Eight names on a Tampa order in August. A ninth at Avon Park on the sixth of November. No one at the Replacement Training Unit asked whether they would get along.
The crew of 44-6838, Spirit of Martinez, on the hardstand at Horham, 1945. Kodachrome. 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 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
Avon Park. Left seat, right seat. Frank Calicura and Victor Probst in a B-17 cockpit.Family collection
Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire, 13 December 1944. Issued out of Hunter Field under Shipment FQ-555-CA, Crew FQ-555-CA-93. 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
The enlisted column of the 13 December 1944 shipping ticket. Brown, Markus, Collins, Ernest, Titus — five hands on one form. The officers signed the other column.Family collection
Each man links to the 95th Bomb Group database, a modern compilation of the group’s crew record. It is not a wartime paper. The listing there is titled F.J. Calicura, 31. Where a later notice is on the open web, it sits under his name.
Nine men, four totals
32 · 31 · 31 · 31 · 31 · 31 · 30 · 30 · 28
Five men flew the whole tour. Four did not, and no two of them for the same reason. Every figure below is the 95th Bomb Group database’s, a modern compilation of the group’s crew record. It is not a wartime paper issued at Horham. Where it conflicts with a document in the family collection, both are given and neither preferred.
Mission counts for Crew 1479 in the 95th Bomb Group database
Two twenty-eights that are not the same number. Frank Calicura’s certified figure is twenty-eight operational missions — combat, excluding the food. Robert Collins’s database count is also twenty-eight — twenty-five combat plus the three drops. Marvin Markus’s family remembered twenty-eight full bombing runs. His compilation is thirty-one. That family subtracted the food, exactly as the Army’s own certification does.
The enlisted serials confirm five of six home cities from a source that is not the wallet clipping. Titus’s does not. Serial 39 is the Ninth Service Command — the Pacific coast. The Lincoln paper and the Omaha wallet were writing about a young man who had already gone west. Stated, not resolved.
F.J. CALICURA on the tape. Crusher cap, B-15, the wings. A crack in the print runs the length of his face. England, 1945. The same sitting as the corner of the page the family made.Family collection
Born 1921, son of Saverio and Angelina, one of seventeen. Learned to fly on the waterfront strip his eldest brother built. Commissioned 15 April 1944 at Turner Field. First lieutenant, serial O-828662, 335th Bomb Squadron, 95th Bomb Group. Twenty-eight combat missions, three humanitarian drops, 208 combat hours. The compilation lists thirty-one — the twenty-eight plus the food. Lt. Col. Stuart’s memorandum of 8 May 1945 certified the twenty-eight and left the drops unnumbered.
Came home a first lieutenant with a commercial ticket and an instructor’s endorsement. Cut meat with his brother Bill on Main Street. Died in 1962.
Serial 02057087 · 32 in the compilation · +1 · three mornings with other crews
Avon Park. Victor G. Probst, right-hand seat. The copilot. Cropped from the same plate. Three mornings in other ships. Twenty-nine with this crew. Thirty-two in the group’s compilation.Family collection
Right-hand seat for the tour, except three mornings: Chemnitz in The Red Fox, Ruhland in the Spirit with Getchius, Dortmunderfeld in Poof Proof. Twenty-nine with this crew. Thirty-two in the group’s compilation — a modern count, not a paper issued at Horham. His officer serial sits before Barnes’s in the same series. He is named on the Tampa order of 30 August; Barnes is not.
Returned to England to study architecture at the University of London, then co-founded a Texas firm that designed hospitals, including Houston’s St. Luke’s and Texas Children’s.
John R. Barnes, navigator. The second man is not labeled on the print. The name in the corner was added later.Family collection
Born Philadelphia, 31 January 1922, son of Leonard and Gertrude Barnes. Added to the crew at Avon Park on 6 November 1944; he is the ninth name, the one missing from the Tampa order. Thirty-one in the compilation. His officer serial follows Probst’s in the same series — commissioned second, which is why the Tampa order does not name him.
