Robert E. Engle was born December 1919 in Price, Carbon County, Utah.

His father, William A. Engle was born in Delaware and was a businessman, county commissioner and state legislator. His mother, Lovina Green, was born in Utah and married William in 1917. Robert had two brothers and one sister. His sister and one brother both served in WWII.

Robert graduated from Carbon High School in 1937. After high school he worked as a foreman at a fox and chinchilla farm. When he enlisted in the Army in September 1940, Robert was single and living at home.

He initially served in the artillery, but after Pearl Harbor he requested transfer to the Army Air Force, He trained at several airfields around the country and received his wings and commission at Williams Field, Arizona in February 1943. Robert then received extra training on the new B-29 bombers. When he was sent overseas in Dec 1944 Robert was assigned as a replacement pilot with the 881st Bomber Squadron, 500th Bomb Group, stationed on Saipan.

On his first mission, Lt. Engle had a close call when his plane had an engine fail near Nagoya, Japan while on a bomb run. He managed to get the plane back to Saipan after flying for over 15 hours at just above stall speed. On a February 15th mission, Lt. Engel and Sgt. Johnson were able to save the life of one of his gunners who had been severely wounded with over 100 pieces of shrapnel. They could not start a regular IV because the victim’s veins had collapsed from shock, so they preformed the first intra-sternal needle insertion in aerial combat. This allowed them to give plasma and the victim survived.

Eight days later on February 23, 1945, 1st Lt. Robert E. Engel was killed on a training flight off Saipan. He attempted and aborted two landings and got the plane back to near the coast before landing in the ocean. Six of the nine people on board survived.

He was buried February 24, 1945 in the Saipan 27th Division cemetery. After the war at his family’s request his remains were returned to the US. He was reburied at Golden Gate National Cemetery on January 10, 1949

References:

500th Bomb Group Day by Day - http://500thbombgroupb29.org/journal%20-%20combat.pdf

Obituary - Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Mar 1945, p17

Funeral - Sun-Advocate (Price, UT), 6 Jan 1949, p 3

Long flight - Salt Lake Telegram, 17 Jan 1945, p 1

Saves a life - Ogden Standard-Examiner, 12 Mar 1945, p1

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see 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's name and read his/her story.

Robert E Engle