ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 97613
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| Date: | Saturday 27 November 1943 |
| Time: | |
| Type: |  Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress |
| Owner/operator: | United States Army Air Force (USAAF) |
| Registration: | 42-37865 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 9 / Occupants: 9 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | -
 Atlantic Ocean
|
| Phase: | En route |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | |
In November 1943, sixty-two B-17s of the 447th Bomb Group left Harvard AAB in Nebraska for a transatlantic flight to England. Sixty arrived. Two were lost with their crew over the Atlantic and never found.
One of them was the B-17G 42-37865 of 708th BS that took off at 0233 hrs GMT on 27 November 1943 from Goose Bay, Labrador for a direct flight to Prestwick, Scotland. It went missing without a trace, being unaccounted for since radar equipement at Goose Bay lost track of it 85 miles out and on course. Weather conditions enroute and at the terminal were considered satisfactory for the trip and were proved so by the successful completion of flights by two other similarly routed B-17s which departed the same night.
No radio contact was made with the subject aircraft after it was cleared from the tower fresuency, except that the pilot of one of the B-17s that completed the trip reported at Prestwick that he contacted on Channel B, VHF, an aircraft believed to be 42-37865 one and one half hours out by Goose Bay, which reported "everything OK".
An aerial search was scheduled to start at daybreak the next day but a blizzard through the Goose Bay are prevented it to be launched on 28 November.
Crew (all lost):
2nd Lt Leonard Jacob Thiesen (pilot)
2nd Lt Floyd Franklin Fuller (co-pilot)
2nd Lt John N Marsland (navigator)
2nd Lt Daniel Lambert Duffin (bombardier)
Sgt Raymond C Bassemir (flight engineer)
PFC Basil S Garros (radio operator)
S/Sgt George Dunger (assistant radio operator)
S/Sgt Richard R Doerck (air gunner)
S/Sgt Eugene Darter (armorer/air gunner)
Newsarticle in the Kingsport Times 19 March 1944:
"Staff Sergeant Eugene Darter, tail gunner on a Flying Fortress B-17 has been missing since his plane disappeared over the Atlantic on November 27 according to word received by his wife, Mrs. Eugene Darter, the former Miss Ruth Pierson, Westview. No word has been received of the plane´s crew except the message which came in one hour and a half after they took off, saying that they had not run into any difficulty. Staff Sergeant Darter, who has been in service since July, 1941, served 18 months in Panama. A former student of Dohyns-Bennett, Sergeant Darter received his gunnery training at Fort Myers, Fla. The three brothers who are in service are W.S. (Bill) Darter, Army Air Force, somewhere overseas, Henry Darter and Roy Darter, both seeing service with the Navy somewhere overseas."
Sources:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071013103024/http://www.447bg.com/library/aircraft/ac_harvard.html
MACR 1119 (available online at https://www.fold3.com/image/28608371)
https://www.findagrave.com/page=vcsr&GSvcid=193550
https://etvma.org/veterans/eugene-darter-10636/
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 27-Nov-2015 12:31 | Laurent Rizzotti | Updated [Aircraft type, Total fatalities, Total occupants, Phase, Source, Narrative] |
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