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The 95th - recognizable by the large block letter “B” inside a square on the aircraft’s tail - was the only bomb group to receive three Presidential Unit Citations, including one for the first daylight raid on Berlin in 1944. Hobbs and his crew were assigned to the 95th Bomb Group, based at Horham airfield, in eastern England. Lois had to find her way back to Ogden on her own - and then wait. “I wasn’t allowed to tell her,” Hobbs said. Hobbs and his crew were sent to the East Coast for a date with a transport ship across the Atlantic Ocean and into the war in Europe. On March 16, 1945, Hobbs reported to the base as usual. “Then he’d come home that night, and she’d be happy.” “He’d leave each morning, and she’d cry,” Stokes said of her parents. “She always blamed herself for her father’s death,” Hobbs said.īy the spring of 1945, the newlyweds were stationed in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Hobbs was assigned his flight crew and awaited deployment.Įach morning, Hobbs would go to the base, not knowing if that was the day he and his crew would be shipped out. Their honeymoon consisted of Hobbs wrangling just enough leave to return to Utah for the funeral. Three days later, Lois’ father died of a heart attack. Despite the fact her father didn’t approve of his daughter’s choice, Lois told Hobbs, “Send me some money, and I’ll come down, and we’ll get married.” While he was training on the B-17, Hobbs got a letter from Lois, his blind-date sweetheart back home. “Dad was so glad he was not doing the B-24 Liberators - they flew faster and had more bomb load and range, but they were noted for gas leakage. “The B-17 was like a Harley (motorcycle) in the sky,” Stokes said. He later earned his wings in Arizona and was told to report to Roswell, New Mexico, to fly B-17s. He did well enough on the test that he was shipped off to Missouri to begin his pilot training. Instead the military sent him to Colorado for aircraft armament school, where he’d learn to take care of the guns on various warplanes. In Colorado, his superiors asked for volunteers for the aviation cadet program. He thought he was headed for Italy to fix aircraft. They were smitten.Ī few months after graduation, Hobbs enlisted in the military with the promise he could become an aircraft maintenance welder. “I took her to a dance at Mound Fort Junior High School,” he recalls. 8, 1941 - the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - Hobbs went on a blind date with Lois Crosbie, also of Ogden. “Except for three years in the service, and two years living in Washington Terrace, I’ve spent all of my 93 years within 150 feet of this house,” he said in a recent interview from his Ogden home. “Because he was 21 years old, and they gave him a plane,” she says with a laugh.Īlthough macular degeneration has left him legally blind and he wears hearing aids, today the 93-year-old Hobbs’ mind is still just as sharp as that long-ago autumn day when he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces.īorn March 13, 1924, Hobbs spent most of his life in Ogden and graduated from Ogden High School in 1942. So, what on earth would possess Hobbs to engage in such daring behavior? Before he can answer, daughter Susan Stokes, who lives in North Ogden, blurts out her theory. It was May 1945, just days before the end of World War II in Europe. “This was Holland, so when we dropped down to within 10 feet of the ground we were flying below sea level,” Hobbs muses.Īt one point, a farmer standing in the wrong place at the wrong time was compelled to flatten himself on the ground as the bomber roared a few feet overhead. But then, just as quickly, he’d dip back down and resume skimming the fields of the German-occupied territory.
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But first, a little fun in the Netherlands countryside.įollowing the contours of the land, Hobbs would rapidly climb just high enough to get over the large dikes intersecting the landscape. The Flying Fortress had just completed its day’s mission, and now Hobbs and his crew were taking the scenic route back to their air base near Horham, England. OGDEN - Roaring along at 150 mph, Ogden native Ray Hobbs flew his B-17 bomber a scant 10 feet off the ground.