Fifty Missions over Europe: The Wartime Diary of Lt. John Shular, Usaac

By The Shular Family

When John Shular died in 1996, his family found a diary detailing the fifty missions he had flown as a bombardier aboard a B-17 in the Second World War. He spoke to no one of the diary during his life.
In Fifty Missions over Europe, Shulars family shares this diary that offers unique insight into the brutal and terrifying lives of the American airmen who fought and won the air war over Europe. The diary begins in July of 1944 in Foggia, Italy, when Shular flew his first bombing flight, a time when aircrews faced an 89 percent casualty rate. He completed his fiftieth mission December 9, 1944.
With photos included, the diary is presented here exactly as Shular penned it. Footnotes have been added to the text to explain abbreviations, technical jargon, and instances where the text may be unclear.
Shular retired from the air corps after twenty years of service in 1963 and taught high school science and business for fifteen years in Southwick, Massachusetts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781491799079

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Copyright © 2017 Alan Shular.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9906-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9908-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9907-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016908923

iUniverse rev. date: 02/22/2017

Contents

Foreword

Missions 1–26

Missions 27–50

Afterword

Appendixes

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of Major John Shular. He was a war hero, a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a coach, and a grandfather. He lived for his country, his family, and his students. This book is a huge indication as to what kind of a man he truly was. He rarely did anything for himself, and so for that this book allows his memory to live on forever. We love and miss you every day dad.

Love Alan, Aunt Rose, and Jesse

FOREWORD

John Shular was born on November 30, 1915, the second of four children. John’s mother and father, John and Mary Shular, both immigrated to the United States from their native Slovenia in the early years of the twentieth century.

John’s father found work in the coal mining camps of southeastern Kansas. When coal was still plentiful in that part of the state, one of the larger mining camps in the area was Gross, now a part of rural Arcadia, Kansas. It was there that John and his siblings (Mary, Felix, and Rose) grew up. John’s mother and father were determined to see that their four children would receive the education that had not been available to them in Slovenia. Hard study was stressed in their home as much as hard work. Because of this, all four Shular children graduated from the Kansas State Teacher’s College (now Pittsburg State University) in Pittsburg, Kansas. John