From Stars and Stripes, 23 Dec 1943: "The first combat mission of Staff Sergeant Kenneth Mace, a Fortress gunner, was no dry run. When he stepped out of his plane after the Bremen raid, bystanders noticed his trousers' seat was covered with ice".



B-17G #42-97578 stalled after take off for a flight to Deenethorpe and crashed into a barracks on 24 Mar 1944. Killed in Action (KIA).



The Yelden crash is extensively documented within Bill Donald's book "JOHN BURN ONE-ZERO-FIVE". This ship was a radar equipped PFF (Pathfinder) and was designated to be flown by another crew of the 401st BG as lead ship in the mission to Schweinfurt. Pilot Sellers and his crew were to fly the plane from their base at Chelveston, across to the 401st BG at Deenethorpe during the early morning hours of the 24th. The ship would then have been flown by an experienced PFF crew on the mission to Schweinfurt. However the B-17 crashed on take off near the village of Yeldon England, she was fully loaded with both fuel and bombs ready for the next days mission. 21 people were killed including the crew of 11, 8 servicemen of the 1121 Quartermaster company barracked in the village and two civilian children perished in the incident, Edwin Keith and Monica Ruth Phillips - killed in their families bungalow.