218085 F/O Daniel Joseph Heffernan Royal Canadian Air Force New York 415 squadron I have some photographs and documents from the late Major D J Heffernan USAF, Formally a Graduate of Loyola College. He served in the RCAF and then joined the USAAF after the USA entered the war. He was an Air Gunner in the RCAF with 415 Squadron based at Thorney Island, Hampshire, and a Gunnery leader/instructor in the USAAF based at Sudbury Suffolk UK. He kept a war diary during his USAAF service that shows although an American he had been schooled in flying and airmanship in a different culture than the one he later joined. He was a dedicated flyer and took the fight to the enemy, enjoyed the camaraderie and uniformed life in general even being a little bit of a dandy. He was pre-war a stock-broker in New York and although he did not have to involve himself in the war he joined the RCAF as an Airman Air Gunner at the age of 30+. He flew most of his 300 hours of operations in Hampdens and Wellingtons then a couple or more trips as an Aircrew Observer/Gunner in B 24s and possibly an odd trip in a B 17.He was divorced in the USA sometime in the early 1940s but re-married in England to a local Hampshire lady during the war.
After the war he and his wife returned to the US to Travis Air Force Base but he sadly died of Tuberculosis in 1953. A short purposeful life lived it would seem to the full.
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