B-29 loss in Korea Nov-Dec 1951
 

Recently, I finished reading the book "The Coldest War' by James Brady. It's the story of a Marine platoon commander in Korea.
During one night a formation of B-29s flew over,"after midnight", and the following incident happened:"When the planes had gone, I turned to go back inside. Then,off to the north, ...came the sound of another plane,trailing home after the rest. I scanned the sky and then I saw it, a brilliant spark of light in the distance...coming slowly,the sound not right...As the plane neared our lines we could see it was aflame and gliding rather than flying...[T]hen there was an explosion that canceled out the moon and blinded our night vision.When we could see again the big plane was wheeling,over and over, tumbling to earth...it hit somewhere to our left,on the forward slope and burned for a long time.
...Towards dawn there was some firing off to the left, and I thought I could hear burp guns...We heard later one of the flyers had parachuted down,landed safe and gotten up the slope to within 100 yards of the first battalion's wire. But a gook ambush was out in the snow and they caught him there and shot him before he had reached the wire. Marines chased the gooks off and went out to bring in the body. Of the other nine others from the plane nothing more was heard."

Can anyone identify the B-29? I've tried but cannot find any candidate that fits this incident.

Re: B-29 loss in Korea Nov-Dec 1951
 

Perhaps you've also went thru this website http://www.dpaa.mil/portals/85/Docum...orwald_all.pdf.


Only B-29 that seems to fit the picture is 42-93974 on 9 Nov 1951 on a night leaflet mission. But then, without a more precise location or date from the book, it now is just a suggestion...


Regards,


Leendert

Re: B-29 loss in Korea Nov-Dec 1951
 

There is a list of B-29 losses during the Korean War time period here:
http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/to...ses_damage.htm

The description of the loss of 42-93974 would seem to rule it out.

Maybe one of the other crashes described would be a better fit.

Brady was in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment. There are on-line records that can be consulted, particularly if Brady's book would narrow the event down to a few months. I believe he was in Korea during the winter of 1951-1952. He arrived in November, 1951. I looked at a few of the months. There was a body recovery of a Marine (not an Airforce crewman) in December 1951. Possibly he has confused things? Other possibilities are that he has the date wrong or the event happened when his company was attached to a different battalion. (When you read through the on-line records, there are times when individual companies are temporarily attached to a different battalion. It would probably be necessary to read the other's battalion's reports during those times).

https://www.koreanwar.org/html/usmc_...it.html?pid=86


Here is the incident description from the book. Note Brady says the crash would have been seen for 10 miles up and down the front lines. Also, from my reading of it, it is not clear the Brady's unit recovered the airman, only that he had heard about it.

https://books.google.com/books?id=dO...20B-29&f=false

Re: B-29 loss in Korea Nov-Dec 1951
 

Thanks for the input. It is possible he confused the facts as many military memoirs mixup the facts. I will continue to look into this.