Memorial

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S/Sgt Joseph A. Cox volunteered for the U.S. Army in Fort McClellan, Alabama on 27 November 1942.

The airplane was hit by flak which destroyed one engine and caused fuel leakage. The pilot crash landed the airplane after he gave the order to bail out because the right waist gunner refused to leave the airplane.

1st Lt Sidney P. Upsher:

“At 1330 hours, at 4700N/1310E at 21,500 feet, I called B-17 No. 739 to ask about the formation. Then he called our aircraft saying that he had one engine feathered and trouble with one other and that he didn’t know if he could make it over the Alps. He said he would have to bail out if he couldn’t, and would have to ditch if he did make it over the Alps. He was losing altitude, and his altitude at that time was 15,000 feet. I called him back, and wished him Good Luck, and then heard no more from him.”

Six men surrendered to the local authorities together, Woodruff J. Warren, Donald W. Hart, William Jolly, Frank Pinto, George D. Mayott and Joseph A. Cox, and were loaded into a truck for the purpose of transporting them to Kaplitz (now Kaplice), Czechoslovakia. Two automobiles accompanied the truck: one contained Nazi Party official Franz Strasser, the Kreisleiter of Kreis Kaplitz, and the other contained Captain Karl Lindemeyer, the Kaplitz chief of police.

When the convoy got to the top of a hill on the road to Kaplitz, Strasser, who was in the lead vehicle, stopped his car. The truck containing the unarmed American fliers also stopped. Strasser then walked back to the truck and shot and killed one airman with his machine pistol. When the driver of the truck tried to protect a second American airman by allowing him to take refuge in the truck cab, Strasser threatened to kill the driver if he continued to interfere.

Strasser then shot this second American and, when he was prostrate on the ground, raked the airman from head to foot with his machine pistol. As for the other airmen, they were shot and killed by Captain Lindemeyer.

At this point there is some confusion about how many airmen were involved in this incident and were victim of this ware crime. Some records say there were six men taken prisoner, other official trial records speak of five victims, even though it is certain that six crew members were killed and four, who were taken prisoner on a different location, survived the war.

On 24 August 1945, Strasser was tried by a military commission sitting in Dachau, Germany. At this trial he pleaded not guilty. He did not deny that he participated in the shooting of the five American prisoners, but the insisted that the shooting was justifiable because it was necessary to prevent them from escaping. He declared that the truck had difficulty in negotiating the hill and that, after the truck had stopped, the Americans attempted to escape. The driver, however, testified at the trial that this statement was false and that the unarmed Americans had not tried to escape. Strasser was found guilty as charged and was sentenced “to be hanged by the neck until dead”. He was executed in the Landsberg Punishment Prison on 10 December 1945. Captain Lindemeyer had commited suicide prior to the trial.

Lt Warren and his crew were buried in shallow graves in a ditch along the highway near which they were murdered. In May 1945, the remains of five unknown U.S. airmen were recovered from such graves by the 26th Infantry Division QM Corps and taken on 28 May 28 1945 to U.S. Military Cemetery No. 1 in Nurnberg, Germany, for burial.

After identification they were given their final resting place, either at Lorraine Cemetery or in the United States.