Hostile Skies and Empty Tables — The Men and Missions of the 445th Bomb Group (1 Viewer)

[Flyeric]

Hello everyone,

I thought members interested in the Eighth Air Force and the B-24 Liberator might be interested in my recently published book, Hostile Skies and Empty Tables — The Men and Missions.

I've been flying from Tibenham airfield in Norfolk, England, for many years. Tibenham was the wartime home of the USAAF 445th Bomb Group, and my involvement with the airfield's history led me to spend many years researching the men, aircraft and missions of the Group.

The book follows the experiences of the aircrews who flew from Tibenham, including the disastrous Kassel mission of 27 September 1944, when the Group suffered devastating losses.

It draws on personal accounts, photographs and historical records to tell the story of the men behind the aircraft, rather than simply recounting the operational statistics.

Alongside the book, I've recently launched www.445th.com, a freely accessible website containing a searchable database of the Group's missions, personnel and aircraft, together with crew photographs and archive material.

The book is available in hardback, paperback and Kindle editions through Amazon.

I'd be delighted to hear from anyone interested in the 445th Bomb Group or who has family connections with the men who served at Tibenham.

Eric Ratcliffe

 

[Flyeric]

A bad day at the office.

an extract from my book Hostile Skies and Empty Tables :-

Limping across the Channel, one of the few survivors from the Kassel Raid's 6 minutes of slaughter was
1st Lt. Stanley Kryvic's badly damaged B24 Liberator 331 U "Percy", they hadn't intended to be heading for a early bath in a freezing North Sea, at the early morning briefing it had been announced that Brussels airfield had been liberated with intact runways and this was now the intended destination for the damaged bomber.

The sole surviving Liberator from the annihilated 702 squadron, was in deep trouble with three wounded gunners T/Sgt's. Puto, Paul and Rand. Radio Operator John Cadden still dazed having taken a hit on his flak helmet and also covered in Hydraulic oil from the shot out system, John was trying to take care of the wounded gunners injecting the most badly wounded Harry Puto with a shot of morphine.

Meanwhile up front in the " office" Stanley and his co-pilot 2nd Lt. Leonard Trotta had their work cut out keeping Percy in the air, with one engine shot out and feathered, another with low oil pressure and producing little power, with no hydraulic assistance on the controls it was just sheer muscle power keeping Percy aloft and trailing behind the few flying remnants of the 445th BG.

Slowly descending through the overcast, the sight of a grey North sea greeting them when they finally broke through to clear air, setting a course westward was the best option until hopefully England would come into view, before Percy would run out of altitude and they would have to ditch.

To try to arrest the slow descent, the guns and ammo and anything else not needed was dumped over the side, John having to fend off the disposal of his radio set so he could keep communication with the air-sea rescue incase they didn't make it accross the water, managing to arrest the descent to just over a 1000 feet by this action, the welcome site of the coast of England hove into view and Kryvic saw that they were not far off track to get back to the runways of home base Tibenham, so they pushed on in the direction of home.

A few miles out because of the lack of hydraulics the undercarriage was manually lowered as Stanley set a heading for the threshold of runway 33, the extra drag caused meant that Percy was not longer able to maintain altitude and the aircraft arrived at Tibenham at just a few hundred feet, seeing that the runway was blocked by contractors vehicles, with minimum airspeed and too low to do a circuit onto a different runway Stanley's only option was to keep flying straight ahead in the hope of make it onto Old Buckenham's runway 6 miles ahead, this proved impossible and Percy gave up trying to be an aeroplane in a field at Yew Tree farm Carlton Rode just 2 miles from the safety of Old Buckenham, breaking up in the crash and catching fire, it was the bravery of Stanley Krivic in pulling a trapped John Cadden and Leonard Trotta from the burning wreckage that prevented the casualty list being higher than navigator Daniel Dale , who didn't survive the crash, the rest of the crew transported to the 65th Hospital at Redgrave near Diss. The last aircraft was down,
Of the thirty-nine aircraft scheduled to fly at Tibenham that fateful September morning:

One never got off the ground

Three aborted and returned to Tibenham

Twenty-five were shot down in Germany

One crash-landed in Belgium

Two crashed or crash-landed in France

Two landed, badly damaged, at Manston on the English coast

One crashed at Carleton Rode in Norfolk

Four returned to Tibenham

Of the 370 guys scheduled to fly that day:

9 never left Tibenham

27 returned to Tibenham due to aborts

117 were killed, with a least eight – and possibly 11- murdered by the Germans

121 were PoWs or on the run

42 landed back at Tibenham

54 landed elsewhere and were making their way home. Some arrived that night, others took more than a week to return to duty.

Which meant there were only seventy-eight for supper that evening, the empty tables bearing a grim testimony to the over one hundred of their friends where lying dead, battered and burnt in the German countryside

Amazon link :- Amazon.com : hostile skies and empty tables book.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=hostil...refix=,aps,138&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_2_0_recent

 

[Boom]

Is there much coverage of the missions flown by James Stewart?

 

[Flyeric]

I have a list of all the missions flown by Jimmy mainly from Tibenham, a couple fromOld Buckenham before he flew a desk at Ketteringham

photo of him at the control tower Tibenham 1976