Art Deland and “Ready, Willing and Able”
These documents and photos include the following:
1
Art Deland and his hand-picked crew of ten men arrived at Langley Field, Virginia in August 1943, at about the time the initial ten crews of the Wright Project were departing that airbase to head for Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Deland and his crew trained on the radar-equipped B-18B’s and later adopted the Low Altitude Bombing (LAB) equipped B-24D when those became available. Later in the year the first B-24J versions arrived at Langley and one of the first was claimed by Deland’s crew. This B-24J, 42-73396, was promptly christened “Ready, Willing and Able”, complete with the Vargas-inspired artwork on her turret-equipped nose. Two photos taken at Langley Field in January 1944 on eve of departure for South Pacific, DeLand is back row center in Photo 2.
2
Operations Order Number 28 of 2 February 1944 sends the DeLand crew and “396” to Guadalcanal via Mitchell Field.
3
The DeLand crew stands in front of “Ready, Willing and Able” at Munda Airfield shortly after its arrival there in February 1944. The DeLand crew and its B-24J was the first replacement aircrew and aircraft, as well as the first J-model LAB B-24, to join the Wright Project. The latter was re-designated as the 868th Bomb Squadron as of 1 January 1944. A companion B-24J and crew, that of Lieutenant Bob Hoffman in “Long Distance” arrived a few after DeLand joined the 868th.
4
A reconstruction of the combat flight log of the Deland crew, requested by the Nightstalkers author, covering the period of service in the South Pacific, January – December 1944, from the departure from Langley Field thru the return home at the conclusion of the combat tour. Upon the departure of the DeLand crew, “ownership” of the aircraft (396) was claimed by the crew of Captain Earle Smith, renamed “Our Baby”, with the understanding that the Vegas image would not be altered. These DeLand missions are reflected in “Nightstalkers” in Chapter 12 as well as other entries, namely pages105-106.
5
The B-24J aircraft “Long Distance”, aircraft 42-73410, was flown to Munda to join the 868th Squadron at the same time as the movement of the Deland crew, and became the second B-24J model to join the unit. Here the crew of Lieutenant Bob Hoffman stands with “Long Distance’ in early 1944 as that crew began its combat service.
Re: Long Distance, the pilot was Phillip Hoffman. My father-in-law Robert E. McLaughlin was the radio operator (back row 2nd from the right). He died at 102 from covid in 2020.