Fall 2026 Militaria and Aviation Auction
Lot 230:
Description
WWII 15th Air Force B-24 Liberator Combat Scrapbook of Capt. Volney W. "Bud" Wiggins – Pilot of "Flak Shak I" and "Flak Shak II, " 50 Combat Missions over Ploieti, Blechhammer, and the Reich, Two Silver Stars, Two Purple Hearts, Five Air Medals Offered is an exceptional, named combat photograph album compiled by Captain Volney W. "Bud" Wiggins, a B-24 Liberator pilot who flew with the Fifteenth Air Force out of southern Italy in 1944. The album’s brown cloth cover, titled in applied lettering "U.S. Army Air Corps, " bears an applied painted-leather roundel signed (c) Walt Disney depicting an impish mouse mascot straddling a camouflaged Liberator – insignia art associated with the 345th Bombardment Squadron, 98th Bombardment Group. The front pastedown carries a typed and clipped summary crediting Wiggins with 85 combat flying missions and 285 combat flying hours between 10 May and 23 September 1944, two Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts, and five Air Medals, followed by a handwritten "Secret / Confidential / Restricted" title page signed by the captain himself. No separate published biography of Wiggins has been located; his story survives here, in his own captions, clippings, and photographs. The album’s narrative power lies in Wiggins’s running handwritten commentary alongside candid wartime photography. A "Vital Statistics" page charts his path from enlistment on 7 April 1942 through cadet training at Santa Ana, Thunderbird Field, and Yuma, to his first combat mission on 10 May 1944 and his fiftieth on 23 September 1944, bombing targets in Italy, Germany, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Poland. A dramatic in-flight photograph captioned "Bombs Away over Ploeti, Rumania" describes the target as a Standard Oil Co. refinery and "one of the worst targets of the Fifteenth Air Force, " while another shows a German fighter and a B-24 both going down in flames. Cockpit portraits show Wiggins in flak helmet and oxygen mask; one caption movingly describes co-pilot Mat Hall, wounded by ME-109 fire over Bucharest, removing his own mask to give Wiggins oxygen so the ship could stay airborne – Hall was later killed flying as co-pilot for another crew when shot down over Blechhammer, Poland. Further pages record battle damage to "Flak Shak I" and "Flak Shak II, " a flak-punctured tail turret, a shot-up nose and engine cowling, and crashed and burned-out Liberators on the field, with captions naming "three damn good boys" shot down in flames over northern Italy by a Bf-109, and Ben Barbers, killed after completing 48 missions. Beyond combat imagery, the album is filled with personal and theater ephemera: candid snapshots from stateside cadet training, sightseeing photographs at the Roman Colosseum, an original printed program for Irving Berlin’s "This Is the Army" all-soldier musical revue with personal-appearance billing, and several pieces of occupation-era currency (Greek drachma, Italian lire, and other notes) laid in among the pages. A genuine ordnance arming-wire safety pin retains its printed warning tag, "Pin not to be removed until fuze is about to be placed in bomb." Condition is fair to good and consistent with heavy wartime handling: the faux-leather cloth binding shows edge wear, chipping, and board loss at the lower spine corner, with non-original replacement binding-post hardware; internal leaves show toning, embrittlement, minor chipping, and handling wear, while the painted Disney medallion remains vivid with only mild craquelure and border rubbing; photographs and paper ephemera show light silvering and age-appropriate wear. A superb, named 15th Air Force combat pilot’s album whose blunt, first-person captions on Ploieti, flak damage, and lost crewmen bring the air war over southern Europe to vivid, personal life.
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