This Military Service Page was created/owned by
AB Raymond Guinn
to remember
Bank, Bertram A., Maj.
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Contact Info
Home Town Montgomery
Last Address Tuscaloosa, AL
Date of Passing Jun 22, 2009
Location of Interment Evergreen Cemetery - Verbena, Alabama
Major Bert Bank enlisted in the AAC on 27 January 1941, after graduating from University of Alabama with an LL.D. in 1940 and working for the Tuscaloosa News. He received his commission upon graduation as part of the U of A ROTC program.
He served with the 27th Bombardment Group (L) that was transferred to the Philippines in November 1941. The unit was supposed to be armed with the A-24 Dauntless dive bomber aircraft which never arrived. When Luzon was attacked by Japanese forces, the 27th became an infantry unit, fighting the Japanese for 99 days, until they were forced to surrender on 9 April 1942. He became a POW and was on the forced "Bataan Death March". He was held at Camp O' Donnell and Cabanatuan, and Mindanao until 30 January 1945 when he and other POWs were liberated by 6th Army Ranger Battalion at Cababatuan. He remained in Valley Forge General Hospital for much of his remaining career due to the malnutrition he suferred under the Japanese.
Bank served as a member of both the Alabama House of Representatives and Alabama Senate. He served two terms in the State House, first being elected in 1966, and one term as a State Senator, being elected in 1974. He forgo a second term in the State Senate to unsuccessfully run for Lieutenant Governor in 1978.
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The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the military aviation arm of the United States of America between 1926 and 1941. The statutory administrative forerunner of the United States Air Force, it was renamed from the earlier United States Army Air Service on 2 July 1926 and part of the larger United States Army. The Air Corps was the immediate predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), established on 20 June 1941. Although discontinued as an administrative echelon during World War II, the Air Corps (AC) remained as one of the combat arms of the Army until 1947, when it was legally abolished by legislation establishing the Department of the Air Force.
The Air Corps was renamed by the United States Congress largely as a compromise between the advocates of a separate air arm and those of the traditionalist Army high command who viewed the aviation arm as an auxiliary branch to support the ground forces. Although its members worked to promote the concept of air power and an autonomous air force between the years between the world wars, its primary purpose by Army policy remained support of ground forces rather than independent operations.
On 1 March 1935, still struggling with the issue of a separate air arm, the Army activated the General Headquarters Air Force for centralized control of aviation combat units within the continental United States, separate from but coordinate with the Air Corps. The separation of the Air Corps from control of its combat units caused problems of unity of command that became more acute as the Air Corps enlarged in preparation for World War II. This was resolved by the creation of the Army Air Forces (AAF), making both organizations subordinate to the new higher echelon.
The Air Corps ceased to have an administrative structure after 9 March 1942, but as "the permanent statutory organization of the air arm, and the principal component of the Army Air Forces," the overwhelming majority of personnel assigned to the AAF were members of the Air Corps.
