An interactive map of the Angeles, Luzon area and Browngardt crash site.
Over the target during the January 7, 1945 raid on Clark Field, Luzon, a B-25 of the 499th Squadron, #43-36030, flown by Lt. Arthur Browngardt, was observed with a fire in the right engine. The airplane continued on in a southerly direction, attempting to gain altitude, but struck the roof and steeple of the Holy Rosary Cathedral in the nearby town of Angeles.
The plane continued forward, leaving the left wing tangled in the rafters, and then crashed onto the patio of the Holy Angels Academy, which sat perpendicular to, and 100 yards south of, the domed end of the cathedral. The entire crew was killed in the crash and was buried 200 yards south of the wreckage. The original facade of the academy is now part of a larger campus building that can be viewed from a street view in Google Maps.
No Missing Aircrew Report (MACR) is available from the usual sources, so much of the available information comes from a brief paragraph in the mission narrative and from an article attributed to the Sag Harbor Partnership of Sag Harbor, New York. The crew is listed in the MACR for the Buffington loss of January 9, 1945, but only in regard to the re-interment of their remains in another Army cemetery. In that correspondence, it is stated that the Browngardt crew had been indentified. There is some discrepancy in that one of the Browngardt crewmen is listed separately from the rest of the crew, in a later section of the document.
After the war, the remains of the crew were returned to the US and were buried in private cemeteries. The crew of #43-36030 were:
- 2Lt Arthur Browngardt, Jr., pilot
- 2Lt Jack B. Bartlow, copilot
- 2Lt Howard C. Lebeck, navigator
- T/Sgt William H. Noe, engineer
- T/Sgt Clarence H. Gilbert, radio operator
- S/Sgt Engelhardt Von Hebel, aerial gunner