Target: Genshagen - 21 June 1944 - Mission #118

Between 0100 and 0130 hours, 34 crews were briefed for this target on the outskirts of Berlin. The RAF had planned to send some 900 bombers to go to Berlin on a daylight raid but this mission was subsequently cancelled.

At 0500 hours, 33 ships began take-off forming up on a PFF lead ship. A force of 29 completed the mission for credit with 28 bombing the target and releasing (698) 100 and 500# bombs on multiple targets in and around the primary. Eight ships bombed the primary with fair results, weather being a factor; 18 bombed Potsdam on PFF flares with unobserved results and 1 released on a railroad at 5224N-1340E, results unknown. No enemy fighters were encountered but flak on the bomb run was intense causing damage to 7 returning Liberators.

From the 577th, one crew was MIA in aircraft #027, "E for Easy". The crew, with pilot 1/Lt Hans G. Belitz, was last seen near the target peeling out of formation, dropping down into the clouds, and heading southwest. Nothing else was known about the fate of this crew and aircraft. The returning ships landed around 1400 hours.

Bombardier 2/Lt Milton Issenberg reports that his pilot, 1/Lt Warren Whittemore, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions on this mission. According to 2/Lt Issenberg, "There was very accurate intense flak. I counted six enemy fighters. We caught a 20mm shell in a wing. We flew deputy lead and took over lead and led part of the group home. We had the most flak holes ever, and our rudder cables were severed by flak. We almost bailed out, but Whit [1/Lt Whittemore] and our engineer, Carl Peterson, and I held a quick conference. Carl went to the rear and took both ends of the cable. I stood halfway up the bomb bays, and as Whit wiggled the controls and loosened up the cable, I signaled back and forth between the two of them and Carl tied the two ends together. It worked. We sweated out the miles all the way home, for now we were alone, but we made it. We lost one ship in our element, but many on that mission were lost on that flight. It was our longest mission, nine hours and forty minutes. Whit handled the plane gingerly, the controls softly, so as not to separate the cables and we were the last plane to land at base."

On this day, the 392nd's extremely well-thought-of Commanding Officer, Colonel Rendle, departed the station to assume duties as Chief of Staff of the 14th Combat Wing. Lieutenant Colonel Lorin Johnson, the former Deputy Commander, returned from assignment at 14th Combat Wing Headquarters to assume duties as the new Commander.

MISSING AIR CREW REPORT SECTION

21 JUNE 1944 - TARGET: GENSHAGEN

MISSING AIRCREW REPORT: #06158 AIRCRAFT: #42-110027 (NO NICKNAME) "E" 30th Mission

AIRCREW: BELITZ    *    SQUADRON: 577th

CREW POSITIONS AND STATUS:

P   l/LT  Belitz, Hans C.      POW
CP  2/LT  Loar, Robert         POW
B-N 2/LT  Jones, Allen V.      POW
NG  SGT   Peters, Henry J.     POW
R/O S/SGT Mulhern, Robert T.   POW
EnG S/SGT Sekul, John C.       POW
WG  S/SGT Smith, William H.    POW
WG  S/SGT Vineall, Bradford H. POW
TG  S/SGT Walz, Harry R.       POW

MISSION LOSS CIRCUMSTANCES: A returning eye-witness (Lt. Evans, crew pilot, 576th) stated this plane was last seen peeling off and going down under control into the top of a cloud deck, and heading southwesterly. According to German Report #KU 2311, 22 June 44 at 1730 hours, this aircraft had made an emergency landing on 21 June at 1130 hours in Aldrup, Germany, south of Wildeshausen and (8) crew members were taken as prisoners. The ship’s downing was recorded to be from flak. One crew man escaped capture according to this report who turned out to be Lt. Loar, the Co-Pilot, who was captured (13) days later on 4 July 44 at 0420 hours near Assen at a bridge over the Noord-Willemskanaal Canal having been apprehended by a bridge guard, one Private Lens (Report #KU559A, Air Base Hqs District Amsterdam/Bentheim, dated 5 July). During the plane’s emergency landing, one waist gunner, S/Sgt. Smith was reported to have been injured also and later transferred to a Luftwaffe Hospital at Bissel. The report (#KU 2311) stated the prisoners taken on 21 June were transferred to the Evaluation Center-West Oberursel on the same day. (Note: Two items of interest noted in the German reports:

(1) Pilot Belitz and crew must have accomplished a good job of their emergency crash landing in that less than one half of the B-24 (40%) was reported damaged by the Germans; and (2) when S/Sgt. Smith was searched his personal effects revealed the name of his wife and address in Huntington, West Virginia, Maxine S., 36 West 3rd Aye, which was reported to Dulag-Luft, Oberursel/Frankfurt. It is small wonder that sometimes the German interrogators seemed to have an amazing, personal knowledge about a prisoner’s background).

INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS OF CREWMEN FATES: An article in the May 2005 issue of the 392nd BGMA News provides more information. As the Belitz crew neared the Initial Point, bombardier/navigator 2nd Lt Allen V. Jones did not respond to a routine interphone check. He was found at his position, unconscious. Not knowing if the problem was just with Jones' oxygen system or if it would affect the entire crew, Belitz decided to abort.

