The 505th Bomb Group

    The 505th Bomb Group, Very Heavy (VH) was activated on 11 March, 1944, at Dalhart Army Airfield, Dalhart, Texas. The group was assigned and transferred to Harvard Army Airfield, Nebraska on 1 April. Harvard was a B-24 airfield, o a building program was underway to provide barracks, mess halls, hangers, and other facilities to accommodate the larger B-29 group. The combat crews were trained mostly in B-17s because the B-29 production was allotted to the 58th and 73rd Bomb Wings already fighting or in route to their overseas bases. The B-17s were used for all initial training: take offs and landings, instrument & night flying, cross- country navigation, and formation flying, as well as bombing and gunnery practice. The unit received their B-29s during late spring and summer of 1944.

    The ground echelon left 6 November for Fort Lawton, Washington and boarded the victory ship, USS Sea Star, for Tinian. On 15 November, the air echelon left Harvard by civilian train for Hamilton Field, San Francisco, California. From the west coast, they flew in C-54s to Tinian. The air crews moved to Kearney, Nebraska, for overseas processing early in December. They flew their new B-29s to Tinian and were arriving daily by Christmas. Their B-29s were marked with a circle W tail code.

    During January, 1945, eight training missions were flown against enemy-held islands of Alamagan and Guguan with no enemy activity noted. They entered combat in February with strikes on Iwo Jima and the Truk islands. They began flying very long-range strategic bombing missions over the Japanese home islands and Shimonosekoi Strait mining missions. The group’s mining missions every other night closed the straits. Postwar reports by the Japanese government stated that we had effectively starved the nation.

    The group flew 134 combat missions, which included strategic bombing sorties, mining missions, and wide scale incendiary attacks.

    The group received their first distinguished unit citation for a strike against the Nakajima aircraft factory at Ota in February, 1945. Their second citation was for mining the Shimonoseki Straight, and harbors of the inland sea in June and July,1945.

    In the fall of 1945, the group was deactivated as part of “Sunset Project.”

Commanders: Maj Gen. George Roberts – 15 Apr 1944; Col. Robert Ping – 3 May 1944; Lt Col. Charles Eisenhart – 1 Jul 1945