Spirit of MartinezWhat a Family Kept
A still life of wartime objects

The footlocker

What the paperwork says, and what it cannot settle

None of these documents agrees with all the others about exactly what happened, or exactly how many times it happened. Fourteen chapters into trying, the book stopped trying to resolve that. A family kept everything anyway.

Seven numbers

26

Lucky Bastard Club

A squadron tradition rather than an official Army count. The card in the family’s collection commemorates his membership at the twenty-six-sortie threshold.

28

Combat missions

The 95th Bomb Group’s own crew record, from Chemnitz on 14 February to Oranienburg on 20 April. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stuart certified the same figure on 8 May 1945, with 208 combat hours. Frank and Joyce numbered the scrapbook to twenty-eight, mission for mission.

30

Bombs on the jacket

Painted in bomb symbols on the B-15 in the footlocker. Subtracting two missions flown in borrowed aircraft, the crew record accounts for twenty-nine of those thirty symbols and leaves the last one unexplained.

31

Combat plus Chowhound

Twenty-eight operational missions plus three humanitarian sorties over Utrecht. Stuart’s memorandum, concerned only with combat performance, does not count the food. Add them together and the total is thirty-one.

48

The hometown figure

A Public Forum letter to the Martinez Gazette — a hometown’s rounding-up of a hometown son’s service, generous rather than accurate.

~50

What Frank said of the ship

The figure he used in April 1945, describing not his own tally but the Spirit’s — the number of combat missions she had flown, under whichever crew was assigned her, without a single abort.

53

The airplane’s life

Her full lifetime total from first assignment through the end of the war, under every pilot who ever sat in her left seat.

Decorations

  • Distinguished Flying CrossRibbon present; citation not located
  • Air MedalGO 289 · 27 February 1945
  • Air Medal, oak leaf clusterGO 482 · 15 March 1945
  • Air Medal, second clusterGO 638 · 28 March 1945
  • Air Medal, third clusterGO 720 · 7 April 1945
  • EAME Campaign MedalCentral Europe, Ardennes, Western Europe

Objects

Award of Merit, 1939

Treasure Island. Gas Model Hydroplane Meet. Outstanding junior citizen. Two signatures, one of them Leland W. Cutler’s.

Woody Woodpecker solo card

19 October 1943, Canal Field, Ocala. Signed Ellis G. Ort. The Army let the occasion be what it was.

The PILOT ring

Dark oval stone, eagle and shield, a banner with one word. The paper from that April is all addressed to somebody. The ring is not addressed to anyone.

Shipping voucher no. 13

Fifteen pieces of flying gear, Hendricks Field, 25 July 1944, in Frank’s own hand. An A-2 jacket worth $8.12 had already gone missing from a locker.

The short snorter

A dollar bill covered in signatures. The Army did not require it, did not track it, and would not have cared if it were lost.

Nine wallets

Martinez Kiwanis Club, stamped SPIRIT OF MARTINEZ, ordered for a war in the Pacific that never came.

Joyce’s scrapbook

Clippings glued to black pages in a wooden cover, numbered in pencil from Mission #1 to Mission #28 after he came home. The only object that was made rather than kept.

Fourteen captains’ charts

Newcastle to Prague, annotated by hand, missions one through fourteen without a gap. Control points, times, flak in colored pencil.

The ribbon bar

Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, EAME campaign medal. The DFC citation has not been located. In July 1973 a fire in St. Louis destroyed most of the files.

VA letter, 30 October 1959

Claim C-1,302,621. Compensation denied. The condition was found either not service-connected, or service-connected but rated below ten percent. Both readings were available in the same sentence.

Photographs

Plates the family kept. The mission reports document targets, tonnage, losses, and times. These document a dirt strip by the tracks, a wet street, a handshake, a name on the nose, smoke over a yard, a newsroom, a cutting block, and a sidewalk in Watts.

