Herbert E. Bridges

Harvard, IL.

Date of Birth: 8 July, 1917

Date of Death: 1 February, 1945

Branch of Service: USAAF (United States Army Air Forces)

Rank: Staff Sergeant

Unit: 25th Bomb Squadron, 40th Bomb Group, Very Heavy, 20th Air Force

Aircraft Type and Position: B-29 Superfortress- Right Waist Gunner

Place of Death: Southwest of Singapore, Indian Ocean

Staff Sergeant Herbert E. Bridges

On February 1, 1945, Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Herbert Edson Bridges Jr., aged twenty-seven, was downed in his B-29 over Singapore. Word reached his family shortly after, but without certainty his aircraft had not been recovered, and no one could say whether he had survived or been taken prisoner. For the Bridges family, not knowing was its own particular grief, one that would stretch on for more than a year before the weight of evidence closed what hope remained.

Herbert Edson Bridges Jr. was born on July 8, 1917, in Lawrence Township, just west of Harvard, Illinois, to Herbert Bridges Sr. and his wife Winifred. He had one sister, Janice. On December 5, 1941, two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Herb enlisted at age twenty-four. He began his service at Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois, and went on to train at schools across the country, qualifying as a turret gunner on the B-29 Superfortress. He was eventually assigned to the 25th Bombardment Squadron, 40th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy), and flew aboard a B-29 nicknamed the Calamity Jane.

According to intelligence reconstructed after the mission, the Calamity Jane was on a bombing run over Singapore when she was struck by anti-aircraft fire. Damaged but still airborne, she turned toward the position of a nearby U.S. submarine, the USS Swordfish, in hopes that her crew might be rescued. A radio message was transmitted to the Swordfish but was garbled in transmission, and by the time the coordinates were recalculated, a different course of action had already been decided upon. The plane was lost at sea, with no other aircraft remaining alongside her. An unconfirmed report suggested that five survivors had parachuted near a crash site in Endow, north of Singapore, and rumors circulated that the aircraft had been used for Japanese propaganda. Neither account could be verified, and no evidence that any crew member survived was ever found. On February 1, 1946, one year after the mission date under Section 5 of the Missing Persons Act of 1942, all crew members of Calamity Jane #42-24589 were officially declared presumed dead.

Staff Sergeant Herbert Edson Bridges of Harvard, Illinois is memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery in Taguig City, Philippines. A memorial marker also stands in his honor at Bigfoot Prairie Cemetery, just north of Harvard. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the Purple Heart, and the Air Gunner Badge.