The 303rd Bombardment Group of the “Mighty Eighth” Air Force became world-famous as “The Hell’s Angels,” the unit in which “The King of Hollywood,” Capt. Clark Gable, first flew as a photographer and waist gunner on May 4, 1943.

Gable, playing a B-17 pilot, had starred alongside Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy and Lionel Barrymore in the 1938 movie Test Pilot, but in early 1943, Gable was still grieving over the death of his wife, actress Carole Lombard, who less than six weeks after Pearl Harbor, was killed returning to Hollywood from a war bond rally in her home state of Indiana. After raising over $2 million in defense bonds, Lombard thanked a hometown crowd, saying: “Before I say goodbye to you all, come on and join me in a big cheer! V  for Victory!”

In the 1930s, Lombard, who is listed as one of the American Film Institute’s greatest stars of all time list, was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid stars, earning about a half million dollars annually or about five times FDR’s salary.

Seventy years ago today, on January 16, 1942, the 33-years-old Lombard and her mother died when their TWA DC-3 crashed into a desert mountain peak between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. All twenty-two passengers, including 15 army servicemen, were killed instantly.

January 18, 1942, Jack Benny did not perform his usual hit radio program, out of grief and respect for Lombard. Laughter, Lombard’s trademark, fell silent across the land. Benny had been co-starring in Lombard’s final film, To Be or Not to Be (1942), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It was a satire about Nazism and World War II, and was in post-production when Lombard died. The film’s script had Lombard’s character asking, “What can happen on a plane?” It wound up on the cutting room floor.

The grief-stricken Gable enlisted in the Eighth Army Air Corps.  Gable had been personally recruited by Air Force chief General Henry “Hap” Arnold—who knew Gable from the filming of Test Pilot—to make a training film for flight crews, but Gable wanted to fight as well and first flew in the B-17, The ’8′ Ball. German fighters attacked the plane while Gable manned a machine gun. When comedian and actor Bob Hope entertained the troops he asked for “Rhett Butler” to take a bow. Gable refused and remained seated among his buddies. Wartime strain was beginning to show.

The European air battle, one of the longest and costliest of any war, heralded not only the nearly complete devastation of the world’s cultural cradle, but also the controversial decision by western democracies to engage in industrial-scale terror bombing on civilian populations. It neatly ushered in atomic age rationale for a new corps of battle planners, like Eighth Army bomber tactician Curtis E. Le May, for whom the wholesale destruction of cities by day became routine. For the men who flew the missions, it was an intense strain, roughly equivalent to playing Russian roulette with an Army issued Colt .45 every mission day. Over all, about 12.4 percent of the 350,000 men who flew in the 8th Air Force died in action. It was one of the war’s most deadly assignments.

As historian Donald Miller noted in his book, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, “Even Clark Gable who flew only occasionally, came close to breaking down. He would drink himself to sleep, and every now and then disappear from the base for a day or two to find refuge,” with his friend, actor David Niven. From international press accounts, Hitler and Herman Goering both knew Gable was in England. Gable was considered by Hitler to be one of the world’s best actors and Goering “offered his fliers a reward equaling $5,000 to bring him down. Gable, fearing Hitler would put him in a cage ‘like a gorilla,’ and exhibit him all over Germany, told (crewmember) Jack Mahin he would never bail out of his plane if it got into trouble. ‘How could I hide this face? If the plane goes, I’ll just go with the son of a bitch.’”

The film Gable made and narrated was used for American propaganda, war bond fund-raising and as the training-and-propaganda-film Combat America.

Following the war, Gable starred in another B-17 related film, Command Decision in 1948, co-starring Walter Pidgeon and Van Johnson. Portraying the strategic bombing of Germany, the film depicted the political infighting involved in conducting a major war effort and the emotional toll it took on commanders who ordered missions that resulted in high casualties, the effects of sustained combat on all concerned, and the nature of accountability for its consequences.

Walter Cronkite, a United Press reporter, also flew with the 303^rd, and wrote about his experience during a February 26, 1943, mission attacking U-Boat pens in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. He reported being “escorted” by FW-190s and ME-109s and wrote “the flak was so thick you could walk on it” and said he was “too excited to be afraid.”

The 303rd got its nickname Hell’s Angels from one of its planes, the first B-17 in the Eighth to complete 25 missions against the Third Reich on May 13, 1943. The better-known Memphis Belle, completed its 25^th mission just six days later, but Hollywood director William Wyler, a commissioned USAAF officer who flew with and filmed the more wholesome-looking Belles’ crew for a documentary designed to raise morale and money for war bond drive, made sure the spotlight fell on that plane. Memphis Belle was thereafter described as the first crew to complete 25 missions and return home. The Hell’s Angels shrugged off the slight and continued the fight while the crew of the Belle were lionized in a glitzy stateside film premier and toured the nation raising cash for the war effort.

After completing 48 missions, Hell’s Angels returned to the U.S. January 20, 1944, for its own publicity tour. The 303rd had the last laugh by becoming the Eighth’s most fabled unit and was destined to become the first bomb group to fly 300 missions.  By war’s end they had completed 364 missions, greater than any other Flying Fortress squad in the Eighth Army.

Gable attended the launch of the Liberty ship SS Carole Lombard, named in his wife’s honor, on January 15, 1944. When she died, Lombard had been scheduled to star in the film They All Kissed the Bride. The role went to Joan Crawford who donated her entire salary from the film to the American Red Cross.

Gable and Lombard are interred together at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Although Gable remarried, he was interred next to her when he died in 1960.