TAPS
Welcome home and RIP
1st Lt Robert G Fenstermacher WWII, Army Air Force
Posted on 10/16/2013 9:01:21 PM PDT by robowombat
World War 2 aviator identified and to be laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2013
BY MARTIN BARILLAS
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced on October 11, despite the current partial federal government shutdown, that the remains of an American aviator are being returned to his family for burial. 1st Lieutenant Robert G. Fenstermacher, who was shot down during the Second World War, will be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on October 18.
Lieutenant Fenstermacher, a native of Scranton PA, was just 23 years old when he paid the greatest price in service to his country. It was on December 26, 1944, while National Socialist Germany was making a final and initially successful counter-offensive in what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Fenstermacher was piloting a P-47D Thunderbolt – which was perhaps the apogee of the development of propeller-driven fighter planes - that was on an armed-reconnaissance mission against targets in Germany. It was on a snowy and largely over cast day that his aircraft crashed, near Petergensfeld, Belgium.
According to DoD, a U.S. military officer reported seeing Fenstermacher’s Thunderbolt crash. Reaching the site shortly after impact, the officer was able to recover Fenstermacher’s identification tags from the burning wreckage. No remains or aircraft wreckage was recovered from the crash site then. Fenstermacher was declared killed in action and a marker was eventually placed in his memory in a U.S. cemetery.
After the end of the conflict, a team from the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service (AGRS) investigated and interviewed a local Belgian woman who told them that an aircraft crashed into the side of her house. The team searched the surrounding area, but was unsuccessful locating the crash site.
Nearly seventy years later, a group of local historians excavated a private yard in Petergensfeld in 2012. It was there that they discovered human remains and aircraft wreckage consistent with a P-47D Thunderbolt. The remains were turned over to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) at DoD. Forensic scientists at JPAC used both circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools, such as dental comparisons. They found a match with Fenstermacher’s records.
The record shows that Lt. Fenstermacher earned the Air Medal with seven Oak Leaf Clusters after flying in at least 57 missions, his last at the height of the Battle of the Bulge. Investigations showed little else after his P-47 Thunderbolt went down over Germany. The lieutenant was added to the list of tens of thousands lost and never recovered. There were more than 400,000 American service members killed during WWII, and the remains of more than 73,000 were never recovered or identified.
The winter of 1944-45 in Belgium was one of the coldest on record. Allied and German troops on the ground, fighting in the Ardennes forest that borders Germany, waded through deep snow and sometimes froze to death. On the day that the Battle of the Bulge began, December 16, the mercury dropped to 14 degrees Fahrenheit at 5:30 a.m. as German troops back by panzers and artillery paid the American lines a visit.
Lt. Fenstermacher was in the air on an armed reconnaissance mission, ten days into the battle that was to be Adolf Hitler’s last-gasp offensive. He flew his Thunderbolt towards Houffalize, Belgium, to attack a train station near Roetgen, Germany. But even after all of his combat flights and decorations, it was to be his last time aloft. Unfortunately, Fenstermacher and his fellow aviators had received unreliable intelligence. The German train station had already been captured by Allied forces. So it was that Fenstermacher was shot down in the fog of war. According to later media reports, Fenstermacher was shot down by friendly fire. According to the Scranton Times-Tribune, Michael Mee, Chief of Identifications of the Past Conflict Repatriations Branch, which is part of the Army Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Center, Fenstermacher “had bad information in the air.”
The Battle of the Bulge was the largest land battle fought by the United States during World War II and in the history of the Army. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill hailed it as “undoubtedly, the greatest American battle of the war, and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory,” he said. After his plane was lost, Fenstermacher was listed as missing in action. The War Department told his mother the classification had been changed to killed in action on May 2, 1945.
Fenstermacher had been heading for Houffalize, Belgium, but his plane crashed about 40 miles northeast, in the Belgian town of Petergensfeld, less than a mile from Roetgen,Germany.
Volunteers from a group called History Flight, which rebuilds historic aircraft and searches for aviators’ remains, examined a number of possible sites of Fenstermacher’s crash. For example, the wing of Fenstermacher’s aircraft struck a Belgian home, which burned to the ground. Today, another home has been rebuilt in its place, using original stone in the foundation, that is owned by Monica and Klaus Loeher.
The Loehers’ cooperated with the History Flight volunteers, who used the couple’s garage for the investigation. The excavators found.50 caliber guns, a piece of a dog tag chain, what may be fragments of the lieutenant’s cap.
Joining the Loehers’ at the October 18 final interment at Arlington for Lieutenant Fenstermacher, will be Bob Fenstermacher, who is the last living relative to remember the fallen aviator. Bob was only three years old when he last saw the lieutenant who was shipping overseas. Also on hand will be members of History Flight, a Florida-based nonprofit group of volunteer archaeologists, historians and others who work with the U.S. military to findings of investigations and to locate relatives of deceased aviators. After they had begun restoring WWII planes, History Flight began to seek out the missing in action and seek out their survivors.
Welcome home, airman.
/johnny
Ping
young good men dying for this country and what have we done?...allowed?....
God help us all....
“what have we done?...allowed?....”
Agreed.
Salute to the young Airman.
That happened all too often.
When he flew over D-Day to observe the battle, Jimmy Doolittle used a P-38 Lightning (the plane with the twin booms) precisely to minimize the danger of friendly fire.
No disrespect to LT Fenstermacher, who died a hero. The P-47 was a short range fighter, relegated to recon missions by December 1944. The P-51 Mustang had superseded the Thunderbolt in every respect by then.
The Battle of the Bulge was the largest, costliest and continuous single battle the US Army ever fought. From the time the battle began on December 16, 1944 to when it was declared ‘’contained’’ on January 27, 1945 there was never a day, an hour or a minute that any American unit was not in contact with the enemy. Some 80,000 Americans were either killed, captured or wounded, one of those wounded was my late Uncle Fred who served with the 84th. Infantry Division.
Welcome home LT.
It was a great plane, but emphasis on "perhaps" in "perhaps the apogee."
Ironic, isn’t it? The home he is welcomed back to is more like the regime he fought than it is like the home he left and fought for.
Thank you for posting this, Robo!
Canteen PING!
Bump.
Rest well young Airman.
The P-47 was known to be able to absorb a fair amount of punishment and get you home, too. The Mustang’s weakness was the radiator vs the air-cooled P-47.
Welcome home Sir!
Welcome home and RIP
1st Lt Robert G Fenstermacher WWII, Army Air Force
Not so. The P-47 was probably the most vital fighter of the war. More than any other weapon the Germans utterly dreaded the “jabos”. German fighters were generally unable to deal with their speed, heavy armor, and armament.
The range was on longer an issue after D-day gave them French bases.
Despite its extremely dangerous assignments, it had the lowest loss rate of any USAF fighter in the ETO. It’s ability to survive battle damage was legendary, as was its ability to dish it out. The paddle bladed D model dominated any German it encountered.
And with its 8 guns, nothing matched its firepower.
The P-51 is and was beautiful, but its main trick was its range. It was delicate and not a good choice for ground attack. A solid case can be made that aside from the Corsair, the P-47 was indeed the apogee of prop fighters.
He was with the 506 th Fighter Squadron of the 404 th Fighter Group.
P47 D 42-28933
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