Part I

25-December, 1943 - Christmas dinner at Will Rogers Field, Oklahoma City. (Rhymer Myers)

The 34th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 1943-1945 version, was not exactly what you would call a "do it by the book" outfit. Oh, yes, there was a time or two when the "book" was pulled from our squadron archives (a dusty packing case--that is, if we could find the case) and if I stretch my memory a bit I can even recollect a couple of times that the "Articles of War" were appropriately administered.

But for the most part the 34th was an extremely innovative and very youthful organization. I would say at the time of conception the average age probably fell somewhere in the 20/22-year bracket and that might be stretching it a bit. It was molded from a typical representation of America with a sampling or two from England, Canada and Mexico thrown in. "Old Country Heritage?" - - you better believe it: Gasbarrino, Parulis, Minnich, Des Roches, Kaufman, Pachenco, Mendez, Szelag, Jorgenson, Kosiol, Zwicke, Santelli, Gronowicz, Cvetenovich, Cohen, Rosen, Kupski, Orosuto, Israelian, Ybarra, Desgroseilliers, Skedros, and Kopczynski to name several. But let's start at the beginning....

Our "genesis" became real at Will Rogers Field, Oklahoma City in December of 1943. The locale was well chosen centrally and served as the site where the initial molding of some 350 men and officers into a viable, functional and operational organization was rapidly to take place. The "new" 34th embryo actually was conceived 15 December 1943.

We were one of four photo reconnaissance squadrons scheduled for expeditions overseas deployment--the 31st, 32nd and 33rd were the others. Of these the 31st was already manned and as it turned out awaiting movement orders to the United Kingdom. An earlier squadron, the 30th, was purportedly already in place in England. Of the remaining units two more would be sent to the European Theater of Operations while the other would go to the Mediterranean. At this point movement of these squadrons was scheduled chronologically with the 34th "momentarily" headed for the "Med". (A fifth photo squadron, the 35th, was subsequently formed and sent to the China-Burma-India theater.)

Also on 15 December 1943 three Army Air Corps Officers, all with the rank of major, sat in the Group Commander's office of the 2nd Photo Training Group (RCN) at Will Rogers Field and with the toss of a coin received their command assignments. Yours truly, as far as I was concerned, won the toss and with God's blessing officially took command of the 34th on the following day.

It wasn't easy locating the outfit, however, for also on that day the 34th was experiencing its first of what was to be several rounds of "musical chairs" before its demise in late 1945 at Furth/Nurembourg, Germany. It was Special Order #59 (a paper-shuffle nightmare) that transferred the bulk of the 34th personnel from the 31st. Purportedly, they had been assigned originally to the 31st for house-keeping purposes only (but that's another story). As it turned out, yes, I had a squadron; now, all I had to do was locate the "warm bodies".

At the time of conception the squadron molding process was just that, a literal "melting pot" of warm but eager bodies which had come from all walks of life and directions. For the large part the more experienced personnel, enlisted technical specialists in particular, originally came from the early cadres of several National Guard Squadrons that had been federalized in early 1941. Colorado, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and California were among those well represented. It was this nucleus that provided the overall technical expertise and the experience base of the 34th. This foundation was enhanced by volunteers and draftees from civilian life, all with plenty of "practical know-how" but whose only military exposure was a few weeks of basic training followed by specialty training in photography, engineering and other technical fields as given at our schools in Colorado Springs, Illinois, the Gulf Coast and similar training sites throughout the country.

It was via the volunteer/draftee source that we were to round out our "generalized" enlisted ranks. We were the recipients of a really great bunch -- a professional golfer or two, a railroad engineer, a couple of "damn good" piano players, a wild brahma-bull rider from the far west and a real professional commercial artist from our nations capitol were just a few. Bill Walker, a native of the United Kingdom and one of the oldest men in the squadron, shelved a most successful commercial art business in Washington, D. C., just to volunteer his services as a private in Uncle Sam's forces. He was just tired as hell of seeing his former homeland being "bashed" about by the likes of the Hitlers and the Goerings.

13-October 1944 - Technical and Engineering Specialists of the 34th PRS backed by the F-5B-1-LO "Heat Wave Hatty". Click above to read more! (Rhymer Myers)

Bill was but one of several in the volunteer category who fortunately became an integral part of our group. Without exception he and those like him did an outstanding job--they didn't have to volunteer; they probably would never have been drafted; they just wanted to play their part in terminating this fracas that was engulfing the world. These high calibre men helped give the squadron a certain "something"--stability I guess you would call it--which really payed off time and again when the chips were on the line.

And of course, there were some very important "eleventh-hour" personnel assignments which served to bolster our enlisted legions. Although reasonably well manned with some expert personnel, our engineering section, in particular, was in need of a few fully qualified "P-38" engineering specialists. Thanks to the training squadron at "Rogers" we immediately liberated some much-needed technical depth and specialist expertise. For example Armin Schramm became our Line Chief while Ken Spieth, Gary Walter, Willard Vaughn and Leno Braus all rapidly became Crew Chiefs and Lee Wiegand, our "one-man air depot", did everything.

All in all the 34th really commenced its "War-posture" foundling days at Oklahoma City with a truly well-rounded corps of enlisted personnel.

Now, the members of the 34th were in place and really ready to go to work.

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