James J. Gibbons Lt. Gibbons (second from left, front row) with his crew A newspaper article printed during WWII detailed the activities of Lieutenant James J. Gibbons. He visited his parents in Ogden after he had completed 50 combat missions with a heavy bomber group in Italy. As a pilot of the Fifteenth Air Force, he flew the B-17 Flying Fortress. Lieutenant Gibbons has taken part in missions to most of the German occupied territory. He was among those giving support to the invasion of southern France, and saw action over targets in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia and the Rumanian oil fields. His last mission was over oil targets in Blechhammer, Germany. Lieutenant Gibbons holds the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters and has been recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross. He enlisted in the Air Corps in February, 1942, and was assigned overseas in April, 1944. He had graduated from Ogden High School and attended Weber College. Lt. Gibbons will spend Christmas at home, after which he will report to California for a new assignment. Lewis Harding Lewis attended Weber beginning in 1936 and completed his studies in 1945. He served in the Army Air Corps from December of 1943 to September of 1945. Lewis was a musician and had the distinction of directing the Air Corps Band during his time in the service. He was discharged as a corporal. Stillman Jacob Harding B-24J From 464th Bomb Group I joined the Utah National Guard, Battery A, 222 Field Artillery, in 1940. The Utah National Guard was sent to permanent camp for training in March 1941 at San Luis Obispo, California. 30 On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, I was sitting on my bunk, when a man ran through the camp shouting, 'The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor.' Within three days our unit was doing guard duty on a reservoir that provided drinking water to San Diego, California. While there a Japanese submarine fired shots at a U.S. ship refueling dock near Santa Barbara. California. In April 1942, we were transferred to Fort Lewis, Washington, to get ready for overseas duty. While there I applied for flight training and was accepted. I received flight training at Santa Ana, California; Thunderbird Field in Phoenix, Arizona; Gardner Field in Taft, California; and Marfa Air Base in Marfa, Texas. After graduation, I went to Roswell, New Mexico to train on the B-1 7. I was then sent to the Air Force Replacement Depot in Salt Lake City, Utah, where crews were formed to fly overseas. We lived in what are now the barns on the state fair grounds on North Temple and 10th West in Salt Lake City. I was assigned to fly as co-pilot on a B-24. The B-24 crew consisted of ten men: (1) pilot, (2) copilot, (3) top turret gunner, (4) bottom turret gunner, (5) and (6) left and right waist gunners, (7) tail gunner, (8) nose gunner, (9) navigator and (10) bombardier. Our crew was sent to Mountain Home, Idaho, and then to Pocatello, Idaho, to the 464th Bomb Group 15th Air Force. While at Pocatello, our aircraft crashed on a night takeoff killing two crew members. The remainder of our crew was reassigned to other crews. We flew our B-24, which we named "Strictly from Hunger," overseas via South America, and West Africa, to Tunisia. From there we went to our temporary base at Gioia del Colle in Southern Italy. The Germans had previously occupied this city and had left very little when they moved out. The residents lived in extreme poverty and with very little food. At the mess hall each meal, we would never eat everything on our mess kits because we knew that outside the door there would be a line of about 15-20 Italian boys from small to teenagers, each one with a spoon and a gallon can. They would eagerly scrape the food remaining on our mess kit into their bucket and then go to the rear of the line while eating what we had left for them. We tried to make sure there was plenty left for them. We flew our first missions from an airfield in the city of Gioia to Northern Italy and Southern Europe. Mission number 4/5 (on the long missions, credit was given for two missions) was to Weiner Neustadt, Austria where the Germans had an aircraft manufacturing plant. We were awakened at 4 o'clock a.m. After a quick breakfast we attended the briefing. We were informed our target was a German ME-109 factory. The flight would be long, about 11 hours, and we could expect 170 German guns to be firing at us as we neared the target. (A later count showed that more than 270 guns had fired at us.) For three days the mission was delayed due to the weather. On the fourth day, 10 May 1944, it was a 'go' but our plane was grounded, so we were assigned to another plane for the day. We took off early in the morning and formed up into a group of 36 aircraft that was our group - 464th Bomb Group - four squadrons and 36 aircraft: six, six, six, six, six, and six all in formation and headed for the target. It had been decided that our best chance for a direct hit would be to come in against the wind as we approached the target. Flying upwind reduces the ground speed of the plane dramatically, thus increasing the time our planes would be under fire from the ground. But this target had been approached before and survived. We wanted to destroy it for good. So we flew upwind. As we approached the target on our final run, I looked ahead and I couldn't see any airplanes at all. All I could see was a big black cloud of smoke where the anti-aircraft shells were bursting. As I watched, all of a sudden I could see the group of aircraft ahead of us, and then I felt our plane start to bounce and I knew we were the ones being shot at. About three minutes before we would drop our bombs, I had my hand setting on the control pedestal between the pilot and myself. All of a sudden, two holes appeared in the instrument panel and I looked at my hand and one of those - whatever it was that came through those holes - had hit my hand and severed my thumb right off my left hand so that it was hanging by the glove and just a bit of skin, and I had taken another hard hit in my left thigh. Our radio operator was standing behind me and I turned around, and pointed to him, and told him to get me a shot of morphine in my hand. He gave me the shot and put a compress on my hand. Then he unplugged my oxygen and my communications and wanted me to come out of the seat but I said, 'No, hook me back up. I am going to stay here until the bombs are away at least.' So he hooked me back up to my oxygen and my communications. Just as he got me hooked up our outside engine, number four, started bumping. I knew it had been hit, so I cut the throttle on the number four engine. A bit later, our number two engine started to run away. I could hear it speeding up faster, and faster, and faster - so I cut that engine. Now we were on just two engines and I increased the power on them so we could stay in position until the bombs were away. As soon as the bombs were away, we couldn't keep up with the group, so we moved out of the way 31