Lt Manford O. Croy Jr - February 1945, Duxford (photo cropped from UPL 20502)

Page 24 of the Duxford Diary. Many of the 8th Air Force Groups produced an unofficial unit history in the months after the war ended in Europe but before they were redeployed out of the ETO (‘European Theater of Operations’). The Duxford Diary was the book created by and for the service personnel who were based at Duxford at the end of the war in Europe, as a memento of their time at the airfield. Resembling a college yearbook, unit histories were an unofficial – and often tongue-in-cheek – record of the unit’s time in the UK. They include photo montages showing different aspects of base life. Often the servicemen in the photos are unnamed. The American Air Museum hopes that by adding unit histories to the website as individual pages, the men in the photos will be identified and associated to their person entries.

Page 97 of the Duxford Diary. Many of the 8th Air Force Groups produced an unofficial unit history in the months after the war ended in Europe but before they were redeployed out of the ETO (‘European Theater of Operations’). The Duxford Diary was the book created by and for the service personnel who were based at Duxford at the end of the war in Europe, as a memento of their time at the airfield. Resembling a college yearbook, unit histories were an unofficial – and often tongue-in-cheek – record of the unit’s time in the UK. They include photo montages showing different aspects of base life. Often the servicemen in the photos are unnamed. The American Air Museum hopes that by adding unit histories to the website as individual pages, the men in the photos will be identified and associated to their person entries.

Page 129 of the Duxford Diary. Many of the 8th Air Force Groups produced an unofficial unit history in the months after the war ended in Europe but before they were redeployed out of the ETO (‘European Theater of Operations’). The Duxford Diary was the book created by and for the service personnel who were based at Duxford at the end of the war in Europe, as a memento of their time at the airfield. Resembling a college yearbook, unit histories were an unofficial – and often tongue-in-cheek – record of the unit’s time in the UK. They include photo montages showing different aspects of base life. Often the servicemen in the photos are unnamed. The American Air Museum hopes that by adding unit histories to the website as individual pages, the men in the photos will be identified and associated to their person entries.

Official USAAF photo 56362 AC - Original caption : “1st Lt. Manford O. Croy Jr., of Seattle, Washington, tells Major Harry L. Downing of Lincoln, Nebraska, operations officer of U.S. 8th AF 82nd Fighter Squadron, how he and his flight of North American P-51 Mustangs destroyed 10 locomotives and other transport hauling reinforcements and supplies to the German armies. Lt. Croy’s flight was part of the force of 800 Republic P-47’s and North American P-51’s that escorted more than 1,400 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators of the 8th AF that attacked targets in Central Germany on 22 Feb 1945.” NOTE : Harry Downing is on the right in this photo, Major Croy on the left.

Article in the “West Seattle Herald”, 10 May 1945, relating the announcement of Manford Croy's death. His widow Joan, born in 1924, re-married and died in 2013.