Ask a member of the 467th Bombardment Group whom they hated most and the answer won’t be Göring or Hitler. Ask a veteran of this B-24 Liberator group what they feared most and they won’t say German flak or fighters.
“It was no contest,” said former Staff Sgt. Vincent Re, an engineer gunner. “By a vote of 100 percent, the man we hated most was Colonel Albert J. Shower.”
During the war, the U.S. Army Air Forces, or USAAF, fielded 243 combat groups, including 125 bombardment groups, of which 72 were “heavy” (four-engined) groups. Of the 243 groups, it appears that only one––the 467th––was formed, trained, taken overseas, taken into battle, led to victory, and brought home by a single commander from start to finish—Shower.
“We hated him,” said Re.
As we shall see, the men’s attitude toward ramrod-stiff, iron-disciplined Shower (West Point, 1932) changed over time. But the object of their greatest fear never changed.
Long after they confronted flak and fighters at altitude over the Third Reich, long after they fought abominable weather, freezing temperatures, and massed Messerschmitts, after they lost friends and won the war, B-24 Liberator veterans of the 467th Group said that nothing terrified them so much as taking off and assembling over East Anglia for the flight to the target.