Aerial view of Martinez Airport: a dirt strip on filled ground beside railroad tracks, a hangar lettered MARTINEZ AIRPORT, light aircraft and cars
The strip by the tracks. Filled ground along the Southern Pacific, a hangar lettered MARTINEZ AIRPORT, the wires Sam Calicura Jr. spent years trying to get moved. Two men dragged this runway into city fill. One of them taught his brothers to fly on it.Family collection
Nine airmen posed in two rows under the nose of a B-17 painted Spirit of Martinez
The crew of 44-6838, Spirit of Martinez, on the hardstand at Horham, 1945. The name is already on the nose — this is the ship after the Army caught up to what the men had decided to call her.Family collection
Seven of the Spirit of Martinez crew standing on gravel in flying jackets, two wearing parachute harnesses
Seven of the nine. The collection does not label the plate, or say whether this is Florida or Suffolk. Two men are in harness. The under-nose portrait at Horham has all nine.Family collection
Three officers standing under the painted nose of Spirit of Martinez, two of them shaking hands
Under the nose, 1945. Frank Calicura in flying kit at left; Capt. David Olsson — another Martinez man — in the overcoat; Col. Jack E. Shuck, group commander, taking the handshake. The book records the moment as official recognition, not a friendship.Family collection
Frank Calicura in flying kit standing at the painted nose of a B-17, his hand on the word MARTINEZ
Frank Calicura at the nose of 44-6838, Horham, 14 February 1945 — the morning of mission one. The name is already on the ship.Family collection
Radio operator Robert J. Brown at his set, oxygen mask on, a round window behind him
Robert J. Brown at the radio, Spirit of Martinez. Oxygen on, headset on, the set in front of him. The name on the print was added later.Family collection
Navigator John R. Barnes in the nose of a B-17, looking down at a chart
John R. Barnes in the nose, a chart in his hands. He is the ninth name — the one missing from the Tampa order, added at Avon Park on 6 November 1944.Family collection
Two airmen at a B-17 window, backlit, one of them identified as Earle F. Bogacki
Earle F. Bogacki, flight engineer, at a window of the Spirit of Martinez. The second man is not labeled on the print. The name in the corner was added later.Family collection
Tail gunner James A. Titus in leather helmet and oxygen mask, close to the camera
James A. Titus, tail gunner. Full face gear at altitude. A Lincoln paper stated plainly that he served in England as tail gunner on a B-17.Family collection
Robert E. Collins and Marvin L. Markus sitting on a hillside in flying jackets, both wearing ball caps
Robert E. Collins, ball turret, at left; Marvin L. Markus, togglier, at right. A 95th Bomb Group photograph. A later overlay on the print spelled Markus as Marcus. The book keeps the spelling the Army used.Family collection
Frank and Dominic Calicura in officer’s uniforms at a table, glasses in hand, the album page captioned Frank and Dominick Calicura
Frank and Dominic. The album is captioned in period hand, “Frank & Dominick Calicura.” Pilot wings on both men. A Gazette clipping puts the brothers together in New York in December 1944 — Dominic instructing fighters in Georgia, Frank waiting for the European Theatre. Nothing in either source fixes this table as that meeting. The timing fits.Family collection
Joyce and Frank Calicura standing together under pine trees: he in khaki, she in a floral dress, Maxwell Field, 1943
Joyce and Frank, Maxwell Field, 1943. Kodachrome. She crossed the country on the chance a ten-week course would still have him there when the train arrived. The collection’s own note on the slide ties it to what came nine months later: a son.Family collection
Frank Calicura in khaki, Eighth Air Force patch on the shoulder, kneeling on a sidewalk with a toddler in a hat and striped shorts
Frank and Frank Jr. — Jimmy, on his feet. Eighth Air Force patch on the shoulder, so after the tour. The one-month-old photograph from the window in July 1944 is a different plate. This is later: a boy old enough to stand, a father home long enough to kneel beside him.Family collection
Three American officers in greatcoats walking a wet London street, a double-decker bus behind them
A London pass. The mission reports document targets, tonnage, losses, and times. They document nothing about a wet street, a snack bar, or a Soho card carried back in a uniform pocket.Family collection
First Lieutenant Frank Calicura in khaki uniform seated beside bound volumes of the Contra Costa Gazette
Frank Calicura at the Contra Costa Gazette, Martinez, summer 1945. Bound volumes of the county paper stand at his shoulder — the same paper that had been printing him since he enlisted. First lieutenant, pilot wings, the ribbon bar the service coat still carries.Family collection
Frank Calicura and his young son Samuel standing with arms folded in front of the Watts Towers
The other direction. Frank Calicura and his son Samuel outside the Watts Towers, on a stop the family places during a trip to Disneyland, about 1958. Samuel was born in 1952.Family collection
Vertical aerial photograph of a port city, smoke rising from docks and rail yards along a river
Hamburg, 20 March 1945. Mission sixteen, Blohm+Voss. Smoke over the yards — the kind of image the Eighth produced by the thousands that spring to document what a mission had or had not accomplished.Family collection
Frank Calicura in a white shirt and butcher’s apron working a cutting block in a shop lined with refrigerated cases
Frank Calicura at the block. He went to cut meat for his brother in 1938, flew a war, and came back to the same trade. By 1955 he and Bill had their own renovated quarters at 700 Main Street. The qualification record had typed it: meat cutter.Family collection
A butcher working a Biro bandsaw, a hanging carcass in the open cooler behind him, a third figure in shadow
August 1955, Calicura Bros. Meats. Billy at the Biro, a hanging carcass in the cooler. In the shadow behind him the family identifies a third man: Sabato Rodia. The wall calendar that dates the companion plates is not in this frame.Family collection

