Charters Towers

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On Feb. 25, 1942, we landed in Brisbane, Australia. Spent about 10 days at Ascot Race Track, unloading equipment and loading it back on railroad cars. On Mar.10, we arrived at Charters Towers in N.E.Queensland, where they were building a new air strip. When we left Savannah all our ranking Officers were left to form a new Group and our aircraft to pull sub duty on the East Coast. But they had made no arrangements for us to have any planes. There we sat ready to fight a war with a 1st Lt. Group C.O. and no aircraft.

In March, we received 42 Pilots from the 27th Bomb Group. in the P.I., and 25 A-24 Dive Bombers that never got to the P.I.
Col. Davies became our Group C.O. and some of the Majors and Captains became Squadron C.O.s. Col. Davies got word of 25 B-25 belonging to the Dutch in Melbourne. He took a group of pilots with him and they came back with the B-25s. Still not sure whether they begged, borrowed or stole them. They were divided between the 13th and 90th Sqs. At any rate we had something to fight with and pulled our first combat mission Mar. 31, 1942. That was the start of 42 months of continuous combat duty for the 3rd Bomb Group aka the 3rd Attack Group.