The American pilot felt his plane wobble within the sky close to the coast of West Sussex, England, the place the seashore gleamed beneath him, and the emerald meadow pastures lay forward on June 22, 1944.
He and 9 different crew members aboard a B-24 Liberator had simply been jolted by a shell from a German antiaircraft gun that tore by way of the aircraft’s steel, forcing the pilot, First Lt. William B. Montgomery, right into a dire state of affairs as he tried to fly from Paris again to base camp in Britain.
However the pilot with the U.S. Military Air Forces — 24 years previous and identified again house in Ford Metropolis, Pa., as a soccer star who favored to put on his golden fraternity school ring — appeared to know the trouble was futile. He allowed his crewmates to parachute off the aircraft as he stored it aloft in West Sussex, historians stated. Seven of them did, and survived.
Lieutenant Montgomery and two others remained on the aircraft, which nose-dived and crashed on open farmland, making a fiery crater that buried plane components and human stays roughly 20 ft underground. They got here to be counted among the many casualties of World Warfare II.
For practically eight many years, officers had designated Lieutenant Montgomery’s stays as “unrecoverable.” However this month, after a journey that spanned generations and concerned obscure clues from farmers and DNA testing, an agency with the Department of Defense said it had recognized the stays of the lieutenant. Lieutenant Montgomery will quickly be buried at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery in a ceremony that shall be witnessed by a septuagenarian nephew who was named after him.
“I used to be so shook,” the youthful William Montgomery, 76, of Roswell, Ga., stated in an interview concerning the second when he was advised of the invention. “I imply, shedding tears.”
The lieutenant’s namesake had heard tales about his uncle from his father, Thomas Braden Montgomery, who died in 2010. How Lieutenant Montgomery had saved the lives of seven males in Europe, within the midst of an epochal battle towards the Axis powers. How he had captained the soccer staff and observe staff at Washington & Jefferson Faculty. And the way, at an inch shy of 6 ft and about 190 kilos, he had change into a robust pilot able to flying immense plane like a B-24, which may weigh greater than two dozen tons.
“I think about that the households of these seven troopers had been very joyful that my uncle was an excellent pilot,” Mr. Montgomery stated.
Andy Saunders, an writer in Britain who researches aviation historical past, had lengthy tried to piece collectively the place Lieutenant Montgomery’s stays might be.
In 1974, Mr. Saunders started investigating an plane loss involving an American B-24 that had presumably crashed close to Arundel, close to the English Channel with about 3,000 residents.
One of many employees on a farm close to Arundel, which was run by an area man named John Vendor, advised Mr. Saunders in 1974 that throughout the warfare, he had gone to the crash website and picked up a bracelet inscribed with the identify “Montgomery.” The bracelet was given to the authorities on the time, and it’s not identified what turned of it after that.
Mr. Vendor additionally shared with Mr. Saunders in 1974 that at about 9 p.m. on June 22, 1944, he was a boy and preparing for mattress when he heard “a thunderous scream of a aircraft in an influence dive,” based on contemporaneous interview notes from Mr. Saunders.
The boy slipped out to the crash website and noticed “little signal of particles within the grass area, solely the grime round 5 craters” and little or no smoke. The subsequent morning, Mr. Vendor stated, he may hear “ammunition exploding underground.”
Mr. Saunders requested the Air Pressure Historic Analysis Company for a report concerning the crash, and it documented Lieutenant Montgomery’s actions that day intimately by way of first-person accounts from surviving crew members. It additionally recognized the 2 different crew members who had remained on the aircraft, and likewise died on that day, as John J. Crowther, a flight officer whose physique was discovered yards from the crash website, and Sgt. John Holoka Jr., whose stays haven’t but been publicly recognized.
‘Put together to bail out.’
The crew had been despatched to bomb an airfield near the Palace of Versailles close to Paris, which was beneath German occupation, after they had been struck by flak, prompting them to flee towards West Sussex, the place seven crew members parachuted, the report states.
“After I bought out of the aircraft and my chute had opened, I noticed the aircraft, and in about 30 seconds or much less, it began into an influence dive and crashed into the bottom,” Second Lt. Herbert Ok. King stated within the report.
One other crew member, Second Lt. D.M. Henderson, recalled within the report that they had been close to the English coast “when the order came to visit the interphone: put together to bail out.”
A surprised Mr. Saunders searched the positioning in 1974 with others however didn’t discover any stays as he shoveled the grime — simply machine weapons and components of engines.
For a number of many years, he stated that he sought methods to persuade the U.S. Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company to research the positioning. Lastly, as soon as in 2019 and once more in 2021, the company despatched crews there and ran DNA checks on bone fragments discovered deep underground, which nonetheless smelled of hydraulic fluid many years later, stated Mark Khan, a researcher of army historical past.
These fragments had been “very unsubstantial,” apart from a tooth and a boot that had preserved bones from a foot within it, which can have belonged to both Lieutenant Montgomery or Sergeant Holoka, stated Mr. Khan, who assisted the archaeological staff.
Different gadgets had been discovered, Mr. Khan stated, together with a bracelet that possible belonged to Sergeant Holoka and the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity ring that Lieutenant Montgomery wore.
That was the merchandise that the lieutenant’s nephew noticed just lately when a army official from Fort Benning, the army base in Georgia, got here to his home to go over funeral preparations, Mr. Montgomery stated. The ring was barely bent, and its previous golden sheen had acquired the faint glint of a brass vintage.
He took it out of a sealed proof bag, then checked out a photograph of Lieutenant Montgomery smiling along with his squadron. Mr. Montgomery leaned in nearer. Wrapped round his uncle’s finger, he noticed, was a darkish band. “The ring,” he stated.
Jack Begg contributed analysis.
