I am genuinely wondering as my father and grandfather both say he's a German, but to my research the uniform is an RAF uniform, it anyone could help me find out what country he belonged to that'd be great.

The left is a picture of my grandfather Roger. He was in the US Army Air Corps and drove fuel trucks in France during the war. I'm not sure what unit he was in. It's been a long time since I've heard his stories. There were stories of his convoy getting strafed by Luftwaffe remnants. Stories about guarding Italian prisoners with a Thompson submachine gun. The story that sticks out the most is about a bayonet from the Franco Prussian War. Being of French Canadian descent the brothers could speak both French and English fluently. A GI owed an outstanding laundry bill to a French family. My grandfather was able to mediate and convinced the GI to pay his debt. The French family gifted him a Model 1866 Chassepot Yataghan bayonet that had been in their family since the Franco Prussian War. They would have had to hide it throughout the occupation as under Nazi law weapons including swords and bayonets were illegal. My father has the bayonet now. After the war my grandfather worked in the civil service at Brunswick Naval Air Station until he retired. There he would drive fuel trucks, plow snow from runways and roads, and operate other heavy equipment and trucks. Another one of his jobs was to transport men by bus from the base to the SERE survival school in Rangeley Maine. His older brother Camille (right) would never return home to Maine from Europe. Camille was a tanker in Company E, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Division "Hell on Wheels". During Operation Grenade the 2nd crossed the Rohr river and spearheaded the assault into the Rhineland. The 2nd faced intense opposition and Camille's Sherman was knocked out in the fighting. He was grievously wounded and several days later would succumb to his wounds in a field hospital near Dusselfdorf. Camille rests permanently at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten at Plot K, Row 10, Grave 12.

I purchased two uniforms to 2Lt. Paul Nolan Hudgens, 0-797010. He was assigned to the 322nd Bomb Group, 449th Bomb Squadron, 9th AAF. I’m trying to find out his position on the B-26, and missions he flew. He received 11 Air Medals and 1 Distinguished Flying Cross. Also searching for his plane.

On January 28th, 1944, 25 B-25s of 70th BSqn, 42nd BGp, of the US Army Air Force attacked Japanese forces at Tobera Airfield, Rabaul, New Guinea. The bomber carrying this crew was on a run over the airfield when it rolled and crashed. Antiaircraft fire had likely either hit the pilot or severed control cables. There were no survivors.

In 1959, the wreck was discovered and the crew’s remains recovered. Due to the destroyed nature of the wreck, it was impossible to identify individual crew members’ remains, so they were buried together in a single grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

F/O Leslie D. Gilliland (pilot)
F/O Marion O. Stevens (co-pilot)
2nd Lt. Andrew V. Bobal (bombardier-navigator)
Sgt. James A. Goldsmith (engineer)
S/Sgt. Benton Freeman (radio-gunner)
Sgt. Charles D. Dintaman (gunner)

I was asked to find out what happened to Cpl William H. Pearce, a left gunner on a B-29 of the 792nd Bomb Squadron, 468th Bomb Group, lost at sea in July 1945. His family are happy for the research to be shared. Everything below is from US government records at the National Archives, and every page is in the gallery.

THE MISSION

On 12 July 1945 XXI Bomber Command sent four wings against four Japanese cities and an oil target in night incendiary raids, bombing by radar. Mission 263 was the 58th Wing's: four groups against Utsunomiya, 60 miles north of Tokyo, a city of 87,868 people in 1940 with new housing growing up beside the Nakajima aircraft plant. The command's report, signed by Curtis LeMay, puts the damage at 0.94 square miles destroyed, 34.2 per cent of the built-up area.

THE FUEL

42-24855 passed Iwo Jima on the way back at 0528 with 1,549 gallons aboard. About two and a half hours out of Iwo the flight engineer found No. 1 engine low and transferred 300 gallons into it. No. 1 then began using fuel far too fast, backfiring and smoking, and was feathered. When the engineer tried to move what was left in its tank to the other three engines, the transfer system failed. With 450 gallons for three engines and not enough to reach base, the pilot, 1st Lt Irwin A. Stavin, chose to ditch beside a convoy he had sighted.

He had a Dumbo with him on VHF. The bomb bay doors were faulty, so nothing could be jettisoned, and the loose equipment was thrown into the bomb bay. The astrodome and every escape hatch were opened before they went in.

THE CONVOY

USS Kerstin (AF-34), a stores ship carrying chilled and frozen provisions for Iwo Jima, was convoy commodore for LST-734, LSM-345, YP-645, YP-642 and the merchant ship Michael Casey, escorted by PC-809 and PC-1591. They had left Saipan on 12 July.

At 0745 on 13 July Kerstin's bridge logged a B-29 crossing the convoy at about 3,000 feet with a PBM following. At 0750 it began circling on the port bow. The port outboard engine was out of commission and the inboard port engine was "operating with difficulty". The commodore sent PC-1591, PC-809 and LSM-345 out to stand by, and at 0758 the B-29 came down about two miles off the convoy's port quarter. The PBM dropped what looked like a yellow life raft. Kerstin's log puts the convoy at 18°46'N 144°09'E at 0800.

