messerschmidtbf109

Mally_0052 Mally Collection Image

from SDASM Archives

• Michael Mally said:

  Airmen from the 376th Bombardment Group atop an abandoned and derelict Luftwaffe Bf-109. The fighter was disabled by retreating Germans when the British Imperial forces recaptured Gambut airfield in the Libyan desert. The man at this photograph’s far right is 1st Lt. Navigator/Bombardier William O. (O’Brien) Mally. Mally, and perhaps the others in this picture, had been part of the Halverson Detachment. The Detachment was one of a couple of units created to bomb Japan after Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Before HALPRO, the detachment’s code name, deployed someone in Washington decided to depart from normal American practice which put both a navigator and a bombardier aboard heavy bombers. HALPRO navigators were hastily trained to bomb too.