2nd Lt. Lyle L. Schulzkump, pilot of B-24 #42-100040, that disappeared on May 26, 1944, on a L.A.B. mission.
About this flight, of a Consolidated B-24J-65-CO Liberator, http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/1942_5.html says: "Crashed into mountain 50 mi S of Mengtze, China near present border of Vietnam May 26, 1944 while on radar recon mission to Hainan Island. All aboard killed.
From China Up and Down by John T. Foster, page 158, the nose art name of 42-100040 was "Pokey." Foster credits another book, The Aluminum Trail by Chick Marrs Quinn for that info. Page 183 relates "Mission 121 Lowe’s Burma Queen on sweep misses small boat with bombs but strafes it. On this day "Pokey" of 374th (No.42-100040) (Schulzkump/Arnold) lost on sea sweep. On the same page, Foster mentions mission 119 on May 25: "Col. Averill in "972" (L.A.B.) and
From mission report summary: 42-100040 was equipped with "Snooper Radar". The plane departed Chengkung, China on sea search mission and failed to return. Later, Chinese eyewitnesses reported the plane ( approximately one hour into the mission), flying in poor weather, was apparently attempting to get under the clouds when it struck the side of the Morshih Kou Shan mountain near the villages of Na Fa and Ta Shen, about 50 miles south of Mengtze, China near the border of Indo-China (Vietnam). Because the plane was carrying extra fuel tanks in the bomb bays it exploded with such force that none of the crew were ever recovered and only small traces of the aircraft.
Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) #5346 includes list of contacts for the crew, showing Lyle's father, Elmer W. Shulkump lived in a rural area near West Point, Nebraska. Lyle was born March 19, 1920, and after graduating from eighth grade in 1933, he helped farm until his enlistment into the army air corps ground crew on October 14, 1941.
He was a "draftee" assigned a "permanent station" by October 25, 1941, to the air corps replacement training center at West Point, Nebraska.
Lt. Schulzkump completed ground school work, military drill, and physical training at San Antonio aviation cadet center, and was a flying cadet by July 19, 1942. He was ready for primary flight training by September 2, 1942.
By April, 1943, it was announced that he was ready for final battle training after graduating from gulf coast training center (with headquarters at Randolph Field, Texas). He was commissioned as second lieutenant and awarded silver pilots' wings on April 24, at Pampa, Texas, and his mother had the privilege of ping the bar on his coat following the graduation exercises. He received additional instruction at postgraduate flying schools in types of bombing and fighting planes.
Just a few days later in the same month, on the 27th, he left the states for overseas duty and his last letter was written May 22, 1944. In this letter he spoke of flying his first mission. Later, through correspondence with the wife of the radioman of the crew, from information contained in a more recent letter from the radioman to his wife, the family learned that the crew had sunk a Japanese ship on that first mission, with three direct hits. The family further deduced that the crew's final mission--when all were lost--was their third mission. Although the family did not have detailed info on that final mission, they apparently had been provided some basic information from the war department, as they knew the plane had gone on a sea sweep near Hainan island in the South China sea, and had failed to return from their May 26, 1944 mission, with wreckage of the plane eventually found in China on June 20, 1944.
Local papers listed Lyle missing in action in "Asiatic area" on July 10, 1944.
In July 1945, a year later, various region and local newspapers listed the sad news that he had been reclassified as "deceased" based on a "finding of death," or FOD, in the "Pacific theater" according to war department release. The war department wrote to his parents, "In view of the fact that 12 months have now expired without the receipt of evidence to support a continued presumption of survival, the war department must terminate such absence by a presumptive ruling of death."
According to his cousins, Orion and Louse Schulzkump, Lyle Schulzkump was an only son, and unmarried. His parents, Elmer and Mary established a tomb for him--yet empty given the lack of recoverable remains--at Mt. Hope Cemetery at West Point, Nebraska. There was never closure for his mother after he was considered MIA. She always thought, until the day she died, that someday he would walk in the door. "There would have been closure for her if his body could have been found."
In the darkness of night during mid-September 2016, his loss was remembered with a 21-gun salute at Mount Hope Cemetery. "Those in the cemetery reflected on the thoughts of what Schulkump’s family went through including the uncertainty of whether he would ever be found, would he return home either alive by some miracle or would he even come back to Cuming County to be laid to rest."
ASN: O-678133
(Text by Tony Strotman and Patrick Lucas)
