Target: Juvicourt Air Field - 12 August 1944 - Mission #151

Briefing for 35 crews was held at 0200-0300 hours with the 577th and 579th with Lieutenant McMahon as Bombardier, sharing the lead aircraft duties. The mission was to be flown in a very circuitous manner, the route extending east of London, down over the Cherbourg Peninsula to a point east of Paris, then, out over Holland. Assembly weather was very poor causing six ships to abort and return to base. One plane, #023 from the 577th with 2/Lt John D. Ellis's crew, crashed northeast of London, killing all personnel.

Of the 29 ships bombing, five tacked on to other units and released on other targets. One ship joined the 458th to bomb Mont Melon airfield, three bombed with the 44th at Laon-Couveon airfield and another joined the 93rd Bomb Group to bomb the same target. The 392nd ships released (1557) 100# bombs and those striking the primary achieved fair results with about 65 percent of the weapons impacting within 2000 feet of the MPI.

Again fighters were not encountered and flak was negligible. One ship did receive flak damage but all returned safely at 1230 hours.

CASUALTIES NOT LISTED IN MACR

2/LT Ellis, John D. (P)           577th   KIA
F/O  Stalsby, Samuel C. (CP)      577th   KIA
2/LT Cox, Robert B. (N)           577th   KIA
S/S  Hultengren, Clare W. (G)     577th   KIA
T/S  Jankowski, Stanley F. (EnG)  577th   KIA
T/S  Holling, John H. (R/O)       577th   KIA
S/S  Minick, Frank Jr. (NMI) (LW) 577th   KIA
SGT  Cable, Jay V. (BT)           577th   KIA
S/S  Shaeffer, Jack O. (TG)       577th   KIA
S/S  McGinley, William C. (TG)    577th   KIA

One 577th Sqdn plane was piloted by 2/Lt Ellis in aircraft #42-95023, a B24H Model, Call Letter "Y," no nickname. Ellis crashed-landed close to the villages of Cheshunt and Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, killing everyone aboard. It was widely believed in Cheshunt that pilot Ellis deliberately steered the ship away from the town.

In gratitude, townspeople erected a Memorial Plaque on the wall of an administration building at CAMBRIDGE American Cemetery with an identical plaque in the library at Cheshunt. The plaques say, "To these gallant American airmen who on August 12, 1944, sacrificed their lives to prevent their aircraft from crashing on our homes. The residents of Cheshunt and Waltham Cross in the County of Hertfordshire dedicate this plaque in grateful memory." The names of the ten men on the Ellis crew are then inscribed. Three of these crewmen are interred at CAMBRIDGE: 2/Lt Ellis in grave E-1-98 whose home state was California; his awards included an Air Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters but a Purple Heart citation is not recorded. 2/Lt Cox is in grave E-6-88 from home state Ohio having been awarded an Air Medal with Oak Leaf cluster, posthumously, but there is no record of a Purple Heart citation. S/Sgt Minick is in grave E-3-778 with home state of New Jersey with awards of an Air Medal and the Purple Heart. T/Sgt Jankowski, T/Sgt Holling, and S/Sgt McGinley are interred at Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, Section E Site 37. S/St Hultengren is interred at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, Section C-25 Site 14268.

Englishman John A.W. Harris was a teenager when 2/Lt Ellis's plane crashed near Cheshunt. He was close enough to see the smoke rising from the crash site and his uncle George Chapman was the first fireman on the scene. Mr. Harris has spent several years investigating the crash. Here are his findings.

England 1944. A SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH

By John A.W. Harris

Some fifteen miles north of London, there are two small parishes, Waltham Cross and Cheshunt--two separate names but almost as one.

On 12 August 1944 just before 0800 hours, a B-24 Liberator bomber, #42-95023 from the 392nd BG, appeared from the South. It was flying very low, just below the cloud ceiling which was about 2000 feet or less. It passed over Bullsmoor Lane south of Waltham Cross, travelling northeast. The bomber was making a terrible noise--the engines, which appeared to be starting and stopping, were trailing black smoke and flames--and flying in a swooping motion.

