This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Linda Gartz-Family
to remember
Gartz, Frank Ebner, 1st Lt.
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Contact Info
Home Town Hillside
Last Address Caserta, Italy
Date of Passing Oct 12, 1945
Location of Interment Oakridge-Glen Oak Cemetery - Hillside, Illinois
On January 20, 1945, Ebner was assigned his first mission to bomb the oil storage facility at Regensburg in southern Germany. He would go through the same pre-mission routine twenty-five times during the next three and a half months. In the early morning hours the sergeant called his name, along with those of the pilot, co-pilot, and bombardier. Gartz, Atkinson, Berryhill, Van Nort. I can imagine the pumping adrenaline; my uncles straw-lined throat as he forced down his fear along with the daily breakfast of green powdered eggs and fried Spam.
All of the young men would have tried to appear confident when they met together in the cool, damp darkness of the briefing room, a cave previously used to store wine, to learn about their assigned target. Of major German strategic interest, Regensburg would be heavily defended, and flak would be intense.
At 08:40, twenty-eight B-17s lined up nose to tail on makeshift runways, each plane carrying a typical load: 3000 gallons of fuel, three to four tons of bombs, and hundreds of pounds of ammunition. Any spark from an errant engine failure would end in conflagration. Within seconds of each other, the planes took off, then formed a tight formation over the Adriatic Sea, only fifty feet separating the wing tips of each.
After two years of intense, rigorous training, Ebner was now put to the test in real combat. All told, the B-17s dropped five hundred fifty-one 100-pound bombs that day on the target. Ebner's plane returned from the mission unscathed, but one B-17, with all ten of its crew members, had been lost.
After March 23rd, Ebner flew twelve more sorties to Czechoslovakia, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Italy, for a total of twenty-five from January to May. On all the missions Ebner flew, only six B-17s were lost. On the missions he didn't fly in that same time period, twenty-one planes were lost, more than three times as many. Fly with Frank, could have made a good motto. He truly seemed blessed.
On May 8, 1945, the Allies declared the war officially won and named it, Victory over Europe or VE Day. Overjoyed, the Gartz family couldn't wait to greet their darling Ebner back in Chicago, safe and whole. He was promoted to first lieutenant on May tenth, just four days before his twenty-first birthday.
"Right now I'm very confused as to what I'm going to do in the post war era. I want and don't want to go to school. I want and don't want to get married. So I really don't know what I want to do."
He found a way out of his dilemma in June 1945, when he scored a coveted job with the 15th Air Force Headquarters in Caserta, Italy, just north of Naples. Arriving in droves to develop plans for rebuilding war-ravaged countries, American VIPs needed a crack navigator and pilot team to fly them to their appointments throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, good salary, extra flight pay, and the chance to rub shoulders with congressmen, senators, special envoys, ambassadors, and high-ranking generals.Ebner wrote to my Dad:
"Take in your welcoming mat, as your little brother is remaining in the Mediterranean Theater as long as he can. The thing that might do me some good is getting to know some of these wheels for future reference. The army is finally paying off for the times I flew over Vienna on a carpet of flak."
It was also the perfect excuse to put off those nagging maternal expectations for marriage and school. I can imagine the disappointment back in Chicago. Like a pricked balloon, the families anticipation for a joyous homecoming sighed out into a crumpled melancholy acceptance. But the war was over. Everyone could stop worrying.
The job turned out to be everything Ebner had hoped for.
Combat Missions Flown:
450120, Regensburg GE ,46642
450213, Vienna AU , 46637
450216, Trens AU, 46548
450220, Vienna AU 46530
450228, Verona/Parona IT, 46548
Information Source;
Niece, Linda Gartz
Second Bombardment Association
WWII - European Theater of Operations/North Apennines Campaign (1944-45)
From Month/Year
September / 1944
To Month/Year
April / 1945
Description (North Apennines Campaign 10 September 1944 to 4 April 1945) In Italy during the fall and winter of 1944-1945 the Allies used their air power against the enemy’s communications as ground forces beat against the Gothic Line north of the Arno. Although little progress was made on the ground, the action in the Apennines tied down a large German army at a time when those troops could have been used in decisive campaigns being directed against Germany by the Allies in the west and the Russians on the east.