Shot down 27 August 1943 in B-17 #42-29530, Killed in Action (KIA).



It is August 27,1943 the time is 1927 or 7:27 pm the 305th Bomber Group is just coming out of a bombing raid on Watton France, and they are surrounded with flack.



But we’ll start at the raid briefing that morning. For three consecutive raids (possibly Schweinfurt Germany, Gilze-Rijen Holland and Villacoublay France) 1st Lt. Don Moore’s B-17 was badly shot up, forcing them to alter formation. The Group Operations officer talked to Don, on this particular morning, and gave him orders to stay in formation. They were scheduled to lead an element that day, Don’s first step to making Captain, flying the B-17 “Moonbeam”. But at the last moment before takeoff, the deal was changed and they were moved to “tail end Charlie” the hot spot of formation, at that time.



Everything went fine that day until the actual bomb run. It seemed that the flack was centered on them. The ordinary thing to do would be to pull up or out, just a little, but because of his orders that morning Don stayed in to ride it out. Photographer TSgt Dan McGovern, abord the “Old Republic”, witnessed a terrific explosion and watched in horror as, almost in slow motion, the “Moonbeam” billowing and trailing smoke, started to lag behind the formation. First, Joe Kosmicky, the ball turret gunner, is wounded with a hit between the ball turret and the left waist gunner’s position knocking out the B-17’s oxygen and interphone systems. The next burst took off the tip of the left wing and then came the bad one. It went into the bottom of the left inboard engine and burst before it came out of the top. By some miracle, no one in the cockpit was wounded. The #2 engine caught fire and Bob Coffman, the co-pilot, looks outside to see the fire melting the aluminum covering right off the wing. The fire and flames were streaming clear back past the tail. They tried to put it out, but it was impossible. The bomber, now on fire, started to vibrate violently before it slowly started to spiral and fall. Don calls for his men to bail out, and ordered Warren Seyfried, the engineer, to get his chute. When Seyfried gets back he sees Don put the chute on and set the automatic pilot, then bails. McGovern sees the stricken B-17 fly on for some distance before it spun out of control and went down in flames crashing in a fireball.



As the crew bails out, Sgt. Harold Graham, radio operator, bailed out from the radio escape hatch, his chute caught fire upon his escape. After Coffman and Smith bail out the left wing fell off putting the plane in a spin. According to Coffman’s son, Coffman’s chute had holes, so Don gave Coffman his. There were three men in the remains of the plane, 1st Lt Don Moore, SSG Joseph Kosmicky, and Sgt. David Pearlman, the right waist gunner. Of the crew that safely bailed out FLT O Robert Coffman, 2nd Lt James Meade, the navigator, 2nd Lt David Smith, the bombardier, SSG Trevor Falkner, the left waist gunner, and SSG Warren Seyfied were sent to POW camps. SSG James King, the tail gunner, and Sgt. Bill Wood, the photographer, escaped, separately, through the French underground.



Don’s crew called him Pappy out of the respect they had for him. His co-pilot described him as “cool as a cucumber” through all of this, his navigator called him a providential agent, and his bombardier tried to put in for D. F. C. when he returned from POW camp. As Warren Seyfried was a POW, he had a fellow answer his comments on what happened “Red, there are two ways to die. To die for nothing at all, or to die for life – for thousands of lives.” And Seyfried felt that is the way Don went. He was that way. Not just on the outside, but all the way through. He proved that. He would never have left until everyone else had gone. He died so that the crew could live. Seyfried continued telling Don’s wife, when he grows up just a little more tell Douglas, for me that he can well be proud of the way his Daddy died.