Dozens of U.S. airmen in England assisted with an archaeological dig earlier this year aimed at finding the remains of an Army pilot lost there during World War II, and in the process helped shine a light on one of the war’s most ambitious and ill-fated secret operations against the Nazis.
The search for Army Air Forces Lt. John Wesley Fisher, of Peekskill, New York, led the airmen to a plot of land in Britain’s Suffolk district near the English Channel coast, where Senior Airman Wyatt Stephensen of the 100th Maintenance Squadron, 100th Air Refueling Wing, spent five days helping with the search.
Stephensen said he was mostly on shovel detail, digging up muck from the site to be run through sieves on the chance of finding evidence of Fisher or pieces of his plane.
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“It was a big honor to be able to look for his remains,” he said.
Fisher, 21, was on a top secret mission on the afternoon of Aug. 4, 1944, when he flew off in a B-17 Flying Fortress — nicknamed “Wantta Spar,” a boxing reference — carrying the biggest conventional bomb load ever put aboard a U.S. aircraft.
The B-17 normally had a crew of 10 but, for that special mission, Fisher was joined only by Tech. Sgt. Elmer Most, who served as co-pilot and also had an unusual job designation — automatic flight control engineer — for the flight from Royal Air Force base Fersfield east of London.
Their orders were to fly the bomber, crammed with 21,170 pounds of Torpex, a more powerful explosive than TNT that was used in torpedoes and depth charges, to an altitude of about 2,000 feet and then bail out over the English coast after turning over radio control of the plane to a Lockheed Ventura medium bomber flying above.
The pilotless B-17 — turned into what was possibly the first U.S. combat drone — was then to be guided by remote control to crash in an immense explosion on a hardened German target. It was meant to be a blow to the Nazi regime as it was developing more devastating long-range weapons to target England.
But the switchover of control from the B-17 to the “mother ship” failed after an initial connection. Most was able to bail out as the plane went into a stall, but Fisher stayed with the aircraft and may have steered it away from a populated area to crash in a woodland, leaving an enormous crater.
About a week later, Navy Lt. Joseph Kennedy Jr., 29, the oldest of the nine children of Joseph Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, took off on Aug. 12 from the RAF Fersfield on a mission similar to Fisher’s but with a different aircraft — a Consolidated PB4Y-1 B-24 Liberator patrol plane.
Kennedy’s co-pilot was Navy Lt. Wilford Willy, an expert in radio operations, aboard the stripped down B-24 packed with more than 10 tons of Torpex for a planned attack on a German target in France.
Kennedy and Willy also were to take the aircraft to about 2,000 feet and then bail out over the English coast but, as they prepared to hand off radio control to a Lockheed Ventura bomber, the B-24 disintegrated in an explosion, possibly due to a short circuit, that was so enormous that it damaged a following escort de Havilland Mosquito aircraft and injured several crew members.
The Search for Fisher
The remains of Fisher, Kennedy and Willy were never found. But 80 years after their missions ended in tragedy, more than 90 U.S. airmen joined in the dig at the crash site of Fisher’s plane, giving new perspective to the failed attempt to create new weapons of war by turning stripped-down bombers into combat drones.
The Fisher search in May and June was part of the ongoing Operation Nightingale, a British Ministry of Defence initiative to involve sick, wounded and injured veterans in archaeological investigations to aid in their recovery.
U.S. involvement came about through a contact with Richard Osgood, an archaeologist and founder of Operation Nightingale, by Army Reserve Sgt. Michael Doherty, who served as a volunteer coordinator for the Fisher search.
Once he put out the call for volunteers, the response was overwhelming from the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall and from U.S. European Command service members at RAF Molesworth, Doherty said in a phone call.
The 100th ARW command “actually put most service members on orders to be able to participate. There were also several volunteers who attended on their own personal leave, and there was actually a waiting list for volunteers,” Doherty said.
The dig was supervised by the Cotswold Archaeology firm in Britain, one of many organizations around the world that partner with the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, in the search for missing-in-action U.S. service members.
In a Zoom call last week, volunteer airmen from the 100th Maintenance Squadron said they felt privileged to participate in the Fisher search and learn more of the legacy of the Army Air Forces during World War II.
“I don’t want to say I got emotional,” said Senior Airman Samson Bell, 24, of Washington, D.C., but “it touched me” to learn that Fisher “at the time of his passing was younger than me.”
Bell, who worked at the site for four days, marveled at “the amount of bravery it took to do what he did.”
Rosanna Price, digital engagement manager for Cotswold Archaeology, said a total of 93 U.S. military personnel from RAF bases Mildenhall, Molesworth and Lakenheath took part in the search. In addition, two more from the U.S., Maj. Brittany Schick and Maj. Jenna Steele, came over to volunteer, she said.
In an exchange of emails last week, Price, who oversaw the dig and the work of the volunteers, gave the final results of the May-June Fisher dig.
“Our search returned over 5,000 fragments of Fisher’s plane, Wantta Spar. We also recovered material evidence, including what looked to be pieces of oxygen mask tubing, potential parachute material, and one item of Lt. Fisher’s personal effects.”
She declined to identify the personal effects item, which was turned over to DPAA for lab analysis. A spokesman for the DPAA said the item would eventually be returned to the Fisher family.
The volunteer search teams also found a horseshoe, which was believed to have been aboard Fisher’s plane, Price said.
From the personnel files and official records she had access to in the course of the search, Price said she believed Fisher showed extraordinary heroism in saving his co-pilot Most and then steering the B-17 away from populated areas to crash in the woods.
