Memorial

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Robert O. Shoemaker attended 1 year of college an was an chainman. He enlisted in Baltimore, Maryland on 13 March 1943.
Statement from 1st Lt Hubert F. Donohue:
"We were flying at approximately 23,000 feet altitude, just after bombs away. We were trying to catch the formation when I noticed aircraft B-17G, 42-97234, falling back. We maintained our air speed to catch the group formation and he was unable to stay in a favorable position due to the increase in the air speed. At this time we had several enemy fighter attacks and subject fighters, he burst into flame, peeled off to the left, and started downward in about a 45 degree dive. The aircraft was completely in flames. I then lost sight of the ship immediately afterward. I saw no parachutes leave this aircraft."

A field investigation in January 1951 revealed that the remains of six Americans who had been interred in the cemetery of Barby and who could have been the remains of crew members of this airplane, had been removed by a Capt. Wagen in July 1945. Attempts to trace the disposition of these remains have been negative and the office of the Quartermaster General had no record of a Capt. Wagen.

The crash site for Bomber Dear has been positively identified by the DPAA/JPAC in the summer of 2015. The site will be returned to in the spring of 2016 as an archaeological dig to try and obtain bone fragments of the men aboard the plane when it crashed. There may have been 6 men aboard when it crashed.

On 5 October 2017 the DPAA/JPAC offically anounced that the remains of Robert Shoemaker, John Liekhus, Allen Chandler, Bobby Younger and John Brady, who are all remembered on the Tablets of the Missing at Henry-Chapelle, have been accounted for. They now all have their final resting place at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Viriginia.