65 years ago today, Ray Noury’s plane was shot down by enemy fire

By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET -- It will be a quiet anniversary today, but Ray Noury will be thinking of that day in the sky over Czechoslovakia when he lost 10 friends and fellow airmen.

It is now 65 years ago that Noury’s B-24 Liberator was shot down by pursuing enemy planes as it limped home, damaged and burning, from a bombing mission over Germany.
Noury remembers how one of the heavy bomber’s engines was hit by enemy fire as it made its bombing run on an aircraft factory in Regensberg, Germany, and then dropped out of its 98th Bombardment Group formation to try for home in Italy with two other damaged B-24s.
The planes were easy pickings for the following fighters and Noury remembers watching one of them fall without anyone getting out. His own plane went down over the villages of Pradlo and Nepomuk in what is now the Czech Republic.
“I figured we were going to be next,” Noury said while remembering the long ago battle from his Cass Avenue home on Friday.
The plane’s bid to escape came to an end as fire in an engine on the right wing intensified and Noury, a waist gunner, turned to help the ball gunner in the belly of the plane.
Harold Carter told Noury he had been hit and couldn’t get his turret to move back to its opening into the crew cabin. Breathing oxygen because of the plane’s altitude, Noury attempted to manually rotate the ball back to the opening but could not get it to budge.
As he started to run out of oxygen, Noury said he turned to get his parachute and was able to get one strap on.
“I was lucky to hook one of the straps because that is all I can remember,” he said.
Noury doesn’t know what happened to the plane at that point and only regained consciousness as he dropped through the air suspended by the strap of his tattered chute.
Noury survived a landing down a snow slope in the mountains and was the only crew member of the plane to do so.
Down in the villages, residents attending a wedding had spotted the air battle in the sky and saw something fall. Two men decided to go up into the snow on skis and they found the seriously injured flyer the following day and brought him back to the village hospital.
Noury was treated at the hospital for fractured ribs and shrapnel wounds to his arm and chest for five days before being taken into custody by the Germans. More than 50 years later doctors would also learn from an MRI scan he had also fractured a vertebra in his neck in the landing.
Noury was transported back to Germany for interrogation and spent the rest of the war in German prison camps for Allied airmen.
Surprisingly, Noury linked up with other captured Rhode Island airmen and also remembers the time he spent awaiting liberation with Arky Najarian of Pawtucket, Leo Callahan, a schoolmate of his from his days growing up in Central Falls, and Wilfred Hebert of Cumberland, a B-17 crew member shot down later in the war.
“It is surprising how many of us from Rhode Island that were there,” he said of his stay in the German stalags. Noury was freed from the camps on April 29, 1945, just prior to the war’s end.
In the years since the war, Noury has worked to keep the memory of his lost crew members alive and told his story to members of the media and even family members of the flyers who had never known their relatives.
Two of those relatives, John and George Torrison, nephews of Wayne Nelson, met with Noury in 2002 and from that experience decided to return with him to the Czech Republic to met with the people who had help him to survive.
Noury went over to visit Pradlo and Nepomuc in 2004 and was treated as a war hero and celebrity by all who met him.
The visit inspired an effort to build a formal memorial to the lost crewman on the wooded hill where the plane had crashed and Noury said the tribute is now nearly ready for dedication.
“It was supposed to be done for the 22nd but the weather was bad there so it was delayed until May,” he said. 
Noury didn’t think he would be able to leave his wife, Therese, for a February return to the Czech Republic but he hasn’t ruled out a possible visit for the May dedication.
“May is a few months away and we will see what happens,” he said.
The monument will honor 1st Lt. George Goddard of Texas, the pilot, 2nd Lt. Haig Kandarian of California, co-pilot, 2nd Lt. Charles Spickard of Missouri, 2nd Lt. Joseph Altemus of Pennsylvania, Tsgt. Oscar Houser of Pennsylvania, Sgt. John Goldbach of Pennsylvania, Staff Sgt. Rexford Rhodes, who had joined the crew to fly his 50th mission, Waynworth Nelson of Wisconsin, Harold Carter of Illinois, and Roy Hughes of Texas. 
As he has become older, Noury has found it a comfort to know that his crew will be remembered
“There is going to be stone for each and every one of them,” he said.  “To me, I think it is tremendous and I think it is something that is really valuable,” Noury said.
“The appreciation those people gave to us, to do something like this without knowing us, without knowing anybody, and to go to that extreme — how much more could you ask of someone,” he said.
Noury got a chance to recall the thrill and fear of flying last September when he was invited to fly on a restored B-24 that tours the country as part of the Collings Foundation’s efforts to keep the old warplanes preserved and flying.
The old waist gunner boarded the B-24 in Waterbury, Conn., and joined a B-17 heavy bomber, a B-25 medium bomber, and a P-51 fighter for flight into North Central State Airport in Lincoln.
He met Ray Jette of Central Falls, and the late Thomas E. Devlin of Blackstone, both B-24 crew members during the war, when he arrived back on the ground.
The three veterans shared their stories once again, and Noury remembers the two veterans to have been as impressed with the event as he had been. Both Jette and Devlin, who died on Oct. 3, were able to complete the required 50 missions to win a trip home and knew well what Noury faced while flying his own 19 missions over Europe.
Noury said the experience of flying in B-24s was the same for him in September as it had been all those years ago.
“Every flight you went on, you were always nervous until your plane would take off. Once you had taken off, you would just go along. You were just there for the ride,” he said.