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15th AAF
Delbert W. Trueman
721st Squadron

Delbert W. Trueman, 721st Squadron   Delbert W. Trueman, 721st Squadron
Photographs courtesy of Kim Clarke, granddaughter of Cpl. Delbert W. Trueman, 721st Squadron


Delbert W. Trueman was born in Danville, Ill., on Valentine's Day, 1917.
He grew up in Marion, Ind., the oldest of Paul and Nellie Trueman's four children.
He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in December 1943, six months after his younger brother was killed in a B-24 training flight in Salinas, California.
Second Lt. Dale J. Trueman, who was 24 when he died, was a pilot with the 34th Bomb Group, 4th Bomb Squadron.

Delbert Trueman underwent basic training in Greensboro, N.C., with the Army Air Forces 302nd Wing, 1179th Training Group.
He then went to Flexible Gunnery School at Harlingen Army Air Field in Texas. After receiving his wings in May 1944, he shipped to Westover Field in Massachusetts, where he met his crewmates for the first time and was named the assistant radio operator.

The pilot of his crew was Lt. Lloyd White.
Other crew members were:
Co-pilot, Richard Kitzman
Bombardier, 2nd Lt. Byron Fish
Engineer Cpl. Lloyd E. Greene
Assistant engineer Cpl. Robert W. Warner
Radio operator Cpl. Thaddeus Guzan
Armorer/gunner Cpl. Charlie Ward
Assistant armorer/gunner Cpl. Charles S. Kleinhenz
The navigator was a second lieutenant by the name of Fredericks.


The crew spent the summer of 1944 training at Chatham Field in Savannah, Georgia. They departed for Europe in mid-September 1944 and, after a series of stops in northern Africa, settled in at the 450th Bomb Group headquarters in Manduria, Italy, in early October. They were members of the 721st Squadron.
Delbert was assigned to fly his first combat mission on Oct. 17, 1944.
Given that he and other members of Crew 272 were a "green" replacement crew, they were split up and assigned to fly their first few missions with more seasoned crews.
Trueman and Kleinhenz were set to fly in B-24J #42-51566 with 1st Lt. Leonard Mojica, pilot, and 2nd Lt. Marvin G. Niederjohn, co-pilot.
Trueman would be the tailgunner.

The day's target was the Vienna Saurerwerke. Planes of the 721st Bomb Squadron left Manduria at 8:15 a.m. and reached Vienna shortly after noon. After successfully dropping its bombs, ship 42-51566 was hit in the right wing by flak and went into a flat spin east of Vienna. The aircraft crashed near Leopoldsdorf.
Four men were able to jump from the burning aircraft before its crash landing.
T/Sgt. Joseph J. Marallo, T/Sgt. Robert A. Davis, S/Sgt. Richard L. Conkle and Cpl. Richard J. Pinardi all parachuted to the ground, where they were captured and made prisoners of war.
Killed in the crash were 2nd Lt. George E. Webb, S/Sgt. Elvin R. Killingsworth , Mojica, Niederjohn, Kleinhenz and Trueman.
The German Army buried the airmen's bodies in the Vienna Central Cemetery, where they remained until the end of the war and the liberation of Vienna.
U.S. troops disinterred the bodies of the dead airmen in August 1946 and moved them to a U.S. military cemetery in St. Avold, France.

Cpl. Delbert Trueman's body was then moved from St. Avold to Marion, Ind., for permanent burial in Grant Memorial Park.
He is buried next to his brother, Dale.




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