Shot down 14 October 1943 in B-17 #42-31059. Prisoner of War (POW).

Missing Air Crew Report #842

Bruce Kilmer

Pilot, 384th Bomb Group, Grafton-Underwood, England

I regret that I only knew Bruce in his latter years. In his eighties, just getting around was clearly a chore. However, I am unable to conjure up any memory of Bruce without him wearing a smile. He was that kind of guy. Difficult though it was, he traveled around to schools and museums giving talks about the war, often with his friend and fellow airman, Bob Bily.

During WWII Bruce was a B-17 pilot in the 384th Bomb Group. Bruce had flown 17 missions into occupied Europe before October 14, 1943, but he knew this would be a rough one as soon as he saw the target, Schweinfurt, Germany. This would be the second trip to the famed ball bearing plants in the Schweinfurt area.

The first one in August of the same year had cost the 8th Air Force over 60 bombers and their crews. Since then the factories had been repaired and the air defenses strengthened. Bruce instinctively knew there would be a lot of empty bunks in Grafton-Underwood that night, but hoped one of them wouldn’t be his.

War planners had determined that the best use of strategic bombers was to hit key industries, which could prove to be bottle-necks in German war material production. Since trucks, tanks, artillery and airplanes all require bearings, reducing their production should create shortages in many industries. A cluster of such factories around the German city of Schweinfurt were the sort of target they badly wanted to hit.

The problem was that they were situated deep in Germany. The bombers would be out of range of fighter cover for hours. There were hundreds of enemy fighters based along their route. On the August 17 mission they had proved capable of hitting the bombers inbound, landing and re-arming, then hitting them again when they were returning home.

On this trip Bruce’s bomb group was able to drop its bomb load on target and turn for home. However the enemy fighters returned to finish the mauling they had begun. Before long Bruce’s B-17 was riddled by gun and cannon fire and two engines put out of operation. With the aircraft on fire, Bruce gave the order for his crew to bail out. He stayed behind to hold the aircraft level until all had left. Crawling through the passageway from the flight deck to the crawlspace underneath it, Bruce sat in the forward hatch and buckled on his parachute. The mighty Flying Fortress had held on as long as she could, the fire reached the half-empty fuel tanks and she exploded in a fireball.

The next thing Bruce said that he remembered was tumbling through the air with his parachute flailing about attached by only one D ring. Through good fortune, or perhaps divine intervention, he had been blown clear of the aircraft instead of being engulfed in the fireball. He quickly grabbed the chest pack parachute and snapped into the second ring on his harness. Upon opening his chute he found he was very close to the ground and shortly landed in some woods. He then unbuckled his harness and began burying the parachute.

It was at this point that he became aware of a man in a long trench coat standing nearby. Without saying a word the man handed Bruce a similar coat and motioned for him to put it on and follow him. He was fortunate to have been rescued by a member of the underground, freedom fighters who risked immediate execution to help downed Allied airmen.

Bruce was hidden at various farm houses until they were sure that he was not a German agent sent to uncover these underground cells of the resistance. He later spent six months traveling with a small group of men and went with them on missions to blow up bridges, railroad tracks and German supplies. Bruce later joked that he was a terrorist of sorts, but said it was a lot better than sitting in a POW camp.

German agents constantly pressured civilians to reveal the location of such groups, and it was only a matter of time until someone did. One day the cell was planning a mission in the basement of a farmhouse when they were suddenly surrounded by German soldiers. All were marched out of the house and placed in a line in the yard. The German officer in charge announced, in good English, that he knew one of them was an American airman and ordered that man to step forward.

Although he never actually said so, I’m sure Bruce was at that moment torn between stepping forward and invoking protection under the Geneva Convention and staying in line and accepting the fate of the resistance fighters who had risked their lives to hide him and even trusted him to participate in their missions. Bruce said nothing.

The German officer repeated the order in French, and one of the Frenchmen pointed Bruce out as the American and apparently disclosed that Bruce’s dog tags were in his shoe. The officer then walked over to Bruce and ordered him to remove his shoes. Finding his military dog tags the officer ordered a guard to pull Bruce out of the line. He was dragged to a point behind the German guards and held at gun point. The officer then barked a command in German and the Frenchmen were executed in a burst of gunfire. Bruce had once again escaped death by the narrowest of margins, but his trials were far from over.

Having worked with the French underground, he was interrogated much longer than most downed airmen. Bruce was moved to Fresnes Prison near Paris, Wiesbaden, Germany and Dulag Luft, Frankfort. Here he was held in a small, cold, damp cell with little food or water. He was threatened daily with torture and execution if he didn’t reveal information about the resistance fighters.

The men in the underground had been careful to never reveal names or locations, even blindfolding Bruce at times when he was moved. Eventually his captors either gave up on getting information out of him or believed that he really didn’t know anything of use to them.



Bruce was sent on to the prison camp at Stalag Luft III near Sagan, Germany. Badly overcrowded, the conditions here were terrible and he rapidly lost weight on the meager rations of bread and soup. As Russian troops moved closer to the camp in December they were told to prepare to move to another camp. The prisoners saved what little food they had and prepared themselves as well as they could for the ordeal ahead.



This was one of the coldest winters on record and the trek soon became a death march for many Allied airmen. Those that became too weak to continue were shot and left on the side of the road, where they were quickly stripped of any coat or shoes that might improve someone else’s chance of survival. Some nights they stayed in barns where hay provided some comfort. Occasionally, they found an egg or two to eat. When the starving, frostbitten survivors finally arrived at the Moosburg prison camp even the deplorable conditions of the prison camp were welcome. Of course, the addition of thousands of new prisoners to an already crowded camp meant that everyone’s rations were reduced even further.

As the Russian advances again threatened to reach the camp, rumors floated throughout the camp that Hitler had ordered all POWs to be killed rather than released. Apparently the rumor was true and the Allied command was aware of it. Elements of General George Patton’s 3rd Army mounted a rescue mission. Bruce knew death or rescue was eminent when their German guards abruptly packed up and left the camp. The Allied officers in the camp ordered everyone to stay put, as anyone leaving might be killed by the departing Germans troops, German civilians, or even accidentally shot by their rescuers.



They knew rescue was close when they heard the unmistakable rumble of American Sherman tanks approaching. A great shout rang out when the first tank rolled out of the woods and up to the fence. The tank commander stopped and motioned for everyone to move back. The tank then knocked the fence down and drove into the camp. Among the rescuers was a young soldier who was asking if anyone knew if Bruce Kilmer was there. The word spread through the camp and Bruce was located. At first Bruce didn’t recognize the soldier as he hadn’t seen him in three years, it was his brother.

The prisoners were later ferried to rehabilitation camps near Paris and then on home. After the war Bruce married, had a family and made a career as a lie detector operator. He would become a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society and president of the North Texas Chapter and would be interviewed for TV documentaries several times.

Yet, most of those who knew and worked with Bruce throughout his life probably had no idea of the trials he had survived during the war. Bruce died on Memorial Day of 2007 Another American hero.



Sources: “Decision Over Schweinfurt”- Thomas Coffee, University of North Texas oral history program, and various personally witnessed presentations made by Bruce at 8th Air Force Historical Society meetings and area museums.



lda 3/22/16