NARA enlistment record: https://aad.archives.gov/aad/record-detail.jsp?dt=893&mtch=1&cat=all&tf…

Midland Reporter Telegram 2006

From the Midland Reporter Telegram in 2008:

"Not only did he live out his youthful wish, Frank Hawk fought in a war that granted him his peacetime dream-flight.
"As a young buck, I always wanted to fly," Hawk, 87, said in the haven of his Midland jewelry store. He reflected on his youth in Oklahoma from whence he went to war via the United States Army Air Forces' (USAAF's) circuitous training regimen in the early 1940s.
A B-17 Flying Fortress bombardier, Hawk survived 27 combat missions over embattled Europe in 1943 and 1944, received the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) awarded for "heroism or extraordinary achievement" in aerial flight and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, and returned Stateside for the duration of the war to instruct bombardier cadets in the twin-engine AT-11 and in the classroom at Midland Army Air Field.
"We were fortunate to survive," Hawk said of his B-17 aircrew.
In a world at peace but in forthcoming turmoil, Hawk in Midland met his bride-to-be, Maxine Hughes, daughter of jeweler-watchmaker John Hughes, who became his mentor. In turn, the now-widowed Hawk, a horologist and graduate gemologist, became his daughter's mentor. Shanna Hawk Moran, a graduate gemologist, is her father's business partner.
"Growing up, I never knew about his war experiences," she said. "He never talked about it."
Today, the daughter beholds her father as a "war hero," although "he would disagree with my assessment. To him, the heroes are those who didn't come back."
All told in the 1939-1945 World War II, 16 million Americans served in the armed forces at home and abroad; more than 404,000, including almost 292,000 battlefield deaths, died in the war; almost 672,000 suffered non-mortal wounds; and, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, approximately 2.4 million WWII veterans are surviving today. However, their daily death toll is about 1,200.
Honoring the 'Greatest Generation'
To honor America's Greatest Generation, a Permian Basin group called "World War II Freedom Fighters" is organizing a May 3 roundtrip airline flight, costing ,160,000, to take 200 World War II veterans to Washington, D.C., to tour the 2004-dedicated National World War II Memorial.
"It is just breath-taking," said Hawk, who has toured the memorial twice, once with members of his 95th Bomb Group attached to the USAAF's "Mighty" Eighth Air Force in England.
The WWII Freedom Fighters group is raising funds to fly, "free of charge," Permian Basin WWII veterans to the memorial which, like the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is maintained by the National Park Service.
"It is amazing," said Shirley Rutledge, who is coordinating the Freedom Fighters' one-day trip through efforts of American Legion Post 430 in Odessa.
Her father, Donald Hoy, who died in 1995, was a World War II veteran who served 30 years in the Navy.
"We can get her done," Rutledge said of raising funds for the flight. "Everybody just needs to get on board. We can do this. We are going to do it."
Funds may be sent to the American Legion Post 430, P.O. Box 1109, Odessa, Texas 79760. Rutledge may be reached by telephone at 362-6356 or 553-2012.
Hawk, who plans to make the trip, may be contacted at 684-4525.
His enthusiasm for flying was whetted as a teenager in the 1930s when he and his buddy, Bill Barrowman, took their first-ever flight for 50 cents each in a barnstormer-piloted Ford Tri-Motor, affectionately nicknamed "The Tin Goose" and the "Flying Washboard" due to its corrugated aluminum construction.
"That kind of started us off (in aviation)," Hawk recalled.
'A Date Which Will Live In Infamy'
By 1941, before Japan's Dec. 7 attack, which U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt termed a "date which will live in infamy," on U.S. air, naval and ground forces at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in Hawaii, Hawk was in the USAAF, the old Army Air Corps.
He took basic training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and was assigned to Sheppard Field, now Sheppard Air Force Base just outside Wichita Falls, Texas, to studying aircraft-engine mechanics. Later, he joined a B-17 ground-crew in Spokane, Wash.
Early into 1943, Hawk earned his bombardier wings and an officer's commission at Kirkland Field, Albuquerque, N.M., and was shipped overseas. His first-flight buddy, Barrowman, was a glider pilot in France.
Hawk's first eight flights with his 95th Bomb Group were in the B-17 Flying Fortress "Superstitious Aloysius"-the nose-art image of a cheery elf bearing a lucky horseshoe and wishbone.
"Naturally, I think it is the greatest airplane ever built," Hawk said of the four-engine heavy bomber. "The C-47 was also a fine aircraft."
On its 16th mission, "Superstitious Aloysius" got "shot up" and was ditched in the North Sea, Hawk said, and the aircrew was rescued.
Hawk's 95th Bomb Group, which usually consisted of 18 airborne B-17s flying with other Flying Fortresses, made bombing runs into Germany, Hungary, France and Norway. Their targets included rail-yards and airfields, a German V-2 rocket site in France and a heavy-water plant in Norway where the Germans were experimenting to produce the nuclear (atomic) bomb.
"We obliterated that" in 1943, Hawk said.
On Sept. 18, 1944, Hawk's B-17 was among a flight of more than 100 Flying Fortresses from the Eighth Air Force's Third Division that dropped supplies to the Polish Home Army, which was surrounded by German troops. The Warsaw Uprising by the Polish insurgents was to free Poland's besieged capital from German control and to prevent takeover by the Soviet Army. However, the Polish Home Army, commanded by General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, surrendered in defeat. But for the Germans, it was a Pyrrhic victory, and the uprising was quelled.
For his role in dropping supplies for the Warsaw Uprising, Hawk in 1987 was awarded the Polish Home Army Cross.
B-17 Aircrew: "Just Like A Family'
Of his 10-member B-17 Flying Fortress crew, Hawk said, "We were just like a family. You had to be, because you had a particular job, and they all had to mesh together. Everything had to work. If one failed, it would make somebody else fail on their job. So, everybody had to learn to work together. We came really close together: the four officers (pilot, co-pilot, bombardier and navigator) and six enlisted men(flight engineer-top turret gunner, radio operator, two waist gunners, ball-turret gunner and tail-gunner).
"Rank didn't mean anything once you were in the air," Hawk said, "except the pilot was commander of the crew. Period. He gave the orders. He is commander even when there are generals and colonels over there (in the right seat). There has to be one commander; there can't be two."
In their daylight missions, the Eighth Air Force's B-17s and B-24 Liberators were escorted by the P-38 Lightning, the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustang.
The German defense included anti-aircraft flak guns and Luftwaffe's Messerschmitt Me.109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters.
"I could see them coming, and the tail-gunner could see them going," Hawk said.
Of World War II's Greatest Generation, Hawk said, "We were more involved-the whole United States and all its Allies. The home effort was greater than it has ever been in any war. The response from people at home kept us going: Rosie the Riveter and all those people that built airplanes plus those people that bought War Bonds, those people that sacrificed everything at home. The people at home really supported us 100 percent."

Service record in possession of his daughter

Daughter; actual medal in possession.

Drawn from the records of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, Savannah, Georgia / http://95thbg.org/95th_db_pages/left_formation_code/gethonoroll.php