Part 3: When WW II came to The Arthur Area

Author: Bill Crane

We have record of the 49 Arthur men who served in the U S Army Air Corps during WW ll. Many were pilots, gunners, navigators, radio operators, bombardiers, radar operators, and ground crews, that kept the aircraft airworthy. The B-25 carried a crew of up to 10 men, all had wings insignia on their chest. They all experienced the same dangers as their pilots. The cooks and quartermasters had a monster job of keeping 12 million men, in all corners, of the globe, including combat zones, fed, and equipped.

After the war the Army Air Corps. was given its own command and rename the United States Air Force.

Arthur men who served in Army Air Corps.
*Missing Burl Pankey Picture

More airmen died in WW II than Marines.

Here are some amazing WW II Statistics of the Army Air Corps. Almost 1,000 Army Air Corps planes disappeared in route from the US to foreign locations, but an eye-watering 43,581 aircraft were lost overseas.

In a single 376 plane raid in August 1943, 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England. In 1942-43 it was statistically impossible for bomber crews to complete a 25-mission tour in Europe. Pacific theater losses were far less (4,530 in combat) owing to smaller forces committed. The worst B-29 mission, against Tokyo on May 25, 1945, cost 26 B-29 Super Fortresses, 5.6 percent of the 464 dispatched from the Marianas.

On average all service branch’s, 6,600 American servicemen died per month during WW II, about 220 a day. By the end of the war, over 40,000 airmen were killed in combat theaters and another 18,000 wounded. Some 12,000 missing men were declared dead, including a number "liberated" by the Soviets but never returned. More than 41,000 were captured, half of the 5,400 held by the Japanese died in captivity. Total Army Air Corps combat casualties were pegged at 121,867 men.

The losses were huge---but so were production totals. From 1941 through 1945, American industry, without computers and with pencil and paper and the slide rules, built and delivered more than 276,000 military aircraft. A typical cost of a new home today would have built four B-25 Bombers. The aircraft built, was enough not only for US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, but for allies as diverse as Britain, Australia, China, and Russia.

However, our enemies took massive losses. Through much of 1944, the Luftwaffe sustained uncontrolled hemorrhaging, reaching 25 percent of aircrews and 40 planes a month. And in late 1944 into 1945, nearly half the pilots in Japanese squadrons had flown fewer than 200 hours.

 Experience Level: Uncle Sam sent many of his sons to war with absolute minimums of training. Some fighter pilots entered combat in 1942 with less than one hour in their assigned aircraft. A high-time P-51 pilot had 30 hours in type. Many had fewer than five hours. Some had one hour. The attitude was, "They all have a stick and a throttle. Go fly "em." The Group commander, Col. Donald Blakeslee, said, "You can learn to fly ‘51s on the way to the target. A future P-47 ace said, "l was sent to England to die." He was not alone. many bomber crews were still learning their trade. Jimmy Doolittle's mission, 15 pilots on the April 1942 Tokyo raid, only five had won their wings before 1941. All but one of the 16 copilots were less than a year out of flight school. ln WWII flying safely took a back seat to combat.

Navigators: Perhaps the greatest unsung success story of AAF training was Navigators. The Army graduated some 50,000 during the War. And many had never flown out of sight of land before leaving the United States for a war zone. Yet the huge majority found their way across oceans and continents without getting lost or running out of fuel Cadet To Colonel: It was possible for a flying cadet at the time of Pearl Harbor to finish the war with eagles on his shoulders. That was the record of John D Landers, commanding the 8th Air Force Group, at age 24.

At its height in mid-1944, the Army Air Corps had 2.6 million people and nearly 80,000 aircraft of all types. Today the US Air Force has about 12 percent of the manpower and 7 percent of the airplanes of the WW II peak.

But within living memory, men left the earth in 1,000- plane formations and fought major battles five miles high, leaving a legacy that remains timeless.