“Exterminator”

Exterminator carried the 93rd Bomb Group's colors from the earliest days of its combat service in England. Early in her career, flying with the 329th Bomb Squadron, she passed through the hands of several pilots -- Ralph J. McBride, Howard W. Freese, and Kenneth Cool among them -- while bombardier Harold Mann rode her through thirty missions, first over the deserts of North Africa and Libya, then over the skies of Northwest Europe.

In March 1943 she transferred to the 330th Bomb Squadron, and it was there that Captain Hugh Roper made her his own -- she was named after him. On August 1, 1943, Roper flew Exterminator on Operation Tidal Wave -- the daring low-level raid on the Ploesti oil refineries in Romania that would become one of the costliest missions of the air war. Turning for home through smoke and chaos, Exterminator collided in mid-air with fellow Liberator 41-24121 some four kilometers northeast of Razlog, Bulgaria. All eleven men aboard were lost, including Roper himself.

Exterminator did not come home from Ploesti, but her name and her service -- spanning two squadrons, two continents, and dozens of missions -- endure as one of the 93rd's enduring stories of endurance and sacrifice.