The photo above shows the crew standing in front of Good Pickin at the completion of their training
 Back row, left to right
Ben C. Wassell - Schenectady, New York - Pilot
Albert C. Joyce - Salem, Massachusetts - Co-Pilot
Anthony C. Formato - Bronxville, New York - Navigator
Leonard Hersch - Brooklyn, New York - Bombardier
Back row, left to right
Robert D. Stetler - Van Wert, Ohio - Waist Gunner
Eugene J. Harpster - Furnace, Pennsylvania - Radio Operator
James T. Finch - Wantagh, New York - Tail Gunner
Pete N. Rayhawk - Sharpsville, Pennsylvania - Waist Gunner
Leon J. Sarnowski - New Britain, Connecticut - Ball Turret Gunner
Victor B. Ratliff - Hellier, Kentucky - Engineer & Top Turret Gunner

Good Pickin pictured above, seriel number 42-6153, a B17-F, was used as a trainer and never left the USA.
The 8th US Army Air Force served in the European theatre during WWII. In the three years of combat service from 1942 to 1945 more than 26,000 air crew lost their lives.
On the morning of April 18th 1944 a B17-F Flying Fortress, serial number 42-97242, took off from Station 153 at Parham, Suffok, England. She belonged to 568th Squadron of the 390th Bombardment Group, US 8th Army Air Force. She was just one of hundreds of bombers from multiple air fields that took off that morning in the hopes of dealing another crippling blow to Nazi industry and supply chains.

At right, the control tower of Parham Air Field, home to the 390th Bomb Group. Click on the photo to enlarge.
42-97242 was manned by Crew 12, the crew pictured above. This was their sixth mission, the first had been just 10 days ago on April 8. Their target was the Heinkel Aircraft Factory near Oranienburg Germany, just a stone's throw from Sachenhausen, the first Nazi concentration camp, and about 20 miles from Berlin. At 2:40 that afternoon, directly over their target, they were hit by heavy anti-aircraft fire. The entire tail section, from the waist gunners back, was completey torn off. Official records indicate that no parachutes were seen as the plane went down. German records state that there were no survivors and list only 4 crew names in their reports (indicating that 4 dog tags were found). Nine of the crew were buried in a common grave. The remains of one of the crew, most probably that of Pilot Ben Wassell, was found during salvaging of the wreck, after the remains of the other nine had been buried.
Date
Mission
Target
44-04-08
081
Quackenbruck, Germany
44-04-10
083
Maldegem, Belgium
44-04-11
084
Rostock, Germany
44-04-12
085
Leipzig, Germany
44-04-13
086
Augsburg, Germany
44-04-18
087
Oranienburg, Germany

Above, at left, a photo of the Heinkel Aircraft factory during WWII and at center a present day view. Above right, missions flown by Crew 12.  Click on the photos to enlarge.

A month later on May 24 1944 a B17 (sn 42-39924, Tornado) from the 95th Bomb Group was shot down in the same area of Oranienburg/Germendorf. Eight of the ten crew members perished. Four of the crew were buried in a common grave next to the common grave of the 9 crew members from the April 18 mission.

In 1952 the remains of Ben C. Wassell, Pilot and 1st Lt., were re-interred in the Ardennes Military Cemetery in Belgium, C/23/3. The remains of the other 9 members of Crew 12 and 4 members of the B17 from May 24th were brought back to the US and were interred in Arlington Cemetery, Washington DC. The image below was taken on the day of interment.
Alec at Arlington Cemetery. Victor Ratliff was Alec's fourth cousin
The United States War Department kept records of aircraft that went missing. Known as an MACR (Missing Aircrew Report) they documented information about the aircraft, the crew and how the plane was lost. These reports were not made available to the public until 1996. Each link below is to a page of MACR 4014 for B17 42-97242. Most MACR were eventually saved on 16mm film so the quality of these pages leaves a lot to be desired. The first 3 pages were generated shortly after the squadron returned to base, one of the pages is dated 04-19-44. The last four pages, would not have been attached to the MACR report until much later. They are transcriptions / translations of original German documents generated by the Reich Air Ministry and were either captured after the war or were provided by the German Red Cross.
Mario Schulze lives in Oranienburg and is a member of AG Fliegerschicksale Oranienburg, an organisation dedicated to locating graves and crashsites of Allied crewmen from WWII. Mario knew from locals about 42-97242 but had difficulty finding the exact location of the crash site. Then in early 2000 he came across an aerial photo taken during the war and knew in his heart he had found the site.

