#OTD 76 years ago, five of the six men in the photo below died in Normandy. A little #WW2 thread...
The chap on the right of the front row was a chap called Clement Monaco. He'd been wounded and therefore wasn't part of the crew when their B-26 was shot down near Caen. /1

The smaller guy on the left of the back row, Don Weiss, was the pilot. He took over from Charlie Thornton as commander of the 555th Bomb Sq, 386th Bomb Gp when the former was shot down over the Netherlands the previous February. /2

The name of the aircraft pictured, Incendiary Mary, refers to Mrs Weiss, Don's wife. Here's Don in the cockpit. By the time Don was shot down, Incendiary Mary had been written off when Bob Perkins crash landed it, much to Don's annoyance. /3

Perkins himself was shot down near Demouville in July 1944, was captured (briefly) before being freed by British troops. Anyway, I digress....
On the 22nd of June, Mission No.216 for the 386th Bomb Gp was "a chateau HQ near Caen".
This one: /4

Nice gaff. Who lives in a place like this? Well, for a few weeks in June of 1944, it was the HQ of I.SS-Panzer-Korps. Here's an extract from a German situation map of today in 1944: /5

This Korps was under the command of course of Sepp Dietrich. He's well known, there's loads of photos of him. This one is my favourite: /6

As the formation of B-26s approached their target at about 10000', they came under anti-aircraft fire. With the bomb bay doors open, Don Weiss' plane took a hit right there and broke in two over the woods in the bottom left of the photo (the HQ is marked top right) /7

The front half of the plane hit the fields, the rear crashing into the woods. None of the eight men on board survived.
One of them, Orville Thatcher, was only on board as a passenger. His body was recovered fairly quickly and taken by the British to Tilly sur Seulles cemetery /8

By the end of the year, plans were undertaken to move him to the American cemetery in la Cambe, which duly happened. He was repatriated after the war.
The other seven men remained missing.
In May 1986, remains were received by the Normandy American Cemetery and... /9

... subsequent investigation identified them as four men, from the front of the plane. Including of course Don Weiss, who was identified through dental records and anthropological profiling (he was below average height). Back then though, no DNA testing so it took a while.../10

...(over ten years) before they were buried in a communal grave in Arlington, it being impossible to properly seperate the remains. /11

A few years ago, John Canty's (front left in the photo at the top of the thread) dog tag was found and subsequent investigation led to his recovery. Thomas McCaslin (front centre) and Robert Perkins (not pictured) are still missing. /12

In 2017, just before the discovery of Canty, Don's daughter visited Normandy. She'd been into the field where her dad died but not into the woods. The grey stuff by her feet is wreckage from her dad's plane. /13

Don Weiss, Pete Slustrop, Dave Meserow, Orville Thatcher, George Hazlett Jr, Robert Perkins, John Canty, Thomas McCaslin..... RIP
/End