In August of 1943, two months before he would graduate from Advanced Flight Training at Blackland Airfield my father, Cadet Ernest Anders Erickson was on a short pass from the base. Here in this shot having some fun at a photograph studio while in Miami Beach. Maybe dreaming of being based in warm climates in Italy and or North Africa.

One year later in the midst of completing his 31st through 34th missions Lt. Ernest Anders Erickson would find himself in early August of 1944 in Italy during a shuttle bombing run. It was his longest assignment that began on August 5th, 1944, when the "Lili of the Lamplight" (44-6085) took off from Horham Airfield in England on the first in a series of five consecutive shuttle bombing missions which spanned the width of the European continent.

During that ten-day run Ernest and his crew encountered barrages of deadly flak fire and Luftwaffe fighter resistance. After flying missions over Rahmel and Trzebien in Poland, and Bazau in Romania, the squadron landed at Poltava Airfield in the Ukraine, where they refueled and rearmed. They carried out one final mission in Eastern Europe and then headed towards the Mediterranean.

They landed at the 15th Air Force base in Italy, formerly controlled by the Germans at Tortorella Airfield, referred to as Foggia Satellite No. 2. He spent the time in and around Foggia unwinding from the long week of flying. Soon enough he and some of the crew commandeered a jeep.

They visited the Mediterranean cities of Salerno & Naples and my father had a chance to photograph the allied ships which were moored in the harbor and scattered throughout the waterways. In Foggia, a crew member captured what I have always thought were classic photos of my father standing in front of various abandoned Luftwaffe bombers. The photos were taken not long after the Allies had taken over the airfield. Abandoned equipment and airplanes were strewn across the countryside. The images in these photographs seem surreal. I look at them and imagine the chaotic retreat of the once highly disciplined and invincible German military. By mid August the ship and crew left Foggia and completed one more mission, their 34th, over Toulouse, France before heading home to Horham.

By late August my father and crew awaited the day they would complete their last and final 35th mission. The cards laid out for that mission on August 26th, 1944 took a very uncertain last minute diversion.