An interview with Lt. Col. Henry Supchak and his daughter Elizabeth Hoban about their book, The Final Mission: A Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War. Lt. Col. Supchak's B-17 was hit by antiaircraft fire over Munich on July 31, 1944, during his thirty-second air-combat mission. He attempted to reach neutral Switzerland but he and his crew were forced to bail out over Austria. Supchak was the last man on board when he noticed his plane was on course to crash into a village; he readjusted the controls before escaping. He was immediately captured by the Germans and put into a solitary cell. A small boy from the village, Ander Haas, who witnessed the crash, was able to find out where Supchak was being temporarily held and snuck food and water to him. Supchak and his entire crew were soon shipped off to a POW camp in Germany and spent the rest of the war in prison. Supchak remained in the armed forces after World War II although he suffered from what today is called post traumatic stress disorder. Ultimately, with the help of his wife, a MASH nurse, he embarked on a journey to find his crew members before they all passed away in an attempt to find closure from the war. But it was the unexpected discovery by his daughter that Ander Haas was looking for Henry Supchak in 2005 that finally completed the circle. Haas had grown up to become a successful entrepreneur, developing the tourist industry in the very town that Supchak saved. Ander Haas invited Henry Supchak back to Austria in order to thank the pilot in person for what he did more than sixty years earlier.
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