View source for Excerpt from Heroes of the 483rd

The following is an excerpt from the book, "Heroes of the 483rd: Crew histories of a much-decorated B-17 bomber group during World War II", compiled by Jacob L. Grimm, Edited by Verne H. Cole.  This book is available for sale through the 483rd Bombardment Group (H) Association's website, [http://www.483rd.com/ http://www.483rd.com/].  The two page section reproduced here is the only section of the book that mentions [[John Thomas Wilson]].  

=Harvet A. Mitchell Crew=
===483rd Bombardment Group (Heavy), 815th Squadron===

{| class="wikitable" 
!  Name               || Position          || MIA || POW || Hometown(1944)
|-
| Harvey A. Mitchell  || Pilot             ||  *  ||  *  || Charlottesville, VA
|-
| James Sutton        || Co-pilot          ||  *  ||  *  || Culver City, CA
|-
| Roy J. Broome       || Navigator         ||  *  ||  *  || Columbia, SC
|-
| Howard C. Bonniken  || Bombardier        ||     ||     || Medford, OR
|-
| Harold G. M. Strunk || E                 ||  *  ||  *  || Reading, PA
|-
| Matthew F. Thompson || Radio             ||  *  ||  *  || Long Island, NY
|-
| John Nelson         || Nose Gunner       ||  *  ||  *  || Brooklyn, NY
|-
| August D. Winnego   || Ball Turret       ||  *  ||  *  || L'Anse, MI
|-
| [[John Thomas Wilson|John T. Wilson]]      || Tail Gunner       ||  *  ||  *  || Emlenton, PA
|-
!  Others             ||                   ||     ||     || 
|-
| Amburse J. Triplett || Left Waist Gunner ||  *  ||  *  || Matewan, WV
|-
| William F. Wilson   || Gunner            ||  *  ||  *  || Crawford, GA
|}


The crew assembled at Lincoln, NE,
and shipped to Alexandria, LA, in October
1944. After 10 weeks of intensive
combat training, they returned to the staging
area at Lincoln on 28 December 1944.
At Lincoln, they were issued combat
clothing and equipment.

From Lincoln they traveled by train
to Camp Patrick Henry, VA, and boarded
a Liberty ship at Newport News 18 January
1945. They docked at Marseilles,
France, and spent a few days at “Pointe
d’Rouge,” the estate of a champagne heiress,
then boarded a French ship, Ville
d’Oran, manned by British sailors. The
ship dropped off some “red fez” Algerian
troops at Algiers before continuing on to
Naples, arriving about 5 February 1945.
Near Caserta, they boarded a “40 x 8”
cattle car for the trip to Foggia. A jeep
took them to Sterparone.

Mitchell began flying orientation missions
early in March. His targets were
Linz, Wiener Neustadt and Graz. Most of
his crew, plus Triplett and Wilson, joined
him for the first time on 14 March 1945,
and they went down.

Their target was Almasfuzito, Hungary,
and they were flying in B-17 42-
32017, Sweet 17. After they left the target,
other planes in the formation observed
the Number 3 engine was feathered,
and a radio message indicated a loss
of oxygen. As they fell behind and below
the formation, a message indicated they
would try for the Russian lines to the east.
Harvey Mitchell recalled the events that
day:

“Over Almasfuzito the ‘unlucky flak’
hit, in what was otherwise a ‘milk run,’
severed an oil line to the Number 3 engine,
and while Sutton knew to hit the
feathering button as soon as pressure began
to drop, it dropped too quickly and
the prop came almost to full-feathered,
and then went back to unfeathered and
proceeded to windmill. A short time later
Sutton reported smoke coming from the
engine and it was about then I decided
not to put the crew at risk of explosion
and ordered the bailout at about 10,000
feet. Sutton stayed in the cockpit with me
and Broome asked if he could stay as long
as we did, and I agreed if he would stand
by the escape hatch in the waist. (The
front hatch was frozen shut, and the bomb
bay filled with armed bombs.)

“Sometime in there the windmilling
prop froze up, shuddered violently and
broke off at the shaft. We came down
through an undercast, and as we broke
clear a small flak battery began tracking
our crippled airplane almost like a sitting
duck. I told Sutton we had to get out of
there. He headed for the waist, and I
leaned over to set the auto pilot, and as I
did, a flak burst shattered the front window
and lodged in the back of my seat.
Needless to say I rolled out and went to
the waist, and first Broome, then Sutton,
then I, bailed out.

