Hello all,
Does anyone know of any resources to find a photograph of a B24J, serial #42-51095?
Long story short is I am friends with a WW2 veteran that was shot down in this ship, he was the tail gunner. I have scoured the internet to no avail..... His crew flew missions on other B24's and I have found a given him copies of those which he was thrilled about since he had not seen them since the war. Still no luck on the fateful ship they were lost in.
Long story long goes like this -
I work for at a very old pump company in the manufacturing department, since I'm constantly talking about history some of my older co-workers told me about a veteran who used to also work where I do who they knew was a POW during ww2. This man actually lives only about a half mile from my house! I started researching and found history of his crew and what happened to them.
They were hit by flak over the target and limped home as far as they could but ran out of fuel and all had to bail over the Netherlands. They all survived this and a bunch of them evaded the Germans and made it back to the allies. My friend was not so lucky, after 16 days on the run he and some of the others were betrayed by a member of the underground and turned over to the Gestapo. He spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft 4.
Now that I knew this history I was dying to meet him so I went and knocked on his door... Once he realized I wasn't trying to sell him a vacuum cleaner he invited me in. He has a scrap book full of photos from his service, training, the crew, western union telegrams his parents got when the went MIA, telegrams from the red cross saying he was a POW, very very neat to see this stuff. He also still has the uniform he was given when liberated from the POW camp - same uniform he wears to the memorial day parade!
So, now that I knew him fairly well, I was determined to find a picture of the B24 from the final mission. I searched the internet, I contacted the administrator of the 458th bomb group web page - no luck! Then I started searching for other crew member's families to see if maybe someone had a picture in their personal collection. When I found the pilot's family I learned that he had passed away in the 1990s and they had no photographs. The pilot's son was so excited to hear of a living crew member of his father's that he flew out to Massachusetts and met me at my house and we went to visit Mr. Allen. It was a great event to get to witness! They were both very happy to get to meet one another! Mr. Allen told some good stories about the pilot, like when they all snuck out to a bar during training and he stole the pilot's date - the next day during their training flight the pilot kept working the rudder back and forth- quite the rough ride for a tail gunner!!!
Anyways back to the picture search. Next I contacted a historian in the Netherlands that had done a lot of the research that ended up on the 458th bomb group page. He lives about 30 minutes from the crash site! While he did not have any photos of the plane he has shared a lot of interesting facts. The plane crashed into a barn, killing a farmer, his wife and daughter. A son survived and the story is that he kept a box full of parts from the b24 - my contact tried to track that down but hit dead ends and found that the son had passed away a few years back. In a further effort to find some artifacts my contact actually went to the farm where the crash happened and met the current owners - they let him do some metal detecting. While he didn't find anything this time, he believes he may have better luck when the grass isn't so tall. Also, the owners stated that when they built their new barn in the 1980's they unearthed a large about of aluminum that they sent off to the scrap yard. They believe the engines are buried under the concrete of the new barn still though.
So that's the longer version of the story. Anyone have any advice on other places to find a photo of the B24? Thanks!
http://www.458bg.com/crewarmour.htm
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