This Ford-built B-24H was assigned to Lt Col Leon Vance, deputy commander of the 489th BG. It was Vance who had brought the aircraft from the US to Halesworth. The bomber was named after its pilot?s infant daughter Sharon, who had been born in 1942. Lt Col Vance was flying a different aircraft on the 5 June 1944 mission against a German coastal defence complex near Wimereaux, France-a mission in which the latter aircraft was lost, and for which Vance was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was the only B-24 crew member in the Eighth Air Force accorded this distinction whilst flying a mission from the UK. Vance was heading home to recover from combat wounds when he went down on a C-54 Skymaster carrying wounded and crippled veterans over the North Atlantic on 26 July 1944. In October 1946, at the age of four, Sharon Vance travelled via US Army Air Forces transport to Enid, Oklahoma (now home of Vance Air Force Base), for a ceremony in which Maj Gen James P Hodges gave her the Medal of Honor awarded to her father. Today, daughter Sharon Kiernan of San Diego, California, is an Air Force wife, and she helps to keep alive the memory of her father, and of the bomber named after her. The Sharon D retained its nickname throughout the war, and was eventually transferred to the 445th BG. It survived the conflict, and was eventually broken up for scrap. Repaint by Jan Kees Blom for the AlphaSim 2008 Consolidated B-24 Liberator.
by jankees
(2008-10-31 09:44:12)
Submitted by jankees
by jankees
(2008-10-31 09:44:12)
Submitted by jankees
