Crashed near Ruhland on 2 Mar 45 in B-17 #42-97979 'Leading Lady', Prisoner of War (POW).

Was on mission to Dresden.

this was his 19th mission over Dresden, Germany, he was in the lower lead element of the formation, and beginning his bomb run when the German fighters attacked. The Germans hit them head on instead of from the rear like usual. In the first pass, they hit four aircraft hard enough to bring them down. Vaadi’s aircraft Leading Lady] was burning and shot up at about 28,000 feet. He started dropping down to try and keep up with the formation but at about 16,000 feet the aircraft went out of control. He had his crew to practice their emergency training a lot and he attributes the fact that everyone got out of the disabled craft alive to that training. As the co-pilot, Brownie started to bail out, the B-17 rolled and exploded. The concussion blew the co-pilot and Vaadi out of the hatch. He does not remember being blown out, but due to his training his chute opened, and he made it down. Chest Chute - It was only hooked on one side. Other aircraft crews were not so lucky. Vaadi says he landed on the airfield that the German fighters had taken off from. As he hit the ground, he had a German soldier pointing a Luger at his face.



On 4 April 1945, they started a 120-kilometer march to Stalag VII A (Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager VII-A), Moosburg, Germany.

Vaadi and his group arrived about a week or 10 days before the end of the war. Tanks arrived and knocked down the fence. A prisoner saw George S. Patton standing up in his jeep regardless of the bullets flying around him. Patton told them he would help as much as he could.



Eugene Vaadi stayed in the service, and was flying B-29 and his crew were shot down by MiG-15s [Annotator's Note: Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, over China on 12 January 1953.

Eugene Vaadi had been a prisoner in China since January 1953. August 1955 he and his crew members were called in separately to the head of the prison and informed they were being freed. They were then given items from the Red Cross that they had been denied the previous three years. They traveled through China from Peking, to Canton to Hong Kong – throwing all of their Red Cross items out to the locals. Their Chinese guard was begging them not to do this so he wouldn’t get in trouble. When they arrived at the border, the paperwork for the exchange took a few hours. They were handed off to the British who then took them to the Americans who took them to the Hong Kong Country Club to get new clothes and food. They did not go straight home to the United States but instead got on a Douglas C-124 Globemaster II to Clark Field, Luzon, Philippines] and then back to Japan and from Japan to Hawaii. They then went to Travis Field in California. Vaadi, Captain John W. Buck, USAF and Major William E. Baumer, USAF were put on a plane back to the east. Vaadi was dropped at Rome, New York where he met his parents. He returned to duty and went to the 1611th Air Transport Wing that later became the Air Force One group flying important US government and military officials. He flew the Atlantic routes and loved that duty. 1959-1961, Vaadi volunteered to go to Tripoli, Libya, where he had 3200 personnel under his command as the Deputy Base Commander. He said that was excellent duty. He retired from the Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1968 after serving 26 years. In conclusion, Vaadi says that he enjoyed his service, including flying Lockheed C-130 Hercules during the War in Vietnam.