Leroy Butler
Staff Sgt. LeRoy C. Butler, 756th Bomb Squadron, 459th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force, KIA April 12, 1944 New Hanover High School
Air Force Staff Sgt. LeRoy C. Butler, 756th Bomb Squadron, 459th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force, KIA April 12, 1944.
Butler graduated from New Hanover High School, NC in 1939, a classmate of my sister, the late Elizabeth Jones Garniss, and Tanky Meier. He and fellow WWII veteran Kelly Jewell remembered Butler from school as a ruffian - not rowdy - a genuine "boy."
Butler's B-24 Liberator bomber "Texas Lassie" flew out of Giulia, Italy. Details went unknown until 2003 when his bombardier e-mailed an eyewitness account to the group's reunion organization.
Anti-aircraft flak and fighters attacked Butler's plane while bombing the aircraft assembly plant at Bad Voslau, Austria. "Texas Lassie" lost an engine and dropped from the formation. A Focke-Wulf Fw-190, the enemy's best fighter, blew off the top gun turret, killing Butler, the engineer and gunner, on his first mission.
The B-24 plummeted, hydraulics gone, gas fumes everywhere, metal shards covering the wings. Survivors parachuted into Bosnia and were rescued. How authorities recovered his body and buried it at Nettuno goes unanswered.
S/Sgt. Leroy C Butler was assigned to the 459th BG 756th Squadron.
Military Occupational Specialty (MOS): Engineer/Gunner.
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