I hope this little helps....
WWII AMERICAN CEMETERY, MADINGLEY
WWII Honor Roll:
Matt W. Ransom, III, Sergeant, U.S. Army Air Forces, Service # 34854130
728th Bomber Squadron, 452nd Bomber Group, Heavy
Entered the Service from: North Carolina, Died: 12-Oct-44
Buried at: Plot E Row 1 Grave 2, Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, England
Awards: Air Medal, Purple Heart
728th BS: Sqn callsign "Pinetree", Aircraft ID code "9Z*".
01/44 to 08/45, 728th, 729th, 730th and 731st Bomb Squadrons of the 452nd Bombardment Group (Heavy) 'Labor ad Futurum' arrived from the USA with B-17G Flying Fortress'. First mission flown 05/02/44, last mission 21/04/45, flying a total of 250 missions, losing 158 B-17s (110 in combat). Won a DUC for the 07/04/45 mission to Kaltenkirchen, 09/11/44 1st Lt DJ Gott and 2nd Lt WE Metzger both won the Medal of Honor. 452nd Bomb Group returned to the U.S.A.
Crash memories still painful for B-17 navigator
The sound of footsteps at night on the wooden walkway outside his hut filled 2nd Lt. Sidney Solomon with dread. It was always a GI coming to notify him and his B-17 Flying Fortress crewmates they would be part of a bombing run to mainland Europe at sunrise.
"You always hoped they'd pass by, but they never did. It was the most scary thing about it," said Lieutenant Solomon, 86. "You hear the steps coming closer and closer and you say, 'I hope he goes by, I hope he goes by.' Invariably, he'd stop."
Early on the morning of Oct. 12, 1944, the crew members were surprised to be awakened because they knew their regular aircraft, Little Miss America, on which they'd completed seven missions, was to be flown that day by another crew. Instead, they were assigned to fly a different plane, Inside Curve, to Germany.
They didn't make it out of England before the aircraft crashed, killing seven of the young men. The only survivors were Lieutenant Solomon and waist gunner Tech Sgt. Paschal H. "Pat" Powell, who lost touch with each other after World War II for more than 50 years.
The son of a barber in New York's Catskill Mountains, the future lieutenant was a college student in Oklahoma when he joined the military to fight the Nazis.
"I'm Jewish and thought, 'Those bastards gotta go.'"
He trained as a navigator, while Sergeant Powell learned his job. They met their fellow aircrew members in Lincoln, Neb.: pilot William Miller; co-pilot Joseph Kayatta; bombardier Robert H. Brucks; tail gunner Matt Ransom III; radio operator Johnny Wilson; engineer/top turret gunner Charles A. Bacharach and ball turret gunner Earl O. Bowen, whose nickname was "Short Round."..........
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