Dear Harry,

Thanks for the letters. I had already heard from John Miller on this facet of #604. Your choice of the word saga is quite appropriate and it is more of a continuing one rather than recently discovered. 

My side of the story began, or rather was re-activated, in July 1986 when I received a letter from a young Swiss author, who in the process of research for a book he was writing, ran across a photograph of partially destroyed B-17 located in a hanger at Chateauford, near Paris (Villacoublay?) destroyed B-17. I have a Xerox copy of this and it quite clearly shows the tail number 230604. At this point I should explain that the Swiss author, whose name is Hans-Heiri Stapfer, was at that time, primarily interested in Allied aircraft that had been captured and actually used by the Germans in one way or another. I gave Stapfer as much background information on the mission and subsequent happenings as I could. Incidentally, John Miller’s data that he gave you is accurate up to a point. The crash-landing (wheels up) was in Normandy near the small town of Villers  Bocage. Two of us, Harold Curtice, the navigator and I were helped by the family of the French Royalty to the extent of food and clothing. We were eventually captured south of Perpignon, almost to the Spanish border, some ten days later. Five of the crew were aided by the underground and returned safely while the other five were captured and interned for the  remainder of the war. 

Stapfer and I corresponded and exchanged information and speculation regarding the aircraft for about a year. Sometime during this period I had word of another photograph of a crash-landed B-17. At this point, Stapfer had about given up on the idea of using my story in his book; this, for the simple reason that he had abandoned the possibility that this aircraft could have been used by the Germans and that, of course, was the main thrust of his book. 

What follows is a classic example of the number of people who et involved in situation such as this. In February 1987 I received a letter from Clayton Davis, an evadee who was shot down in 1944 and escaped through Belgium, France, and Spain thus back to England and whose avocation is identifying airmen who were aided by the people of these countries. His letter included a copy of a letter from Michel Clemencon of France to a Colonel William Colgan which had and attached a not-to-clear copy of a photograph of crash-landed, still smoking B-17 with a very clear Square D and the tail number 23064; are you still with me?  I answered his letter with my story and asked to be advised of any new developments. I never received an answer, but I have given copies of all this to Hans-Heiri and thoroughly confused the issue of the B-17 in the hanger. 

In any event in September 1987, I received a letter from a Jean Menard, proprietor of a small museum in the  village of St. Martin des Besaces in Normandy. Included was a beautiful small photograph of my aircraft taken, obviously, within hours after the belly-landing. I furnished Mr. Menard with a by-now-famous picture of #604 in flight. My copy of this picture, incidentally was obtained from the Pentagon after Bill DeSanders had told me of it’s existence and that one of his crew had taken the picture the same day of the mission; how’s that for a before and after combination. One side benefit of all this was that Mr. Menard put me in contact with the now-retired railroad station-master at La Reole, a small town outside of Bordeaux, who helped us one night on our abortive journey to Spain. It’s really unbelievable the number of people who are still interested in the happening of so many years ago. 

Trying to tie all this somewhat incoherent mess into a tide bundle is almost impossible. Stapfer has published his book, Strangers in a Strange Land, sans my story, but mentioning the 100^th at some length. Mr. Menard seems to be prospering in the museum business and I keep practicing my typing. My correspondence file has now grown to book size and constitutes pretty interesting reading. 

Probably the best explanation of how a B-17 transferred itself Phoenix like, from a smoking wreck on a farm in Normandy to an almost flyable machine in a hanger outside of Paris, is the one offered by Stapfer, who seems to have considerable experience in piecing together things like this. Hardware and fuselage components, including tail sections were salvaged and used to outfit cannibalized B-17s which may or may not have ever reached flying status with the Luftwaffe…. Hal Helstrom

-end-