Michael Pappas' Missing Air Crew Report (MACR). No other information materialized, from 1945 until 1997, and only when Barry Wareham (the co-pilot's son) and Chad Lindell (the pilot's nephew) began to inquire.

 

Luftwaffe ME report for Butch's crash. Filed by Platzcommando Gleiwitz on December 28 at 11:45 am, missing the crew information and burial location. Received by Dulag Luft West on January 23.

In 1947, the Polish Communist government permitted the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) a one-time search and recovery mission for MIAs. We compiled tables from the master list of AGRC exhumations near Blechhammer, that revealed how the German military handled dead American airmen in Cosel county.

The Germans recovered the Lindell crew bodies between Butch's two crash sites. By then, there were already 190 American dead buried in 9 village graveyards and a temporary forest site east of the Farben factory (near two plane crashes, those dead were soon moved to Blechhammer village cemetery.)

 

Eyewitnesses meet at the front crash site in 2020.

 

 

 

 

The Pappas family traveled to Kosel county in 2016. Julia and her daughters Claire and Mary visited the barn that served as a temporary morgue for Alex Abramowich, Joe Lajkowicz, and Julia's brother Michael.

Jerzy told us what he remembered from his childhood.

Julia attended Mass; prayed in the graveyard; and saw her brother's crew remembered in a local museum.

The German military's burial report was missing. But the math was overwhelming. The eyewitnesses crystal clear in their recollections. The distance was 3 miles. We believed we had a case to plead with the Poles, and needed express permissions to proceed.

We assembled a collection of heartfelt letters from American families, congressmen, and clergy to plead our case directly with the parish priest in Stare Kozle. Here is Father Nenes' plea.

Reading Father Jaroslaw's response to Julia. Permission to directly engage with the Church and its parishioners! But years of outreach had produced no leverageable search teams *. And the American government wasn't responding to our "theories." So we resolved to push forward ourselves.
(100% American attitude. "We'll make it happen!")

* In fairness, our team criteria were tough: Knowledge of the war and the Holocaust. Knowledge of Poland's and Silesia's cultural and political issues, then and now; Understanding of the Catholic church of Poland (being Catholic is a plus). Polish, German, English fluency. World-wide travel on short notice. Internet and software development skills. Adherence to overlapping parties' confidentialities **. Must work for free.