Tail gunner S/Sgt Thomas P. Hickey was a replacement crew member who had flown 15 missions with various other crews. Tail gunner S/Sgt Thomas P. Hickey was the ball turret gunner on this mission according to his records, he swapped positions with ball turret gunner S/Sgt Ollie G. Crenshaw who acted as tail gunner on this mission, this was common practice among the Enlisted Men that they swapped positions internally. The officers kept to the list of assigned positions. On Thursday, September 28, 1944 at approximately 4:00 a.m. tail gunner S/Sgt Thomas P. Hickey escaped from the Wengen internment camp with tail gunner T/Sgt Keith L. Pearson (B-24H, Serail No.: 41-28629 emergency landed at Dübendorf on April 13, 1944) and traveled by train to Thun, Bern Fribourg, Romont to Vevey, from there to St. Gingolphe, and after wandering around the area for a few days, crossed the border to join the Allied troops in France. On October 3, 1944, at about 10:00 a.m., he was arrested near Le Bouveret by a Swiss border guard. After his admission to the Lesyn internment hospital. Escaped from there on Sunday, October 29, 1944, without succeeding in recapturing him. He was caught a little later and on January 29, 1945, the Bern High Court sentenced him to two months in prison in the Wauwilermoos penal camp. The costs of the proceedings were halved to Sfr. 10.
He fled Switzerland a little later with the help of the Maqui (French underground). He was smuggled out in a coffin, posing as a dead man. In 1955, he died in Alaska.
S/Sgt Thomas P. Hickey is buried in Grandview Cemetery in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA.
B-17 G-25-BO, Serail No : 42-31669 Marking: VK-J Nik Name: Shoo Shoo Baby from the 8th Air Force, 303rd Bomb Group, 358th Squadron. The B-17 named "Shoo Shoo Baby" made an emergency landing at Dübendorf after a mission over Oberpfaffenhofen on April 24, 1944. The aircraft took off from Molesworth, England, and was flown by 2Lt Raymond Hofmann and his co-pilot 1Lt Robert W. Snyder. Navigator 1Lt Samuel Minkowitz recalls the mission, "Before reaching the target we had already lost one engine when we became involved in a fight with fighters. Then over the target we had another engine shot out by flak. The propeller could not be brought into sail position and so we could forget about a return to England. We finally landed at the Dübendorf airfield. The B-17 returned to Burtonwood on September 12, 1945.
Crew:
Pilot: 2nd Lt Raymond Hofmann
Copilot: 1st Lt Robert W. Snyder
Navigator: 1st Lt Samuel Minkowitz
Bombardier: 2nd Lt Elmer P. Israelson
Engineer: T /Sgt William R. Blakeny, Jr.
Radio : T/Sgt Seymour Berman,
Ball Turret: S/Sgt Ollie G. Crenshaw
Right Waist: S/Sgt John W. Bahr
Left Waist: T S/Sgt Tracy W. Lawson
Tail Gunner: S/Sgt Thomas P. Hickey
Combat Mission No. 140 24 April 1944
