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Lt. Richard Krause - bombardier, 12 Air Force, 321st BG 445th B S - May 1944 to June 1945

Richard Krause flew 70 missions with the 12th Airforce in the last year of the war. The Italian Campaign was a costly grind up the boot of Italy. Without the the 12th, the price would have been much higher to the Allied ground troops. The B-25's of the 12th became the forerunners of the Wild Weasel anti-aircraft supression squadrons later developed by the Airforce. The Luftwaffe and RSI fighter force had been whittled down but the Flak arm continued to take a very heavy toll as it became highly concentrated with the retreat through the Brenner Pass.
Work in progress 8/29/02

Richard was born 1919 in Syracuse, New York to a middle class family. His father was service manager for the US Rubber Co. He worked thru the Great Depression, but it was hard times for the family regardless.

Americas Coastal Forts

Richard: I was drafted,went to Coast Artillery OCS at Ft. Monroe, VA. and graduated in 1942 . At that time the AAF was in short supply of flying types and the flight pay was attractive, so several of us in the Coast Artillery unit transferred to the AAF in 1943 and went to Santa Ana,CA.for flight qualification.

The AT-11 trainer.
The AT-11, a variant of the Beech 18, was equipped with bombsights and racks holding up to 10 100-pound practice bombs. The AT-11 normally carried three students and a crew of two on training missions.
A clear plexiglass nose dome housed the famed Norden bombsight.

Some of the AT-11s were converted to navigation trainers similar to the AT-7 series but most were dedicated to bombardier training. The AT-11 was powered by two 450-hp, nine-cylinder radial air-cooled Pratt and Whitney engines, giving it a maximum speed of 215 mph. A total of 1,582 Kansans, as they were called, were built from 1941 to 1943. ]

Richard: I qualified for bombardier school and was sent to Kirtland Field, Albuquerque,NM for bombardier training.

After being awarded the wings, I was sent to Greenville NC for B-25 basic flying training then subsequently to Columbia Air Base for bombing practice. They used 100 pound sand bomb made out of stove pipe.

From Columbia our crew received secret orders for overseas, which we could not open until leaving the states. We flew our plane solo to North Africa via Ascension Island.

While waiting at Telergma the final orders came to fly to Solenzara, Corsica, which is where I spent the next 10 months. Then as the Germans were retreating North in Italy our squadrons moved over to the west coast of Italy at Ancona and Falconara, which reduced target flying distances,.

At the time I arrived in Corsica in May 1944, 50 missions was the norm, but as replacements crews became fewer and fewer, the number of rrequired missions kept increasing until the Germans had retreated thru the Brenner Pass, which was about the outer limit for flights from Corsica, so that's when our bomb wing units moved over to the west coast of Italy in the vicinity of Ancona. The B-25's didn't have a long enough range fuel wise to fly missions into Germany. Those were the assigned to the B-17's and B-24's units.

Flak took an equally high toll of the lower flying B-25's
Shipping targets and skip bombing missions were flown when Rommel was retreating from North Africa across the Mediterranean prior to my arrival.

I did fly many missions bombing bridges over the Po River Valley, in northern Italy, which probably how the nickname the BridgeBusters arose.

In my 70 missions, our flight was never intercepted by Italian or German fighters. We occasionaly had P-38 or P-51 fighter escorts.

E-Mail Me @ worldwar2mem@yahoo.com

57th Wing web site and associated links.

310st BG page Web Birds

A 321st BG story link.

The B-25 link.

Avaition Wings and BAdges of WWII

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