Original Item: One-of-a-kind set. Flight Officer Carroll A. Ray (ASN 17057937) from Beadle County, South Dakota was Gilder Pilot assigned to the 9th Air Force, 439th Troop Carrier Group, 91st Troop Carrier Squadron and flew gliders during the war including the D-Day invasion.
The 91st was part of the 439th Troop Carrier Group. It has also taken part in the airborne drop in the night prior to the allied invasion in Normandy. The squadron also took part in operation Market Garden. “In early February 1944 the air echelon of the 439th was ordered to Baer Field, Fort Wayne, Indiana, the aerial port of embarkation, arriving there on the 14th of the month. The ground echelon would follow by ship to England. The advance parties of the 439th and two of its squadrons, the 91st and 92nd, departed Baer Field in their C47 transports o/a 19 February 1944. Flying a circuitous route they arrived at Balderton Airdrome in England on 21 February 1944. The remaining two squadrons, the 93rd and 94th, did not arrive at Balderton until 6 March. The airdrome was located 2 miles south of Newark, England in the midlands. Skidmore and the ground echelon of the 439th TC Group and its four squadrons left New York aboard the U. S. S. George Washington, an Army troop transport, on 28 February 1944. After eleven days at sea the ship arrived at Liverpool, England on 10 March 1944….