[303rd-Talk] Cronkite

[Bill Jones]

> Thanks Bill, great story.  Keep your eyes open for a Cronkie article
> called, "Nine Crying Boys and a B-17" or something similar to that. 
> It's about the death of pilot Don Stockton, who was Cronkite's friend at
> Molesworth.  We've looked for a copy of that story for 12 years without
> success.

The newspaper clipping I posted was from the 360thBS microfilm that's 
available from Maxwell AFB. It was in a journal type notebook that the 
squadron used to record details about the day to day activities of the 
squadron, including mission loading lists, and narratives of the 
mission, etc. This journal only covered the period back in the US 
before moving to Molesworth thru about Sept of 1943 I think.   The 
photos of the pages of this book found on the microfilm showed that 
they often attached newspaper clippings that had mention of the various 
missions. 
  So I'd think that the best place to find a copy would be in the 427th 
BS microfilm, assuming that they had a similar way of keeping records.  
I only have the 360th and about half of the 359th microfilm, and don't 
have any of the 427th microfilm. It is pretty obvious though, that the 
360th and 359th microfilm show different methods of keeping records, at 
least in the last year of the war, so the 427th may not have kept a 
similar journal, or they may not have attached newspaper clippings.  
But hopefully someone has a copy of the 427th microfilm, and can look 
there. 
   The microfilm images are often in very poor condition, and it's hard 
to read, which is why I transcribed the article into text.  Whoever did 
the photo-copy work to create the microfilm had a tough job, and would 
often take multiple pictures of a page, once showing the clipping, 
again with the clipping folded back to see the hand-writing on the 
journal pages under the clipping. 
  Initially, I had to drive 40 miles to a library, and pay an expensive 
fee to make copies of the microfilm pages, but eventually I bought a 
cheap microfilm viewer on EBAY, however my viewer is just for viewing, 
and doesn't make copies, however I can take pictures of the screen, 
plus I have a computer scanner made to copy 35mm slides, which works 
fairly well to make copies, although the resolution isn't quite as good 
as I'd like. 

 


Bill Jones         N3JLQ
Sweden Maine
wejones at megalink.net
http://www.megalink.net/~wejones 
 
303rdBG page 
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