Ok ok. So I’m not very good at this whole blogger thing. I just don’t make time to reflect and write what’s going on.
That being said here's what’s going on in my Genealogy world.
Two weeks ago I got my request back from the AF Archives. A few weeks early mind you. It was like Christmas. Kathy text me a pic of the package while I was at the Community Blood Center, donating blood. When I finished I drove home as fast I could, I was so excited. I received two CD's and after popping them in the computer I found out what I had in store for me. 4000+ Pages of PDF from the 92 Bombardment Group. It took some time to break it down but eventually I got it down to Months and then even further to Narration, Operational Reports, Publications, Crew Lists, and then Appendix.
WOW was there a lot of info. I first had to go find the 407th and specifically Merl on each crew list. Then I took that and had to match the crew list with the Operational Reports. This took almost a week working on it whenever I could usually a couple of hours at a time.
All in all I found out he flew on 31 Combat missions and flying on 17+ different aircraft (some AC I couldn’t figure out the tail number).
I have plotted all the mission targets on Google Earth. Most were just listed as the town bombed so not 21st Century accuracy but still impressive when you look at.
My next step is to work on getting these all time stamped. Hopefully I can figure out the spreadsheet work around to make it smother.
We'll see.
Eric Stitt
