Levin replica of ‘Snafuperman’ is bomber that late Sedona veteran flew in WWII

“Don’t break it,” don’t break it,” was going through Lewis Levin’s mind Monday, Aug. 24, as he presented the Garland family with his newest model, a Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” — two years and several hours a week in the making.

The model’s new home is at Garland’s Navajo Rugs, 411 SR 179, depicting the B-17 bomber dubbed “Snafuperman,” flown by family patriarch Lt. William Thurber Garland ahead of Mission No. 263, which set out Aug. 29, 1944, to destroy the Privoser oil refinery and railway yards in Moravská Ostrava, Czechoslovakia during World War II.

“This is a replica of Dad’s plane, and he has such detail in it,” Dan Garland said as Levin dropped the work off. “Right behind here is the navigator’s table. He’s got little radios and knobs, and a map open, and [Lewis[ he did all that, and you’re never going to see it.”

Bill Garland

Born June 28, 1916, in Seattle and raised in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Garland moved to Phoenix in 1938 and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces. By the time of the mission had flown 29 combat missions in a B-17 when he was shot down, spending a year in a German prisoner of war camp.

After returning from Europe, he married Georgiana Isham of Phoenix. Garland died May 25, 2008, and was survived by his children, Gary, Susan and Dan and eight grandchildren.

The Mission

“This guy was a kid on this mission,” Levin said. “He was in his early 20s. If you take a look at that picture of him in the crew and you compare it to what he was when he was a prominent person in Sedona later on, there’s a big difference. He’s a tall, skinny kid.”

The B-17 bomber #42-107118 was delivered to the USAAF in February 1944 and named for “Snafuperman” a March 1944 Warner Bros. cartoon starring the animated character “Private Snafu,” parodying the comic book here Superman, who had debuted in 1938.

The “Snafuperman” bomber was hit hard over the target and was falling behind the rest of the 20th Bomb Squadron’s 2nd Bomb Group formation of 22 bombers in front of Snafuperman, according to Gary Garland. Two engines were shot out, then a third, so bombardier, Al Novak crew jettisoned their unarmed bombs to lighten the load. Additionally piece of armor behind the pilot’s chair is also the only thing that saved his father’s life from a 20 mm round hitting the plane.

Still unable to keep pace, they had no choice but to bail out. Garland put the plane on autopilot as it began a downward spiral over the Czech countryside, and one-by-one the crew bailed out. The plane crashed between the towns of Metylovice and Frýdek-Místek in what is now eastern Czech Republic.

“As I went through the bomb bay, I could see that the waist of the plane was shot full of holes where the bombs had been,” William Garland wrote in the 1997 book “Mission No. 263.” “In the waist, I found Charles Griffin, the radio man, covered with blood on his face. I did not recognize him at first.

“The left waist gunner, Russell Payne was lying on the floor. He had been shot through the stomach while firing at the enemy. The other crew members were attempting to fasten a parachute on him. The tail gunner, Bob Hoadley was shot in the wrist. Hoadley had come out of the tail position when wounded but had not brought out his chute with him. In his wounded condition, Griffin had crawled back into the tail and retrieved Hoadley’s chute. He was later awarded the Silver Star for this act.”

“Dad’s sitting on the edge of the bomb bay with his feet out, getting ready to jump, and he looked down, and the straps on his chute were not buckled — because when they were flying they didn’t like to sit on those buckles, so dad didn’t buckle it,” Gary Garland said. “If he had jumped, I wouldn’t be here. … But somehow he saw this. He tried to pull himself back in the plane, and by then it was so much on fire. He got so scared. He pulled himself back in the plane, buckled it, and then jumped.”

Payne and flight engineer and top turret gunner Irving Katz were killed in action while Garland the other seven crew members — co-pilot Leo Zupan, navigator Albert Novak, bombardier Bill Hayett, radio operator Charles “Chas” Griffin, ball turret gunner Jesse Barker, waist gunners Ralph DeWitt and Roebrt “Bob” Hoadley — were captured as POWs.

Garland was, for a short while, a free man until he was captured by the Germans.

“He got under a barn,” once he got on the ground “and it started to rain, and he spent the night there,” Gary Garland said. “The family that lived there [saw] him and gave him something to drink and eat. The next day he got out, walked down the road, and he hurt his ankle, so he’s trying to find a doctor. And the doctor turned him in to the Nazis, like they’re supposed to do.”

Garland spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war at Stalag-Luft 1, located 105 miles northwest of Berlin — among the 7,717 Americans who were held there over the course of the conflict.

Conditions inside collapsed in the camp’s final winter before the German surrender. The Germans cut off the American Red Cross parcels that had supplemented starvation rations in February 1945. Men grew too weak to do much besides lie in their bunks and think about food.

“I think we should emphasize the importance of allies and friends around the world,” Mary Garland said.

“When POWs awoke at Stalag Luft I on May 1, 1945, the German guards had disappeared and a hand-sewn Stars and Stripes replaced the swastika on the flagpole,” according to the National WWII Museum website. “The Red Army arrived a day later.”

Even during the his lowest point at Stalag-Luft 1, Garland’s entrepreneurial spirit endured.

“At the POW camp, they all dreamed of food the whole time — and on some toilet paper Dad mocked up a fish and chips restaurant, and he kept that,” Gary Garland said. “50 years later. We’re at dinner, and he says, ‘My next thing is I’m going to start a fish and chips restaurant. Who wants to go in with me?’ … The last thing we wanted was another restaurant. But he was close to 90 years old.”

Following his Flight

Gary and his wife Mary Garland made a trek in 2016 to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“We drove around a bridge across the river, followed this river down for a mile or so, and we got out of the car and they said, ‘Follow us.’ And there’s a field, a farm, and a factory with a water wheel, and an old barn, and they said, ‘This is where your dad spent the night,'” Gary Garland said. “That sent shivers up the spine. To think that that’s all there, and it matched his story perfectly.”

Levin said his devotion to getting Bill Garland’s story right is why he is so dedicated to the accuracy of his model of the Snafuperman — including detailing the interior with touches no one will see such as the seats and miniature maps.

“I’m not just treating the plane as a toy, trying to recreate the plane in a model, and the fidelity to the real plane — fidelity to reality,” Levin said.

“It’s kind of something that I do for relaxation,” Levin said. “I’ve built a lot of models and I’ve given them away to people because of things in their lives that were significant to them, and I’m able to do this, there’s more joy in handing these models off to others.”