“We know what Fisher did because Most survived to tell the tale,” Price said. “Fisher pushed him from the aircraft when [Most’s] parachute” caught on an exit hatch, which had been rerouted to the navigator’s door “due to the rest of the plane being stuffed full of the Torpex,” Price said.
“There were also eyewitness accounts documented at the time from locals in the nearby fields who saw Elmer leave the plane, the plane pitch and dive, and ultimately then crash in the woodland,” Price said.
After freeing Most, who had been dangling on the side of the aircraft, Fisher returned to the cockpit to attempt to regain control “as the plane appeared to slip out of autopilot,’ she said.
Fisher was now alone in the cockpit of a “malfunctioning flying bomb,” Price said, and “to have managed to somehow maneuver the aircraft into that tiny strip of trees, saving everyone but himself, was a feat of pure skill, clear thinking, and bravery.”
In addition to the account from Most, “I believe there was video footage taken from either the screen in the mother ship … or one of the escorting fighter planes,” she said.
Fisher was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor, in a vague one-sentence citation that gave no hint of what had happened on his top secret mission.
He was cited “for conspicuous gallantry in action against the enemy while serving with the Eighth Air Force in the European Theater of Operations during World War II.”
Joe Kennedy’s Ill-Fated Mission
A week after the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy, the first of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s V-weapons — or “Vergeltungswaffen” in German, meaning vengeance weapons — was launched from a base in northern France in an effort to terrorize British civilians and undermine morale, according to the British Imperial War Museum.
The V-1 “flying bomb” carrying about 1,000 pounds of explosives hit on June 13, 1944, near a railway bridge on Grove Road in south London, killing six and injuring 42. The British would come to call the V-1s “doodlebugs,” for the buzzing sound the pulse-jet motor made before the engine cut out and the weapon silently hit the ground.
Before the war ended, a total of 6,725 V-1s were launched at Britain. Of these, 2,340 hit London, killing 5,475 and injuring 16,000, according to the British National Archives.
Many of the slow-flying V-1s were shot down by British fighters or anti-aircraft batteries, but the V-1s were followed in September 1944 by the V-2 ballistic missiles, for which there was no defense.
The Germans were also in the process of developing a V-3 weapon, which was to be an enormous long-range cannon with a 450-foot barrel at the Nazi fortress Mimoyecques in northern France to bombard London, but the cannon never fired a shot as Allied forces overran the site.
U.S. intelligence was aware of the development of the V weapons, and a plan was put together at Eglin Field in Florida to take aging warplanes, pack them with explosives and turn them into remote-controlled flying bombs to target the launch sites of the V weapons.
In June 1944, Army Air Forces Lt. Gen. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, commander of the Eighth Air Force in Britain who had earned the Medal of Honor for flying bombers off the flight deck of the carrier Hornet to attack Tokyo, signed off on “Operation Aphrodite” to convert B-17 bombers for missions against the launch sites of the V weapons.
The Navy’s part of the overall plan was called “Operation Anvil,” which would use PB4Y-1 B-24 Liberator patrol planes of the kind flown by Kennedy on missions over the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay.
Kennedy, who was often described as the man-who-would-be-president in the numerous books and biographies on the Kennedy family, volunteered for Operation Anvil although he had flown enough missions to earn a return to the States.
At the time, his younger brother, John F. Kennedy, was being hailed back in Boston as a hero for his actions with patrol-torpedo boat PT-109. The speculation in the biographies was that Joe Kennedy felt he needed a combat action award to become the favored son his father wanted to put in the White House as the first Irish Catholic president.
The target for the mission flown by Kennedy and Wilford Willy on Aug. 12 was the V-3 site under development at the heavily fortified Mimoyecques complex in France, but their plane dissolved in a fireball over the English village of Blythburgh, causing fires on the ground but no deaths or injuries.
In the tunnels under Mimoyecques, there now is a small memorial to Kennedy, which says in French: “In memory of Lt. Joseph Kennedy and his U.S.A.F. crew who went missing on Aug. 12, 1944, during a bombing mission on Mimoyecques.”
Taking the 50-50 Odds
Kennedy and Willy would eventually be awarded the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor, but not even the Kennedy family was at first told the nature of the mission in which Joe Kennedy was killed.
In a condolence letter, now in the U.S. National Archives, to “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Kennedy” at the family compound at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Navy Cmdr. Page Knight wrote, “By now, you will have been notified by the Navy Department that your son, Joe, has been killed in an aircraft accident while on an operational mission.
“I am not at liberty to disclose the nature of Joe’s mission, but I can assure you that he gave his life while on a mission vital to the cause for which we are all fighting,” the letter said.
The letter went on to state that Joe Kennedy’s clothes and other personal effects were being packed up to be sent home by his sister, “Lady Hartington.” That was Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, who had stayed in England to work for the American Red Cross and was at odds with her family for marrying William Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, against her parents’ wishes. Cavendish would later be killed in the war in Belgium while serving in the British Army.
Kathleen Kennedy, known as “Kick,” would later die in a 1948 plane crash while on the way to the French Riviera.
In an account he wrote on his brother’s death for the family that is now in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the future president wrote that Joe turned down a chance to go home “for he had heard of a new and special assignment for which volunteers had been requested, which would require another month of the most dangerous type of flying.”
“It may be felt, perhaps, that Joe should not have pushed his luck so far and should have accepted his leave and come home,” the president wrote, but “as he told a friend early in August, he considered the odds at least 50-50, and Joe never asked for any better odds than that.”
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