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.
Fred C. Humphreys
December 25, 1915 – unaccounted for since January 4, 1944
Born Paris, Henry County, Tennessee
Loss location: North Sea, roughly thirty miles northwest of the Frisian Islands (loss location)
First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Forces; pilot, 427th Bombardment Squadron, 303rd Bombardment Group (Heavy); B-17G Flying Fortress 42-31526 (Sweet Anna / Lil' Butch), Kiel mission, January 4, 1944
Missing in action — DPAA lists 1st Lt. Fred C. Humphreys as Unaccounted For (Non-recoverable), profile a0Jt0000000LkaiEAC (verified 2026-09-22). Pilot of B-17G 42-31526 lost January 4, 1944 on a Kiel mission after a distress signal over the North Sea; nine of ten crew remain unrecovered (one crewman's remains later washed ashore on Ameland). Memorialized on the Wall of the Missing at Cambridge American Cemetery. Non-recoverable is an analytic category for a North Sea ditching, not a recovered grave.
Fred Calvin Humphreys left Paris, Tennessee, for the Army Air Forces out of Memphis in March 1942. By early 1944 he was a first lieutenant piloting B-17s with the 427th Bombardment Squadron of the 303rd Bombardment Group — the Hell's Angels — flying out of England against German targets.
On January 4, 1944, he took Sweet Anna (serial 42-31526) on what was the airplane's first combat mission, bound for the port at Kiel. After enemy fighters hit the formation, the bomber sent a distress signal over the North Sea about thirty miles northwest of the Frisian Islands and did not come home. The crew ditched. Only one man's remains later washed ashore on Ameland. The other nine, including Humphreys, were never recovered.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000LkaiEAC still reads Unaccounted For, analytical category Non-recoverable. He is on the Wall of the Missing at Cambridge American Cemetery. This register will not invent a North Sea recovery the public file does not carry. A finding of death closed a personnel file. It did not bring a body home from the water west of Heligoland.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1941-014
- Content hash
- acab12de 9578fcfc 5157bc30 ed99d402 d4cfed16 9bec9106 bbaa82a8 17bdd181
- Base anchor
- 0xda7f53 4221adc5 96961067 97667302 0cb59ab8 aabcb6bd e8a38cf5 fe806479 ee
Base stores the content hash, publication number, memorial id, and timestamp — not the full obituary text. The complete memorial remains on Notice Nearby. This is not a legal affidavit.