Duirng the summer of 2006 Jerry Evers, and Jack Tate a nephew of Radio Operator Jack R. Mcallen, stopped in to visit with my father my brother Steve and myself. At the time our middle brother John was currently serving in Iraq and wasn't due to return until September 2007. Jerry had done some inverstigative work while in Europe and came across an eyewitness account of the downing of the Robbins Crew, Aircraft 248.

The following article written by Sebastien Nicholas was published in the Septemberr 2005 issue of "39-45 Magazine". The article has been translated from French to English by Jerry Evers.

When the "Judith Lynn" Crashed near Bourgogne

The great number of air raids that took place over France and Germany during the Second World War are no longer counted. Over the course of it numerous bombers were lost and the crews perished during these perious missions, especially American aircraft daylight bombing over enemy territory. That's what happened one day in April 1944 while flying over the Reims region, in particular, the villages of Fresnes-les-Reims and Bourgogne.

On April 1, 1944, 245 B-17's and 195 B-24's, some belonging to 409th and 328th Bomb Squadrons, took off for mission number 287. These two squadrons launched their machines from Hardwick air base, code named HC, in Norfolk, East Anglia. They were escorted by 280 P-47's and 195 P-51's of the 8th and 9th Air Forces. The mission's goal was to annihilate the chemical plants of Ludwigshaven, Germany.

The operational force divided into two. The 245 B-17's abandoned the mission after encountering heavy cloud cover over the French coast. Seven B-17's returned damaged. The 195 B-24's dispersed and bombed targets of opportunity: 101 over Phorzheim, Germany, 38 over Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 17 over Strasbourg, France and 9 over Grafenhausen, Germany. Off course, 26 aircraft, including those that had bombed Strasbourg, deviated from the return course and arrived the vicinity of Reims traveling southeast to northwest. It was later revealed from post mission Army Air Corps reports that the formation believed they were over Lille, France!

The weather was not good and the cloud cover low. The aircraft flew at a medium altitude and arrived outside Reims now over Fresnes-le-Reims. The villagers who looked skyward heard nothing but loud noise. It was around 1130. Suddenly the four engine bombers broke out of the cloud cover. They were followed for a little while by Focke-Wulf 190's belonging to JG 2 based at Vitry-en-Artois and by Me-109G fighters of the JG 26 based at Etain. The alert, like each time in the same situation, was given by the flak based at Reims air base. The three pink bursts in the sky were from the first flak rounds fired to give the alert and estimated range and altitude.

The aircraft were now targeted and taken under fire by the crack battery located at the Modlin farm where the three guns of the 88mm battery were decorated with white circles synonymous of the number of aircraft shot down. As nearly always their first rounds fired were on target. Two aircraft were hit. One was cut in half near the tail section which fell just behnd the village of Fresnes-les-Reims. The forward section went into a spin and crashed in flames near the entrance to Bourgogne, not far from the Fresnes road, twenty meters from the CBR rail line and fifty meters from the first farmhouse. It was pulverized on impact. In the following minutes a squad of Germans, mostly officers, arrived and cordoned off the area. Evewitness Lt. Stahl and Lt. Deyot, pilot and co-pilot of another B-24, saw Lt. Roznos' aircraft hit by flak and break apart. It was about 1140. They also saw a parachute.

The aircraft, a B24 D, numbered 42-40983, built in San Diego and having the code letters RE, carried the B on its tail section indicating it belonging to the 328th Bomb Squadron of the 93rd Bomb Group. It was named "Judith Lynn". The members oft he crew were 1st Lt. Joseph M. Roznos, pilot, 2nd Lt. Thaddeus Johnson, Jr. co-pilot, 2nd Lt. Franklin caldwell, navigator-bombardier, Tech/Sgt Frank O. Dinkins, engineer, S/Sgt Henry Volgenstein, radio operator, S/Sgt John S. Rose, nose gunner, S/Sgt Harold L. MacNew, right waist gunner, S/Sgt Charles H. Waldmann, left waist gunner and S/Sgt Edward J. Miller, tail gunner.

