Welcome to 92nd Bomb Group Document Library. We have thousands of documents that were retrieved directly from the National Archives. We have gone through and seperated them out based on date and type. Below you will find the Daily Bulletins, Mission reports, Load Lists, and other documents pertaining to the 92nd Bomb Group’s time in the European Theater. All documents are OCR searchable, please know OCR is not perfect in this regard as some of these documents were in really rough shape. Having your subjects First name, Last Name, ID # will provide best chances of finding reference.
Once you find a document you want to view – click the preview button, this will open the document up in a new tab where you can download that document for yourself. If you do not have search info or just want to browse, no worries! Click on the subject matter and each document type is sorted by month and year!
5 responses to “Document Library”
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I am a researching the story of B-17F 41-24437 that was transferred to the 92nd BG, 327 squadron in August, 1942. She was one of the first B-17s to fly non-stop to Prestwick, Scotland. She was then one of six that flew the command staff to Operation Torch on November 5. On January 12, 1943 she the famous “Thunderbird” who made it back to Biskra with engines 3 and 4 out. Ernie Pyle wrote her story and it was Eisenhower’s favorite of the war. She made it back again in June, 1943 with the same engines out. Thunderbird flew over 100 missions and is the most famous B-17 not known today. Lt. Dana F. Dudley flew her for over 40 of her missions and went on to train B-29 pilots and own a Ryan PT-22 he named Lil Thunderbird after the war. I am looking for any records of the 92nd movement north in July, 1943 and the mission/crew lists for their flights in Sept-Nov, 1942.
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Dale,
Thanks for the inquiry, I am looking into this to see if any yet to be uploaded documents match what you are looking for.
Referencing Reel B0181 Page 1939 we see the mission list, the 92nds first credited mission was 6 September 1942 with a target of Meaulte, On 26 Sept 1942 they had a “Diversion” followed by an uncredited Division on 2 Oct 1942. On October 9th 1942 for their 3rd mission they had a target of Lille-St. Omer and their final credited mission of 1942 was Cherbourg/Maupertur on 21 Oct 1942. They had 2 uncredited Divirsions which do not officially registered as a sortie.
The records I have been able to comb through do not have the loadlists or the usual report on planning records. I have only found written summaries of each of these missions usually 4-5 paragraphs.
Regarding July of 1943 – it looks like those records are apart of Reel-B0182 I have not reached this reel in earnest yet but a quick scroll through I see the daily bulletins but none of the load lists for July of 1943.
(The full reels have not been uploaded as of this comment) They will be available at some point, can also be requested through the Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB-
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I found this as I was doing some other research. You might be able to hook up with Brad Forward through FB. It is a 6-year-old post off of the 92nd BG FB page, but you never know until you try.
Brad Forward
January 13, 2018
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I was wondering if anyone could help me find some pictures or information, this is my relative Ronald Bradley Forward. He was a B-17 pilot, later a C-118 pilot and Colonel. He will be 100 soon and I was hoping I could find some pictures or information from his past that he would enjoy seeing. He is in the front of the article “The Story of a Raid”. He was best friends with another pilot Dana Forrest Dudley. Thanks!
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I am trying to trace a location in Germany, almost certainly within the Ruhr (in the vicinity of Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Dortmund), listed as ”Alm” in the 8th Air Force summary (8th AF mission no. 835, 19.02.1945: “422 B-17s are sent to hit benzol plants at Bochum (99) and Gelsenkirchen (36), oil refineries at Dortmund (74) and Alm (37) using Micro H and H2X; 162 hit the secondary target, the Munster marshalling yard (162) visually”).
Doing the basics yields no useful results as the only actual location I have found listed as ”Alm” is in Lower Saxony, 100s of kilometers away from the Ruhr; and ”Alm” is also a word which designates an alpine pasture (thus is commonly found without actually designating a location thus named).
This could maybe be a garbled spelling or potentially a misreading of ”Hamm” (30 km N.E. of Dortmund) or ”Hamme” (a district of Bochum), but that would be unusual, and in any case doubts won’t cut it. I have resorted to looking through the bomb group records to see if I can find further information about the target of each. The 92nd BG is one of the few for which I have not been able to find mission information for that day.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
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Good Morning Alex – I will look at information we do have – I know the documents I am currently going through contain 1945.
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