506th FG Gazette
Mission notes, people, and progress—dispatches worth keeping.
FT. MEYERS, FL.
Col Bryan B Harper welcomed Major Malcolm C Watters into his office at 53rd FG headquarters on Page Field at Fort Myers, Florida. Harper, 33-year-old commander of the training unit, had just received news that he had been waiting for since the war began nearly three years earlier. A new fighter group, the 506th, was being formed for a combat assignment to provide Very Long Range escort in the Pacific Theatre, and Harper assigned as its commanding officer. He needs a solid core of subordinates to help train and lead the new group, which was why he had summoned Major Watters to his office.
Harper who is well acquainted with Major Watters, who had served in the 53rd FG during its deployment to the Panama Canal Zone earlier in the war, and now commanded one of its training squadrons. Like Harper, he had been hoping for a combat assignment for a long time, and now the colonel offered him a job as a squadron commander in his 506th FG. Watters was intrigued, and asked Harper who was in the group. 'If you say "yes", it's you and me!' Harper replied. Watters readily accepted command of the 457th FS, and the new VLR group was on its way.
LAKELAND, FL.
506th was activated today and set up shop at Lakeland Army Air Field, Florida. Pilots, mechanics, armorers and support personnel have begun arriving from all over. Harper tapped another of his squadron commanders at Fort Myers, Major Harrison B Shipman, to command the 458th FS. Major Thomas D DeJarnette, commanding the 462nd FS, was a combat veteran, as were the deputy group CO, Lt Col Harvey J Scandrett, and the group operations officer, Major Harley Brown. All three pilots had flown P-39s during 1942-43 in New Guinea, and Scandrett had one confirmed kill to his credit.
AACHEN GERMANY
Allied forces secured a major victory as the US 1st Army captured Aachen, Germany today. The first major German city to fall. This brutal, 19-day battle breached the Siegfried Line, marking a key step in the invasion of Nazi territory. Simultaneously, in the Pacific, U.S. forces continued their assault on Leyte in the Philippines.
BATTLE OF THE PHILIPPINE SEA 19-20
Japan attacked Allied forces who have advanced in the Pacific Theater to the Marianas Islands in the war's largest aircraft carrier battle to-date. Prepared for the strike, the United States launched a stunning counter-attack, and the battle is called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" due to minimal U.S. casualties and the Japanese losing some 600 aircraft, two oilers and three carriers.
Saturday, Oct 21, 1944
506th FG Publication