Oliver E. Fouts

[Charles Slauter]

I am trying to locate pictures and any other information on Lt. Oliver E. Fouts, a navigator-bombardier on B-25 Liberator who was killed August 6, 1945 near Korea and is listed as missing or buried at sea. His name is on the "Tablets of the Missing", Manilla American Cemetery in the Philippines. He was from Wingate, Indiana.

This information is for his daughter, Teri-Ann Fouts Slauter, my sister-in-law.

Bud Slauter budslauter@yahoo.com

[mike furline]

Lets see what we can sort out.

Here’s a list of missing aircrew from 1944 & 1945. There are Fouts, but no Olivers.
http://accident-report.com/crews/1944/NAME44F.html
http://accident-report.com/crews/1945/NAME45F.html

Another website with Fouts, but no Olivers
http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/namesf.htm

The aircraft could either have been a B-24 Liberator or a B-25 Mitchell. No such aircraft as a B-25 Liberator.
Here’s a list of missing aircraft for August 1945, http://accident-report.com/MACR/1945/m194508.html
On August 6, 1945 only one B-24 went missing. B-24 s/n 44-49451, 308th Bomb Group, MACR 14828.

Here’s a 308th Bomb Group link http://www.usaaf-in-cbi.com/308th_web/index.htm
Could not find a Fouts.

You can join Fold3 http://www.fold3.com/ for a free trial period and access MACR ( Missing Air Crew Reports). I searched, but could not find any Oliver Fouts.

Are you sure the name is the correct spelling? Date? Do you have any other info., Bomb Group, name of aircraft, etc.?

[Cvairwerks]

Found a service number for him and some group info.

http://projectpriam.com/priam/view_profile.asp?id=7589

The 500th Bomb Squadron Association: http://500thbsq-b25s.com/

From here: ftp://ftp.calweb.com/users/w/warbird/honorrol.txt

I found the following:

August 6, 1945 Fusan Harbor, Korea
Hit by naval fire while making a rocket run on gunboats in the harbor. Plane exploded
just before it hit the water.

LORENZ, Harold Pilot
LaSalle, Colo 2nd Lt
LANPHIER, Merlin Co-Pilot
Reasnor, Iowa 2nd Lt
FOUTS, Oliver E. Navigator
Wingate, Ind 2nd Lt
PEDDICORD, Marvin F. Engineer
Glenn Dale, Md S/Sgt
KENDALL, Robert G. Radio Operator
South Portland, Maine Sgt

[Cvairwerks]

Found the following:

They were flying B-25J 44-29554, shot down at 1045 local, Fusan Harbor, Korea. A/c was hit by heavy AA fire, cartwheeled and crashed into the harbor with no survivors.

http://www.345thbombgroup.org/pdf/missi ... -Aug45.pdf

is the pdf for the unit. It's 21 megs and the reports are somewhere around page 420 or later.

[the330thbg]

Wow.., gotta love the WIX!!!

[mike furline]

Great detective work Cv!

It's odd that his name and a/c serial number don't turn up on any of the web pages I posted above. Did a s/n search in the MACR's and got zip.

[Cvairwerks]

Mike: I suspect that the reported date being incorrect and the fact that the reports were written a couple of weeks after the action contributed to being missing from the MACR's. If you look at the unit report, the typewritten date is for the 7th and has a time of 1145 local, while the summation report a few pages later has the 6th and 1045 local. Also note that someone had penned in a correction on the date and added the a/c serial number too.

I got lucky on finding what I did. It took a few hits to find the first official reference. From there, I found a hit for the 500th B.S., which lead to the 345th. From there, several other things poped up and I posted the three with the most information. The sites have quite a bit of other info that wasn't that germane to what was being hunted. I wasn't able to find any pictures, but I only searched using the one name and the a/c serial number. I suspect that a good data miner could write a little routine that would allow one to input a number of keywords and be sent on it's way, reporting back in a spreadsheet form with the location and the keyword hit list, allowing one to sort by the combination hit rate. It would allow one to do some serious mining, while minimizing chair time.