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| Lt. Benajah Burkitt, 303rd Bomb Group, and his whole crew were killed on a January 5, 1944 mid-air collision. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/42689099/benajah-g-burkitt http://www.303rdbg.com/missionreports/096.pdf |
Benajah Gray Burkitt never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
He was born on June 15, 1919 in Tennessee. His parents William and Jennie were also both born in Tennessee. His father worked as a dairy farmer. Ben had four older sisters, two older brothers and one younger brother. By 1940 Ben had complete four years of high school was was working on the family dairy farm.
Ben volunteered for the Army Air Corps in January 1941. Sixteen months later, while stationed in Florida, he married Laura Ford. Ben trained as a pilot and reached the rank of second lieutenant in the 360th Bombardment Squadron, 303rd Bombardment Group which was equipped with B-17 Flying Fortresses. By November 1942, the 303rd BG was one of the first bomb groups sent to fly bombing missions out of England.
Lt. Burkitt and his crew were flying missions by November 1943. They were assigned to a brand new plane (42-314410) on January 5, 1944. The mission was to bomb Kiel, Germany. Takeoff was made in semi-darkness under poor visibility. As Lt. Burkitt's plane reached the assembly area, it collided with Rikki-Tikki Tavi II from the 379th Bombardment Group. All 20 men from the combined two planes were killed.
A son, who never knew his father, was born four months later.
His grave is at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee. I don't know what happened to his widow.
| Most people get to these stories from a very popular social media site. That website cut traffic to my blog by 80% last October. Recently it has taken further steps to block my efforts to share these stories. No explanation was given. There may come a time that I will no longer be able to share them at all. Here is what you can do to help: 1. Scroll to the bottom of this page and either subscribe to the daily post or follow via email. 2. Share the URL on your social media. It should not have the same restrictions coming from you as it does from me. Who would have thought that a project meant to honor our WW2 Fallen would be treated like spam? |
Last year on this date I profiled A-36 Comanche pilot John Claus, Distinguished Flying Cross nominee. You can read about John here.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
I created this video to explain why I started this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY.
Please consider joining the public Facebook group to increase the exposure of this project. Go to: WW2 Fallen 100
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