Posted:
By: Dave Edkins
On: 01/27/2006
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It is my understanding that decoration award practices differed for the bomb groups. Some groups were more stringent in handing out DFCs. The early war practice was to award the DFC for 25 missions, or completion of tour. This is illustrated by the Memphis Belle crew receiving the decoration before returning home for a bond tour. In the book, The Lucky Bastard Club, by Eugene Fletcher, he relates how the 95th Bomb Group C.O. discontinued awarded the DFC for tour completion in January 1945. So, the individual group and wing commanders had some control over the awards. Fletcher still received a DFC for flying the Cologne and Hamburg mission in October 1944. The Air Medal was created to help boost the morale of the airmen, facing daily combat with poor odds for survival. It could be awarded for individual actions as well as for cumulative combat missions. The five bronze clusters on the AM would indicate a possible thirty combat missions, the AM for the first five and a cluster for each additional five. A silver OLC was intended to represent five bronze clusters. I am not familiar with the award practices of all the groups. I hope this does help you a little.
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