The below crew photo is from the book The Long Haul, the story of the 497th.

Lt McSpadden and his crew were a Replacement Crew and did not arrive on Saipan until early to mid-March 1945. This information is in the two Morning Reports at the bottom of this page.

From information in SSgt Erle Flanagan's and SSgt Logan Spark's IDPFs, most of the crew would have been at Clovis AAF, New Mexico from September 1944 until the middle of February 1945. They were then transferred to Kearney AAF, Nebraska, to wait for the B-29 that they would fly to Saipan. SSgt Spark's file shows the last date at Kearney AAF to be 25 February 1945.

Lt Foley's IDPF is sketchy on these details and the only information about him comes from the August 24 1944 article in the Highland Vidette ( at this main page ). According to this, he had recently completed bombardier school ( location not mentioned ) and after a 15 day leave was to depart for Lincoln AAF. There is no information about when he joined the rest of the crew at Kearney AAF.

During the time that the McSpadden Crew arrived on Saipan there was an ongoing transition within duties of some members of the crew. The easiest to spot is SSgt Logan Sparks whose name appears in the second Morning Report below. In the original crews the position of Flight Engineer was manned by an officer. SSgt Logan Sparks was the Flight Engineer on this crew, reflected by his MOS of 737.

Another transition was taking place within the Bombardier and Navigator positions. In the original crews these two men had very distinct training for their position. With Lt Foley, best noted in the Missing Air Crew Report on Page 2, you will see that these two separate positions have now been combined into one, with the designation Bombardier-Navigator, or the reverse. The AAF schools now were set up to teach these men both specialties in one location.