"Twenty-five-year-old Robert Finch, a lighthouse keeper's...
“"Twenty-five-year-old Robert Finch, a lighthouse keeper's son from Maine, USA, was a B-24 navigator whose plane was shot down over Yugoslavia in 1944."”
Summary
The Robert Finch referenced in official records was born in Arizona, served briefly in the Marines, and later became a political aide; he was not a 25‑year‑old lighthouse keeper’s son from Maine nor a B‑24 navigator. No credible source links a Robert Finch fitting that description to a B‑24 shot down over Yugoslavia in 1944.
Sources 60 searched
- WW2 bomber downed on the territory of former Yugoslavia
National Archives and Records Administration
- Robert H. Finch
Robert Finch was born in Tempe, Arizona. After serving in the Marines briefly during World War II, he entered Occidental College in Los Angles where he graduated in 1947 with a bachelor's degree. Following college, Mr. Finch went to Washington, D.C. where he worked as an administrative aide ...
- 456th BG aircraft losses Compiled by R. Kliemann MACR Date AC AC name
Shot down by anti-aircraft fire and crashed at Semlin, Yugoslavia.
- 11 Operations: July, 1944 G YOR, HUNGARY - MISSION NO. 222 - JULY 2,1944
headed for Yugoslavia.
- Operation Tidal Wave - Wikipedia
The pilots, Podporuchik Peter Bochev, ... two B-24s were registered as having crashed in Bulgaria). The new fighter aces were personally decorated afterwards by Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria with the Order of Bravery, the first time in 25 years. Iron Crosses were awarded a month later from the German embassy. Other losses occurred over Yugoslavia, where two ...
- Accidents and incidents involving the Consolidated B-24 Liberator - Wikipedia
This is a partial list of notable accidents and incidents involving the Consolidated-designed B-24 Liberator. Combat losses are not included except for some cases denoted by singular circumstances. Consolidated C-87 Liberator Express and PB4Y Privateers are also included.
- List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1943–1944) - Wikipedia
This is a list of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft grouped by the year in which the accident or incident occurred. Not all of the aircraft were in operation at the time. For more exhaustive lists, see the Aircraft Crash Record Office or the Air Safety Network or the Dutch ...
- The B-24 Liberator – Heritage League of the Second Air Division
Part of this confidence rested on the wing patented by David R. Davis: this had a particularly deep section, with sharp camber and a reflex curve on the underside, and was almost as slender as the wing of a sailplane. Tunnel tests confirmed Davis’s claim that this wing offered from 10 to 25 per cent less drag than ordinary wings, but no full-scale wing had flown.
- 74-A-12-Avro-Lancaster-R5868.pdf
the pilot (Wing Commander Ian Hay, and Navigator F/O A.R.T. (Reg) Boys, DFC were · allowed to leave the aircraft on landing, and Sugar became the first Lancaster to land on an · ‘enemy’ airfield. See ‘The Burst’ July/August 1991 pp.39-41 for details – extract in aircraft · history file. Photo at Kitzingen -Claims to Fame (027910) p.35.
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