Robert Bowers Buchanan was born on May 31, 1917 in Utah. His mother was also born in Utah while his father was born in Scotland. His father worked as a newspaper reporter and later a county clerk. Robert had two older brothers and an older sister. By 1940 Robert was working as a clerk, having completed one year of college while living with his parents.

He was inducted into the army on May 20, 1942. He was assigned to the Army Air Corp and served in the 334th Bombardment Squadron, 95th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force where he rose to the rank of tech sergeant. Sgt. Buchanan was a radio operator flying B-17s.

On January 29, 1944, the B-17 Lizbeth II, with Sgt. Buchanan as part of the crew, took off from their airbase in England for a major bombing mission totaling 863 bombers. The target was the industrial areas and railroad yards of Frankfurt. Lizbeth II sustain damaged from fighter attack during the mission. On the return leg it crash landed near Ghent, Belgium. Five of the crew survived but Sgt. Buchanan was not one of them.

His grave is at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Thank you Robert for your sacrifice.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

This story was first written on May 31, 2017 for the WW2 Fallen 100 blog. https://ww2fallen100.blogspot.com/2017/05/ww2-fallen-robert-buchanan-b-17-radio.html

Robert B Buchanan