QUINLAN, Texas — (AP) — A Texan who died when the bomber he served on was shot down in World War II is finally coming home for burial next week in a rural East Texas graveyard, officials said Tuesday.
Tech. Sgt. Frank A. Norris, 23, of Quinlan, Texas, was serving with the Army Air Forces as a flight engineer aboard a B-24 Liberator, according to a Defense Department statement. His bomber was part of an Aug. 1, 1943, air raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, the biggest of the war on that strategically important target.
The mission was the costliest of the war for the Allied air forces in Europe, with 53 of the 162 B-24s that made it to the target lost. Norris was along with 660 aircrew members losing their lives on the raid.
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Norris couldn’t be identified among the dead until DNA analysis made it possible last year. He is to be buried on April 30 in Paynetown Cemetery near Quinlan, about 40 miles northeast of Dallas.
