July 1, 1942, was a red-letter day in the career of Brigadier General Ira C. Eaker, chief of VIII Bomber Command, the Eighth Air Force’s heavy weapons division. That was the day the first dozen Boeing B-17E bombers and crews of the 97th Bombardment Group arrived at their bases in England, finally giving VIII BC a strategic offensive capability to fight the Germans in Western Europe. Eaker wanted to show off his new unit, so he arranged an aerial gunnery display for July 29 in the presence of senior generals down from GHQ. The base was in a festive mood that morning as the officers gathered on the roof of the concrete block control tower to watch. But things did no go well. The gunners, most of whom had never operated a turret in the air, failed miserably to hit their targets, and the results embarrassed and angered Eaker.
Upon investigation he discovered the 97th’s fliers “were inept at formation flying, had little high altitude flying experience and were lackadaisical, loose-jointed, fun-loving, and in no sense ready for combat,” recalled aide and biographer James Parton. Eaker immediately fired the commanding officer and set about replacing him with someone capable of turning the group around. He had just the guy in mind—a spirited, capable 40-year-old aviator whose natural leadership talents had impressed him over the years, and whose career would be marked by making possible the impossible: Colonel Frank Alton Armstrong Jr. General Eaker called him into his office and said, “I have a small job for you. You are going to complete the training of our new heavy bomb group and lead them in combat within 16 days.” Armstrong replied, “I’ll do my best, sir.”
THIS WASN’T THE FIRST or last time that Eaker would rely on Armstrong, who made a livelihood as a “Mr. Fixit” for the general. That career path, though, didn’t appear likely in 1927, when Armstrong was living “high on the hog,”the team folded at the end of the season, and Armstrong found himself facing a bleak future. While he could fall back on the law degree he had earned at Wake Forest College, the thought of spending his life writing torts and filing motions held no fascination for him. The woman who would become his wife intervened. Vernelle Hudson, a 22-year-old Virginian, made clear that she was “not about to marry a man who wanted to do nothing more with a college education than play ball.” She’d recently seen a recruitment poster that exhorted young men to “Join the U.S. Army Air Corps!” Formed in July 1926, the Air Corps was just a fledgling outfit, but full of opportunities. Armstrong had never been up in a plane, but the thought of being a flier caught his fancy. What a fine pursuit: “exciting, exacting, challenging,” he wrote in his memoir. And so in February 1928 he enlisted.
