Eugene Scott Bush was the second son and youngest child of Kansas farmers, Robert T Bush and Ola M (Osborn) Bush. He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps on 04 Aug 1943.



Eugene served as the Tail Gunner on the B-17G, #446140 'Miss Lace,' on 30 Nov 1944 when it encountered heavy flak over the target, the Brabag Synthetic Oil Plant just northeast of Zeitz, Germany. After a near explosion of flak, the plane lost its right wing and entered a vertical spiral while ablaze. Bush escaped the burning plane, deployed his parachute, and floated down to the ground.



From his vantage point suspended beneath an open chute, Eugene was the nearest of two witnesses to view the demise of his plane. He testified to the events that he witnessed after he was released from a German POW camp in 1945. He stated that about three minutes after the bomb drop over the mission's target, the plane was hit, went into a spin, and he jumped. Once he got his bearings, he saw that his plane was ablaze and in a dive. Small pieces of debris were braking away from the plane and raining down upon him. The plane's tail and waist broke away from the fuselage as a unit, but he noted no other parachutes in the sky.



Upon reaching solid ground, he set out across country in an attempt to evade capture. He made it to within 59 miles of the Czech border when he was picked up at the Altenburg Rail Station in Altenburg, Thurindia, Germany. Held as a Prisoner of War, he was returned to the States and discharged from the US Army Air Corps on 07 Nov 1945.



After the War, Eugene graduated from Kansas State College of Agricultural and Applied Sciences in Manhattan, KS, married, and established a family.



Sole survivor of the crash of the B-17G "Miss Lace." German POW -- Survivor