28 May 1944, Mission 376
On this date, 67 years ago, the 8th Air Force marshaled a complex 1000-plus plane raid on targets throughout Germany. Details of the raid are captured on the internet, and in a unique book, Mission 376 written by a Dutch officer whose family witnessed the crash of one of the bombers amazon.com.
The Decatur Deb, B17G 231651,was one of the bombers assigned synthetic oil industry targets in the area of Magdeburg. It flew from the 571st Squadron, 390th Bomb Group airfield at Framlingham, Anglia. One of the three survivors of the Decatur Deb wrote the following accounts of its last minutes and his subsequent capture.
SSG Stoy was still alive until at least 2007, but has not answered recent emails. The seven crewmembers of the B17 were given a decent burial by villagers of Eberdorf, near Magdeburg, though the fire had so reduced the bodies that they were placed two per coffin. After the war, US Graves Registration personnel reburied the crew in various US cemeteries in France
