MacArthur's Airmen - Thomas L. Sharp
 Thomas Sharp, originally from Richmond, VA, left San Francisco in mid-September 1943 bound for New Guinea, as part of the 79th Airdrome Squadron of Fifth Air Force.
The 79th Airdrome Squadron was formed in May 1943 at Hunter Field, near Savannah, GA. The men comprising the unit were tasked with the actual operation of airdromes (air fields) in combat areas. While at Hunter Field, Sharp, who had previously been trained as an armorer and gunner, found himself working on medium bombers. “I like this work fine,” he wrote to his father, “although I work pretty hard. We are working on B-25s and B-26s – two of the Army’s finest bombers. These babies are really flying arsenals and you learn a lot by working on them. The turret guns are the hardest to work on because it is so hot. You see the sun shines down on you all the time through that bullet proof glass and I mean you sweat.” In addition to working on the aircraft, the men of the 79th also had to defend the air field in case of attack. “I have been one of the 12 picked for a machine gun crew in case we are attacked. My shooting score was the highest so I probably will be gun crew chief…When we go overseas this will be my job in case our air field might be attacked. Of course, we will work on planes until we are attacked.” But the men also had time for recreation as well. The 79th’s softball team won the championship at Hunter Field, and the team captain was 20-year-old Private First Class Thomas Sharp.
The 79th arrived at Port Moresby, New Guinea, in mid-October 1943 and were initially stationed at Jackson Airdrome, where they were put to work loading supplies on C-47 transports. From there they moved a few miles west to a smaller air field used almost exclusively by P-38s. In August 1944 the majority of the 79th moved to Hollandia, New Guinea, where, as one soldier recalled, “our only contact with the war…was the sight of abandoned equipment and wrecked Japanese planes.” One month later they were moved again to Morotai in the Dutch East Indies, a moved which brought them much closer to the war.
 At Morotai, the 79th was transferred to Thirteenth Air Force control, “and the squadron had its first taste of performing the full function of an Airdrome Squadron,” one of them wrote. For 98 straight nights Japanese planes from nearby Halmahera and fields elsewhere on Morotai bombed the 79th’s base on the Gila peninsula. One of the first casualties was the 79th’s commanding officer, Lt. Clarence Walter. In addition, Sharp and others complained that the bombings interrupted the evening movies, which always resumed after the raid with a few choice words for the Japanese. Christmas Eve 1944 was one of the few nights when no raids occurred: “We didn’t have a raid last night and so we got right much sleep,” Sharp wrote.
In late February 1945, Clark Field on the Philippine island of Luzon became the 79th’s new home. On August 15, V-J Day, the 79th was on a transport anchored just off the Japanese island of Ie Shima, where they celebrated the Allied victory by preparing for an approaching typhoon which lasted for two days and leveled the American camps on the island.
Following the Japanese surrender, Sharp and the 79th were stationed as part of the occupation force at Chofu Air Base, north of Tokyo. Sharp left Japan in late October to return to the U.S. The 79th Airdrome Squadron was deactivated in October 1948.
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