Pilot  Captain Casper
Radio Sgt Arthur L. Richardson
Crashed August 26, 1942

Mission History
Part of a group of nine B-17s that attacked a Japanese convoy off Milne Bay. The attack took place between 6.30am and 7.45am. Dropped its bombs individually on a cruiser and a transport within 40' to 200' with no results apparent. During the attack, the aircraft received five anti-aircraft hits in the wings and fuselage and the hydraulic system was disabled. However, During the same flight, another B-17F 41-24354 received a direct hit and crashed. This bomber crash landed at Mareeba Airfield on the return flight.

Relatives
Cleora Richardson (wife of Arthur L. Richardson)
"My husband, was with the 19th Bomb Group in the Philippines and Australia in 1941 and 1942. He flew on 51 bombing missions in the Pacific and walked away from four crash landings. One of them was the "Daylight Limited" Sgt. Richardson was one of four most decorated men in the Pacific during this period. He died in 1961 while on active duty at Wakkanai Air Base in Hokkaido, Japan. After his death a theater on Wakkanai Air Base was named the "Arthur L. Richardson Memorial Theater". He made many friends among the local people.

Richardson often talked about a flight that took numerous hits and that the person on the side gun received injuries to the eye, possibly losing it. He (Richardson) would have normally been in that position but had been pulled to act as radio operator. He felt very lucky that he was spared. I notice one of the men (Penwarden) in the group picture I sent earlier wearing an eye-patch.

Sgt. Richardson had received a previous Purple Heart for injuries sustained in an enemy ground strafing at Mindanao. The wounds he sustained to his legs were not very serious but would account for the picture his buddies painted of him being evacuated on a Dutch freighter in a pair of bloody coveralls with a big cigar in his pocket. This was his worldly goods at the moment. Everything else had been left behind at Clark Field. So many left much, much more; their lives and in one case, a buddy of his left a wife who was a nurse. He was frantic, not knowing what was happening to her. I don't know when, or if, he ever found out. I have been told that only about 15% of the men in his group got out of the Philippines. So many things you wonder about, the questions never stop.

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