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Lt. Vratny’s plane, ying lead
in the lead squadron, began to fal-
ter and stagger. It nally left the
formation under control but soon
began to stagger even more and
give indications that the pilot was
losing control. Finally the crew
began to bail out. It is understood
that a Lt. Fishel of the 486th BG,
I gave Capt. Wilson specic instructions to go into
the waist to notify the other members in that part of the
plane to bail out as quickly as possible. All members
except Lt.Col. Lay and myself did bail out. The only
who was ying in a tail of one of
the planes of that group, followed
the parachutes to the ground with
binoculars. He counted eleven
‘chutes, saw them land, remove
the ‘chutes and run for nearby
woods. Lt. Mellen states that he is
almost certain that he recognized
the last to jump as Lt Col. Lay.
man injured on board our aircraft was the Bombardier,
Capt. Francis Hodge. … Lt. Col. Bernie Lay and myself
also bailed out. Lay taking over controls while I bailed
out and then in turn followed me out of the plane.
Here, too, he continued to personally partici-
pate in his unit’s missions. However, he was not
allowed to complete many of them. On Thursday,
May 11th, 1944, he led his unit over Troyes, France.
It was supposed to be a Milk Run, but thanks to
a navigational error, the Liberator formation
found itself in the area of a German airfield near
Châteaudun, where it was surprised by very
heavy flak. Two aircraft from the front of the for-
The aircraft crashed near Bretoncelles and
was completely destroyed by fire. The crew came
down by parachute mainly in the area of Le Mage,
Verneuil, Longny-au-Perche in southern Nor-
mandy. Wounded bombardier, Capt. Hodge was
captured the same day. After landing, he man-
aged to stow his parachute and with a wounded
leg, two wounds from flak shrapnel and a lacer-
ation above his right eye, managed to crawl to
a French farm. The farmer, who was not connect-
ed to the underground movement, refused to help
the American airman escape due to Hodge’s inju-
ries and out of concern for his wife and daughter.
So he brought him bread and wine and rode his
bicycle to a nearby village to fetch the German
authorities….
The rest of the crew managed to escape cap-
tivity for a long time, but some of them were later
tracked down and taken during their stay in Paris.
Four of the eleven men of the crew still managed
to escape capture. Among them was the unit
commander, Lt.Col. Bernie Lay.
In his Escape and Evasion report of August 15th,
1944, he stated:
An interesting statement about the last mo-
ments of Lay’s or more precisely Vratny’s Lib-
erator, was noted by an intelligence officer from
a debriefing with 1st Lt. Riggs Mellen, flying near
the stricken plane:
mation were shot down. One of these was B-24H
s/n 41-29468 ‘Peg-O
-
My-Heart’, which was
hit by flak shrapnel three times in succession.
The pilot was 1st Lt. Frank Vratny, and the Com-
manding Pilot, Bernie Lay, sat in the co-pilot’s seat.
The plane took many hits to the wing, and three
engines were disabled, as were the hydraulic and
electrical systems.
The entire crew managed to bail out of the fa-
tally stricken aircraft and take to their chutes.
The pilot, Capt. Frank Vratny wrote of the last
moments on board:
German crash report of B-24H 41-29468 on May 11th, 1944.
(NARA, KU)
HISTORY
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September 2024