The monthly narrative gives the last three digits of the aircraft's serial number, however, I think the writer made a mistake. There were 10 B-24's with 487 as the last three digits of the serial number. Seven of those can be ruled out as they are documented to be lost/damaged in other places at other times. Included in those 7 was 44-40487, lost 10 August 44 over Yugoslavia, belonging to 456th/746th, MACR 7466. That's why I think the narrative is in error. The chances of one squadron having two aircraft at the same time with the same 'last three' is small, and if it were the case, normal practice would have been to use 'last four' or full s/n to differentiate between the two aircraft. I believe it more likely that the narrative writer accidentally used the a/c from the 10 August loss when writing about the 15 August loss.
Your relative certainly died in the 15 August takeoff accident. The problem now is identifying the a/c. There is no aircraft accident report filed for the 456th for 15 August, so that avenue is out. Do you have the full monthly narrative for August? If so, is the aircraft identified in it for the 10 August loss? Perhaps the writer swapped the two.
Do you have the formation plan for 15 August? Some bomb groups used 'last threes' to ID a/c on the plan, some used two digit "combat numbers" unrelated to serial numbers.
Is there a "Form 34" in the mission folders? (see attachment) It generally gave full serial numbers for lost/crashed aircraft.
Do you have the aircraft load lists for the mission? If so, how are the aircraft IDed on the lists?
There were two folders for each mission in the 449th BG records. Do you have the full mission folders for 15 August? If not, I would suggest contacting AFHRA and requesting the full folders. For a fatal aircraft accident, there should be something in the folders to ID the aircraft.
Ironically, one of the B-24s with 487 as the last three was 42-51487 which had a takeoff accident on 15 August 44, but in Boise, ID.
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