News-Info-Alerts

Re: For Us, He Will Always Be Young

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 06, 2003

"Rest comes 60 years later for plane's crew
BY IRV LEAVITT
STAFF WRITER

Hour after hour, Boris Georgeff and his fellow U.S. Navy Air Corps crew searched the freezing waters of the north Pacific for a sign of their seven buddies whose plane had disappeared over Japanese territory.

They didn't find the plane on March 26, 1944, or the day after its disappearance, or on any of the days that followed. They didn't know what became of it until three years ago.

That's when Russia confirmed the plane had crash-landed on the Kamchatka Peninsula, and that they had found it in 1962. Russia's eventual admission stemmed from the work of the Joint U.S.-Russia Commission on POW/MIAs, then about 7 years old.

Nov. 19 and 20, the families of the lost airmen will finally get some degree of -- albeit not complete -- closure, with ceremonial interments at Arlington National Cemetery.

After exhaustive work, Navy investigators have found the reason for the crash -- anti-aircraft fire into the engines -- but were able to link granular remains found at the scene to only three naval airmen: navigator Don Lewallen, gunner Jimmy Palko and shipboard mechanic Clarence Fridley.

What happened to other four is anybody's guess. A Russian geologist, Yuryevich Khotin, who found the plane in 1962, has been quoted as surmising that only three or four men died in the wreck, and some of the others might have wound up in Russian prisons.
"It's a mystery," said Georgeff, of Northbrook. "No one really knows."

Chicago resident Charlotte Davis plans to journey to Arlington for the Nov. 20 burial ceremony honoring the crew of Bomber 31, including her brother, Jack Parlier, a meteorologist and photographer who was participating in his one and only combat mission the day the plane was lost.

"I knew he was OK, where he is now," she said. "But mother never got over it. She always wondered. You know, Tokyo Rose named every one of those crew members right afterward. We didn't know what happened. It's just a surmise. We don't know how they died."

The staff members of the Navy's Navy Personnel Command, POW/MIA Section, in Millington, Tenn., wish that they knew, too, because they consider their bosses to be the families of sailors lost in combat.

"It appears from all the reports I've seen, that maybe three or four survived the crash site, so their fate is still unknown," the POW/MIA Section's Ken Perry said Tuesday. "In cases like this, where some of the crew members are not (confirmed dead), we have individual interment for the known crew members, and a group interment for the other four, knowing that all the information is not uncovered.

"The case is not closed," Perry added. "I really believe that archival information will lead us to an answer, but it may be years before we get the next lead."

At 11 a.m. Nov. 19, separate services for Lewallen will be held. At 11 a.m. the following day, services will be held for the remaining crewmen, including those identified, plus Parlier, pilot Walt Whitman, co-pilot Jack Hanlon and radio operator Sammy Crown Jr.

Although he doesn't know the whole story, Davis is looking forward to the ceremony, which will include U.S. Navy fly-overs and other honors. "It's very important to us," she said. "He was lost for so long. This will bring partial closure. He was a good kid. And it was a long time ago.

"For us, he will always be young."

The night of the crew's last flight was a rough one for all five planes flying that night, Georgeff remembered last week. They were assigned to take off from Attu in the Aleutians, fly hundreds of miles to the island of Shumshu in the Japanese Kurils, where they were to drop flash bombs, photograph enemy positions and return.
Two planes turned back because of foul weather. Another crashed on takeoff into nearby Massacre Bay, killing four crewmen, Georgeff said. The plane he co-piloted took off through the roaring flames of the wreckage. It made it to the target, accomplished the mission and returned almost 11 hours later, without ever seeing another plane, including Whitman's.

"I think of that night quite often," Georgeff said last week. He said the PV-1 Venturas the crews were flying were tough, but ice that would build up on the wings and propellers of the planes endangered them as much as Japanese flak, and may have contributed to the loss of the plane that crashed on takeoff.

During flight, an automatic system was used to squirt defrosting chemicals at the propellers. "The ice would fly off and slam against the side of the fuselage," he said. "At first, it would scare the hell out of you; it sounded like the plane was coming apart. But you got used to it."

Georgeff and his fellow Navy fliers flew reconnaissance over the Kurils from October 1943 until June 1944. Then they reformed, and flew bombing runs, attacking air bases, factories and food supply targets. The missions successfully diverted Japanese forces north, away from the main action in the south Pacific.

Georgeff, then a lieutenant, was promoted to pilot for the bomb and rocket attacks of the Kurils. Will Swinney of Austin, Texas, who has organized reunions of the Aleutian airmen, was a member of Georgeff's crew.

"We went over those fishing factories, and I'll tell you how low we were flying -- we missed one of those roofs by about 10 feet," Swinney said Monday.

"When you're running 280, 300 knots, that's too fast, and too close," he laughed. "I was watching that left wing. A whole lot of machine gun fire was coming right over it. He raises it up one foot, that wing comes off. Boris is a real good pilot, never gets flustered."

Georgeff, now 86, flew recreationally until about 10 years ago. After the war, he finished his education on the GI Bill, like many World War II veterans. He taught airplane maintenance for years, then worked on aircraft propellers at Morton Grove's Crane Packing Co.

He later taught shop and other subjects at Iroquois Junior High in Des Plaines from 1980 until the late 1990s, when he started substituting in Northbrook schools. He retired from teaching in 1997.

Georgeff said last week that he doesn't know if he'll attend the Nov. 20 ceremony, but he appreciates the Navy's gesture.

"I think it means now that we know what happened, and it sort of brings everything to a final conclusion," he said.

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