Crew of "Enola Gay" - (back row, from left) Major Thomas Ferebee, Bombardier, Captain Theodore Van Kirk, Navigator, Colonel Paul Tibbets, Commander, Captain Robert Lewis, Co-Pilot;  (front row, from left) Staff Sergeant Robert Caron, Tail Gunner, Sergeant Joseph Stiborik, Radio Operator, Staff Sergeant Wyatt Duzenbury, Flight Engineer, Private First Class Richard Nelson, Radio Operator, Sergeant Schumard.  Best regards, JR.

Crew of "Enola Gay", 1945.

Natives admiring an American Air Force F4-U “Corsair” somewhere in the Pacific. 1943

Touching a bird of steel

The sudden surrenders of Italy, Germany and Japan caught the U.S. military by surprise.  Millions of GIs wanted to go home - NOW! Impossible, of course, so a method of controlling redeployment was hastily conceived.  Called the Point System, it qualified GIs for discharge according to length of overseas service, family status, military occupational status (MOS), etc. etc.  Highest score (85) meant a fast trip home.  The Ardee News was Fürstenfeldbruck's base newspaper in Ocupied Germany, and then served as the AAF European Redeployment Center (ergo, "R-D News"). affectionately known as a "Repple Depple."  The new policy led to gradual fragmentation of units instead of mass unit discharges, but it also resulted  in the most experienced men and women dropping everything and suddenly leaving as soon as they got orders. Continuity of operations was disrupted and morale sank.  In September of 1945, General George Patton (by then the reluctant Military Governor of Bavaria) wrote home: "Over here we are sloughing away, the Third Army being very much like a person with leprosy, dropping off an arm or a leg or a toe practically every day..." Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31, 1945, the total U.S. Army strength fell from 8 million to 4.2 million in only four moths, and by the end of 1946 it was only 989,664, split between the Military Occupation forces in Germany, Japan, Austria, Korea -- and the homeland bases, etc.  To top off the disintegration, the American public demanded stopping the military draft.