B-17 dig in The Netherlands

Don is an abbreviation of donderdag which is tuesday.

Very moving story and interesting account of “Little guy” Thank you for posting.

My father, the late Donald F McGurk was the co-pilot aboard the B-17 “Little Guy” when it down 26 Nov 1944. “Don” must be the Dutch abbreviation for Thursday because for some reason his first name gets translated as “Thurs”. He was captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft I in Barth Germany. He passed away Sep 10 2002, one day shy of his 81st birthday.

Looking forward to your updates on this dig.

Hi there,

Yes, we have brought this case to the attention to the local authorities and have been in close contact with the recovery team.

Cheers
Cees

Will you be helping with this the next dig?

Good work done boys,

Next is a Lancaster that crashed near Anna Paulowna, two crewmembers are still missing. Some large concentration of metal have been found on site a few weeks ago by the RNethAF recovery team. Let’s hope the missing will be found and given the respect they deserve.

Cees

Walter,

PM sent.

Eric

B-17 Dig in the Netherlands

Thank you, Thank you,
the tailgunner Bob DeLange was my Uncle. He never talked about this much when I was a child, and now we know what happened. Again thank you for the story of Little guy…….

Walter F. Anderson

http://www.destentor.nl/regio/apeldoorn/7695674/Laatste-stukken-B17-van-held-uit-de-grond.ece

Highlights:
– No additional human remains found (all crew were already accounted for on site).
– Some light explosives (ammo) found and disarmed.
– Small parts only found, some light structure, data plates, etc (most of it recovered by German forces in the war and by scrap dealers)
– Ceremony held on site
– Site now declared clean

Translation courtesy of Google:

The story behind the monument
On November 26, 1944 crashed at this point an American B-17.
The plane turned back after a bombing damaged a railway junction near Osnabruck. On board were two heavy bombs. Above Apeldoorn threatened bomber crashing down. The pilot, the 24-year-old Lieutenant Smith ordered his crew command the device to exit by parachute. He jumped, but flew to prevent the aircraft in the village would mean. The unit broke down here. Kyle Scott Smith was killed in the crash, but his courage, he came a disaster in Apeldoorn.
Jelle Reitsma has done extensive research into this event. Here is his report:

November 26, 1944
In much of Europe in November 1944 was still war. In four months, the Allied armies from the beaches of Normandy had advanced to the Rhine in the Netherlands, but the offensive was stalled. In the northern Netherlands ruled dull resignation following the failure of the airborne landings at Arnhem in September 1944.

Sunday, November 26th was a beautiful, clear autumn day in almost all of the Netherlands in Apeldoorn. The five-member family Meurs, who Chasse 126, near the Ribeslaan lived, was at half past one in the snack when she was startled by a swelling noise from a low-flying heavy bomber. Allen ran to the front window which overlooked the Jachtlaan, but they were too late to see the plane. That must be an American, “said Hans, the nineteen year old eldest son, the English fly at night. The machine was on the other side of the house and flew toward the Kristalbad, then still called the Boschbad.

When Meursen had reached their backyard, they heard a thud and saw a nearly pitch-black cloud of smoke rising, immediately followed by the crackle of exploding ammunition. The family and many other people from the neighborhood ran Ribeslaan, but were at the junction with Dark Avenue (now Mayor Rose Male Nepveulaan) stopped by German soldiers who were doing extremely excited to bring a machine gun into position. It was clear that the machinery inside the gates of the Boschbad and therefore outside the reach of the residents had fallen.

Miep, the youngest daughter of the family Meurs, went that night with her girlfriends and Titia Olly [2] secretly to the wreck. Titia wrote more than fifty years later as follows: “When it was dark we went through the woods, where we each tree had to Boschbad. We climbed over the fence and found despite the darkness easily boating lake. The island was the wreck of the plane – like a lame, injured bird. Two or three armed Germans were on guard.
One of us was the first who saw it: a strange, large object in half and half out of water. It looked like a parachute and when we got closer this suspicion was confirmed. We thought to have found a gold mine because we knew that there blouses, handkerchiefs and other things could be made. We gently pulled the parachute and all three were suddenly paralyzed. The parachute was attached, half in and half out of the water, a body in uniform. Approximately 20 to 30 meters from the wreck away. “

Kyle Scott Smith

2nd Lt. Kyle Scott SmithHet body was found the body of Kyle Scott Smith, a 24-year-old lieutenant from Albany, Ohio. After studying at Ohio University, he had hired in the U.S. Army Air Force in March 1944 in Marfa Air Base in Texas completed his training as a pilot. Since Sept. 27 he and his crew were part of the 532 Bomb Squadron (BS), which belonged to the 381ste Bomb Group (BG) of 8 USAAF, the U.S. 8th Army Air Force [3].
The “Smith crew” as the crew in the jargon of that time had been called five operational missions flown over Germany and a four over France.

