GOOD
PICKIN and the crew of 42-97242
| 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. |
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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. |
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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.
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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. Wassel, 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.
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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.
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| 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. |
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| 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 At right, a photo of Princess Pat in formation over the English countryside |
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In
the heat of battle the crew was probably not aware that their camera
had got 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.
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| 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. |
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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.
Click on the images for a larger version. |
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Mario
had never been able
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 I found
Dudley Stetler, Robert's brother, still living in Van Wert, Ohio. His
brothers tags and bracelet have been returned to him.
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.
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| 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
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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
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| The Norden Bombsight and Sperry Autopilot | |
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| Above
- id plate from the Norden Bombsight /Sperry Autopilot recovered from
the crashsite. |
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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 |
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