Pilot 2/LT John D. Ellis and co-pilot F/O Samuel C. Stalsby had a desperate malfunction condition with all four engines to cope with. (This was not a rare event; on 27 August 1943 a B-24H Liberator crashed with an almost identical fault.) The Ellis B-24 flew on the east side of the main road though Waltham Cross and on to Cheshunt. I was in Leven Drive at this time and no aircraft passed west of me; the poplar trees that lined the Cambridge Arterial Road were visible at 640 yards, so the Liberator must have passed on the east side of me before making a left turn close to Hillside Avenue and then coming down on Maxwells Farm. This is basically what happened on Saturday, 12 August 1944.

The reported locations of the 392nd BG planes that saw 2/Lt John D. Ellis's plane as it left the formation.

There is one fact about this crash that cannot be challenged: fireman George Chapman had received a phone call about the crash first, then drove his vehicle and trailer from Gews Corner to Maxwells Farm, over one mile away, and ran out a 30 foot hose before the Liberator blew up. This must have taken at least fifteen minutes, so it did not crash and immediately explode as so many people have reported.

I will attempt to clear up much of the misinformation.

After the crash, there was a collection made for the families of the crew of this Liberator. Part of this collection was set aside for two memorial plaques to be made in recognition of their gallantry in avoiding homes in the two villages of Waltham Cross and Cheshunt. One plaque is in the Library at Cheshunt, and the other is on the wall of the administration building at the Cambridge American Cemetery at Madingley, so I have always thought there is more to this crash than is known. Even in Peter Rooke's Book, Cheshunt at War, he found it hard to sift out versions of this crash and that some people would be disappointed at not being included in his book. I still find this today that the information some people give to me is not true, as they were too young at the time and some lived too far away from the crash. If you drive to the locations of the information given you find it was not possible to see what was said, taking into account how the layout was in Cheshunt August 1944. Also the midair collision with a B-17 was not possible-- I will go into this later.

First, my account of that morning. Saturday, 12 August 1944, at 0800 hours was a very dreary morning. Very low, dense clouds (10/10s) made it very quiet and suppressed any noise. For some reason, I'm not sure what, I looked up. Just the other side of Cedars Park to the northwest there was a fire--very black smoke. Just a fire, I thought, but I looked back and it had become a very big fire.

Being a nosey young boy, I made my way up to the Cambridge Arterial Road, and on my way looking over to the right, the fire had become immense. We had a westerly strong breeze; the smoke was so dense that some of it was dropping to the ground just as you would see rain falling from very bad storm clouds. When I got to the top of Park Lane, there was at that time some old farm workers' cottages with some people outside. One said, "Don't go down there," but I needed to see what the fire was. The road was lined on both sides with Lombard poplar trees and planted very close together all about 100 feet tall, so I had to run down towards the fire to get a better view. I reached about 800 yards from the fire and could see what appeared to be the end of a wing sticking out from the fire; the rest was just one big black fierce fire, crackling like mad.

Then there were two low explosions (which may have been oxygen cylinders), then a poof of air and the whole thing exploded. It was very strange, the explosion--from intense black smoke, it was now a white smoke mixed with gray smoke lower down. (All this vitriol black smoke had gone; it must have been well over several hundred feet high and appeared to have a boiling motion to it.) There were large and small pieces of aluminum coming out of the top of this boiling white mass and dropping back in, again and again this continued for some time. I can only describe it as looking at a disco silver globe shrouded with white smoke. As quick as it came, it was gone. Some small pieces of debris were falling close by, so I was off. When I got back to the cottages, there was a woman with a small child that was crying. She said, "You silly boy" but I kept running back home.

The next day I went down to Theobalds Lane and looked across to the crash site. There was a lot of activity going on, the orchard on the east side of the road had a lot of the bomber and its occupants hanging in the fruit trees, I will not discuss the aftermath of this, for in the early part of the nineteen-fifties I was in the RAF and had to attended a few crash sites DH Vampires and Gloster Meteor F8 and it is not a place to be. For a very long time after the crash, if you had to pass the crater at Maxwell's Farm and it had been raining, it would fill with water and you could smell the acrid fumes coming from it.

Sometime during the next week Uncle George called in to see my mum. He had a newspaper with him and asked mum if she had heard about the American bomber that had blown up. She said yes. Uncle gave the paper to her and said, "That's me at the crash site dampening it down after it exploded." He then proceeded to tell my mum what had happened. He went on, "When I arrived, it was well alight. The road had parts of the airplane on it. A nurse came running up and said I have seen some of the airman but they are not moving."

