RAMSEY MCMURRAY July 4, 1945 age 19 DNB Louisiana

RAMSEY ROBERT MCMURRAY b. 1926 Detroit d. July 4, 1945 Died Non Battle

 Bossier, Louisiana

Cpl Army Air Force 331^st Base Unit

17190 Snowden

Burial unknown

Parents: Marshall Bailey & Agnes M. (Nixon)

Siblings: Margaret Bailey, Marshall Bailey Jr.   

Both parents were born in Canada, but all their children were born in the States. Father was a manager at the telephone company. Ramsey graduated from Redford in June 1943 and one year later enlisted at Fort Sheridan, Ill in the Air Corps.

He served with the 331^st Combat Training Squadron at Barksdale Field in Louisiana. General Jimmy Doolittle and his famous 17^th Bomb Group trained at Barksdale as did the Free French and Nationalist Chinese aircrews. The base turned to training bomber crews instead of pursuit and fighter crews.

 

B29 Superfortress

The USAAF data base lists him as Robert R. MacMurray. He was flying in a B-29A Superfortress #42-93993 when it crashed in a swamps south of the airfield about one mile south of Sligo. Six other airman were killed: 1^st Lt and pilot Donald R. Schultz, 2^nd Lt Ludwig Novlan, 2^nd Lt William D. Sullivan, S/Sgt Henry J. Tuemler, Sgt. Willis L. West, Cpl James J. Sacco.

Those killed in training don’t receive the recognition of airmen killed in battle. There is little information about the crash event unless a local newspaper is in the archive database, which rarely happens for the remote, often disappeared, airfields. There are no crew photos, or photos of the new airman ready for overseas. A few of the training airfields had yearbooks with cadet photos, but not Barksdale.