My Uncle Fred (top row, 2nd on left) was 381st Bomb Group out of Ridgewell, England. I was fortunate enough to tour what is left of the RAF base and I was given a document outlining their missions per day. This is from June 6, 1944 ..... The invasion of the European continent by allied forces started this morning between the hours of 06.00 and 08.00. The men worked all night in preparation for the missions of today. Aircraft of this squadron attacked defense installations in France, while other squadrons of the group attacked other defences. Those taking part were: Capt Winter and Lt Moore; Lts Sutherlin, Doyle, Thomas, Dussault, Sluyter, Guy and Cann. A second and third mission were planned for today, but were scrubbed due to bad weather. The password is Design. My Uncle, like most, never really spoke of his time in the military or war but he reached out to me while living in London. I asked a few questions and will share this answer. My Mother is Betty and their younger sister Deanna “We didnt have an official name for our crew or plane. From D-Day on the pace was stepped up and we would change planes often due to repairs and maintenance schedules. Of course we NCOs wanted something on our leather flight jackets so I came up with Miss Behavior and a plane with bombs dropping from it on the back and on mine I had Bettys and Deannas name on the front. We were known as Quinns crew also our crew number was 3807.” “There were four Squadrons in the 381st. On a given mission there would be 36 planes in one formation, made up with 12 crews from three squadrons and two standby crews from the squadron that didnt fly that day. Im not sure why all of the pilots names were not listed but ours are. I had kept a tag from one of the bombs on each mission and entered the date and target for that day. They correspond exactly with those given in the diaries.”
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:28:48 +0000
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