MOUNT VERNON — On this day in history, Feb. 22, 1945, Lt. Frederick Coe, a native of Mount Vernon, was killed in action while on a bombing mission in the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria.
Coe grew up on a farm, and he loved hunting on the property accompanied by his dogs.
A graduate of The Ohio State University, he hoped to settle into the quiet life of a farmer after the war. With the draft looming, he decided to volunteer for the Army Air Forces rather than slog through the war in the infantry.
He passed the AAF’s rigorous physical and mental tests, won his wings, and became the pilot of a B-24 heavy bomber commanding a 10-man crew.
His crew found the soft-spoken Coe to be demanding yet friendly and fair. They appreciated that he treated them respectfully, like adults, rather than subordinates.
They also had the utmost faith in his ability as a pilot. They figured that if anybody could get them through the war in one piece, it would be him.
On Dec. 18, 1944, Coe took off for his fifth mission, a visit to the OÅwiÄcim oil refinery. The facility lay next to the Auschwitz III concentration camp, so the bombardiers were briefed to be especially careful to make sure that their bombs fell on target.
Coe’s formation ran into a cluster of thick, billowing, cumulus clouds on the way to the target. By the time the planes came out of the mire, the formation was a tangled mess.
They reorganized into two extemporaneous groups. Coe joined a pack led by Lt. Col. Harrison Christy, and resumed course. A second cluster followed behind.
Soon after Coe’s group crossed into Hungary, Christy’s lead plane took a corrective turn. His navigator had missed some landmarks. More time and gas were lost.
At last, they reached the target. Just as Christy’s men opened their bomb bays, the second echelon slanted across their path a thousand feet below. The navigational mistake had brought the two groups over the target simultaneously.
The pilots in the lower group looked up with horror. At any moment, hundreds of bombs would drop through their ranks. They veered sharply to the left as rivulets of 500 pounders slipped past. Disaster had been narrowly averted, but the evasive action disrupted the bombardiers’ aim in the lower group.
A later strike photo analysis indicated the raid had severely damaged the refinery. Other bombs, however, had destroyed some barracks inside Auschwitz III. No doubt, innocent lives had been lost in the confusion.
Vapor trails streamed from Coe’s engines soon after bombs away. As far as he could tell, the plane had not been hit; the issue was mechanical, but it was serious.
Coe could only get as far as Yugoslavia before he ordered the crew to bail out.
Coe and his co-pilot, Dale Hoffman, stayed with the plane until the rest of the crew jumped. They escaped just as the engines failed completely.
The pilots landed close to each other and quickly linked with a band of Partisans. Ten days later, they returned to their base in Italy.
The rest of the crew straggled in later. Some were flown out of Yugoslavia on Jan. 5. The rest, including Flight Engineer John Mulvaney, had to walk across the Dinaric Alps to safety. They did not arrive back in camp until late January.
Coe spent three weeks in the hospital before he resumed flying. The rest of the crew rejoined him after a brief rest. Coe and his men decided to fly as often as possible to finish their 35 mission tours.
On Feb. 22, they set off for their seventh mission in 10 days, a raid against a rail junction in Worgl, Austria. Weather again broke the formation up over the Adriatic.
Six planes, including Coe’s, headed through the Brenner Pass toward their alternate target, Merano, Italy.
Soon Coe’s navigator warned him that they were just five minutes from some flak emplacements. Surely the navigator in the lead plane had made a mistake. Couldn’t Coe divert around them?
“We can’t,” replied Coe.
He could not leave the formation unless the plane was crippled. Those were perhaps the last words Coe ever spoke.
The flak guns embedded on the mountainsides opened fire from virtually point blank range. A shell scored a direct hit near the cockpit. Coe, Hoffman and Mulvaney were killed instantly. The rest of the crew bailed out safely. Most became POWs.
Coe’s parents received word that he was missing in action again in early March. Since he had gone missing and returned once before, they believed he could do so again.
It was not to be.
The posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross awarded to their son was small consolation. When his belongings were sent home, they found a poem written in his notebook:
A little flower, a pleasant smile,
And kind words said to me
Mean more than long-drawn eulogies
When life has ceased to be!
One has to wonder whether Coe had a premonition of his impending doom. He is buried in the Mound View Cemetery in Mount Vernon.
This story was abridged from the author’s upcoming book Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII US Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines, available on March 15 from Regnery Press.
