B-29 #42-63494 500 BG FEB.19, 1945

[RSwank]

When you look at the internment forms for Jefferson Barracks on Ancestry (here is Kutchera's)

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer...75&pId=1608800

They show that the nine crew members who were killed were buried in a group burial on 26 July, 1949. They note that the nine crew members were in 4 caskets. I don't think Kutchera was found in 1969.

There is a Japanese website here: http://digitao.sakura.ne.jp/aomoriku...-42-63494.html
and Google does offer a "translation". If I am reading the translation correctly they are saying that Kutchera's plane was brought down by both a collision with a fragment of B-29 42-24692 and by a Japanese fighter. They mention the 3 bodies at one gravesite and 5 at another but I suspect there was perhaps another body buried (maybe) at a third site. Or perhaps when the grave registration team recovered the bodies they found they had nine bodies (just not individually identifiable).

Rolland