Lt. Col. Christopher Kuester, Commander, 424th Air Base Squadron, joined the local community, June 14, in honoring Lt. Floyd Addy, who died 70 years ago while maneuvering his aircraft to avoid crashing in the center of Wodecq, a small village 30 kilometers north from Chièvres Air Base.
On June 14, 1944, Addy's crew of 10, boarded the B-24 "Won Long Hop," part of the 861st Squadron, 493rd Bomb Group, with the mission to bomb the air base near Laon, France in order to relieve the Allied forces. The mission was to be the last one for "Won Long Hop" as it was intended for scrap upon its return. It had never succeeded one single mission and its last mission was not going to be the exception.
After the "Won Long Hop" missed its target, the commander of the formation ordered Addy to assess the damage caused by their bombings. While doing so, the B-24 was not longer part of the formation and had to head back to England by itself. The plane was hit numerous times by anti-aircraft fire but flying over Chièvres Air Base, then occupied by the Nazis, enemy fire blew out the four engines and it was clear that it wouldn't reach England anymore.
Addy ordered his crew to bail out while he decided to maneuver his plane to an unpopulated area where he would attempt a crash landing. His last words to his crew were: "Good luck to you; I stay in the plane. There are friends among the people on the ground and I don't want that one of our planes falls upon them." These words are mentioned in the book "A Wartime Journey: Bail-out over Belgium - World War II" written long after the war by William Cupp, one of Addy's crew members.
As he flew over Wodecq, Addy managed to avoid the steeple of the church.
"At that time on June 14, 1944, the church of Wodecq was filled with children preparing their procession of faith that was to be held on Whit Sunday," mentioned Marcel Leroy, who is one of the planners of the ceremony as well as a witness of the events. "I was a four year old boy at the time and recall the plane flying over the village as I was about to go to school," Leroy added.
After avoiding the center of the village, Addy headed south, probably in an attempt to make a crash landing in the fields. As he realized he wouldn't be able to succeed, he bailed out. Unfortunately, the plane had lost too much altitude so his parachute wouldn't open and Addy crashed in a field.
"His actions can be retold in countless stories across the ages," Kuester mentioned in his speech. "People risk their lives to save people they did not even know. Young Floyd would not see his wife Barbara again. He would not meet his daughter Ann, born after this crash. But Floyd sacrificed himself so someone in this town could see their family again."
Addy is buried in the Netherlands American cemetery in Margraten but the people in Wodecq are preserving his memory at the monument honoring his actions.
The other nine crew members of the "Won Long Hop" made it safely to the ground. While some were taken prisoners, others managed to get back to England with the help of the local resistance. All of the nine crew members made it eventually back to the States at the end of the war.
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