Activated in June 1943 as a heavy bombardment group. Trained with B-24 Liberators for duty overseas. Moved to Italy, December 1943 – January 1944. Began combat with Fifteenth Air Force in February 1944, operating chiefly against strategic targets until late in April 1945. Early operations included attacks against such objectives as marshalling yards, aircraft factories, railroad bridges, and airdromes in Italy, Austria, and Romania.
Received a Distinguished Unit Citation for performance at Wiener Neustadt, Austria on 10 May 1944: when other groups turned back because of adverse weather, the 456th proceeded to the target and, withstanding repeated attacks by enemy interceptors, bombed the manufacturing center. Helped to prepare the way for and supported the invasion of Southern France during July and August 1944. At the same time, expanded previous operations to include attacks on oil refineries and storage facilities, locomotive works, and viaducts in France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and the Balkans.
Received second DUC for a mission in Hungary on 2 July 1944 when the group braved severe fighter attacks and antiaircraft fire to bomb oil facilities at Budapest. In April 1945 bombed gun positions, bridges, roads, depots, and rail lines to support US Fifth and British Eighth Army in their advance through Italy. Transported supplies to airfields in northern Italy after V-E Day. Returned to the US in July 1945.
The 456th relocated to Smoky Hill Army Air Field, Salina, Kansas, on 17 August 1945. Put under control of Second Air Force, for conversion to a B-29 Superfortress group and operations against Japan, and re-designated 456th Bombardment Group, Very Heavy. The Pacific War ended before the conversion was completed, however, and the group was inactivated on 17 October 1945.
See 456th Bombardment Wing page for additional lineage and history The 456th Bomb Group (Heavy) was an air combat unit of the United States Army Air Forces during the Second World War. A "heavy bombardment group," the 456th operated B-24 Liberator aircraft and was known unofficially as "Steed's Flying Colts," after its commander.
The 456th Bomb Group flew 249 bombing missions from Italy while assigned to the Fifteenth Air Force. Its members earned two Presidential Unit Citations for valor in combat and participated extensively in the strategic bombing campaign against oil production targets including Ploieşti, Romania, that resulted in high bomber losses.
Inactivated at the end of the war and allotted to the Air Force Reserve, the group was reactivated twice as a bomb and troop carrier group, and later had its lineage and history bestowed on a like-numbered wing of the United States Air Force.
Organization of the 456th Bomb Group (H) The 456th Bomb Group (Heavy) was created ("constituted") on 14 May 1943, by Special Order of the Second Air Force as a bomber unit planned for future deployment to the Eighth Air Force in the United Kingdom.
Group Commanders of the 456th Bomb Group: Col. Thomas W. Steed (14 July 1943 – 19 May 1945), Lt. Col. Robert C Whipple, (19 May 1945 – 30 August 1945), Col. George E. Henry, (31 August 1945 – 3 September 1945), Col. John W White, (4 September 1945 – 17 October 1945). Deputy Commander Lt.Col. Russell was in temporary command from July – October 1944, in the absence of Col. Steed.
Deputy Group Commanders (air echelon commanders): Lt.Col. Harmon Lampley Jr. (3 September 1943 – 28 March 1944); Lt.Col. Joseph G. Russell (1 June 1944 – unk); Lt.Col. Chester R. Ladd (1945—unk).
Executive officers (ground echelon commanders): Lt.Col. Walter C. Phillips (14 July 1943 – November 1944); Lt.Col. Leonard A. Weissinger (November 1944 – June 1945)
Four heavy bomb squadrons were constituted at the same time and assigned to the group: 744th Bomb Squadron (H) Commanders: Capt. John R. Sinclair (14 July 1943 – 9 March 1944), Major Robert L. Reid (10 March 1944 – August 1944), Major Joseph N. Jacobucci (August 1944 – unk), Capt. William S. Rawls (dates unknown) 745th Bomb Squadron (H) Commanders: Capt. William H. McKee (14 July 1943 – ?), Major Louis M. Abernathy (dates unk), Lt.Col. David H. Cissna (October 1944-unknown), Major John S. Chandler (dates unknown) 746th Bomb Squadron (H) Commanders: Major Paul T. Golden (14 July 1943 – March 1944), Capt. Frederick W. Hyde (March 1944—unknown), Lt.Col. Samuel W. Parks (dates unknown) 747th Bomb Squadron (H) Commanders: Major Benjamin F. Kelly (14 July 1943 – unknown), Capt. Richard R. Clark (unknown—10 May 1944, killed in action), Major William B. Clark (11 May 1944 – 5 November 1944, killed in action), Major Lewis T. Phillips (6 November 1944 – June 1945), Harold Lewis
Training history and movement overseas Formation The group and its four squadrons were activated without personnel or equipment on 1 June 1943, at Wendover Field, Utah. On 14 July 1943, the location of the group was changed to Gowen Field, Idaho, where a cadre of 66 officers and 237 enlisted men was assigned, transferred from the 29th Bomb Group at Gowen. Colonel Steed, formerly chief of staff of the IV Bomber Command, took command on the same date. While at Gowen Field, and at its next two stations, the 456th received additional personnel drawn from the 18th Replacement Wing at Salt Lake City, Utah, and the 470th Bomb Group, Mountain Home Army Air Field, Idaho. The air echelon (consisting at that time of key flying staff and four aircrews) was sent to the Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics at Orlando Army Air Base, Florida, for a four-week course of specialized cadre training in field operations and combat tactics.
