B-25 of 83rd BS, 12th BG lost on 6 October 1944

[Laurent Rizzotti]

I'm searching this plane and I am trying to find its crew members.

Here is what I have:

12 B-25s from 83rd BS, 12th BG, had taken off at 0800 to bomb a bridge at Nyaungyan in the Mandalay area. At 0940 the formation lost height as it approached the target, but spotted Japanese fighters approaching from the direction of Meiktila. These were 64th Sentai Ki 43s wich had scrambled from that airfield. Captain Saburo Nakamura, the unit’s leading pilot with 20 claims for aircraft destroyed or damaged, dived into a head-on attack, followed by a second pilot, the US crews reporting that fire from Nakamura’s damaged the left wings of aircraft Nos 57 and 65, the latter being the formation leader. No 52 was then hit and the pilot, Lt D E Sheridan, was wounded in the arm and face, while Lt John R Couch’s No 63 in the second element of the formation was also hit during this initial attack.
At that point No 63 (B-25J-1-NC Mitchell 43-3964) was seen to have flames coming from the starboard engine and top turret, and it gradually lost height, apparently still under control. It then crashed into the ground, one or two parachutes being seen. Sgt Toshimi Ikezawa, the third pilot to take part in the initial head-on attack, saw Couch’s B-25 fall just as he passed by. The MACR 9096 describes the fate of his crew. Four members of the 83rd BS (1st Lt John R Couch, 2nd Lt Leslie W Hodge, 2nd Lt George L Mauldin and Sgt Earnest E Wilson) are commemorated on the Manila Memorial and shown as being missing since this day. They were probably the crew of this bomber.


Most of the above is copied from
"Air War for Burma", by Christopher Shores. ISBN 1-904010-95-4

A crew of four is possible for a B-25 but it may also have been 5 or 6. So if anybody knows of how many crew a B-25 J usually carried in 1944 over Burma, I would like to know it.

If anybody has the MACR 9096 I will be interested to have the crew list, and their recorded fate.