3
Brutus Hamilton diary entry for August 7, 1943.
4
Donald Hudspeth diary entry for August 13, 1943.
5
Alva (Jake) Geron related his experiences on the Ploiesti raid and the August 13, 1943, raid on Wiener Neustadt, Austria, in two interviews with me. Alva Geron, author interviews, December 8, 1990, and August 2, 1993.
CHAPTER 30: MORAN CREW
1
See “Rosebud Indian School Boys Visit the Journal,” Rapid City Journal, February 7, 1933, p. 5.
2
Homer Moran’s basketball exploits were documented by the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader and other South Dakota newspapers. The “Wandering Sioux” photo and cutline were published in the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, January 21, 1938, p. 10. Also see “Powerful Northern Squad Coming for Two Contests,” Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, February 4, 1940, p. 10.
3
See “World’s Tallest Team Sets Back Wolves, 60–52,” Rapid City Journal, March 12, 1940, p. 7; “Northern Beaten 60–52; Hamline Wins; Wayne Out,” Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, March 12, 1940, p. 6.
4
Homer Moran, interview with Bill Kubota, September 5, 1998.
5
Moran recounted his path to flying B-24s with the 93rd Bomb Group in his September 5, 1998, interview with Bill Kubota. Moran’s graduation from the Victorville, California, flying school was noted in a small item in the Rapid City Journal. See “Is Pilot,” Rapid City Journal, July 31, 1942, p. 3.
CHAPTER 31: A DISAPPOINTING FINALE
1
Martin Bowman, Home by Christmas? The Story of US 8th/15th Air Force Airmen at War (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK: Patrick Stephens, 1987), p. 41.
2
Biographical material on Ernst-Günther Baade is drawn primarily from Samuel W. Mitcham, Rommel’s Desert Commanders: The Men Who Served the Desert Fox, North Africa, 1941–42 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007), pp. 76–77, and Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007), p. 165.
3
Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, p. 165.
4
Atkinson, Day of Battle, p. 165. Also see Lieutenant Colonel Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, US Army in World War II: Mediterranean Theater of Operations: Sicily and the Surrender of Italy (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, US Army, 1993), pp. 374–76.
5
Atkinson, Day of Battle, p. 167.
6
Ibid., p. 168.
7
Garland and Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy, pp. 413–15.
8
Ibid., pp. 413–78.
9
Ibid., pp. 413–16; Atkinson, Day of Battle, p. 168.
10
Edward Sand diary entry for August 16, 1943.
11
The length of a combat tour for an Eighth Air Force heavy bomber crew member was set at twenty-five missions in the spring of 1943. The number would be increased in increments of five missions in 1944 as Luftwaffe resistance diminished, until it reached fifty missions by the final months of the war. The length of a combat tour for heavy bomber crews based in North Africa was already at fifty missions in the summer of 1943, but the 93rd, 44th, and 389th B-24 crews—the three Eighth Air Force B-24 groups temporarily based in North Africa from June to August 1943—were still governed by Eighth Air Force rules, and thus their tour of duty was twenty-five missions.
