The B-29 flown by Capt Will Latimer was lost on 73rd Bomb Wing Mission
42
the night of 13-14 April 1945.
Additional details are in the
73rd Bomb Wing Mission 42
section.
Five of the men died in the crash and six survived.
Sgt Welsh along with the other five were taken to
Eastern District Kempei Tai Headquarters on 14 April 1945.
Of those surviving the crash, the only one to survive
the war was TSgt Louis Vance.
He was transferred to the Ofuna POW camp.
Sgt Walter Walk died of injuries and / or pneumonia while
at the Eastern District Kempei Tai Headquarters..
On either 9 or 10 May 1945, Sgt Welsh and the other three men were
transfered to the Tokyo Military Prison
and died there 26 May 1945.
B-29s flew an incendiary mission to Tokyo the night of 25-26 May 1945.
During the raid, the prison caught fire.
Other inmates were released from their cells and were able to escape
the fire.
The POWs were physically forced to remain in their cells.
The first two pages of Missing Air Crew Report ( MACR ) 14237 are
below.
Paragraph 5 states that "Aircraft was not contacted after take-off
".
On this mission each aircraft bombed the target individually.
There were no reports from other B-29s observing where
the Latimer B-29 was hit nor where it went down.
The only details of what took place came from
TSgt Vance following the end of hostilities.
His statement from another section of the MACR
is in Paragraph 6 of the third page below.
A version of the MACR from Sgt Welsh's IDPF is the
green page in the fourth document.
The status of each man is noted.
Below this green page are two pages from Sgt Welsh's IDPF
titled Identification Check List dated 29 March 1949.
Within those pages is a concise summary of
what took place with the B-29 and each of the crew members.
The final document is a page from Sgt Irvin Ellingson's IDPF
and in there are additional details concerning the crash location
and
what took place with each of the crew members.
