506th FG Gazette
Mission notes, people, and progress—dispatches worth keeping.
LOCAL NEWS
LAKELAND, FL.
Carl Molesworth "Very Long Range P-51 Mustang Units of the Pacific War"
19 February 1945
Air echelon of the 506th FG board a train bound for California, where the aircraft carrier USS Kalinin Bay is waiting to carry them across the Pacific.
Lt. JJ Grant Letters from Iwo Jima The Air War
We are all rather anxious to get where we are going, to get to a place where we can unpack and fix it up and call it home for a little while. Most of us are anxious to start flying again - sometimes I think this flying business has gotten into my blood. I sure hope when peacetime comes that I can have a plane (of course a schoolteacher could not afford one) (note: JJ never did get his plane - he did obtain a Bird Colonel status in the Reserves but never flew after Iwo) All the enlisted men aboard got paid the other day. You could not walk around the decks without stepping into a crap game, a poker game or some type of game where they had a chance to increase their money.
WORLD NEWS Feb 1945
- 2: Ecuador declares war on Germany and Japan.
: Naval docks at Singapore are destroyed by B-29 attacks.
- 3: The Battle of Manila (1945) begins: Forces of the U.S. and Philippines enter Manila. The Manila massacre takes place during the fighting.
: Heavy bombing of Berlin. Judge Roland Freisler is killed while trying to save court documents.
- 4: The Yalta Conference of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin begins;[1][2] the main subject of their discussions is postwar spheres of influence.
: Belgium is now cleared of all German forces.
- 7: Paraguay declares war on Germany and Japan.
- 9: The Colmar Pocket, the last German foothold west of the Rhine, is eliminated by the French 1st Army.
- 12: Peru declares war on Germany and Japan.
- 13: The Battle of Budapest ends with Soviet victory, after a long defense by the Germans.
- 13/14: The Bombing of Dresden takes place; it is firebombed by Allied air forces and large parts of the historic city are destroyed.
- 14: The 1945 Bombing of Prague: American planes bomb the wrong city.
- 16: American paratroopers and Philippine Commonwealth troops land on Corregidor Island, in Manila Bay. Once the scene of the last American resistance in early 1942, it is now the scene of Japanese resistance.
: American naval vessels bombard Tokyo and Yokohama.
- 19: U.S. Marines invade Iwo Jima.
Feb 1945
506th FG Publication