Original Item. Only One Available. This is a very nice lot of 8th Air Force jewelry pieces including a handmade bracelet consisting of six British coins dating from 1912-1919 and one insignia for the 8th Air Force, wrapped together to be worn as a bracelet. The second piece is a nice gold-colored 8th Air Force pin, likely for a girlfriend or wife to wear stateside.

The bracelet measures roughly 7¼” when laid out, and the pin is about 1⅛x1⅜”. The jewelry is all in great shape and is ready for further research and display.

The 8th Air Force

Eighth Air Force was established as VIII Bomber Command on 19 January 1942 and activated at Langley Field, Virginia on 1 February. It was reassigned to Savannah Army Air Base, Georgia on 10 February 1942. An advanced detachment of VIII Bomber Command was established at RAF Daws Hill, near RAF Bomber Command Headquarters at RAF High Wycombe, on 23 February in preparation for its units to arrive in the United Kingdom from the United States. The first combat group of VIII Bomber Command to arrive in the United Kingdom was the ground echelon of the 97th Bombardment Group, which arrived at RAF Polebrook and RAF Grafton Underwood on 9 June 1942.

VIII Bomber Command launched its first raid in North-western Europe on 4 July 1942, when six RAF Douglas Boston (A-20 Havoc) bombers flown by crews of the 15th Bombardment Squadron (Light), accompanied by another six Bostons from the more experienced No. 226 Squadron RAF, commanded by Captain Charles C. Kegelman attacked four airfields in the Netherlands. Alerted to the attack, the airfield defenses were prepared for the raid when it arrived. The right propeller of Kegelman's Boston was shot away by flak while over the target at De Kooy Airfield. Further ground fire caused damage to his right wing, and the engine caught fire. Kegelman's aircraft lost altitude and even bounced off the ground, but he was able to bring the damaged bomber home and received the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) from General Carl Spaatz on 11 July. This was the first DSC earned by a member of the Eighth Air Force in World War II. The other American-flown Boston had been shot down over De Kooy.

Regular combat operations by the VIII Bomber Command began on 17 August 1942, when the 97th Bombardment Group flew twelve Boeing B-17E Flying Fortresses on the first VIII Bomber Command heavy bomber mission of the war from RAF Grafton Underwood, attacking the Rouen-Sotteville marshalling yards in France. Colonel Frank A. Armstrong may have been the commander of the 97th, but at the time of the raid, not yet left seat qualified. On this mission, he sat in the co-pilot's seat of the lead B-17, Butcher Shop. The pilot in command and leader of this historic mission was Paul Tibbets, who on 6 August 1945, dropped the first Atomic Bomb, Little Boy, on Hiroshima from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay.

During World War II, the offensive air forces of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) came to be classified as strategic or tactical. A strategic air force was tasked with a mission to attack an enemy's war effort beyond his front-line forces, predominantly production and supply facilities, whereas a tactical air force supported ground campaigns, usually with objectives selected through cooperation with the armies.

In Europe, Eighth Air Force was the first USAAF strategic air force, with a mission to support an invasion of continental Europe from the British Isles. Eighth Air Force carried out strategic daytime bombing operations in Western Europe from airfields in eastern England as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive.

The Pointblank directive of June 1943 redirected the Allied strategic bombing effort against the German air force in order to reduce it to the point where it could not oppose the planned invasion of France in mid-1944. Also in June 1943, two groups of the Eighth Air Force from England began training for the upcoming Operation Tidal Wave, a low-level raid on the Ploiești refineries in Romania. A third group, the 389th, which was originally scheduled to deploy to England, was also assigned to the mission. The groups were transferred to Libya in July, where together with the Ninth Air Force attacked targets in support of the Allied invasion of Sicily. A few weeks after Tidal Wave, the Eighth Air Force groups returned to England.