_Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart leads his men

The only Oscar winner to be awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for combat service for his country, Hollywood star James Stewart was acclaimed for being one of the few squadron commanders of the Eighth Air Force to lead his men on missions over occupied Nazi territory because he wouldn’t ask them to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself.

One of the Eighth Air Force’s finest squadron commanders was Major James Maitland Stewart, a Princeton honours graduate known to all as Jimmy Stewart, the Hollywood movie idol.

Drafted in 1940 at age thirty-two, the thin, six-foot four son of an Indiana, Pennsylvania, hardware store merchant had tried to get into the Army Air Force but failed to meet the weight requirement for his height.

He appealed the decision, over the protests of his dictatorial boss at MGM, Louis B Mayer, and in a second test told the enlistment officer ‘this time forget to weigh me’.

He started military service as a private, signing his enlistment papers just days after winning an Oscar for his role as a reporter in The Philadelphia Story in February 1941.

Already with a commercial pilot’s license and a sporty two-seater plane, this experience got him into the Army Air Corps as a flight cadet with a monthly salary of $21, exactly $11,979 less per month than he received from MGM.

After earning his pilot’s wings one month after Pearl Harbour, he coaxed and complained for overseas combat duty until his commanders relented.

He arrived in England in the Autumn of 1943 as a squadron commander with the 445th Bomb Group, a Liberator outfit stationed at Tibenham, outside Norwich in the East of England, in what was known to airmen as B-24 Country, and flew his first mission in December, a raid on submarine pens at Kiel, Germany.

He flew again three days later, in a raid on Bremen, northern Germany, and again on Christmas Eve, in an attack on V1 launch sites in occupied France.

Three months later he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for holding his formation together under intense enemy fire on the first day of Big Week, a joint operation by the USAAF and RAF Bomber Command from February 20-25 1944 to attack Nazi aircraft industry. It would deplete the Luftwaffe’s ability to defend Germany and led to Winston Churchill’s claim that ‘we were Masters of the Air’.

It came at a cost. By the end of Big Week, Allied air forces flew some 6,000 sorties, lost 357 bombers, 28 escort fighters and more than 2,000 airmen killed or captured.

During his deployment, he maintained a pattern of behaviour that endeared him to the men under his command. Stewart flew as often as possible as the flight leader on a mission and made a point of leading dangerous missions piloted only by volunteers. He quickly gained a reputation as a lucky pilot who always brought his crews back safely.

On those occasions when he was not flying missions, he always remained at the control tower until the last B-24 returned home or was accounted for.

In total, the now Lt Col Stewart flew 20 combat missions before being transferred as Group Operations Officer to the 453rd Bomb Group at Old Buckenham, East of England in the Spring of 1944.

In 1944 Lt Col Stewart was promoted in July 1944 to 2nd Combat Wing headquarters at Hethel near Norwich.

On March 29, 1945, he was promoted to colonel. A little over a month later, the war in Europe was over.

Eighth Air Force Commander General Jimmy Doolittle later wrote that, ‘If the war had gone on another month, Jimmy would have become a group commander, which was the most important job in the Air Force.’

Stewart resumed his film career on his return to the USA. His first role back in Hollywood in 1946 was Frank Capra’s Christmas favourite It’s A Wonderful Life. This ultimate ‘feel good’ movie is reckoned amongst his best and was his favourite role.

Many felt the raw emotions he unleashed in this film built up while he was in combat. He said after the war, ‘Fear is an insidious and deadly thing; it can warp judgement, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes, and worse. It’s contagious. I could feel that if it wasn’t checked it could infect my crew members.’

The final shots of the film see Stewart’s character George Bailey welcome his returning wartime hero brother wearing… an Eighth Air Force uniform.