Hall-Banks-Clayton County GaArchives Military Records.....Thompson, M/Sgt. Luther June 1944
ww2 20thAAF, 58th Bomb Wing, 262nd Bomb Group
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Iris Thompson Fry IrisAngelLink@aol.com January 10, 2005, 9:52 am

M/Sgt. Luther Thompson
When M/Sgt. Luther Thompson of Lula, Ga., as a boy first began tinkering with 
an austere looking 1916 Dodge touring car, he could have not dreamed that 20 
years later he would be one of the world's foremost experts on the engine of 
the plane upon which the outcome of a World War, in part, depended.
As Line Chief for the Air Technical Service Command's Bomber Flight Test Branch 
at Wright Field, he supervised the activities of all mechanics that are keeping 
the newer B-29 test models in perfect operating condition so that vital 
experimental flights could be performed without a hitch. And it all started 
because the officer who now guides the B-29 production program sold him on 
being an airplane mechanic back in 1923.
That was the year that Thompson strolled into an Atlanta recruiting office, and 
agreed with 2nd Lt. Kenneth B. Wolfe, that the Army offered a bright future to 
mechanically minded young men.
For five years, Thompson was stationed in the U.S. and became as intimate with 
the old Liberty engine as he had been with the reluctant Dodge. The years that 
followed were marked by the usual tours in Panama, the Phillipines and back to 
the States. On the line he was overhauling 0-19's, B 3's, P 12's. It was the 
Old Army life and Thompson enjoyed it, despite such peace time annoyances as an 
automatic break in grade each time he re-enlisted.
At 7:30, Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, he sat in the Hickum Field Inspector's office. 
With others present, he assumed the distant drone of aircraft engines was the 
Navy. Suddenly he spotted red circles on the wing tips. "Navy, hell, it's the 
Japs!" He spent the rest of the day sweating out waves of Nipponease bombers, 
herding women and children from the NCO club, hauling dead and wounded out of 
smouldering hangers, standing alert in a machine gun pit. The Army had a job to 
do and Thompson was in the thick of it.
Two months after Pearl Harbor he began a two-year assignment as Line Chief of a 
B-17 task force in the South Pacific. Nearly every month the squadron changed 
bases; Figi Islands, Canton Islands, Christmas Islands, Midway. Thompson and 
crews spent most of their time robbing one B-17 to get another in the air, 
between work shifts spent 23 Jap raids in slit trenches.
In April, 1943, the wind-beaten veteran mechanic was recalled to the U.S. for 
his most important assignment--First Line Chief in the 20th Bomber Command, 
headed by his former recruiting officer and close friend, General Wolfe. For 10 
months, Thompson lived with B-29 engines in the Bell Bomber Plant, Marietta, 
Ga; then he flew to a secret Superfortress base in India.
"Those weeks in India were the hardest and most anxious of my life. The weather 
was hot and sticky, the roofs leaked, the mud was knee deep. The food (C 
ration) powderded eggs, concentrated stew, hotcakes, coffee, was hardto live 
on." But, M/Sgt. Thompson and crews tuned their big B29 engines to a test 
perfection.
One tense day, the world's biggest bombers took off from bases in China. On 
June 15th, 1944, they droned out the night, and plastered the sprawling 
Imperial Iron and Steel Works with tons of explosives.
Thompson stayed for one more raid, then headed back to the U.S. for assignment 
at Wright Field, Ohio, as Line Chief for the Bomber Flight Test Branch.

Additional Comments:
The acount was taken from The Atlanta Constitution, unknown writer.

Respectively submitted:
Iris Thompson Fry
daughter
daughter

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