What a family kept

A card, a bill, a ticket, a wallet, a jacket, a patch, a form, a letter, a chart. None of them agrees with all the others about exactly how many times it happened.

Typed civilian education and occupation block from Frank Calicura’s qualification record: Alhambra High 1938, Bay City Flyers, meat cutter
The Army’s own form. Twelfth grade, Alhambra Union High School, 1938. Three months of Civilian Pilot Training at Bay City Flyers, Concord. Occupation: meat cutter, Sam Calicura, 726 Ferry Street, Martinez. The book has him cutting meat at the Star Meat Market on Main Street. Both addresses are in the record. They are not the same, and this page does not reconcile them.Family collection
Handmade birth announcement painted as laundry on a clothesline for Frank James Calicura Jr., born June 20, 1944
We’re simply “BUSTIN’” to tell you. It’s a boy, born 6/20/44 at 3:15 p.m., named Frank James Calicura Jr., seven pounds seven ounces. Proud Mama and Papa, Joyce & Frank Calicura. The card went to Hendricks Field. He had not yet seen the child.Family collection
Typed last will and testament of Frank James Calicura, signed at Avon Park Army Air Field, 7 September 1944
Avon Park, 7 September 1944. Second Lieutenant Frank James Calicura, serial O-828662, 325th AAF Base Unit. The entire estate to Joyce B. Calicura of 731 Mellus Street; if she does not survive him, to his brother Sam of 3120 Ricks Court. Witnesses: Cpl. Clarence E. Rither of Anoka, Minn., and Pfc. Thomas C. Dykes of Lexington, Ky. He had not yet flown a combat mission.Family collection
A worn black leather wallet stamped in gold Lt. Frank Calicura The Spirit of Martinez
Lt. Frank Calicura, ‘The Spirit of Martinez’. One of nine wallets the Martinez Kiwanis Club sent to Horham that spring, good leather, stamped for a war in the Pacific that never came. He moved his cards into it the week it arrived.Family collection
A worn one-dollar silver certificate covered in overlapping wartime signatures, Washington at the center
The short snorter. Charles Beatie’s name is on it — the man who helped drag a runway into the Martinez fill. Frank signed it as 1st Lt., AAF. Dominic signed it. The Army did not require it, did not track it, and would not have cared if it were lost.Family collection
Mimeographed shipping ticket of 13 December 1944, Grenier Field, signed by nine of the crew plus a tenth name, for B-11 flying jackets and A-10 trousers
Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire, 13 December 1944. Issued out of Hunter Field. Crew FQ-555-CA-93 signing for ten B-11 flying jackets and ten pair of A-10 trousers. Airplane 44-6830 — not the Spirit. Eight serials away, same shed, same month; the ferry ship they gave up on the far side of the Atlantic. A tenth signature, Eugene P. Allamano, RAD, is a passenger, not crew.Family collection
Painted B-17 Spirit of Martinez, serial 6838, call sign E, over two rows of yellow bomb symbols on an olive flight jacket
The B-15. Spirit of Martinez, tail 6838, call sign E, thirty bomb symbols. Subtract two mornings in borrowed ships and the crew record accounts for twenty-nine. The jacket and the database disagree by one.Family collection
Embroidered Eighth Air Force shoulder patch: a golden winged 8 on blue, a white star with a red center
From the shoulder of his Ike jacket. The Eighth Air Force: a winged 8, a white star, a red center. The command that sent him to Chemnitz, and then to Utrecht.Family collection
