The Last Flight of the Purring Panther: Iowa Time Machine August 1944

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On August 13, 1944, First Lieutenant John W. Colsch lifted his B‑26 Marauder, “Purring Panther,” from an English airfield for what he and his crew believed would be their final combat mission before heading home. That day’s mission ended not in homecoming but in catastrophe when a bomb from another aircraft severed the wing of Colsch’s Marauder, sending his plane and a companion ship into fatal dives.

Born in New Albin, Iowa, on April 28, 1918, he graduated from New Albin High School, attended Columbia College in Dubuque for a year, and enlisted in the United States Navy in October 1936, serving until his honorable discharge in September 1940. He then pursued aeronautical training and entered Army Air Forces aviation cadet school, earning his commission and pilot’s wings on March 19, 1942. During the war, B‑26 Marauder groups like the 391st Bombardment Group, to which Colsch belonged, formed part of the Ninth Air Force’s medium bomber force that struck bridges, rail yards, and enemy strongpoints supporting Allied ground campaigns from Normandy onward.

By 1944, Colsch was flying with the 573rd Bomb Squadron of the 391st Bomb Group from bases in England, attacking targets in France as Allied forces pushed inland from the Normandy beaches. Veteran tail gunner Elmer Hansard, flying his own sixty‑ninth and final mission in another Marauder that day, recalled in a brief written account that the group was sent to bomb a bridge at Dreux that was hindering Allied troops, and that the flak around the target was “terrific.”

In his description, the flak and enemy fire framed the danger, but the fatal blow to Colsch’s aircraft came from above when a bomb dropped from a higher-flying B‑26 struck “Purring Panther,” blew off a wing, and sent the plane spinning into Lt. Boyd’s ship, which lost its tail. Both aircraft plunged to the ground with no crew able to bail out. Colsch and all five members of his crew were killed, and his family in Iowa first received word that he was missing in action before a presumptive finding of death reached them in August 1945. #Iowa #OTD #History #WorldWar2 #WW2