Field was a radio operator, flying combat missions with the 306th Bomb Group from Thurleigh, Bedfordshire. On 14 February 1945, while on a mission to Dresden, his aircraft was shot down. Field bailed out, after rescuing a wounded crewmate. Another member of the crew, Al Lubojacky, died in the air. Field was not able to help him: ‘That night after I was on the ground, I had been captured, I was sitting in a jail cell, and it suddenly came to me: “Why didn’t I do more to help Al?” It might have given him a little bit of comfort & consolation to see that he wasn’t by himself.’



Prisoner of War (POW) crashed on 14 Feb 1945 in B-17 #42-97185.



Hardin Field McChesney Jr. was the son of a college teacher in Bowling Green Kentucky. Immediately following Pearl Harbor he had gone down to the recruiting office with a crowd of fellow 20 year-old college juniors to volunteer but were sent away. He was eventually called up into the Army in 1943 and initially trained as an infantryman in Alabama. He then saw a notice saying that the Air Corps was recruiting so took the initial tests and transferred to the Air Corps. At Miami Beach for assignment, he failed to make pilot but showed aptitude as a radio operator. Completing training in radio combined with aerial gunnery he was assigned to the B-17 in the summer of 1944 and shipped over to the 306th BG at Thurleigh in Bedfordshire in the December of that year.



The radio operator had to multi-task, to check and maintain all equipment, transmit and receive codes, operate ground to air and air to ground, fire the guns and distribute the anti-radar chaff. Hardin flew 10 missions - or to be precise nine and a half -before being shot down on 14th February 1945. Radio operators were the only enlisted men to attend briefings so he knew the target - Dresden - and the reason for the raid at the request of the Soviet High Command. Having dropped their bombs on the target they were jumped by three FW 190s and number two engine set on fire. 'There was a big fire in the bomb bay and communications were shot out'. With no communication the men were forced to bail out on their own initiative. Hardin went to the assistance of the waist gunner but was forced to leave the turret gunner who had been hit - something he was still haunted by 69 years later.



He bailed out - never sure whether he landed in Germany or Czechoslovakia - and was greeted by a hostile crowd who manhandled him until a very young and armed German soldier came and took him prisoner. He was first driven to a police station - where he was spat upon by locals - then kept for 3 or 4 days in a local jail before being taken by train to an interrogation center in Frankfurt where he saw his pilot and other American airmen. There followed the usual pattern at this stage of the war, of moving thousands of prisoners of war away from the advancing Russians. McChesney says they were on the road for the rest of the month landing up in a camp in Wurzburg Bavaria where, on Sunday morning 29th April, American tanks arrived. 'On Sunday afternoon we were out walking....seeing where we might be able to find some food'. General Patton arrived the next day 'that was the end of the war as far as we were concerned'.



A few days later trucks arrived and started moving the men; a couple of weeks later they were en route the USA for a 60 day furlough. After the war McChesney finished college and initially became a newspaper reporter, going on to work in Public Relations for the Federal Government. He finally worked for the Veterans Administration for 20 years and - he says - got tired of listening to those veterans who saw the war as the only important event in their lives.