George Knight Pond was born in Malone, NY on October 26, 1918, he was the son Floyd Osborne Pond and Lillian (Leduc) Pond. Mr. Pond graduated from Franklin Academy (Malone, NY) in 1936 and attended Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. In 1940, with the call to duty in World War II, he became a flying cadet in the U.S. Army Air Corps. and after graduation he served as second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. On March 8, 1944, after flying 17 combat missions with his B-17 named the Bad Penney, Lieutenant Pond's replacement B-17, named the Iron Ass, was shot down by German fighter planes (Focke Wolf 190's) as the lead plane of a force of 300 B-17's while on a raid over Berlin. Captured, he spent over a year as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 1, the Barth-on-the-Baltic prison camp in Germany. Here he would serve as godfather to 6 fellow prisoners. Freed in April of 1945, First Lieutenant Pond was awarded several prestigious medals of honor including the air medal with Two Oak Leaf Combat Clusters, the POW Medal, and the American Campaign Medal with Bronze Star, but perhaps the most important honor was his selection to man the controls of the plane that flew the prisoners of war, now freed from the prison camp, out of Germany and back to England. George Pond passed away in his home surrounded by his family on May 28, 2013.

Apparently shot down by fighters on a mission to Erkner, Berlin on 8 Mar 1944, B-17G #42-39988 'Iron Ass' was believed to have crashed NE of Helmstedt, Gr after the crew baled out (edit: they did not bale out, George Pond successfully landed the plane). Prisoner of War (POW).



POW