Service # 37375829

Rank Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army Air Forces

Unit 511th Bomber Squadron, 351st Bomber Group, Heavy

Entered Service From Missouri

Date of Death November 3, 1943

Status Missing in Action

Memorialized Tablets of the Missing



Shot down 3 November 1943 in B-17 #4229852 'Fireball. ' Killed in Action (KIA).Harlan D. Burton was born on August 25, 1921 in Sedalia, Missouri. He was the son of Ollie and Euba Burton, and had 4 siblings. He attended Broadway Elementry School before going to Smith-Cotton Junior-Senior High School in May, 1936. At age 16, he became a truck driver, hauling cattle for his father from Sedalia to St. Louis. On December 20, 1941, he married Verna Louise Newton.



He was inducted into the Army on August 5, 1942 (one account gives this date as the 19th) at Jefferson Barracks in St. Lois, Missouri. His first assignment was Las Vegas, Nevada. Subsequent assignments led him to Salt Lake City, Utah; Blythe, California; Casper, Wyoming; and Salina, Kansas.



Burton was assigned to the 351st Bomb Group and reported to Polebrook, England in early 1943. Here, he was assigned to a combat crew of the 511th Bomb Squadron. Alternating as waist gunner and ball turret gunner, he flew 25 missions from June 22 to November 3, 1943. On November 3, the crew was tasked for the mission to bomb submarine pens and facilities at Wilhelmshaven, Germany.



During the bomb run, enemy fighters attacked the formation. A lower squadron B-17 pilot was shot through the head, and his aircraft pitched up, colliding with the aircraft in which Burton was flying. The mid-air collision severely damaged the aircraft, and as it dropped out of formation, it was attacked by three German fighters. The waist gunners shot down two of them, and just as Burton disposed of the third one, the B-17 exploded. Spinning downward, it crashed in the sea off Mellum Island, North of Wilhelmshaven.



Six of the crew survived and were taken prisoner by the Germans. The Germans eventually recovered three bodies which they identified as the pilot, co-pilot, and engineer. Burton's body was never recovered. His name is inscribed on the Tablets of the Missing at the American Cemetery at Margraten, Holland.



In May, 1944, Burton's status was changed from MIA to KIA. In 1952, a committee attempted to verify Burton was indeed dead. German records and local stories led them to the conclusion that the body was non-recoverable, and Burton was declared dead in 1953.



He is remembered on a World War II memorial in Pettis County, Missouri.