WWII crash site ID’ed

 

2LT Lester Lowry was a fresh pilot on January 26, 1944 when he took off in his P-47 in Essex. He never returned.

Not an unusual story leader – we lost lots of pilots in WWII, especially over Europe, and between horrendous crashes and  losses over water many have never been recovered. DPAA says 71,000 are still missing from WWII alone, and it’s safe to say that no matter how much hard work is put into the task, that number will never reduce to zero. But, it may be one less now, as Lt. Lowry’s plane has been located after almost 82 years.

At the time of the crash, Second Lt. Lester L. Lowry was flying a P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft, named “Lucky Boy,” during a training exercise near Essex, England, on Jan. 26, 1944, according to The Guardian. Then the 23-year-old’s plane suddenly dove straight into the ground and caught on fire.

Lowry has been listed as a soldier missing in action (MIA) ever since.

In 1949, investigations began searching for signs of Lowry and the tragic accident, but nothing was found, the BBC reported in September. In 1979, amateur archaeologists in Essex recovered multiple aircraft components, some of which were connected to Lowry’s plane and its crash site.

You would think something like a crash site would be identified just a few years later.

Then in 2023, 78 years after the war ended, the DPAA, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense and Cotswold Archaeology began working on “Operation Nightingale” to help find, account and honor the soldiers who died in combat. There are still around 72,000 WWII service members unaccounted for, according to The Guardian.

Since Operation Nightingale began, the three agencies have worked on 24,757 square feet of the site and recovered nearly 5,000 of the plane’s artifacts. This includes the engine’s cylinder heads, valves, pistons, fuel system pipes, machine gun components, fuselage, the wings and the cockpit panel pieces, according to the BBC.

It sounds like a fairly horrific rash, as most of the parts they describe are usually parts of larger assemblies, andf what is pictured above are very small parts.

Lowry was born in Grove City, Penn., in 1920, according to the BBC. He was orphaned at 9 and raised by his aunt, per The Guardian. He later joined the Pennsylvania National Guard and was mobilized in 1941. He then transferred to the U.S. Air Forces and by November 1943, he was stationed in England, according to the BBC.

It was suspected that Lowry’s crash occurred because he had only had 47 hours of training, and new pilots were typically taken quickly into combat.

But there’s that Paul Harvey possibility…

But a nearby witness at the time of the crash, Peter Morris, now 90, shared his account of the accident, saying that Lowry landed near a schoolyard where 150 kids were, Toksvig explained to The Guardian.

“Peter thinks that Lowry missed the school on purpose,” Toksvig told The Guardian. “Suddenly, the whole story flipped on [its] head. Maybe Lowry wasn’t inexperienced. What he actually was was a hero.”

Wilson added that although Lowry lost his life during training, his “sacrifice is no less than someone who’s killed in the first wave on Omaha Beach,” adding, “Everyone’s doing their duty.”

Sandi Toksvig is co-hosting an episode of  Hidden Wonders featuring the excavation, and Sam Wilson is the lead Cotswold’s archeologist.

Hopefully they will find Lowry’s remains soon and bring him home. He’s still one of ours.

Category: We Remember, WWII