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Lieutenant Curtis Biddick was known as a ‘hard luck’ pilot but was recognised as exceptionally expert and courageous. ‘Every time he went out something seemed to happen,’ said one of his buddies. On one raid he brought his plane back with 1,700 shell and bullet holes in it and two wounded men aboard.
Curtis Rundle Biddick was working as a buyer in the wholesale meat industry in San Francisco when he enlisted in January 1942 as an Aviation Cadet in the United States Army Air Corps, graduating as a pilot in September of that year.
He was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group in Wendover Field and departed the US for Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia, England in the spring of 1943.
On July 24, 1943, Biddick piloted a B-17, nicknamed ‘Muggs’, on a twelve-hour mission to Trondheim, the first Eighth Air Force attack on a Norwegian target. Biddick and his co-pilot Flight Officer Richard Snyder finished the raid with their oxygen system knocked out, sharing an emergency bottle between them.
On his return, Biddick crash-landed in the vegetable patch of an RAF commanding officer in Aberdeen. The crew were returned to Thorpe Abbotts the following day.
Just under a month later, on August 17, 1943, Biddick’s B-17 ‘Escape Kit’ took part in a mission to Regensburg. The 100th Bomb Group was assigned to ‘coffin corner’, so called for its vulnerable position at the rear of the formation. Approximately 40 miles north of Regensburg, Biddick’s plane suffered an oxygen fire caused by shell damage to the nose and fuselage, trapping those on the flight deck.
‘The last the other fliers saw of the Fortress piloted by Lt Biddick, a large hole had been blown in the fuselage just under co-pilot Richard Snyder’s window during a heavy attack by German fighters before they reached the target. Flames were pouring out of the hole,’ said Major William Veal, co-pilot of another Fortress.
‘There seemed to be fire all over the inside of the ship – everywhere you could see in the nose, cockpit and turret there were flames.’
Snyder was seen leaning out of the window trying to beat out the flames but lost his grip and fell out. He had no parachute on, witnesses said. The Fortress did not make it to the mission’s rendezvous in North Africa. Four of the crew were trapped by the blaze on the flight deck and were killed, including Lt Biddick, the others bailing out.
