Duffy, Lawrence T.
Army Staff sergeant
Lawrence T. Duffy, age 22, from Franklin County Enosburg Falls, Vermont .
Parents: Patrick Duffy
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Saturday, May 26, 1945
Death details: On April 24, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress (serial number 42-94206) with a crew of eleven departed Guam for a bombing mission against enemy installations in Tachikawa, Japan. Just after it dropped its bombs, this plane caught fire and entered a slow downward turn to the right before crashing and burning on the ground. Six members of the crew were killed in the crash. Their remains were later recovered near the crash site and identified. Five members of the crew bailed out and were taken to a military prison in Tokyo, where they later died during an airstrike. The remains of two of those men were later recovered and identified, but the remains of the other three could not be located. Staff Sergeant Lawrence T. Duffy entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Vermont and served with the 458th Bombardment Squadron, 330th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy). He was the gunner aboard the B-29A, and was one of the survivors of the crash who died at the Tokyo Military Prison. Today, Staff Sergeant Duffy is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Saint Albans Daily Messenger (1946)