This might be breaking my own rules a little since it's not really a "lost" photo that I found. My step-grandpa, Vern Palmer, was a tail gunner on the B-17 Bomber Flying Fortress and this was his crew. I've had this photo scanned in my own family archives for quite some time and I've always wondered about the other guys in the photo... especially since Vern wrote their names on the back. He was being coy and wrote (6) "?" for himself. But that's him on the right in the back row.
So I think this photo qualifies as the spirit of my mission to reunite people with photos of their family members. The family members of these guys might already have this photo (in fact, I found this identical photo on Instagram posted by someone else already...more on that later), but in case they don't have it and have never seen this photo before, we're hoping to track them down.
Unfortunately, this era of war heroes is rapidly dwindling. But by the off chance any of these fellows are still around, it would be incredible it talk to them.
My military-history-nut husband has done a lot of research on these guys the last couple days. He has a website that lists all their missions in great detail. Here's the account of one of their last missions, which was the closest they came to disaster. It even mentions Vern by name in an excerpt from a book about the 351st. This website is how we found the full names of all these guys.
Lieutenants -
1. Donald McLott
2. James J. Redmond
3. Martin Strom
4. Anthony Wagner
Sergeants -
1. Wesley Creech
2. Lloyd Bogle
3. Wilbert Beyer
4. Aldridge Vinson
5. Samuel Bell
6. Vernon Palmer
It was exciting to go through and see all their missions, targets, flight paths, and the severity of the combat they saw. The bottom line, these guys flew about 34 missions over Europe and had 0 casualties. Those are great stats compared to other B-17 squads. They were either very good or very lucky or both. Probably both. Here's the picture of "My Princess" one of the B-17 planes they flew in.
Now, in our extensive Googling (which my husband is still currently deeply diving into) we found that the pilot James J. Redmond wrote a memoir. It's on Amazon and it's called Reddo's Raiders. We just bought it. It's all about his missions and war experience so we figure it's got to have some stuff about my grandpa in there. And it might have clues as to what happened to these other guys, as well. I'm pretty excited for it to get here!
That led me to look up "Reddo's Raiders" on social media and found the hashtag #reddosraiders on Instagram. I gasped when I saw someone else had posted this very same group photo. The account seems to not be used anymore, their last post was two years ago. But I tried contacting them there anyway, just in case. It also says "RIP grandpa" in the caption of another photo of James J. "Reddo" Redmond. We also found his obituary online and have read about the amazing life this man went on to live.
And his family obviously has this picture already, but I'd still love to hear from them if we can figure out a way to make contact.
We're digging into whatever we can find about the other guys, but that's where we stand now as I post this. So, like always, please let me know if you have any leads or if by some rare chance you recognize one of these names. I could go on and on about Grandpa Vern, and his love story with my grandma, but for this project, I really want to find out whatever I can about the other guys in this photo. If you're interested in learning more about Vern and my grandma, Betty Palmer, you can read about them in this school project I did years ago.
And one last photo of Vern with a picture of "Betty" pinned up on the side of his plane. Because it's too cute and one of my favorite pictures of all time.
The top picture is of the crew after mission 77 on the B-17 "Ain't it Gruesome". Here is the link to the flight roster: http://www.351st.org/loadlist/search.php?type=m&mission=77&ac=42-29863
ReplyDeleteI knew and flew with Don Mclott in his later career. Email me at Bourne747@aol.com
ReplyDeleteMy name is John Sullivan. Jim “Reddo” Redmond was my granddad. I grew up listening to his WW2 stories and they inspired me to become a pilot for 25+ years. My wife compiled the book Reddo’s Raiders for publication. I know a lot about My Princess and attended the reunion in Polebrook England about 15 years ago. Feel free to reach out to my ridiculous gmail address thortacosully@gmail.com if you want to talk about your grandpa.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly . my dad's uncle David Harmon was also a crew member of "My Princess" but with pilot Lt Hibbard's crew.
ReplyDeleteUncle David as we called him was the belly turret gunner and on June 21.1944 "My princess" was heavily damaged in combat from flak and fighters.
Lt Hibbard told everyone to bail out and they did except for the pilots and navigator which then flew on back to an emergency landing in England.
My "Uncle Dave" became a POW nearly dying in captivity by war's end and there were some rough stories about being a POW , UNLIKE the TV series "Hogans Heroes" .
There is a portion of Lt Hibbards flight back without crew in the book "An Innocent at Polebrook".
Uncle David worked for the Hershey company after WW2 and was a heck of a nice guy.