The Arundel Bomber: Family of American pilot visit crash site

The pilot, 2nd Lieutenant William Bailey Montgomery, co-pilot Flight Officer John J. Crowther and TSgt John Holoka went down with the plane on June 22, 1944.

Eight members of the family one of the former crew, travelled across the Pacific from Charleston, South Carolina, to see the site on Park farm where their ancestor had crashed.

Fg Off Crowther was listed as Killed in Action and his remains were repatriated but 2d Lt Montgomery and TSgt John Holoka are still listed as Missing in Action

Tracey, a relative of 2nd Lieutenant William Bailey Montgomery, said that she was honoured at visiting the site.

She said: “I’m so honoured to have been able to visit the site where this all took place.

"It’s such an amazing job that Mark (Khan) and the rest of the team have done at the site, to preserve so much of the legacy of a crew of Americans who were brought down.

"To be here with hear with all the family makes it that much more special, to be able to honour him, all of us together is something special and something that I will never forget.”

Work to recover the remains of the crew of an American bomber that crashed in a farmer’s field in Arundel in June 1944 was completed in 2021 and co-project investigator Mark Khan spoke of the work that had taken place.

He said: “The parts from the crash are pretty much all salvaged from the farm site now.

"We thought throughout the excavation for the two bodies, was that if we found pieces like the cockpit, headsets and pieces for the parachute that we may be able to find the bodies.

“Through the digs we were able to find out that one of them pilots had come out of the aircraft.

"On site, we also have a memorial for the pilots as well.”

Back in 1974, the Wealden Aviation Group dug up the aircraft, being primarily interested in the relatively intact mechanical components. Three of the engines and most of the machine guns were removed but the remaining material was pushed back into the excavation trench.

Ten years later, the fourth engine was removed from its resting place in a drainage culvert.

In the Missing Air Crew Report, it states the plane was hit very hard by flak as it passed over the target airfield.

The plane made a sharp turn to the right with some loss of altitude before the pilot and co-pilot could bring it under control. Instead, they flew below another formation of B24s until they crossed the French coast and were then given a heading back to the English coast.

But as they were flying over the briefed point of entry to the English coast, the co-pilot gave the order to bail out. Four men landed in the sea, one on the beach and two in a field.

The plane went into a power dive and crashed into the ground. The survivors said the bomb-bay doors, the logical way for the pilot, co-pilot and engineer to escape, were peppered with flak holes and never opened.