Some of you have been gone a he** of a long time and others only a few months. We'll try to give you a short history to bring you up to date but the details must wait until later. If you want to know about any particular person or mission just write and ask.

    The 20th. Fighter Group arrived in the UK on 26 August, 1943 and flew its first mission on 28 December. During the latter part of July, 1944 the Group changed over from P-38s to P-51s. We flew 138 P-38 missions and 174 P-51 missions; the last being 25 April, 1945. Total Missions: 312.

    The group also destroyed 400 locomotives, damaged 122, and clobbered 1555 freight cars, 169 oil cars, 94 ammunitions cars, 536 motor vehicles, 992 German soldiers and many other targets. We were one of the pioneering high altitude precsion bombing outfits using P-38s and with both P-38s and P-51s we have dive, glide and skip bombed hundreds of targets and strafed many more. We have had some big days but the biggest was on 10 April, 1945 when the boys destroyed 5 jets and damaged 2 more in the air over Berlin and beat up the surrounding airfields, destroying 55 and damaging 24 planes on the ground.

    We have 26 "Aces"*, 3 of whom have destroyed ten or more planes: Capt. Jimmie Morris, 10 2/3, Capt. Joe Mansker 10, and Capt. Red Fiebelkorn, top man with 11.

    On 11 September,1944 Col. Rau led 64 P-51s of the 20th. on the third of four shuttle runs carried out by 8th.AF bombers and fighters. From Russia the Group escorted bombers to targets in Hungary and on to Italy from whence the boys returned home on 17 September.