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| Date: | Sunday 21 January 1945 |
| Time: | |
| Type: |  Stinson L-5 Sentinel |
| Owner/operator: | United States Army Air Force (USAAF) |
| Registration: | 42-99078 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 2 / Occupants: 2 |
| Other fatalities: | 0 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | St Aubin sur Aire/ 3/4mi -
 France
|
| Phase: | Unknown |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | |
Crashed.
My grandfather, John Reiter (misspelled elsewhere on the internet as John Teiter) was the pilot of this L-5. 14th Liaison Squadron. Our family story goes that his unit was asking for volunteers to fly an injured man to proper medical attention and that he volunteered. We believe the flight was at night and that the crash occurred due to severe snow. We do not have any military records to verify this. John's crash ensured he'd never meet his, then, infant daughter; my mother.
The original source listed here on asn.flightsafety.org as http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/db.asp was defunct by the time I found it on June 18, 2024.
An also defunct chat room I'd found too late at http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=27173 was the first to point me toward the book. It included John's service ID, even though that was not in the book. I presume the person posting (Leendert) searched the, then, very common name of John Reiter and found the service number someplace like https://www.honorstates.org/profiles/408412/. That is an "auto-generated" profile matching where we know he he lived, matching our presumed fact that he had no middle initial, matching that he died "non-battle," and matching what we believed his rank to be.
"The Fighting Grasshoppers" by Ken Wakefield hardcover page 121 , paragraph 9 reads as follows: "In January 1945 operations were seriously curtailed by bad weather. Flying was variously made dangerous by snow, high winds and heavy rain, and on the 21st Lieutenant John Reiter and his passenger were killed when their L-5 crashed near St. Aubin-sur-Aire in bad weather. At the time Lieutenant Reiter was on a scheduled flight to St. Dizier carrying a P-47 pilot who was returning to his base after surviving a crash landing."
I have started to collect some of John's information for my family tree here https://www.geni.com/people/First-Lieutenant-John-Reiter/6000000005380891539 where I sometimes share publicly.
Sources:
http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/db.asp
"The Fighting Grasshoppers" by Ken Wakefield
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=27173
https://www.honorstates.org/profiles/408412/
https://www.geni.com/people/First-Lieutenant-John-Reiter/6000000005380891539
https://aad.archives.gov/aad/record-detail.jsp?dt=893&mtch=17&cat=WR26&tf=F&q=john+reiter&bc=sl&rpp=10&pg=1&rid=2837415&rlst=1018069,1328764,1341989,4240489,5572032,6390702,7720178,1662752,2837415,3015216
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 19-Jun-2024 08:45 | wolvensense | Updated [Total fatalities, Total occupants, Source, Narrative, ] |
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