June 2010, 65 years after Lt. Roy Steadham's plane was shot down, members of his family went to Germany in search of his grave. This amazing story of their journey was told at the Bainbridge Rotary meeting by Rotarian Sheriff Wiley Griffin. He, his sister Kay Griffin Ragan, brothers Don and Douglas and nephew Douglas Jr. are that family. Lt. Roy Steadham was their Uncle.

Part 1

Roy J.Steadhams name is on the Memorial Wall in Willis Park. Roy Steadham was born in Decatur County in 1919. He was 24 years old on April 8, 1944 when on Saturday at 1:44 pm he was shot down over Suderburg, Germany. His name is also on the Wall of Memory in the American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands.

Roy is our mother's brother and he was raised in the Steadham community, which is where the old Steadham's Store is now located 8 miles North of Bainbridge on Newton Road. Roy graduated from Pine Hill High School. A keepsake of our family is a post card from Roy while he was at North Georgia College in Dahlonega, Georgia in the year 1937.

It reads as follows: Dear Mother, If daddy can't pay my expenses for the rest of the year, let me know at once and I will come home and next year I will go to Tifton and finish a 2 year course there and Finish. It seems as if I will fail up here but things may change. Send the $25 dollars and let me know about the rest. I know Daddy is in debt. Love, Roy

Well, Roy went on to attend Georgia Southwestern in Americus, Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton and the University of Georgia. With three years of college Roy enlisted in the Air Corps of the United States Army, Fort McPherson, Atlanta on January 12, 1942.

I thought it interesting that his official enlistment papers stated: Term of Enlistment: Your enlistment is for the duration of the war or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law. Roy received his wings and was commissioned as a flying officer after Navigator-Bombardier school at Ellington Field, Texas. Roy was assigned to the Army Air Corps 44th Bomber Group, 68th Squadron.

The 44th Bomber Group consisted of 77 officers and 900 enlisted men. This group consisted of 4 squadrons. The 44th was activated by the Army at MacDill Field, Tampa, Florida, January 13, 1941. The 44th was designated a B-24 Heavy Bombardment Group within the United States Army Air Corps during the military buildup and during World War II. The B-24 was dubbed, "the ugly duckling", because of it's lack of a slick aesthetic design, however, it was a very rugged and worthy combat plane.

It had a very aerodynamically efficient wing and four powerful Pratt and Whitney engines that made it a very valuable weapon in America's air arsenal. It was the only aircraft flown in combat by the 44th in World War II. The 44th trained at Barksdale Field, LA while patrolling the Gulf of Mexico for German submarines. They also trained at Will Rogers Field, OK. After training the ground crews traveled by train to Ft. Dix, NJ and boarded the HMS Queen Mary to the United Kingdom. 

The aircrews were dispatched to Greiner Field, NH where they received new aircraft, OLIVE DRAB B-24' S. They modified their planes and readied them for the flight to Britain to join the fledgling "Mighty Eighth Air Force" at Shipdham Field, Norfolk, England.

The 44th flew their first combat mission on November 7, 1942. This was the first of 344 missions flown against the Axis powers in World War II. Over 8400 individual combat sorties were flown by the 44th. When the Americans arrived, both the German Air Force and the British Air Force had abandoned daylight bombing raids against each other because neither could sustain the losses each had experienced. However, the Americans with their B-24's set out to prove that they could conduct high altitude, daylight precision bombing against German targets without fighter escort and the Americans persisted at great cost in men and aircraft. In compiling this outstanding record the 44th lost 850 of its brave young patriots, who gave their lives to "SAVE THE WORLD".

From Shipdham Field, England the 44th flew combat missions over Germany to destroy German airfields, boat and rail traffic, ship and submarine building, piston ring factories, military V-1 and V-2 sites, and targets of opportunity. On Easter Saturday, April 8, 1944, the 44th was the lead group of the 2nd Air Division on a mission to Brunswick, Germany. German fighters broke through our fighter screen and mauled the 44th in a brief, but costly air battle. The mission was our largest effort with 44 B-24 bombers in its formation. Eleven of these fine young crews were lost before our fighters prevailed. This was an example of German tactics and tenacity in defending their homeland. April 8th, 1944 was our worst day for the loss of men and aircraft.

