379th FS, 362nd FG, USAAF, Flown by Capt. Wilfred Crutchfield - Based at Etain, France, January, 1945
Crutchfield, a veteran leader with the 378th Fighter Squadron, brought his plane with him upon his transfer to the 379th. On January 22, 1945, he spotted 1500 German vehicles concentrated in a small area around Prum, Germany, as the Sixth SS Panzer Armee was embarking for the Eastern Front.
In the next six hours, the group destroyed 315 trucks, seven tanks, seven half-tracks and 15 horse-drawn vehicles in a bloody battle that cost the group five P-47s and four pilots. Crutchfield stayed in the Air Force after the war, but disappeared in 1968 while flying a training flight with a student in a T-33; the crash site, on a glacier on Mt. Rainer in Washington, was not discovered until October 2004.