12/23/2023 0 Comments Half wing ww2![]() ![]() “Those who pass by it, see it and read the plaque can take inspiration from it,” he said. He called the wing a piece of history hanging in the terminal. “They flew with a Norden Bombsight at lower altitudes, which presented more danger, and with the 8th Air Force, which lost more men in World War II than the Marines, and they did it boldly and bravely,” he told the crowd. Dennis Duffy, 514th Air Mobility Wing commander, said the story of the Chow-hound and its crew has finally been rewritten. “The people of Lonlay L’Abbaye have not forgotten their appreciation for the sacrifices of the Allies who liberated them,” he told the audience last weekend, “and several people still remember seeing the crash.”Ĭol. He also attended a memorial service held by the French townspeople, who have erected a monument to the downed flyers. Collins of Suffern, New York, was one of the family members who watched the excavation. John Collins of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, nephew of crew member Sgt. On the plane’s nose, one of the original crew members drew a dog cartoon resembling the Disney character Pluto gnawing on a dog bone. Jerald Newquist christened it “Chow-hound” in May 1944 because “we fight to eat and eat to fight, ” a surviving member of the first crew said. The first crew assigned to fly the B-17 under Lt. Thompson.Īfter the excavation, the military and families later learned how the Chow-hound got its nickname. Traces of Treece and the two other crewmen also listed as missing, Harry Kortebein of New York and David Nelson of Chicago, were not found until the military excavation. ![]() The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command excavated the site in 2004 after being informed about it by a French aircraft hunting team in 2002. Of the nine crew members, four were found and hurriedly buried by the French farmers because of approaching Germans and two others were found soon afterward by Allied troops moving through the countryside. Her son, Mark Dimon of Florence, presented the plaque that carries the crew member’s names and will be mounted below the wing.Ī team of 40 members of the 514th Air Mobility Wing, (AMW) an Air Force Reserve Command wing at the joint base, recovered larger wing pieces of the plane in 2011 at the request of the families. Treece, a gunner who knew Morse Code and radio communications, quit high school to join the Army Air Corps in 1941 because he always dreamed of flying when they were growing up in Marshall, Arkansas, his sister recalled. The only additional thing the family was told all those years was that he was lost over the English Channel,” she said. “I got to know my uncle through all of this. A red border is still visible but the blue background that once surrounded the star has faded from weather and time. Army Air Corps insignia - a star with wings on either side. It’s comforting knowing that he and the Chow-hound are not forgotten,” said the 93-year-old Dimon, who attended the dedication on the 70th anniversary of the Aug. A wing section of the downed aircraft, retrieved from a French farm field by Air Force reservists in 2011, was mounted at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst as a memorial tribute to her brother and the others in the nine-man crew who died in the crash. They were then able to bury his remains in Arlington National Cemetery.īut the final chapter of the saga did not end until last week. ![]() She didn’t find out his B-17 “Chow-hound” bomber was shot down by German anti-aircraft fire and crashed in France until 2004 - 60 years later - and did not know for sure he was among the Army Air Corps crew killed until she and another relative gave DNA samples. Treece was missing in action in Europe during World War II. In 1944 her family received a telegram from the Army saying Tech. JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST – For more than half a century, Florence resident Virginia Dimon had no idea what happened to her younger brother.
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