Later in April 1944, the 44th, along with the Royal Air Force and other bomb groups of the 8th Air Force, fully engaged at a German railroad facilities with the goal of isolating the planned Normandy Battlefield, in advance of the invasion on June 6, 1944. After participating in the D-Day invasion, the 44th supported the ground troops in the "Battle of the Bulge", the "Battle of Hurtgen Forest", crossing the Rhine River and on to the defeat of Germany.

Growing up, we were told Uncle Roy had bailed out of the plane and was probably shot by Germans or civilians as his parachute landed on German soil. My daddy, Wiley M. Griffin, Jr., was a veteran of World War II and landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day plus 28 (that means twenty eight days after June 6, 1944 and by then, the beaches had been secured.)

My daddy was a Sergeant in the Army and after landing at Normandy he engaged in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U. S. Army has ever fought in it's history. He received two Bronze Medals and like so many war veterans he never talked about his experience of war unless it was with another soldier that could understand.

Let's jump forward to June of 2010. My brother Douglas, a Vietnam Veteran of 1971-72, came up with the idea to travel to Europe and see what we could find. We had not a clue on where we were going. From letters from our daddy and information from his Bronze Stars, we knew we wanted to go to the beaches of Normandy and the Hurtgen Forest. We also wanted to go to the "American Cemetery", in the Netherlands, where Roy's Memorial Marker was located.

In Germany Douglas, Kay, Wiley and Don. Not pictured is Douglas Jr.
We knew Roy's marker in Oak City Cemetery here in Bainbridge had inscribed Roy's rank and insignia 8th Air Force/44th Bomber Group. The date he was killed in action was April 8th, 1944. Using the internet and researching the 44th Bomber Group we came to the possibility Roy was shot down near Salzwedel, Germany. This town, smaller than Climax, Georgia, was the site where three B-24's were shot down by Messerschmitt 109 German fighters.

Using the Missing Air Crew Report, referred to as MACR reports, filed by survivors of Roy's plane that were there on April 8th, we felt pretty confident that one of these B-24's shot down near Salzwedel was Roy's plane. This is that report written by Sgt. Lanning Baker in his own words: "At 1344 hour near Salzwedel our aircraft was attacked by enemy aircraft. We were flying a new plane so it had no name. It was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. I remember feeling quite secure because there were so many bombers in the air, well escorted by P-5 I's. We were hit by fighters which came out of the sun from above and in front. Our plane was hit so hard it seemed to momentarily stop in the air. Fire immediately erupted from the bomb bay and flashed onto the flight deck. I got out of the top turret, losing my oxygen mask in the process, and opened the top hatch door. This allowed the fire to go over us and out that hatch between the pilots. I then passed out from lack of oxygen."

"When I came to, I was lying on the flight deck floor right next to my parachute pack. I noticed that the right front bomb bay door was open or had been blown off. The other three were still closed. So I snapped on my chute and got out as quickly as I could. The bombs were still in place. By this time, the plane could not have been too high because I hit the ground in no more than 3 or 4 minutes. I remember looking up after my chute opened and the plane was still flying, but there was a lot of fire."

"What happened to the others on board? Hock and Feeney were in prison camp with me. I saw Lt. Phelan at Camp Lucky Strike in France after the war was over. He said Lt. Altemus told him to jump and he would follow. He also said he saw me lying on the deck and he thought I was dead. But when I got out of the plane, I saw no one! Altemus could still have been in his seat as the smoke and fire made poor visibility. As hard as we were hit in the front, I'm sure all in that area were killed or badly wounded."

The following is the status of the aircrew of the B-24 plane # 0 2 0 that crashed at Suderburg on April 8th:
Navigator - Harold W. Bellard - K I A -maybe missing
Bombardier - Roy J. Steadham - K I A - missing
Radio Operator - Victor A. Lopez - K I A - missing
Nose Gunner - William J. Gaffney - K I A - missing
Pilot - William B. Altemus - K I A - found and buried 6 miles away at Hankensbutte.
Ball Turrett Gunner - James D. Mickey - K I A*
Left Wing Gunner - Robert N. Gilbert -KIA*
*Both Mickey and Gilbert were found 5 miles from crash site on April 12, 1944 and buried at a nearby cemetery.
Co-Pilot - Eugene A. Phelan - Prisoner of War
Engineer - Lanning C. Baker - Prisoner of War
Right Wing Gunner - John E. Feeney - Prisoner of War
Tail Gunner - Frank Hock - Prisoner of War

See Part 2, Searching for Lt. Steadham