"Heavenly Body II"

19th June 1944

My name is Richard Andrews and I was flying the tail gun position onĀ 19 June 1944 when the “Heavenly Body II” was run into by our left wing plane. Six of us survived, three were killed. As of today there are only two of us left. I’m very familiar with the mud on Canvey Point where I landed. I was the only one of the crew to land on shore. Two Englishman have collected the stories of the survivors from the “Heavenly Body II”, Alan Jasper and Geoff Burke. Alan Jasper was the gentleman that searched out each of the survivors and contacted each and exchanged addresses so we could get together. We did get together many times, even though we lived in opposite ends of the country. Every mission is a story in it’s self, but our 29th was one of the shortest and the most deadly.

The crew of the B17 “Heavenly Body “

Richard Andrews is third from left in the back row. Lloyd Burns (front row on the right) died this week aged 85.

You can read the story of the B17 crash as told by Stan Pierce here .

Comments about this page

  • Message from Richard Andrews: Bill (William) Farmer passed away very peacefully & unexpected early this morning (Thurs) in his sleep.

    Richard Andrews is now the sole surviving member of the crew.

    By Janet Penn (16/09/2011)
  • My name is Norma and I just purchased a photo book in Fl with the name of Peter L Hollis and it has pictures of WW 11 in it. There is a original picture of yr plane
    Heavenly Body in it. Not sure what else there is. If u r interested please let me know

    By Norma (08/02/2020)
  • Thank you for thinking of us Norma but I would think it unlikely to be our plane. Ours is II and was so new it had not even been painted, as I understand it, before the events in June 1944.

    By Janet Penn (08/02/2020)

Add a comment about this page

Your email address will not be published.