Unusual Air crew wings.

[Kilroy56]

These appear to have been converted from Aerial Gunner' s wings...

Late war manufacture?

Thoughts welcome.

Thank you, 

Dominique 

[ram957]

Looks looks a homemade conversion...

[Allan H.]

It looks like they used a pocket button to make the center of the wing! Interesting piece.

 

Allan

[stratasfan]

If you take a shank button and remove the back section, that's what they attached to the center of the wing badge. Very cool!

[5thwingmarty]

It is hard to tell from the angle, but it looks like the wing has the long, typically post WWII pins.  It seems odd that someone felt the need to convert a gunner wing to an aircrew wing, since gunner wings were considered more desirable than aircrew wings.  It is hard to imagine anyone serving anywhere that they could not acquire an aircrew wing when they needed one, and had to go to the length of converting a gunner wing but I have an even more bizarre aircrew wing headed my way to share soon.  

[Kilroy56]

Your comments are appreciated,  thank you.

A similar wing happens to be pictured in Maguire's "More silver wings, pins & greens"...

[5thwingmarty]

The one in the book looks to have been made from the same base gunner wing and to have had the same button added.  

[Allan H.]

I think that there was at least a faction of flyers that considered the Aircrew wing to be "superior" to Air Gunner wings. I recall a veteran who told me that when he was promoted to Technical Sergeant, he changed over to Aircrew Wings because he had a lot more responsibility than just being a gunner (or even a Radio Operator Gunner). Aircrew to him at least meant that he was responsible for a portion of the aircraft's flight and wasn't simply "riding shotgun."

 

As collectors, most of us prefer the Air Gunner Design, but I believe, based on the testimony of veterans, that the Aircrew wing was held in somewhat higher regard by the flight types.

 

Allan

[bschwartz]

That's really interesting Allan.  Thanks for sharing that.  For all the veterans I've known I never once thought to ask that.  All of them are gone now so the chance has passed.  For some reason I met a lot of B-17 tail gunners and a lot of ball turret gunners.  Didn't have the opportunity to know as many pilots but a few navigators and bombardiers but no waist gunners.  I always kind of wondered who decided to wear air crew wings versus the wings of their other specialty.  This story makes a lot of sense.  Although all of them had brass balls to do what they did.  The power of youth and invincibility.  So sad that so many of them went down with their planes so young.  

[Kilroy56]

Much interesting information !

Allan and Bob , it is always a pleasure to hear your comments.

As to this strange wing , it looks it is not a unique specimen .

[CNY Militaria]

An interesting discussion for sure! I have never seen a wing made in that fashion, but I like it. As the gunner wings went away during the post war USAF era, it is also possible that the service member was cheap enough, or sentimental enough, so convert his gunner wings to aircrew for the new regs. 

[5thwingmarty]

I hadn't thought about the post war use of the wings.  Since there are more than one of these out there where the same base wing was converted using the same button, maybe it was just the manufacturer trying to use up old stock to fill a post war order.  Still seems like a lot of work when die struck wings were so readily available.