Robert Earl Wildermuth's marginalia in Alcorn's *Jolly Rogers*

What this is

Robert Earl Wildermuth flew a full combat tour as a B-24 navigator with the 400th Bombardment Squadron of the 90th Bomb Group. Decades later he acquired John S. Alcorn’s The Jolly Rogers: History of the 90th Bomb Group During World War II (1981) — the group’s definitive published history — and read it the way only a man who had been there could: he annotated almost every page in his own hand, correcting the official account, marking the missions he flew, and naming the men he knew.

His marginalia are the rarest kind of source in this archive: a participant’s private commentary written directly onto the printed record of his own war. What follows transcribes his handwritten notes, page by page, with only enough of Alcorn’s printed context (paraphrased) to make each note make sense.

A note on sources and copyright: Alcorn’s book is an in-copyright 1981 publication; its text is paraphrased, not reproduced, below. The quoted passages are Robert Earl’s own handwriting — family-owned — signed “REW” or “RE.” Bracketed words are uncertain readings of the handwriting.

December 1944 — the first missions from Biak

Beside Alcorn’s account of the group’s third Pacific Thanksgiving (23 November 1944), which the official history calls the most elegant feast the Jolly Rogers ever had, Robert Earl set the record straight from the enlisted-and-junior-officer end of the chow line:

“Ate my first Thanksgiving dinner sitting in the sand and eating from a mess kit. Mess hall too small. — REW”

At the foot of the same page, against the text describing the 90th still flying “milk runs” to the Davao area at the close of 1944, he logged his first combat mission:

“Flew first mission through a horrible thunderstorm about 300 miles out from Biak (20 Dec 1944). Lost an engine after leaving target area and had to fly back on 3 engines. Threw everything overboard. — RE”

On the facing page, beside the photograph of group commander Lt. Col. Wilson H. Banks, he logged his second:

“Flew 2nd mission on 25 December 1944 (Christmas Day). Again went to Davao. Christmas dinner enroute to target (cold ‘bully beef’). — REW”

These two entries date the start of his combat flying more precisely than his own combat log does — a 20 December 1944 first mission and a Christmas Day second, both long overwater runs to Davao from Biak, the second eaten as cold canned beef over the target run. (A separate marginal note near the Banks caption reads “Wm. Haggert” — apparently identifying a man in the photograph; its exact reference is uncertain.)

The Formosa map — Kiirun and Taichu

On Alcorn’s map of Formosa (Taiwan) opening the “Formosan Fury” chapter, Robert Earl highlighted the targets he struck and annotated two of them. Beside Kiirun (Keelung) in the north:

“Very dangerous target. Anti-aircraft manufacturing plant located here. Said to be 365 heavy anti-aircraft gunnery sites located around this target. Went there 3 times. — REW”

And beside Taichu (Taichung), the firsthand version of the group-lead disaster he also tells in his combat log:

“Led group to Taichu. Our first group lead. Bombardier late in setting up bomb sight. As a consequence we led the group over a big naval base. Every plane in group hit by flak except ours. Last time we got to lead. Cost us all a promotion. — REW”

The Taichu note matches the 3 June 1945 entry in The Big One — the flak-fearing bombardier, the botched turning point, every aircraft in the group hit but his — confirming the story against the map of the target itself.

Mindoro — on R&R when the group moved

Beside Alcorn’s account of the 90th staging up to Mindoro on 10 January 1945, Robert Earl noted that he wasn’t there for the move:

“On R&R leave when group moved up to Mindoro — much nicer in Sydney, Australia anyway. — REW”

This is the Sydney R&R that runs through his combat log — the ten-day leave to the group’s leased hotel on King’s Cross that stretched to twenty-one days.

Peleliu — the H2X detachment

Where Alcorn describes the radar-equipped (H2X) Liberators of the 320th and 321st Squadrons detached to the 22nd Bomb Group at Anguar in the Palau Islands, Robert Earl marked his own part in it:

“Our plane was H2X equipped so [I] went along to Peleliu Island in the Palau group. Flew 2 night missions from Peleliu. — REW”

This is the Peleliu attachment phase of his tour — the night radar missions over Taiwan flown on temporary duty with the 22nd BG. A companion note about the difficulty of the work is only partly legible: “Our crews [were] unaccustomed [to] night flying …” — the rest of the passage is not confidently readable.

