456th Bomb Group Crews, Page 7

The crew of "Lassie Come Home."

Front row kneeling:

    co-pilot-Steve Hansen

    Navigator- Paul Crisafulli

    Bombardier- Werner Foss

    Pilot- Stanley Sagert

Back row standing

    Ball turret gunner - Kermit Caudill

    Radio operator-gunner- Joseph L. Estep,Jr.

    Tail gunner- Lloyd Beaver

    Flight engineer / waist gunner - James Crowell

    Nose turret gunner- Charles Lee

    Upper Turret- Charles Krause

From Fred Riley: ... the plane called "Lassie Come Home", 42-52215, was in the 746th Squadron.

It was assigned to the crew of Cpt. Stanley Sagert, they were sort of a hard luck crew and seemed to encounter problems. While in crew training at Muroc Air Field (Now Edwards AFB) as I recall, I think on one flight they lost two engines on the same side.

Stan Sagert was not a large man and the plane developed a lot of torque and they were having difficulty controlling it. The co-pilot Lt. Stephan Hansen was a

large Swede and he was credited through his size and strength in getting he plane back to the field safely, saving both the plane and crew.

After they had flown some missions, on 7/15/44 (See the history book) while on a mission to Ploesti they encountered problems and went down but evaded capture and finally returned to the Stornara base. (I think they bailed out and Stan was rather a religious man and carried a picture of Christ by the throttle controls in the cockpit. If my memory serves me I believe they went to the crash site of the plane and recovered that picture.)

On this day they were flying a different plane, #42-78275, I do not know if it had a name. Also, I do not know what became of their original plane, Lassie Come Home. Upon their return to the base I believe that Stan insisted the men on the crew not be required to return to flight status.

Most of the crew were quite young, they had a number of missions in and had had quite a few bad experiences.

I believe the original crew was:
* Pilot - Stanley Sagert - Current

Bombardier - Werner Foss - Current

* Engineer - Kermit Caudill - Status Unknown

* Gunner - Charles Lee - Status Unknown

* Tail Gunner - Lloyd Beaver - Current

* Radio Operator - Joseph Estep - Status Unknown

Navigator - Paul Crisafulli - Current (Had been Wounded In Action)

* Navigator - William Breese - Status Unknown

Co-pilot - Stephan Hansen - Deceased 8/16/98

* Upper Turret - Daniel Krause - Deceased 3/25/93

* Gunner - James Crowell - Current

* Co-pilot - Vernon Altheide - Deceased 1952

* Bombardier - Julian Rice - Status Unknown

* Indicates those on the 7/15/44 mission. On that mission the original bombardier, Werner Foss, navigator Paul Crissafulli and Stephan Hansen were not aboard, other than their replacements the others were all original crew.

These two photos supplied by Terry Spencer.

This photo is called "Chico", the name of the monkey. His larger friend is Joseph L. Estep Jr.

Fred Riley remarked when this came in: "This guy likes to monkey around!! When we went through Brazil on the way over some of the fellows bought monkeys from the natives. I had a small one for awhile but felt sorry for it so I released it before we flew on!"