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The term "Little Friends" was the nickname given to the fighter escort on those long, deep penetration missions into Germany. They looked after their charges and helped them complete their mission by keeping the enemy fighters away from the formations. If a bomber became separated from the stream, it was their job to protect the bomber and their crew until they made it back to England.
This page is dedicated to to the relatives of members of the 445th Bomb Group who responded to a call for help from the webmaster. A tremendous amount of information has been sent in to this website and only a small portion of it has been shown. By stepping forward and offering to help, more information will be made available to the other viewers.
Through various contacts, this website has obtained over eight thousand pages of textual information in the form of crew load lists and some tactical mission summaries from the National Archives and Records Agency (NARA) in College Park, Maryland. Copies of microfilm records from the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama were ordered and converted into graphical images for viewing on the computer.
Additional information in the form of 2nd Air Division Tactical Mission Reports and Missing Air Crew Reports (MACRs) will soon be ordered from AFHRA. Once this information comes in, the number of pages of material will more than double. The Tactical Mission Reports for the 280 missions flown by the 445th will make up some 11,200 pages by themselves. The 109 aircraft lost and their associated Missing Air Crew Reports will increase the total by another 2,500 pages.
So, you can see that the total is approaching some 24,000 pages of data. If there is time and money available, the next acquisition would be the microfilm reels of the 8th Air Force Field Orders. The Field Orders (FOs) were generated at 8th Air Force HQs and taskings were sent down through the various bombardments divisions to the combat wings and finally the individual bomb groups. The Tactical Mission Reports and the Field Orders are available on twenty-five 16mm microfilm reels, each containing some 2,000 frames (pages). If you do the math, that comes to about 50,000 pages of data. The process is in place to convert the pages into graphical images to make the viewing process easier.
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