Lost over the Philippines — the night of 13/14 January 1945

The single longest annotation runs down the margin of Alcorn’s page on the Mindoro operations, wrapping around a map of the Philippines (on which Robert Earl highlighted Mindoro, Samar and Leyte and circled a spot marked “LOST”). It is the full firsthand version of the radar-nap story his combat log and memoir only summarize:

“After moving to Leyte, on a night flight [of] 13–14 January [1945] we got lost. We had flown all night and about 120 miles out from our base on Leyte, the bombardier/radar man, Lt. Adler, said he could pick our base up on radar and that if I wanted to, I could take a nap and he’d direct us back to our home base. I immediately stretched out on the flight deck and went to sleep. Radioman T.Sgt. Fred Kuszmaul woke me up about an hour later — the radar man had erroneously picked [a return] up and thought it was our base. We flew in circles for about an hour, our radioman radioing our base to pick us up on their radar and then give us a heading to home base. Our messages were intercepted by the Japanese, and unknown to us they would send back false headings to fly. Finally [I] saw a huge Navy convoy moving on a northwesterly heading [and] told [the] pilot to take up [the] same heading. As the convoy was probably going to Leyte, [it] turned out to be right. Landed at our base with [15] minutes of fuel left. Caught hell from all of our superior officers, all the way up to 5th Air Force headquarters. Glad to return to our outfit to start flying day missions again. — REW”

Two things in this note go beyond his other tellings. First, it names the culprit outright — Lt. [Merwin] Adler, the radar/bombardier whom Robert Earl’s combat-log crew roster already flags as over-confident, whose false radar “lock” 120 miles out is exactly the homecoming-nap story told there. Second, and remarkable: the Japanese were intercepting their position-finding radio traffic and transmitting false headings back to lure the lost aircraft further astray — a piece of electronic deception Robert Earl only recorded here, in the margin of the official history. What saved the crew was old-fashioned navigation: spotting a U.S. Navy convoy steaming northwest toward Leyte and simply following it home, landing on fifteen minutes’ fuel.

A separate short note on the same spread records that the enemy was not entirely gone from the rear areas either:

“Still active on Pelilu — a Jap soldier in [the] tent next to ours. — REW”

17/18 January 1945 — Jay Strozier

The most striking annotation sits beside Alcorn’s account of a 320th Squadron aircraft lost on the night of 17/18 January 1945, which the book notes Wiley Woods remembered as piloted by a man named Courtney. Robert Earl’s hand fills the margin:

“My best friend and cadet classmate 2 Lt. Jay Strozier was the navigator on this crew. I waited and waited on the morning of 18 January to go to [breakfast] with Jay when he returned. — REW”

This is the firsthand ground truth behind the Strosier–Courtney marquee moment in his combat log — the Selman Field navigation-cadet classmate who had told Robert Earl many times that he never expected to make it home, lost with Lt. Courtney’s crew in a thunderstorm off Samar. The combat log spells the name “Strosier”; here in Alcorn’s margin he writes “Strozier.” Both are in Robert Earl’s own hand; the archive keeps both spellings on the record. The detail his annotation adds — that he waited and waited that morning of the 18th to go to breakfast with Jay — is the small, unbearable human fact the official history has no room for.

February 1945 — the Navy, and the crew in the next tent

On the page covering February operations and “A Golden Opportunity Lost” — Alcorn’s account of the solid undercast on 13/14 February 1945 that kept the group from striking a powerful Japanese naval force (two hermaphrodite battleship-carriers, Ise and Hyuga, a cruiser and destroyers) in the South China Sea — Robert Earl registered his verdict in four words:

“Phooey! Haven’t thought much of the Navy since. — REW”

This is the same episode as the 13 February 1945 entry in his combat log: the day his crew carried a single 2,000-lb bomb after the fleet, the naval officers refused to let them bomb through the undercast for fear of hitting U.S. submarines, and they dumped the bomb in the ocean on the way home. The margin note is his lasting opinion of how that “golden opportunity” was handled.

Lower on the page, beside Alcorn’s account of an 11 February crash of a heavily laden 400th Squadron aircraft (pilot Lt. Al Hill among the four survivors, seven killed), Robert Earl added a piece of the human aftermath:

“This crew lived in the tent next to ours. Co-pilot James Miller also survived, and after a short rest from flying he flew his first mission back with us. Acted as a radio security man. Scared to death. Rode right by the escape hatch on all missions with us. — REW”

A man who had walked away from a four-engine power loss on takeoff, back in the air weeks later in the next crew’s tent-mate’s aircraft, flying every mission within reach of the escape hatch — the small true detail of what surviving a crash did to a man.

