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 Clarence
K. Smith was born in 1922, the son of Robert C. Smith, Sr. of 236
Chestnut Street, Spring City, PA. Clarence was one of ten children:
brothers Roland and Robert Jr. who were also in the service, Allen, who lived at
home with their father, and Norman, who lived in Phoenixville, and sisters
Minerva, Ella, Bertha, Florence, and Anna, who were all married at the time of
Clarence's death. Clarence's obituary mentions his mother as, "the late
Martha (Strickland) Smith", but it is not known how long his father, Robert, had
been raising the family on his own.
Clarence was a graduate of West Chester High School and worked
on his father's farm before entering the Army. Clarence entered the
service on
October 23, 1942 and became a radio mechanic with the Army Air Corps. After
his training was completed, he was assigned to the 701st Bomb Squadron,
445th Bomber
Group, stationed in
Tibenham, England. The 445th was also the unit to which actor (Lt. Col.)
James Stewart was assigned.
Clarence's family last received a letter from him on October 12,
1944. A few days later on October 18, Clarence was one of 24 passengers and crew
aboard the B-24H Liberator Bomber 42-50347. Among those on board were 15
commissioned officers who were being ferried back to Tibenham after seeing more
than 30 successful combat missions. That afternoon, in heavy rain, the
aircraft exploded in mid-air and crashed into a field near Birkenhead, England.
According to witnesses, the plane was clearly in trouble as it lost altitude
overhead. The plane shuddered in flight and began breaking up before it
hit the ground, leaving bodies and wreckage strewn over the field. The crash
site, located in a field between Landican and Thingwall, about 2 miles from
Liverpool, was a scene of utter carnage. As onlookers rushed to help any
survivors, small fires continued to burn, igniting ammunition from the plane's
weapons. Sadly, there were no survivors to help. Some victims were
found with partially opened parachutes, others wore life jackets, thinking they
were about to crash into the nearby Mersey River. All 24 men on board
the B-24 were lost.
The following is an excerpt from an
article on the crash, written by 445th Bomb Group veteran, Fred Biscetti for
The Journal 2nd Air Division. Volume 45 Number 1, Winter 2006:
Among the witnesses was
16-year-old Doug Darroch of Oxton Road, Birkenhead. He saw the
aircraft's final dive and later walked along the railway track
to the wreckage site, where recovery was progressing under
arc-lights. Young Darroch never forgot the accident and became
determined to put up a memorial to the airmen who had died. In
1995, fifty-one years later, Doug Darroch and his family paid
for and erected in Birkenhead a very impressive tribute - a
rugged stone monument bearing a plaque engraved with the words:
IN MEMORY OF
THE 24 AMERICAN SERVICEMEN
OF THE U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE
WHO DIED WHEN THEIR AIRCRAFT
EXPLODED IN MID AIR
ABOVE THESE FIELDS ON
18. OCT. 1944.
Later, in 2001 after Darroch had
learned the names of the American victims, he added a larger
plaque listing the names, ranks and serial numbers of the
airmen. The name of J.F. Simpson was included in the list by
error. Lt. Simpson was killed in a P-47 Thunderbolt crash a few
miles away in a separate accident.
The cause of the crash remains
undetermined, but there are at least two theories. One theory is
that of a test pilot, Ralph Stimmel, who had flown that same
B-24 to Ireland and had reported that there was a strong odor
of gasoline in the plane indicating the possibility of a leak. Stimmel passed this warning to the pilot before the ill-fated
flight back to Tibenham. Another theory is that the B-24 iced up
in the low clouds and stalled. The pull-out from the dive that
followed the stall stressed the airframe so much that it caused
the aircraft to break up and plunge to the ground, where it
exploded.
Ironically, this was the second
tragic event for the 445th Bomb Group in one month. Three weeks
before, on September 27, the 445th suffered the highest group
loss in Eighth Air Force history when 35 of its 37 B-24s were
shot down in a matter of minutes in an attack by FW-190s and
ME-109s during a mission to Kassel, Germany with a loss of 117
airmen, 112 of them later confirmed as killed in action.
The tragedy of the B-24 crash
over Landican near Birkenhead was that most of the 24 victims
had already survived more than 30 combat missions against the
Nazis, only to die as idle passengers on a routine flight in an
old bomber crashing in an English field far from the flak-filled
skies high over Europe. All honor must go to Doug Darroch, his
family and his community for their tribute to the American
airmen - truly a gesture of friendship and appreciation by a
grateful and sympathetic people, initiated by a 16-year-old boy
in 1944.
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According to Wikipedia, the memorial stone erected by
Doug Darroch is
colored in the blue and yellow of the United States Army Air Forces, with 24
yellow bricks each representing a life lost.
Sergeant Clarence K. Smith died non-battle on October 18, 1944.
According to an entry on the
www.armyairforces.com discussion
board, those who perished in the crash are named as follows:
DRISCOLL, William
GEHMAN, Reginald H.
HAMILTON, Vincent P.
OLSEN, Harold W.
PRICE, William F.
BLAKE, Richard M.
BRICK, Edward F.
LEARY, George J.
MOSHER, Roland F.
NAGY, Stephen J.
TENNEY, Clesen H.
UMPLEBY, Loran, A.
WILLS, Ralph G.
SECHLER Roy, W.
BOYD, Robert E.
PATTERSON, James, E.
MARSHALL, Robert, L.
RELYEA, Floyd K.
ARRIGOTTI, Joseph, L.
ENGASSER, Albert
MOOTZ, Frederick, L.
MOSS, George S.
SMITH, Clarence K.
Sources:
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