Welcome! Phase 1 of this site (34thbg.org) has been completed. This phase entailed extraction of personnel, mission, and aircraft data from Gary Farrel's site "Valor to Victory" (V2V) and loading it into a database that has been used to generate a more usable and more accurate account of 34th Bomb Group (H) activities. When researching a particilar serviceman on this site, one typically starts with the Personnel Roster (select "Personnel" then "Roster" from the site menu. Next, locate your target individual in the personnel list by scrolling through 4000+ names or by using the built-in search function of your browser. In the far fight column labelled "Combat Sorties" of the row containing the name of the individual you've located, you will now see a link icon if that individual flew on any of the group's 170 combat missions or 7 non-combat mission. Click on that link and you will be presented with a list of the sorties flown by that person. Further, if you click on one of the "Details" links in the sortie list you will be presented with a sortie report containing additional information including a list of the crewmembers on board the aircraft for that particular flight. These steps are a much easier task than scouring for information in V2V about a flight crew member (other than a pilot) - especially if don't happen to know the name of the pilot your target serviceman crewed with.

We believe that you will find this site to be much easier to navigate than V2V and we are fairly certain that many users will find it more accurate as well. Much of the information extracted from V2V has been verified using online repositaries such as the Fold3.com site which provides several thousand 34th Bomb Group documents scanned from originals at the National Archives. We've had the luxury of using technologies and online resources that were unavailable when Gary Farrell was serving as the Archivist and Historian for the 34th Bomb Group Association. Nonetheless, we are well aware that the inforation presented on this site is not 100% accurate. For example, Farrell didn't provide crew load lists for all sorties so we have thus far had to assume (unless we've located documents proving otherwise) that the assigned crew members generally flew as a team. Presently we have plans to verify the crew lists by obtaining copies mission documents from the National Archives. It will take a good deal of time and effort to obtain the required copies and work through them but we hope to have that accomplished in the next 6-12 months. Meanwhile, if you notice errors in the site that you believe deserve swift attention, please contact me at: jlsager@csuchico.edu

If you happen to have a copy of this often referenced book and would be willing to loan it briefly to the cause of improving this web site, please contact me at the above email address. It would assist us greatly in improving our understanding of events. Additionally, if you know the contact information for the current copyright holder, please let us know so that we might contact them to get permission to quote appropriate portions of the book.

Finally, I would like to add a shout out to John Funk, son of M/Sgt Lewis Funk, Photo Chief for the 34th Bomb Group. John provides the online collection of "Mendlesham Memories", the newsletter of the 34th Bomb (H) Group Association, Inc. He is also custodian of Lew Funks WWII photo collection - a healthy portion of which we hope to provide access to via various web pages and links provided on this site at a future date.