Posted by Alan Morton on 1/4/2008, 1:07 am, in reply to "hallie l. bennett, 751st squadron"
75.83.113.51

Hi Burt ... Your Dad flew approximately Fourteen (14) Combat Missions with the Pilot Jack B. Owens Crew in the summer of 1944. The First Mission was Mission 47 to Target: Villacoublay, France on May 20, 1944. The Plane Captain was Jack B. Owens. The co-pilot was Charles E. Berta and the Tail Gunner was Sgt, Hallie L. Bennett. But the rest of the crew was made up of strangers and their first time together (but all trained B-17 Flight Crew members -just the first time together as Pilot Owens Flight Crew). The Second Mission #50 was to BERLIN on May 24, 1944 and still a mixed bag of crewmen. But the Pilot gets a new permanent Navigator Lt. Armen Topakian. (Berlin isn't the best target for a bunch of absolute strangers flying together in combat! But c'est la vie). Missions 51 and 52 remained "crew status quo." Mission No. 83 Date - July 07, 1944 Target - Leipzig - Ditched This was a repeat mission to the aircraft plants at Leipzig, the previous mission on Jun 29th had not done the job. This time the 457th had the same target and made visual passes in trail on the target. Photos later showed that the target had recieved direct hits and smoke billowed skyward and could be seen hundreds of miles away. On the way to the target one of the 457th planes, an old model F, was unable to transfer fuel and had to leave the formation and eventually ditched in the North Sea. Over 1000 planes had been dispatched and 37 failed to return. Plane s/n 42-30731 was an old model F and on this mission to Leipzig was piloted by Lt Jack B. Owens. They had lost three engines and the fourth was sputtering. They left the formation and set direction toward Glatton. They were unable to maintain altitude and within 15 miles of England, over the English Channel, they elected to ditch the plane following standard procedures. The plane broke in half as it hit the water. Some of the crew managed to get a life raft out before the plane sank. Four of the crew drowned and the other five were rescued by air-sea rescue. Jack B. Owens Crew Member this mission did not include Sgt. Hallie L. Bennett! The crew on this mission was as follows: Plane s/n 42-30731 Pilot Lt Jack B. Owens POW Copilot Lt Hays Bricka POW Navigator Lt Armen Topakian POW Bombardier Lt Francis A. Minturn KIA Aircraft Engineer T/Sgt Phillip M. Murillo KIA Radio Operator T/Sgt Theodore C. Roland KIA Right Waist Gunner S/Sgt John D. Ward POW Ball Turret Gunner T/Sgt. Earl Markwalder KIA Tail Gunner S/Sgt R.C. Zeagler POW Here are ALL of the 14 Missions Numbers your Dad flew: 47, 50, 51, 52, 59, 61, 63, 65, 66, 79, 80, 94, 95 and 98.

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Posted by Alan Morton on 1/4/2008, 1:50 pm, in reply to "hallie l. bennett, 751st squadron"
75.83.113.51

My posting this date 1/4/2008 has some obvious errors! Pilot Jack B. Owens, Co-Pilot Hays Brica, Navigator Armen Topakian, Sgt. John Ward and Sgt. R. Zeagle could not have ditched in the English Channel and ended up as POW's at the same time. Why? Because two of these three officers were back flying on Mission #95 aboard A/C #827 on July 25, 1944 ... AND these Officer's names are not posted as POW's on the Prisoner Of War section of this web site. See:http://www.457thbombgroup.org/NARRATIVES/MA95.HTML By the way the Model B-17F was easily identified because it had no Chin Turret like the later Model B-17G. Lastly, Son Burt A Bennett wants to know if there are any photos of the Lt. Jack B. Owens crew. It's not likely, but we'll look. The son of Lt. Hays Brica lives in Florida, His Dad is deceased. No account of the whereabouts of Lt. Jack B. Owens. I'm trying to contact the Topakian family in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, we former Flight Crew members are dying off like flies.

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