The Man Behind the Name
Samuel E. McGowan entered the Army Air Corps in 1942 and trained as an aircraft mechanic at Wichita Falls, Texas. He then trained on the A-20 light bomber at the Douglas Aircraft plant in Santa Monica, California.
Orders sending him to North Africa were changed at the last minute, and he was moved into the pipeline for B-24 Liberator flight engineer training, including aerial gunnery training at Wendover, Utah.
After joining a crew and finishing training together, the group picked up an airplane at Topeka, Kansas in November 1943 and flew it overseas along the South Atlantic Ferry Route, from Morrison Field in Florida to Natal, Brazil, and on to Casablanca, where they were present when Winston Churchill visited to meet with Allied officials.
They reached England in January 1944 and were assigned to the 93rd Bomb Group, 328th Bomb Squadron, at Hardwick. As second engineer on a crew led by pilot John F. Higgins, McGowan flew thirty combat missions from February through May 1944, starting during "Big Week."
Service record.
Missions flown.
The missions below are those we have been able to document for this airman, drawn from flight logs, mission records, and archival sources. It is not necessarily a complete account of every mission flown; gaps may reflect missing documentation, transferred assignments, or records lost to time.
Before and after.
After finishing his combat tour, McGowan stayed in England for several weeks and was assigned to a special base defense force, driving a small tank. He returned to the United States on a Douglas C-54, expecting some rest time in Florida, but was instead placed in the pipeline to train for a new Air Commando unit headed to the Pacific. After his protest, the Army recognized he was not due for another overseas tour and assigned him as an instructor at the B-24 crew school in Smyrna, Tennessee. After the war, he returned to West Tennessee, worked for a few years on the guard force at an Army ammunition plant, then returned to farming for the rest of his life. He passed away in August 2003.