The photograph shows housing destroyed by the RAF during night raids. INSIGNE. }); Each 8th Air Force WWII Decal is made with the highest quality 2.5mil High Gloss 5-Year Calendared vinyl. Login; Frequently Asked . By the late 1940s, the B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators used in the European Theater of the war were thoroughly obsolete as combat aircraft and were mostly sent to the smelters. clearTimeout(debounceTimer); Eighth Air Force carried out strategic daytime bombing operations in Western Europe from airfields in eastern England as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive. The 388 Bomb Group association was formed to insure the accomplishments and sacrifices of the men and women of the 388th are remembered. In the planned invasion of Japan, the mission of Eighth Air Force would be to conduct B-29 Superfortress raids from Okinawa in coordination with Twentieth Air Force operating from airfields in the Mariana Islands.[12]. Please include this amount with your annual renewal or new membership! Hard copies will be available for an additional $25 per year. Under ACC, Eighth Air Force provides command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C2ISR); long-range attack; and information operations forces to Air Force components and warfighting commands. } An Eighth Air Force unit, the 2d Bomb Wing, spearheaded the air campaign by dispatching B-52s from Barksdale to launch conventional air-launched cruise missiles against Iraqi targets. Altogether, the Eighth Air Force dropped over 4,800 tons of high explosive on Berlin during the first week of March. Eighth Air Force was relieved from assignment to Strategic Air Command and assigned to the new Air Combat Command (ACC) on 1 June 1992. The next day, over 900 bombers and 700 fighters of Eighth Air Force hit more aircraft factories in the Braunschweig area. 466th Bombardment Group - 8th Air Force 468th Bomber Group - 20th Air Force 488th Bombardment Group 493rd bombardment group - 8th Air Force 497th Bomber Group - 20th Air Force. As a professional researcher and World War II historian, Bill Beigel provides research services to genealogists, historians, authors, and civilians who are looking for information found in WW2 military unit records. As part of this plan, Eighth Air Force headquarters was reassigned to Sakugawa (Kadena Airfield), Okinawa, on 16 July 1945, being assigned to the United States Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific without personnel or equipment. The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). There were 261 fighter aces in the Eighth Air Force during World War II. A handful remained in service performing non-combat duties through the mid-1950s as air-sea rescue aircraft (SB-17, SB-24); photo-reconnaissance aircraft (RB-17, RB-24), and as unmanned target drones (QB-17) and their controllers (DB-17). } if (isMobile()) { var newImgWth = (origImgWth * ratio); These data were taken from the Loading Lists of the 385th BG combat missions missions, preserved in the U. S. National Archives in College Park, MD. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); National and Regional Reunions held annually across the United States, Tours, Seminars, Symposiums, Banquets, Veteran Question & Answer Sessions and more, Access to Bomb Group, Fighter Group and POW experts and researchers, Our award-winning magazine presented quarterly by mail or electronically. winHgt / origImgHgt); Over the years, the Society has become a strong organization with an emphasis on remembering and honoring our comrades who served with distinction: the men who flew, the many thousands of ground crews, and those who worked in the background. By 1945, all but one of the Eighth Air Force fighter groups were equipped with the P-51D. A strategic air force was that with a mission to attack an enemy's war effort beyond his front-line forces, predominantly production and supply facilities, whereas a tactical air force supported ground campaigns, usually with objectives selected through co-operation with the armies. if ($(".fancybox-caption__body").hasClass("af3-caption-body")) { Contact Us, If you have any data on servicemen and their units and would like to submit it to our digital library; please Contact Us, Copyright, Army Air Corps Library and Museum, Inc., All Rights Reserved. However, the only reliable way of dealing with the jets, as with the even faster Me 163B Komet rocket fighters, was to attack them on the ground and during takeoff and landing. The RAF had been making night raids on Berlin since 1940, (with heavy raids in 1943) and nuisance de Havilland Mosquito raids in daylight, but this was the first major daylight bombing raid on the German capital. The Eighth's combat record also shows 566 aces (261 fighter pilots with 31 having 15 or more victories and 305 enlisted gunners), over 440,000 bomber sorties to drop 697,000 tons of bombs, and over 5,100 aircraft losses and 11,200 aerial victories. By mid-1944, the 8th AF had reached a total