THE DITCHING

The 58th Wing's ditching report has them coming down from 4,000 feet and approaching at 120 mph, parallel with swells about six feet high and twenty feet from crest to crest. They hit at 95 to 100 mph, nose up about five degrees. Four slight impacts were followed by a violent one when the right wing struck the crest of a swell and swung the aircraft hard to the right. The fuselage broke just aft of the wing; the rear section sank in less than a minute, and the front floated nose down for about two minutes.

Stavin was knocked out, came round as water came into the front compartment, and got out through his window with the nose, he reckoned, twenty feet under. The co-pilot used his own window. The bombardier followed the engineer through the engineer's hatch, and the CFC gunner, radio operator and navigator went out through the astrodome. The right and left gunners and the radar man used the rear escape hatch, and the tail gunner his own. Two rafts were released from inside and the Dumbo dropped two more.

Everyone except the left gunner, Pearce, and the tail gunner, Cpl William A. Teague, reached the big rafts. The two were seen in the water in their inflated Mae Wests and never reached the rafts. The survivors believed they were pulled under by wreckage as the aircraft sank, or slipped out of Mae Wests that were, in the report's words, "improperly fitted as per instructions received at Topeka, Kansas."

The report calls Stavin's "a new crew very recently reported in from the States". Most of them had never done a wet dinghy drill, and afterwards the wing made it compulsory for every new crew before its first mission. The report also records all eleven men alive after the landing.

THE RESCUE

Kerstin logged the B-29 sinking at 0811 and the three ships reaching the survivors at 0815. PC-809 was at the scene by 0823 and took aboard Stavin, 2nd Lt Richard LaCrosse, Sgt Frank Ortiz and Sgt Robert Silcox. PC-1591 picked up five more at 0907, "none injured", and landed them at Iwo Jima at 0730 on 15 July.

Kerstin's diary: "There were eleven (11) men in the crew. One was not recovered, one was dead when recovered and the remainder suffered minor injuries." It adds that "the pilot exhibited great skill in the manner with which he maneuvered and crash-landed his plane." Its roster lists nine men recovered and Teague under DECEASED. Pearce is not on it.

THE TWO GUNNERS

Cpl William Herbert Pearce, left gunner, 13104872, was born in Washington DC on 15 June 1922 and enlisted at Miami Beach on 4 February 1943. He is named on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial, Court 7, and was awarded the Air Medal and the Purple Heart. He was 23.

Cpl William A. Teague II, tail gunner, 14153875, was born on 30 January 1926 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 12, Site 510. He was 19.

STILL MISSING

I have found no photograph of the ditching or of 42-24855, and none of these papers names the PBM's squadron. If anyone has 468th Bomb Group photographs or a family connection to Stavin's crew, I would like to hear from you.

The plaque was presented by the citizens of Boise, Idaho, in memory of the 107 crewmen who were killed in the Battle of Cape Esperance, 11-12 October 1942.

A group of Serbs - political prisoners exiled to Bor mines for forced labour. 15.02.1942.

Inventory number 15205

Courtesy of Museum of Yugoslavia.

Almost 100 B-17s had extra passengers. Cameramen and photographers were on many planes. That formation flew over the North Sea, crossed Denmark, and continued east towards Marienburg in East Prussia. The idea was to confuse and avoid the Luftwaffe, bomb the Focke-Wulf factory at Marienburg, and use the footage in war propaganda to get more support for the bombing effort in Europe. This is how the 1944 movie „Target for Today”was made.

Today, the airfield at Marienburg is still in operation, as a Polish NATO air force base at Malbork.

​

I wanted to share the story of my great-grandfather, Yakov Fyodorovich Korneev, and hear the stories of other people's ancestors who fought in World War II.

He served in the Red Army as a signals soldier with the 1183rd Rifle Regiment of the 356th Rifle Division. His job was to maintain telephone communications between commanders and their units, often under artillery and mortar fire.

In July 1942, he repaired a damaged telephone line 85 times over the course of a week.

In July 1943, during fighting near Bolkhov, he continued repairing communications lines under fire and carried five wounded soldiers off the battlefield.

But the episode that led to his highest award happened during the crossing of the Dnieper River in September 1943.

According to his award citation, he crossed the river on a makeshift raft carrying communications equipment. The raft was destroyed by enemy fire, and he was wounded. Despite this, he continued maintaining communications with his regiment's command post. Later, he repaired another 15 breaks in the telephone line on the western bank of the river, under enemy fire.

For his actions, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on January 15, 1944, along with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal.

He survived the war, but the severe concussion he suffered during the fighting eventually made him medically unfit for further military service.

I'm not sharing this to make a political point or to argue about the war. I'm simply interested in preserving the memory of someone in my family and learning about the experiences of people on the other side of the world.

Did any of your grandparents or great-grandparents serve in WWII? I'd love to hear their stories, whether they fought for the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, or any other country. What did they do during the war? Did they leave any letters, photographs, medals, or stories behind?

I'd be especially interested in hearing about ordinary soldiers and their experiences, rather than just famous commanders and major battles.