AAF Form 5 Individual Flight Record for 2nd Lt. Frank J. Calicura, February 1945, certified by Capt. David E. Olsson
The individual flight record for February 1945. Calicura, Frank J., 2nd Lt., serial O-828662, 335th Bomb Squadron, 95th Bomb Group. This month: 94 hours 35 minutes. Certified by Capt. David E. Olsson, Assistant Operations Officer — the same Martinez man who later stands in the overcoat under the nose. The form states the hours. It does not state what a man carried home.Family collection
Newspaper clipping of a letter titled If the People at Home Only Knew, signed Frank Calicura, England, 21 April 1945
England, 21 April 1945. To Ray Taylor, later printed under the title “If the People at Home Only Knew.” Twenty-eight combat missions, seven still to go; the Spirit stood down for her third engine change; not once an abort. “We should be the honored ones, in having the people at home asking us to name it after our town.”Family collection
Printed captains’ map of northwest Europe, hand-labeled Mission #7, 23 Feb. 1945, with a penciled route, times, and pink flak shading
Captains of Aircraft Map, Newcastle to Prague. Hand-dated 23 Feb. 1945 and numbered Mission #7. Control points, an IP, an RP, fighters, flak in colored pencil. The crew record puts mission seven on the 24th, at Bremen. Whose hand made the annotations is not established here. The flak is planned intelligence; the times are briefed times.Family collection

Questions left open

These are not gaps awaiting a tidier draft. They are the points at which the surviving record stops.

  • Which classification center

    The collection does not say which of the three Army Air Forces classification centers administered Frank’s battery. No assignment has been made on the strength of geography.

  • The thirtieth bomb

    The jacket carries thirty symbols. Subtracting two missions in borrowed aircraft, the crew record accounts for twenty-nine.

  • The Distinguished Flying Cross

    The headstone and the coat carry the ribbon. At least one archival summary of the service record does not list the award, and no citation has been located. The 1973 NPRC fire is the ordinary condition of that absence.

  • The origin of the back injury

    A sworn statement places its onset at Avon Park in the autumn of 1944, before combat. The 1959 letter is capable of two readings and settles neither.

  • The seventeenth child

    This book gives seventeen throughout, as the family does, and states at the outset that only sixteen can be documented. Either a seventeenth child was born later and went unrecorded, or an infant died young and is counted by the family but was never counted by the newspaper.

  • Which Treasure Island building

    The Gazette records only that Sam Calicura Jr. and Charles Beatie purchased a building at the exposition grounds for hangar purposes. Treasure Island held both purpose-built aviation structures and the Gayway. No source identifies which.

  • What he understood of the ground

    Nothing in the collection addresses what Frank Calicura understood, at the time, about the civilians beneath any of the targets he was sent to. Nothing has been supplied in its place.

  • Whether Dale Ernest is the unnamed witness

    Ernest was at Avon Park in the claim’s window, and in Martinez the year the claim was decided. The connection is offered as likely, not documented.