Flight Officer Steven Casimir Baran, 26, of Chicago, is one of four flight crew members and 16 paratroopers who were killed in the early morning hours of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when their C-47 transport plane was shot down by German anti-aircraft fire near the town of Picauville, France.

He was the co-pilot and a member of the 91st Troop Carrier Squadron, 439th Troop Carrier Group. The C-47 took off from Upottery Airfield in the Blackdown Hills of Devon, England on the night of the 5th of June 1944 at 23.13p.m. for the Mission Albany Airborne part of the Invasion of Normandy on D-Day. It was shot down and crashed at 1:14 a.m. Their mission was to drop paratroopers from Company C, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Battalion, 101st Airborne Division

Flight Officer Baran was born August 3, 1918 in Chicago. He was working at Acme Steel in Chicago when he registered for the draft in October 1940, and he enlisted two days after Pearl Harbor on December 9, 1941. His enlistment records shows him as single, five-feet-eight-inches tall and weighing 169 pounds. He is interred at the Normandy American Cemetery in France.

The French townspeople erected a monument near the crash site to honor those who died. Situated next to the Picauville town church. It includes a mini-replica of a C-47 that overlooks a stone wall with six black plaques with gold lettering commemorating the air crews. A glassed-in container holds one of the C-47's engines.

Those who died were:

Crew

2 Lt Marston F. Sargent – Massachusets
F/O Steve C. Baran – Illinois
T/Sgt Walter F. Gendron – New Hampshire
S/Sgt Melvin B. Shullanberger – California

Paratroopers

1 Lt Kenneth A. Beatty – Georgia
Sgt Colin Campbell – New York
Sgt Roy H. Speake
T/5 John D. Hall
T/5 John L. Davis
Cpl Eugene E. Middleton
Pvt Jay E. Cheel – Nevada
Pvt Augustine Gonzales – Texas
Pvt James D. King – Arizona
Pvt Salvatore Laferrera – New York
Pvt Luther F. Morrison
Pvt Benjamin Winn – West Virginia
Pvt Hugh F. Williams
PFC Frederick J. Feneran – New York
PFC Robert J. Hensel – Illinois
PFC Robert M. Naimola – New York

Situated right next to the Picauville town church. Monument A mini-replica of a C-47 overlooks a stone wall with six black plaques with gold lettering commemorating the air crews of the C-47s that crashed in the area while dropping paratroopers on D-Day. A glassed-in container holds one of the C-47's engines.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (www.storiesbehindthestars.org .) This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen person's name and read his/her story.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56642076/steve-c-baran

https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/d-day/air-operations/serials/serial-11/crash-c47

https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/monument_details.php?SiteID=729&MemID=1018

Steve C Baran