Memorial

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Patrick Winzey enlisted in New York City, New York, on 13 July 1943.

According to crew members of other airplanes in the group, the aircraft's hydraulic system was on fire due to flak hits. It turned out of the formation, but because of intense flak and the fact that they were on the bomb run, additional observations were not possible.

According to the pilot, who survived, flak hit the cockpit area. The interphone and radio were destroyed, and the oxygen system exploded, filling the cockpit with flames so intense that the aluminium skin was burning. This obscured all vision.

Four crew members survived and were taken prisoner; five men were killed.

On 3 January 1945, the following article appeared in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "Staff Sgt. Patrick M. Winsey, 19, of 154 4th Ave, formerly assistant manager of the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Eagle, was killed in action, Sept. 11, according to a War Department telegram received by his mother, Veronica, New Year's Eve. Sergeant Winzey, holder of the Air Medal and four Oak Leaf Clusters, dreamed as a boy of flying ships. He stayed away from school one day, and the truant officer found him building airplane models. 'Why are you at home instead of in the classroom?' demanded the agent. 'I'd like to be a pilot,' he answered. The truant officer looked at him pityingly. 'Son,' he said, 'you haven't got a chance.' Veronica Winzey, grief-stricken at the loss of her eldest son, wept as she remembered this scene from his boyhood. 'Because he was poor, he had only his dreams,' she said. However, along came the war, providing many Americans who could not afford peacetime flight training with opportunities in the Air Corps. Pat Winzey was drafted at 18, three months before he was to graduate from Manual Training High School. He became an assistant radio man and turret gunner. In one of his last letters home, he wrote to his father, Arthur M. Winzey, a machine operator in a textile house: 'So you like the Air Medal?' he wrote. 'Well, it only takes six missions to get one, the same amount for an Oak Leaf Cluster.' To his mother in his last letter, he wrote: 'With a little luck and God's will, it won't be too long before we will be finished and headed home for a while. We are almost to the top now, not much further to go.' He described seeing buzz bombs and mentioned the peculiar strain suffered by fliers: 'For some reason, even if you are tired, you can't always sleep; just lie in bed for a while. By that time, it's late, dark, and you fall asleep.' Staff Sergeant Winzey had completed 25 missions when he was shot down over Germany."