The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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211757 Veto Iavecchia United States Army Air Force 2nd Air Division 389th Bomb Group from:Mayfair, PA Veto Iavecchia enrolled in Army Air Forces flight school during World War II and was qualified as a bambardier in the 389th Bomb Group, Second Air Division, Eighth Air Force. He was stationed in England and participated in two missions on D-Day. On a 20th June 1944, bombing run to destroy the synthetic-fuel supplies in Politz, Germany, his B-24 bomber, "Mistah Chick", with 11 aboard, was hit by enemy fire. The flak disabled the plane's hydraulics and caused fuel to leak. Unable to return to England, and uncertain how long the fuel would hold out, the crew voted to try and make it across the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden. The crew jettisoned everything, including the machine guns, through the bomb bay doors. The plane made it across the Baltic, and, with the landing gear inoperable, the pilot landed on a dirt field. The crewman suffered only minor injuries. The Swedish Government interned the crew. Unaware of what had happened, the War Department sent telegrams to the men's families saying the crew was "missing in action and last seen over Politz, Germany". Five weeks later, the families learned that the crew of the "Mistah Chick" had been located; five months after that, the crewmen were freed. S. Flynn Add to this record.  Related Content: 389th Bomb Squadron, USAAF D Day and the Battle of Normandy Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.