Honor For A Lost Brother

High above Hamburg, Germany, the massive planes slammed together in a fury of twisted metal.

The two B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers were part of a squadron from the 100th Bomb Group on a New Year's Eve mission to bomb German oil refineries. Moments before, another bomber in the formation had been shot down by Nazi fighters, and the two planes moved to fill the same empty space.

The pilots didn't realize they were on a collision course, top to belly. To the amazement of the witnesses in the surrounding planes, the B17s did not separate and crash but continued to fly together in a high-altitude piggyback ride.

One of the propellers of the top plane had become lodged in one of the engines of the bottom plane, and the lower plane's turret guns punctured the belly of the top plane, locking them together.

With a fire raging in the bottom plane's engine, the pilot and copilot of the top plane managed to keep the locked aircraft from spiraling or diving out of control, giving eight of the total 18 crew members time to bail out before a crash landing in a field.

Fifty-four years later, Joe Seyfried of Spring Hill stood in the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah, Ga., gazing at a large painting by Gregg Thompson that depicts the two planes flying together in what one crew member reportedly described later as "mating dragonflies."

A few minutes before, Seyfried (pronounced SIGH-freed) had learned by searching the museum's archives that his brother Francis, an Air Corps gunner who has been missing in action since the war, was aboard the bottom plane.

"We were dumbfounded," said Seyfried, 78.

After analyzing records, including a debriefing report on the incident, and from basic deductions, Seyfried has concluded Francis was able to bail out but probably perished after landing in the frigid waters of the North Sea. He was 23.

Today, Seyfried will accept a Purple Heart on his brother's behalf. Seyfried sought the award with the help of U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, who is hosting the ceremony at 1 p.m. at Nature Coast Technical High School to present medals to more than a dozen area veterans.

"It's been a long and well fought battle," Seyfried said. "I'm pleased we've gotten what he should have gotten many years ago."

A mystery solved

John and Mary Seyfried of Queens, N.Y. saw all six of their sons go off to war. All but one came back.

Francis J. Seyfried was a "ladies' man" with talents on the baseball diamond and in the boxing ring. He enlisted in January 1943 with hopes of becoming a pilot, but his superiors declined to put him in the cockpit because he was prone to motion sickness. He was assigned as a tail gunner.

The last the Seyfried family heard from Francis, officials were reconsidering making him a pilot because of the substantial losses the 100th Bomb Group was suffering in the war, giving it the nickname "the bloody 100."

The family was notified on Jan. 19, 1945 that Francis was missing in action. No other details ever came.

"My parents were very upset they never got a body," Joe recalls. "My mom was worried he was alive somewhere and had amnesia."

John and Mary died without knowing what happened to Francis. Joe Seyfried, who served two years during the Korean War and is retired from Con Edison in New York, didn't want to do the same.

In 1997, he and his wife Kathleen visited Arlington National Cemetery with hopes of unearthing some information on Francis. They came up empty.

The next year, while on a 15-day bus tour of Europe, they stopped at a military cemetery in Belgium. The superintendent put Francis' name in a computer and found he was listed on a wall honoring missing soldiers at the Netherlands American Cemetery in the village of Margraten. The tour guide refused to backtrack the eight or so miles so the Seyfrieds could visit the wall.

The following year, the Seyfrieds visited the Mighty Eighth Museum in Savannah. When given Francis's name, a librarian found his name in documents noting that he was among the crew of a B-17 called "Nine Lives."

The librarian knew at that moment that Francis was part of one of the Second World War's most amazing stories.

"Come with me," the librarian said. She took the Seyfrieds to the gallery, where the painting called "The Piggyback Flight" hung with a description of the event.

They learned that 10 of the 18 crewmembers on board the two planes survived, including the pilot and copilot of the top plane who brought both aircraft in for a crash landing. The pilot, Lt. Glenn Rojohn, died in 2003 at the age of 81.

Joe Seyfried worked to secure several commendations for his brother, but faced a challenge in the Purple Heart.

The Army initially denied the request. A letter to Brown-Waite's office noted "injuries accidentally incurred in a combat zone do not entitle an individual to an award of the Purple Heart."

The letter said the Army would reconsider if Seyfried could supply evidence "verifying the plane crashed as a result of enemy action."

Joe Seyfried supplied a 1944 report that says Francis was "killed in action." In his response, Joe couldn't help but voice his frustration that his brother's death had been called an accident.

"This was not a case of two jeeps having an accident on the parade grounds, this was a combat situation," Seyfried wrote.

He received word last year that Francis would get his Purple Heart.

Six times a year, Joe pays to have flowers placed under his brother's name on the memorial wall in the Netherlands.

"We're never going to get a body back," he said, "but at least we have more on what happened."