Memorial

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Sgt Edward R. Bosack volunteered for the Air Corps of the Army of the United States in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 4 November 1942.

The aircraft was hit in the right bomb bay by flak over the target. Fire immediately broke out at the fuel transfer system. Flames were extinguished by the co-pilot. Both elevator cables were damaged. The pilot attempted to open the bomb bay doors to salvo the bombs. The right bomb bay opened but the left bomb bay would not function. The pilot twice circled the town of Chanly, Belgium looking for an open field to crash land. The right engine of the aircraft started popping and the pilot ordered the crew to bail out. Four parachutes left the ship, two through the nose wheel, one through the bomb bay and one through the waist. The last one to leave the aircraft left on an altitude of about 250 yards. The aircraft crashed into the side of a wooded hill and burst into flames immediately. Approximately twenty minutes later three bombs exploded.

Two crew members were killed. The four who bailed out survived.

Near the wreckage, the body of one crew member, the pilot Cpt Webster S. Allyn, was found one and a half days later and initially buried at the 1st Army Cemetery in Eupen, Belgium. Since the airplane fell in Allied territory, a complete search was possible at the crash point at the time of the crash and immediately afterward. No trace was seen of Sgt Bosack who was never seen to leave the airplane. A field investigation in October 1947 dug plane parts out of the ground but was unsuccessful in finding any human remains. It seemed logical to presume that the body of Sgt Bosack was completely demolished by the crash, fire and exploding bombs.

In September 1947, the priest of Chanly stated that in the course of the summer of 1945, two habitants of the village became aware of a strong smell of decomposure of a body or a part of a body on the place where the airplane crashed. Nothing further was done to investigate this.

In the course of the vacation of the summer of 1947 Mr. Heck, the director of a school in Charleroi, had affirmed that, in 1945, he had found, on the same spot of the accident, the upper bones of a human cranium. Unfortunately he left these bones on the place and since than they had disappeared.