467th Bombardment Group

[ The 467th Bombardment Group is an inactive United States Army Air Forces unit. Its last assignment was to the Strategic Air Command, at Clovis Army Air Field, New Mexico, where it was inactivated on 4 August 1946.

During World War II, the group was an Eighth Air Force Consolidated B-24 Liberator unit in England stationed at RAF Rackheath. The group set unsurpassed record for bombing accuracy on 15 April 1945, holding the record for bombing accuracy in the Eighth Air Force. They destroyed a German battery at Pointe de Grave, on the west coast of France and scored a 100 per cent strike. The group commander, Colonel Albert J. Shower, was the only group commander to stay with the same group from beginning to the end of the war. Returned to the United States in July 1945, converted to B-29 Superfortresses and trained for deployment to the Pacific Theater. Deployment to Okinawa cancelled with the end of the Pacific War in August 1945.

After training completed, moved to Clovis AAF, New Mexico and was one of the original ten USAAF bombardment groups assigned to Strategic Air Command on 21 March 1946. The group was inactivated on 4 August 1946 due to the Air Force's policy of retaining only low-numbered groups on active duty after the war, and its B-29 aircraft, personnel and equipment were reassigned to the senior 301st Bombardment Group at Smoky Hill Army Air Field, Kansas.

In 2010, the group was converted to provisional status as the 467th Air Expeditionary Group and activated to support airmen deployed throughout the country.

Established as a Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombardment group in mid-1943 at Mountain Home Army Air Field, Idaho, and activated on 8 September. Transferred to Kearns Center, Utah for personnel assignment and organization then sent to Wendover Field, Utah for combat training on 1 November.

In January the group received deployment orders for the European Theater of Operations (ETO). On 12 February 1944 the ground unit went by train to Camp Shanks, New York. They sailed on the USAT Frederick Lykes on 28 February 1944 and arrived in Clyde on 10 March 1944. The aircraft left Wendover on 12 February 1944 and took the southern Atlantic ferry route. One B-24 was lost with all the crew over the Atlas mountains. Moved to RAF Rackheath, Norfolk in England, February–March 1944, and was assigned to the VIII Bomber Command. The group was assigned to the 96th Combat Bombardment Wing, and the group tail code was a "Circle-P".

The mission of the 467th was to engage in very long range strategic bombardment operations over Occupied Europe and Nazi Germany. The group began operations on 10 April 1944 with an attack by thirty aircraft on an airfield at Bourges in central France. In combat, the unit served chiefly as a strategic bombardment organization, attacking the harbor at Kiel, chemical plants at Bonn, textile factories at Stuttgart, power plants at Hamm, steel works at Osnabrück, the aircraft industry at Brunswick, and other objectives.

In addition to strategic operations, engaged occasionally in support and interdictory missions. Bombed shore installations and bridges near Cherbourg Naval Base on D-Day, 6 June 1944. Struck enemy troop and supply concentrations near Montreuil on 25 July 1944 to assist the Allied drive across France.