Memorial

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Sgt Kenneth C. Brown joined the Air Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, on 22 January 1944.

The airplane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, which blew off at least 25 feet of the left wing. The plane veered to the left, almost hitting another airplane, and fell to the earth.

Eight crew members were killed. They were initially buried at the cemetery of Leonding, Austria, on 17 October 1944. One man survived and was taken prisoner.

His niece, Mrs. Beverly Brown, wrote the following biography:

Ken Brown has been described as the most even-tempered of all the Ames Brown children. He was a good student and played snare drum in the high school band. He enjoyed the farm and liked to drive the Fordson Tractor.

In the fall of 1943, nearly all the boys in the Senior high school class of W. Springfield High School went to the recruiting office to sign up for the war. Ken was only 17 at the time. Two days before his 18th birthday. Kenneth Cheney Brown enlisted on January 9, 1944. By Friday, he was in Miami Beach, Florida, for basic training. Ken's two older brothers were already in the service at this time.

While home on furlough in May, he received his high school diploma.

Ken was sent to gunnery school at Laredo, Texas, and advanced training at Davis-Monthan Field, Tucson, Arizona. He was promoted to Sergeant.

Sergeant Kenneth Brown was sent to Bari, Italy, with the 464th Heavy Bombardment Group in September 1944. He was serving as Nose Gunner on a Liberator (B-24). On his fourth mission, he was on a bombing mission from Bari to St. Valentin in Austria. The plane was shot down over Leonding, Germany.

Ken's parents were notified that he was missing in action. While serving as a Sergeant in England, Philip Brown read that his brother was missing in action in a copy of the home paper, Conneaut News Herald, which his mother had sent. Several months later, a War Department telegram received by his parents stated that information concerning Sgt. Brown's death had been received through the International Red Cross. Ken's younger brother, Glen, was sent to pick up the telegram. This was the only way the brothers were informed of their brother's death.

The surviving servicemen relayed their accounting of the incident to their parents, who in turn told Edna Brown. The plane was in a tailspin, and centrifugal force kept Kenneth and others from escaping.

Sergeant Brown was buried in a National Cemetery at Margraten, Holland. A monument to his memory is in West Springfield Cemetery, Pennsylvania.

Edna and Ames were unable to tell their children about the death. At home in Springfield, Glen Brown, Ken's brother, learned of his brother's death through the newspaper.

At the time of his death, his brother Ames Jr. was a private, serving in Detroit, Michigan, and his brother Philip was a sergeant stationed in England.

Niece Beverly Rae Brown was the first relative to visit Kenneth's grave site in Holland in 1974. The cemetery is in a beautiful, rural part of the country with many trees and gentle rolling hills. The cemetery is very well maintained as a monument to Americans who gave their lives in WWII in Europe.