22 May Smoking the Ceiling
Maj. Harry J. Holt stands by. Captains John L. Lambert and George R. Buckey lend support at Captain John L. Ryan does some smoke writing.
The first six months of combat operations were difficult for the new crews of the 306th Bombardment Group. They arrived at Thurleigh Airfield in September of 1942, and the following month, their first raid was a baptismal by fire.
Fortunately, in November came a welcome morale booster. Several famous movie stars arrived at the airfield for the making of the wartime movie Four Jills in a Jeep starring Carole Landis, Mitzi Mayfair, Kay Francis, and Martha Raye.
A Polish Air Squadron flying out of Thurleigh before the Americans arrived had inscribed on a mess hall ceiling the names of the targets they had bombed. The 306th continued this tradition, and after each mission, the men would take a candle and smoke the ceiling of the officers’ club with the date and target for the day’s mission. After a big party one night, squeezed in between the mission data, there appeared a cartoon of a nude young lady. The image was ordered to be blotted out.
When the movie stars visited the officers’ club, Ms. Landis noticed this ceiling immediately. She was thrilled to see the officers select the airman they thought had done the best job that day and hoist him up, pyramid style, to memorialize the name of his mission.
The April 24, 1943 issue of The Saturday Evening Post featured this photograph in an article titled, “The Clay-Pigeon Squadron” by Jack Alexander. The location of bomb group was a unnamed “American Bomber Base in England.” Today we know that the Clay-Pigeon Squadron was the 367th, one of four squadrons of the 306th Bomb Group.
No Comments