Polson residents proved heroes to World War II bomber crew in distress

World War II reached across nations and cost the lives of 70 million people, the deadliest conflict in human history. While the Mission Valley was a considerable distance from the theaters of war, it didn’t stop many of the region’s residents from going overseas to fight, and even die, for their country.

On Feb. 3, 1943, World War II came to the town of Polson quite literally, and the townspeople rose to the occasion.

Earlier that day, a B-17 Flying Fortress had taken off from Walla Walla, Wash., for a two-hour practice bombing run with pilot Lt. Jim Breeden at the controls. Things started to go south as the crew experienced bad weather and lost radio communications due to static. The plane flew all afternoon and into the evening before Breeden found favorable weather above the Mission and lower Flathead valleys and saw the lights of Polson and Ronan.

Polson’s telephone operator, Maude Brassfield, had been told there was a missing B-17 earlier in the day, and at around 10 p.m. she heard the bomber flying low and circling the town. Along with fellow operator Louise Malgren, Brassfield alerted Polson residents to the situation.

Montana Highway Patrolman Wallace Beaudry and Les Baldwin led residents in their vehicles to the Polson Airport, where they lit the runway with their headlights. Meanwhile, Breeden picked out what appeared to be a fairly flat field south of Polson for a belly-landing.

The crew observed cars lining up around the snow-covered runway, and their hopes immediately soared. The B-17 circled around, and Breeden had the crew defuse the practice bombs by dropping them into Flathead Lake.

Then he approached the airfield from the north and lowered the landing gears.

“I flashed the light to indicate the field,” Beaudry said in several newspaper articles covering the incident. “Then pointed it upward toward where we could hear the ship circling. With the flares lined up as a path and the spot pointing like a finger, the pilot brought in his ship. It was a beautiful landing.”

At approximately 11 p.m., the wheels made touchdown with a rooster tail spray of snow. The deep snow actually acted as a brake, and thanks to the efforts of Polson residents, the B-17 was safe and sound on the ground.

About five minutes of fuel remained in the plane after the 12-hour flight.

When the crew exited the plane, bombardier Lt. Herbert Egender kissed the snow-covered ground. Egender would come back 25 years later as a colonel to visit Polson.

“The landing in Polson that dark night in 1943 is deeply engraved in my memory, and the wonderful hospitality of the good people of Polson then and in 1968 will never be forgotten,” he later wrote in a letter to the Lake County Leader’s Paul Fugleberg. “Is it any wonder I have had a warm spot in my heart for Polson for more than 40 years?”

Right after the plane landed, Egender took the plane’s Norden bomb sight and stored it in the vault of Security State Bank. Lake County deputies guarded the plane, and the crew was taken into town for a T-bone steak dinner at the Hut Cafe. They then stayed the night at the Salish Hotel.

The crew of eight would stay for the next couple of days in Polson, where they were treated like heroes, dining and dancing the time away with Polson residents.

The hospitality was so good that the men decided to rename their plane “The Polson Express.”

Hundreds of Polson residents went to the airport to take a look at the B-17, which is still the largest plane to ever land or take off from there. School children even wrote their names on the fuselage.

Leo Maier, who grew up on Flathead Lake, wrote to Missoulian columnist Evelyn King in 1992 to tell his experience of the B-17 landing.

“I will never forget it,” Maier said. “I had ridden my horse into town to go to the movie. When I came out, I heard that big airplane circling overhead. So I rode over the bridge and over to the airport. Made it just after the plane landed.

“My horse walked right up to the airplane and I got to touch it. Still gives me chills just to think about it.”

The landing incident made the newspapers in Spokane, Missoula and Boise, Idaho. For the plane to leave, Lake County road equipment was used to lengthen the runway to 2,500 feet, but an experienced crew sent to take the plane back to Walla Walla got it in the air in less than 2,100 feet.

The crew that had landed in Polson eventually parted ways and met different fates during the war.

Sgt. Joseph Napalitaro didn’t make it to Europe; he was grounded because he suffered from terrible air sickness.

Breeden was shot down during his first mission in Europe and become a prisoner of war. Navigator Morris Floyd was also shot down on his first mission and was a POW.

 Egender would “dodge bullets” until Aug. 17, 1943. While on the way to Schweinfurt, Germany, during his 15th mission, he was shot down and taken prisoner.

The rest of the crew were in a plane that was shot down over Europe, and only two gunners survived.

The Polson Express was shot down over France on its eighth mission of the war, but the crew inside survived.

Those who were prisoners of war were released April 29, 1945.

Egender made the trip back to Polson in 1968 as a colonel, and Breeden would end up ranching in Montana near Augusta before he died in 1975.

According to his brother, Vic, Breeden didn’t like to talk about his wartime experience, but he had a fond place in his heart for the Polson folks that came to the rescue in 1943.