Rodolfo Guerrero, Army Air Corps (Sep.) was a B-24 Liberator turret gunner with the 8th Air Force during World War II. Drafted in 1943, into the Army Air Corps he missed the pilot test by a couple of points, so he served as an upper turret gunner and radio operator with the 475th Bomb Squadron in the 8th Air Force at Norwich, Norfolk, England. He received the Air Medal five times for 30 combat missions and the Distinguished Flying Cross for the bombing of Berlin. He flew twice on D-Day and played a part in General George Patton’s Third Army’s 600-mile march across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
“When Patton was racing across with his army and was short of gas, they took us off bombing, and we were hauling gas into Lyons, France,” Mr. Guerrero said. During the war, he flew a total of 30 combat missions against the enemy.