Ray was from Queens, NY. He enlisted in the cadet program in high school which meant that you would be called up after graduation and not drafted which hopefully meant you got a better choice of what you would be. He was called up in December of 1943 at 18 years of age.

He was first sent to Miami Beach for his basic training. He said this wasn't too bad - Miami Beach from Queens, NY - a hotel for a barracks. But there was no elevator and he was on a high floor and he was always forgetting something soooooooo when it was time to report you had to run like crazy back up and back down those stairs in the heat! After basic in Miami he was sent to Denver to armament school. From there he went for three months to Las Vegas for aerial gunnery school where they wanted to make him a ball turret gunner on a B-17. Seeing as how he had hurt his back loading ammunition in armament school and seeing how sitting in the belly of a B-17 didn't look all that exciting to him he chose to become something else and off he went to another school. This time to Alamagordo, New Mexico.

Ray was assigned to the 16th Bomb Group in Fairmont, NE at the end of 1944.

In March of 1945 Ray went to Seattle then the SS Exchange then to Hawaii and then on a convoy ship to Guam where he landed April of 1945. While first on Guam they built barracks, huts and whatever else was needed.

Ray learned his cryptography "on the job". When I asked Ray about the codes he said that all the Allied Forces all over the world used the same codes. These changed every six hours. They had recognition signals, challenge, reply, and flare signals. There was a code book for the radio operators which was turned in after every flight. The radio operators would call in their strike reports and may day calls.

The cryptographers worked 8 hour shifts 24 hours a day.

I asked Ray where he was when the war ended and he said he was asleep. His shift had ended and someone came in when they saw the strike report and told everyone what had happened.

He could not return to the US right away as everyone when home on the point system. So he remained there for seven more boring months. He returned on April of 1946. He went to NYU in the fall of 1946 and that is where he met his lovely wife Fran.

Below are many photos of Guam that Ray was kind enough to bring to my home to allow me to scan. Ray pointed out to me that some of the B29's had not armament nor side bubbles - you all that know me, know that I get so excited when I look over someone's WWII photos that I sometimes miss the details - when he pointed it out - I asked why.

Ray said that all 315th planes were unarmed except for tail guns. They had closed up the slide blisters and the top gun and that they flew at night. This made them much lighter and they could take on more fuel and more bombs. They also did not fly in formation.

Enjoy the photos. If you have any questions, you can reach Ray here.