483rd Atlas

483rd Atlas

How this atlas was made

Where the routes come from

Every Missing Air Crew Report the Fifteenth Air Force filed in 1944 has an item 2, typed the day of the loss: point of departure, course, target. The course is the route briefed that morning, written as positions: “Course 43/05N 16/42E to 43/50N 17/00E to 46/53N 17/28E to 47/09N 17/39E to IP to target. Return Rally to 46/46N 18/38E …” (MACR 7105, 30 July 1944). The reports were read from their page images in the National Archives catalog: the 483rd’s own, and those of the five groups that flew with it in the 5th Bomb Wing (2nd, 97th, 99th, 301st and 463rd), on the days they bombed the same target.

The operations orders of the 47th, 49th and 55th Bomb Wings, transcribed at 15thaf.org, quote the Air Force’s plan for each day: the 5th Wing’s target and times, which wings flew together in one column, and each issuing wing’s route, initial point, axis of attack and rally. On 30 July their route is the course in the 483rd’s own report, point for point, and it names the initial point the report leaves blank: Alcsút, 47°26′N 18°37′E, axis 110°.

The rest comes from the escorts’ reports and loss reports, the 99th Bomb Group’s wartime intelligence narratives reprinted by its historical society, the data blocks printed on strike photographs (heading at the moment of exposure, time, altitude), the AAF Evaluation Board’s report on Ploesti (December 1944), and the records of the places below: the Hungarian Defence Minister’s event summaries and the Budapest police, the Croatian state’s daily reports, German air-warning logs reconstructed by Czech historians, Swiss official communiqués, local histories and newspapers. Times are given as written: B is two hours ahead of Greenwich until 16 September 1944, A one hour.

The months before and after his tour, April to mid-July 1944 and mid-November 1944 to April 1945, were added in October 2026. For them only the courses typed into the group’s own loss reports have been read so far, on the days the 483rd lost an aircraft; the other groups’ reports and the wings’ orders of those days have not, so most of those missions have no line yet.

How strong each route is

• Own loss report: the course typed in a 483rd loss report of that day (30 July, 13 September). The strongest.
• Another group’s report: the course typed in another 5th Wing group’s loss report, same target, same day. Where two groups’ reports of one day survive, they agree.
• Wing orders: the route of a B-24 wing flying with the 5th Wing in one column that day, from its operations order. Probable, not certain, for the 483rd.
• Reconstructed: a line through timed positions and the records of the places below, where no course was typed.
• Another day’s route: the course documented for the same target on another day, used where this day has none.
• No route found: the line on the map is the group’s usual way to that area, a guess. Parts marked drawn on any route are guesses too: an initial point with no position is drawn on the line of approach about 45 km out, or on a heading a document records; a rally with no direction is drawn as the shorter turn toward the way home; a way home with no course is the way out reversed.

Corrections this research suggests

Each of these is a reading of the documents, open to review, not a settled fact.

• Missions 56 and 75 (26 July, 23 August): the 817th’s own record says Wiener Neudorf, not Wiener Neustadt, and no Fifteenth Air Force bombs fell on Wiener Neustadt between May and 27 December 1944.
• Mission 77 (25 August): Brno, not Brod, as the 817th’s record, the Air Force’s list and all five sister groups have it.
• Mission 84 (Belgrade): flown on 3 September, not 2 September.
• Mission 70 (16 August): no raid on Valence itself that day; the Rhône bridges at Saint-Vallier and Pont-de-l’Isère were bombed.
• Missions 118 to 120: the 817th’s record names Maribor on 6 November; the wing orders put Floridsdorf on 5 November and the 5th Wing on Maribor on 7 November.
• 28 October and 1 to 3 November: the 817th’s morning reports say “non-operational”.
• Mission 112 (23 October): Pilsen’s city records say no bomb fell on the town that day; the 817th’s record says nine planes bombed Pilsen.
• Mission 62 (3 August): the ditching of 42-102403 off Rimini belongs to this mission, not mission 61.
• The strike photographs listed for missions 79 and 93 are other groups’ B-24 frames; mission 86’s photograph was taken from 26,000 ft.
• Mission 64 (9 August) had Győr as its primary and Brod as the alternate; mission 109 (16 October) had Brux as its primary and Pilsen as the first alternate.

What would complete it

• The 483rd’s own Daily Operations Report, 12 April to 29 December 1944, at the National Archives at College Park (RG 18; catalog entries 2891714 and 2891715, not digitized). It should give the route, initial point and heading of every mission.
• The overlays the 483rd attached to its October loss reports (MACRs 8974, 9142, 9319) were never filmed; the 10 September report (8361) has no catalog record at all.
• The 483rd Bomb Group Association’s mission reports, now with the Museum of Aviation Foundation and Middle Georgia State University.
• “The Air Battle of Ploesti” (Fifteenth Air Force, 1945), in print only; Johann Ulrich’s maps of the raids over Austria (1967); for Hungary, Pataky, Rozsos and Sárhidai, volume II.
• Sarajevo, 8 September 1944: the times of the two waves are known (09.50 and 10.20), the way they came and went is not.
• For the months outside his tour: the other 5th Wing groups’ loss reports and the wings’ orders of those days, which gave most of the routes of July to November 1944.

Loss reports and strike photographs: National Archives (public domain). Wing orders: 15thaf.org transcriptions. Quotations from later books and articles are kept short and credited. Map: 1945 borders after historical-basemaps (A. Ourednik) and Natural Earth, rivers and lakes kept to 1944.

A work in progress.