“We landed outside a village called
Kotor, Hungary. Broome and I were fairly
close together and we were immediately
captured by a cordon of Hungarian troops.
Sutton was further away, and as we later
learned, was captured by troops under the
leadership of a German officer. I had
sprained my left ankle on landing and
Sutton had sprained his right ankle.
Broome and I were taken to a vacant room
of a school building in the village, and
sometime later Sutton was brought in.
From what he told us, he was beaten by
the German officers using a riding crop
or swagger stick, and I don’t think civilians
were involved. Neither do I think he
was seriously injured physically. He felt
humiliated and was just mad because as
he said, ‘In a fair fight I could have killed
that s.o.b.’

“Incidentally, when we left our formation
I had asked Ray to give me a heading
for what was termed a ‘safe landing
field’ in Russian control at Pecs, Hungary.
What we didn’t know was that the battle
lines left a deep bulge under German control
and we flew right down the middle
of the bulge.

“Early morning March 15, we three
were taken outside and boarded one of
two horse-drawn two-seater buggies. The
second one carried a guard detail. The ride
took several hours, and we were taken to
the nearest city — Nagy Kanisza —
which was a collection point for captives.
We spent the night in the city jail and the
next morning we were herded outside,
along with others, to stand in the back of
a truck which ran on a charcoal burner.
That was when my crew was reunited in
its entirety, to my tremendous relief.

“I would like to note one incident on
our way to Nuremberg. On March 21 we
were headed on foot to Amstetten, Austria,
and about 1.5 km outside the town
our Volksturmer guards heard air raid sirens
ahead and decided we should wait
there for the ‘all clear.’ We went to one
side of the valley we had been walking
through, and lay down on a grassy knoll.
With warm sunshine — for a change, and
through sheer exhaustion, I think we all
went to sleep in short order. We were suddenly
and most shockingly awakened by
500-pounders going off no more than a
football field away. That was the beginning
of a three-hour-long maximum effort
raid by our own 15th Air Force (probably
20 March 1945). We watched wave
after wave, coming in from various directions,
and if an occasional plane was
not in tight formation we prayed he would
get back in before dropping its bombs.

“After the raid, our guards insisted
over our objections that we had to go into
town, and we would be all right if we
stayed close together and kept quiet. They
were almost right until we got to the town
square, where two SS officers were sitting
in an open car. They ordered our
guards to bring us there, and proceeded
to harangue us as ‘murderous American
swine’ until they gathered a crowd. Then
they incited the crowd to pitch into us with
buggy whips, fists, kicks, etc. until they
knocked us down in a heap. They made
us get up and knocked us down twice
more. Once my head was sticking out and
got kicked by a hob-nailed boot, I guess,
splitting my scalp. After we got up a third
time, a one-armed civilian started a shouting
match with the SS officers, and our
guards edged us away through a door into
someone’s courtyard, where there was an
unexploded bomb.

“That was the end of that memorable
day.”

William Wilson had trained with the
Henry Froelich crew at Dyersburg, TN.
Marriott’s records indicate Wilson previously
flew a tour with the 8th Air Force.

Triplett also previously served in the
8th Air Force with the 452nd Bomb
Group. His missions from England included
a shuttle mission to Russia on 11
September 1944, when they bombed Chemits,
Germany. On the way home, 13
September 1944, they landed at the 483rd
Bomb Group in Italy after bombing Drosgyor,
Hungary.

The 452nd Bomb Group returned to
England on 17 September, but Triplett’s
crew remained behind when their pilot
became ill. After more than a week at Sterparone,
the crew returned to England and
was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group.

On his seventh mission, Triplett and
his crew headed for Bielefeld, Germany,
when Number 3 engine caught fire shortly
after takeoff, with flames burning the
horizontal tail section. They bailed out
over King’s Lynn on the east coast of
England. Two men were injured. The
crew was broken up and the enlisted men
were sent to the 15th Air Force.

Triplett and crew member Kennerd
Wilson were assigned to the 483rd Bomb
Group and the 815th Squadron. They remained
together as tent mates, but they
did not fly together. Wilson usually flew
with Perry Holden. Wilson recalls that he
and Triplett made “lots of friends” at Sterparone
on their original visit with the
452nd Bomb Group.

Broome previously served in the Army
before entering flight training.