W. Raymond Wood specializes in military history.
"...not only details the events surrounding the death of one
aviator during the Allied strategic bombing campaign against
Germany in 1943, but also could be described as an introductory
work in how to do research with WWII records...extremely well
researched account of the author's own private quest to find out
the truth about his brother....Or Go Down in Flame would be useful
to WWII historians interested in the bombing over Germany and to
non professionals interested in researching relatives lost during
the war...-- "Plains Anthropologist, Vol 41, No 158"
This is the engrossing story of an American professor's quest to
learn how his older brother was killed in WW II and the process by
which the body was transported to its final resting place, the
family plot in Missouri. Lt. Elbert S. Wood, navigator on a B-17
bomber during a 1943 raid over Germany, was the sole member of the
crew who did not parachute safely to ground after the plane was
damaged. (Lt. Wood, wounded, was probably strangled by his own
parachute lines.) The author interviewed surviving crewmen, visited
the crash site and questioned German civilians who attended Lt.
Wood's funeral in the small Bavarian town where his body was taken.
He constructed an outline of his brother's military career and a
moment-by-moment account of his last mission. In one of many
poignant moments, Wood pays tribute to the town Burgermeister who
went out of his way to give an American airman a dignified burial
(German soldiers on leave served as guards of honor) "when this was
not a popular or even safe course of action." The book may also be
read as an exemplar of how to research the fate of an American
combat casualty.-- "Publisher's Weekly"
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