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Henry Hank Cervantes | Lt Col Henry Hank Cervantes Lt Col. Henry Cervantes was born in Fresno, California in October 1923. He joined the US Air Force and graduated on the 27th June 1944. Lt Col. Henry Cervantes was one of only a few Mexican American Pilots, of The Bloody100th Bombardment Group flying B-17s. On 18th March 1945 he flew on the last Eighth Air Force mission to Berlin, and on 7th April got home safely after his B-17 E-Z Goin' was badly damaged in a head-on attack by Me109s of Rammkommando Elbe. |
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Heaven Can Wait by Nicolas Trudgian. B-17 Fortresses of the Bloody Hundredth- the Eighth Air Forces 100th Bomb Group - return to Thorpe Abbotts following a raid on enemy oil refineries, September 11, 1944. Nicolas Trudgians moving tribute to the Bloody Hundredth shows the imaginatively named B-17, Heaven Can Wait, on final approach to Thorpe Abbotts after the intense battle on September 11, 1944. Skilfully piloted by Harry Hempy, the seriously damaged B-17G has struggled 500 miles home on two engines to make it back to England. They lost their tail gunner that fateful day. Below the descending bomber stream, an agricultural traction engine peacefully ploughs the wheat stubble in preparation for next year's vital crop, the farm workers oblivious to the unimaginable traumas so recently experienced by the crews of the returning B-17 Fortresses. Signed by four pilots and crew who flew with the 100th Bomb Group in Europe during World War II. Published in 1999 - Issue price was £120. |
Clipped Signature - Hank Cervantes. Lt Col. Henry Cervantes joined the US Air Force, graduated on the 27th June 1944 and was one of only a few Mexican American Pilots, of The Bloody 100th Bombardment Group flying B-17s. On 18th March 1945 he flew on the last Eighth Air Force mission to Berlin, and on 7th April got home safely after his B-17 E-Z Goin' was badly damaged in a head-on attack by Me109s of Rammkommando Elbe. |
Clearing Skies by Robert Taylor. The winter of 1944 / 45 wasn't the coldest ever recorded in England but it came close. The weather was bitter and, in what would turn out to be the last Christmas of the war, temperatures plunged across the country, bringing ice, freezing fog and deep banks of drifting snow. Airfields across East Anglia stood bleak and frost-bound, runways kept clear of snow when conditions allowed, whilst the heavy bombers of the US Eighth Air Force remained under wraps, engines oiled, warmed and ready for any break in the banks of murky fog that would allow them to fly. And when those breaks came, the bombers were back in action ready to play their part in the final destruction of Hitler's Third Reich. The end game was rapidly approaching and both sides knew it. Clearing Skies portrays one such break in the weather when, with recent heavy snow beginning to thaw, the B-17 Fortresses of the famous 100th Bomb Group at Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk are being prepared for a new mission to Germany in early 1945. Earning the nickname 'The Bloody Hundredth' due to the heavy losses they suffered, Robert has fittingly chosen the 100th BG to represent all those who flew so heroically with the Eighth Air Force in England during World War II. The Eighth flew its final bomber operations of the war on 25th April 1945, the last of 968 combat missions involving over 523,000 sorties; they had dropped some 700,000 tons of bombs, inflicting destruction on a scale from which the enemy could never recover. Yet the cost of the victory in which they had played such a major part made for sober reading; they had lost some 6,130 bombers and fighters along with some 47,000 casualties, including more than 26,000 dead - half of the entire US Army Air Force losses during the conflict. |
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