On 30 July 1943, the group's ground echelon moved to Bruning Army Air Field, Nebraska, where it remained until 8 October. The air echelon joined the group at Bruning in mid-August and received four B-24D aircraft for familiarization flights.
The air echelon left Bruning on 5 September 1943, for Kearns Army Air Base, Utah, and on 29 September moved by train to Muroc Army Air Base, California, where it would remain until its designated overseas deployment date of 1 December. The ground echelon followed on 8 October. By 1 November, to train approximately 70 crews, the 456th had received only 28 aircraft, all old and half of them grounded for maintenance or lack of spare parts. The shortage of aircraft hampered the training efforts not only of its flying personnel but also its maintenance units.
The 456th received only a minimal amount of unit training in navigation, high altitude bombing, and gunnery, but its most serious training deficiency was a lack of high altitude formation flying using heavily loaded aircraft (as it would in combat). In all the group received only three of the normal six months of unit POM ("Preparation for Overseas Movement") training.
Despite the group's lack of preparation, and the refusal by Colonel Steed to certify its combat readiness to POM inspectors, the 456th's air echelon was ordered to discontinue training. The ground campaign in Italy had captured Foggia and its network of potential airfields, and seven groups of Liberators originally slated for the Eighth Air Force, including the 456th, had been diverted by General Arnold to the new bases then under construction.
The air echelon was ordered to fly its training aircraft to Hamilton Field, California, beginning 3 December 1943, while the ground echelon entrained for movement to a port of embarkation. At the time of its deployment, the 456th had reached its full strength of 377 officers and 1,627 enlisted men.
Movement to Italy
At Hamilton Field the air echelon received 61 new B-24H Liberator bombers over a period of several weeks. Traveling individually between December and February, the aircraft flew to Italy using the South Atlantic Ferry Route, established by Pan American Airways in the 1930s: Palm Beach, Florida; Puerto Rico; Trinidad; Belém and Natal, Brazil; Dakar, French West Africa; Marrakesh and Casablanca, French Morocco; Oran, Algeria; and Tunis, Tunisia, where it waited while construction was completed on its airfield. On 30 January 1944, at Dakar, one of the 456th's aircraft exploded while taking off, killing nine of the ten crew members.
The ground echelon arrived at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia, on 4 December, underwent final processing, and sailed in a convoy from Newport News, Virginia on 15 December aboard three Liberty ships. The convoy passed through the Strait of Gibraltar on 5 January 1944, divided into two sections, and reached the Italian ports of Taranto on 11 January and Naples, 19 January.
On 23 January, the ground echelon traveled by open truck in wet, freezing weather to the new base (code-named "Newbox") on the Tavoliere near the Adriatic Sea, southeast of Foggia. The airbase was constructed on a nationalized estate called Incarnata Farm (), less than a mile north of the village of Stornarella and approximately two miles southwest of the larger town of Stornara; it received the name of the larger city as its location. Stornara airbase was centered in a cluster of airfields of its parent and newly activated 304th Bomb Wing and two other heavy bomber wings of the Fifteenth Air Force surrounding the city of Cerignola.
Staff officers immediately began requisitioning farmhouses for administrative buildings and setting up tent encampments in nearby olive groves for the living quarters. With some improvised improvements, the 456th lived in tents throughout its fifteen months at Stornara (for several months, the ground crews lived in infantry shelter halves until a sufficient number of squad-sized tents became available). Stonara's single runway was in length and oriented north-to-south, with taxiways on either side and revetments for 62 aircraft placed along them. The runways and taxiways were covered with steel matting called pierced steel planking, or PSP.
On 26 January, the 456th group headquarters reached Stornara and activated the base. The group's bombers began arriving from Tunisia on 1 February. On a training familiarization flight on 6 February another B-24 was lost, crashing into a mountain while flying in clouds, killing all aboard including three aircraft commanders.
Combat operations and tactics The original group identification aircraft markings for the 456th Bomb Group, located on the outward side of the B-24's twin tail fins, consisted of a black diamond symbol superimposed on a white circle (marking of the 304th Bombardment Wing) on the fin's upper half, and the number 3 in white on the lower half. In May 1944, with the numbers of olive drab aircraft diminishing rapidly by combat attrition and operational wear, the Fifteenth Air Force adopted a system of color bands and symbols. The 456th's markings then became a long black diamond on the upper half, and the entire lower half painted bright red (the 456th's group color). The upper surface of a bomber's rear horizontal stabilizer, on which the tail fins were mounted, was similarly marked, with the left stabilizer painted red and the right having the diamond symbol.
Within the 456th Group, individual aircraft were identified initially by numbers painted on their noses, with sets of two-digit numbers assigned to squadrons ("numbers in squadron"), but this system was later discontinued and a non-standard pattern of three-digit numbers employed (usually, but not always, the last three numbers of an airplane's USAAF serial number). Late in the war some squadrons adopted letter identification painted on the rear fuselage, but this was not systematized, and many aircraft had no individual identification at all.
In combat