The four-engined B-17 bomber [5], nicknamed the Little Guy (either Youngster) morning that Smith had taken off from the airbase Ridgewell in Essex. Sunday that the Americans fell by more than one thousand bombers factories and railway lines in Germany. The crew of the Little Guy was for this mission:

2nd Lieutenant Scott Kyle Smith of Albany, Ohio, the first pilot
Thurs 2nd Lieutenant McGurk from West Springfield, Mass., second pilot;
Flight Officer (Ensign) Melvin LaLuzerne from Green Bay, Wisconsin, navigator;
Staff Sergeant Byron F. ‘Tuck’ Wear in Princeville, Illinois, bombardier [6];
Sergeant Lester F. Colson from Brooklyn, New York, radioman
Sergeant Robert K. Porter Pitt Pennsylvania, Virginia, flight engineer;
Sergeant Gustavo “Gus” E. Contreras from Tucson, Arizona, belly turret gunner;
Sergeant Thomas Arnold of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and zijluikschutter
Staff Sergeant Francis R. ‘Bob’ DeLange from Minneapolis, Minnesota, tail gunner.

The Little Guy in trouble

The entire crew of the Little Guy, left with cap in hand Thurs McGurk, bottom center of Kyle S. Smith, Gustavo ContrerasEen right of hours after the start was one of the four engines [7] from oil leakage. What the crew did, the engine could not be started and the propeller had to be put in the feather. Kyle S. Smith had 8 under the rules of the USAAF mission can break, but he was not the man, he continued, if only three motors. But his own band, he could not keep up.

Road, near Zwolle, Little Guy was attacked by a German fighter, but that attack failed, the gunners shot down the German. The German artillery bombarded the flying formations in this area, but the heat released was weak and inaccurate and did hardly any damage.

The second engine falls off
Little Guy joined probably with a different formation and bombers took part in a bombing of a different purpose, the rail yards of Osnabrück. Visibility was now much diminished, the land was no longer visible through the clouds and the leading group of bombers had marked the target with colored smoke. Clearly, the accuracy of bombing suffered as severely. Little Guy had two ‘runs’, because the bombs are not loosened. Eventually there were six 1,000-pounders off, but there remained two behind the bomb bay, which had forced it to be reversed.

Now No. 3 engine was also off, perhaps because of damage caused by shelling by German artillery. Likely that the three remaining engines during the flight back to the fully loaded too heavy bomber in charge.

The third engine falls off
Little Guy had just reached when the third engine IJssel (No. 4) went out, probably due to overheating. This was the fate of the Little Guy decides, as a B-17 engine can not keep. Because only No. 1 engine was still running, the airplane started a big turn clockwise.
Above the outskirts of Apeldoorn came Kyle Smith gave his crew to leave the unit mission. And they jumped: Melvin LaLuzerne the navigator, the “togglier Byron Wear, the radioman Lester Colson, the flight engineer Robert Porter, belly turret gunner Gustavo Contreras, the zijluikschutter Arnold Thomas and the tail gunner Bob DeLange.
Thurs McGurk, the second pilot, who was the last to leave the unit alive. Just before he jumped, said Kyle is against him, Spring, I’ll be right behind you.

A disaster prevention in Apeldoorn
Kyle had a problem. He flew too low in a right turn could not adequately be corrected and right above the town of Apeldoorn, with two bombs on board. Although those were not armed but remained dangerous. Not far ahead of him he saw a sandy plain in the forest with a number of ponds. He did his utmost to the Little Guy in the air and then keep that things could not, he crashed his plane into the canoe pond exactly the Boschbad. He lost life, but spared a catastrophe for Apeldoorn.

Kyle Scott Smith was buried on Heidehof [8]. A British Chaplain (Padre Buchanan) who was made prisoner at Arnhem and in the St. Joseph Foundation (now Space) was imprisoned, led the funeral.

Ridgewell appeared on the Little Guy is the only aircraft of 381 BG that this Sunday was lost.
The loss was hard, precisely because this Sunday the Americans ‘Thanksgiving Day’ celebrated. The British had done everything to this important day for the Americans to give a festive character by organizing a special service at the Cathedral of Bedford in the evening was the traditional turkey on the menu.
But, as the chaplain of 381 BG James Good Brown wrote, “what was supposed to be a day of rejoice and gaiety Suddenly Turned quiet and somber.”

