Pisseleux 6fev1944 10:41AM
Par une matinée grise, un bombardier américain crêve les nuages au dessus d'un village et tombe en morceaux dans les rues: une tragédie et un double miracle vont unir le village et les Etats Unis de générations en générations.

Pisseleux 2014 Contact Pisseleux 2014
Les témoins des évènements et ceux qui ont fait vivre ce lien d'amitié franco-américain
Archives Municipales de Villers Cotterêts
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX

B17 BOMBER CRASHES OVER PISSELEUX (FEB 6,1944)

Sunday February 6, a gray morning.

The clouds are low, the air is damp. Towards 10:30 the town of Pisseleux and Villers-Cotterets are about to live through the catastrophe of the explosion and crash of the fortress. The B17 Bomber belonged to the 96th Bomb Group and was on its way back from a mission.

It was then that the German fighters launched an attack on the squadron tail, flying low. Their machine gun attack was sudden; One fighter attempted a spin (tail dive) but collided with the B17. The left wing and second engine of the fortress were hit, setting fire to the wing-tank.

Losing height rapidly, the B17 emerged from the low cloud, flew along parallel with the railroad line, then dropped its undetonated bombs, before exploding over Pisseleux bridge.

All this happened so fast that the airmen had no time to reach their parachutes. Debris fell into Presbytere Street in Pisseleux and as far into the forest as Pre Gueux forest lodge: most of the fuselage fell over what was once the RAMBACH farm, now the Oree Du Bois development.

Nine bodies were later found in different parts of the village; in trees, on roof tops, in gardens, on the plain...

They were assembled in the school nursery, now the Brogly Room.

First buried in Pisseleux Cemetery, six bodies were subsequently transferred to the Dinoze American Military Cemetery, near Epinal. The three others were repatriated to America, upon request of their families.

But out of this disaster, there was one miracle: the crew’s tenth airman finished his fall on a pile of sawdust behind the DEQUECKER woodsheds. Two local inhabitants then came to his rescue; Messrs Dede DUPUIS and Jacques RUDEAUX.

However, the miraculous survivor was rapidly taken by the German army to a Paris hospital for treatment, and was subsequently transferred to different prisoners of war camps in Germany.
There have been contradictory reports about falling bombs, most of these saying these did not explode, some asserting they destroyed four houses. Current procedure for aircraft flying back with undropped ordnance was to defuse them inflight, which would imply these did not actually explode on impact.
The dismembered man was Jacob Kurtzberg, the sawdust pile one was Joe Pino, the airmen on the plain were Robert Leonard Miner, William Charles Weiner, but they can't have been three or four, for the closest ones had fallen north of the cemetary, and not in the area mentionned.