American War Hero · World War II · Notice Nearby
No rights-safe contemporary likeness is on file. The record is the service and the writing, not an invented face.
Philip D. Anderson
April 5, 1915 – unaccounted for since October 14, 1943
Born La Crosse, La Crosse County, Wisconsin
Loss location: near Schweinfurt, Germany (loss location)
Flight Officer, U.S. Army Air Forces; navigator, 369th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group (Heavy); B-17F Flying Fortress 42-30707 (Piccadilly Commando), Schweinfurt mission, October 14, 1943
Missing in action — DPAA lists Flight Officer Philip D. Anderson as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt000001Fd5QvEAJ (verified 2026-09-28). Navigator on B-17F 42-30707 shot down October 14, 1943 near Schweinfurt; seven of ten crew bailed and became POWs; Anderson and two others lost with the aircraft and remains not recovered. Memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at Luxembourg American Cemetery. Birth date and La Crosse, Wisconsin, from University of Wisconsin–Madison Gold Star Honor Roll (class of 1937). Active Pursuit is an analytic category, not a recovered grave.
Philip Drake Anderson was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on April 5, 1915, and finished the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1937. He did not wait for a U.S. commission. In October 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in Toronto, transferred into the RAF, married while training in London, and on July 1, 1943, moved into the U.S. Army Air Forces. By mid-August he was with the 306th Bombardment Group — the Reich Wreckers — navigating Fortresses out of Thurleigh.
On October 14 he flew as navigator on B-17F 42-30707, Piccadilly Commando, against the Schweinfurt ball-bearing works. German fighters tore the formation up. Seven men from that crew got out and became prisoners. Anderson and two others went down with the airplane. No survivor could say what happened after the bail-out order.
DPAA profile a0Jt000001Fd5QvEAJ still lists him Unaccounted For, analytical category Active Pursuit. He is on the Tablets of the Missing at Luxembourg American Cemetery. A presumptive finding of death closed a personnel file. It did not bring a body home from that Black Friday sky.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1941-023
- Content hash
- 35b91d95 3bb3ff3c 8f64e3a8 ce7a3835 9a58ba44 29cee542 0092098b 1a14fece
- Base anchor
- 0x2bee03 56cdcd8d 9124cc57 b1787a9d b48e11a2 bc6edf11 26283c72 03f6283e e4
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