WWII pilot from Medina survived being prisoner of war after bailing out of plane

By Ginny Kropf, correspondent Posted 23 January 2025 at 10:06 am

Don Cielewich piloted aptly named Hard Luck, a B-17 bomber

Provided photos: This formation of B-17s shows Hard Luck, center, the plane in which Medina native Don Cielewich went down on a bombing mission in Germany.

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series about Medina native Don Cielewich and his family.

MEDINA – Don Cielewich enlisted in the Army July 1, 1943 and became part of the Army Air Corps. He went to Transition Flying School in Sebring, Fla. and Advanced Flight School in Seymour, Ind., before eventually joining the 100th Bomb Group in Scotland as a lieutenant.

The mission which changed his life began on Aug. 14, 1944, when he was assigned to pilot the B-17 Hard Luck. Their target in Germany was Mannheim/Ludwigshaven. This was his first time flying that plane and on runup for takeoff, he realized it was aptly named. He reported to his commander the engines were shot, but he refused to let Don abort the mission.

The late Don Cielewich of Medina wears a bomber jacket and headset in this photo from World War II, when he was a B-17 pilot and POW.

News accounts of the mission say Hard Luck was shot down, but his co-pilot Lenard Moen of Whittier, Calif., who Don’s son Scott visited in later years, said that wasn’t true. They ran out of gas.

“When they took off, the plane was struggling,” Scott said. “Lenard said dad was a strong guy and he was struggling to get the plane over a grove of trees at the end of the runway. He was pulling with all he had and just touched the tops of the trees. As they were turning for the bombing run, the engines quit.”

Moen said they had realized with the increased manifold pressure, they were consuming way too much fuel, and Don dumped the bombs when the first engine quit. He gave orders for the crew to bail out the rear side door and set the plane on autopilot.

Don and Moen tried to bail out the nose hatch, but had trouble getting it open. They were at 1,400 feet over mountains when the hatch finally gave way. The plane was at 500 feet when Don bailed out and his chute didn’t fully open. He landed in a tree and was hurt.

The men were separated and Moen walked for three days through the mountains until he was captured. Don attempted to make his way to France, following a railroad line. He traveled at night and found shelter during the day. Both men were taken in by German farmers who discovered them and then turned them over to German officers.

Fritz Rey was the farmer who found Don and fed him a raw egg and a glass of home brew. They cooked another for him to take with him, but it was taken by the authorities to whom he was turned over. They next took him to a large Gestapo interrogation center outside Frankfort, where he spent six days and nights in solitary confinement before being moved to Stalag Luft III, 90 miles southeast of Berlin.

In January 1945, Don and 10,000 American officers were forced to walk for 11 days, covering 110 miles, before being loaded into boxcars for transport to Moosburg. Here, he spent the remainder of his confinement until being liberated April 29, 1945 when General George Patton’s tanks rolled through the front gates.

Don was home from the war about a year when a letter arrived from Fritz Rey, inquiring how he fared during imprisonment and if he ever thought of the egg Fritz gave him. He went on to tell Don because he had given him that egg, he was reported to the circuit prison. But he said his concern for Don was because he had spent four years as a prisoner of war in France during World War I and could put himself in Don’s plight.

Click here to see the first part of the series.