344th Bomb Group
Group
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A J Wood
Military
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Lieutenant AJ Wood of the 344th Bomb Group in the cockpit of his B-26 Marauder (serial number 42-95987) nicknamed "Yo-Yo Champ". Image by Jack K Havener, 344th Bomb Group.. Associated caption: '"Yo-Yo Champ"- AJ Wood. Yo-yos always come back and pilot Wood was short, chubby and red headed so "Chicken Little" was appropriate. Sept 1944.'
AJ Wood served as a pilot with the 344th Bomb Group.
In an oral history interview a fellow 497th Bomb Squadron pilot, Robert Schwaegerl, recalled:
'We played golf whenever we could...We had a little core in our group, the squadron commander, one of the leading fight commanders and A.J. Wood, who was not my radioman but another pilot. He was a rotund man, and he used to shoot in the seventies all the time. We would have little groups of about eight of us who would go out most of the time.'
Service
Units served with
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497th Bomb Squadron
Squadron
Aircraft
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42-95987 Yo-Yo Champ
B-26 Marauder
B-26 Marauder serial number 42-95987 crashed on 24 April 1945, flying a mission from Dijon, France, where it was based with the 17th Bomb Group, to Schwabmunchen, Germany. ...
Associated Place
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Stansted Mountfitchet
Military site : airfield
Today, Stansted is one of the busiest airports in Britain. During the Second World War, instead of airliners delivering passengers, Stansted Moutfitchet’s aircrews in their B-26 Marauders attacked Nazi targets, paving the way for D-Day and the...
Events
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Revisions
| Date | Contributor | Update |
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| 27 April 2016 12:07:25 | Lucy May | Changes to biography and place associations |
| Sources | ||
Interview with Robert W. Schwaegerl (December 29, 1999) held the University of Florida: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00005707/00001/44j?search=woods |
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| Date | Contributor | Update |
| 25 January 2015 21:33:32 | Tanks | Created entry with surname, middlename, firstname, nationality, highest rank, role, unit associations, aircraft associations and media associations |
| Sources | ||
AAM Photo |
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