Marshall Draper: First American Shot Down On July 4, 1942

On Today's Episode of Captivity Chronicles Show "Marshall Draper: First American Shot Down On July 4, 1942" with Val Burgess!
Live at 2 PM PST | 5 PM EST
Thursday | July 20, 2023

Marshall Draper recalls that On July 4, 1942, in the early morning, six American aircrews attended a briefing for the first U.S. air strike on Germany. The strike force was composed of six Royal Air Force (RAF) and six American crews (Army Air Forces) in a combined operation using Douglas A-20 bombers of the RAF 226 Squadron at Swanton Morley Air Base, near Norwich. Also in attendance at the briefing was Lt. General Dwight Eisenhower.

The twelve A-20s were divided into four flights of three aircraft. Each flight being assigned a different target. All the designated targets were Luftwaffe air fields in Holland. The flight took off, formed up, and headed east at a height of about fifty feet above the North Sea toward the Netherlands. The men thought they passed two fishing boats. In fact, they were called “squealers” by the RAF. Their function was to alert the shore based anti-aircraft defenses.

A few moments later, they approached the seawall. Heavy flack opened up on them. When they cleared the sea wall and turned left - Draper came face-to-face with a flak-battery gunner. He then realized the battery gunner was shooting directly at him. The A-20 was ripped right up the middle as they passed two feet over and above the gunner’s head. That was Draper’s last memory of the attack. Please join us and hear Marshall Draper share, in his own words, his shoot down, captivity and how and what he did for MIS-X, a clandestine branch of the Brits taught to the captured American prisoners of war.

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