B-24 Liberator 42-42348 nicknamed "Lady Shamrock" was assigned to the 445th Bomb Group. On 23 September 1944 the aircraft, flown by a skeleton crew of seven men from the 458th Bomb Group led by Second Lieutenant George Koehn, took off from Horsham St Faith on a flight to deliver fuel to Saint Dizier in France. On return from Saint Dizier, the aircraft exploded in flight over the Netherlands, killing all but one member of the crew on board. Dutch coast guard later recovered the wreckage.



Lawrence Fick, a navigator of the 458th Bomb Group, who served with Koehn's crew, investigated the loss of the aircraft in the mid-1960s, and suggested that the aircraft could have drifted off course on its return journey and encountered German flak.