Memorial

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After his graduation from Harvard University in 1930, Major Canfield, became associated at different times with G.M.P. Murphy & Co, the International Business Machine Corporation, the Keswick Corporation, and was secretary-treasurer of the Differential Wheel Corporation.

Robert W. Canfield was married in 1933 to Camilla Hooper Brown. Their three children are George, Camilla who was seven when her father died, and Pamela, who was born after his death.

In the spring of 1943, he attended an Army-Navy conference called by General Arnold to grapple with the whole complex problem of aerial flexible gunnery. Canfield's imagination and curiosity were fired and he contributed everything he had to the quest for a sighting system which should be theoretically correct, easily thaught and easily applied. In July, when a 'zone' system of sighting had finally been evolved, Canfield was sent on a special gunnery mission to the United Kingdom to put the system to test under combat conditions.

On 12 August 1943, he set out as waist gunner and selected a plane in the most exposed position of the formation in order to make sure the system had a good test.

After having dropped its load of bombs on Gelsenkirchen and got through exceptionally heavy flak over the target area, the plane was heavily attacked by enemy fighters. It crashed in a field on a hillside outside the little town of Lindlar. Some records show the plane was shot down by flak.

Six men parachuted to safety, five men were killed.

Maj Canfield was found in the crashed plane and was brought to the Elizabeth Hospital in Cologne where it is presumed he died of injuries as a result of the crash. He was initially buried at the West Cemetery of Cologne, from where his remains were disinterred in April 1946 and marked as Unknown X-2168. After being evacuated to Ardennes Cemetery his remains could be identified. He was given his final resting place on 13 April 1950.