510th Bombardment Squadron insignia

This great design comes our way courtesy the fantastic collection of my good friend Sam Grabarski.

The insignia in this post was created by Hank Porter in early 1945 for the 510th Bombardment Squadron, which was attached to the 351st Bombardment Group (Heavy). The design features the image of one of the crows from the film Dumbo.


The 351st was activated on October 1, 1942. The Group was composed of the 508th, 509th, 510th and 511th Bombardment Squadrons. The unit was eventually assigned to an airfield in England and on May 14, 1943, eighteen of the Group's B-17 bombers executed the unit's first combat mission, with a raid on a German airfield in Belgium.

Some 279 Flying Fortresses served with the unit over the course of its three year history. These bombers flew a total of 9,075 sorties and dropped almost 21,000 tons of bombs. The gunners in the Group expended 2.7 million rounds of ammunition and were credited with the destruction of 303 enemy aircraft.

351st B.G. bombers fly through heavy anti-aircraft fire, while on a mission to bomb Berlin in March 1944.

Most of the Group's raids took the bombers into Germany, where they targeted ball-bearing plants, railroad marshaling yards, a locomotive and tank factory, oil refineries and communications centers. Bombers in the Group also struck targets in France, Belgium, Norway and Holland that included submarine installations. power plants, airfields and V-rocket weapons sites.

351st Group also attacked targets in support of the D-Day landings, the airborne attack on Holland, helped stop the enemy counter-offensive during the Battle of the Bulge and supported the assault across the Rhine River into Germany.

175 of the Group's bombers were lost, (124 in combat) and two of its men were posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, when they were killed in a crash while attempting to land a badly damaged plane in order to save their severely wounded pilot, who was unable to bail-out. The Group suffered almost 1,000 casualties.

Men in the Group received two Distinguished Unit Citations: the first in October 1943 for an mission against an aircraft factory in Germany, which was successfully bombed despite facing heavy anti-aircraft fire and an onslaught enemy fighters, and the second for a successful attack in January 1944 against aircraft manufacturing facilities.

Hollywood actor Clark Gable poses as a B-17 waist gunner.

Clark Gable served with the Group's 510th Squadron. Gable flew a total of five combat missions, while filming an Army Air Forces aerial gunnery film titled, Combat America. Gable later served with the 18th Army Air Force's, First Motion Picture Unit. The unit, composed of Hollywood actors, artists and technicians, (including several Disney artists), produced publicity and training films.

Please click on this link to view another great Dumbo crow insignia design I posted in 2006.