Robert Hayes was studying at Westport High School in Kansas City, Missouri, when he left school to enlist in the Air Corps, having just turned 18. Joining the William Quaintance crew in the 306th Bomb Group / 369th Bomb Squadron as a Ball Turret Gunner, he was sent to England, where they arrived in October 1943. Robert Hayes was credited with an Me110 destroyed on the 11 January 1944 mission to Halberstadt. On sick bay on 22 February 1944, he was not on board B-17 # 42-31695 and was replaced by Robert Might at the Ball Turret position. The Quaintance crew and the substitute gunner were lost when 31695 was shot down over Germany that day, the sole survivor, Engineer Alexander Markowski being made a Prisoner of War. Robert Hayes completed 14 missions and although he wanted to fly on other missions, he was ordered back to the States in the frame of the Sullivan Act, as his brother Claude M. Hayes Jr, a member of the 70th Tank Battalion, had been killed in France on 27 August 1944, a tragic fact Robert only learned from his parents when he got back home.