Hardin Field McChesney Jr
MilitaryImage courtesy of Hardin Field McChesney
Field was a radio operator, flying combat missions with the 306th Bomb Group from Thurleigh, Bedfordshire. On 14 February 1945, while on a mission to Dresden, his aircraft was shot down. Field bailed out, after rescuing a wounded crewmate. Another member of the crew, Al Lubojacky, died in the air. Field was not able to help him: ‘That night after I was on the ground, I had been captured, I was sitting in a jail cell, and it suddenly came to me: “Why didn’t I do more to help Al?” It might have given him a little bit of comfort & consolation to see that he wasn’t by himself.’
Prisoner of War (POW) crashed on 14 Feb 1945 in B-17 #42-97185.
Hardin Field McChesney Jr. was the son of a college teacher in Bowling Green Kentucky. Immediately following Pearl Harbor he had gone down to the recruiting office with a crowd of fellow 20 year-old college juniors to volunteer but were sent away. He was eventually called up into the Army in 1943 and initially trained as an infantryman in Alabama. He then saw a notice saying that the Air Corps was recruiting so took the initial tests and transferred to the Air Corps. At Miami Beach for assignment, he failed to make pilot but showed aptitude as a radio operator. Completing training in radio combined with aerial gunnery he was assigned to the B-17 in the summer of 1944 and shipped over to the 306th BG at Thurleigh in Bedfordshire in the December of that year.
The radio operator had to multi-task, to check and maintain all equipment, transmit and receive codes, operate ground to air and air to ground, fire the guns and distribute the anti-radar chaff. Hardin flew 10 missions - or to be precise nine and a half -before being shot down on 14th February 1945. Radio operators were the only enlisted men to attend briefings so he knew the target - Dresden - and the reason for the raid at the request of the Soviet High Command. Having dropped their bombs on the target they were jumped by three FW 190s and number two engine set on fire. 'There was a big fire in the bomb bay and communications were shot out'. With no communication the men were forced to bail out on their own initiative. Hardin went to the assistance of the waist gunner but was forced to leave the turret gunner who had been hit - something he was still haunted by 69 years later.
He bailed out - never sure whether he landed in Germany or Czechoslovakia - and was greeted by a hostile crowd who manhandled him until a very young and armed German soldier came and took him prisoner. He was first driven to a police station - where he was spat upon by locals - then kept for 3 or 4 days in a local jail before being taken by train to an interrogation center in Frankfurt where he saw his pilot and other American airmen. There followed the usual pattern at this stage of the war, of moving thousands of prisoners of war away from the advancing Russians. McChesney says they were on the road for the rest of the month landing up in a camp in Wurzburg Bavaria where, on Sunday morning 29th April, American tanks arrived. 'On Sunday afternoon we were out walking....seeing where we might be able to find some food'. General Patton arrived the next day 'that was the end of the war as far as we were concerned'.
A few days later trucks arrived and started moving the men; a couple of weeks later they were en route the USA for a 60 day furlough. After the war McChesney finished college and initially became a newspaper reporter, going on to work in Public Relations for the Federal Government. He finally worked for the Veterans Administration for 20 years and - he says - got tired of listening to those veterans who saw the war as the only important event in their lives.
Connections
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Units served with
- Unit Hierarchy: Group
- Air Force: Eighth Air Force
- Type Category: Bombardment
- Unit Hierarchy: Squadron
- Air Force: Eighth Air Force
- Type Category: Bombardment
People
- Military/Civilian/Mascot: Military
- Nationality: American
- Unit: 306th Bomb Group 369th Bomb Squadron
- Service Numbers: O-769039
- Highest Rank: Lieutenant
- Role/Job: Navigator; Bombardier
- Military/Civilian/Mascot: Military
- Nationality: American
- Unit: 306th Bomb Group 369th Bomb Squadron
- Service Numbers: 31420284
- Highest Rank: Sergeant
- Role/Job: waist gunner
- Military/Civilian/Mascot: Military
- Nationality: American
- Unit: 306th Bomb Group 369th Bomb Squadron
- Service Numbers: 42076275
- Highest Rank: Sergeant
- Role/Job: Tail Gunner
- Military/Civilian/Mascot: Military
- Nationality: American
- Unit: 306th Bomb Group 369th Bomb Squadron
- Service Numbers: T-129559
- Highest Rank: Flight Officer
- Role/Job: Bombardier
- Military/Civilian/Mascot: Military
- Nationality: American
- Unit: 306th Bomb Group 369th Bomb Squadron
- Service Numbers: 17023812
- Highest Rank: Technical Sergeant
- Role/Job: Top Turret Gunner ; Flight Engineer
Aircraft
- Aircraft Type: B-17 Flying Fortress
- Unit: 306th Bomb Group
Places
- Site type: USAAF heritage site
- Known as: AAM
Events
Event | Location | Date | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Other Prisoner of war |
14 February 1945 | ||
Died |
Bowling Green, Kentucky | 2 December 2019 | |
Born |
Louisville, Kentucky | ||
Buried |
Lexington, Kentucy, USA | Field donated his remains to the University of Kentucky Medical School |
Revisions
Removed some punctuation in the "Summary biography" to aid clarity.
Spelling correction of middle name in "personal details" Hopefully my correcting the spelling in Personal Details will also correct his name as captioned on your biography-page for our 306th veteran, Hardin Field McChesney Jr, is the correct spelling of his name, in 306th BG records, and in your B-17 exhibit at the American Air Museum. That caption on the biography-page had his middle name misspelled, as "Feild" even though within the biographical write-up it is correctly, as "Field." Thank you for hopefully fixing his name in the caption if this editing I've attempted today doesn't fix it both places.
BarbN
Biography completed by historian Helen Millgate. Information sourced from correspondence files and articles held in an IWM research collection related to the acquisition of various items and ephemera belonging to Hardin McChesney.
Merged with duplicate entry to include details from:
- MACR 12333 ;
- Paul Andrews, Project Bits and Pieces, 8th Air Force Roll of Honor database.
American Air Museum text from displays.
Names of crew from American Air Museum oral history interview with McChesney and confirmed by memorial
306th BG Association Directory, 1 September 1999 Edition MACR 12333 / Drawn from the records of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, Savannah, Georgia