Miep, Titia and Olly were not the only ones who were a shocking reminder of the crash of the Little Guy. Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, later Minister, lived in 1944 at the edge of the forest at the Wilderness Avenue. With the curiosity of a seven year old boy went with his friends pile into the Boschbad height. He picked as a pilot glove, hand of the pilot still in it … That kind of stuff you will not forget, he noted in a 2005 interview with The Stentor.

There were many more people in Apeldoorn, the Little Guy and his crew on that beautiful Sunday in November have seen and heard. Most sat at the lunch, there was no air raid, and given they were startled by the noise that the aircraft was low on coming: A horrible noise, a deafening noise, the thundering of a motor overload and the like. Almost everyone went outside to see what was going on. They saw the plane flying low over, crew members jump from a plane and parachutes to their decline. Some immediately sought cover in their basements or took their flight box, thinking that a raid would follow. Almost everyone remembers that there were shots and saw with horror many German and Dutch soldiers in German service shoot the parachutes to their declining ratings. Sat Possibly the fear of paratroopers on the Germans after the Battle of Arnhem still. Another assumption is that the damage and casualties from allied bombing in which German soldiers Heimat inciting revenge on Terrorflieger, as the propaganda of the Goebbels aircrews suggested.

The two halves map with crosses marked where the witnesses were. A parachute icon marks the places where six crew members landed. Where numbers have fallen seven and eight, is not clear. The route is reconstructed on the basis of reports by eyewitnesses and by the prevailing winds to consider (WSW, 2 to 3 Beaufort) in combination with the low altitude of the Little Guy. By which weak winds drove the little parachutes, and the crew came so close to the ground.
Joop van Duuren, who was 13 years old and lived on the Dogger Bank 129: I saw a Dutch NSB yielded a crew member on Deventerstraat [9] in the direction of Deventer Bridge. The American walked with his hands in the neck and the NSB was walking behind him with a gun. This was probably the first crew member jumped, “somewhere between the Toll Bridge and the Deventer.
Previously, the Deventerstraat towards the bridge seen marching German soldiers, who fired their guns at the crew in their white parachutes descending.
A crew landed on the railing of the bridge Deventer as a rag doll by Warren, who was 19 years old and near the canal saw the parachutists float down.

Henk de Weerd, then 15 years, recalls: I lived in the Griftstraat [10], near the market where my father was a butcher. We sat around noon to eat, when we heard a plane very low happen. I ran outside, but the aircraft I saw no more. But I saw a man on a parachute and landed on the market almost immediately afterwards was captured by German soldiers. Later I heard from the neighbors, that German soldiers in the cafe on Stationsstraat The Sun [11] were run out and fire on the descending paratroopers had opened.

The then 15-year-old Jan de Waard was on the balcony on the second floor of the building of the Dutch Trading Company at the corner of Kerklaan and Deventerstraat. The German sentry on the post office opened fire with his machine gun at the crew behind the post office on the market fell and hit his parachute. He landed on the middle market. Also from the police he was shot, to the fury of German Luftwaffe personnel, from the cafe on the corner of Market and was an end to the shooting. I ran there. I stood there with a few others and German soldiers, near the American. I remember his short black hair, dark brown eyes, white teeth and sunburned striking looks and how he, chewing gum, looked at everyone. He was then transported by ambulance to the hospital.

Jan de Waard remembers little later in the Deventer bridge crew has seen a death: He was near the railing, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, eyes closed and his mouth shut. The story went around that this American was shot by a very young (16 years old?) German, with the rifle of one of two older Wehrmacht soldiers. Gustavo Contreras was this? [12]

J.A. Tempelman, then 13 years old, saw from his parental home at Deventerstraat 5 / 6, falling parachutes, one of them seemed to end up on the marketplace. I ran to the marketplace and saw a crew member – shot (?) – On the ground. German soldiers applied first aid and then chased us away. Earlier, Tempelman German soldiers emerge from the Gate of Cleves, on the descending paratroopers began shooting. Later, he saw another crew member on Deventerstraat was drained by two German soldiers and the Ortskommandantur to Regentesselaan was charged.

The 15-year-old Gerrit Eikendal wrote in his diary: 1 hour afternoon shot a four-engine plane over the village. Seven paratroopers. There was fierce shot at, 1 or 2 dead, 1 seriously injured or 2, 3 not injured. A decrease in the Short Neuve, one by Adrian Keller Schoolstraat in the garden. Aircraft cases island in the canoe pond, a pilot burned.

