B-17 Pilot Robert Barrat: A Grave for Six, a Name Back
On 9 February 1945, two B-17s of the 303rd Bomb Group collided in formation over Germany. Eight of the nine men aboard 2nd Lt. Robert Barrat's bomber were killed. In 1947, six of them were identified as one set of collective remains and buried under one marker in Missouri. In 2025, the laboratory gave the pilot back his own name.
Chapters
- 0:00 A grave for six
- 0:49 The pilot and the plane
- 1:47 Lutzkendorf
- 2:14 9 February 1945: the collision
- 3:50 Two report numbers
- 4:07 Eisenberg and the bombs
- 5:09 1947: eight sets, two names
- 5:36 Six men, one identification
- 6:21 The joint marker
- 7:17 October 1991: two rings
- 8:39 How a site gives up small things
- 9:03 2024: the reexamination
- 10:12 The navigator
- 10:54 Arlington, May 2026
- 12:06 The account
- 12:41 Next: a chaplain in North Korea
Transcript
A grave for six 0:00
B-17 pilot Robert Barrat: a grave for six, and his name back. On the ninth of February 1945, two B-17s collided over Germany. Eighty years later, a laboratory took one man out of a grave he shared with five others.
We read the agency's release against the bomb group's own records, line by line. Where they disagree, we show you both.
A word on what you are seeing. The black and white film shows other Eighth Air Force missions in 1944 and 1945, not this crew. The excavation in Germany, the funeral at Arlington and the laboratory come from other cases. We found no published film of Barrat's crew, his crash or his funeral. No human remains are shown.
The pilot and the plane 0:49
Robert J. Barrat was twenty, from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, the agency says. In early 1945 he piloted a B-17G Flying Fortress in the 427th Bombardment Squadron, 303rd Bombardment Group, Eighth Air Force.
The group flew from Molesworth, in England. The bomb group's association gives his aircraft's serial, forty-three, thirty-nine, one forty-nine, and says it had no name. A university page calls it Hell's Angels. That was the group's nickname, not the plane's.
A B-17 registry follows that aircraft. Delivered at Lincoln, Nebraska, on the twenty-first of December 1944. Dow Field, Maine, on the third of January. Assigned to the group at Molesworth on the third of February 1945. Six days later, it was missing.
Lutzkendorf 1:47
The target on the ninth was Lutzkendorf, in eastern Germany, today part of a town called Krumpa. It held a synthetic oil plant. One account calls it a high priority target for the Allies, because of that plant.
This is another oil plant in the same region, Leuna, filmed by the Army in April 1945, after the bombing. It is not Lutzkendorf. We found no film of Lutzkendorf in the archive.
9 February 1945: the collision 2:14
On the ninth of February, the agency says, witnesses saw Barrat's aircraft collide with another aircraft in formation. It was seen hitting the ground and exploding. Eight of the nine men aboard were killed.
The agency does not name the other plane. The bomb group's association does. It was a B-17 of the same squadron, piloted by First Lieutenant Alfred Nemer. Its account says Nemer's plane was hit by flak before bombs away, and its right wing struck Barrat's tail.
The rear of Barrat's fuselage, from the waist window back, was torn off. The bomber went down in two sections. The tail gunner, Sergeant George Emerson, got out of the severed tail by parachute and became a prisoner of war.
Nine men had been aboard. The association's crew list gives their posts: pilot, copilot, navigator, togglier, radio operator, engineer, ball turret gunner, waist gunner and tail gunner. One of the nine came home.
Emerson later wrote that flak had disabled an engine on Nemer's plane, and that it plowed into theirs. He put the altitude at twenty-five thousand feet. Another account says twenty-four thousand.
Nemer's plane went down too. The association counts five of its crew killed and one captured. Three were picked up by Russian troops and returned to Molesworth on the sixth of March. Two of its dead, the association says, lie today in the Ardennes American Cemetery, in Belgium.
Two report numbers 3:50
Each lost aircraft got a Missing Air Crew Report. Two report numbers belong to these two planes, twelve two four five and twelve two two nine. Two archives assign them the opposite way round. We could not open the reports to settle it.
Eisenberg and the bombs 4:07
Barrat's bomber came down in a wooded valley near Eisenberg, in Thuringia, the association says. The German account puts the wreck fifty meters north of an old mill in that valley.
Before the crash, the bombs left the plane. Where they fell depends on the source. A German witness, quoted by the association, says the crew leveled the plane and dropped them on a field outside the village, and one house was hit.
The German encyclopedia entry on Eisenberg, citing a regional history of the bombing war, says the bombs fell over the town, did not explode, and still destroyed two houses. Both versions agree on one number. Ten people on the ground were killed.
Arlington's article on Barrat says the crew's actions saved the town. It does not mention the ten.
Residents of Eisenberg buried the dead crewmen in a local cemetery, Arlington's article says. It is the only sentence we found about those graves.
1947: eight sets, two names 5:09
After the war, the American Graves Registration Command was tasked with recovering missing Americans in Europe. In 1947, the agency says, one of its teams recovered eight sets of remains from marked graves in the Eisenberg civilian cemetery.
The remains went to the Central Processing Point at Neuville-en-Condroz, in Belgium. There, two of the eight sets were identified as individuals.
Six men, one identification 5:36
The other six, in the agency's words, were administratively identified as the collective remains of Barrat and five of his crew. Six men. One identification.
Those collective remains were buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, in St. Louis, Missouri. In our last episode we said they were buried together in 1947. The release dates the recovery to 1947, not the burial. We found no date for the burial.
Arlington's article describes the same grave differently. It says the six were buried together as unknowns. The agency says they were identified, collectively. One grave, two descriptions.
The joint marker 6:21
The association marks six names for that joint marker. Barrat. The navigator, Shirl Best. The togglier, William Karp. The waist gunner, Herbert Link. The ball turret gunner, Louis Linhart. The engineer, Raymond Reiss.
The two crewmen it does not mark are the copilot and the radio operator. No source we found says they were the two identified in 1947. That is an inference, and we leave it there.
A group grave puts several men under one stone that carries all their names. This one, in Section 78 at Jefferson Barracks, is for prisoners of war from Rabaul. It is not Barrat's crew. It shows what such a marker is.
For forty-four years after 1947, that was where the record left them. Six names on one stone in Missouri, and a wooded valley in Germany.
October 1991: two rings 7:17
In October 1991, the agency says, a German citizen located the crash site. He recovered debris from the aircraft, two inscribed rings, and possible remains.
Who found it changes with the source. The agency says a German citizen. The association says a group. Another account says a local history enthusiast, and Arlington says an Eisenberg resident. None of the sources we read gives a name.
The agency does not say whose rings they were. The association does. One was a gold wedding band engraved M N to P B, 1944, the navigator Shirl Best's. The other carried the initials R J B. Arlington's article calls it Barrat's college ring.
Everything, the agency says, went to the Army's Memorial Affairs Activity in Landstuhl, Germany. From there it went to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, a predecessor of today's agency.
In Eisenberg, a memorial stone went up near the crash site. The German source dates it to 1993, set up privately, for the ten civilians and the eight crewmen. The association dates a dedication to September 1995, with Emerson, the tail gunner, there.
How a site gives up small things 8:39
This is what a recovery excavation in Germany looks like today: an agency team in northern Germany in 2023, on another case. The soil comes out by machine and by hand, and goes into buckets.
Every bucket is washed through a screen. What stays on the mesh is sorted by hand. It is how a crash site gives up small things, like a ring.
2024: the reexamination 9:03
The release gives no dates between 1991 and 2024. It does not say when the material reached Hawaii, or what was done with it first. In 2024, it says, the remains were reexamined.
To identify Barrat, the agency's scientists used anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence. Scientists of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System added mitochondrial DNA analysis.
Mitochondrial DNA is passed down the mother's line. It is compared with references from relatives on that side of the family. The release does not say who gave them, and we do not either.
The release does not say what the circumstantial evidence was. A ring with his initials, in the same debris, is the obvious reading. The agency does not say so, and neither will we.
Arlington's article reads as if the match was made soon after 1991. The agency's dates are 2024 for the reexamination, and the thirtieth of April 2025 for the accounting. We follow the agency.
The navigator 10:12
Barrat may not be the first name to leave that grave. A television station in Illinois reported that the navigator, Shirl Best, was identified in December 2024 from the Eisenberg crash site, and reburied in his hometown in November 2025. We found no agency release for him.
If that report is right, two of the six now have names of their own. Both came out of the material a German citizen found in 1991, not out of the grave in Missouri.
On the thirtieth of April 2025, Robert Barrat was accounted for. The agency published his release on the twenty-second of May 2026.
Arlington, May 2026 10:54
On the twenty-seventh of May 2026, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 78. At the service, Arlington's article says, the agency's chief of staff presented framed images: Barrat, a B-17, the crash site, and his marker from Jefferson Barracks. We found no published video of that funeral.
This is another one, in 2018. Five airmen of a B-17 lost on a mission to Merseburg, in the same region, in November 1944, buried together at Arlington. A caisson, a band, one casket for five men.
Four names on the joint marker have no announcement we could find. William Karp, Herbert Link, Louis Linhart and Raymond Reiss.
They are four of about seventy-one thousand. As of March 2026, the agency counted seventy-one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three Americans still unaccounted for from the Second World War. On the same count, nineteen hundred and four have been accounted for since 1973. Barrat is one of the second number now.
The account 12:06
So here is the account. Nine men aboard. Eight killed, one captured. Eight sets of remains in 1947. Two named, six as one. In 1991, two rings. By 2026, two of the six with their own names, if the Illinois report holds, and four still sharing a stone.
For eighty years, Robert Barrat's last known position was a wooded valley near Eisenberg, and then a grave with five other names. In 2025, the laboratory gave him back his own.
Next: a chaplain in North Korea 12:41
Next, a chaplain in a prison camp in North Korea. Father Emil Kapaun died there in 1951. His remains came back after the armistice, and were buried as an Unknown in Hawaii. In 2021, the laboratory gave him back his name. That is the next episode.
Description and sources
We read the case through the record: the B-17G of the 427th Bomb Squadron, assigned to Molesworth six days before it was lost; the mission to the synthetic oil plant at Lutzkendorf on 9 February 1945; the collision with 1st Lt. Alfred Nemer's bomber, the tail torn off, and the one survivor, tail gunner George Emerson; two Missing Air Crew Report numbers that two archives assign the opposite way round; the bombs, which fell on a field outside Eisenberg or over the town depending on the source, and the ten civilians killed either way. Then the graves: eight sets recovered from the Eisenberg civilian cemetery in 1947, two identified at Neuville-en-Condroz, six 'administratively identified as the collective remains' of Barrat and five of his crew, and buried at Jefferson Barracks ('as unknowns', in Arlington's words). Last, October 1991: a German citizen found the crash site, debris, two inscribed rings and possible remains; Landstuhl, the laboratory in Hawaii, the reexamination of 2024, mitochondrial DNA, and the accounting of 30 April 2025. The navigator, Shirl Best, was reported identified in December 2024 by local press. Four names still share the marker.
PRIMARY SOURCES
- Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Pilot Accounted For From World War II (Barrat, R.), 22 May 2026. https://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/ID-Announcements/Article/4499743/pilot-accounted-for-from-world-war-ii-barrat-r/
- Arlington National Cemetery. WWII Bomber Pilot, Honored for Saving Civilian Lives, Identified and Laid to Rest (K. Hymel), 30 Jun 2026. https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Blog/Post/15083/
- 303rd Bomb Group Association. 2Lt Robert J. Barrat crew; 1Lt Alfred K. Nemer crew. https://www.303rdbg.com/427barrat.html and https://www.303rdbg.com/427nemer.html
- b17flyingfortress.de, B-17G 43-39149 and 42-31060 (MACR 12229 and 12245, assignment reversed between archives).
- German Wikipedia, Eisenberg (Thueringen) and Eisenberger Muehltal, citing G. Sagan, Ostthueringen im Bombenkrieg 1939-1945 (2013).
- WIFR, 8 Nov 2025; Hero Card 280 (The Grateful Nation Project), on F/O Shirl P. Best.
- DPAA, World War II accounting page; Congressional Research Service IF13175 (71,783 unaccounted for, as of 4 March 2026).
- Next episode: DPAA. Chaplain Accounted For From Korean War (Kapaun, E.), 14 May 2021.
ARCHIVE PLATES — public-domain documents, with author, date, archive and licence.
- U.S. Army Air Forces photo, National Archives 342-FH-3A06136 — early 1944 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
- BKLPUBLIB — 2025 | Wikimedia Commons | CC0
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — 2020 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Last Known Position reads a missing-in-action case through the record that closed it: the loss report, the excavation and the laboratory.
About the material. Film: U.S. Army Air Forces combat subjects of Eighth Air Force missions in 1944 and 1945, a burning B-17 over Belgium in January 1945, and the Leuna oil plant in April 1945 (National Archives); none shows Barrat's crew or Lutzkendorf. Video: a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency recovery excavation in northern Germany, 2023, a group funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for another B-17 crew, 2018, a repatriation flight from Germany, 2018, and the DNA laboratory, all from other cases, via DVIDS. Photographs: U.S. Army Air Forces (National Archives), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and a CC0 photograph of Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, via Wikimedia Commons. Diagrams are drawn in code. Nothing here is AI-generated imagery. No human remains are shown.
About the sources. The agency's release does not name the other aircraft, the survivor, the five crewmen in the collective grave or the owners of the rings; those come from the 303rd Bomb Group Association and Arlington National Cemetery, and are attributed in the video.
The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement. This channel is independent and not affiliated with the U.S. Air Force or the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.