Richard J. Quigley

Rank: Sergeant, U.S. Army Air Forces

Serial: 32078529

Unit: 704th Bomber Squadron, 446th Bomber Group, Heavy

Entered service from: New Jersey

Died: December 12, 1944

Memorialized at: Tablets of the Missing, Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, England

Awards: Air Medal, Purple Heart

Sergeant Richard J. Quigley was born in New Jersey in 1921, the son of Joseph A. Quigley and his wife the former Amelia Hodgson. By April of 1930 the couple had separated, and Richard Quigley and his mother were living with her mother and step-father, Amelia and Albert Johnson, at 1506 Chesapeake Road in Camden’s Fairview section. They lived in Philadelphia in the mid-1930s. The 1940 census shows Richard Quigley and his mother living at 167 Cornell Road in Audubon, New Jersey, with his grandmother, aunt Alberta Johnson, and uncles Carl and James Johnson. Richard Quigley was a high school graduate.

Richard Quigley was inducted into the United States Army at Camden, New Jersey, on July 8, 1942. His enlistment records state that his occupation was in “unskilled occupations in electroplating, galvanizing, and related processes.” He qualified for flight duty and was assigned as a ball turret gunner to a B-24 Liberator crew with the 704th Bomber Squadron, 446th Bomber Group, Heavy, which operated out of Bungay airfield in Suffolk, England.

Sergeant Richard J. Quigley was killed in action on December 12, 1944, while returning from a raid on the railroad marshalling yards at Hanau, Germany. His plane, a B-24J nicknamed “Wedding Belle” (42-95178), crashed into the North Sea at about 3:04 p.m. Sergeant Quigley and four other crewmembers were dead on impact. Three other crew members, including co-pilot Second Lieutenant Robert S. Skinner, were not killed instantly; they were picked up by air-sea rescue but died before being brought ashore.

Richard Quigley was survived by his parents. Joseph A. Quigley died in 1953. Amelia Quigley died on June 6, 1992, in Mt. Holly, New Jersey, and was buried at New Camden Cemetery with her mother.