USAAF
5th AF
90th BG
320th BS
October 1944
Pilot Herb Corley
Crash Landed October ?, 1944
Mission History
This bomber took off on a mission to bomb troops at Daraga. Damaged by flak over Legaspi that damaged the hydrolic system. The bomber returned and crash landed without flaps or undercarrage at Hollandia into a pile of used 55 gallon drums. The result is seen in the photograph, with the nose turret completely
dislocated from the fuselage, and both propellers torn from the engines
#1 and #2. The Liberator had the squadron's "Moby Dick" paint
scheme on its nose - just in front of the pilot tube is the whale's
eye.
Carl Thien writes in Pacific
Island Odyssey:
"One day, returning from a ride in an A-20, I was passing
a fuel dump near the airport when a B-24 returning from a bombing run,
was unable to reach the Sentani Strip and crashed into hundreds of empty
fuel drums. A few other nearby soldiers went into the dump to do what
we could to help the downed flyers. Some of the empty drums were exploding,
and others were starting to burn, but we could see the flyers trying
to get out of the plane. We managed to bring three of them to the edge
of the dump before a regular crash crew arrived and got the rest out. Several had been wounded before the crash,
and couple more were badly hurt when when the plane grounded. The B-24
was still repairable after it was dragged out of the area and back to
the airstrip, and we saw it the next week being worked on. We heard
that most of the crew survived even though being severely wounded."
Relatives
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References
The Forgotten Fifth by
Michael Claringbould, page 76
Pacific
Island Odyssey by Carl Thien.
B-24