Of the nine members of the crew five were thrown from the fuselage. They were Miller, Volgenstein, Rose, MacNew and Waldmann. The four others perished in the incinerated forward part of the aircraft. They were reduced to ashes from which protruded several bones. Those who took part in their removal from the wreckage were left with the macabre memory of an intact arm and hand with a ring and bracelet attached which was placed in a coffin with the other remains. "The heads and arms had vanished and nothing was left but the torsos" recalled one young Frenchman who arrived about thirty minutes after the crash of the aircraft of which nothing more remained than the engine blocks and several oxygen bottles scattered over a radius of about twenty meters. As in similar situations, many young people, as well as the inhabitants of neighboring villages, in this case Fresnes and Bourgogne, gathered to look. A certain humber of them would also be forced by the Germans to collect the bodies of those thrown from the fuselage.

One of them recalled (AJ 19 years old at the time) "At the time of the crash I was at bazancourt. Airplanes were heard and suddenly they descended from the fog at a very low altitude. The flak began firing and a few minutes latter two aircraft were in flames. One of them lost its tail section and crashed on the outskirts of Fresnes-les-Reims. Immediately it began spinning like a top and crashed a little more than a dozen seconds latter. Taking my bike I went to the crash site like so many other young people at the time when something like that happened. When I arrived at the site of the crash I was unable to approach the bulk of the fuselage which fell outside Bourgogne. I was there for just a few moments when the Germans began calling people to collect the bodies of the crewmembers (not those burned in the aircraft but certainly those thrown from the spinning aircraft). I made an attempt to leave but then a German took a pistol and forced us, a few young guys and me, to collect the bodies in order to load them into one of their trucks. We picked up three scattered about one hundred or a hundred fifty meters from the Mission Cross. It took four of us to carry a body or what was left of it. They had all their equipment but had exploded on hitting the ground. One thing burned into my memory is that one of the ones we picked up had his head shattered from the nose to his forehead."

A school boy from Bourgogne (L.D. 13 years old at the time) was also shocked by what he saw. "The weather was not very good but we saw, after hearing the anti-aircraft fire, something fall far away and crash behind the village, probably an aircraft which had just been hit. Suddenly, while our attention was held by this, a gigantic explosion was heard which rattled the walls and everything. Everyone quickly got up and our teacher, realizing what had happened, let us go immediately; a second aircraft had been hit and crashed on or near the houses on one end of the town or so we believed. A thick black cloud began to fill the sky and was already covering half the town.

All the school kids began running and those from one end of the line to the other, including me, already imagined that this mass of steel had crashed on their house. The worst was yet to see. Little by little as we continued each one made it to their residence and the others continued along. When it was my turn my mother was waiting for me at the door of our house and my childood curiosity made me want to go see. In fact it had not fallen on our houses but about fifty meters from the last farmhouse.

The Germans reacted quickly. A truck arrived to collect the bodies of the aviators thrown from the plane. Several people were recruited to help them. When the truck left a trail of blood followed the macabre convoy. The bodies were dropped off at the undertaker before their burial. A single aviator succeeded in parachuting from one of the two aircraft. He landed near the wreckage. He was wearing a large bloodied bandage on his neck. The burned bodies in the wreckage were only removed the following day. My brother and I, having seen everything, went to the part that came off the plane that we had seen while we were at school. Looking around behind the village we came upon the place. It was the gun turret with four machine guns still inside. A long belt of linked ammunition was wrapped around the interior of the turret. We tried to remove some of it but the game quickly ended as the Germans were begining to search for the wreckage of both aircraft especially the guns.

During our return home we learned that our father had been recruited by the Germans to guard the forward section of the aircraft wreckage. Near midnight I joined my mother to take coffee to my father. This nocturnal visit will forever remain in my memory. Three or perhaps four bodies had been reduced to a doll-like state and also an intact forearm with the hand still cutching a piece of silk or a handkerchief. I will also remeber my father's return in the morning when we were leaving for school.

