Aircraft History
Built by Boeing. Delivered to the U.S. Army. Ferried overseas to the Pacific.

Wartime History
Assigned to the 20th Air Force, 330th Bombardment Group, 458th Bombardment Squadron. Code "K32" Nicknamed "Colleen".

Mission History
On June 22, 1945 this B-29 took off from North Field (Andersen AFB) on Guam and aborted the mission. While returning to land, this bomber crashed at North Field (Andersen AFB). Only one of the crew, 2nd Lt Howard survived and was admitted to the 373rd General Hospital.

Recovery of Remains
Immediately after the crash the remains of Capt Bauer, 1st Lt Gilbert, 1st Lt Foster and Sgt Kalman were unable to be located or identified.

Robert Mann adds:
"Regarding K32, "Colleen". In our collaboration Tom Britton is the photo and text guy and I am the historian/data base developer. The story, as I get it from Bill Harris, the Historian at Andersen, is that K32 aborted the 6/22/45 mission, returned to North Field, crashed and went over the cliff beyond the end of the runway. The site of the wreckage is well known, in fact, I am almost positive that I visited that particular site in 1950 when I was stationed at North Field/Andersen with the 514th Recon Typhoon Chasers. The location, 300 feet down the cliffs on a terrace, north of the runway axis, matches my memory exactly and the wreckage was clearly visible at that time looking up from the base of the original Tarague Beach road. Apparently Typhoon "Paka" in 1997 opened up enough of the jungle to lead to the discovery of another portion of the plane which contained remains, probably the A/C and Pilot. These were recovered by the Hawaii recovery team in 1997 or '98. Part of the confusion concerning 42-93955, K32, lies in the misidentification of K37 as 93955 in the 330BG Crew/Plane rosters put out by Crowell and, recently, Smisek. With the misidentification came a listing that K37 was abandoned over Iwo Jima on 6/22/45, the same day K32 was lost on Guam. There is a real possibility that K37 was actually on June 1st."

Memorials
The deceased crew members were officially declared dead the day of the misison. After the recovery of remains, the crew were transported to the United States for burial.

The crew has a group burial at Arlington National Cemetery at section 60, site 7901.

Two of the crew are individually buried at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl). Kimball at plot N, grave 1040. Morel at plot B, grave 831.

References
Missing Air Crew Report 14915 (MACR 14915)
FindAGrave - Sgt Richard A Morel (obituary, Punchbowl grave photo)
FindAGrave - Sgt Richard A Morel (Arlington group burial)
FindAGrave - Gordon E Kimball (obituary, Punchbowl grave photo)
FindAGrave - Gordon E. Kimball (Arlington group burial)
Thanks to Robert Mann and Tom Britton for additional information

Last Updated
February 18, 2020