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Contact Info
Home Town Saint Paul
Last Address
My nephew, Rick Van Bogart at, rjvbogart@hotmail.com, is assisting me with this site.
Date of Passing Mar 28, 2009
Location of Interment Rose Hills Memorial Park - Whittier, California
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Jim as he preffered, was know as "Van", or "Rumboogie", (a nickname given him in the Air Force, because he didn't drink, and would always give his "shots" to the other guy's.) Jim joined the Minnesota Air National Guard in 1939 and was in the 109th Obsevation Squadron at Fort Snelling Minnesota. He had acquired his private pilots licence prior to enlisting in the Army Air Force in April 1942, and trained at Fort Warren, Wyoming with the Quartermaster Company, Service Group (Aviation), and was sent to the B-26 Over Seas Training Base at Mac Dill Field Tampa, Florida as a pilot trainee. Then on to Walla Walla Army Air Base for combat aircraft maintenace and repair training. Then to, Galena Field Washington, Great Falls Air Base Montana, and Camp Stoneman, Pittsburg, California.
Originally headed for Europe with the 8th Air Force, Jim was redirected to the Pacifc and flew a B-26 Marauder with a group of medium and heavy bombers sent to join the 5th Air Force in Australia. A short stay at Townsville, then on to the Air Base at Iron Range. While at Iron Range, Jim helped Col Arthur Rogers install the first opperational nose turret in a B-24 Liberator, "Connell's Special", and flew the first test hops with it. He found out that it was actually a little faster with the turret. When Col Rogers returned from one of the first missions with it, his nose gunner held up three fingers as they taxied by... 3 Kills.
Moving throughout New Guinea and the Philippines Jim volunteered, and was called on to fly often, and flew transport, photo, training, escort, and combat missions. At one time he was currant in 14 differant aircraft, and was amoung the first to fly the Douglas A-26 Invader in the Pacific. After WWII, Jim remained in the Minnesota Air National Guard with the 109th Fighter Squadron until 1947, when he moved to Califonia. He became a 2nd Lt. in Squadron 21 Civil Air Patol, El Monte Wing . He was also a "Weekend Warrior" and trained with the 452nd Bomb Wing at Long Beach, Calif. in the Douglas B-26 Invader.
In 1950 His Air Force Reserve Unit became the first to be activated as a complete Air Force Unit. They were sent to, Itazuke, Japan. Then Miho, and flew bombing and close ground support missions in Korea. They moved to K-9 Air Base Pusan, Korea in May 1951, and he flew 58 misions with the 728th "Cannibals" Squadron in the A-26 "My Baby" 44-34686. He also flew the F- 86 Saber with the 5th Fighter Interseptor Squadron before coming home in 52'.
Other Comments:
"I remember coming back from a mission, off the China Coast, in a P-38, when I heard, "Mayday, Mayday." I looked all around, then spotted a TBM smoking and going down. I radioed back, "I got you." Then I saw him hit the water with a terrific splash. I flew cover for him until Air Sea Rescue arrived."
(This pilot went on to become the 41st President of the United States, George H W Bush.)
Remembrance Profiles -
5 Airmen Remembered
Edwards, Benny, SSgt, (1950-Present)
Giaridini, Elmer, SSgt
Hetrick, Clarendon, TSgt
Moore, Robert, Sgt, (1950-Present)
Wetter, Paul, SSgt
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.
