What ultimately became of the bombardier nagged at Chris Scivyer.
Eight of the nine crewmen of the B-17 bomber survived the Dec. 28, 1944, crash. Onlythe bombardier died.
He was a quietperson. He kept to himself. His story was less told. Scivyer wascurious.
An expert in building construction andthe author of three books on radon, Scivyer is a meticulous seeker of details.He was bornin southern England, where he still lives, a decade after World War II. But with evidence of the war still all around him — veterans telling stories, buildings once clipped by Nazi air raids still standing — he became fascinated with the war, particularly its machinery.
Many British war planes had been manufactured right in Scivyer's neighborhood. The Handley Page factory was next door to his house, and the de Havilland plant was just a few miles away. Scivyer's favorite plane was always de Havilland's fast and versatile Mosquito, one of the few mid-20th century weapons of war made almost entirely of wood.
"The human part of all this I'd never taken so much interest in," Scivyer said.
Until the bombardier.
The bombardier was Milton Olshewitz. He was from Indianapolis. He jumped out of the B-17 at 8,000 feetwithout a parachute.
An exacting job
The B-17, called Choo-Z Suzy, was returning from a mission over Germany. Scivyer learned, by combing U.S. military archives, that the plane had dropped onto therailway yards ofKoblenz18 demolition bombs, each weighing 250 pounds, and two 500-pound incendiary bombs.
As the bombardier, Olshewitz sat in the very front of the planein a sort of glass bubble, exposed. From there, he plotted the plane's path during itsfinal-phase bombing runand also the precise moment to release the bombs.
The jobrequired an exacting mind, and Olshewitz likely had one. At 23, he was the oldest of the crew, and he had the most education. He had graduated from Indiana University andfrom optometry school.
He had grown up in Indianapolis and gone to Shortridge High School. He was one year older than schoolmate Kurt Vonnegut, whose POW experience in Dresden as the German city was bombed would inspire the author's masterpiece "Slaughterhouse-Five.”
Olshewitz enlisted in the Army Air Forces andin August 1944 was sent to an American air base in England, where he joined the Choo-Z Suzy crew. B-17 crews were often close-knit, but Olshewitz did not socialize much with the others.
"Well, for one thing, he was an officer, and we were mostly enlisted men," said Leon "Jack" Persac, the Choo-ZSuzy's ballgunner who, at 91, is thelast living crew member.
And, Persac told IndyStar, "he was the only married man on our plane." "That separated him from the others, like when we'd go to London on leaveor Bedford, the little town. We'dmeet girls, English girls. You could go to town every night if you wanted. Olshewitz never did. He stayed in the barracks."
During World War II, Allied bombers launched thousands of attacks on Germany from bases in England. Many of the bombers were shot down over Germany by enemy fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns. Some crashed on their way home.
"Within a mile or two of where I'm standing," said Scivyer, interviewed by telephone fromHertfordshire, "a Liberator crashed, and a B-17, a Mitchell, and a couple of Lancasters — they'd been hit in Germany and made it out but could limp only so far."
The Choo-Z Suzy went down in some woods a few yards from where now stands Building Research Establishment Ltd. Scivyer has worked there since 1978.
The fateful fire
According to interviews withScivyer, Persac and MicheleReioux, the daughter of pilot Paul Reioux, here is how events unfolded in the skies above southern England on Dec. 28, 1944:
As the plane returned to English airspace, Olshewitz did what he always did once he was out of the enemy's reach. Probably to make himself more comfortable, he removed his parachute and parachute harness. With their home base, Thurleigh, less than 50 miles away, the crew had assembled in the middle of the plane to prepare for landing.
Jim Talley, the navigator, came over the intercom to say there was a fire in the nose. It's unclear what caused the fire. The official report blamed a faulty electric cable.Scivyer suspects enemy fire.
The crew sat tight. Moments later, Jim Price, the engineer, who had been in the front of the plane, came bursting through the bulkhead door. Thick black smoke followed him. The crew reached fortheir parachutes.
But Olshewitz had left his parachute up front, near his bombardier's position in the nose.
Olshewitz made afrantic, futilesearchfor his parachute. The crew members jumped. Olshewitz jumped, too.
"Bailed out over England on mission return, plane was afire, wore neither harness nor parachute," said the Olshewitz entry in the 306th Bomb Group's archives.
Olshewitz landedin a garden at157 Toms Lane, Watford. He was still breathing. He stopped breathing about 20 minutes later.
The other crewmensurvived the crash, survived the war and later got together for occasional reunions. Shortly before PaulReioux diedin 2010, he was talking about the war with his daughter. Olshewitz's name came up."You know," Reioux told his daughter, "I still pray for him."
Searching for answers
When Scivyer first learned of theChoo-Z Suzy's ordeal,shortly after hiring on at Building Research Establishment 38 years ago, he began nosing around thecrash site. The plane's wrecked hulk had long since been carted away, but he noticed small pieces of airplane still lying about, small metal fragments. He noticed also that a line of nearby trees, still alive,had been uniformly chopped about 10 feet off the ground — remnants, he is certain,of the B-17's final, out-of-controlglide path.
In 2014, Scivyer was telling two new colleagues of the crash that had occurred just outside the office window. Their interest reignited his own. He learned everything he could about the Choo-Z Suzy. He became obsessed with Olshewitz. He made it his mission to find Olshewitz's grave.
Hecombed the cemeteries in England known to have American soldiers and did not find him. Helooked in the U.K.'s Jewish cemeteries and did not find him.Milton Olshewitz is not on Findagrave.com.
Scivyer could find no obituary or any mention of a funeral or burial.
Earlier this year, Scivyer again sought information from the 306th Bomb Group archives, and finally someone there had the answer. Olshewitz's obituary was found.The obit reported the funeral wasFeb. 24, 1949, more than four years after his death. It said he was survived only by his parents.
The obit reported that the burial was in Beth-El Cemeteryin Indianapolis.
"It was the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle," Scivyer said. "The mystery was solved."
Earlier this month, Scivyer contacted an Indianapolisflorist, Coby Palmer, and ordered up a floral arrangementto be placed on Olshewitz's grave.
Palmer made up a wreath of ivy, mums and roses. He went with artificial so the tribute would last longer.
He added some red, white and blue ribbon and two small American flags. On Wednesday, the 72nd anniversary of the final flight of the Choo-Z Suzy, he stood the wreathup next to the bombardier's headstone.
Call IndyStar reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter:@WillRHiggins.
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