B-17 #4230860 collided with another aircraft, #42-3265, returning from mission to bomb Bremen on 16 December 1943. Killed in Action (KIA). This is the official report.



A witness to the accident reports, "We made a wide turn and headed out over the Zuider Zee...I saw fighters with swastikas closing in on us at over 400 miles per hour..They shot by so fast I couldn't aim my gun...Explosions followed, and planes in our squadron started going down. Looking behind and above us, I saw Schroeder's plane explode. I saw Clarence Kelly's ball turret fall away free from what had been the belly of the plane...We went on to the briefing room and tried to tell what happened. Apparently somebody decided that Schroeder's plan had collided with another B-17 from our squadron...But that's not the way I remember it. Our ball turret gunner Dutch Eisenhower, our tail gunner Vic Hunt, and I all thought the German fighters shot it down." --from THE COLD BLUE SKY by Jack Novey. Howell Press, 1997. Novey was a waist gunner in the same squadron.