1943 and March 1944. He was shot down on the Big B mission of March 8, 1944.His crew almost didn't make it home from the Bremen mission earlier.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
cperkins510

All

 

Examples of officially named DFC's and Air Medals have been posted in various threads thoughout the forum. I decided today to start one devoted to examples awarded to POW's . I have also thrown in some Purple Hearts for good measure.

 

During WWII , the AAF would often award named medals to crewmen who were either MIA or POW's . The medals were officially hand engraved by the PQMD ( Philadelphia Quartemaster Depot ) and presented to the NOK either in person or via the mail . Sometimes you will find groups to POW's that have un-named medals in them because the medals were awarded before the recipient became a casualty. I have a number that fit that example.

 

The normal naming convention is :

 

RANK

NAME

A.C.

 

The name itself can be on 1 or 2 lines . Also note that all the DFC's and AM's are HAND ENGRAVED.... not MACHINE.

 

I am going to leave the names of the vets out of my posts to frustrate geneologists ..... and you know the rest of the story...

 

The first group is a DFC/AM group to a bombardier from the 303rd BG who was shot down 11/13/44 on his 25th Mission ( His DFC is for completing 25 missions ) . His B-17 was named " Liberty Run " . He spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft 1 . Included is his POW barrackes card and a POW camp made lead wing .

 

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Wow, really love the POW wings. I've never seen anything like those before.

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  • 2 months later...

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Here's an officially engraved Air Medal to a B-17 pilot with the 335th Bomb Squadron, 95th Bomb Group. His time in combat with the 95th BG lasted only 15 days but what he managed to take part in and be a part of in those 15 days is quite remarkable. His first combat mission was Sunday February 20th, 1944, Day One of Big Week, and his last was March 6th, 1944, the Eighth's 250th mission.

 

February 20th was the only flight he flew as Co-Pilot on and they hit Rostock, Germany. He would fly on every day of Big Week; the 21st's target was Hanover but was aborted and they hit targets of opportunity, the 22nd's target was Schweinfurt but was aborted and they hit targets of opportunity, the 24th saw them returning to Rostock and the 25th they hit Regensburg in a joint effort with the 15th Air Force. He flew two more missions in February on the 28th and 29th (hitting Brunswick).

 

Then came the 4th of March. Over 500 planes were launched with Berlin as their target. Midway through the flight a recall order was issued to which the vast majority of the bomber stream responded and turned around. The 95th, with Lt. Col. Grif Mumford in the lead plane, disregarded the recall order as his radio operator believed it to be a German ruse. Of the 34 planes in the 95th formation that launched that day, 12 would abort. The remaining planes, along with a Pathfinder from the 482nd BG and elements of the 100th BG, would successfully reach and hit Berlin, with the 95th losing 4 planes, marking the first successful American daylight raid on the city.

 

The next day Life Magazine came to Horham to photograph the men of the 95th BG who took part in the March 4th mission. This particular pilot's plane was hastily renamed Berlin First and was used as the B-17 in the photograph that would appear in the March 27, 1944 issue (see following post).

 

He would fly again on March 6th, 1944, with Berlin again as their target. En route to the city Berlin First was attacked by a German fighter and lost three of her engines. The entire crew was able to bail out and Berlin First crashed outside of Bremen. He was captured and would spend the next 14 months in Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany.

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From Life Magazine, March 27th, 1944:

 

“Berlin First”

“In this colossal portrait one Flying Fortress and some 130 young men commemorate an historic moment in the life of the U.S. Eighth Air Force. The men are the crews of a single formation of heavy bombers, which on March 4 made the first American attack on Berlin. The airplane is named Berlin First, not only because it took part in the raid, but also because all but one of its crew to Berlin were on their first flight over the Continent.

 

In addition to being the record of a milestone, this picture partly overcomes a curious anonymity which has obscured the fliers of the Eighth. For men who are making one of the greatest American offensive efforts of the war, little has been told of them. Only their heroes are known to the U.S. The Berlin First portrait is also a reminder of the human scale of the war in the air. The tight good-sized group of men shown above is just about enough to fly 13 heavy bombers.

 

The first raid was nearly forgotten in the great Berlin attacks which came in the week after March 4. The raid of March 6, in which 800 Fortresses and Liberators cascaded 2,000 tons of bombs on the city, was another precedent for the Eighth. For the first time American daylight bombers had equaled the most ambitious of RAF attacks.”

 

 

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Thanks Kurt!

 

Here are two more images...

 

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Mumford's formation is not pictured here but was made up of 12 planes by the time they made it to Berlin.

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  • 5 months later...
Schofield1943

Here's a DFC to a navigator who was shot down over Ploesti on August 1, 1943 and spent the rest of the war in a Romanian POW camp.

 

Euroclydon The Storm

328th Bomb Squadron

93rd Bomb Group

 

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Euroclydon was piloted that day by Lt. Enoch Porter and their position in the formation was off of Lt. Col. Baker's left wing as one of the lead planes.

