Unidentified ship.
Mission 508 · 01 August 1944
The crew.
In their own words.
2nd Lt. Thomas L. Boggan (ASN 0-691612), Bombardier, 328th Squadron, 93rd Bomb Group, was MIA on 1 August 1944. He bailed out at approximately 17,000 feet north of Paris, near St Denis, landing in a field where a French woman and two children immediately approached him and directed him toward nearby woods. A French civilian then escorted him about a mile up a hill to a hiding place in the rocks and returned with food and a message instructing him to wait until morning when civilian clothes would be brought. The following morning, two men brought clothes and shoes. Boggan put the civilian clothes over his uniform and followed one of the men six or seven miles to a small station, where he boarded a train to Paris with a ticket and two slips of paper directing him to the Gare St Lazare and to Mont de Gausincourt. In Paris he exited the Gare du Nord, approached a Frenchman who showed him the Metro route to Gare St Lazare. After spending 3.5 to 4 hours in the station among Gestapo and German soldiers, a young Frenchman sat beside him. Boggan asked in French for help, and the man guided him by Metro through the Pantin area to a dairy or cab man named Heilys, a former boxer, whose gymnasium Boggan used as a safe house. Two resistance men arrived the next day; one of them, Pierre Durafour, spoke good English and took Boggan to his home across the street from La Petite Parisienne, where a woman who had worked for the US government during World War I cared for him for three days. A resistance courier then escorted Boggan and others to a camp at Chateaudun. At the No. 1 camp near Cloyes, Boggan met F/Lt Peter Berry and British colonel Lucien Bedford. On 11 August a British captain arrived by jeep promising to send tanks and trucks, but no one appeared the following day. After a series of failed rendezvous, Boggan and two RAF men left on foot, walking cross country 25 to 30 miles southwest to a village that had already been liberated. They were taken by car to American forces at Montebleau and eventually obtained a flight from T-2 airfield, arriving back in the UK on 19 August 1944. He was interviewed on 20 August 1944 at 63 Brooke Street, London.
Sgt. Edwin W. Ritter (ASN 16070712) served as Ball Turret Gunner on the same aircraft as 2nd Lt. Boggan on the mission of 1 August 1944. He is listed on the crew questionnaire but no further details about his fate were provided in this report. Boggan stated that he believed all crew members had sufficient warning to bail out, as the emergency bell was rung in adequate time. However, he saw only two parachutes open after leaving the aircraft and had no contact with any other crew members after landing. Ritter's fate following the bailout is unknown from this document.
The flight.
Notes.
Read the records.
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