Crew Roster · Personal File
Nathan Solomon
2nd Lt. Nathan Solomon served as navigator-bombardier on the 16 January 1945 mission to Lauta. He was listed as missing in action (prisoner of war) on the MACR.
German records confirm Solomon, born 22 November 1917, was captured and identified as one of the five crew members taken prisoner after the crash near Saalau/Kamenz.
Sortie Log
1 CATALOGUED SORTIE
16 JAN 1945
16 JAN 1945
The sorties below are those we have been able to document for this airman, drawn from flight logs, mission records, and archival sources. It is not necessarily a complete account of every mission flown; gaps may reflect missing documentation, transferred assignments, or records lost to time.
8AF Mission
Date
Target
Aircraft
№ 796
16 JAN 1945
Lauta
B-24J Liberator serial 42-51275, assigned to the 409th Bomb Squadron, 93rd Bomb Group, departed Hardwick on 16 January 1945 on a bombing mission to Lauta, Germany. Eyewitness S/Sgt. Metro Hereshko observed the aircraft drop out of formation about a minute after bombs away, peel off to the left and downward apparently under control, then go into a spin. No parachutes were observed from the tail position before visual contact was lost. German records confirm the aircraft crashed on 16 January 1945 at approximately 1300 hours at the north border of the village of Saalau near Wittichnau, northeast of Kamenz, Saxony. The crash was reported as 100% destruction. Of the nine-man crew, five were captured, one (F/O Robert A. Newell) was killed when his parachute failed to open, and five other crew members were killed in the crash. German authorities identified the five dead by name from information provided by T/Sgt. Charles W. Curran.
42-51275