You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

A MAJOR reason why we won WWII. The famous Red Ball Express logistics service.

The Express initially started with 67 truck companies, which ballooned four days later into 132 companies with 23,000 drivers and mechanics. This easy transition to truck transport was due in part to the industrial might of the United States, which produced over two million of the heavy haulers during the war.

Although the Transportation and Quartermaster Corps ran the operation, many branches were needed to make the operation run effectively. Military police played the role of traffic cops, engineers helped to maintain the roads and bridges, and ordnance teams repaired disabled vehicles. Army tactics and doctrine prior to the war emphasized mobility and maneuver, which were put to effective at a time when the German army still relied on horse-drawn transport to ferry some of its equipment.

At its peak, the Red Ball Express operated nearly 6,000 vehicles that carried over 12,300 tons of supplies a day.

[Lee Stewart]

Lieutenant Milton Marx, a commercial artist in civilian life and an officer attached to the Ninth’s Public Relations Office, followed the action with his paintbrush and watercolors.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

Day’s Pay was a B-17 Bomber purchased during a fundraising drive where workers were asked to “give a day’s pay and send a bomber on its way” , raising 300k, and it flew in more than 60 missions in Europe.

Under the “Day’s Pay” moniker painted on the nose, the words “Presented to the Army Air Forces as a Result of Cash Contributions by Employees of Hanford Engineer Works,” explained the origin of the plane. There was also a plaque mounted on the inside of the plane.

The first mission flown by "Day's Pay" was to Dusseldorf, on 9 September, and it flew more than fifty missions in the 493rd Bomb Group. Then in February 1945 following deactivation of the 862nd Bomb Squadron, it was transferred to the 94th Bomb Group, and had completed sixty-seven missions by the time it was returned.

The employees who bought her continued to keep track of Day’s Pay as it flew its missions. The employee newspaper, the Sage Sentinel, reported on its progress. The paper published a list of the plane’s crew. Employees wanted to send Christmas cards to “their” boys overseas.

In July of 1945, Day’s Pay was flown back to the United States, initially to Connecticut, then on to Independence Field, Kansas, for storage.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]