Where did my grandfather fight during WWII?

Question

I know that he was in the Army.&#160; He was&#160; a Technician Fifth Grade 38 215 662 for the Battery A 400th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion.&#160; His Enlisted Record and Report of Separation - Honorable Discharge shows that he served in the Siciian; Rome-Arno; Naples-Foggia; Rhineland GO 33 WD 45.&#160; He received a EAME Campaign&#160; Medal with 4 Bronze Stars and I Bronze Arrowhead; Good conduct medal; Victory Ribbon; 4 Overseas Service Bars. I want to know more detail about the battles he was involved in, etc.

Alex Daverede · Answer

Dale, Your grandfather&#8217;s unit, the 400th AntiAircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion (Semimobile) was equipped with 32 40mm Automatic Gun M1 on Carriage M2A1 similar to this image: The 400th, along with two other battalions, one equipped with searchlights and another armed with 90mm cannon, formed at first Coast Artillery Regiments (Antiaircraft) (Semimobile), then, later in the war, AntiAircraft Artillery Groups. The regiments and groups had the mission to provide low to medium altitude air defense to specific areas.&#160; These areas contained lines of communications targets and Army Air Forces airfields.&#160; So the 400th was not normally close to the fighting fronts where the infantry and armored divisions performed their missions.&#160; Those combat units had their own antiaircraft artillery automatic gun battalions (mobile), whose weapons were mounted on armored halftracks that could keep up with a war of movement.&#160; The 400th instead guarded key infrastructure targets such as ports, airfields, supply and fuel depots, bridges and the like. Your grandfather&#8217;s war consisted of moving the guns to the target area to be protected, emplacing the weapons, erecting and calibrating the battery&#8217;s fire control instruments, laying in communications wire for command and control, and then standing watch with the guns awaiting the next German air attack.&#160; At some point when air attack was no longer a risk, the battery would reverse the process and redeploy to a new location.&#160; When the gun was in action, the gun crew had a squad leader, gunner, assistant gunner, one loader on the gun mount itself, and two or three of other loaders who took the four-round clips from the ammunition cans and passed the clips to the on mount loader.&#160; You can get an idea how the setup works (or doesn&#8217;t) by watching the second half of Steven Spielberg&#8217;s 1979 classic comedy 1941 where Dan Ackroyd provides unique instructions on the 40mm Automatic Gun M1. I hope you find this information useful. A. J.

Lisa Sharik · Answer

The WWII Order of Battle shows the 400th AAA arrived in North Africa on June 22 1943, Italy on September 21, 1943 ( this is two weeks after the Invasion of Italy by Allies), Corsica on March 26 1944 and France on November 11, 1944. In addition to the records held at the National Archives, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library has them in their collection: This index lists the army units for which records are available at the Eisenhower Library Personal account for a soldier who served with the 400th AAA with some locations: Austin &#8216;Bert&#8217; Fernald &mdash; U.S. Army during World War II | News | newsmirror.net Lisa Sharik Texas Military Forces Museum

Elliot Schneider · Answer

Dale, Here is some information on the unit and overall operations of AAA-AW BN in ETO. Please follow the links. Attached a photo of men from Battery D. According to early records he was attached to the following in 1943. Which at that time was with the 5th Army 45th AA Brigade: 107th AAA Group, Headquarters and Headquarters Battery; attached: 400th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion [-Battery D] 409th AAA Gun Battalion (Semi-Mobile) https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/carl/eto/eto-038.pdf http://www.alternatewars.com/Nafziger/Pt_I_1943-1945/943uamd.pdf The 45th Air Defense Artillery Brigade Distinctive Unit Insignia, often called a unit crest or DUI for short, was approved on 23 September 1966 at the height of the Cold War that defined the trajectory of the unit&#8217;s destiny. In its center is a Florentine fleur-de-lis, symbolic of the organization's battle honors for service in Italy during World War II. The red cone has the appearance of a field of fire, with a sunburst inside it representing the power of artillery fire which denotes the air-defense mission of the unit. A pair of birdbolts (short blunt arrows for killing birds without piercing them) are an allusion to the accuracy and striking power of the Brigade's missiles and air-defense artillery weaponry. The unit motto, "Deter Or Destroy," simply listed the only two acceptable options for dealing with the possibility of an incoming enemy missile. Constituted as the 45th Coast Artillery Brigade (Anti-Aircraft) on 26 April 1942 and activated 1 June 1942, the 45th Air Defense Artillery Brigade is credited with participation in three campaigns in Italy during World War II (Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno, North Apennines) and was inactivated on 13 February 1945. The unit&#8217;s exact lineage is almost impossible to discern after this point, but at some time in the 1950s it became the 45th Artillery Brigade (Air Defense) and was assigned to the Air Defense of the Chicago-Milwaukee area. Its original headquarters was at the Museum of Science and Industry from 1952 to 1957, at which point it moved to the Arlington Heights NIKE Site. The Brigade was probably redesignated as the 45th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in 1972, and likely inactivated at the latest with the termination of Army Air Defense Comand (ARADCOM) in 1975.

Where did my grandfather fight during WWII?

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