Joseph Arrington “Art” Bunting (July 10, 1921 – April 4, 1945)

405th Fighter Squadron, 371st Fighter Group, 9th Air Force

By Erika Grant and Luci Meier

Early Life

Joseph Arrington Bunting was born in Greensboro, NC on July 10, 1921, the oldest child of Rubye (née Bowen) and Archie M. Bunting.¹ His parents named him after both of his grandfathers, as Rubye’s father was named Joseph and Archie’s father Arrington.² Archie Bunting was born in North Carolina in 1889. In 1910, Archie lived with his parents and four of his siblings on a farm his family rented in Gilmer Township, Guilford County, NC.³ Joseph’s mother, Rubye Bowen, was born in Georgia in 1898. Like her husband, she also came from a farming family, and in 1910 lived with her parents and five of her siblings on a rented farm on Cordele Rd., Crisp County, GA.⁴ Growing rates of tobacco and cotton production, along with a rising regional birth rate, contributed to an increase in farms across the southeastern US between 1900 and 1920, especially in Georgia and North Carolina.⁵ In 1910, many of the families who lived in homes close to the farm where Archie Bunting lived in North Carolina worked at a cotton mill, which suggests that surrounding farms like the Bunting’s likely produced cotton, an indication which supports these trends.⁶

Joseph Bunting’s father, Archie, enlisted in the US Army on February 13, 1914. During World War I, he served overseas as part of the Headquarters Detachment of the 318th Engineer Regiment, 6th Infantry Division, as a Regimental Supply Sergeant.⁷ On May 8, 1918, Archie departed for France from Hoboken, NJ aboard the USS America, and remained abroad until June, 1919.⁸ The 318th saw combat first in the Gérardmer sector, Vosges, France between September 3 and October 12, 1918, and again during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive between November 1 and November 11, 1918.⁹

Shortly after returning from service, on August 11, 1920, Archie Bunting married Rubye Bowen in Duval County, FL.¹⁰ Rubye had moved from Georgia to Florida with her family sometime after 1910.¹¹ Together, the couple had five children, including Joseph Arrington (born 1921), Robert Moran (born 1923), Winifred Carnelia (born 1925), Archie, Jr. (born 1926), and Charles Frank (born 1930).¹² All three of Joseph’s brothers also served in the US military. Robert served as a Sgt. in the Army with the 292nd Ordnance Company during World War II; Archie, Jr. served in the Army Air Force; and Charles served in the military for thirty-two years, four in the Air Force and twenty-eight in the Missouri Army National Guard.¹³ On May 29, 1924, Archie and Rubye Bunting had a son who tragically died the same day he was born. His parents named him Watson.¹⁴

In 1926, when Joseph Bunting was five years old, he, his parents, and his siblings Robert, Winifred, and Archie, Jr. lived in St. Petersburg, FL, where Archie, Sr. worked as a carpenter.¹⁵ Florida experienced a land boom in the 1920s. Increasing financial prospects of the growing middle class, fueled by credit that was easy to obtain, attracted land developers as well as both tourists and families that settled in the state.¹⁶ Carpenters like Joseph’s father were drawn to Florida in the early and mid 1920s as the demand to build new houses, hotels, and communities across the state grew. By the later 1920s, though, Florida’s real estate bubble began to burst. Banking and credit crises, along with relentless hurricane seasons in both 1926 and 1928, negatively impacted the state’s economy and the building industry.¹⁷ The Great Depression, which followed the stock market crash in October 1929, destabilized the global, national, and state economies in the 1930s. Hard economic times impacted countless families across the US, as national average household income dropped forty percent by 1933.¹⁸

By 1930, the Buntings had moved back to North Carolina, where they lived in a rented home at 1528 Phillips Ave., in Greensboro. Archie, Sr. continued to work as a carpenter, while his wife Rubye worked inside the home to care for Joseph and his siblings.¹⁹ Joseph’s paternal grandmother, Emma Bunting, owned a home at 1520 Phillips Ave., only a few houses away. She lived there with two of her daughters, Laura and Jessie; a granddaughter, Marie; and two grandsons, Walter and Harry.²⁰

Bunting Receiving First Place Trophy at the Thanksgiving Race, 1940

By 1940, the Bunting family had moved from North Carolina back to Florida, where they settled in St. Petersburg.²¹ Despite the challenges of the Great Depression throughout the 1930s, Joseph and his siblings attended St. Petersburg High School. Joseph, who by this time went by the nickname “Art,” graduated in 1941; his senior quote read “Full speed ahead to success.”²² His emphasis on speed reflects his participation in and success as part of the school’s Varsity Track Team. During his senior year, Joseph, as well as his brother Robert, ran for the team, known as the Green Devils. As we see in his 1941 yearbook, Joseph won the 1940 Reilly Thanksgiving Mile Race, hosted by Thomas G. Reilly, with a final time of five minutes and twenty-four seconds. His brother Robert placed second and received a medal.²³ Shortly after graduating from St. Petersburg High School, Joseph began working at Bell Bakery, located at 421 Preston Ave. South, St. Petersburg, FL. He worked there when he registered for the draft on February 14, 1942.²⁴