Sometime latter the Germans came to collect the debris with a crane equipped with a cable and huge rakes. While some of them were occupied with raking the ground others were involved with the crane removing the largest pieces."

We remember that the Germans made a farmworker remove the incinerated remains of the crewmembers from the still smoking wreckage.

The other aircraft that was hit at the same time caught fire and went into a spin. It crashed a few minutes before the other B-24 on the airfield at Courcy, the current airbase 112. It was B-24J number 42-100248, having the code "YM" and carrying the tactical marking "P" on its tail, indicating it was part of 409th Bomb Squadron. No civilian was able to approach it.

A gunner in another B-24 S/Sgt Richard R. Galvin, recalled, during the attack by German fighters he saw a plane on his right disintegrate and that he was no longer able to identify B-24 42-100248.

One member of the crew was succesful in parachuting and landed about thirty meters from the burned remains of the first aircraft. He was immediately taken prisoner by the Germans. He was waist gunner Frank G. Zywiczynski. Wounded, he was taken to a hospital in Reims and then to Stalag IV. His brothers in arms were less fortunate.

There were nine of them. They were 1st Lt. Edward L. Robbins, pilot, 2nd Lt. James L. Wagner, co-pilot, Lt. Rober F. Bins, navigator, 2nd Lt. Joseph J McCauley, Bombardier, T/Sgt Raymond R. Carriker, engineer, T/Sgt jack R. McCallen, radio operator, S/Sgt David A. Butler, waist gunner, S/Sgt Charles B Speier, nose gunner and S/Sgt Stanley A Wochiechowski, tail gunner.

When this wave of aircraft arrived over our skies, one of the German aircraft (a Messerschmitt Bf-109) which was chasing them was shot down at the same time as the two B-24's. some witnesses said it was hit by the same burst of flak as the two American palnes, but it could've also been shot down by the defensive fire of the Liberator squadron. The pilot succeeded in bailing out while his plane crashed on the heights of Boult-sur-Suippe. It was Unteroffizier Albert Boeckl (JG 26) who was given credit for shooting down one of the B-24's while the other was credited to Lieutenant Christoph Dezius (JG 2).

The crewmembers of the American planes were buried on 3 April 1944 in the communal cemetary of Bourgogne, then later buried in a national cemetary or taken by their families to be buried in the United States. some remain in France buried in the Epinal cemetary in the Vosges.

This account of the crash site and eyewitness discriptions allowed my father to piece together several things that confused him about that day. First, he was never absolutely certain, but assumed that the aircraft wreckage he was found near was his plane. Although he could identify it as a B-24, he naturally assumed that it was his aircraft. After my father was captured he requested permission to view the other crewmen, but was denied the opportunity and was taken to a hospital to be treated for his wounds by his German capturs.

After reading this article my father was able to gather that he parachuted into the wreckage of the other B-24 and was mistaken for a member of that crew. Which explained why during his interogation he was subjected to brutal beatings for given the incorrect answers to the interogators.

Included in the written transcripts of the eyewitnesses that Jerry had given us were copies of several black and white, faded, but still visable photographs of young french men posing next to a tail wing assembly and on the remains of an engine block from one of the B-24's. The photos are believed to be that of the "Judith Lynn", as my fathers B-24 was the wreckage that crashed near an airport, which the Germans were using and was naturally off limits to all civilian personal.

During subsequent visits by Mr. Evers my father was given a POW Challenge coin from Jack Tate, which he takes great pride in recieving. We would like to thank Sebastien Nicholas, who wrote the article, and of course Jerry Evers for locating it and transcribing it to english for us and Jack Tate for the POW Challenge coin. On a personal note; this was always the empty page on the web site, the one where very little was remembered, and with so many questions that my father could not answer. To date my father still has no memory of how he was able to exit the aircraft and get under canopy safely, and because of that this page remained under construction for the duration of it's original posting, and now, thanks to Jerry it has been completed.