Look Back: Plains Twp. airman, 24, killed in B-17 crash during World War II
May 19—More than 40 years after being killed in action in the closing days of World War II, a memorial stone was dedicated for U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Donini.
The dedication was held May 28, 1985, outside Perugia Beneficial Society Club on Ridgewood Road in Plains Township. The memorial stone remains but not the veterans flag holder and American flag.
Donini was killed April 6, 1945, when the B-17 bomber, known as the Flying Fortress, in which he was a ball turret gunner collided with an escorting fighter plane, a P-51 Mustang, while returning to Grafton-Underwood, England, from a bombing mission over railroad yards near Leipzig, Germany. There were 42 aircraft assigned to the mission.
Donini was 24 years old.
Just three weeks before his death, Donini was promoted from corporal to sergeant on March 17, 1945.
Donini was part of the 544th Bomb Squadron of the 8th Air Force, 384th Bombardment Group, and among an eight man crew on the B-17, that flew seven missions from March 24, 1945, until his death.
According to a report from the War Department about the crash, Donini's B-17 was flying at an altitude of 24,000 feet over Germany when it collided with an escort fighter plane of the same squadron.
The pilot of the B-17 turned right after the collision as the number 3 engine fell and number 4 engine was on fire before going into an uncontrollable flat spin, breaking apart as it crashed near Leisnig, Germany.
Donini was initially listed as missing by the War Department as other pilots and co-pilots in other B-17s and fighter plans observed six parachutes being deployed after the collision. Three of the eight men crew survived.
As was custom during World War II, correspondence from the War Department listing servicemen and women killed in action or missing was published in the Times Leader Evening News and the Wilkes-Barre Record.
Donini's missing status was published May 4, 1945.
Nearly nine months later, the War Department listed Donini as "presumed dead," as published in the Wilkes-Barre Record on Feb. 23, 1946.
Five years after being killed in action, Donini's body was returned from Europe in April 1950.
"The body of Staff Sgt. Joseph Donini, son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Donini, Keystone, Plains, who was killed in action in Europe, will be returned to his late home Thursday," the Evening News reported April 18, 1950.
According to the Evening News story, Donini was taken to Tunkhannock and received an escort to his home by the Plains Post of the American Legion.
Donini entered the U.S. Army Air Force in November 1942, having previously been a member of the Naval Reserve. Donini arrived at the Grafton-Underwood airbase in England with the 384th Bombardment Group on Feb. 25, 1945.
Donini was reburied in the Italian Independent Cemetery in Wyoming under military rites by the Plains Legion Post.
