Shot down on D-Day

  • Published
  • By Jack Prince
  • 442nd Troop Carrier Group
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. --  Editor's note: The following narrative is the first-person account of Jack Prince's crash after being shot down in Normandy on D-Day. 

"As we went on in and got close to the drop zone I was starting to get a lot of ground fire, you know antiaircraft fire. 

"Just about the time I was ready to drop the troopers ... I had them up and ready ... I was catching an awful lot of flak. Some came through the side of the cockpit and I got a little ding in my hip ... nothing serious. 

"I was going about as low and as slow as I could for the paratroopers. I was under 500 feet at maybe 110 to 115 miles an hour, but my left engine got hit and I had to drop them a little soon. No sooner than I got the paratroopers out that I lost my right engine. Of course you are nothing more than a glider then. 

I got to looking around and all I could see were treetops and more treetops. Everything was blacker than an ace of spades. 

"I kept stalling and stalling and stalling trying to keep it in the air. Just at the very last second, when I had to go down, I saw a little patch of ground ... it probably wasn't over a city block square ... so I dumped it in there. I skidded across it and came to rest between two trees. 

"We got out of the plane as fast as we could and started looking for a place to hide. The flight engineer somehow got separated from us. I learned later that he was killed that day. I guess the Germans weren't interested in taking care of prisoners at that time and so they shot him. 

"The other three of us got under some shrubbery to hide. The next morning along a creek bed we found an overhang and hid under there. There wasn't a heck of a lot of protection but we just sort of hunkered down there. We were so close we could hear the German soldiers across the creek from us so we didn't dare do anything. Most of the time we stayed right in that spot. When we could, we would drink creek water. 

"After we had been there for about a week and hadn't heard anyone nearby, the co-pilot slipped out and found a French lady who agreed to provide us with water. For fear of the Germans finding out she would never bring it to us in person but would leave it where we could pick it up later on. 

"We were there 16 or 18 days and the war just kind of went on by us. We would hear artillery shells going over us all the time though. We were just very, very lucky. Anyway one day the woman came down waving a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes saying, 'The Americans are here! The Americans are here!' I had lost about 25 pounds through it all."