ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603110048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE GEARAN ASSOCIATED PRESS MONTCLAIR
A BOMBARDIER FROM VIRGINIA will revisit his past as a section of his B-17 that was shot down over Germany is brought to America.
For 51 years, Stephen Stofko has remembered how his B-17 bomber pitched violently after it was hit by German antiaircraft fire, and the incredible noise as it spun toward the ground.
``I remember saying out loud, `Oh God, is this really happening to me?''' Stofko said.
On Friday, 51 years to the day after Stofko and eight of his fellow crew members bailed out and were taken prisoner by Nazi forces, he will get another look at what little is left of that plane.
And the survivors will continue a search for the remains of the 10th crew member, presumed killed in the crash.
Stofko, 71, and three other members of the bomber's crew will watch as young soldiers collect a 10-foot-tall section of the plane's tail from a farmer's field in what used to be East Germany.
``It's an artifact; an antique, I guess. And so are we,'' said Stofko, a retired computer expert living in this suburb of Washington.
The tail section, with its insignia and identifying numbers still clearly visible, will go on display at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base museum in Dayton, Ohio, said curator Charles Worman.
Stofko, then a 20-year-old bombardier, and his fellow crew members were based in Italy as part of the 15th Air Force. On the day they were shot down, on Stofko's 12th mission, they had been sent to bomb one of Nazi Germany's last oil refineries.
The only crew member who didn't escape the crash was Sator Sanchez, a veteran of 65 previous bombing missions.
Stofko said he didn't know the other nine crewmen before the flight, and spoke briefly with Sanchez before they boarded.
``The only thing he said to me was, `Well, I hope we see some action today,''' Stofko said.
Stofko and navigator Leslie J. Tyler passed the six remaining weeks of the war together in prisoner of war camps. ``We were as close as two people could be. Closer than brothers,'' Tyler said.
However, when their last camp was liberated on April 29, 1945, by Gen. George Patton's Third Army, Tyler got on one bus to freedom and Stofko another.
They heard no more of each other until Stofko read a 1992 book Tyler wrote about the war.
They're among seven crew members still alive, and several of them hope to find Sanchez's remains, which they believe were removed from the crash site.
Tyler has identified two possible grave sites and hopes to exhume remains for DNA testing this year.
Tyler and another survivor discovered the bomber's tail section in 1993 during a visit to the crash site near Bad Muskau, southeast of Berlin on Germany's present border with Poland.
A farmer, Ernst Kollar, had used the wreckage as a wall for a farm shed.
``Mr. Kollar remembers the days when the Americans were bombing his town. Now here he is donating back a piece of the plane that did the bombing,'' Air Force Capt. Brian McPeek said.
McPeek organized the bomber section's recovery by Americans stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, and will accompany Stofko to a ceremony to be attended by Kollar and other villagers.
``I'm looking forward to meeting him,'' Stofko said of Kollar. ``He's taken good care of our plane.''
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB