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Archive Report: US Forces
1941 - 1945
Compiled from official National Archive and Service sources, contemporary press reports, personal logbooks, diaries and correspondence, reference books, other sources, and interviews.

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29.06.1944 514th Fighter Squadron P-47D ‘Bloom’s Tomb II’, 42-8473 1st Lt. Levitt C. Beck Jr.

Operation: Armoured reconnaissance of the Mantes-Gassicourt, France

Date: 29th June 1944 (Thursday)

Unit No: 514th Fighter Squadron, 406th Fighter Group, 303rd Fighter Wing, 9th Air Force

Type: P-47D Bloom’s Tomb II

Serial: 42-8473

Code: O7:R

Base: Ashford airfield (Station #417), Kent, England

Location: Abondant, 8 km NE of Dreux, France

Pilot: 1st Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck Jr. O-736945 AAF Age 24. Evader/ No. 78286 *

Above: Photograph of 1st Lt. Levitt C. Beck Jr., (Credit: Dwight “Andy” Anderson)

* This was his Buchenwald inmate number.

REASON FOR LOSS:

The following is a statement by 2nd Lt. Byant L. Cramer concerning the shooting down of 1st Lt. Levitt C. Beck, O-756945 on the 29th June 1944.

“At approximately 08:15 on 29th June, I was flying the wing of Yellow flight leader, Lt. Beck, at 13,500 ft. on a heading of 260 degrees, over Dreux. The flight was jumped all too effectively at this time by four Fw190’s, who came out of some clouds directly over us. Lt. Beck and I broke left, but one of the 190’s got hits on Beck’s airplane before I could get it off his tail. His engine was smoking rather badly, and as I followed the enemy aircraft down in his dive, attempting to close into effective range, I heard Lt. Beck call on the radio and say, "My airplane is hit. I think I’ll have to bail out”. I cannot say for sure whether he made the jump successfully or not, nor am I positive he did jump. It is quite probable, however, that he did jump, and successfully. A pilot from the 313th Squadron, flying below us at the time of the encounter, reported seeing an unidentified, black fighter dive into the ground, and saw a chute open up above it. The Focke-Wulfs were silver.”

In his book “Fighter Pilot” (Ref 1) 1st Lt. Beck wrote that he crash landed his aircraft so the eyewitness account probably related to 1st Lt. Edward R. Gaudent who was flying P-47D 42-8682 from the same squadron and was also shot down during this encounter.

Above the wreckage of Bloom’s Tomb II. 42-8473 was originally assigned to the 487th Fighter Squadron, 352nd Fighter Group, 8th Air Force and later transferred to the 514th Fighter Squadron. (credit: American Air Museum in Britain)

Beck said that his P-47 crashed at Abondant which is some 8 km NE of Dreux.

Beck described that his engine was shot out during the head-on attack with the German fighter. Later in the book he wrote that he had heard from the Résistance that the Fw190 was itself shot down in the encounter and the German pilot bailed out. They informed him that the pilot was shot by German troops who may have thought he was an enemy airman from the shot down aircraft. 1st Lt. Beck speculated that this may have been the reason for the gunfire that he had heard after leaving the location of his crashed aircraft.

German records document a time of 07:37 hrs for the crash. However, no Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) (German Air Force High Command) fighter claims for the Reich, West & Südfront that record a P-47 near or close to Abondant at or around this time frame, has been found.

One possible explanation is that if indeed the German pilot was shot by his own side then there would no one to report his claim. This is also true in the case of 1st Lt. Beck as he died before he could report his claim.

Tom Kracker (Aircrew Remembered) has tentatively identified the German pilot as Uffz Walter Ruffing of 7./JG11 flying Fw190A-8 Wk# 172713 "White 123" who was KiA when his Fw190 was shot down by a P-47 near Flers, Normandy, France on the 29th June 1944. This was the only recorded loss of a Fw190 in the west on this day. No record of where he was buried has been found.

He initially evaded and was hiding in locations in Anet and Rouvres. A week after arriving at the home of Mr. René Farcy a car arrived to collect 1st Lt. Beck. It was driven by a Jean-Jacques accompanied by a Madame Orsini who claimed that they were part of the French underground.

Jean-Jacques was in fact a Belgian traitor named Jaques Desoubrie (Jean-Jacques, Jean Masson and Pierre Boulain were aliases) who had infiltrated the Réseau Comète (Comet Line) escape route in Brussels and Paris. He was responsible for the Nazis rounding up dozen of members of the Réseau Comète and Allied airmen. He was finally captured and stood accused at a French military trial in Lille. He was convicted and condemned to death for having participated in the capture and assassination of members of the resistance and for sending Allied military to their deaths in violation of the Geneva convention. He was executed by firing squad.

Madame Orsini, also known as Colette, was Marie-Antoinette Orsini and an accomplice of Desoubrie. She was arrested by the French authorities but not before Desoubrie tried but failed to kill her so that she would not inform on him (Ref 3).

1st Lt. Beck was taken to a hotel on the rue Pigalle in Paris which was not far from the apartments of Desoubrie. Here he was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Fresnes prison located to the south of Paris. This was were French political prisoners were held and ordinarily Allied airmen, after questioning, were moved to a PoW Camp. In the summer of 1944, with the Allies having liberated Paris and closing in, the Gestapo guards started reducing the prison population by execution, and then relocating surviving prisoners to various concentration camps east of France (Ref 2).

The prison was liberated on the 24th August by French forces.

On the 15th August 1944 168 PoWs including 1st Lt. Beck and hundreds of French men and women were packed into a freight train and transported to Buchenwald concentration camp on a journey lasting five days. Buchenwald was located 8 km north of Weimar, in the German province of Thüringen.

Sqn Ldr. Lamason and Fg Off. Chapman who evaded the enemy were being moved along the Réseau Comète (Comet line) and were also betrayed by a traitor. The events leading to their capture, subsequent incarceration at the Buchenwald concentration camp and the tenacity of the two in getting most of the airmen transferred to Stalag Luft 3, are described here:

1st Lt. Beck was one of two airmen that did not make the transfer to Stalag Luft 3. The second was Fg Off. Philip Derek Hermmens, 152583, RAFVR, who died the camp hospital through medical neglect on the 18th October 1944 due to septicæmia from a wound received whilst escaping his crashing aircraft. This was further complicated through medical neglect for rheumatic fever and pneumonia. Note: although his official date of death is given as the 18th October the true date is thought to have been the 27th September 1944.

1st Lt. Beck was taken to the camp hospital where he died of purulent pleurisy due to medical neglect on the night of the 29th/30th October 1944 (Ref 2)

There is no known grave for 1st Lt. Beck and it was speculated that his body was cremated at the camp and his ashes dispersed.

Burial Details

Above: Memorial at Buchenwald for Fg Off. Hemmens and 1st Lt. Beck (Credit Harold Skaarup).

1st Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck Jr. Air Medal (Three Oak Leaf Clusters). Commemorated on the Tablets of the Missing, Luxembourg American Cemetery with a date of death as 29th November 1944. Born on the 2nd January 1920 in Houston, Texas. Son of Levitt Clinton and Verne Ethel (née Tryon) Beck of Walnut Park, California, USA.

Researched by Ralph Snape and Traugott Vitz for Aircrew Remembered and dedicated to the relatives of this Pilot with additional thanks to Traugott for his work on the ‘VitzArchive’. Thanks to Tom Kracker for the German fighter loss information (Jan 2022).

Reference(s):

1. “Fighter Pilot” by 1st Lt. L.C.B. Beck Jr.
2. Hitler’s Atrocities against Allied PoWs - Philip D. Chinnery - Page 191.
3. Footprints in the Sands of Time: RAF Bomber Command Prisoners-of-War in Germany 1939-1945 - Oliver Clutton-Brook - Chapter 6.

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