Bomb disposal was the most technically demanding and dangerous job
outside of combat during World War II. Fewer than five thousand men
did it in the American armed forces. During the war their
activities were shrouded in secrecy, so that the Axis would not
know what techniques the Allies were using. When they came home the
citizen soldiers and officers who had done the work preferred
anonymity to publicity. Furthermore, the units they had served in,
often squads of six enlisted men and one officer, had been too
small and independent to attract much notice by American
chroniclers, official or unofficial, of the biggest armed conflict
in history. Captains of Bomb Disposal, 1942-1946 attempts to bring
some long-overdue public attention to this small group of neglected
heroes. It chronicles two of their two most significant
achievements during the World War II era: the contributions of the
thirty-three bomb disposal squads of the Ninth Air Force, and the
top-secret intelligence mission code named Operation 'Hidden
Documents."In 1944 the Ninth Air Force was the most powerful
tactical air force the world had ever seen. In the European Theater
of Operations (ETO) it controlled more bomb disposal personnel than
any other high command. Part I of Captains of Bomb Disposal,
1942-1946 mainly describes training at the Bomb Disposal School at
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and the support thirty-three
bomb disposal squads gave the Ninth Air Force. Interwoven in the
narrative covering events after D-Day is the wider context in which
those squads, and all of the Ninth Air Force, operated, namely, air
and ground forces pioneering a large-scale, close partnership which
defeated the Germans in northwest Europe. Also discussed is how
Ninth Air Force bomb disposal squads helped handle the problem
after V-E Day of up to two million tons of surplus explosive
ordnance in the theater.Most of the sources for Part I on bomb
disposal operations are unpublished unit histories, Ninth and
Eighth Air Force ordnance reports, theater-level reports, and
related documents at either the National Archives at College Park,
Maryland (NACP), or the Air Force Historical Research Agency
(AFHRA), at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Part I is organized
around, but definitely not limited to, the World War II experiences
of Capt. Thomas R. Reece. Now deceased and the author's father, he
was one of the four highest-ranking bomb disposal officers in the
Ninth Air Force. Some of his official and personal papers are
utilized. Background material on the course of the war in the ETO
is taken mainly from published official histories, and for the
Ninth Air Force, also from unpublished documents at AFHRA.One of
the passages in Part I describes how two men in the 80th Bomb
Disposal Squad, Sgt. Russell F. McCarthy and T/5 Walter V. Smith,
in 1945 won the Soldier's Medal, America's highest military award
for bravery in action not against the enemy. They were not the only
bomb disposal personnel to win that award during the World War II
era. Part II revolves around Capt. Stephen A. Richards, who was
commanding officer of the 123rd Bomb Disposal Squad, attached
during the war to General Patton's Third Army. Captain Richards and
two combat engineers won the award for disarming a cache of
booby-trapped documents outside Stechovice, Czechoslovakia in
February 1946, as part of Operation 'Hidden Documents." The trio
was apprehended by Czechoslovak authorities while the other mission
members took the documents to Germany, and was only released after
the documents were returned. Meanwhile, a diplomatic crisis was
ignited as Czechoslovakia officially protested the American
infringement of its sovereignty. Moreover, the Czechoslovak
Communist Party used the controversy for propaganda purposes
shortly before the national elections of May 1946.Shortly before
the trio was released, the operation received fairly extensive
publicity, including an article on page two of Th
General
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