Howard 'Howie' Griffith Mertens was the second son and youngest child born to native Californians, Ferdinand C Mertens and Margaret Mary (Griffith) Mertens, but his paternal grandparents were German immigrants. Howie graduated from Mission High School in San Francisco and was apprenticed to his father, a renowned local cabinet-maker when he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps. He never married. He received his flight training at Luke Airfield, Glendale, AZ.



On this, his 28th mission, Howie served as the Co-Pilot on the B-17G, #446140 'Miss Lace,' on 30 Nov 1944 when it encountered heavy flak over the target, the Brabag Synthetic Oil Plant just northeast of Zeitz, Germany. After a near explosion of flak, the plane lost its right wing and entered a vertical spiral while ablaze. It broke into two sections: the tail/waist section, which landed near Threna, Germany, and the nose, which crashed into District 7 of the Oberholz Forest near Großpösna, Germany. In this debris field, German citizens recovered partial and complete human remains and military identification tags for some crew members seated in the nose section of the plane, but Howie's military ID tag was not located. The citizens of Großpösna placed five sets of remains in individual coffins that later were buried in their town cemetery. Howard's identity remained unknown to the Germans.



In late June 1945, the US Army exhumed the crews' remains from the Großpösna Cemetery. One set of remains eventually was identified as those belonging to Howard after a laundry tag marked with his name was found inside the remnants of clothing buried with his corpse. In 1949, his remains were brought back to the United States and re-interred in the Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, CA, at his parents' request.