Bob Lamb served in the Army Air Corps between 1943 and 1946. He was a bombardier instructor for six months and spent a year as a navigator on a B-25 in the Western Pacific after having earned his wings as an aerial navigator and bombardier.

 

Lamb says within the span of three or four weeks in 1945, his squadron experienced four incidents involving the deaths of 19 of their own men and an unknown number of Army soldiers. During one of his missions, Lamb was part of a group asked to give ground support to American infantrymen on an island in the Philippines. Because of the strategy employed by his bomb group, which involved low level strafing and bombing, they had only one plane equipped with a bombsight for high altitude operations.

The bombardier in the lead plane was to focus on a smoke bomb fired into the Japanese held location by our infantry, but it was snuffed out by the enemy and one of their own was sent back. The bombardier became confused and signaled “bombs away” over their territory.

 

Only the lead squadron released their bombs since the other three saw the error in time. However, the lead squadron of six planes had to repeat the original pattern for the other eighteen to unload on a correctly positioned smoke bomb.

 

Two of Lamb’s original crew were killed near Borneo in another “friendly fire” incident. After the war, Lamb took the opportunity to visit their families in Illinois and Kansas.

In New Guinea kunai grass grows up to 15 feet tall. Returning from a mission, the U.S. B-25s were forced to fly so low that grass was picked out of the engine cowlings after landing.

 

Only last year, 206 letters Lamb wrote to his parents were discovered in a storage area, as well as copies of the 130 letters they sent to him.