Aircraft shot down over Syke

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During the Second World War , on November 29, 1943, an aircraft was shot down over Syke . Here, a crashed B-17 bombers of the US Air Force under German bombardment on Syke in today's Lower Saxony from. Eight members of the ten-man aircraft crew were killed in the crash . Of the two survivors, one crew member saved himself by parachute ; the other crew member survived the fall from a height of over 8,000 meters in the rear of the machine.

crash

The United States Air Force Boeing B-17 F (Flying Fortress) aircraft belonged to the 96th Bombardment Group (Heavy) , which was stationed at Snetterton Heath Air Base , England . It was nicknamed " Rikki Tikki Tavi " by its crew . On November 29, 1943, the aircraft took off from its home airport and took part in an air raid on Bremen with over 300 other bombers . After anti-aircraft fire and the attack by a German fighter plane , the machine broke into two parts over Syke and crashed. A rain of debris fell over the place. The aircraft tank set a building on fire. Two dead planes were lying on the street in the village; Another plane broke through a house roof and hung dead on its parachute inside the building. Debris such as wings, aircraft engines, tail units and pieces of equipment were found in pastures, fields and in the forest.

Survivors

The 26-year-old surviving aircraft navigator Jessie E. Orrison was able to save himself by parachute and went down in the Friedeholz near Syke, where he got stuck in a tree. He was initially interned in the Sandbostel camp.

The 19-year-old gunner Eugene P. Moran, who was in the rear machine-gun position, survived the unrestrained fall with gunshot wounds in the torn off rear section of the machine. According to various statements, the fall should have occurred from a height of 8,000 or 9,000 meters. He was the first person to survive a fall from this height. Moran was also taken to the Sandbostel camp, seriously injured. A Serbian doctor who was captured saved his life by treating his severe head injuries surgically. Moran was later interned in the Stalag Luft IV prisoner-of-war camp in Groß Tychow in Western Pomerania . After the war, he returned to his home in Soldiers Grove , Wisconsin , where a street was named after him in 2007 and he died in 2014 at the age of 89.

memory

On November 29, 2018, on the 75th anniversary of the plane crash, around 25 relatives of four crew members at the time traveled from the United States and visited the peace wood near Syke, where the surviving planes had fallen. An information board was set up at one point in the forest. The visit was made possible by the city of Syke, the Kreisheimatbund, a journalist, the former mayor of Bremen Henning Scherf and the newspaper publisher Dirk Ippen .

literature

  • Ulf Kaack, Jürgen Kuhlmann: Air War in the County of Hoya County , 2017 ( online preview )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ November 29, 1943: The end of "Rikki Tikki Tavi" in the district newspaper of November 13, 2018
  2. ↑ Frank Jaursch: 75 years after the B-17 crash: Soldier families from the USA visit Syke in the Kreiszeitung on November 13, 2018
  3. ↑ Eugene P. Moran at soldiersgrove.com
  4. ^ Eugene P. Moran , obituary, March 26, 2014
  5. ↑ Michael Walter: 75 years later, Americans and Germans commemorate an episode from the war in the Kreiszeitung newspaper on November 29, 2018