Memorial

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T/Sgt Berton E. Briley graduated from Garber High School in Oklahoma and attended college. He worked as a musician.

He joined the Air Corps of the Regular Army in Wichita, Kansas on 18 July 1940.

The airplane was hit by flak directly in the #3 main fuel tank over the target. The wing came off almost immediately, and after dropping several thousand feet, it broke into at least three parts. Crew members of other bombers saw the airplane explode, and the pieces fell into Stettin Lake.

Probably not all pieces fell into the lake because German records mention that wreckage was found some 2 km south of Stettin.

Seven crew members survived and were taken prisoner; three men were killed.

After the war, American investigators found several graves of American airmen at different civilian and military cemeteries in the area, most of them buried as unknown. These remains were evacuated to the identification center at Ardennes Cemetery, but not one of them could be identified as being of Sgt Briley.

His nephew, Michael T. Briley, remembered: "Berton E. Briley was my father's brother (Carl F. Briley). My father died in 1971, but he had told me about his brother being shot down during the war. Around 1980, my mother received a letter from a relative, I do not remember who, but who had sent a picture from a former German prisoner of war camp. There was a plaque there listing several POWs. Berton was on the list and listed as being captured after a plane crash. Berton was listed as heavily injured and died shortly thereafter at the POW camp."

T/Sgt Briley is remembered at Carbon Hill Cemetery in Carbon Hill, Hocking County, Ohio, with a memorial marker.