 

From Black Sunday: Ploesti by Michael Hill:

 

Enoch Porter held Euroclydon in position off Baker’s left wing. During the run for the refineries, The Storm took a flak hit in the bomb bay tanks, causing flames to erupt amidships. Another shell burst in the nose, slashing hydraulic lines. The fire spread forward into the tunnel below the flight deck. Navigator Lt. Raymond W/a/r/n/e/r recalled, “I tried to use the intercom, no response! I reached up under the flight deck and tried to tug the pilot’s legs or rudder pedals to signal our problem. Still no response! The fire was getting pretty bad, I figured it was time to try and get out. I pulled the nose-wheel door release and only one door opened. I looked behind me; ‘Red’ (Lt. Jesse D. Franks Jr.) was trying to get his chute on. Another shell exploded behind me, which shattered my shoulder blade and put shrapnel into my head. The concussion blasted me back through the tunnel into the flames. My feet were in the fire and one of my arms was hanging out the open nose-wheel door. ‘Red’ tried to pull me back so he could push me out. We had a pact with each other. He couldn’t get me out so he jumped on the closed door and fell out. I was laying there kicking and screaming, with my feet in the fire and my arm in the slipstream!”

 

Porter and co-pilot Flight Officer Joe Boswell hauled back on the yokes with everything they had. Euroclydon rose like a flaming comet to about 200 feet. Waist gunners Charles Reed and James Vest jumped for their lives. In the nose W/a/r/n/e/r was still struggling. “The aircraft shuddered, I slipped out. Everything went into slow motion. I saw my right hand reach for the ripcord; it seemed to take hours. My chute opened horizontal in the slipstream as I hit the ground!”

 

Euroclydon had reached about 250 feet before the forces of gravity and metal fatigue took over. As the burning ship stalled, the fire weakened fuselage snapped in two, just behind the wing. The burning sections fell to earth and slammed into the ground, taking the rest of the crew to their deaths. Gunners Vest and Reed survived their jump. W/a/r/n/e/r lay unconscious near a small creek bleeding from 35 shrapnel wounds. Jesse Franks lay dead in a field; his chute hadn’t opened enough to slow his jump from 75 feet.

 

He remembered, “I came to about dark. I hid my chute and got ready to walk to Turkey. I had to lay down in the creek 'cause I was blacking out from time to time. I figured if I lay there all night I might not make it. I went towards a peasant’s cottage that was towards my left. There happened to be two soldiers nearby; I surrendered to them. They took me to the cottage.” He recalled that finally the soldiers took him to a building that had other wounded Americans inside. He was placed in one of the corners with other badly wounded. Later, he found out that the corner he was put in was reserved for those that weren’t expected to live.

 

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He spent months recovering in the hospital before he was transferred to a Romanian POW camp. The shirt he was wearing on that fateful day is now on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio next to Lt. Colonel Addison Baker's Medal of Honor and other awards from Operation Tidal Wave. Below is the information card beneath the shirt:

 

Lt. Raymond P. "Jack" W/a/r/n/e/r was a navigator on one of the B-24s that bombed the oil refineries at Ploesti on Aug. 1, 1943. Immediately after bomb release he was firing a .50-cal. nose gun dueling at tree-top level with anti-aircraft batteries. Enemy shrapnel nearly severed his left arm, but he was able to bail out of the stricken B-24. He struck the ground just as his parachute was opening. He was captured and received hospital care. Nurses laundered his bloody shirt and repaired the many holes and returned it to him when he was released from the hospital in December. He wore this shirt proudly during his remaining nine months as a prisoner of war and he brought it home with him.

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

A new addition to my collection. 2nd Bomb Group, 96th Bomb Squadron, Co-Pilot. Shot down on May 7, 1944 during a mission to Romania. Interestingly, all 10 crewmen made it out. Seven crewmen landed on one side of a mountain range and were picked up by British paid Chetnicks. All 7 were returned to US forces within 2 weeks. The other 3 crewmen (including this co-pilot) landed on the other side of the mountain and were picked up by Chetnicks working for the Germans! They spent the remainder of the war as POWs. The man named on the Air Medal talks about this in the 2nd BG's unit history.

2nd Lt. N. J. C., Co-Pilot March 4,1991:

"We lost engine No.3 and No. 4 to flak and could not feather them. We lost altitude steadily on the way to Italy and had to bailout when we neared the mountains of Yugoslavia. When it was time to bailout of the aircraft, I went to the front of the bomb bay and saw some enlisted men at the back end of the bomb bay. I motioned for them to jump but they would not, afraid I guess. So being a dumb hero, I jumped out first to show them it was necessary. If I had waited another three or four minutes, we would all have been picked up by British paid Chetnicks and there would have been no POWs. But you never know."

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  • 2 years later...

Here's a nice addition to a Gunner from the 515th BS, 376th BG, who was shot down on 16 Aug 1943 on a bombing mission to Foggia, Italy. He was captured and spent the rest of the war as POW at Stalag Luft 4. He was Returned to Military Control, Liberated or Repatriated on 30 May 1945 according to NARA.

 

Thanks to fellow forum member Kurt Stauffer as we were both eyeing this medal at the same time and opted not to get into a bidding war over it. What makes this medal unique is, he earned it for his role on that “special” low level raid on 1 Aug 1943 to bomb oil refineries in Romania while flying on a different 515th BS aircraft. The GO lists him as Missing in Action.

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  • 4 months later...

Navigator of a B-17 named " The Joker" with the 94th Bomb Group. He was captured 10/7/44 and held in Stalag Luft 3 in the South Compound.

 

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  • 2 years later...
  • 9 months later...

My latest rescue.

Part of this group came from an antique mall, part of it came from another collector, and part came from eBay.

All of it originally had been in the same frame.

He was a Stalag Luft 3 POW captured on May 10, 1944 on a mission over Weiner Neustadt.

For that mission he was awarded the DFC.

He was a B-17 pilot with the 463rd BG. He earned his Legion of Merit during the Korean War. 

I was able to tie the number on his POW ID tag to him from the Luft 3 west compound rolls. 

Glad I could bring this group all back together.

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