Delivered Dallas 23/6/44; Langley 28/7/44; Dow Fd 22/8/44; Assigned 748BS/457BG [A] Glatton 22/9/44; crashed on take off for Ingoldstadt 5/4/45 with Don Snow, Co-pilot: Major Ed Dozier, Navigator: Jim Guyot, Bombardier: Harry Baal, Flight engineer/top turret gunner: Joe Adams, Radio Operator: Bob Pinkney, M/op-Herb Stempler, Waist gunner: Robert Levi Todd, Tail gunner: Lt Jack Taifer (9 Killed in Action); Navigator: Bill Meng, badly wounded but survived, (Returned to Duty); exploded near base; Salvaged. MISS IDA.

Miss Ida’s final flight

On 5th April 1945 the crew of Miss Ida assembled for its briefing prior to take off, its mission No. 224 to an Ordinance Depot at Ingolstadt Airfield in Germany. At 0600hrs the fully fuelled Miss Ida laden with 12-500 GP bombs, and cases of .50 calibre ammunition began take off procedures. The first attempt failed (the plane falling back onto the runway), eventually she took off but with engine number two on fire. She slowly climbed over Holme Woods on the north side of the airfield and turned to a heading on the outward flight path over the village of Glatton about one mile away. In an attempt to abort the flight and to return to base Miss Ida fell, crashing on Glatton’s Manor Farm fields at ‘Top Hovel’. The pilot struggled to attempt a belly landing (undercarriage folded away) but she skidded along the ground, with her spinning propellers ploughed through a hedge and gouged out the tops of the deep furrows of the next field. Her starboard wing clipped a straw stack in its path and broke off, it careered through another hedge and on impact blew up at the boundary hedge of Upper Lutton Slype. The enormous explosion and earth tremors awoke the whole of the Glatton village and blew windows in on one farmhouse almost half a mile from the crash site.

First at the crash was teenager John Williams (late father of Paul Williams) who recalled the horrific scene for the book From Far Afield They Came. To his left was an enormous crater some 8ft deep and 30ft across and to his right the burning straw stack. Human carnage was strewn about the site and the smell of cordite hung low in the air. Hearing the ambulance some ¼ mile away, he went to meet the vehicle and rode back in it directing the driver to the exact spot in the nearby fields. Then he saw the sole survivor, Lt William J. P. Meng Jr. who had been thrown clear of Miss Ida when the starboard wing was ripped off and was relatively unscathed.

About three feet away from the crater, John helped the ambulance men lift the plane’s oil tank off the lower part of the navigator’s body. There was only one other body. The straw stack in the first field was like a bonfire, set alight by the fuel from the broken wing, the shells exploding with the heat spurting out from all sides. Crash crews combed the fields for survivors, human remains were collected in blankets and taken to a waiting ambulance. A timber framed cattle shed had disintegrated, its corrugated roof completely blown away and one cow in the adjoining field had its horn blown off by a piece of flying metal (it eventually had to be destroyed). Parts of the undercarriage had been blown 300 yards away and bent a plough. Once all the fields were cleared of debris, it was piled high and almost stretched from one telegraph pole to the next on the verge alongside the High Haden Road, awaiting collection. Sadly the crewmen like many other such young men before them in the prime of youth, who had dedicated their lives to freedom, lost theirs in an English field.

The crew

On the 5th April the crew of Miss Ida consisted:

Lieutenant Donald L. Snow – Pilot

Major Edward B. Dozier – Air Commander, in place of the co-pilot as Miss Ida was the lead aircraft on the mission

First Lieutenant James P Guyot – Navigator

Lieutenant William J Meng Jr – Lead Navigator (survived)

Lieutenant Harry G Vaal – Bombardier

Technical Sergeant Joseph E Adams – Air Engineer

Staff Sergeant Robert L Todd – Waist Gunner

Lieutenant Jack E Taifer – Tail Gunner

Technical Sergeant Robert W Pinckney – Radio Operator

Lieutenant Herbert L Stempler – Radar Navigator