[The following is in regards to American B-24 crews flying out of Italy during World War II.]
His tentmate and close companion, navigator Lt. Sam Adams, did go on two missions. Because McGovern had flown as a co-pilot for five missions, he was five missions ahead of his crew in reaching the magic number, thirty-five [at which point your service was done and you could go home]. Adams hated to fly with any pilot other than McGovern, but he wanted to get home as soon as possible to take up his studies to become a Presbyterian minister. So he volunteered for missions as a substitute navigator. On his second substitute service, in the second week of January, Adams’s plane was blown apart by German flak. There were reports, unconfirmed, that two or three parachutes had been seen after the plane exploded.
McGovern and Rounds held on to the hope that Sam had made it out of the plane and come down by parachute. They depended on substitute navigators on their missions, but for a few weeks they lived with Sam’s empty bunk, his photographs, and his neatly hung clothing, waiting for word that he had made it. The word never came.
”I had seen other men killed before,” McGovern said, “but never anything like that. When there are just three of you living together so closely in a tent in an olive grove in Italy, a helluva long way from home, you really got to know one another. And then all of a sudden you see the empty bunk and it really gets to you.”
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen E. “The Isle of Capri.” The Wild Blue: The Crews of the B-24. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 200-1. Print.
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When was it lowered to 25 missions? Or did it vary by theater?