Thank you for reading about my great-grandfather.

Rewatching Band of Brothers again for the umpteenth time, and whenever they take incoming fire someone immediately calls it as an 88. This is something I've read in a fair few memoirs too. Guys talking about how "the area's zeroed in by Kraut 88s".

And it got me thinking, were 88s ever really used as artillery at all? I mean not in a pinch, but actually as in-direct fire support? Or is this a case of 'tiger fever' whereby the actual guns were likely howitzers of some kind, 105s or similar, and it's just that the 88 had a reputation so any artillery got branded as being an 88 whether it really was or not?

EDIT: Thanks all for the responses, you all seem to agree mostly on what I suspected to be the case. That being that 88s were occasionally used in an 'artillery' role, commonly enough to expect first hand accounts from all over the place, but that most of the time the guns in question were in-fact howitzers and the like, and troops referring to them as 88s is probably a case of tiger fever.

It also occurs to me now that 88 is a pretty slick name, as in, it rolls of the tongue easy. I can see how troops would end up using 88 as a slang term for 'enemy artillery' simply because it's short and snappy and everyone knows what you mean, roughly speaking.

Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Paul Sr and Anna Heller on May 8, 1927, Paul Heller was their oldest son with two younger siblings.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he tried to enlist locally in the Marine Corps but was rejected due to his age (14).

Undeterred, young Paul travelled to Savannah, Georgia, and with the help of a fictional Aunt’s signature on the parent/guardian consent form and lying that he was born in 1923, Paul was able to enlist in the Marine Corps on February 17, 1942.

After boot camp Paul was assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.
They landed at Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942 and participated in the capture of the Japanese airfield under construction which would become Henderson Field.

Two months later on the afternoon of October 7th, it was observed that a group of around 150 Japanese soldiers had established a position on the US side of the Matanikau River.
The ensuing battle from October 7-9 resulted in a decisive US victory as the Marines had learned from past mistakes.

On October 8th, PVT Paul Heller was Killed in Action during the battle.
His remains were brought home in 1948 and buried at Gettysburg National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - Section 2 Site 0425.

The notices of his death were sent to his fictional aunt and his father who was the recipient of his death benefits.

His parents were separated at the time, and its possible Paul’s mother never knew he had enlisted in the Marine Corps.

I’m sharing a Crowdfunder from the National Maritime Museum Cornwall relating to Operation Chariot, the St Nazaire Raid of 28 March 1942.

The fundraiser is specifically for a specialist high-security, conservation-appropriate display case so that Captain Stephen Beattie’s medal group, including his Victoria Cross, can be brought to Falmouth and put on public display.

The money is not being raised to purchase the medals themselves, the family is giving them on longterm loan to the museum.

Operation Chariot was one of the most daring British raids of the Second World War. British forces sailed from Falmouth to attack the Normandie Dock at St Nazaire, with HMS Campbeltown used to ram the dock gates.

Lieutenant Commander Stephen Beattie commanded Campbeltown during the operation and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his leadership and courage.

The raid came at an enormous cost. Of the men who took part, 169 were killed and 215 became prisoners of war. Beattie was among those captured and remained a POW until April 1945, only physically receiving his Victoria Cross after his release.

There is now an opportunity for his medals to be displayed at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, alongside objects already held by the museum relating to Beattie and Operation Chariot.

Falmouth is closely connected with the story: the force sailed from there, survivors returned there, and Beattie later made Cornwall his home and spent the latter years of his life in the county.

Because of the rarity and historical value of the medal group, it cannot simply be placed in an ordinary museum cabinet. A purpose-built case is needed to provide the correct level of security and environmental protection.

That case is what the Crowdfunder is paying for.

If anyone here is interested in Operation Chariot, Victoria Cross recipients, or preserving Second World War history, any donation or share would be greatly appreciated.

Crowdfunder:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/beattie-victoria-cross-display

More about Operation Chariot and its Falmouth connection:
https://nmmc.co.uk/2026/09/operation-chariot-the-st-nazaire-raid-and-its-falmouth-connection/

It would be wonderful to see Beattie’s medals displayed in a place so closely tied to the operation, while helping tell the wider story of everyone who took part.

My friend, Peter van Kaathoven, and co-author of our Substack story about Zerlegebetrieben (German aircraft wreck salvage yards in Vught and in Auschwitz), is an active local historian in Vught.

He and his friends unveiled two WWII glider memorials on September 26th near Vught. These American gliders were part of the Market-Garden operation, and had to do emergency landing after their towing planes were shot down, one on September 18th and the other one on September 19th. All allied soldiers were helped by local Dutch resistance, and avoided capture.

In the photos, Peter is doing the speech, and one of the photos is with children of local Dutch resistance fighters who helped the American soldiers.

Based on the attached photo, I am trying to definitively determine if the fuselage had a white stripe or it was bare aluminum. To me this area looks unpainted.

Can anyone share what airmen of the 8th Airforce were awarded campaign stars for?

Stationed on the island of Guam in 1944, Yokoi went into hiding as American forces reconquered the island, and spent the next 28 years living in a cave and hunting for food by night.

He was discovered by two fishermen in January 1972.