By Peter V. Owens, surviving nephew
On the morning of September 15, 1943, eleven young American crewmen on a B-17F were returning with their 65th Bomb Squadron after dropping their bombs over Lac, Papua New Guinea. They must have felt some degree of relief having survived the mission, but as they cruised back toward their base at at altitude of 11,500 feet, they flew into an enormous thunderhead. In an attempt to avert the storm cloud, Pilot Lt. Howard G. Eberly "peeled up and out to the left" and was never seen again. A half century later the plane was discovered strewn over a mountainside in the rugged, almost impenetrable Owens Stanley range in Papua New Guinea--one of the wildest, most remote jungle regions in the world.
Evidence later revealed that the plane plowed into a mountain side killing everyone aboard. My uncle, the man for whom I was named two years after his death, was the plane's photographer.
From a base in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG), a B-17F (#41-24552) aircraft, in a formation with five other B-17's from the 65th Bomb Squadron, 43rd Bomb Group, attacked and bombed Lac (PNG) on September 15, 1943 between 10:20 and 10:55 A.M.