Warbird Information Exchange

A large photo of this man was brought into MAPS but his name is not known. He was allegedly "the youngest member of the United States Army Air Corps." he was from Akron, Ohio, enlisted at age 15, flew 20 missions over Europe, his plane was shot down and was a POW. He was 18 years old when the war 'ended.

Any help would be appreciated... Thank you!!!

Can't help you with that one.
but, Sgt Desales Grover (sp) was grounded after 8-10 8th AF B-24 missions and 2 confirmed kills.
It turned out he was only 16 and enlisted at 15. I've got a photo somewhere.

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Don't touch my junk!!

As Jack said:
In Roger Freeman's "The Mighty Eighth" on pg. 139 is a picture of DeSales Glover of the 458th BG. He flew 6 missions until it was discovered he had enlisted in Oct. 1942 at age 14!
He was then, of course, grounded. Gotta admire the guy.


Happy New Year to you all!
Dave

HI. This my father, De Sales A Glover that you are speaking about. My family and I have just recently found articels, photographs, books and people looking for my father and are excited about everything that we have found. In the past, we were not able to find this information due to the difference of the spelling of his name on enlistment versus his birth name. Unfortunatealy, my father passed away on Janaury 24, 1998 and is buried at Barrancas at Pensacola Naval Base. Based on what we have found and read, I have not received confirmation if he in fact is the youngest. He enlisted on October 15, 1942, 11 days shy of his 15th Birthday. He retired after 22 years and several wars in the military.

First, welcome to the WIX! Very interesting about your father. Did he look older than he was or did he just pull a fast one over the recruiter?

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

G'day Mr/Ms Glover,

Thank you very much for registering and posting here at WIX. I've been fascinated with the story of your father since reading about him in Roger Freeman's The Mighty Eighth. Like so many people, Google didn't give much information other than several scanned newspaper clippings and basic information about his service. There are several pics online, the most common being the one of your dad, grinning and holding a .50 cal machine gun by his aeroplane, as seen in Freeman's book.

If I may ask, would you be interested in telling us a bit about your dad please? The human story of war fascinates me, and the particular story of a fourteen year-old kid from Pittsburgh going off and managing to enlist and serve in combat is a story which certainly bears telling. Your note that he served for several decades is fascinating, and I'd love to hear a little about the man himself, if you're interested. He did his bit, and deserves more recognition than the small footnote in history that he currently holds. His military service, his later years and his family story; I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to hear a bit.

Here are some pics of your dad. Again, I'm sure you have them, but they may interest the greater WIX community;








As to your dad's service, one of the best pages I found was this one;

http://www.458bg.com/storiestaleoftwogunners.htm

It is a link from this one, which gives great detail of his crew's story but not much more than already known about your dad;

http://www.458bg.com/crew33spaven.htm

No doubt you've seen it and have all of the information therein, but it does give more information than I'd previously found. Other pages on that site give information about his crew and their aeroplane, B-24H-10-CF, 41-29273 Flak Magnet, as seen below;



This aeroplane was shot down after being damaged by flak in April 1944, becoming the two-hundredth victory of Heinz Bär.

So, I thank you again for posting here, and would be most fascinated to read anything that you may wish to share.

Cheers,
Matt

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Matt Austin - playing with warbirds since the early 80s.

See my Lee-Enfield videos at - http://www.youtube.com/user/Jollygreenslugg