The lineage of the 417th Night Fighter Squadron dates back to February 17th, 1943. It was one of four specialized squadrons organized to operate an airborne intercept radar. Daniel D. Whitney, who’s father-in-law, Joseph M. Van Laecken was one of the first ROs in the 417th, compiled a historical document entitled “417th NFS Illustrated History” which contains annotated chronologies, photographs and material from other members. This material is now available on this site thru the links below in PDF format. Due to file sizes, the original book has been broken into the six sections listed below. Some of the files are large and may take time to load.
417th NFS Illustrated History-Chapters 1-3 (13MB)
417th NFS Illustrated History-Chapter 4 pages 1-39 (26MB)
417th NFS Illustrated History-Chapter 4 pages 40 – 87 (26MB)
417th NFS Illustrated History-Chapter 4 pages 88-106 (10MB)
417th NFS Illustrated History-Chapters 5 – Appendicies (22MB)
417th NFS Illustrated History Addendum (20MB)
Corrections and Updates
This section will be used to track correction or updates to the material posted above. If you believe any of the material is in need of correction, please post a comment to this page and the site Administrator will add the comment to this section for others to see.
Page 1: Richard Ziebert should be spelled Richard Ziebart
Page 4-74: The photo lists one of the squadron members as Dave Reihl. This should be Dave Diehl.
Page 4-74
In the caption third line down the name “Dave Reihl” should be “Dave Diehl”, it’s a picture of my father, David F. Diehl.
Did you get the photos I sent?