Mission 119

Target: Messina, Italy

Aircraft: WIDDLE WED WABBIT

Pilot: Walter Swarner

On 30 April 1943, elements of the 376thHeavy Bombardment Group attacked the port of Messina, Italy. This day they would suffer the third in a series of tragic ditchings, which would result in the loss of seven men in Lt. Walter Swarner’s crew.

Aboard Swarner’s B-24D WIDDLE WED WABBIT that day were newly-arrived copilot Lt. Dwight F. “Pappy” Morgan and gunner SSgt Alexander S. Holliday.

As Swarner and his crew were completing their bombing run, navigator Robert Longstreth suddenly shouted over the intercom: “Raise her up, Swarner, we’re going to collide!” While Swarner’s quick response avoided a collision with an errant plane in the formation, he and his crew were now outside the protective umbrella of the formation’s guns. Suddenly, an Me-109 Messerschmitt came in head-on, and a single burst of cannon fire killed bombardier Lt. Theodore Deffner and copilot Morgan. In the rear section of the diving plane, Sgt, Holliday, who was on his knees manning the tunnel gun, suddenly screamed: “Help me, I can’t get any oxygen!” Crew members managed to revive him with an oxygen bottle. Unfortunately, the plane eventually crashed into the Mediterranean, and only Swarner and three other crew members made were able to escape. Only waist gunner Albert Romero and tail gunner John Gaffney survived to be picked up by an Italian Air-Sea rescue unit. They became POWs but eventually escaped and returned to the 376th. (James Walker, “The Liberandos”)

Alexander S Holliday