Lost Souls: 8

Summary

The Man Who Calculated Death Episode: Lost Souls: 8 Release Date: April 29, 2025 Host/Author: PodcastOne

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1. Unearthing a Turbulent Past

The episode delves deep into the haunting history of Suzanne Rico and her sister Stephanie as they confront their mother's final wishes. In 2013, Suzanne receives a life-altering call: her mother, Gabriele (Gabi) Lesser, is on her deathbed. With time running out, Gabi entrusts her daughters with the task of completing her unfinished memoir, which unveils the family's dark and complex ancestry tied to World War II.

Notable Quote:

Suzanne Rico (00:30): "It was the first time I had ever heard my mother's voice."

2. Life in the Kinderheim

Gabi Lesser recounts her harrowing childhood in a Kinderheim (children's home) in post-war Bavaria. The memoir paints a bleak picture of malnutrition, overcrowding, and emotional turmoil. The children, many orphaned by the war, find solace in fairy tales amidst the chaos of air raids and the loss of loved ones.

Notable Quote:

Gabi Lesser (01:08): "The end of World War II, celebrated by most of the world. God Save the King was no rescue for my mom."

3. The Legacy of Robert Lusser

The roots of the family's struggles trace back to their grandfather, Robert Lusser, a decorated aeronautical engineer who worked for the Third Reich. After becoming homeless, Robert approaches Mamu Floria Wilfert with an offer: he would manage the Kinderheim Niederschrift (memorandum) in exchange for the care of his motherless children. This arrangement sets the stage for the family's entanglement in wartime mysteries.

Notable Quote:

Gabi Lesser (02:53): "And across the top of the neatly typed document my grandfather had written was Roberts."

4. The Mysterious Farmhouse Bombing

Central to the episode is the unresolved bombing of the Lesser family farmhouse during World War II. Gabi’s memoir hints at deliberate targeting, but questions linger about the true intent behind the attack. The sisters embark on a quest to uncover the truth, hoping to bring peace to their family's haunted past.

Notable Quote:

Gabi Lesser (06:03): "A ghostly, mournful presence haunting the Kinderheim."

5. Initiating the Investigation

In the winter of 2019, amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, Suzanne and Stephanie decide to revive their mother's memoir project. Suzanne takes the lead, seeking out potential witnesses and delving into previously classified military records to piece together the events surrounding the farmhouse bombing.

Notable Quote:

Gabi Lesser (08:54): "If I put together a help wanted ad for solving the farmhouse bombing, it would read something like this."

6. Collaboration with Colonel Matt Dietz

Recognizing the complexity of their investigation, Suzanne enlists the help of Colonel Matt Dietz, a seasoned historian with extensive knowledge of World War II aviation history. Their collaboration aims to sift through thousands of military documents to identify the specific bomber plane involved in the tragedy.

Notable Quote:

Matt Dietz (19:05): "In my former life, I flew F15ES and spent the last year in GU as the Director of Operations for US Air Force Central Command."

7. Decoding Military Records

The search leads Suzanne and Matt through a labyrinth of declassified documents. They meticulously examine mission reports, flight logs, and aircrew records from March 13, 1945. Their persistence pays off when they identify a B17 Flying Fortress that experienced engine trouble and was last seen near the farm.

Notable Quote:

Matt Dietz (22:54): "So I think I found a plane that may be our bomber in question, but there's a problem."

8. Unraveling Conflicting Accounts

A critical discovery emerges: conflicting reports of the bomber’s crash location. While some documents place the crash near the Bavarian farmhouse, others suggest it occurred in Northern Italy. This discrepancy raises new questions about the bomber crew's fate and the possibility of their capture or death at the hands of German forces.

Notable Quote:

Matt Dietz (24:41): "The Alps, right? Yes, those are pretty significantly tall."

9. Emotional Revelations

As the investigation progresses, the sisters grapple with the emotional weight of their findings. They confront the reality that their grandmother, Hilda Lesser, was one of several airmen who went missing during the mission. This revelation humanizes the tragedy, highlighting the personal losses sustained by both sides of the conflict.

Notable Quote:

Gabi Lesser (32:37): "But solving the mystery surrounding my grandmother's death has spawned another. What happened to that crew? Nine of them."

10. The Journey Continues

The episode concludes with Suzanne and Gabi facing the complex emotions tied to their ancestors' wartime experiences. While they have uncovered significant details about the farmhouse bombing, new mysteries about the bomber crew's fate remain unresolved, setting the stage for future investigations.

Notable Quote:

Suzanne Rico (35:08): "You're not gonna believe this. What? I figured out the mystery of the Stuttnalhof bombing."

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Concluding Thoughts

"Lost Souls: 8" masterfully intertwines personal family history with broader historical events, offering listeners a gripping narrative of discovery, loss, and the relentless pursuit of truth. Through meticulous research and emotional storytelling, Suzanne Rico and Gabi Lesser navigate the shadows of their past, shedding light on the forgotten souls of war.

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Next Episode Teaser:
The investigation deepens as Suzanne uncovers more about the bomber crew's fate, intertwining her family's story with the untold histories of their American counterparts.

Transcript

[Suzanne Rico]

Hi, everyone, it's Suzanne Rico. Just a quick reminder that new episodes of the man who Calculated Death are available for free every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. And now onto the show. Oh, Merlin. Merlin, you have no human father. It was a false devil who came to me.

[Gabi Lesser]

You're listening to my mother, reading the Legend of King Arthur for my boys.

[Suzanne Rico]

It was the first time I had ever heard my mother's voice.

[Gabi Lesser]

She was a dramatic, natural storyteller, lifting.

[Suzanne Rico]

Her veil to show her pale, drawn face.

[Gabi Lesser]

And I wonder if she learned this skill during a childhood of air raids, explosions, and the loss of her mother, when her only solace was found in fairy tales.

[Suzanne Rico]

Where is the ancient magic that might rescue me?

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Hostilities will end at one minute after midnight, Tuesday 8 May.

[Gabi Lesser]

The end of World War II, celebrated by most of the world. God Save the King was no rescue for my mom. Instead, three months after the surrender was signed, she ended up in a Kindelheim, or children's home.

[Suzanne Rico]

Looks pretty much the same, I think.

[Gabi Lesser]

Can you imagine?

[Suzanne Rico]

Like 40 kids stuffed in there. Yeah.

[Gabi Lesser]

And for Stephanie and me, the house sitting up on a rise overlooking a green Bavarian valley is legendary.

[Suzanne Rico]

Everybody was starving. Oh my God, it was so bad. So much pain.

[Gabi Lesser]

The property is owned by Floria Wilfert now.

[Suzanne Rico]

Hello.

[Gabi Lesser]

She's the granddaughter of a woman everyone called Mamu. And when Floria unlocks the door and swings it open, my sister and I step into history. A time when sick, malnourished kids packed Mamu's house.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Children coming from the bomb cities.

[Gabi Lesser]

And many, like our mom, had lost one parent, or even both, in a bad condition. A piano and an old ping pong table were the Kinderheim's only entertainment. And while I'm sure Mamu did her best in that post war disaster, that was Germany. In her memoir, my mom writes that she felt like a prison inmate.

[Uli Lesser]

Uli and I get put in a room with bunk beds lined up on one side and tables on the other. We have to line up every morning to get porridge.

[Gabi Lesser]

How my mom and her siblings ended up living among strangers in a two story house with small windows dates back to the Lesser's time in Bernau, when those villagers made it clear Robert Lesser had to go. Newly widowed, unemployed and now homeless, my grandfather walked the 20km to Mamu's Kinderheim and made her an offer. If Mamu would take care of his motherless kids, Robert Lesser, the decorated aeronautical engineer, would take care of the Kinderheim Niederschrift. What's Niederschrift mean memorandum. I actually found a relic from this time that Tanteheidi had never seen.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Now where'd you get that from?

[Suzanne Rico]

I think it was in the files that my mom had.

[Gabi Lesser]

It's a chore list dated July of 1945.

[Suzanne Rico]

It's like slop the pigs, pull the weeds. No, I am not kidding you.

[Gabi Lesser]

And across the top of the neatly typed document my grandfather had written Roberts.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Krusen, Robert's long time when he was a Hausel, which means a handyman.

[Gabi Lesser]

In addition to small tasks, it was a problemless. My grandfather's chores also included big challenges on the well.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

It was we don't have enough water. Maybe we can build another dig another well.

[Gabi Lesser]

That summer, Bavaria was in a drought and there was virtually no water for bathing at the Kinderheim. This resulted in an outbreak of lice, rashes and parasitic mites that burrowed under the children's skin. And as my mom wrote, there was little they could do but suffer.

[Uli Lesser]

We scratched so hard our hands and legs were covered with sores. I began to feel skinless, both physically and metaphorically, which magnified my sense of homelessness, motherlessness.

[Gabi Lesser]

As an eight year old inmate, Gabi had no one to turn to. Robert's handyman duties kept him busy, and Mamu had put Heidi and Troutie to work caring for three dozen refugees. As often as possible, my mom would take her one tattered book of fairy tales and escape to the vast valley outside, growing wild in the sun.

[Uli Lesser]

I would sit and look out at this unrubled velvet valley for hours. I learned to live in the green spaces in my head instead of all the temporary, chaotic places I could not bring myself to call home.

[Gabi Lesser]

But at night, the hunger, lice and loneliness had her trapped. Gabi had buried her sorrow and confusion over her mother's death in order to survive. But now, in the darkness of this strange, sad place, Hilda began to appear as a verlorene seele or lost soul. A ghostly, mournful presence haunting the Kinderheim.

[Uli Lesser]

I creep down the dark hallway toward the bathroom and I hear myself scream. A pale, translucent arm is waving at the far end as if to say, come to me.

[Suzanne Rico]

Come.

[Uli Lesser]

It is Muti's arm, inviting me, calling me, shimmering in the blackness.

[Gabi Lesser]

All these years later, as my sister and I walk through these same rooms once haunted by our grandmother, this is.

[Suzanne Rico]

The place of the ghostly hand.

[Gabi Lesser]

I wonder if Hilde is lost still, the mystery behind her violent death keeping her restless and in motion.

[Suzanne Rico]

Those were the stories of our Childhood, you know?

[Gabi Lesser]

Now we're seeing them here. My mother died without ever solving the farmhouse bombing. And I can't help hoping that I can find the answer so that both she and my grandmother can rest in peace.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

A new chapter opens. The Battle of the Flying Bombs.

[Gabi Lesser]

I'm Suzanne Rico, and this is the man who calculated death. Episode 8 Lost Souls the birds are about to fly.

[Suzanne Rico]

I see black in the future.

[Gabi Lesser]

Come in, come in.

[Suzanne Rico]

This is an invitation. This is gonna blow your mind. Because it blew my mind. So you listen really well. This is the only original of the man who Calculated Death.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

The man who Calculated Death.

[Gabi Lesser]

It's winter of 2019, and Stephanie and I are practicing Blondie's Sunday Girl with our kids. I'm playing guitar, and when I catch my sister's eye over on the drums, she shoots me a wistful smile. Our mom would have loved this scene, but to be honest, we've both dropped the ball on finishing her memoir. There's no excuse, but if there were, it would just be life. We came home from Germany and went back to kids and husbands and work, the past eclipsed by the present.

[Suzanne Rico]

But it didn't sit well that we'd.

[Gabi Lesser]

Learned so much about our mother's turbulent childhood, but hadn't yet fulfilled our promise.

[Matt Dietz]

As the federal government races to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

[Gabi Lesser]

So when the world shut down in 2020, instead of worrying, Stephanie and I made a pact she'd get back to editing the memoir. And I dedicate myself to full finally figuring out who dropped those bombs on the Stuttnehof and why. First thing I do is track down a woman that Tante Heidi thinks may be the last eyewitness.

[Suzanne Rico]

Hello?

[Gabi Lesser]

Hi, is this Alice? Alice is still living in Bernau. Am Kimse mein Grosswater und mein Grossmutter. But whatever she'd seen as a kid.

[Suzanne Rico]

Had been long forgotten.

[Gabi Lesser]

And she hangs up. Plan B is getting my niece Tia, who's home from college due to Covid to help dig through formerly classified records.

[Suzanne Rico]

Robert Lesser.

[Gabi Lesser]

That might prove the bombing was targeted.

[Suzanne Rico]

No records found. No records found. Please revise your search.

[Matt Dietz]

You're on CIA right now.

[Suzanne Rico]

No, this is the National Archives.

[Gabi Lesser]

I also start reaching out to experts in World War II aerial bombing.

[Colonel Dietz]

You know, my experience, even with secret projects is nothing stays Secret Forever.

[Suzanne Rico]

That's Dr. Conrad Crane, senior historian of.

[Gabi Lesser]

The US Army War College self spreadsheet.

[Colonel Dietz]

Which is supposed to list the bombing missions from 1945.

[Gabi Lesser]

After hearing the story of my mom and aunts.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Seven bombs fell. One hit the house like a total targeted one drop.

[Gabi Lesser]

And about the memorial stone Stephanie and I saw at the Stuttna.

[Suzanne Rico]

American bombs.

[Gabi Lesser]

He agrees the farmhouse bombing could have been a classified American mission.

[Colonel Dietz]

8Th Air Force. Okay, here we go. 3, 13, 1945.

[Gabi Lesser]

And after searching through records of the US Army Air Force Special Operations, he finds something pretty intriguing.

[Colonel Dietz]

A red stocking mission.

[Suzanne Rico]

Faith Air Force red stalking mission.

[Colonel Dietz]

It was a visual bombing so they could get down low enough to bomb. It doesn't say what kind of aircraft.

[Gabi Lesser]

I'd love the answer to be something this sexy sounding.

[Suzanne Rico]

Does red stalking mean anything to you?

[Colonel Dietz]

I know, I'm not familiar with that.

[Gabi Lesser]

Term at all, but the red stalking mission turns out to be just another red herring.

[Suzanne Rico]

In 1945, there was an urgent need for intelligence information from inside the Reich.

[Colonel Dietz]

Okay, so redstocking is probably deliberate agents. So that wouldn't be.

[Gabi Lesser]

We can't find any other top secret US missions on March 13th. So Dr. Crane pivots back to the family theory that it was the British. One of the Royal Air Force's famed Mosquito planes used for special ops.

[Colonel Dietz]

The evidence fits. A Mosquito coming in low altitude with a directed targeted raid on the farmhouse. You know, it's all circumstantial, obviously, but then somehow we gotta find some kind of a flight report by the mosquito that talks about the raid.

[Gabi Lesser]

And the guy who could find that top secret file, if it exists, is Sir Sebastian Cox.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

My official title is Head of the Air Historical Branch in the UK Ministry of Defense.

[Suzanne Rico]

So I've heard. Seb, as long as I can remember, this story about the bombing and how they were out to get Robert Lesser.

[Gabi Lesser]

100% sure.

[Suzanne Rico]

It cannot be any other way. Is this even possible? That it would have been a targeted attack?

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

Bluntly, no.

[Gabi Lesser]

The official historian of the Royal Air Force shoots the family legend right out of the sky.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

It's a complete waste of time, effort, energy, when there are far more important targets than Robert Lissa. So that's the first point. The second point is it's ferociously difficult to do it with the technology of the day. You can hit individual buildings, but only in some pretty specific circumstances. So navigation was. Yeah, it was still an art.

[Gabi Lesser]

My aunts, my mom, even those villagers in Bernau who blamed Robert Lusser for the Stuttnehof's destruction. Seems they were all wrong. And it's a relief because the process of elimination narrows things down.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

The $64,000 question is, why would the bombs hit this remote farmhouse in Bavaria on 13 March 1945? Why? And who?

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

We just Saw these silver little.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

And your aunt's description is of a formation of planes flying over a squadron.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Coming from the Alps over the.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

And one of them peeling away in one plane. One left the group and coming down.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

Lower, circled and dropped the bomb.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

And dropping the bombs and rejoined the group. So who is flying over Bavaria? And the answer appears to me to be the United States 15th Air Force, based in Italy.

[Gabi Lesser]

He's right. While the 15th didn't run any special ops on March 13th that I could find anyway, they did indeed fly a huge raid into Germany.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

God.

[Gabi Lesser]

Just.

[Suzanne Rico]

Pages and Pages 7. 1843.

[Gabi Lesser]

The details are listed in a 743 page book called Combat Chronology. And once I find the right year.

[Suzanne Rico]

45. 45, 45.

[Gabi Lesser]

It's easy to find the mission.

[Suzanne Rico]

On March 13, 569 B24s and B17s bomb Regensburg marshalling yards and several straight lines.

[Gabi Lesser]

Ten seconds later, I locate the city of Regensburg on Google Maps.

[Suzanne Rico]

Let's see where that goes.

[Gabi Lesser]

Ten seconds after that, I've got the Italian base where the 15th Air Force was stationed. And with one click, I've got the flight path.

[Suzanne Rico]

It goes right over Baron Elam Quince. Right over the farmhouse.

[Gabi Lesser]

That clear. March morning. 952 planes, Liberators, flying Fortresses, Mustangs and Lightnings took off from Foggia to bomb military targets in Bavaria. But it seems one hit a farmhouse instead. Question is, which one? And was it an accident? Or was it vengeance for my grandfather's vengeance? Weapon luster didn't work in the ussr, did he? It's back to just me and my niece searching for clues. A college freshman sitting across from Tia at my kitchen table with that damn clock ticking incessantly in the background. It feels like I'm just wasting time.

[Suzanne Rico]

Strategic bombing in World War II. It's making my eyes roll back in my head.

[Gabi Lesser]

But even though every turn leads to yet another dead end, the number you.

[Suzanne Rico]

Have reached is not in service.

[Gabi Lesser]

God damn it. This is a result I just can't stop.

[Suzanne Rico]

Come on. The forgotten 15th. Ugh. I can't do this. I don't know what I'm doing.

[Gabi Lesser]

How do we find it?

[Suzanne Rico]

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[Gabi Lesser]

If I put together a help wanted ad for solving the farmhouse bombing, it would read something like this. Expert needed in World War II aviation history. Must have excellent track record. Finding needles in haystacks. Access to military databases a must. Experience flying military aircraft a plus.

[Matt Dietz]

Hi, my name's Matt Dietz. I'm a colonel in the United States Air Force, and I'm currently the head of the history department at the U.S. air Force Academy.

[Gabi Lesser]

Instead, I found Colonel Dietz the old.

[Matt Dietz]

Fashioned way, word of mouth, several different capacities.

[Gabi Lesser]

And while Matt might sound like a boy scout, he's actually kind of a badass.

[Matt Dietz]

In my former Life, I flew F15ES and spent the last year in GU as the Director of Operations for US Air Force Central Command.

[Gabi Lesser]

In addition to all of that, he's also a dogged solver of historical mysteries. And when I send him an email explaining who my grandfather was and the details of the farmhouse bombing, Matt was hooked.

[Matt Dietz]

After you sent that message, I kind of dug into the records. And did they have any specific targets in the Kimchi area?

[Suzanne Rico]

Yeah, the neighborhood of the Stuttna Hall.

[Matt Dietz]

Right. And no was the answer there.

[Gabi Lesser]

Before we get any farther, Matt tries to prepare me for failure. Because even though there are mission reports for the day in question, to get any real information, you have to dig down deep.

[Suzanne Rico]

So there's a whole other layer below the layer that you're on.

[Matt Dietz]

There are. Yeah. Three or four other layers below that. Yeah. The lower you get, the more detailed the record gets. But the more records you get, if that makes any sense.

[Suzanne Rico]

Sure. I mean, the haystack gets bigger.

[Matt Dietz]

Yes, yes. So we're kind of looking at the outer edges of the haystack. Right. Now and trying to figure out, like, what do we know?

[Suzanne Rico]

We know the date, March 13, 1945.

[Gabi Lesser]

We know the time right around midday.

[Suzanne Rico]

We also know the coordinates of the farm and who was flying above it.

[Matt Dietz]

The likelihood of it being either an aircraft in distress that was having sort of engine trouble or something that would cause it to need to drop its bombs early, you know, bombs away and then go home, or aircraft that are just trying to find German targets of opportunity and in the melee they missed their target and hit her house.

[Gabi Lesser]

So Matt's theory is that the farmhouse bombing was the result of either a lame duck mission or what was called a nuisance bombing. We're going to try to prove one or the other. And when Matt and I touch base a month later, he's got his hands on the formerly top secret records of the 15th Air Force from March of 1945.

[Matt Dietz]

Right now what I have are just these like 10,000 pages of PDFs. So you can't really like quickly thumb through them. You know, you have to kind of like scan them one at a time to see like, is that the one? Is that the one? Is that the one?

[Suzanne Rico]

You know, and you have to stay awake?

[Matt Dietz]

Yes.

[Gabi Lesser]

The records Matt sends me to look through are just gobbledygook, old school teletype printouts with 10 digit codes.

[Matt Dietz]

And so you have to find the month and then like use the decoder key to figure out the day the target. We start searching, decode what, you know, units were involved.

[Gabi Lesser]

Okay. Matt really does the bulk of it as I struggle along slowly and for several weeks there's no progress. But then one day I get an email. Subject lined. A small development.

[Suzanne Rico]

Matt?

[Matt Dietz]

Yep. I'm up. Can you hear me?

[Suzanne Rico]

I can. How are you?

[Matt Dietz]

I'm very good. How are you?

[Gabi Lesser]

Matt's found a B17 Flying Fortress that became disabled on its way to Regensburg on March 13, 1945.

[Suzanne Rico]

What do you got for me? Like, I couldn't sleep last night.

[Matt Dietz]

So I think I found a plane that may be our bomber in question, but there's a problem. So it seems like we have two crashes for the same airplane in two different locations.

[Gabi Lesser]

Whoa.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah.

[Gabi Lesser]

A plane crash. I'd never even considered it before, but now I'm looking at two conflicting reports of exactly that.

[Matt Dietz]

44, 6178 is the aircraft number.

[Gabi Lesser]

According to the other B17 crews flying in formation with 44, 6178, the plane went down in Bavaria.

[Matt Dietz]

The bomber crews are essentially, you know, looking out the window of their Bomber. And they report the last place that they saw this bomber, that it's having engine trouble. It's. It's descending towards the ground. They just logged the last location that they saw the aircraft.

[Suzanne Rico]

And where was that?

[Matt Dietz]

That was very near, actually just to the south of the farm.

[Suzanne Rico]

No way.

[Gabi Lesser]

It sounds so promising until I see the second report filed by the two fighter pilots who were escorting the crippled bomber.

[Matt Dietz]

The two put the crash actually in Italy. However, the altitudes that they list in their report, the aircraft would not have been able to make it over the mountains. So between southern Germany and northern Italy, there are pretty significantly tall mountains.

[Suzanne Rico]

The Alps, right? Yes, those are pretty significantly tall.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah.

[Suzanne Rico]

Yeah.

[Gabi Lesser]

Italy or Germany. It can't be both. Which means we still can't be sure that we found the needle in the haystack.

[Suzanne Rico]

Do we know if it had its bombs on board or they'd already dropped them when it crashed?

[Matt Dietz]

No, I do not.

[Suzanne Rico]

Oh, man.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah. I feel like we're in the neighborhood. It's just a matter of finding the right detail that might unlock the answer. The problem is the neighborhood's really big, but is.

[Gabi Lesser]

Matt clicks around in the background a little frantically to try to find more information. Something occurs to me. If we're now working on the theory that the bombs that killed my grandmother were dropped by a plane that then.

[Suzanne Rico]

Crashed, there's gotta be some like, record of pilots who died that day in Germany.

[Matt Dietz]

I hadn't considered that.

[Suzanne Rico]

I mean, they had to have a record of that pilot. He was either captured or, you know, killed.

[Matt Dietz]

Yes. What I might need to do is go back to that file to see if I can dig up more details. Because if I can get more details on that, then I might be able to like, reverse engineer this a little bit.

[Suzanne Rico]

Yeah, I mean, basically we're working backwards now.

[Matt Dietz]

Right.

[Suzanne Rico]

So tell me why you wanted to be a historian.

[Matt Dietz]

Exactly.

[Suzanne Rico]

It's like digging through a murky swamp and hoping you find, like, the diamond.

[Matt Dietz]

Yes, it is very much that.

[Gabi Lesser]

All we've got to go on are 75 year old reports from young airmen who were scratching out times and coordinates in little pocket notebooks while flying through enemy territory.

[Matt Dietz]

They're trying not to get shot down. They're looking out for German fighters. They're flying over the Alps. You know, they're writing on tiny little pieces of paper. And if they're like me, they have some sort of like weird hieroglyphics. And so you're, it's, you know, you're piecing together different memories of the incident.

[Suzanne Rico]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Gabi Lesser]

It's no surprise the story is garbled, but by the time we have our next call, Matt, the fighter pilot turned historian, has excavated one layer deeper.

[Matt Dietz]

So I dug around in this particular mission and I found what's called a missing aircrew report for this particular aircraft.

[Suzanne Rico]

Oh, my God, my heart is pounding over this. Like, this is the closest we've ever gotten.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah. So what I think happens is they have these engine problems. They have to turn off two of their four engines. The B17 has four engines, so they turn off two of the four engines. The airplane, because it's heavy with bombs and machine guns and air crew and all this stuff, they have to start getting ready weight. And so one of the things that they did in these kind of emergencies would be to get rid of their bombs. And the place that they get rid of their bombs, which lines up with all the reports that I see, is actually right on top of the farmhouse.

[Suzanne Rico]

Oh, my God.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah.

[Gabi Lesser]

Reading the MacR for myself, number one.

[Suzanne Rico]

And number four were smoking men.

[Gabi Lesser]

There's this strange sense that I can see farther and deeper than I ever have before.

[Suzanne Rico]

Oil leak. Had an oil leak. Kept dropping back in formation and made a 90 degree turn to the left. So with. My mom said that she saw it drop out of formation, airplanes in a.

[Gabi Lesser]

V and make a big U turn.

[Uli Lesser]

The last one swoops away in a pretty curve all by itself.

[Gabi Lesser]

Yeah, that's how she described it.

[Matt Dietz]

That's exactly what it was.

[Suzanne Rico]

Stranger still is Heidi's memory of the time on the wall clock right before the bombs hit.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

I looked up and I saw it was five minutes after one. And then there was a tremendous crash. Crash.

[Matt Dietz]

At 1307, they drop their bombs. And the map is eerie, like somebody. Somebody hand drew the map.

[Gabi Lesser]

Yep. The report contains a map. It's crude, like something my kids would draw, but it's pretty obvious.

[Suzanne Rico]

Look at that. I mean, the only thing that could be better is a big X over.

[Matt Dietz]

The ST or like a Google image that is.

[Suzanne Rico]

Was there.

[Matt Dietz]

It was there. Yep.

[Suzanne Rico]

Jesus.

[Gabi Lesser]

This confirmation is what I've been hoping for, but it doesn't answer all my questions. Like, what about that other map?

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

He said, do you know where this place is? And he points to Stutney's, the one.

[Gabi Lesser]

The officers in that jeep showed Tantahidi right after the war ended.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

And I thought, holy, how do they know this?

[Gabi Lesser]

Matt has three explanations. Number one, the Air Force did a.

[Matt Dietz]

Giant report called the Strategic Bombing Survey at the end of World War II. And so they may have been there just surveying the damage done by the bombs. Number two, bomb disposal and unexploded ordinance is a huge deal. So there were people going around and cleaning up bombs that had been dropped or artillery that had been dropped and wasn't exploded. And number three, maybe they're looking for this missing air crew still. You know, if these guys are still missing, then they're just looking. They're following the trail of clues.

[Gabi Lesser]

That trail would have led them all the way to Northern Italy. Remember, that's where the fighter pilots reported the plane going down. And Matt sends me over documents that prove they were right.

[Suzanne Rico]

301St Bomb Group Fate lost by mechanical fault 13th March 1945.

[Gabi Lesser]

The Flying Fortress with two engines out heads south over the Alps. And despite all odds, they do make it over the highest point peaks. But as they descend, engine three quits and number four starts smoking.

[Matt Dietz]

And so at some point they decide that they have to abandon the airplane and they have to bail out. And so the fighters report the last place that they saw the air crew of the bomber bail out is in Northern Italy, about 200 miles or so north of Venice in the mountains.

[Suzanne Rico]

Oh, my God. They were trying to get home. They were trying to get back to base.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah, but they never made it.

[Gabi Lesser]

But they all punched out.

[Suzanne Rico]

I mean, they probably the odds were that some of them at least would have made it to the ground, Correct?

[Matt Dietz]

Correct, yeah. And it says that there were nine parachutes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[Gabi Lesser]

Matt does the quick math.

[Matt Dietz]

9, 10. So 10 total people on board. So that means somebody was still in the airplane in theory. Often the pilot would remain at the controls in an attempt to get the rest of the crew a chance to get out.

[Gabi Lesser]

But parachuting out of a B17 was dicey and Matt says it wouldn't be unusual for there to be injuries.

[Matt Dietz]

It's very rugged and remote out there and so they could have easily just been lost in the mountains. And there were German forces in the area, so the chances of them having been captured were reasonably high or being killed by German soldiers, it's just hard to say. We never know their fate. Unfortunately.

[Gabi Lesser]

As this news settles in, I get tears in my eyes. I'd always thought about the farmhouse bombing as a one fatality event. My grandmother, Hilda Lesser, so missing in action.

[Suzanne Rico]

Jim Berry, co pilot. Morgan Blodgett, navigator.

[Gabi Lesser]

But now I have to add 10 other names.

[Suzanne Rico]

Bob Du Crane ball, turret gunner.

[Gabi Lesser]

Paul Henshaw, the letters MIA in black ink next to each one.

[Suzanne Rico]

Ray Miller, waist gunner. John Jennings, tail Gunner.

[Gabi Lesser]

The loss of these young airmen, some still in their teens, tilts the room sideways.

[Suzanne Rico]

Finding out that these guys went down.

[Gabi Lesser]

In this plane, it. It puts it all in such a.

[Suzanne Rico]

Different perspective for me because, you know, of course I feel sorry for my mom and my grandmother and my Tantas.

[Gabi Lesser]

But then I think about, like, these.

[Suzanne Rico]

Guys were Americans and I'm American, and.

[Gabi Lesser]

This is just what I'd never expected.

[Matt Dietz]

I agree. I never expected this either. Yeah, it's. It was pretty shocking when I read it. Not gonna lie.

[Suzanne Rico]

Well, we found our needle in the haystack.

[Matt Dietz]

We did indeed.

[Gabi Lesser]

But solving the mystery surrounding my grandmother's death has spawned another. What happened to that crew? Nine of them. Last seen parachuting into a snowy Italian forest.

[Matt Dietz]

To know their names makes them more real. It's not this, like, phantom thing that happened. It was a real live group of people doing all they could to just live through the day.

[Gabi Lesser]

I want to know everything.

[Matt Dietz]

Missing air crew report talks about their family, who they were.

[Suzanne Rico]

Here's all their people, their wives and mothers.

[Matt Dietz]

Yeah.

[Gabi Lesser]

Fathers and how they died. James Derry, Pilot because my family.

[Suzanne Rico]

This is heartbreaking.

[Gabi Lesser]

And theirs are connected by the ghosts of history.

[Suzanne Rico]

I have goosebumps.

[Gabi Lesser]

My grandmother's and ten other lost souls. Coming up on the man who Calculated Death.

[Suzanne Rico]

You're not gonna believe this. What? I figured out the mystery of the Stuttnalhof bombing.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

No way. God, these young people.

[Sir Sebastian Cox]

God.

[Dr. Conrad Crane]

All 10 of them gone.

[Gabi Lesser]

All right, it's gotta be the wrong guy.

[Suzanne Rico]

Or maybe.

[Gabi Lesser]

Maybe he made it home and my father in law was on that plane.

[Suzanne Rico]

Your father in law was on that plane? Oh, my God. Yes.

[Gabi Lesser]

I've been trying to find some relatives that might be able to tell me what happened that day.

[Suzanne Rico]

Well, you got the right guy. All of those crew members are listed as missing in action.

[Gabi Lesser]

Did your father in law make it out?

[Uli Lesser]

The pilot was Lieutenant Derry.

[Matt Dietz]

I believe he was killed by fascists when he landed.

[Suzanne Rico]

I hope I'm wrong. That's next time on the man who Calculated Death, an original series from Discount a Novel. The show is written, reported and produced by me, Suzanne Rico. And if you're enjoying it, please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, including family photos, videos and archival material, go to themanhocalculateddeath.com thanks so much for listening.