“The Witch”

During the withdrawal from Ploesti on August 1, 1943, The Witch flew alongside the Pyramiders' Daisy Mae as part of a small straggling group crossing Bulgaria. Piloted by Julian Darlington, the aircraft dropped back to cover Prince Charming when Bulgarian fighters attacked. Lieutenant Stoyan Stoyanov's Messerschmitt knocked out two of The Witch's engines, and the crippled bomber went down in a mountain wheat field. Four of the crew were wounded in the crash. Bulgarian border guards captured Darlington and navigator Joseph N. Quigley as they tended to a wounded engineer, while four other crewmen, led by co-pilot Daryl Epp, fled unhurt into the woods and later joined Yugoslav partisans rather than being captured. Darlington's entire crew survived; Darlington, Quigley, and the wounded engineer spent more than a year interned in Sofia, presumed dead by the Red Cross registry in Geneva.