Help with interpreting military data (WWII, war, Roman, bomb)
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Hi: I'm putting together a book based on 400 letters my dad wrote my mother during his experiences as a navagator and bombadier during WWII. It occurred to me this evening to look at this old family Bible my mother left me, and there is tons of information in the back, in her hand.
The material related to my father's service record follows. If anyone could tell me what this means, I would appreciate it:
Aerial gunner – Air Offensive:
Europe – Normandy, GO33WD45
Rhineland Ardennes, GO40WD45
Northern France, GO46WD45
Central Europe, GO48WD45
Serial #18-129-687 Citations:
EAME Service ribbon with Silver Star
Presidential Unit Citation
Star & 1 Bronze Service Star
Air Medal GO31Hq. BD45 & four Oak Leaf Clusters
Good Conduct Medal, 598 Bomb Sq. (9th Air Force)
Continental Service: 1 year, 9 mos, 14 days
Foreign Service: 1 year, 6 mos, 13 days
Reason for separation: demobilization
Separation center: Camp Chaffee, Ark – Oct. 13, 1945
I understand the last two lines, of course. Was he in four battles? And are the citations formatted correctly, so that I put them in the book.
GO33WD45 stands for "General Order Number 33, War Department, 1945. That number was used to geographically locate a specific campaign and defined which ones he got credit for. It doesn't have anything to do with the number of battles he was in, but more accurately how many geographic areas/campaigns he was assigned too.
It looks like he was pretty much involved all the way through D-Day on Normandy up until the the capture of Berlin.
>> GO33WD45 stands for "General Order Number 33, War Department, 1945. That number was used to geographically locate a specific campaign and defined which ones he got credit for. It doesn't have anything to do with the number of battles he was in, but more accurately how many geographic areas/campaigns he was assigned too.
Yes, thank you. There's a guy who has an elaborate page dedicated to the B-26 Mauraders;
and he told me this morning just what you said. Every time dad went out, it was a battle, but those designation are campaigns.
>> It looks like he was pretty much involved all the way through D-Day on Normandy up until the the capture of Berlin.
That's good to know. Probably it would be smart for me to, not just transcribe the letters and scan the graphics (letterheads, drawings, etc.), but to actually know something about the history of WWII. Your remarks are helpful, thank you.
>> It looks like he was pretty much involved all the way through D-Day on Normandy up until the the capture of Berlin.
That's good to know. Probably it would be smart for me to, not just transcribe the letters and scan the graphics (letterheads, drawings, etc.), but to actually know something about the history of WWII. Your remarks are helpful, thank you.
Glad to be of some help! I'd be very interested in reading your book, heck, I've done professional proof reading before and would be willing to help you out there.
There should be a list somewhere of the exact geographic areas those Campaigns were in. Once you've figured that out you can start working on individual battles. You'll need to do that by finding the records of which airplanes he was assigned too (usually by serial number,) then from there you can start narrowing it down to specific battles.
Since he was in Europe, he was most likely assigned to a B-17 or B-24 squadron. You may get lucky and find someone who was a crew mate.
Just a word of warning, any information you find via official records is not going to be 100% accurate. Records were not exactly high priority during the war and you may find some things that contradict each other. I would probably go ahead and take everything on face value unless it's obviously out of whack though.
B-26 Mauraders. I'm just wanting to make sure I have some notion about the historical data, as I transcribe the letters. I just wondered what all that meant.
I also have the following, copied out of the back of mother's Bible she left when she passed away. I don't think it's really formatted in a way I could list it in a book. Could you help with that? This is what I have:
Citations:
EAME Service ribbon with Silver Star
Presidential Unit Citation
Star & 1 Bronze Service Star
Air Medal GO31Hq. BD45 & four Oak Leaf Clusters
Good Conduct Medal, 598 Bomb Sq. (9th Air Force)
Continental Service: 1 year, 9 mos, 14 days
Foreign Service: 1 year, 6 mos, 13 days
Reason for separation: demobilization
Separation center: Camp Chaffee, Ark – Oct. 13, 1945
Citations:
EAME Service ribbon with Silver Star
Presidential Unit Citation
Star & 1 Bronze Service Star
Air Medal GO31Hq. BD45 & four Oak Leaf Clusters
Good Conduct Medal, 598 Bomb Sq. (9th Air Force)
Service Stars - Service star - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia My guess is that they were awarded to him "for meritorious participation in battle, or for having suffered damage during battle conditions" which was what they were used for in WWII. A silver is five bronze, so my guess is that six times the airplane he was in was damaged.
Continental Service: 1 year, 9 mos, 14 days
Foreign Service: 1 year, 6 mos, 13 days
Reason for separation: demobilization
Separation center: Camp Chaffee, Ark – Oct. 13, 1945
I assume that Continental Service means he served in the US for 1 year, 9 months, 14 days (probably during training.) And then served overseas for another 1 year, 6 months, 13 days. So he had a total of just over 3 years of service.
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