Question about discharge papers

I was in active and reserve for 28 years. I have several pages in my service record that aren't mine (I did try to get them removed). I was at various times on stuff made an Engineman (EN) versus my rate Electrician (EM), had my NEC (navy equivalent of an MOS) as 3385, 3382 when it was 3384 (Nuclear power electrician), etc. Trust me, clerks can screw up your paperwork massively. You don't even want to know the absolute $h!+ storm of panic I started over evaluations on being discharged from active duty--surprising what keeping every scrap of paper the military gives you can do...

My suspicion is he was put in the position of waist gunner because they had a shortage of waist gunners and the unit assumed 'anybody (your relative) could do it. With a wave of the hand and some magic words he was a waist gunner and it never got officially put in his record.

 

The Air Combat campaign star simply means he was assigned to a USAAF unit in the theater between the effective dates (including ground personnel). It does not mean participation in actual aerial combat.

Unit Morning Reports are held at NPRC in St. Louis and are not sent out via mail. You would have to go there or hire a researcher.

Access to Morning Reports and Unit Rosters

 

This discussion made me think of the 473rd Infantry Regiment, which was created late in the war in Italy with personnel from several antiaircraft battalions which were no longer needed in their intended role thanks to Allied air superiority. Were those men changed from their AA MOSs to riflemen and other infantry MOSs? Or did they just do their new jobs like our chemical warfare waist gunner?

 

They were retrained as infantry in different MOS and then reclassified. It varied a little how it was done but IIRC the 473d Infantry went through an infantry basic course run by one of the Replacement battalions in Italy. The same happened in Europe when various "colored" and other units were drawn on for replacements. Somewhere in the history of the GFRS ETOUSA is a fairly detailed account. It is on Fold3 if you want to look.

The alternate method for smaller numbers of men sent to existing infantry units was to retrain them at the unit, which probably was handing them a rifle and sending them to a Rifle squad. IIRC at a couple of times from its MR that Dad's Battery A, 537th AAA AW Bn transferred personnel to the 357th Infantry, which was the RCT they normally supported (343d FA Bn).

 

Just wanted to drop a little update. I ended up hiring someone to do some research, and I should have the records within 8-12 weeks. He said that the term “air combat” means just what it sounds like, and members of the ground crew did not get that designation. He will confirm my uncle’s role after getting the research done, but he said it was not at all uncommon for a man with my uncle’s MOS to be converted to a gunner, and unless “air combat” was a mistake on the discharge papers, then he flew air combat missions.