Earlier this year my brother asked me to help him out with some military history research, specifically the biographical details of the crew of an American airplane shot down over Italy during WWII. I love a challenge. What I found out was worthy of a Spielberg film. THREAD
Based on some vague notes made in a POW camp we had a list of names and places and we knew roughly where and when the plane went down. I guesssed that most of the airmen would be in their twenties and early thirties and used @Ancestry to find potential relatives. 
I hit lucky with the name Eugene (Gene) LaMar, finding a photograph and a reference to the incident itself. I emailed a family member of Pilot, Vincent Lewis and received an amazing response so from there on in it was a matter of piecing it all together.
The crew I was interested in was part of 485th Bombardment Group. Their website proved invaluable. 485thbg.org They were in 831st Squadron and a search of their crew list gave me their names, ranks and numbers. Now I could look for service records @Ancestry
Vincent’s son, Stephan, sent me a photo of the crew of My Briny Marlyn. Gunners at the back L-R: Wadlington, Cooper, Gorman, Geoghan, Rooth and Luetgenau. Officers at the front: Young, Kitzmiller, Lewis and Bolling.
So young. Geoghan looks like a film star.
So young. Geoghan looks like a film star.
Wadlington was replaced as Radio Operator by Cpl Harold Theodore Mahler, known as Hal. The only child of an older Jewish couple, recent immigrants from Germany, his father had died in 1938. He and his mother were barely getting by in 1940.
Sgt John Russell Cooper was a 22yr old lumberman from Florida. Ball Gunner Sgt John Richard (Dick) Gorman was from Buffalo, NY. Tail Gunner Sgt Thomas Geoghan was 20 from Fairfield, Connecticut. His mother was Italian.
S/Sgt Eugene August Rooth was their Engineer. He was 24 and a Filling Station Attendant from Lyons, Nebraska. His father was a Swedish immigrant and his mother had died in 1937. Rooth was the only crew member who was married and had had children.
Luetgenau was replaced on the day of the mission by 31yr old Nose Gunner Sgt John Howard Breshears from Benton, Missouri. The oldest of five children from a poor farming family he was working as a hired farm hand in Alameda County, California in 1940.
2nd Lt Robert Cushman (Bob) Young had spent the longest time in education. He was an aviation cadet but may also have been at drama school. Born in Delaware, he was living in Philadelphia when he enlisted.
2nd Lt Eugene Alvin (Gene) LaMar replaced Kitzmiller as Co-Pilot. Born in Seattle his mother died when he was young & he seems to have lived with relatives. His High School yearbook shows he was already in an auxiliary flying corps and his ambition was to join the Air Force. ✅
2nd Lt Pilot Vincent Paul Lewis, known as Vince, was born in 1918. Originally from Minersville, Pennsylvania (where everyone worked the mine), he was an only child and was a stenographer and typist in the civil service on enlistment.
2nd Lt Navigator William Dunn Bolling was born in 1919 in Mobile, Alabama, the sixth of seven children where his father was a Locomotive Engineer. In 1940 William was a Secretary in the US Engineers Office.
The 485th Bombardment was a B-24 group that fought with the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy. Based in Venosa, Mission 46 on 20th July 1944 was to bomb Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen. (The same day that an assassination attempt was made on Hitler at Wolf’s Lair).
Stephan Lewis gave me an idea of what it was like for his father to fly B-24s. On the morning of the mission My Briny Marlyn was unavailable and the crew were assigned a new plane 👀👀
Lewis’s crew were in plane 361. With heavy damage to his plane orders were given to the crew to bail out. Lewis was the last to jump, but not before flames from a burning engine burst into the cabin and burned his face, neck and hands.
Stephan had even managed to find out who had shot down his father’s plane: one Captain Ugo Drago, who claimed the hit of 20th July 1944 (and ended up as a commercial airline pilot). 😮
Thomas Geoghan and Eugene Rooth were killed, their parachutes shot at as they bailed out. Thomas had celebrated his 20th birthday exactly one week earlier. The incident was investigated as a war crime.
Howard Breshears also died in the line of duty.
Howard Breshears also died in the line of duty.
Dick Gorman and Hal Mahler were both captured POW and taken to Stalag Luft 3 Sagan-Silesia, Bavaria, and were later moved to Nuremberg-Langwasser 49-11. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Lu… and en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_XI…
The remaining five crew members (Bolling, Cooper, LaMar, Lewis and Young) were spotted by Italian partisans and escaped POWs in a field near San Fior. They were later escorted to safety by an Australian captain. Vince Lewis couldn’t remember his name.
I emailed Auckland Museum their reply revealed that he was Captain Walter John Heslop and his MBE citation matched what we knew of his actions. I was able to relay this information back to Stephan Lewis.
On every anniversary of that fateful July day, the crew would check in with Vince Lewis. One by one the phone calls dropped away until eventually he was the last man standing.
Seventy-six years to the day, at 10am, I will remember the crew of that B-24 and the POWs and partisans who helped the survivors escape and return home. And I will raise a glass to Vincent Lewis, aged 101. #LastManStanding
