Shot down 17 August 1943 in B-17 #42-2990 'Dame Satan'. Initially evaded. Prisoner of War (POW).

Carlyle Darling had actually volunteered for the Schweinfurt mission of 17th August 1943 and was a replacement navigator on 'Dame Satan' when she was shot down. When he bailed out somewhere north of Brussels he landed in Meslin-L'Evêque, near Ath, Belgium. He was picked up by two men who took him in Lanquesaint to a shed and fed and clothed him. Several days later he was moved on to stay with a family (Delcourt in Meslin-L'Evêque) where he and his tail gunner Leland Judy helped with the chores and remained for 18 days. After a stay in Brussels until 5 October 1943, he was guided via Tournai to Lille in France and from there by train to Paris. Carlyle was constantly moved around - often for only a day or two at a time - and still at liberty in April 1944. One time he stayed at a rectory where the priest wore a .45 strapped beneath his cassock. One morning - as he was preparing to be guided to the Spanish border - Germans arrived at the house where he was staying. Thirteen other American airmen had been picked up that day, all trapped by the German secret services with the help of French traitors. Carlyle says he was eventually sent to "Stalag Luft 1 near Stuttgart" (?) where the other American detainees there took him for a spy - being in civilian clothes and wouldn't talk to him until the Red Cross supplied him with a uniform. After interrogation at Dulag Luft in Oberursel, he was sent to Stalag Luft 3 in Sagan/Zagan (Silesia), Poland. Force-marched from there, he arrived at Stalag 7A in Moosburg where he was liberated by US troops on 29 April 1945. See the full story of his evasion and capture at https://www.evasioncomete.be/fdarlinch.html