In Short Nieuwstraat landed a crewman in the tree for a house number. It was quickly put a ladder against the tree to him from his plight. Well on the ground gave him something to drink bystanders, he seemed a little dazed. He was immediately a German soldier nabbed on a bicycle and on foot through the Asselsestraat removed [13].
Another landed in the garden of the family of Paul Schoolstraat 26. He hit a concrete post at the landing, broke his leg and was caught off on a ladder.
Another landed in the middle of the Asselsestraat, just before house number 102 [14]. Another plunged into the canal, a few hundred meters north of the sluice, a few meters from the east bank. W.J. Warren: I helped him out of the water. Tommy was clearly excited and nervous, I think the prospect that he would be made prisoners of war. The Germans were very fast with a motorcycle on the spot and took him prisoner. There is an indication that one of the crew has landed in the High Street but that is not confirmed by other observations.

Han Rijnsdorp wrote in 1986 in his book: I walked around 13:00 hours in front of the former entrance to the Juliana Hospital on the Sprengenweg when unexpectedly above the center of Apeldoorn one in serious difficulty American bomber appeared … If it was yesterday I remember me how to slow from the two motors [15] flying unit first saw sailing down a hatch, followed by a dozen crew members whose parachutes are deployed rather late so I was wondering whether or not it would fall to pieces. While they slowly drifted apart was descending from different directions, to our great indignation by Dutch SS men shot at them with rifles.

From the stories of eyewitnesses it abundantly clear that by German soldiers on the falling crew is shot, but who where injured and thus, remains unclear. How and where Gustavo Contreras was killed, remains an open question.
Even after the crew had jumped except Kyle Smith, the aircraft was seen by several bystanders.

Henk Palm, 9 years old, was living at the Veenweg 84 [16] near the crossing, saw the Little Guy happened: The aircraft came from the direction of the center and black smoke came from one of the engines. It flew so low, we thought it would be tantamount to Waterlooscheweg and we put it on a walk. But it flew more ..

Gep Sannes, then 17 years old, walked out on that fateful Sunday near his home on the Waterlooscheweg [17]. I heard the drone of an airplane that was fast approaching, but I could not see through the tall trees. Suddenly I saw the plane just above me through the tops of the high beech trees shaving. It came from the side of the tracks, made a right turn and flew very low over the Jachtlaan further in the direction of Berg en Bos. Oh, that’s all wrong, I thought and I quickly went back home.

The last moments of the Little Guy

The restaurant in the Boschbad where Kyle S. Smith still managed to fly just over Marten van Houtum, who was 7 years old, the crash of very close quarters. He lived with his parents on the top floor of the restaurant [18] in the Boschbad. “On that Sunday afternoon I walked with my father outside, my mother and brother were inside. We heard the noise of a low flying aircraft and suddenly we saw the plane above us. It came from the direction of the Jachtlaan and made a sharp left turn on Felua Avenue. My father and I dived behind a wall for cover. It seemed as if the airplane had just pulled up to our house not to touch, then went nose down and hit with a resounding blow to pieces on the edge of canoe lake. The noise was enormous, even by the destructive trees and branches and the crackle of exploding ammunition. It was a dark round object out of the plane hurled in the direction of the Felua Avenue rolled up and go there through bushes and branches broke right through the fence and hit the middle of the road to a standstill kwam.Later this proved to be one of the bombs that the plane was still on board.
I wanted to run straight to the wreck, but my father stopped me. After all the noise there was a deathly silence, and there was a strong smell of petrol and burnt parts of the aircraft.
Immediately after the crash of the bomber, I under the pilot, at the last minute by our house to dodge me and my family’s life was saved. “

Marten van Houtum at the site of the crash, November 2007
On November 29 there was a tree by an allied aerial photograph taken from the west of Apeldoorn. Middle of the picture is the cemetery at the Soerenseweg to recognize (the trails system in the form of a wheel with eight spokes). Between the cemetery and the left edge of the photo, west southwest, is the Boschbad – the whimsical bright spots (the large white spots are clouds). Just east of the boating lake – a faint dark ellipse with a light at the top spot: wreckage of the Little Guy.
How did the rest of the crew?

Kyle S. Donald Smith and McGurk McGurkDon later wrote my chute had barely opened when I was already on the ground. He was arrested by the Germans and came to visit a prisoner of war camp and returned later to the United States back.

Gustavo Contreras was when he started his white parachute floated, under fire and slain. Kill is a better word, because the Geneva Convention prohibits shooting at people trying to save their lives with parachutes. Where exactly was, is no more opportunities, he was the first American who received help from the Germans on the marketplace or was he the “rag doll” on the railing of the bridge landed Deventer? The Deventer Bridge seems most likely.

