Re: Lone Survivor of Crash Remembers

Date: February 20, 2004

"Veteran revists site of tragic crash
JOSEPH B. NADEAU , Staff Writer

WOONSOCKET -- Raymond A. Noury, 80, has plenty of memories of his days fighting in the skies over Europe during World War II but most aren’t the type to dwell upon.

The city resident was part of an 11-member B-24 crew of the 98th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force, that set out from Italy on February 22, 1944, to strike an enemy aircraft plant in Regensburg, Germany. He was the only survivor of an explosion that shattered the crippled bomber over Nepomuk, Czechoslovakia, on the flight home.

Ever since crash, the town where Noury landed in a damaged parachute has remembered the deaths of his fellow airmen with a small service at the place where pieces of the Allied bomber fell.

On Saturday, Noury and two nephews of his crew’s tail gunner, Wayne Nelson, will join the residents of Nepomuk in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the crash.

The tribute will include a morning church service followed by ceremonies in the town square attended by local officials and U.S. Ambassador William Cabaniss.
"Those people have been doing it since 1944, and since they have been that committed to it, I felt I should do my best to get there to honor my crew," Noury said Tuesday while preparing for his flight to Prague, Czechoslovakia.

"I thought of going for the 50th anniversary but was sick and couldn’t make it," he said.

How he will feel when he gets there remains to be seen.

"I don’t know," Noury, who was held as a prisoner of war for 15 months, said of his coming experiences. "It gives you a kind of nervous feeling."

Like Wilfred Hebert of Cumberland, who has traveled back to Europe to see the remains of his old B-17 bomber, Noury plans to visit a museum in Prague that now holds pieces of his shot-down B-24.

"They’ve got quite a bit of it," Noury said of his old plane. The artifacts from the B-24 include a propeller, a portion of a wing, and part of the fuselage.

The residents of Nepomuk also located a ring belonging to the plane’s pilot, Lt. George M. Goddard Jr. and returned it to his family in Texas several years ago.

After losing an engine to flak during the bombing run against the Messerschmidt 109 fighter factory in Regensburg, Noury’s plane had begun limping home with several other bombers. The flight was set upon by German fighters over Czechoslovakia and Noury’s plane sustained further damage during the battle and began to burn.

Noury made an unsuccessful attempt to free the plane’s ball turret gunner from the jammed pod and then began to don his parachute. The plane exploded and Noury woke up in his damaged chute dropping toward the ground.

He suffered a number of injuries in his landing and after being captured by German soldiers on skis, was treated in a hospital and transferred to the first of several prison camps he would be held in before being liberated in May of 1945.

At one, point, Noury and Hebert, also captured after his B-17 crashed in Landeck, Austria, on Oct. 23, 1944, were held together in a prison camp, Noury recalled.

During his visit to the Czech Republic, Noury and his party will be hosted by Jaromir and Martin Kohout, longtime researchers into the air battle over Nepomuk in which a force of enemy fighters fell upon the wing of returning bombers.

In addition to visiting the local memorial to lost crew members, Goddard, Haig Kandarian, Joseph E. Altemus, Charles F. Spickard, Oscar W. Houser, Harold C. Carter, John A. Golbach, Roy E. Hughes, Nelson, Rexford R. Rhodes, and Noury as the sole survivor, the guests will also be taken to the crash sites of several other planes destroyed in the battle and later in the war.

In an email to his town’s guests, Jaromir Kohout wrote that the brothers were looking forward to meeting Noury after years of researching the crash.

During their research into the downing of Noury’s plane, Kohout said it had long been the brothers’ goal to "find some relatives of the crew members who lost their lives on 22nd February 1944, and to get some information about Ray Noury -- only one flyer who was captured. After 19 years, it will be possible to meet with you at our country," he said.

Noury said he is most looking forward to seeing the monument to his crew in the town, something he has only seen in photographs to date.

"I want to visit just to honor them," he said.

The memorial bears a title saying "To The Everlasting Memory of American Airmen. After listing their names it states, "They braved the storm so we might have the sun."


©The Call 2004 "