S/Sgt Dunham and four of his crewmates were killed in action on February 20, 1945 when their aircraft, B-17G 43-38596, was shot down by flak after bombs away over Nuremberg, Germany. The aircraft took a direct hit during the turn away from the target, the railroad station at Nuremberg, and exploded within 30 seconds. S/Sgt Dunham's crewmate, S/Sgt Raffel, was trying to help him exit the ball turret when the aircraft exploded. The Germans reported that the aircraft crashed at Röthenbach an der Pegnitz, 10 kilometers east of Nuremberg, between 1300 and 1400 hours. The dead were buried at the cemetery in Fürth, Germany, just west of Nuremberg.



Staff Sergeant Hiram Donald Dunham (called Donald and Donnie), Army serial number 37490373, was born at Yankton, South Dakota on December 9, 1925. He was the youngest of ten children of Hiram Eugene Dunham (10 Aug 1876 – 28 Jul 1955), who was born in Dakota Territory; and Gertrude Lilly 'Gertie' (Kendall) Dunham (5 Oct 1884 – 23 Nov 1967), who was born at Hartland, Waukesha County, Wisconsin. His parents married in 1902. His father was a farmer.



He registered for the draft at Yankton on his eighteenth birthday, December 9, 1943. He was 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed 124 pounds, and had brown eyes and brown hair. He graduated from Yankton High School in 1944. His senior class photo in the school's 1944 yearbook is accompanied by this entry:

------------

Donald Dunham "A good

scout and a good friend."

------------

He enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained at Las Vegas, Nevada and Tampa, Florida. He completed Army Air Forces aerial gunnery training and was assigned as ball turret gunner on the heavy bomber crew of Lt Floyd W. McCullough. The McCullough crew completed crew training in the States and departed Hunter Field, Georgia on November 26, 1944, bound for England via the North Atlantic ferry route. The crew was assigned to the 837th Bomb Squadron, 487th Bomb Group, at Army Air Forces Station 137 near Lavenham, Suffolk, England. They arrived in England by December 7, 1944, and became part of the 8th U.S. Army Air Force in Europe.