Jack Heyn
Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea in the summer of '44 after returning to the states summer of '45
"THE FORGOTTEN FIFTH"
I was a Photographer-Labtech with the 3rd Bombardment Group. aka "Grim Reapers" in the Fifth Air Force aka "The Forgotten Fifth". Shortly after Pearl Harbor FDR and Churchill decided on the policy that they would defeat Germany first. Didn't take long for the troops in the S.W.Pacific to come to the conclusion we were the stepchild of WW II. The bulk of the men and material was being sent to the European Theater. We got the leftovers and the hand me downs.
A good example of this was the 3rd Bombardment Group. On Dec. 7, '41 we were based at Savannah Army Air Base. Our 8th Squadron was equipped with A-24 Dive Bombers. The 13th, 89th and 90th Squadrons were equipped with A-20 Light bombers. Seven weeks after Pearl Harbor we boarded the USS Ancon at Frisco and headed west. Arrived in Brisbane, Australia Feb. 25, '42. In their haste to get us overseas the powers that be failed to make arrangements for aircraft for us. On March 10th we arrived at an airstrip under construction at Charters Towers in N.E Queensland ready to fight a war. Just one problem, we didn't have anything to fight with.
In March we received 42 pilots and 64 enlisted men and 24 A-24s from the 27th Bombardment Group in the Philippines. They had arrived in the P.I. about mid November but were never operational. The planes were assigned to the 8th Squadron and the men dispersed to all four Squadrons. Also in March we begged, borrowed or stole 25 B-25 Medium Bombers from the Dutch. They were split between the 13th and 90th Squadrons, the 89th went begging for a while. Eventually the 89th got A-20s in dribs and drabs as they arrived from the States.
For almost 2 years we were never up to full strength and at one time or another one of the Squadrons was inactive for lack of aircraft. In 1943 while the 8th Air Force in England were flying 1,000 plane bombing raids over Germany, the Fifth was hard pressed to put 200 bombers in the air for missions to the big Japanese navy base at Rabaul on New Britain and the big air base at Hollandia, New Guinea. Finally in January 1944 we received a full compliment of A-20s.
The other Groups in the Fifth pretty much brought their aircraft with them, but did have problems getting replacements for aircraft shot down on missions. Also the 38th, another B-25 outfit flew theirs over, but had some of them ran out of fuel short of their destination and ditched in the ocean. This pretty much explains how the Fifth came up with the moniker "The Forgotten Fifth". The 3rd Bombardment Group served 41 months of continuous combat duty, and has one of the most illustrious records in WW II. It is also the oldest continuous serving unit in the Air Force. The 8th, 13th and 90th flew in WW I, and were formed into the Group. in 1919. After the WW II they evolved into the 3rd Bombardment Wing and at present are stationed at Elmdorf Air Base in Alaska.
-Jack Heyn
http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/heynfotos.htm
