News-Info-Alerts

Re: Men Travel World Searching for Lost Bombers

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 04, 2003

"Crossing paths

By: Jason Kristufek, Staff Writer

Men travel and research World War II bomber crashes

ROLAND - It has been more than 58 years since John Bryner became the lone survivor of a B-17 bomber crew whose plane crashed and exploded in a small German town.

      In many ways, the day his plane was shot down by a German fighter on a combat mission over a strategic target during World War II is a defining moment for him.

      But it wasn't until the last two and half years that Bryner realized just how much the crash, his plane and his fallen crewmates defined a generation of German citizens who still remain in Grossraschen, Germany, today.

      That is where Bryner, who will turn 79 in October, crossed paths with Peter Gajda, whose father was a 19-year-old German soldier who manned a flak gun trying to shoot down American planes during the war.

      Gajda, 50, was born six years after the end of World War II and is in the United States for the first time this month. In the 1990s, he began researching American bombers that were lost over Germany.

      He is staying with Bryner at his home in Roland.

      Together they are traveling to many parts of the county. They will visit a B-17 bomber in Kearney, Neb. They will visit the gravesite of six of Bryner's fallen crewmates at Fort McPherson.

      Then they will visit some remaining relatives of one of Bryner's crewmates in Salt Lake City, Utah.

      Gajda said he has always been interested in history, but the East German government had forbidden its citizens from researching World War II.

      Prior to 1991 it was illegal, he said. If someone was caught doing such research, they were first sent a warning letter to cease. If they continued, they were visited by government officials and warned to desist. If they continued, they faced a prison term.

      It wasn't until 1995 that Gajda was able to access sources and began studying Allied bomber crashes in his area. He grew up and still lives about 30 miles from Grossraschen.

      Most of the information he got from the German side came from oral histories, from eyewitnesses and people who were at or near the crash sites of the American planes.

      In 1996, he was able to obtain a microfilm of bomber crashes from March 1945.

      That is the first time he came across the Bryner name.

The Second was First

      Bryner was born in Washington, Penn. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in June of 1943.

      He was assigned to an American air base in Foggia, Italy, as part of the 15th Air Force, Second Bomb Group, 20th Bomb Squadron.

      On March 22, 1945 a heavily loaded B-17 bomber with Bryner and nine crewmates took off from that base. It was their third combat mission.
      Their target was to destroy the last German synthetic oil refinery at Ruhland, about 150 kilometers southeast of Berlin.

      The trip there and back was more than nine hours, or about as far as a B-17 could fly with a full tank of fuel.

      At around noon, the last plane in the group was met by several ME-262 German fighter planes.

      "They always picked on the last plane," Bryner said. "We called that plane the 'low and last'."

      The bomber was hit in the left wing between the No. 1 and No. 2 engine. The pilot lost control and the plane went into a severe spin.

      "It was impossible for anyone to get out," Bryner said. "The spinning was just too much."

      The left wing fell off as the plane caught fire and dropped toward earth. The spinning subsided.

      Bryner, who was the tail gunner, parachuted to safety through an escape hatch once the mangled bomber stopped spinning.

      The nine other crewmates were killed.

      The plane crashed into a house in the small town of Grossraschen and exploded, killing 13 German civilians.

      Bryner came down in the town of Buckgen, 10 kilometers south of where his plane and the rest of his crew crashed. It was too far away for him to see the destruction and the fate of the rest of the crew.

      He was taken prisoner by the local authorities and remained imprisoned until the end of the World War II. He was a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany.

A common goal     
 
      In 1996 Gajda began researching Bryner's B-17 crash. That crash is the only one whose exact coordinates were known.

      In 1997 Gajda met Eva Wessell who was visiting her hometown. She was born Grossraschen.

      Wessell, who is a professor at the University of California, had lived on the street where Bryner's B-17 crashed. He said she remembers the crash well, even though she was only 5 years old at the time.

      Gajda and Wessell became acquainted and he asked her to contact the 2nd Bomb Group to get information about the sole survivor of that B-17. It had been only a year after Bryner joined the 2nd Bomb Group Association, otherwise no one would have been able to find him.

      In February 2001, Bryner received a letter from German citizens living near Grossraschen. During the excavation of a new house at the site where his B-17 crashed, remnants of the American bomber were unearthed.

      In September 2001, Bryner accepted an invitation to visit the crash site and spoke with the German citizens who lived through the war and remember the horrid day an American plane crashed into their tiny village.

      "I never knew what happened to the plane," Bryner said. "I found out that the people in the village were desperately trying to get the crew out of the plane. That is when it exploded and 13 of them were killed."

      He learned that the Germans had buried the nine other crewmates near the edge of a forest outside of town. They later erected a granite headstone. Six years after the crash the remains were unearthed and laid to rest with family member here in the United States.

      Now, Gajda and Bryner are trying to raise money to erect a monument to honor the nine American flyers that perished in Grossraschen.

      Bryner wants the names of his fellow crewmates to be remembered: Pilot Ernest H. Williams, co-pilot Milas W. Massey, navigator John O. Black, bombardier Maurice A. Tilby, upper turret gunner Clarence P. Skeffington, right waist gunner John C. Shuey, left waist gunner Conrad R. Schryer and radio operator and gunner Henry C. Lawson.

      Bryner, who has lived in Mid-Iowa since 1961, did get to bring a piece of his plane home with him in September 2001. The man who bought the house where the crash occurred gave him a turbo supercharger, a 22 pound solid brass piece off the No. 4 engine.

      "As soon as I saw it, I knew that is what I wanted," Bryner said. "It's solid. It's symmetrical. It's solid brass. It represents so much."

©Ames Tribune 2003"