In 1998, I enrolled as a member of the 95th Bomb Group (H) Memorials Foundation. My sponsor was the unforgettable gentleman known as Grif Mumford, or H. Griffin Mumford, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)
Grif called me and wrote several times upon learning of my interest in the fate of The Joe Noyes Crew. Grif was thrilled to meet a teenager so inquisitive of the war and sacrifices made by his generation of veterans.
So were some of the other 95th Bomb Group (H) veterans, like Bob Cozens and Harry Conley. Harry was especially receptive, because he had known Joe Noyes so well. Harry mentioned Joe quite a few times in his book No Foxholes In The Sky.
In honor of my enrollment as a member of the Memorials Foundation, Grif sent me a signed copy of the Memorials of the 95th Bomb Group, which he edited and published along with Maynard D. Stewart. I remember receiving it in the mail, and being so excited. It was a warm welcome into the 95th family!
I found this booklet the other day and couldn’t believe it. Please understand that I’ve moved quite a few times since 1998. I’m not talking about moving to a new neighborhood in the same city. I’ve lived in California, North Carolina, Sweden, Washington State, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. In Colorado alone, I’ve lived at something like six different addresses.
There have been plenty of opportunities to lose something special like this. So, it was a great surprise to find my old copy of “Memorials of the 95th Bomb Group (H)” waiting to be re-discovered in a box in my home office. I’m relieved that it survived so many relocations! Meanwhile, I am still looking for our other Christmas stockings; the holiday is next week. We only have one right now.
I was just 14 years old when I received this treasured possession. It was personally dedicated to me and signed by the commander who led the first USAAF daylight bombing raid of Berlin on March 4, 1944. The book might not be pristine, but I appreciate its value and significance today. Way more than I did then.
The history of the Mighty Eighth has been a passion of mine for close to 30 years now, and of course, my life keeps going with all the distractions that are guaranteed to consume one’s free moments.
Therefore, I still have yet to dedicate nearly enough time to this website and the veterans and families who sacrificed so much. I feel bad but also grateful because, with any luck, I still have time on my side. I’m here, and all those great veterans; Grif, Bob, and Harry, are gone.
“History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”
– David McCullough
In an attempt to do some more thorough research into the 8th AF, I started poking around at the Combat Chronology document found here. It’s about 743 pages long. It’s a valuable work, but the unappealing nature of such a lengthy historical record makes it challenging to consume and learn from.
After a short time trying to find specific AAF highlights, and getting frustrated with the process, I decided to give the chronology a new life in my own searchable, responsive data table. It’s a lot of information, but I’ve found adding rows to the table immensely fulfilling because I have a new perspective on the entire theater of war between 1941 and 1945.
For example, there was so much happening around the world on any given day in 1942; in Egypt, the remote islands of Alaska, Bengasi, and New Guinea. Mind you, there are also some not so enlightening entries like the one logged from the Eleventh AF, which delights to inform us that on July 5, 1942, “A B-17 flies a weather mission.”
The Joe Noyes Crew was just one B-17 Flying Fortress crew in the Mighty Eighth Air Force. When their plane left the formation for the last time, these ten men belonged to a brand-new and unprecedented Air Force architecture. The combat chronology is a reminder to me of the bigger picture that encompasses all great conflicts.
I’ve named my new project Victory in the Sky, and I hope it inspires and encourages other budding Second World War history enthusiasts in the same way that Grif, Bob, and Harry motivated me. I’ll never forget Grif Mumford, and the warm and generous support that he gave me when I first started researching the Noyes crew. Finding this booklet today was certainly a timely reminder that there is still good work to do.
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