Station 152

Adele and I visited the site of an Air Force Base known as Station 152, located near a village called Debach. When I learned that Dad had been in the 863rd Squadron of the 493rd Bomb Group (from one of dad’s family newsletters Adele had kept) I quickly found the museum associated with it.

We soon learned that Darren Jelley had extensive knowledge of the unit and it’s history.

Darren sent us this photo of dad‘s crew taken at Debach. We were very surprised, because nothing came down to is through Dad or the family, or through the US Air Force archives.

All that remains of the base is some concrete paving, the control tower building, and other buildings which have been used by the farm since the base closed. Richard, the owner of the farm, is very supportive of the museum efforts and himself is a collector.

We drove around what is left of the runways and taxiways, where the mess halls had been, where the crew quarters were, and where the aircraft parking handstands had been.

The volunteers in this museum do a lot of programs for school children, and they are diligent in presenting factual stories and correctly restored equipment.

Dad told me once that his job as navigator included pulling the propellers through a cycle by hand during preflight. This brought oil up into the cylinders.

Darren has the records of our dad‘s missions, obtained from microfilm records held by the US in its archives. The last two missions he flew were food drops to the starving Dutch people in Holland; one where the big airport is now and another over a golf course. They flew at 400 feet and dropped 10-1 British rations, ten days for one man’s worth of food. (May 1945).

Darren also had records of the two combat missions Dad flew, April 1945, which must have been very difficult for him. One was to Czechoslovakia, where German jet fighters shot down four of the aircraft on the mission. The other was over Royan in France. I suspect that Dad did not have any mementos from the war because he wanted to forget about it. The paperwork Darren had included crew lists and formation position. I will write more about that in the future.

See https://493bgdebach.co.uk/ for much more of the story, thanks to Richard Taylor for his commitment, and to Darren Jelley for his passion in wanting to tell the story.