Many bombers were equiped with large format reconnaissance cameras which enabled them to bring back photos of their bombing efforts so command could assess the success of the raid and determine the need for additional bomb runs.
One such camera-equiped bomber was B17 42-97503 Princess Pat. She belonged to the 381st Bombardment Group and on April 18th 1944 she was just a few minutes behind B17 42-97242

In the heat of battle the crew was probably not aware that their camera had captured a photograph of the burning wreck of 42-97242 just after she had hit the ground. Smoke from the crash site of 42-97242 can be seen in the photo below, about 1 inch in from the left and 1 inch down from the top. The Heinkel Aircraft factory is in the center of the photo. Note the fuel storage tanks to the right of the factory.

At right, a photo of Princess Pat in formation over the English countryside

The image to the right is an enlargement of the Princess Pat photo and is rotated 90 degrees. The Heinkel Aircraft factory used slave labor from the Sachsenhausen camp and actually had its own subcamp on the factory compound. click on the photo for a larger view. During this same raid, the subcamp got hit killing several hundred people and completely demolishing the kitchens.

 

The search of the suspected site, a wheat field, produced various bits and pieces of metal and 50 caliber rounds. Mario also found an ID braclet. The name on the braclet was Robert D. Stetler, waist gunner of 42-97242. The following year as a crop of potatoes was being harvested Robert, Mario's son, found a dog tag and it too had the name of Robert D. Stetler.

Mario had been unsuccessful in his attempts to find the family of Robert Stetler so when he told me about the braclet and tags I took up the challange. After several months and an untold number of phone calls I finally located Dudley Stetler, Robert's brother, still living in Van Wert, Ohio. His brother's tags and bracelet have been returned to him. Robert, like many of the other crew member's families I came in contact with, knew nothing more than that their loved one had been Killed in Action.

Right, Robert Stetler

Shown below are presentation boxes given by Mario Schulze and his associates of AG Fliegerschicksale Oranienburg. The Stetler box contains a George V English Penny recovered beside the dogtag, probably change Robert got on his last trip to the local local pub. The Ratfliff box contains a trigger from one of the top turret 50 cal machine guns - Victor Ratliff was the top turret gunner. The third box contains an intact 50 cal. round with a piece of plexiglass window melted on.

box1
box2
box3

 
In addition to Mario Shulze and Dudley Stetler the search for information has brought me in contact with the families of Victor Ratliff, Eugene Harpster, Leon Sarnowski, Albert C. Joyce and Pete N. Rayhawk. Its with the kind permission of the Rayhawk family that I include the Crew Cards below and the photos on the comments page

The inspiration for the Good Pickin nose art seems to have come from a book of matches, or perhaps visa versa. The Superior Match Company of Chicago Illinois produced a whole set of these beauties in their series promoting War Bonds. The inside says "The more BONDS you buy the more PLANES will fly"

Mission 81- For the crew's first mission on April 8th Albert Joyce was assigned as co-pilot on B17 42-97182, Ding Dong Daddy. His position on crew 12 was filled by Flight Control Officer Calvin Worthington. This was Worthington's 22nd mission and he would go on to complete another 7 missions. Worthington, who grew up in poverty, went on to become a self-made millionaire and is best known for starring in his own TV automobile commercials
The Norden Bombsight and Sperry Autopilot
Above - id plate from the Norden Bombsight /Sperry Autopilot recovered from the crashsite.
The Sperry C-1 Autopilot was an electro-mechanical system used to lessen pilot fatigue by automatically flying an airplane in straight and level flight. It could also be used to fly the aircraft through gentle maneuvers. When combined with the Norden Bombsight, it created the stability necessary to bomb targets accurately from high altitude.

The C-1 Autopilot essentially consisted of two spinning gyroscopes located in cases attached to the airplane. One gyroscope, called the Flight Gyro, was located near the aircraft's center of gravity and detected changes in roll and pitch. The Directional Gyro, located in the bombsight stabilizer, detected changes in yaw. Using a series of electrical signals, the C-1 Autopilot controlled the aircraft with servos connected to the control surfaces. Either the pilot or the bombardier could control the aircraft.

The bombsight allowed a bomb to be dropped at exactly the right time needed to hit the target. It used a mechanical analog computer consisting of a system of gyros, motors, gears, mirrors, levels, and a telescope. The bombardier would provide the computer with the air speed, wind speed and direction, altitude, and angle of drift. With this information, the bombsight would calculate the trajectory of the bomb. As the airplane approached the target, the pilot would turn the plane over to the autopilot that would fly the plane to the precise location and release the bomb over the target. Supposedly, use of the bombsight could place a bomb inside a 100-foot (30-meter) circle from four miles (six kilometers) high
 
If you have any information about any of the crew members or you have a photo of Good Picking you are willing to share you can contact me at info@poorhousephotos.com
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