Earned a doctorate at Penn State. Spent much of his career as Director of Pathology at DuPont’s Haskell Laboratory, retiring in 1982. Died 2 June 2011 in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, age eighty-nine.
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
The town already named on the wallet that would later be stamped for the crew. Flew the nose of the Spirit of Martinez. Thirty-one in the compilation. His family, seventy years later, remembered twenty-eight full bombing runs — Frank’s method, without ever seeing Frank’s paperwork. Serial 38: Eighth Service Command. Kingfisher, Oklahoma, from a source that is not the wallet.
Married Dorothy Ellen O’Niel in July 1945 — sixty-nine years. Built an automotive-electric business across several towns and retired in 2003. His 2015 obituary remembered his war in a single number: twenty-eight full bombing runs. Died 30 March 2015, age eighty-nine, and was buried at Kingfisher County Memorial Cemetery with full military rites.
Serial 35316394 · 30 in the compilation · −1 · absent 19 March, Jena
Earle F. Bogacki, flight engineer. A chart in his hands and the hatch above him. The name on the print was added later.Family collection
Born 1920 to Frank and Stella Bojack, a surname later changed to Bogacki — which is very likely why a contemporary wallet clipping printed “Nogacki” and still got the city right. Thirty in the compilation. One morning out: Jena, 19 March. Serial 35: Fifth Service Command. Cleveland, from a source that has nothing to do with the clipping that got his surname wrong.
Stayed in uniform thirty-one years, rising to Chief Master Sergeant through Korea and Vietnam. Married Emily “Lu” McGrath on 3 May 1952. Died 14 February 2011 at ninety, buried with full military honors.
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
Born 1 May 1924 to a Polish immigrant father. Radio on the Spirit from the first morning at Chemnitz. Thirty-one in the compilation. The whole tour. Serial 42: Second Service Command. Corning, New York, from a source that is not the wallet.
Married in Manhattan in December 1947. The license is the last documented trace of him found.
Serial 37732118 · 28 in the compilation · −3 · absent 7, 9, 10 April
Born 5 October 1923. Draft card lists the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and a boss named Lewis Scruggs. Not yet twenty when he registered. The ball turret of a B-17 became his job instead. The group’s compilation puts him in that seat from Chemnitz on, except three mornings in April: Kaltenkirchen, München-Riem, and Burg. Donald J. Wilcox flew the ball those days. Collins is back on the roster for Oranienburg, and for the food. His twenty-eight is twenty-five combat plus the three drops. Frank’s twenty-eight is combat only. Two men on the same crew, both credited with twenty-eight, and the twenty-eights are made of different missions. Neither is wrong. Serial 37: Seventh Service Command. Hutchinson, Kansas. The names are in the record. The reason he missed those three mornings is not.
Signed the Hunter Field shipping ticket of 13 December 1944 in a hand consistent with the draft card. Later life is otherwise thin in the record.
Present with the crew at Avon Park in the autumn of 1944 — the same window a later VA statement describes as the onset of Frank’s back injury. Thirty-one in the compilation. The whole tour. Serial 35: Fifth Service Command. West Virginia, from a source that is not the wallet.
West Virginia University, then the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. By January 1959 he held a patent for an automatic depth-correcting device for moored mines. Visited Martinez that same year — “Dale Ernest + Dau, ’59,” in Jimmy Calicura’s slide index. Died in 2007.
Serial 39711497 · 30 in the compilation · −1 · absent 24 February, Bremen
James A. Titus, tail gunner. Leather helmet and oxygen mask, in the aircraft.Family collection
Gunnery school at Las Vegas, June 1944. Contemporary clippings from a Lincoln paper state plainly that he served in England as tail gunner on a B-17. Thirty in the compilation. One morning out: Bremen, 24 February. Serial 39: Ninth Service Command — California, Oregon, Washington, and the mountain west. Not Nebraska. The Lincoln paper and the wallet that says Omaha were writing about a young man who had already gone west. Stated, not resolved. The serial establishes where he enlisted. It does not establish where he was from.
Discharged as a sergeant from Lincoln Army Air Field. Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Joe B. Titus of 3343 LaSalle Street. Later record remains thin.