March 1945 — Major Robeck’s last mission

Robert Earl was an eyewitness to one of the losses Alcorn records in the “March Climax” chapter: the death of Major Stanley Robeck, C.O. of the 321st Squadron, on the 2 March 1945 raid on the Matsuyama airdrome near Taipei. Alcorn’s text describes Robeck taking the group across the target twice when his bombs hung up, then being hit directly in the bomb bay and exploding at about 1,000 feet. In the margin, Robert Earl confirms he flew that mission and adds the bitter irony the official history leaves out:

“Flew this mission and one the following day. Saw Maj. Robeck’s ship hit. Robeck was on his second tour in the Pacific. Had been heard to claim the Japs couldn’t hit the side of a barn. Flew over the target the 2nd time on the same heading and same altitude as the first. Japs didn’t miss. — REW”

(A note on dating: his combat log places his Sydney R&R at “2 March 1945,” with “no more combat time in March,” while this annotation has him flying the 2 March Matsuyama raid. One of the two dates is approximate in his memory; the annotation is a firsthand eyewitness account of Robeck’s loss, so he was certainly on that raid — the R&R likely fell slightly later in the month.)

May 1945 — the missions he shared

Two of the individual-crew stories Alcorn tells in detail turned out to be missions Robert Earl flew himself, and he marked each “Flew on this mission this day.”

Beside “The Odyssey of Lt. Finley’s Crew” — the 19 May 1945 strike on the hydroelectric plant at Kiirun, on which Lt. W. H. Finley’s 319th crew lost two engines and bailed out into China (they survived, helped by the underground) — Robert Earl noted he was on that same raid. It is the 19 May 1945 “Finley parachuted into China” moment in his combat log, seen from another aircraft in the same formation.

Beside Capt. Wiley Wood’s diary account of his “notable 56th mission” — the 27 May 1945 strike on railroad and rolling stock in Indo-China (the Saigon rail yards), a near-disaster with a burning engine and a bomb-bay tank salvoed to stretch the fuel home to Mindoro — Robert Earl again wrote “Flew on this mission this day.” His combat log’s 27 May 1945 entry records the same strike from his own cockpit.

June 1945 — Balikpapan, and the bombs over the invasion fleet

On the “Summer Glad, Summer Sad” page covering the pre-invasion softening-up of Balikpapan, Borneo, Robert Earl wrote the longest note of this group, wrapping the margin around the strike photograph:

“On this mission [I] was told not to open bomb bay doors while flying over the invasion fleet. When carrying frag bombs — loosely bundled — [the] bombs would sometimes fall out when the bomb bay doors were opened. Someone disobeyed, and bombs fell out on the fleet below. Gen. MacArthur was observing the invasion on a destroyer. Bombs fell all around the ship. Many heads rolled for this, including our Group C.O. — REW”

This is the firsthand version of the Balikpapan pre-invasion story in his combat log — the frag bombs raining accidentally onto the U.S. invasion fleet with MacArthur watching from a destroyer, and the Group commander relieved as a result.

August 1945 — V-J night in a foxhole

Beside Alcorn’s account of the surrender news reaching the group, Robert Earl set down the same near-death he tells in his memoir and combat log — this time written straight into the margin:

“Pandemonium broke loose this day. Everyone had been drinking, and when the announcement came all hell broke loose. Drunken airmen started shooting their guns, demolishing their tents. Bullets whined thru the air. I jumped in a foxhole to be safe and listened to the announcements on my radio. [I] didn’t want to get killed at this time. — REW”

And beside the account of the Japanese surrender delegation landing at Ie Shima in green-cross Betty bombers on 19 August, a note about a keepsake distributed to the group:

“Copies of the photos of the Japanese surrender party were given to all members of the Jolly Rogers. — REW”

September 1945 — the Nagasaki camera flight

At the top of Alcorn’s “Occupation” page, Robert Earl dated and described the mission that closes his war:

“28 Sep — chosen to fly an MGM movie news cameraman over Nagasaki at low level. Very little rubble. Looked like [a] giant bulldozer had pushed everything into the sea. — REW”

This fixes the date of the MGM Nagasaki camera flight at 28 September 1945 and matches, almost word for word, the description in his own combat log — the flattened city that looked as if it had been bulldozed into the sea.

Robert Earl Wildermuth's marginalia in Alcorn's Jolly Rogers