Gibbs, Clarence E.
Army Technical sergeant

Clarence E. Gibbs, age 21, from Mecklenburg County Charlotte, North Carolina .

Parents: Luther Gibbs

Service era: World War II
Schools: Graduate of Berry school of Mount Berry, Georgia

Date of death: Friday, December 29, 1944
Death details: On March 24, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Tech. Sgt. Clarence E. Gibbs, missing from World War II. Gibbs entered the U.S. Army from North Carolina and was a member of the 368th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group. On Dec. 29, 1944, he was the aerial engineer and top turret gunner aboard a B-17G Flying Fortress (serial number 43-39031) with nine crew members which took part in a large-scale bombing mission to support the Battle of the Bulge. While flying over its target, the B-17G was hit twice by heavy enemy aircraft fire and caught aflame. All crew members were able to parachute from the plane before it crashed. Five crew members successfully landed and after being taken as prisoners of war by German soldiers eventually returned to U.S. custody. One crew member was found deceased by German soldiers in the woods near Oesterich, Germany, and was reportedly buried in a local cemetery. The remaining three crew members, including Gibbs, were unaccounted for, and there was no record of them being held as POWs. In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC), the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel in the European Theater, began investigating several crash sites from downed aircraft of the Bingen air raid. Local German citizens who were interviewed reported seeing American troops landing by parachutes. One airman was recovered by a local civilian who took him in and provided aid, but the airman was ultimately taken into custody by German military authorities. Investigations continued for several years, but by April 1950 AGRC had exhausted all efforts to recover the three missing men and issued a recommendation they be declared non-recoverable. In 2013, DPAA researchers working in collaboration with local Germans recovered documents from the state archive at Koblenz, which appeared to contain information on the loss of three captured airmen who had been killed by SS troops near Kamp-Bornhofen. Two DPAA investigation teams followed up on this lead by conducting research in local cemetery records in this area in 2015 and 2019. In May 2021, DPAA teams began excavation of a suspected burial site in the Kamp-Bornhofen Cemetery, where the three airmen were believed to be buried. Under the supervision and direction of two Scientific Recovery Experts, the team recovered possible osseous remains and associated materials. These items were transferred to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis and identification. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between a portion of the remains and Gibbs.

Source: National Archives, Charlotte Oberserver (1945)