B-17 Flying Fortress B-17 42-31080 / Hey Moitle

History of
B-17 42-31080 / Hey Moitle

B-17 42-31080 / Hey Moitle Details

On February 10th 1944, we went on a mission to Brunswick Germany. Our target was an airfield outside of Brunswick. We had a running fight with German aircraft to the target. We dropped our bombs on target and soon after our no. 4 engine was shot out of the wing. And no. 3 engine was burning.

Our pilot 2nd Lt. Paul McWilliams came on the inter phone and told us to prepare to abandon ship. I was in the tail position. I had my chute on. I backed a little to my escape hatch. Pulled the emergency on it and hatch would not open. It was either stuck or frozen. While trying to open it. Plane went into dive. I was struggling to open the hatch. Just as I was about to give up, the plane exploded.

I did not hear any explosions but did feel an awful big gust of wind, and next thing I knew I was hurling through the air with my mind telling me to pull my ripcord.

I couldn’t move my right arm. But pulled the cord with my left hand and as I did so, my chute snapped open. And I could see small pieces of the plan drifting down. The biggest piece was a tip of a wing about 6 or 7 feet long. I did not see aging on the ground.

I could not guide my chute because of my arm and landed in a backyard of a home. Some minutes later two German soldiers came and took me to the hospital in that town. The town’s name is Konigslauchter Germany. While in the basement of the hospital they brought in the ball turret gunner and the navigator.

The navigator said that he had managed to jump, just as the plane went into the dive. Before he jumped, he looked up into the cockpit and seen the pilot and said that he had a glazed look on his face. And that the crew chief Robert L. Scott was in the cockpit helping with the controls. As the navigator was about to jump he also said that the bombardier 2nd Lt. Thomas Mooney was behind him read to jump as soon as the navigator jumped. To my knowledge he never jumped, for we never seen him in the hospital.

The ball turret gunner Marion L. Saar was also thrown out of the ship by the explosion. I did not see him as I floated down. He told me that he had come out of the turret and managed to put his chute on. When the ship went into the dive, he was pinned to the floor of the ship and that he had seen the radio operator Erwin E. La Mont, a few feet from him struggling to release his flak suit from him and that Sgt. Saar could not help him and then the ship blew up. 

(After) or rather that same evening February 10th Me and Lt. Shapiro were in a bed in that hospital. When in walked an English speaking officer, a German Luftwaffe officer with a slip of paper in his hand and wanted us to identify the names for him. They were the names of the pilot, copilot, bombardier, crew chief and radio operator.  He said that they were killed in the plane when it blew up.

He did not show any of their personal effects and we did not see their bodies. We did not identify the names for him. I and Shapiro told him that we never hear of them fellows.

That was the first and last time we ever heard anything of them.

Leonard A. La Marco
Tail Gunner

Source: MACR 2371

B-17 42-31080 / Hey Moitle Crew