If you knew or served with this Airman and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
Casualty Info
Home Town Washington DC
Last Address Giulia, Italy
Casualty Date Dec 18, 1944
Cause KIA-Killed in Action
Reason Air Loss, Crash - Sea
Location Italy
Conflict World War II/Asian-Pacific Theater
Location of Interment American Cemetery - Florence, Italy
"Charles was a ball-turret gunner on a B-24 Liberator. He wanted to become a pilot but washed out of flight school and became a gunner instead. My mother said he never had good luck - poor guy crashed on his first flight - so the air corps made him a gunner. Sadly he was killed on his first bombing mission as well - December 18th 1944. They were returning from a bombing run to Oswiecim Poland and crashed in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Italy where the 15th Air Corps was headquartered. It was assumed that they ran out of fuel. Below are letters my mother got from the War Department. Its very poignant and she was only 20 years old at the time. He was barely 22 at the time of his death. I also found his name mentioned on a battle monument on the Tablet of the Missing at Florence American Cemetery - Florence Italy....
Charles O. Mercer -759th Bomber Squadron - 459th Heavy Bomber Group
My mother met Charles while in high school and they married when she was 18 in 1942. He was born in 1922 as Charles O. Watts. His parents divorced when he was a toddler and his mother's second husband adopted him and so he became Charles Mercer. Its confusing because legally he was under both names but all the military records show him as Mercer. My mother's papers on the other hand show her as Jacqueline Watts before she married my father. Both sets of his parents treated us like their own grandchildren. I called her Mom Mercer and his biological father Pop. She lived here in Washington, D.C. and Mr. Watts lived in Chicago. We would make several trips to Chicago and he and his second wife Raeda would spoil us rotten! Charles was his only child. He and Raeda never had kids of their own...