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‘He was never forgotten’

Remains of WWII airman from Cresson finally found in England

Tech Sgt. John Holoka Jr.'s B-24H Liberator crew is pictured in May 1944 at Halesworth. It is thought Holoka took the photo. Photo courtesy the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

In mid-March, the Department of Defense announced that it had recovered the remains of a Ford City native who piloted a crippled B-24 bomber from Paris to the edge of England during World War II, enabling seven crew members to parachute to safety — before dying himself when the plane crashed in a field.

On Thursday, the department announced it had also recovered the remains of another Pennsylvania airman from much closer to Altoona, who died in the same crash: flight engineer John Holoka Jr. of Cresson.

“I never knew him,” said Keith Levatino of Whitesboro, N.Y., Holoka’s grand-nephew, one of several relatives to whom the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reached out. But Levatino remembered that his grandmother, Holoka’s sister, always kept a large picture of the missing airman in her Cresson living room, and he remembered his mother describing her much older uncle as the “sweetest, kindest man,” he said Friday in a phone interview.

Both of those women are dead, but the recovery of the remains by DPAA representatives and dedicated individuals in the part of England where the crash occurred has brought them closure, Levatino likes to think.

“He was never forgotten,” Levatino said.

Holoka

Holoka will be buried in Portage on May 1, 104 years after his birth, according to a DPAA news release, coupled with military records provided by Dave Kerr, a central Pennsylvania World War II researcher who alerted the Mirror this week to the DPAA finding.

The B-24 Liberator, on which Tech Sgt. Holoka, 25, was a crew member, took part in a bombing raid on a German airfield in Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole, near Versailles, on June 22, 1944, according to the release.

After releasing its bombs, the plane took anti-aircraft fire that “tore out all the controls, except those to one rudder and one elevator,” stated navigator Herbert King in an after-action report provided to the Mirror by Kerr.

The plane lost at least 2,000 feet of altitude after being hit, falling out of its “deputy lead spot” in its formation with other bombers, according to the bombardier D.M. Henderson.

On the way back toward England on the shortest possible route, pilot William Montgomery asked three crewmen who were forward to go to the back of the plane, to help keep the nose up with their weight, according to Henderson.

Tech Sgt. John Holoka Jr. was a crew member on the B-24 Liberator, seen here, and died on June 22, 1944, after taking part in a bombing raid on a German airfield in Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole, near Versailles.

As they neared the English coast, co-pilot John Crowther ordered the crew to bail out, and six left by the “waist” of the plane — while the seventh left by the front.

“The wind drifted me out, and I landed about four or five miles out in the channel,” stated waist gunner Aaron Roper, who unhooked his chute, swam away and inflated his life jacket.

Three others also landed in the water.

Above Roper, four British Spitfire fighter planes were attacking a German Messerschmit, which “headed back toward the French coast smoking,” Roper stated.

Those four in the water were rescued about a half hour later by a launch.

John Holoka Jr. of Cresson stands with family members. Grand-nephew Keith Levatino of Whitesboro, N.Y., recalls that his mother described her much older uncle as the “sweetest, kindest man.” Courtesy photo

King landed on the beach.

About 30 seconds after his chute opened, he saw the plane go into a power dive and crash.

The bomb bay doors, the most plausible potential exit for pilot Montgomery, co-pilot Crowther and engineer Holoka, never opened, according to Henderson.

“Probably when the boys left the controls to jump, in the excitement of finding the doors inoperative, they forgot that they are supposed to crash (it) open with a hundred pound weight, and if two had jumped on one side simultaneously, (the doors) should have opened,” Henderson stated.

The bomb bay doors had been “well-peppered with flak holes,” based on his view of them when he’d gone to the back of the plane on the pilot’s orders, Henderson stated.

U.S. veteran Steve McAlpin poses next to a memorial in Arundel, West Sussex, England, where Tech. Sgt. John Holoka Jr. died when his bomber crashed after a mission over France on June 22, 1944. The memorial reads, in part, “For our lost heroes. Long gone but not forgotten/ Your sacrifice ensured the freedom of the world/ United by friendship, sustained by honor, led by truth, we live, and we flourish.” Courtesy photo

Henderson had gotten a look at the outside of the plane after he bailed.

“Several control cables were hanging from both left and right sides. Cowling front, rear and under the bottom of No. 1 engine was completely shot away. Must have been over a hundred holes in the plane,” he stated in his report.

Crowther’s body was thrown clear of the plane.

He was identified shortly after the crash.

Long-term process

This flak jacket and metal inserts were recovered from the scene of Holoka’s bomber crash in England. Courtesy photo

The effort that led to the finding and identification of Montgomery’s and Holoka’s remains began in July 2016, with a three-way conversation at a battlefield archaeology conference between Mark Khan, military historian and director for Command Post Media Ltd.; along with a UK aviation historian and a DPAA colonel, according to Khan, writing in an email.

The aviation historian spoke to the colonel about two missing airmen that the historian had known about for years and asked why the DPAA hadn’t been making a recovery effort.

Khan asked where the bodies were located, and learned that it was in Arundel, West Sussex, where he lives, piquing his interest.

The colonel promised to look into the matter.

The owner of the farmland where the crash occurred had also been asking the DPAA about possible identification and recovery, according to Khan.

Eventually, after Khan nudged the colonel with a phone call to the Pentagon, the DPAA sent a reconnaissance team to examine the site, Khan wrote.

The efforts of that team, along with a locally manned metal detector survey, led to excavations in 2019 and 2021, Khan said.

DPAA scientists ultimately used “anthropological analysis,” material evidence and “dental, mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome analysis to identify Holoka’s remains,” according to the DPAA news release.

Levantino is grateful both to the DPAA and the British.

The British were not only meticulous, but passionate, “like (Holoka) was their (own) relative,” he said.

“The 100 percent success is just what we so desired,” Khan wrote.

Holoka grew up in a house on Cresson Way that even in 1978, when Levatino last visited, was serviced by an outhouse, according to Levatino, who is the superintendent of Little Falls City School District in New York state.

Levatino’s mother, who was Holoka’s niece, and who alternated time between Cresson and the New York City area until she was 6, remembers that Holoka would play games with her, Levatino said.

She idolized Holoka and his brothers, he said.

Holoka’s parents, Susan and John Sr., were natives of Austria-Hungary, Carpatho-Rusyn, Kerr said, citing census information.

Holoka’s father was a coal miner.

Holoka’s parents received $500 compensation from the state of Pennsylvania for their son’s death in 1950, according to Levatino and a document provided by Kerr.

The British have installed a memorial for the three crew members of the plane who died in the crash.

“Long gone but not forgotten/ Your sacrifice ensured the freedom of the world/ United by friendship, sustained by honor, led by truth, we live, and we flourish,” it reads, in part.

For family and funeral information, contact the Army Casualty Office at (800) 892-2490.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.

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