It’s the Air Corps turn…
This is a late war (1945) poster recruiting for the Army Air Corps at the height of the bombing effort.
This one was done by Jes Schlaikjer. Who, although of German extraction, served with the US Army in France in WWI as a radio operator and was a noted Artist after the war. In 1942 he became an official Artist of the U.S War Department with a studio on the Pentagon.
My late father was with the Army Air Corps in Italy.
As ground crew, he made oxygen for the bomber crews.
Later, he kept the books on an 80 man detachment stationed on a different part of the air base then the rest of the unit. Dad said keeping the books for those 80 guys was
simple.
They were billeted on the upper floor of a building with a
barber shop on the ground floor. So, before duty he’d get a shave from the Italian barber.
They had a stove in the quarters that ran on av gas.
“It used to get cherry red,” Dad told me.
Mom, the army nurse who’d been in the Pacific heard dad
telling about this one day.
“You had a pretty easy war, didn’t you?” she said.
He and the guy who lived across the street from us
for years were at the same air field but never realized it till years afterward. The guy had been a flier stationed on the other side of the large field.
Leon- Thanks for sharing that. I can’t help but wonder how many friends didn’t come back, and was he one of the ones that had to make up the packages to return to the families. Friend of the family had to do that in England, he volunteered to fly as a gunner in 17’s just to get out of the duty…
make up the packages to return to the families.
My late father was trained in Chemical Warfare. When he arrived in India, there was no work for them, so they were moved to Grave Registration duty.
The war aside, those posters also memorialize a season in our history when patriotism and “the American way” were still considered good things.
Is this poster a re-run? If so, I don’t mind at all. The reason I ask is I seem to remember commenting about the guy in the A2 being pretty danged strong to be able to stand there with that bomb in his hands. Those things are HEAVY.
There’s always the possibility I saw this poster elsewhere, of course.
WSF- That had to be hard… VERY hard…
Rev- Yes they do.
Buck- I don’t remember… I hope not.
One more great poster
Rick- Thanks!
Another great poster. My dad was a pilot in the Army Air Corps about that time frame. He’s 90 and has no end of flying tales.
Great poster. My dad was a Army Air Corps navigator who somehow survived the war.
I may have mentioned here before that my dad flew 35 combat missions over Europe as a B-17 pilot with these guys—
http://www.447bg.com/
He was lucky in that he flew his first mission January 2, 1945, by which time the odds had improved considerably. However, he did experience a head-on attack by a Me 163 Komet. I don’t recall him mentioning anyone on our side getting hit, which may well be the case. From what I’ve read, the Luftwaffe quickly discovered that head-on closing speeds in jets made accurate shooting impossible.
Anyway, my dad called to his top turret gunner and asked “Did you get a shot at him?” or more to the point, did you attempt to engage? The gunner replied “Get a shot at what, sir?”
I’ve often wondered what that moment was like, to see something go by that fast and realize that we couldn’t touch them. Also from what I’ve read, the 163’s really weren’t much of a threat for two reasons: 1) dwindling fuel supplies, and 2) full fuel load only lasted about 10 minutes.
Dammit- I can imagine…
Euripides- Thankfully!
RHT- Thanks for sharing that. And that would have been truly scary!!!