His fate was surmised by Lieutenant Stout, also after the war: The entire crew survived as POWs in Romania, except one. His chute was opened by the force of the explosion….” The fire by this time had reached such a proportion that I knew it would be foolhardy to remain further, so I adjusted my chute and went out the nose wheel door…Lt Stout bailed out (or rather I should say he was half-way out of the ship when it blew up. However Richardson was tracking a FW 190 (German fighter aircraft) down and had his turret turned so that I could not get to open the inner door. The interphone was out of order and he could not have heard a verbal order. “…noticing that the ship was on fire tried to notify the nose gunner (Richardson) to the effect that abandon ship had been signaled. After the end of the War, the navigator of the crew gave a gripping description of their final minutes airborne: Fifteen minutes from the target on the return trip, the ship was hit by enemy fighters. Kimzey (Torrington, WY)Ī third crew, that aboard B-24 tail #42-50411, had a similar fate to the two others. The crew was captured and held as Prisoners of War in Germany. Remarkably, the entire crew of this bomber safely bailed out. It then looked to me as though it was out of control as the nose suddenly went straight up in the air and just as she was about at the climax of her climb, I noticed three chutes come out.” Ullman’s ship, which was flying…in a level flight. The fighters peeled off to the left and I looked over at Ship #410, Lt. A waist gunner aboard a nearby aircraft made this report: “…all of a sudden I saw 4 ME 109’s (German fighter aircraft) come right through the middle of our box, a little bit underneath us. “Pappy’s Puss,” B-24 tail 41-29410, was knocked out of the sky by German fighter aircraft. The crew of “Hard Hearted Hannah” (hometowns not of record) were: Turkey was a neutral country, and after a short period, the crew – all of whom survived – were repatriated to the United States. In fact, the bomber managed to stay airborne and eventually crash-landed at a barricaded runway at Sidi Gazi, about 25 miles north of Istanbul, Turkey. Apparently flak might have shot off some of the controls…”
#B 24 bomber crew listings full#
A top turret gunner in another plane in the formation testified that “…there was no smoke, couldn’t tell what happened as the plane was in full control, flying level. It was one of the worst days of the war for the 464 th.ī-24 tail #42-52449, nicknamed “Hard Hearted Hannah,” left the formation for reasons that could not be determined by observers. This mission cost one of their units, the 464 th Bomb Group, five crews. The 15 th Army Air Force, based in Italy, sent hundreds of B-24 Liberators against the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti on June 6, 1944.
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