The Lt. Winter crew (crew 52) was assigned to the 332nd Squadron, 94th Bomb Group, on 5th October 1944.



While little information about Lt. Winter's active duty has yet been discovered, mention of him was made in the Racine Journal on December 9th, 1944 nine days after Winter had died, relating to a successful crash landing he made on November 10th, 1944:



'Helps Bring Flak-Crippled Fort Back from Raid Over Germany'



With three engines knocked out by flak, Second Lt Jerome E Chadek, 22, son of Mrs Mary G Chadek, Route 1 Box 333, came successfully out of a crash landing in a muddy turnip patch in Belgium to praise his pilot, 2nd Lt Owen W Winter, Oak Forest Ill. Chadek was co-pilot on the B-17 Flying Fortress.



The ship clipped the tops from a row of trees, the propeller spun off on the approach 100 feet from the ground and visibility was extremely poor, a dispatch from the Eighth air forces relate.



Chadek told how they flew the Fortress nearly 250 miles from the airfield target at Wiesbaden, Germany through “soupy” weather and a rainstorm that iced the windows. They nursed the stricken craft, battered by flak, back to Allied-Occupied territory.

“They nailed our engines over the target and we had a rough time bringing the plane as far as we did,” Chadek said. “No 1 prop was threatening to come off any minute. We had very little power in what was left of our engines and the weather was terrible.”



Chadek serves with the 94th bombing group, cited for bombing the Muhlembau aircraft assembly plant at Brunswick, Germany.



On 30th November 1944 the Lt. Winter crew all perished in a tragic collision on final approach with another aircraft above them. The following description of the accident is from Losses of the 8th and 9th Air Forces, by Stan Bishop & Jan Hey:



At approximately 1645hrs, 38 a/c returned to base from an operational mission to Lützkendorf, Germany. Landing by peeling off from section and proceeded according to SOP. At 1651hrs two B-17s were observed about two miles away from the base on final approach for landing on runway 275. Due to restricted visibility of approximately 3900ft it was impossible to ascertain the exact closeness of the a/c from the control tower or from the caravan at the landing end of runway. A ‘broadcast’ was made to the a/c on final approach to use caution and observe other a/c on approach.



As they approached the field, it was possible to tell that one a/c was directly over the other by a vertical spread of about 300ft. Red flares were fired rom the caravan and tower and ‘broadcast’ for both a/c to go around was made. The lower a/c pulled up rather violently, gaining sufficient altitude to collide with the a/c above. A/c 42-97985 was broken into two sections by the props of the upper a/c and immediately crashed and burned at Battlies Corner, Rougham. All members of the crew were killed.



The second a/c -8177 maintained sufficient power to execute a crash landing immediately north of the airfield without further damage to the a/c and without injury to the crew.



After burial at Madingley, Lt. Winter was finally laid to rest in Plot B-528, Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California at the behest of his wife, Nelly Winter.