Warbird Information Exchange

Bernerd Harding eased down the farmhouse's narrow staircase and leaned on his metal cane, straining to match 65-year-old memories with the layout of the dim, cobwebby cellar.
"This is definitely not it," he said.
The house was one of four Harding visited Wednesday in this village southwest of Berlin — searching for the pilot's wings he buried in 1944 after the sortie of B-24 bombers he was leading was shot down by German fighters.
Harding bailed out that July day and ended up in a field. Farmers took him to a farmhouse where other U.S. airmen were being held captive. He hastily disposed of the three-inch metal wing pin out of fear of being beaten or shot in revenge.
"I didn't want the civilians ... to know what position I was in the plane," Harding recalled.
Harding, now 90, did not find the wings on Wednesday — nor was he convinced that any of the houses he saw was the site of his captivity. But he said returning to the village after so much time and speaking with Germans who remembered that day was more than worth the trip.
"It's nothing like I expected," Harding said. "One of the fellows who was a teenager at the time, when I shook his hand I said, 'I'm glad we're both on the same side now.'"
After touring the village from the ground, he took to the air, hoping the perspective from the passenger seat of a single-engine plane might help him spot the right house.
The last time he was in the air over Klein Quenstedt (pronounced klyn KWEN'-shted) was July 7, 1944.
First Lt. Harding took off just after dawn that morning from an airfield in North Pickenham, England, a 25-year-old pilot leading a sortie of 12 B-24s from the 8th Air Force's 492nd Bomber Group, 859th squadron to bomb an aircraft assembly plant in Bernburg, Germany. It was his 14th mission.
Two planes turned back with mechanical problems. The 10 remaining B-24s had just dropped their bombs over Bernburg and turned back toward England when the support planes protecting them were diverted to help another squadron. German fighters attacked around 9:30 a.m., crippling Harding's plane, nicknamed Georgette.
"Out in front we could see these — it looked like fireflies," he said. "They were 20 mm shells that were exploding."
He ordered his crew of 11 to bail out, and was the last to jump through the bomb bay doors.
All 10 allied planes, carrying about 100 crewmen and pilots, were shot down. At least half died, Harding said.
Harding landed in a freshly cut wheat field, where three farmers were waiting for him. Two carried pitchforks, the third was armed with a rifle. They led him to the back of a freestanding farm house and through a bulkhead into the cellar, where two other airmen were already being held. He swiftly buried the wings, and soon a two-wheeled cart arrived carrying the body of a dead American airman. Another injured American arrived and after several hours German soldiers took them all to an air base in nearby Halberstadt.
Of the 12 men aboard Georgette that day, only one died, shot in the head by his German captors, Harding found out later. The others were captured and survived the war, but have since died.
About 100 other Americans were rounded up from 36 planes shot down that day, Harding said. Three days later, they were loaded onto a train to Frankfurt, interrogated and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Barth, on the Baltic Sea coast.
After 10 months in the POW camp, the Germans fled the approaching Russian army, who then liberated the 7,500 prisoners.
After the war, Harding became a carpenter in New Hampshire, married and had three sons. He vacationed in Germany in 1990, but said it never occurred to him to return to Klein Quenstedt — which until the fall of communism was in East Germany — to search for his wings.
Then last year, he attended services at Arlington National Cemetery for six airmen whose remains had only recently been discovered with the help of German villagers. Harding wondered whether Klein Quenstedt residents might help him recover his wings and close a chapter in his life.
He connected with Dr. Ulrich Heucke, one of some 750 people living in the village today, who took an interest in his story and organized his tour. Heucke, 41, was born after the war but interviewed residents who remembered what had happened.
"It's too bad we couldn't find the right house," Heucke said. "I thought we were so close."
But Harding will leave Germany with a new mission.
On Wednesday, Klein Quenstedt resident Heinz Kruse gave Harding a gift: a silver bracelet he recovered from the body of a dead American airman on that day in 1944. Kruse took it after pulling the body from a field outside the town, and has kept it ever since. It is inscribed with the name Jack H. Glenn and the serial number that would have appeared on the airman's dog tag.
"He might have been in my group, he may not have been. But I will certainly find out," Harding said.

Too bad he did not find them. It was a long shot. I hope he found some closure anyways. Finding some family member to return the bracelet of a fallen comrade may help some others find a link to their lost loved one as well. They should have a treasure hunter club get together and search all the cellars in the area and see if they can still find it for the old gent, that would make a good ending, former enemies now friends.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Bernerd Harding, a World War II pilot from New Hampshire who went on a quest to find his buried pilot's wings in Germany 65 years after his B-24 bomber was shot down, died Tuesday. He was 90.

Harding's wife, Ruth Harding, confirmed he died at his home in Milford. He had prostate cancer.

Harding never found his wings during his September trip to Germany, but was given a bracelet belonging to another American airman shot down to return to his family.

Harding was a 25-year-old first lieutenant on a mission to bomb Bernburgh, Germany, when his B-24 was shot down on the way back to his base in England. Fighters crippled his plane, forcing him and his crew to bail out with their parachutes.

Harding waited for the others to jump, then turned and saluted a German fighter pilot for not blowing up the plane with the men inside.

Harding's B-24, nicknamed Georgette, was shot down a month after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, on July 7, 1944. One member of Harding's crew was killed. The others — including Harding — were taken prisoner.

Harding grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and was stationed in Manchester, N.H., during the war before shipping overseas. He returned to New Hampshire after the war and did construction work.