George said, "Do not go back, it may blow up at any time!" He then ran out the first 30 feet of canvas fire hose from the trailer, and had gone back to pick up the next hose when the bomber blew up. It blew him under the fire trailer and that, he said, saved his life. My mum asked George about the airmen and his reply was, "All blown to pieces, body parts all over the place, identification must have been virtually impossible." In Peter Rooke's book, he says that the land girls had to collect human remains before they could start work on threshing the stacks.

Two ambulances were dispatched from AAF Bovingdon, Station 112, to collect the remains of the crew. The remains were then transported to the American Military Cemetery near Cambridge, England, for identification and burial.

At the time of the crash, the Maxwell's dog went missing. Some two months later while potatoes were being lifted some distance from the crash site, they thought they found the decomposed body of the dog, but it turned out to be the torso of one of the crew.

If the nurse had a visual of the cockpit and was able to see some of the crew, then the bomber was still heading west into the wind. It had not changed direction from the last sighting; the fire and smoke were going towards the tail end and across the road. 2/Lt Ellis had chosen one of only two places where he could land; the only other place was Oylers Farm some 800 yards to his left. I would suggest that he was committed to the Maxwell field but misjudged the poplar trees and that is what took off the tail stabilizers which in turn caused a heavy crash landing. Uncle George was of the opinion that the right wing was mangled in the ground but this may not have been. Of the poplar trees that lined the west side of the road, four were reduced to bare skeletons and never did recover.

The speculation of a midair collision with a B-17 G-35-DL "Tomahawk Warrior" from the 398th BG during assembly was not possible. Tomahawk Warrior took off at 0618 hours from Nuthampstead (south of Royston) and was to head to Splasher Six, a radio beacon at Frenze Hall on the edge of Diss, Suffolk (just over fifty miles northeast from its base) for group assembly. It appears this did not happen, because at 0700 this B-17 was seen over High Wycombe 42 miles southwest from Nuthampstead with one engine on fire. Shortly after, a second engine fire was seen. The B-17 then crashed at White Horse Lane, Lude Farm, with no survivors, at 0720 hours. (This time may not be correct; a more logical time would be between 0700 and 0710, but how Tomahawk Warrior arrived at High Wycombe I cannot understand as it was 42 miles southwest of where it should have been. It may have been looking for Bovingdon Air Field, AAF Station 112, to land.)

We have a crash time between 0700 and 0720 for Tomahawk Warrior and then Ellis's B-24 crashed at 0800 at Cheshunt, some thirty miles away from High Wycombe to the east. This is almost fifty minutes difference in time, and no related damage to connect either crash.

Now back to the Ellis ship, B-24H call letter Y (a/c #023). At 0528, Ellis took off from the 392nd BG at Wendling, Norfolk. At 0745 he was in a group of B-24s that were flying southeast of London over Bromley in Kent, all in formation at 14,000 feet. When Ellis dropped out of this formation, seven crews provided information on this. The account relevant to this search came from Capt James E. Muldoon (a/c #548), 578th Sqdn, who observed at 0745 hours, "Ship on left wing, nose high."

At this point in time, I estimate that Ellis had lost all power and is about to go into a deadly stall, last seen going into cloud at 10,000 feet near to Biggin Hill Airfield, 25 miles south of the crash site at Cheshunt. I have taken into account some variations and have doubled-checked all coordinates given for each B-24 that gave information at the time; they are all grouped together over Bromley in Kent except for Capt Muldoon. He was southwest of Biggin Hill. F/O Pierce (a/c #194), 577 Sqdn, was just south of Blackwall, London, 14 miles behind the main group.

So I conclude that Pilot 2/LT Ellis and Co/Pilot F/O Stalsby managed to gain some control after the stall while going down though 8,000 feet of cloud to emerge from the extremely low cloud ceiling near to Bullsmoor Lane south of Waltham Cross at a time close to 0800 hour (15 minutes to cover 25 miles does not seen to be unreasonable.)

