Squadron Posters recently came across an amazing and seldom heard of story of what we are calling “The Bomber Babies of WWII”. We were recently contacted by an elderly parishioner of a church in Pittsburg who reached out to us and shared a rare story that we have never heard of before. School children during WWII sold War Bonds to help support the war effort. This particular school raised more money than any other school and set an incredible record. When the children of the “St Mary of the Mount School” in Pittsburgh began their War Bond drive their target was to raise sufficient funds to purchase one aircraft. By the time they had completed the collection they had raised enough to buy 1 B-17 Flying Fortress, 4 Grasshopper flying ambulances, 7 jeeps, 1 amphibious jeep and 35 ambulances. At the same time, it was also sufficient to fund 5 $3000 hospital units and $2000 of medical equipment.
Incredibly, the children of St Mary of the Mount raised a total of $447,804.64 in their campaign. This may have been more than any other school bond drive in WWII. To mark the purchase of their B-17 bomber, the War Department sent a photo of a B17G embellished with the title of their school. (Sadly, this was almost certainly simply a photo retouched with the title, like so many of the war bond planes at that time).
The pupils however had their christening ceremony nonetheless. Water drawn from the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers was poured over a model B-17 airplane in a proxy ceremony. A photo in the Pittsburgh Post Express (19 March 43) shows Father Thomas Quigley accompanied by several pupils of the school (Photo yet to be located). 11-year-old Michael Hickey sold $49,000 of bonds, Raymond Streily sold $44,125 and David Harold added another $35,000. At the ceremony, all three high school juniors were made “Honorary Generals” for their efforts. – We passed this story onto the USAAF Nose Art Research Project and here is the result of their research so far: HERE
We are not sure if any of these school children are still alive today. However we would be very interested in hearing from anyone who knows anything about this time and event in the school’s history.
The American Schools at War program was a program during World War II run by the U.S. Treasury Department, in which schoolchildren set goals to sell stamps and bonds to help the war effort. The program was also administered by the U.S. Office of Education, the Federal government agency that interfaced with the nation’s school systems and its thirty-two million students. The Office, however, allowed the Treasury to work with the schools directly as the main objective of the program was raising money.
Planning for the program began before the December 1941 United States declaration of war on Japan. It started in earnest with the 1942–1943 school year. Students were taught that they could support the war effort in several ways. Their most important contribution was financial. Students bought war stamps and bonds with their spare change or earnings. However, more significantly, they were a sales force of millions selling to their families, neighbors, and communities. By the end of the war, they had raised over $2 billion (equivalent to $29.4 billion in 2020).
Schools at War supplied literature to teachers and posters that encouraged all aspects of the program. Individual schools were incentivized with a special flag to reach 90 percent student participation. School sponsorship of a particular item, such as a jeep or airplane, motivated sales. Tens of thousands of jeeps and hundreds of planes were “bought” under the program.
Here are a few of the postes from this program:
