A commemorative ceremony will be held in the town of Cornebarrieu, near Toulouse in southwest France, on May 7, 2024 to remember a US Army Air Force navigator killed on a June 1944 mission.
Twenty-four-year-old Second Lieutenant Harold Morris Gnesin, from Mississippi, served on the 602nd Bomber Squadron (part of the 398th Bomb Group) at RAF Nuthampstead, Hertfordshire.
On June 25, 1944, Gnesin was in the crew flying B-17G Flying Fortress 42-102463 ‘Triangle W’ targeting the Luftwaffe base at Toulouse-Francazal and the Montbartier fuel depot.
The B-17G was hit by flak and the number three engine was damaged. The starboard wing caught fire, and the aircraft crashed in the Les Syndics area of Cornebarrieu.
Although eight crewmembers bailed out from the B-17G, Gnesin did not make it and was killed in the crash. He was buried the next day in the local cemetery. Gnesin was exhumed in 1946 and laid to rest in a cemetery in the Lorraine region, together with other American servicemen, before he was moved again in 1949 to final rest in Long Island National Cemetery, New York.
The May 7, 2024 commemorative ceremony in Cornebarrieu is open to all and will take place at the town’s war memorial at 10:00hrs in the presence of 12 members of Gnesin’s family, visiting from several cities in the US.
Several dignitaries will be in attendance, including: Alain Toppain, the Mayor of Cornebarrieu; Pierre-André Durand, Prefect of Occitanie and Haute-Garonne; Major General Charles Bourillon; Hector Brown, Consul of the United States of America; and Maxime Saint-Germes, Director of the ONaCVG (National Office for Combatants and War Victims).
The AEROCHERCHE association, which specialises in aeronautical archaeology, has been leading a research operation on the location of the crash.