After the crash, there were rumors that there was one survivor, a Gunner named S/Sgt William C McGinley; this was apparently confirmed by records at that time, but all this proved to be incorrect. Uncle George also confirmed that there were no survivors. So I made a search for this W.C. McGinley, and sure enough he did exist. After some time, I made contact with this gentleman and had an email back from his wife Bonnie. "John, received your letter today and Bill my husband wanted me to let you know that his plane was shot down at Waterloo, Belgium on Jan 29th 1944, he lived with the underground for seven-half months, and the German government reported Bill as killed. Bonnie said that Bill had heard of this plaque with his name on it, but it was not him." As I now know, this McGinley is from Arkansas and the McGinley from the Ellis ship (a/c #023) was from Buffalo, NY.

How strange to have two airmen at the 392nd BG Wendling with identical names and ranks! After this, I sent some info and photo of the plaque so Bill could see what it was all about.

In 1944, my town of Waltham Cross was a magnet for the US personnel. At the weekends they used to flood in--we had more pubs to the square mile than any other village in the UK, and all very old especially the Four Swans Inn (this is where in 1291 the cortege stopped for the night when returning the body of Queen Eleanor of Castile wife of King Edward 1 to Westminster Abby). Every pub and inn had a great atmosphere so they all had a good time, and all us boys had plenty of gum, and the girls had nylons so we were told!!

1944 was not a happy time for my family. We were still being bombed at night and on the 23 Feb we had a very bad air raid. As my dad was an Air Raid Warden, when the air raid warning sounded, my dad had to go to the Wardens Centre about ten minutes away. During this raid we had a big explosion close to the house, taking out some windows. When the all clear sounded, Mum said I must have a look to see if there is a hole, in case Dad falls into it on his bike on the way home. However, she found him at the side of the house all tangled up with his bike. The fragments from the explosion had killed him; he had never left because he had felt it was not safe to ride to the Wardens Centre.

My Dad served in the First World War and was in the Artillery; his job was moving Artillery with a team of horses. He survived all this carnage and death only to be killed outside his own house during a German air raid. My Mum was awarded a widow's pension of fifty pounds a year; this went up in August 1944 to sixty pounds a year.

One afternoon in the summer about 1400 hours there was the sound of heavy bombers coming across from the east. Suddenly, a long line of B-17 bombers flying north-to-south appeared, a sickening site as they had been to hell and back. They were all flying at about 1500 feet. I could only see five or six of them as they were all very low and very slow. Two of them had engines stopped. All had severe damage with large parts missing, but the worst was the one almost above my head. Its port outer engine was gone with a lot of damage also to this wing (especially where it joined the fuselage). Part of the tail fin was missing, there was a large hole just aft of the waist gunners' position (you could see right though and out the other side). Just off the starboard wing flew a P-51; it was just forward and above the wing, the P-51 pilot was in line with B-17 pilot.

Early one morning my Mum was hanging out the washing and all of a sudden a fighter plane hopped over some trees from the southwest. "God," she said, "look at that!" As it passed, we could see it was German Me-109 with a black cross on the side. It was so low just above the roof tops that the pilot had his hand up to shield the sun from his eyes, but Mum said he was giving her the German salute, never changed her mind on this.

We saw our first V-1 Doodlebug in June 1944. It was dark at the time. Mum said that it was a plane on fire; the engine stopped and there was a large explosion. Mum said, "It's crashed!" We were unaware at the time to what it was. But in October 1944, we got blown apart by one that came down in Ruthven Avenue. If this one had three more seconds of fuel, it would have dropped on us. It took till January 1945 to complete all the repairs to our house. On the very next day, a V-2 Rocket came down on the Brush Factory and blew us apart again.

We must never forget these brave young men that came, went and never asked why. This is for the Memory of B-24 #42-95023) and its crew.

Pilot           2nd Lt  Ellis, John D.
Co-Pilot        F/O     Stalsby, Samuel C.
Navigator       2nd Lt  Cox, Robert B.
Engineer        T/Sgt   Jankowski, Stanley F.
Radio Operator  T/Sgt   Holling, John H.
Gunner          S/Sgt   Hultengren, Clare W.
Gunner          S/Sgt   Minick, Frank Jr.
Gunner          S/Sgt   Cable, Jay V.
Gunner          S/Sgt   Shaeffer, Jack D.
Gunner          S/Sgt   McGinley, William C.

John A W Harris. Wormley,
Hertfordshire, England.
April 2009.

CREW LOADING LIST - MISSION #151