Landed with battle damage from a mission to Frankfurt, GR on 20 Mar 1944 in B-17G 42-38124 'Passionate Witch'. RTD. Direct hit by flak on a mission to Chateaudin airfield, FR on 28 Mar 1944, B-17G 42-32082 exploded, broke up, and crashed S of the target. Prisoner of War.



George Silva was the eldest of ten children born to a Portuguese immigrant family in California. All the children had to pitch in to help with the finances and while still at High School George helped out at the local saw mill. After graduation he worked first in a limber yard and then moved to Oakland to the Naval Shipyards where he fitted batteries into submarines. Post Pearl Harbor he immediately volunteered for service but it was a year before he was actually called up into the Air Force.



He did his basic training in his home state opting to be a Mechanic/Air Engineer but the need for Radio Operators was primary and he was posted instead to Radio School in St Louis Missouri, a long, dirty train ride away. There they were taught how to build a radio from scratch before anything else, then the intricacies of the Morse Code. Next it was to Texas to learn how to fire a 50 calibre machine-gun from an airplane and finally to Moses AFB in Washington where he joined up with his crew; the six sergeants and four officers, the pilot Lieut. Young.



From then on they trained as a B-17 crew and, although Silva had never before experienced air-sickness, he was violently airsick on these training flights and almost scrubbed from the course. Fortunately the problem resolved itself and he was able to carry on with his crew for the intensive and prolonged training. In November 1943 they were given 10 days leave and he managed - in spite of serious flooding that year - to travel home by Greyhound bus for a few days with his family.



They began the journey to war on 14th December flying via Grand Island Nebraska and on to Presque Isle in Maine where six of the out-going crews were assembled and they were all invited to a local party - soft drinks only. After breakfast the following morning they were fooling around having a snowball fight when George slipped on the ice and hit his head on the tarmac. He felt no pain but the powers-that-be insisted that he go to hospital for a check-up. Very early the next morning the entire crew came to visit him with the - for George - devastating news that they would be taking off at 8 am.



He was desperate to catch up with his crew after his enforced five days in hospital but did not even start until 30th December when he was authorized to go to La Guardia. After several more 'hiccups' he finally managed the trip across the Atlantic and eventually arrived at Deopham Green Norfolk tp join the 452nd Bomb Group. Upon arrival he was dismayed to learn that he had been replaced on the Young crew and should have instead gone to Salt Lake City for re-assignment; since he was there, however, he could stay!



Whilst becoming conversant with local R/T procedures Silva took the opportunity to explore the surrounding area. He was astonished by the 'simply stunning' greenery and the resilience of the locals after four years of war 'all of the kids looked scrawny' and managed to get himself a bike for twenty dollars. His official position was still in doubt but - finally - at the beginning of February 1944 - flies his very first mission replacing a gunner who had gone sick.



By the end of the month and on his third mission he is at long last with a permanent crew - that of Lieut. Cook' 'Passionate Witch' for a long and costly raid on Regensburg. On 6th March the target is Berlin and there are again heavy losses, the 3rd Division alone losing 34 aircraft. Silva's 7th mission of 20th March is to Frankfurt on which 'Passionate Witch' is very badly damaged and three of the crew injured. On the 28th of the month hitting a Luftwaffe airfield in France George's task is to drop the anti-radar chaff and, as he does so a shell smashes the nose of the plane. A moment later another shell lands between the starboard engines, the outer wing is ripped off and the fuel tanks are on fire. The crew are ordered to bail out and George landed in a shell crater by a German gun emplacement.



He later found out that only three men from the crew of ten had survived. The first thing the German soldiers did was take his cigarettes, they then took him to a windowless hut and locked him in. The guards releasing him at daybreak had two other prisoners with them, another American and an RAF airman, with whom he was forbidden to communicate. They were put on a passing train and taken to the outskirts of Paris - they could see the Eiffel Tower - where they were marched through the streets 'some showed compassion, others did not'. On the next stage by train a passenger screamed that he would refuse to travel with American 'gangsters' so they were transferred to another train, where there was a similar incident.



George was then separated from the others and eventually arrived at Stalag 17B in Krems Austria where he was deloused and examined. At the camp - where he was to discover his waist gunner Dick Thayer - conditions were 'survivable', the food mainly rutabagas and a thin gruel, as a treat a slice of bread which tasted like wood. Keeping clean was a struggle and skin infections rife. Silva later found another of his crew and they were able to share quarters. There were Russian prisoners on the site - separated by barbed wire - and they would trade food and cigarettes. The Russians were deliberately starved and there were daily burials.



From the hidden crystal sets in the camp came the news of the D-Day landings which boosted morale initially but as the Allies advanced the quantity and quality of food in the camp deteriorated even further. In April 1945 as the sound of Russian guns came ever closer they were ordered to prepare for evacuation to the west. The long march in groups of 500 men which followed was an ordeal with only spasmodic shelter and supplies of food. En route they had seen the Germans shooting Jews out of hand, a sight Silva was never to forget or forgive. On 4th May they were liberated by the advancing Americans who disarmed the German guards, some of whom were beaten up by their ex-prisoners. When a count was made of the 4,500 men from Stalag 17B some hundreds had gone missing, casualties or escapees along the was.



The released prisoners - many suffering badly with dysentery - were initially flown to a camp in France to prepare for repatriation. After three weeks George Silva was deemed fit enough to return to the USA and following a ten day rehabilitation in California was at last able to go home to await his discharge.