If someone signed your short snorter and you couldn’t produce it upon request, you owed him a dollar or a drink, aka—a short snort. He had previously lost a friend in that location in a crash, and there are those who think he was flying low to get a better look of where his friend went in and misjudged the altitude.

The museum building is a wartime Nissen hut that was once part of Ridgewell’s base hospital, so it is an exhibit in itself. I’m lucky to have made lifelong friends with several of those whose fathers were once based at Ridgewell.

With another 700 mouths to feed, Christmas turkey for the 381st’s men had to be supplemented by plates of Spam. The land was reverted back to farm land for the most part, Bingley said, with one notable exception. At the time, he was living just a few miles from Ridgewell, “Yet I knew nothing of the base or the 381st.

The First World War saw the dropping of the flechette, while the recent invasion of Ukraine has seen the release of bombs by unmanned drones. Firmly wedded to the doctrine of daylight precision bombing, they believed they could help turn the tide of the war in Europe. Bomb Group follows the 381st's path from its formation in the Texan desert, to its 297th and final bombing mission deep into the heart of Hitler's Third Reich.

For example, we were recently handed a one-hour, 16 mm vintage movie of Ridgewell and its sites that was filmed by one of the 381st’s senior officers across his two years at Ridgewell,” Bingley said. The museum continued on, thanks to his friends, including Jim and Jenny Tennet, together with Alan and Monica Steel, and several others. While looking through photos on the social media site, I spotted a black and white photo identified as Lt. During the expansion, the number of hardstands was increased to 50 and more barracks and other buildings were added.