INTERROGATION OF SGT LARRY T. MAXIM

            The following are the events leading up to the desappearance of Lt. John S. Murphy, navigator on a B-17, shot down on a raid to a jet field at Brandenburg, Germany.

            On an authorized and scheduled. mission to bomb an airfield situated west of Brandenburg, Germany on the tenth day of May, we were approaching the target on the bomb run when we received two direct hits by flack in the left wing and two indirect hits in the waist. Numbers two and three engines were shot out and number one stopped due to lack of fuel.

            I immediately dropped the bomb (one minute short of the target) and the pilot started a wide circle on the withdrawal. We were losing altitude rapidly. Our course lay north of Magdeburg and when it was evident that we could not make our lines in that direction, Lt. Murphy recommended that a turn due South be made midway between Magdeburg and Braunsweig. At this time we were throwing out everything that was not bolted down and suddenly we received the order to bail out. At the time we were ordered to abandon ship we were heading south and west.....slightly.

            We bailed out in this order....Ball gunner, radio man, waist gunner, tail gunner, engineer, myself, navigator, co-pilot and pilot. Our altitude at the time I bailed out was twelve hundred feet. My chute did not open for the first thousand due to a tightness of the pins at the end of the rip cord, thus I struck the ground quite with some force and sustained a spiral fracture of the distal end of the Fibula in the left ankle.

            After thirty minutes of events the tail gunner, engineer and myself came upon a group of slave laborers who were ploughing. Being able to converse in four European languages I was able to obtain the following information from them:

            They saw nine chutes blossom in a straight line. Three of them fell the other side (Magdeburg side) of Seehausen. They confirmed the position on my escape map. The three of us about a mile from Seehausen (west of it) and the rest towards Hornhausen. Seehausen is situated about twenty miles from Braunsweig and about two miles south of the main road from Braunsweig to Magdeburg. Hornhausen is about eight miles west and south of Seehausen, on a secondary road to Magdeburg and Braunsweig.

            At that time we could hear the distant rumble of battle and the slave laborers told me that our troops were in Braunsweig and they were expected the next day. I was beyond walking and was hidden in a straw stack while the engineer went to tell the pilot and the rest of the crew of the information I had received. We were told that Hornhausen was still garrisoned but was to evacuate that night. At that time we could see two of the crew members sitting on a hill about a mile away.

            Fifteen minutes later I was captured and walked to Hornhausen, arriving just as darkness was settling. Just as we approached the town of Hornhausen tow wermacht soldiers came out to meet us and in the ensuing conversation with my captors I learned that they had taken the pilot, co-pilot, engineer, navigator and tail gunner as prisoners. Upon arriving at the "Beaureau" I found the pilot there. He was lying down and I learned that he had  a sprain. He told me that they started them all marching to a town twenty five kilometers away but he refused to walk due to his foot injury. None of the others were injured in any manner up to that time. The road they took was the secondary road south of the main road between Braunsweig and Magdeburg. That was the last they were seen alive by anyone to the best of our knowledge.

            The waist gunner, radio man and ball gunner were taken by another outfit and marched to Eisleben, spending the night and taken to Magdeburg the next day.

            The pilot and myself were taken to Gross Otersleiben that night by primitive vehicles, and we remained there until being liberated by the 67th Battalion of the second armored.

            They all knew of our proximity and of our forces rapid advance therefore they would not have risked being shot in the attempt to escape.

            Our captors were quite sadistic and arrogant. I was on the verge of being shot and subsequently provided them with various and sundry sadistic amusement in my inured condition.

            The foregoing are true and factual statements to the best of my knowledge.
 

RALPH F. COLBURN, JR.,
1st Lieut., Air Corps.
AAF Liaison Officer.

[webmaster's note: Other surviving crewmen were interviewed, but the documents are illegible and will take time to decipher, if they can be deciphered at all.]