This Military Service Page was created/owned by
SSgt Robert Bruce McClelland, Jr.
to remember
Shannon, Joseph Lewis, Lt Col USAF(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town Coal Valley, Alabama
Last Address Birmingham, Alabama
Date of Passing Jan 05, 2010
Location of Interment Elmwood Cemetery - Birmingham, Alabama
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
He flew 70 combat missions in the Mediterranean Theater and another 32 combat missions in the China-Burma-India Theater during WWII and was credited with damaging 1 enemy aircraft in aerial combat and destroying 3 more on the ground. He also flew in the Bay of Pigs invasion operation in Cuba in Apr 1961.
WWII - European Theater of Operations/Egypt-Libya Campaign (1942-43)
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
February / 1943
Description (Egypt-Libya Campaign 11 June 1942 to 12 February 1943) When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the British had been fighting German and Italian armies in the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya for over a year. In countering an Italian offensive in 1940, the British had at first enjoyed great success. In 1941, however, when German forces entered the theater in support of their Italian ally, the British suffered severe reversals, eventually losing nearly all their hard-won gains in North Africa.
Even though the United States had not yet entered the war as an active combatant, by the time General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the German Army’s Afrika Korps, began his offensive against the British Eighth Army in Libya in March 1941, the American and British air chiefs were already discussing American support for the British Eighth Army. Rommel’s rapid and unexpected success in the Libyan desert forced British and American staff officers
in London to accelerate their planning. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers also agreed that the British might need American support in the Middle East. Overall theater responsibility would continue to be British, but the President recognized that a British collapse in Egypt would have far-reaching implications and approved contingency measures to prepare for American support to the theater at a future date.
