Wwii's 440Th Troop Carrier Group Is Going The Distance To Be Reunited

They were expendable. Seldom was there air cover, nor was there armament on their slow-moving aircraft, which blackened the skies over France and other parts of Europe in World War II.

To the young men of the U.S. Army Air Corps 440th Troop Carrier Group, it was a roll of the dice every time their twin-engine C-47s roared into the skies from airfields in England, carrying troops, towing gliders or ferrying supplies to the front.

Many never saw Dover's white cliffs again. But a camaraderie grew among the vets who did survive those flights, and the war.

This weekend, several hundred veterans of the 440th Troop Carrier Group Association will gather for a reunion at the Marriott Hotel in SeaTac.

"The numbers are dwindling," said 74-year-old Tony Ferrucci, association national commander. "We're all getting pretty old. A lot of widows have been showing up for the reunions."

The celebration will be perhaps one of the last events this year to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II.

Ferrucci, owner of Art Printing in South Park, came up with the idea of bringing the fliers together for annual reunions just 11 years ago. Many had kept in touch, but it was a gigantic effort on his part to contact as many former comrades as possible.

He called or wrote to several friends, who in turn did the same with five others, and so on.

Ferrucci, who served as staff sergeant and radio man on a C-47 transport, and others say the four squadrons of the 440th were an unheralded unit, even though its members received more than 1,000 citations, including the Croix de Guerre with Palms, Distinguished Flying Crosses, Air Medals and Purple Hearts.

Sixty-four pilots and crew members in the 440th were killed in action. A number of fliers were captured by the Germans when their planes crashed.

Activated on July 1, 1943, the 440th participated in the airborne invasions of Normandy, southern France, Holland and troop drops across the Rhine River in 1945. It brought supplies to surrounded defenders at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and flew gasoline to Gen. George Patton's armored divisions dashing across France and Germany.

And the group's planes evacuated thousands of wounded troops and liberated prisoners of war.

Unlike many units formed during the war and later decommissioned, the 440th is still operational as the 440th Air Lift Wing with headquarters at Mitchell Field in Milwaukee. Its 97th Squadron is based at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma.

The association's headquarters are tucked in a small office in Ferrucci's Cloverdale Business Park printing plant. Covering the walls are member phone lists, posters, pictures and copies of front pages of newspapers from the war years, and one small, triangular silk banner.

It was given to Ferrucci when he went to Magneville, France, in 1992 for the dedication of a monument to a crew and 18 paratroopers who died in a plane crash near the small town in 1944. Embroidered on the banner is the name of the village and a few words of homage to the American soldiers and airmen.