First Lieutenant Gilbert B. Hadley was a B-24D Liberator bomber pilot with the 9th Air Force, the 98th Bomb Group, "The Pyramiders", from Texas, and the 344th Bombing Squadron, based at Cairo, Egypt, Tobruk, and Benghazi, Libya, in the Mediterranean Theatre 1942-3. He flew on Operation Tidal Wave, the mission to destroy Hitler's oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania, Aug 1, 1943. He was KIA on his return from Ploesti when his shot up and failing B-24D bomber, 'Hadley's Harem', ran out of fuel and forced Hadley to leave the small group of crippled stragglers led by Col. John R. Kane in 'Hail Columbia' and attempt a ditching off the Turkish coast. Three of his crew members escaped, but Hadley was trapped in his cockpit and drowned.

“He looked like Clark Gable,” a Kansas City newspaper wrote about Gib when he was young. He “could talk his way into or out of virtually anything and loved to wear his cowboy boots and pearl-handled revolvers into battle.” He was a handsome, rowdy, flamboyant guy, liked by everybody who met him, particularly his own flight crew.

Like many young men in those hard times before World War II, Hadley joined the Army for the pay, meager as it was, it was better than no job at all. He scored high enough on the army’s intelligence test to be selected for flight training, and he loved it.

Gib’s early training took place not far from where he grew up, and he took great delight in buzzing the houses of his parents and friends, flying only a few feet over their rooftops. When he got assigned to the huge four-engine Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers during the war, he flew them the same way, scaring everyone but himself. When he got his own B-24, he named it 'Hadley’s Harem' because he liked to think he had a way with the ladies. He wanted to paint nudes on the plane below the name, but the chaplain objected.

Gib Hadley was 22 when he died piloting his damaged B-24 and its crew after flying his B-24 1,200 miles, with two engines out, after the deadly mission to bomb the oil refineries at Ploesti. After attacking Ploesti and trying to return home, back to Benghazi, Libya, in North Africa. 'Hadley’s Harem' was one of 177 B-24 Liberators that had set out that morning on August 1, 1943, to bomb the major source of oil for Nazi Germany. The men had been told that the mission was vital and would help end the war. They were also told, just before the mission, that they would, likely, not survive the mission. Hadley survived the first part of the mission and completed his bombing run over the Astra Romano Refinery, but his B-24 was severely damaged by flak over the target. He joined a group of crippled stragglers from his own 98th Bomb Groupled by his Group Leader, Col John R. Kane in 'Hail Columbia' leaving the target area and was still following them when his badly damaged B-24 airplane finally gave out. He crashed trying to ditch in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish coast and drowned trying to escape his sinking plane. Lt. Hadley was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart, posthumously for his part in the mission. Lt. Hadley, who liked to be called “Gib”, was found in the wreck of his plane off the Turkish coast, and brought back to be buried back home in Kansas in 1997, some 54 years after he was killed in action on the Ploesti mission August 1, 1943.

Lt. Gilbert Hadley was 22 years old when he gave his life for his country and for freedom.

Service

Events

Event	Location	Date
Killed in action		1 August 1943