Louis Loevsky

Military
media-7040.jpeg UPL 7040 Lt. Len Smith (Left) & Lt. Lou Loevsky (Right) standing beside the tail of a destroyed German a/c after being liberated from Stalag Luft III - April 1945
Notice Loevsky's "salute" to the Germans!
466th BG - 786th BS 466th Bomb Group collection

466th BG Historian

Object Number - UPL 7040 - Lt. Len Smith (Left) & Lt. Lou Loevsky (Right) standing beside the tail of a destroyed German a/c after being liberated from Stalag Luft III - April...

B-24H #41-29434 'Terry and the Pirates' was involved in a mid-air collision after the other a/c was hit by flak over the target of Berlin and crashed W of Oranienburg, GR on 22 Mar 1944. Prisoner of War (POW).



POW

Connections

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Units served with

Three little girls hold up a balloon celebrating the 100th mission of the 466th Bomb Group in front of a B-24 Liberator (serial number 42-95592) nicknamed "Black Cat". Handwritten caption on reverse: 'On our 100 Mission party Day- 18 Aug 1944, Attlebridge, 466th- wouldn't it be something if we could identify these girls? How could I do it?'
  • Unit Hierarchy: Group
  • Air Force: Eighth Air Force
  • Type Category: Bombardment

People

  • Military/Civilian/Mascot: Military
  • Nationality: American
  • Unit: 466th Bomb Group 786th Bomb Squadron
  • Service Numbers: O-532947
  • Highest Rank: Second Lieutenant
  • Role/Job: Pilot

Aircraft

  • Aircraft Type: B-24 Liberator
  • Nicknames: Terry & The Pirates
  • Unit: 466th Bomb Group 786th Bomb Squadron

Missions

Places

Aerial photograph of Attlebridge airfield, looking north, the fuel store and a T2 hangar are in the upper centre, 31 January 1946. Photograph taken by No. 90 Squadron, sortie number RAF/3G/TUD/UK/51. English Heritage (RAF Photography).
  • Site type: Airfield
  • Known as: Attlebridge Arsenal, Station 120
  • Site type: Prisoner of war camp
  • Known as: Stalag Luft III, Sagan, Germany
  • Site type: Prisoner of war camp
  • Known as: Stalag 7a, Moosburg

Events

Event Location Date Description

Enlisted

26 December 1941

Other

Shot Down/Captured

Malz, Oranienburg, Germany 22 March 1944 As we neared Berlin, we were on initial point," Loevsky said during a phone interview. "When you're on the IP, you may not deviate from your path you fly the straight and narrow and drop your bombs." A sudden burst of flak destroyed an engine of the bomber. In the shock of the explosion, the plane careened into another B-24, disabling engines 2 and 3, and knocking the other bomber from the sky. Loevsky, the navigator, was able to help nose gunner Len Smith semiconscious because of injuries and lack of oxygen from the forward turret and get him out of the plane for the parachute ride down. "The pilot, Bill Terry, was standing at the control column, making final adjustments as the plane was going earthward," Loevsky said. "He yelled, 'Hey, Lou, wait for me!' So, I waited until he left the control column and started across the flight deck, and I bailed out." Loevsky was well aware of the World War II Germans' penchant for shooting airmen drifting helplessly down after leaving a disabled plane, so he chose to free fall until the last possible second to escape the gunners. He said he saw Terry's chute open above him. Terry had deployed his chute while Loevsky was still falling. In those seconds of free fall, with adrenalin pumping and thoughts flashing through his mind, Loevsky considered whether to leave on his dog tags tags with an H for Hebrew or to rip them off. It was an enigma for a Jew parachuting into World War II Berlin. "I had gone to temple occasionally for a wedding, bar mitzvah or funeral I'm not a religious person but I was brought up as a Jew, so there's an H on the dog tags. The purpose is so they can give the proper burial," he explained. "I thought, if I leave it on and fall into the hands of the Gestapo, I'm not a POW, I'm a KIA killed in action. But if I rip them off and throw them away, I'm not a POW, I'm a spy. Without dog tags you risk being killed as a spy. So, I left them on." After his chute opened and he was still heading downward at inordinate speed, he remembers picking a tree to try to slow his rapid descent. By then, he already was attracting rifle fire from a nearby army camp. "Fortunately, I crashed the branches clean off one side of the tree as I came down. The chute caught on top of the tree, my feet whipped over my head, and I blacked out briefly. When I came to, I had a back injury and a gun in my ribs." Regular German soldiers won an argument with SS troopers over Loevsky's custody, and he was taken to prison camp. He never saw Terry again. Loevsky can still see every detail of his own capture, though. "The troops were marching me through the streets of Berlin to headquarters, and the civilian crowds were getting bigger and uglier," he said. "They wanted to have a necktie party." He figures they had seen John Wayne movies. "In perfect American not perfect English, perfect American they said 'String him up! Hang him, lynch him!' So, the two troops, one on each side of me, had to draw their side arms to keep the civilians at bay." A body that German officials said was that of Terry, was shown unmistakably to be false by dental records. Sealey said research her son has done produced a German document that said Terry was found in a park about 200 yards from the crashed plane. She doesn't like to talk about the paper because it is stamped with a Nazi swastika. Loevsky, who is 84 and began searching for his buddies when he was 64, thinks civilians may have been involved in Terry's disappearance. "There is the possibility that the civilians got hold of him and did a number on him," he said. "I think it would have been embarrassing to the German government to turn over his actual body. That's my opinion." Although the mystery remains, Loevsky will be in Lubbock Monday to say his final farewell to a friend from World War II. The American Legion will play taps at the Lubbock memorial. And though only a plaque in Plainview Cemetery serves in lieu of a grave site, Terry hasn't been forgotten after 60 years.

Other

Prisoner of War (POW)

Zagan, Poland 23 March 1944 - 1 May 1945 Stalag Luft III

Died

North Caldwell, NJ, USA 24 February 2013

Born

Lyndhurst, New Jersey, USA

Revisions

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Sources

466th BG Archives

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466th BG Historian

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Sources

Drawn from the records of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, Savannah, Georgia / MACR 3492 / Mighty Eighth Air Force Heritage Museum Membership List, July 2000; MACR 3492, Losses of the 8th & 9th Air Forces / Paul Andrews, Project Bits and Pieces, 8th Air Force Roll of Honor database

Louis Loevsky: Gallery (1 items)