Military Service

Joseph Arrington Bunting enlisted in the US Army Air Force on July 8, 1942 at the Orlando Air Base, now the Orlando Executive Airport on Colonial Ave.²⁵ Before starting his basic training, Bunting reported to Camp Blanding for an aptitude test to determine his prospects for becoming a glider pilot. On July 22, 1942, while testing at Camp Blanding, he told a reporter for the Miami Herald, “I’m going all out for the cause of freedom.”²⁶ Coming from a family in which his father and three younger brothers also joined the US military, Joseph was eager to serve his country. He began training as a glider pilot at the Fighter Command School at Orlando Army Air Base.²⁷ In November 1942, while training, Joseph became engaged to Miss Catherine Farrington.²⁸ They wed on December 24, 1943.²⁹ Though born in Indiana in 1924, Catherine lived in Pinellas County, FL in 1940, and attended St. Petersburg High School with Joseph.³⁰ After getting married, Joseph completed his basic pilot training at the Army Air Field in Chico, CA. He then transferred to Luke Field in Phoenix, AZ.³¹ In February 1944, after completing his advanced flight training in Arizona, he received his fighter pilot’s wings and commission in the US Army Air Force.³²

Joseph Bunting served in the 405th Fighter Squadron, 371st Fighter Group, 9th Air Force, where he achieved the rank of 1st Lt.³³ The 371st Fighter Group, activated on July 15, 1943, saw combat in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) from April 1944 to May 1945. Before the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the 371st began combat operations out of Bisterne, England, an area about 100 miles southwest of London. These operations consisted of fighter sweeps, dive-bombings, and escort missions over France. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Bunting and his fellow pilots flew P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers, which were single-pilot planes, to attack railroads, trains, and buildings in France to hinder German forces. After D-Day, the 371st moved operations to France and continued to support Allied ground forces in northeast France and southwest Germany. Between December 1944 and January 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge, they attacked enemy vehicles, factories, bridges, and gun emplacements on the Western Front.³⁴ On October 31, 1944, 1st Lt. Bunting and several other P-47 Thunderbolt pilots, on an aid mission to help 270 American infantrymen trapped behind enemy lines, dropped rations and medical supplies in the Vosges foothills in eastern France, the same area where Bunting’s father, Archie, fought in late 1918 during World War I.³⁵

On March 29, 1945, Bunting wrote to his wife that he was awaiting orders to return home. By this time, he had acquired 200 hours of combat flying and had completed the eighty-five missions required before becoming eligible to return to the US. Rather than return home, though, Joseph Arrington Bunting chose to continue flying.³⁶ On April 4, six days after he sent the letter, Bunting and the 371st embarked on a sweeping mission around Halle, Germany. Upon sighting a train heading toward the town of Weissenfels, in eastern Germany, Bunting descended to about 500 feet to make a pass on it. His P-47 was subsequently hit by flak and badly damaged. After climbing to an altitude of about 2,000 feet, he bailed out of his plane over the village of Leissling, about four miles west of Weissenfels. Bunting’s wingman on the mission, 1st Lieutenant Arden Williams, witnessed his crewmate’s parachute open, but later lost contact with him. After circling the area, Williams spotted Bunting near a small road, his billowing parachute dragging his body across a field.³⁷ Given the low altitude from which he bailed out, Joseph Bunting likely died when he hit the ground.

Legacy

Although witnesses from his unit saw what happened after he bailed out, no search was made for Bunting’s body immediately following his death, and the US Army listed him as MIA.³⁸ Bunting’s family did not know what happened to their loved one for over a year, when the Army officially declared him dead in May, 1946.³⁹ Bunting’s remains were initially interred in the Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial, near Liége, Belgium.⁴⁰ In the time he served overseas between 1944 and 1945, 1st Lt. Bunting flew eighty-six missions, for which he was awarded an Air Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters.⁴¹ For demonstrating “outstanding leadership and technical skill” while on a mission near Kaiserslautern, in southwest Germany, on March 19, 1945, Bunting was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, which his widow Catherine accepted in September, 1946.⁴² Bunting’s unit, the 371st Fighter Group, flew a total of 17,866 sorties and dropped over 4,000 tons of bombs during the war.⁴³ For attacks against important ground targets in conjunction with Allied advances across the Rhine River during the final months of the war, the 371st earned a Distinguished Unit Citation.⁴⁴

Bunting’s Interment Card, St. Augustine National Cemetery

In October 1946, Joseph Bunting’s widow, Catherine, remarried to Albert S. Monroe.⁴⁵ They had a son, Albert, Jr., in 1949.⁴⁶ In 1950, Joseph’s parents lived with their youngest son, Charles, in Pinellas County, FL, where his father, Archie, continued to work as a carpenter.⁴⁷ Joseph’s brothers Robert Moran and Archie, Jr., who both served during the war, each returned home after its conclusion. Robert, Archie, Jr., Charles, as well as Joseph’s sister Winifred went on to marry and live long lives.⁴⁸ Joseph’s father Archie lived to be ninety years old, and died in Old Town, Dixie County, FL in 1979.⁴⁹ His mother Rubye died in Alachua County, FL in 1959.⁵⁰ Archie and Rubye are buried beside each other in McCrabbe Baptist Church Cemetery in Old Town, Dixie County, FL.⁵¹ Several years after the end of World War II, Joseph’s parents chose to bring their son’s remains home to be closer to them. The US Gold Star family program, created after World War I, allows the families of the fallen to decide to repatriate their loved ones for reburial in the US.⁵² On June 30, 1949, 1st Lt. Joseph Arrington Bunting, was reinterred in St. Augustine National Cemetery, where he was given military honors.⁵³ He rests there in Section C, Site 13.⁵⁴

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