Introduction

• Welcome to the new "Narratives and Loading Lists" section of the 457th website. After many months of work and with the help of several people we are posting our introduction to the new "Narratives" setup for your enjoyment. We are still missing many mission and are working to completion but feel that it is now time to post what we have completed thus far.

• The first thing you will notice after you've clicked on the "Mission Narratives" button on the home page is that the old selection window is now replaced by a calendar for the years 1944 and 1945.  The calendar mission dates appear as grey or light blue. The grey dates are the dates that missions were flown and the light blue dates are the dates when missions were flown and one or more aircraft and crews were lost.

• Clicking on any colored date will take you to the narrative for that mission. If you scroll down the page you will find the loading list (for many missions, work remains to be completed). These lists have been retyped from the originals and are now easily read. If an aircraft was lost on the selected mission the crew names in the loading list will be highlighted.

• Clicking on the highlighted crew will take you to a description of the fate of that crew. For some missions you can find a link on that page to see a photo of the aircraft the crew was flying on that date.

• We have a considerable amount of work to do and will endevour to upgrade this portion of the site as we complete the work.
  

      Enjoy.
      Willard