He reversed course and salvoed the bombs while engineer S/Sgt John Sekul revived Jones with a portable oxygen bottle. Belitz dropped to about 12,000 feet so the crew would not have to rely on bottled oxygen. It wasn't long before tail gunner S/Sgt Harry Walz saw flak bursts while nose gunner Sgt William Smith saw two Me109s that made one pass at the lone plane. Whether by fighters or flak, the nose and top turrets were hit and both Smith and Sekul were badly cut on their faces by Plexiglas fragments.

To get out of the danger zone, Belitz warned the crew that he was going to "put them on the ground" and then put the ship in a steep dive. Walz says he is alive today because of this evasive action on his pilot's part.

They stayed low for a long time. Belitz warned the crew that the plane was "guzzling gas" and they weren't going to make it back to England. Walz remembers firing at a freight train with a flak gun mounted on the end car. They passed over a German airfield, going right down the center of the runway, according to Walz, while 20mm shells riddled the bottom of the fuselage. A burst of flak exploded an ammunition box in the waist and broke gunner S/Sgt Brad Vineall's arm. The #3 and #4 engines were also damaged during this encounter.

At one point a tree branch pierced the nose turret and hit Jones so hard on the right shin that he thought his leg was broken. He knows he was hit by a tree because he saw leaves in the nose turret afterward! The finishing touch came when they struck the chimney of a house and the #1 propeller came off. Both Jones and Walz vividly recall seeing the propeller rolling on the ground as they passed by overhead.

With the #1 propeller gone, the #3 engine on fire, and the #4 engine damaged, 1st Lt Belitz had no choice but to land the plane. In the tail, Walz's intercom was out and he was unaware of Belitz's intentions until Sekul came back, tapped him on the head, and said, "Come on up, we're going to crash." The crew was all on the flight deck when Belitz lowered the wheels and set the plane down in a field of rye near Aldrup, Germany. Walz and Jones call it a "miraculous landing" and agree that it was one of the smoothest their pilot ever made.

As soon as they stopped, copilot 2nd Lt Robert Loar ducked out of the plane and hid in the tall grass at the field's edge. It was the first mission for Loar, a substitute from 2nd Lt William Whitteaker's crew. After dark, he headed west. He got about 85 miles before being captured at 4:20 a.m. on July 4 near Assen, Holland, while trying to cross the Noord-Willemskanaal.

The rest of the crew had no chance to evade, as a German soldier was there almost immediately, with others coming by motorcycle. Civilians quickly arrived on the scene as well. Civilian eyewitnesses remember that one crewman requested, in broken German, that his injured comrades be helped. They needed to go to a hospital, he said. These civilians remember how this officer did everything he could for his crew. In the 61 years since the crash, they have often spoken about this man's "special and great behavior."

The German-speaking American was undoubtedly Hans Belitz, who was born in Hannover (less than 70 miles from where he crashed) and lived there until his family moved to Pennsylvania when he was 13.

The civilians took the crew by horse-drawn cart to a barn. There, Belitz gave Jones a shot of morphine from the ship's first aid kit. A Luftwaffe doctor treated the other cuts and injuries and sent nose gunner Smith to a hospital. This doctor also refused to turn the crew over to an SS officer who tried to get custody of them.

Belitz and Jones were taken first to the German airbase but soon rejoined the rest of the crew at a railroad station, probably in Osnabruck. There was an air raid alert and they were hurriedly locked in a closet on the train platform while their guards went to the air raid shelters. Walz and Jones still remember the sounds of bombs impacting nearby. When the air raid was over, the crew was taken first to Frankfurt for interrogation and then separated, with the enlisted men and officers going to different POW camps.

Belitz and Jones were sent to Stalag Luft III near Sagan and were among those moved by foot and train to Moosburg in late January 1945. While there, Belitz traded his dog tag with an enlisted man and exchanged barracks with him. As he had hoped, Belitz was soon sent out on a work detail to clear rubble from a marshalling yard in nearby Munich. When permitted to take a bathroom break, he hopped on a passing freight train and escaped. Posing as a French farm worker, Belitz needed only ten days to travel the 160 miles west to the American lines. After the 392nd BG confirmed his identity, he spent a few days in Paris and was then sent home to the States.

BURIAL RECORDS: Not pertinent to this crew. All survived this event at the time.

NEXT OF KIN DATA IN WWII: Belitz (Wife, Gloria J., D.B. Gabrie, 529 Sandusky Avenue, Tiffin, Ohio); Loar (Mother, Jennie F., Route #1, Metsmore, Ohio); Jones (Father, Allen A., Box 25, Fruitport, Michigan); Walz (Father, George J., 220 Mendan Avenue, Eighwood, Illinois); Vineall (Wife, Gloria J. 328 Lionel Street, Syracuse, New York); Peters (Wife, Barbara Frances, 21 Ivy Street, Portland, Maine); Mulhern (Mother, Mary S., 3250 Barber Avenue, New York, New York); Sekul (Wife, Elaine, 4600 11th Avenue, Sacramento, California); and Smith (Wife, Maxine E., 331 35th Street, Huntington, West Virginia).

These photos of #42-110027 after it crashed were provided by Bernhard Wübbuler, Goldenstedt, Germany.

These photos of #42-110027 after it crashed were provided by Bernhard Wübbuler, Goldenstedt, Germany.

Many people came to see the B-24 that had unexpectedly landed nearby.

CREW LOADING LIST - MISSION #118