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Contact Info
Home Town Omaha, NE
Last Address Omaha, Nebraska
Date of Passing Oct 23, 2007
Location of Interment Forest Lawn Memorial Park - Omaha, Nebraska
ARTHUR C. JETTER, Sr.
WWII B-17 Pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force
Born
April 21, 1921: Omaha, Nebraska.
Enlisted:
April 21, 1942
Commissioned Officer:
August 30, 1943
Honorable discharge:
November 18, 1945
Place of Separation:
Lincoln Army Air Field, Lincoln, Nebraska
After enlisting in the Air Corp on my 21st birthday, in the spring of 1942, I received orders to report, about six months later, to Santa Ana, California, for preflight training. After the preflight training I learned to fly a number of different aircraft. The training sites for each plane were different.
The next step after preflight training was to primary training where we trained in flying Stearman airplanes at Thunderbird air base near Phoenix, Arizona. We next trained on BT-15?s at Taft, California, near Bakersfield. The BT-15 had twice the horsepower of the Stearman. Following the BT-15 training, we were then sent to learn to fly twin engine aircraft at Stockton, CA. There we flew the Cessna AT-17 and on completion received our wings and our second lieutenant commission.
After a short leave at home (Omaha, Nebraska) I entered B-17 training at Hobbs, New Mexico. Upon its completion we were sent to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we were assigned crews. From Salt Lake City we took a train to Avon Park, Florida, where we trained for 6 weeks in preparation for overseas duty.
Our navigator, John Sampson, was selected for radar training at Langley Field, Virginia. As a result my crew and I were at Langley for 6 weeks then given orders to fly to England. We flew by way of Bangor, Maine; Goose Bay Labrador; Iceland; Scotland and on to England. They reassigned our navigator and then temporarily assigned a navigator just for the trip to England. Once in England we did not have a navigator, the bombardier acted as the de facto navigator. Unfortunately John Sampson was killed in his first mission. We were also on the same mission but with a different bomb group.
Our crew was assigned to the 401St Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force in Deenethrope, England. Our tour of duty when we started flying our mission was to be at total of 25 missions but after D-Day this was changed to 30 and then 35 in short order. We were given credit for one extra mission so in effect our required total became 34. Our second mission was to bomb Le Bourget Air Field near Paris for which our group was awarded a Presidential Citation.
The Crew of:
1st Lt. A.C. Jetter
Unit:
613th Bomb Squadron
Crew Members
Pilot
1St Lt A.C. Jetter
Copilot
1st Lt R.W. Cain
Bombardier
2nd Lt H.B. Hirsch
Radio Operator
T/Sgt L. Sherman
Engineer/Top Turret
T/Sgt R.D. Nelson
Ball Turret Gunner
S/Sgt M.F. Knapp
Tail Gunner
S/Sgt J.J. Baier
Waist Gunner
S/Sgt W.J. Fetters
Waist Gunner
S/Sgt R.S. Robertson
Missions we completed:
1.
Bernay/St Martin (88)
11 Jun 1944
2.
Le Bourget (90)
14 Jun 1944
3.
Bordeaux (93)
19 Jun 1944
4.
Hamburg (94)
20 Jun 1944
5.
Fienvilliers (98)
23 Jun 1944
6.
Belloy-Sur-Somme (99)
24 Jun 1944
7.
Montbartier (100)
25 Jun 1944
8.
Laon/Couvron (101)
28 Jun 1944
9.
Saumur (102)
4 Jul 1944
10.
Rely (103)
6 Jul 1944
11.
Renescure (104)
6 Jul 1944
12.
Munich (108)
12 Jul 1944
13.
Munich (109)
13 Jul 1944
14.
Munich (110)
16 Jul 1944
15.
Augsburg (112)
19 Jul 1944
16.
Strasbourg (121)
3 Aug 1944
17.
Anklam (122)
4 Aug 1944
18.
Hautmensil (125)
8 Aug 1944
19.
Luxembourg (126)
9 Aug 1944
20.
Elbeuf (128)
13 Aug 1944
21.
Haggenau (129)
14 Aug 1944
22.
Yvoir (131)
18 Aug 1944
23.
Berlin (Recall) (136)
27 Aug 1944
24.
Mannheim (140)
9 Sep 1944
25.
Merseburg (142)
11 Sep 1944
26.
Merseburg (143)
13 Sep 1944
27.
Groesbeck (144)
17 Sep 1944
28.
Hamm (145)
19 Sep 1944
29.
Cologne (149)
27 Sep 1944
30.
Munster (151)
30 Sep 1944
31.
Stargard (153)
6 Oct 1944
32.
Cologne (157)
17 Oct 1944
33.
Mannheim (158)
19 Oct 1944
34.
Hanover (159)
22 Oct 1944
35.
Hamburg (160)
25 Oct 1944
After completing my assigned missions in Europe, I returned to the States on board of the Queen Elizabeth. The ship docked in New York City. After a short leave in Omaha I was ordered to Santa Ana California and then to Hobbs, New Mexico. From there it was on to Ohio to an air field near Columbus. In Ohio I completed training as a B-17 flight instructor and then went back to Hobbs, New Mexico.
After a short time in Hobbs and no new orders forthcoming, another pilot and I decided to agree to a second tour of duty, this time to be in the South Pacific. We were to train in PBY?s. PB stands for Patrol Bomber, with Y being Consolidated Aircraft?s manufacturer identification. It could be equipped with depth charges, bombs, torpedoes, and .50 caliber machine guns and was one of the most widely used multi-role aircraft of World War II. The Air Force was taking the PBY?s from the Navy for duty in the South Pacific. For this training we went to Corpus Christi Texas. After a couple months of training on the PBY?s we were sent to Biloxi, Mississippi, for an eight week course in preparation to go to the South Pacific. Fortunately the war ended in the seventh week and shortly thereafter I was sent to Lincoln, Nebraska, to be discharged.
Other Comments:
This is his Veterans History Project interview: https://youtu.be/vYTvKuH5jM0
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.
