On his 6th mission, Winfield Gippert was Co-Pilot of B-24 # 42-100415 when it ran into mechanical trouble on return in the afternoon from the 8 August 1944 mission to bomb the airfield at Romilly-sur-Seine, France. He and seven other crew members managed to evade with the help of French patriots. Gippert, his Pilot Bernard Komasinski and Top Turret Gunner Nelson Brott were taken in charge by Eugène Pommier of Montmirail, chief of the local underground and his wife Marcelle. As the Gestapo was on Pommier’s track, the men were handed over to underground fighters of the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur.) The three men and other Allied airmen were hidden in woods in the Epernay area with Maquis fighters. When they heard that US troops had liberated the nearby village of Montfort, they drove there on 27 August 1944 and met the liberators. Sent back to US 3rd Army HQ via Reims, Gippert, Komasinski, Brott and their fellow crew members Navigator Edgar Michaels, Bombardier Charles Lain and Tail Gunner Stanley Hulewicz left Laval, France, by air in a C-47, landing in Grove, England on 31 august 1944. Escape & Evasion Report E&E 1297.

Back in the States, Winfield married Ann Wiese in 1945 and pursued his career in the Air Force. He did a tour in Korea and was later stationed at the Aviano Air Force Base in Italy from 1955 to 1958. Serving in Viet Nam, promoted to Lt Colonel, Winfield Gippert retired from the USAF in 1974. Winfield and his wife Ann joined the Aviano Reunion Association of Huntsville, Alabama in 1987 where they were active members.