Welcome
About THIS SITE
In 2008 I found an original journal and record book kept by my dad, Arnold B. Deiterman, during his military service in World War II. Arnold B. Deiterman, of Ward, South Dakota, volunteered for service in the fall of 1943. At the time he was a 20 year old farm boy with an eighth grade education and had been doing farm work in Tipton County, Iowa. As his record portrays, my dad left South Dakota for induction at Ft. Snelling, Minnesota. He traveled to Sheppard Field, Texas, for Basic Training and was assigned to Flexible Gunnery Training at Kingman Army Air Field in Arizona.
Arnold B. Deiterman was assigned to a B-24 Liberator Crew as a tail turret gunner and to a crew at Lincoln, Nebraska, in April of 1944. Crew #5555 began training at Casper Army Air Field in Wyoming in May of 1944. Training was completed on July 29, 1944, and my dad returned home to the Moody County farm of his parents for furlough. The crew left Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, on the U.S.A.T. Brazil, for England.
The George F. Maxton Crew was assigned to the Eighth Air Force, 466th Bombardment Group, 786th and 784th Bombardment Squadrons (786th from October 1944 through December of 1944 and 784th from February 1945 through April 1945) at Air Station 120, Attlebridge, England, near Norwich. My dad’s journal entry for the crew’s fourth mission on October 26, 1944, describes the belly landing of the Crow’s Nest after being hit with flak over Bottrop, Germany. These links will direct you to pages of a scrapbook that was developed from my dad’s original mission journals and other memorabilia he kept for nearly 60 years, and came into my hands after his death.
I hope readers find the collection of artifacts on this site to be informative and interesting. I continue to search for photos of the aircraft used in each of the Maxton crew’s missions. Please direct comments and any additional information about the missions, crew, or aircraft to me, his daughter, by clicking here.
Nadene Deiterman Greni, Ph.D.