Assigned 401BS/91BG [LL-B] Bangor 2/9/42; Bassingbourn 1/10/42; Missing in Action Bremen 17/4/43 with Pilot: John W. Wilson, Waist gunner: Walt Bohaczyk, Ball turret gunner: Gil Andrews, Waist gunner: Clifford Cadle, Tail gunner: Robert Ade; (5 Killed in Action); Co-pilot: Art Bushnell, Navigator: Bob Barton, Bombardier: Harry Romm, Radio Operator: Howard A. Earney, Flight engineer/top turret gunner: Norman Thompson (5 Prisoner of War); enemy aircraft & intense flak barrage and dropped back to crashed Hassel, near Bassum, 12 miles S. of Bremen, Germany; Missing Air Crew Report 15520. HELLSAPOPPIN.



17 April 1943, Target: Bremen, Aircraft Plant

Three or four minutes after the target there was a very hard jolt under the left side of “Hellsapoppin”, close in to the fuselage. An anti-aircraft shell had exploded just under the plane. Flak ripped into the left front side of the aircraft, flaking off chunks of metal from the fuselage and throwing them through the interior of the plane. At the same time, three feet of the right wing tip was blown off by a flak burst. A one and one-half foot hole appeared in the nose compartment and the nose window Plexiglas blew out. There was fire in the left wing and nose compartment. The radio room became engulfed in fire from broken oxygen lines.

The pilot, Lt Wilson, was wounded in the head and the copilot, 1Lt Arthur A. Bushnell, in the right eye, both legs, left arm, and right hand by flying aluminum. In the nose, the bombardier, 1Lt Harold Romm, was hit in the left leg by flak. Earlier, before the target, Lt Romm had been hit in the same leg by a machine gun bullet during an attack by a FW 190.

In the top turret, the flight engineer, T/Sgt Norman L. Thompson, felt the jolt and when he looked out, saw the left wing on fire. He had just seen a fighter off the left wing going after a plane below and was afraid it would come back up at “Hellsapoppin.” The enemy fighter was about 15 feet too low for Sgt Thompson to deflect his top turret guns to get off a burst. Since the intercom was shot out, Sgt Thompson was not certain what was happening to the plane. He stepped down from the turret and went into the cockpit. There he saw both pilots with their oxygen masks off and blood pouring out from under their helmets. He assumed both were dead. Sgt Thompson had not heard any firing from the gunners since “Hellsapoppin” had left the target. He believed they either had been killed by the flak and fighters or were too seriously injured to move. From the intensity of the fire, he knew “Hellsapoppin” could explode any second. Sgt Thompson took a final glance at the instruments to ensure the plane was still in level flight. He went back to the bomb bay and opened the doors, which still operated. After checking below and seeing there was no plane under him, Sgt Thompson dropped out.

Almost immediately after Sgt Thompson bailed out, the plane broke in two at the radio room. Four others some how or other managed to escape the aircraft, Lts Bushnell, Barton, and Romm and the radio operator, T/Sgt Howard A. Earney. All were wounded. These four survived to become POWs. The rest of the crew remained trapped in the falling aircraft.

“Hellsapoppin” crashed 20 miles south of Bremen. (The first of Many: First Crews of the 8th Air Force by Lowell L. Getz)