December 23-26, 1944

John Paul Bott contributed vital assistance to the ground forces at a most critical time by bombing railway viaducts, bridges and other communication targets in Germany behind the Ardennes battleground. These included the railroad viaduct at Ahrweiler and the bridge at Kons Karthaus, destroyed in the face of fierce enemy aerial and ground defense.

COMMANDING OFFICER: MAJ/LT COL DONALD K. BRANDON

OPERATIONS OFFICER: CAPT/MAJ LAWRENCE F. LOESCH

1ST LT Bott was a member of the 574th Squadron.

By the time of World War II, the Army Air Corps had become the Army Air Forces. It was a part of the Army, and many of the terms that we know now from the postwar, independent Air Force did not apply. The proper term was "Commanding Officer", not Commander. There were no Air Force Bases; there were Army Air Fields (AAF), or just Fields. One usually said Barksdale Field in everyday talk, not Barksdale Army Air Field.

The move began with a train ride from Barksdale or Lake Charles to Hunter Field, Savannah, Georgia. Here the crews were assigned airplanes, which they proceeded to check out, calibrating the compass, the airspeed indicator, etc. There also were new pieces of equipment to be studied and used. There were briefings about the overseas flight, ditching, water survival, and all those good things. There were training films, some about things other than flying!

For the B-26 people who never flew the A-26, let me mention several things of interest. Regarding wintertime, combat-loaded operations: after the crew chief swept frost and/or snow off its wings, a B-26 would take off, seemingly using all of the 6000 foot runway at A-73 (it used about all of it on clear days too). The combat-loaded A-26 used about 3500 feet when the wing was clean, but it essentially wouldn't fly at all with frost on the wing because it had a laminar flow airfoil, which did not function properly when frost caused early boundary layer separation. Fortunately, winter was ending when the A-26 began operations.

The B-26 was a perfect formation airplane. The nacelles were behind the pilot; nothing interfered with his view. Further, the B-26 had the equivalent of built-in dive brakes--the drag of the airplane. If one came rushing up into formation in the B-26, retarding the throttles smartly and briefly upon almost getting into position would result in a beautiful join-up. Try that in an A-26, and you would find yourself about a quarter of a mile in front of the formation. I, for one, am not sorry that I never had to fly a mission in an A-26.

The reader may ask, ÒWhy are these called Taxi Sheets?Ó The proper takeoff and join-up of 36 or 54 aircraft demanded strict adherence to procedure. A pilot, knowing the procedure and knowing where the various airplanes were parked, could determine from the taxi sheet which airplane he must follow onto the taxiway and which airplane(s) he must let onto the taxiway ahead of his airplane in order to be in proper sequence for takeoff.

A taxi sheet shows the pilotsÕ names and the aircraft alignment by Box and Flight. A normal mission consisted of 36 aircraft arrayed in two Boxes of 18 aircraft each. A Box consisted of three flights of 6 ships each: a Lead Flight, a High Flight (on the right), and a Low Flight (on the left). Normally, a flight consisted of airplanes and crews from one squadron, but there were rare exceptions. You will note that the normal arrangement, before moving to France, was for each Box to be manned by one squadron; after moving to France, the arrangement was for one squadron to man the lead and high flights of the 1st Box; a second squadron manned the lead and high flights ofthe 2nd Box; and a third squadron manned the low flights of both boxes.