"MISSION COMPLETED" Sixty years after his plane was shot down over Europe,      a World War II tail gunner completes a personal mission -- finding the family of his pilot who didn’t come home. (Xenia, Ohio) January 24, 2005 About the last thing Bob Hedges (79) expected when he and his wife went to Lowe’s Home Improvement Store on a Saturday afternoon was that he would come one step closer to the fulfillment of a quest that began in November of 1944. About the last thing David Berry (50), a military historian expected on some now forgotten errand to Lowe’s, was that he would take on a project involving his passion, World War II history. "I was walking down the aisle and noticed a "vintage" gentleman wearing a ball cap that proclaimed an association with the 100th Bomb Group", says Berry. "You only have to spend about fifteen minutes reading about the air war in Europe before you become acquainted with the history of that particular outfit. Their nickname was ‘The Bloody Hundredth**.’ I introduced myself and asked the man what he did in the Hundredth."

Hedges explained that he had been a tail gunner on B-17s during the war, and went on to recount the story of how he and his crew were shot down over Luxembourg on their fourth mission on November 9, 1944. Hedges told Berry how his plane, nicknamed Boomerang, had taken off from Thorpe-Abbotts, England, with a 6,000 pound bomb load—four in the bomb bay and a thousand-pounder under each wing. Enroute to the target—Saarbrucken-- Boomerang was hit by ‘flak’ and lost an engine. The ship began to fall back and lose altitude until she occupied the "tail-end Charlie" position. Boomerang could not keep up as the formation drew further and further ahead, taking away the defensive firepower of the Group. A runaway prop now complicated the problem, and pilot Lewis C. Williams and co-pilot Aubrey J. Blockson worked frantically to shake the prop loose. When this failed, Williams was faced with the possibility of a wing fire or and explosion. He weighed his options, and even though unsure of whether they were over allied or enemy occupied territory he called the crew together and made the decision for everybody to bail out. Williams told Hedges to go first, with the other nine crew members to follow. "When I landed my chute dragged me right into a boulder and knocked me cold. When I came to, I found that I had been transported to a nearby school house by U.S. ground troops. I was told that two of our crew had suffered broken legs, but learned nothing else. I was treated overnight in a field hospital and released the next day. It was then that I learned that Lt. Williams had been killed when his chute became entangled on the rear stabilizer of the plane as it was going down and he had gone down with the plane."                       Next Page