One Mission to Ploesti: A World War II Adventure of an Airman's Escape and Rescue by Robert P. Moore

Author:Robert P. Moore [Moore, Robert P.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: HISTORY
ISBN: 9781457559686
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

Moore, white shirt kneeling, works on a .50 cal. machine gun salvaged from their downed B-17. Chetnik Commandant Keuus standing left of Moore. April, 1944.

We all wondered about our missing airmen. Our Navigator, Lt. John McClean and our Bombardier, Lt. Perle Stainbrook did not make it out of the aircraft. None of us understood why. [In writing about the incident years later, airman Kenneth Manley was of the opinion that over the Bor copper mines the enemy “put a direct hit in the bombardier compartment which killed the two guys that were up there.” Other crew members recalled things differently. More than one of the after-action reports filed by surviving crewmen suggests that the two men were not killed by anti-aircraft fire. It was reported that Co-pilot Fred Irwin was the last to see them both. In his statement Irwin writes that he remembered one of them standing over the open escape hatch preparing to bail out. He told the man to jump. Irwin then moved toward the middle of the plane and proceeded to go out the bomb bay doors, having assumed the man had also bailed out. Exactly which officer Irwin had talked with on the way out is unclear. There was no mention from Irwin that either officers were incapacitated. The stress, fear, and confusion of the crewmen certainly impacted the recollections of everyone. The true circumstances will never be known, but it remained that McClean and Stainbrook did not bail out and their bodies were found with the plane.]

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