strength of more than 200,000 people. For this reason, Eighth Air Force is commonly known as the "Mighty Eighth." Looking for Roster of American Officers in the 3rd Army at Operation Dragoon during WWII 0. SAC fighter wings assigned to Eighth Air Force were: Fighter escorts were no longer needed once SAC was equipped with Boeing B-47 Stratojet and then Boeing B-52 Stratofortress jet bombers carrying nuclear bombs. Major General Jimmy Doolittle relinquished command of the Fifteenth Air Force to Major General Nathan F. Twining and on January 6, 1944, took over command of the Eighth Air Force from Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker at RAF Daws Hill. isDesktopInit = false; "VIII Bomber Command" redirects here. $(".fancybox-caption__body").removeClass("half"); If you don't know of anyone in your family who served during the war, consider asking your family or looking at your family tree for those who would have been the right age to have registered for the draft or who may have served. United States Air Force. ", The Eighth Air Force team consists of more than 16,000 Regular Air Force (e.g., active duty), Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve professionals operating and maintaining a variety of aircraft capable of deploying air power to any area of the world. The right propeller of Kegelman's Boston was shot away by flak while over the target at De Kooy Airfield[7][self-published source?] 4th Bombardment Wing: 1942-1943. On July 4th, 1942 the first American bomber mission flown from England by the U.S Army Air Forces (AAF) flew towards the occupied Netherlands. In late 1943, the P-51B Mustang was introduced to the European Theater by the USAAF. Description Ask questions about records of the U.S. Army, Air Force, . Beech, Keyes Correspondent, US Marines 401 . function captionToggle() { Contact Us. Air Offensive, Europe ; Normandy; Northern France; Rhineland; Ardennes-Alsace ; Central Europe; Asiatic-Pacific Theater. First seen by Allied airmen during the late summer of 1944, it wasn't until March 1945 that German jet aircraft started to attack Allied bomber formations in earnest. World War II proved what the proponents of air power had been championing for the previous two decadesthe great value of strategic forces in bombing an enemy's industrial complex and of tactical forces in controlling the skies above a battlefield. } var caption = ''; His administration chose to invest in the Air Force, especially Strategic Air Command. The operation failed to achieve air superiority, even temporarily, and the German Army continued to be exposed to air attack. U.S. Military Personnel that Served in WWII. On 7 April, Eighth Air Force dispatched thirty-two B-17 and B-24 groups and fourteen Mustang groups (the sheer numbers of attacking Allied aircraft were so large in 1945 that they were now counted by the group) to targets in the small area of Germany still controlled by the Nazis, hitting the remaining airfields where the Luftwaffe jets were stationed. An advanced detachment of VIII Bomber Command was established at RAF Daws Hill, near RAF Bomber Command Headquarters at RAF High Wycombe, on 23 February in preparation for its units to arrive in the United Kingdom from the United States. Researching World War II Bombing Aerial Photography. At first, the Eighth deployed its B-52 bomber and KC-135 tanker units from the U.S. to operating bases in Guam, Okinawa and Thailand. History. Our research database contains information on Bomber, Fighter and Service Groups, their Bases both in England and the United States, Daily Missions and Targets throughout Europe. The 27th was relieved of its duties supporting U.N. forces in Korea and returned to Bergstrom AFB on 31 July 1951, but was redeployed to Misawa AB, Japan during 6 October 1952 13 February 1953 to provide air defense. That base assignment lasted until November 1950, when SAC transferred the Eighth to Carswell AFB (formerly Fort Worth Army Air Field), Texas. There is an entry for each credited mission which that individual flew. else { Allied bomber escort fighters would fly high above the bombers diving from this height gave them extra speed, thus reducing the speed difference. $(".fancybox-caption__body").addClass("af3-caption-body"); if (isMobile()) As the new commander of the Eighth Air Force from January 1944 onwards, Major General Jimmy Doolittle's major influence on the European air war occurred early that year when he made a critical change to the policy requiring escorting fighters to remain with the bombers at all times. With Doolittle's permission, American fighter pilots on bomber defense missions would primarily be flying far ahead of the bombers' combat box formations in air supremacy mode, literally "clearing the skies" of any Luftwaffe fighter opposition heading towards the target. Activated in the Philippines on 20 Sep 1941. First Name. By comparison, the U.S. Navy suffered 37,000 deaths out of the 4.1 million in WW II. . 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