Gustavo was of Mexican descent and was, because he was small of stature, the function of belly turret gunner. Folded, half lying in a small, half-ball with two machine guns, mounted on the underside of the B-17, he was not to be envied. The dome was so tight that he could only buckle on his parachute after the ‘ball’ had crept.

He was buried next to Kyle Scott Smith Heidehof in Ugchelen and is now buried in the large American military cemetery at Margraten [19]. The flag at the final funeral his coffin was covered, was on December 10, 1948 to his father in Tucson, Arizona handed.

It was the tail gunner, Bob DeLange, who landed on the marketplace and wounded? He was hit by German soldiers, who in the vicinity of the Marktpleinhet opened fire? He landed in the German hospital [20] that was located in the St. Joseph Foundation from which, together with the English Major Gordon Sheriff and another Englishman, David Ward managed to escape with the help of a Dutch nurse. They were one day or three hidden in churches and then to Hattem in Apeldoorn, where they stayed until the end of February. Feb. 28 turned the trio back to Apeldoorn, where the family Bob Woltman [21] on the Jachtlaan was housed. This was a family that many pilots and members of the First British Airborne Division has hidden. Bob proved to be a grateful guest. Job Woltman, the son of the house: In September 1945, when my parents delivered a box of clothes, thank you for providing shelter and clothing for our fallen replenishment.

Job Woltman and Bob DeLange in 1950 still had contact with one another, when Job was considering emigrating to America. That is not continued, and when Job in 1985 to restore contact, Bob appeared to be deceased 10 December 1971.

Melvin LaLuzerne, the navigator, wrote in July 2000; …. The pilot was behind the bat to prevent the device in the densely built-up areas would crash. I was the last to jump (Don McGurk also thought that he was the last – J. Meurer) and spoke with the pilot just prior to this. ….. within a few seconds I stood on the ground with a parachute filled with bullet holes.

Pilot Kyle S. Smith was also reburied Margraten and later transferred to Albany in Ohio. He rests there now next to the Presbyterian church. His father later in the same grave, his final resting place.

How did it go with the surviving crew members of the Little Guy?
Bob DeLange remained in the hands of the Germans until the liberation of Apeldoorn.

Thurs McGurk and Bob Porter ended up in POW camps. Don in Stalag Luft I in Barth and Bob Gross Tychow, when East Prussia, now Poland. Bob Porter is probably the infamous “death march” through, when the Germans, afraid of prisoner of war for liberation by the advancing Russian troops forced the prisoners to hundreds of kilometers to the west by foot to go. It was February 1945, it was freezing and there was plenty of snow, route conditions were harsh bad.

Melvin and Byron Wear LaLuzerne were imprisoned in the prisoner of war camp in Barth-Vogelsang Prussia, now Polish territory. There they were liberated on May 1 by the Russians, who also did nothing to prisoner of war to repatriate. 8 USAAF B-17’s put so [22] to the liberated prisoner of war to fly back to England. About Lester Colson and Thomas Arnold, who also were made prisoners of war, no further details. The prisoner of the Little Guy crew survived the war and returned to America. Bob DeLange is a few years after the war dead, the others lived until around the turn. Now no one lives more of this crew.

Finally a monument
It is noteworthy that the self-sacrificing and courageous act of Kyle Scott Smith in Apeldoorn so far little attention has been paid. We celebrate, rightly, every few years the great liberation by the Canadians in our city on April 17, 1945, but these brave Americans we would not be forgotten. Especially since the Kristalbad each year by tens of thousands of young Dutch traffic, on November 26, 2007 unveiled a simple memorial, almost at the point where the Little Guy has crashed at the edge of the canoe pond.

It was “Little Guy”.

More information here:
http://www.apeldoornendeoorlog.nl/monumenten-en-gedenktekens/monumentenlijst/monument-in-het-kristalbad/

In Dutch, unfortunately, but a very detailed description of the loss, the details of crewmembers and eyewitnesses, etc. Too long for me to translate but if anybody has any questions, I am happy to help out.

Pilot Kyle Scott Smith was killed in the crash because he stayed with the disabled aircraft to avoid crashing in the town. Belly gunner Gustavo Contreras was killed after his parachute succesfully deployed but he was shot at by members of the SS while descending. They are both buried at Margraten. The other crewmembers all survived, although another was injured by the SS whilst descending. Three of them evaded capture and were hidden by locals until the liberation of the area by Canadian forces.

maybe either

B-17G # 42-97740 398 BG or 42-106994 381 BG *Little Guy* both reported lost on this date near or around Apeldoorn. There maybe others….