Butler, Doug

Doug Butler was born December 19, 1924, just outside Winchester, Virginia. He grew up there in a large farm family – ten siblings including him! The family was in fact able to endure the Great Depression in part because of the food they produced on that farm. Pearl Harbor would be the event that defined Doug’s generation: he was still in high school but was able to graduate as part of the Class of 1942, and the draft board came looking for him and all the other boys right away. His older brother Bobby had also gone into the service, and he was able to join the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he was tragically killed on a mission in 1944. Doug was sent to the Infantry Replacement Training Center in Macon, Georgia, though he took a chance at the Air Cadets when it came along. He went into pilots’ training at Michigan State College, and then onto Texas.  There he learned that the Army Air Corps had more than enough pilots, but that they were looking for gunners – so that’s what Doug went into, at least at that moment. He asked to attend Armament School when he saw a chance, and that took Doug to Colorado, after which time he was a certified gunner-armorer and was crewed up and ready to go. The men made their way back east and boarded a Liberty ship, bound for England. They were then put into a British convoy bound for the Mediterranean:  Doug would be based in the Foggia region of southern Italy, assigned to the 15th Air Force’s 461st Bomb Group. Their first target was the Ploesti oilfields in Romania, and there and on subsequent missions Doug and the crew confronted flak and fighters and the freezing cold; they also had to contend with an increase in the number of missions to 35.  Doug and the crew made it until that end point, and with the end of the war they returned to the U.S. in their B-24s, taking the southern route across the Atlantic Ocean through Africa and South America. Upon return, he finished his time in the Army Air Corps and went to work with his uncle. He also met the young lady his mother had set him up with, and they soon married and started a family, finding their way in the rhythms of postwar America. Doug Butler was interviewed by Scott Masters in Winchester, Virginia in July 2026; thank you to Philip Fravel and Brian Brehm for their help in facilitating this discussion.