Carl Suther Goodman was born on January 12, 1923, in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. He was the son of William Arthur Goodman and Maggie Jewette Suther Goodman. He graduated from Mount Pleasant High School. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps on February 1, 1942. Inspired by the news of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, Carl resolved to become a bomber pilot. His training took him through several bases and schools, including Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois; Merced and Santa Ana, California; Douglas Army Air Base in Arizona; and Kingman Army Air Base, also in Arizona. He earned his pilot wings at Dalhart Army Air Base, Texas, and underwent advanced flight training at Gulfport, Mississippi. Savannah, Georgia, served as his final stop before deployment overseas. Upon completing his four-engine bomber pilot program, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the 20th Bomb Squadron, 2nd Bomb Group, 15th U.S. Army Air Force, stationed at the Allied base in Amendola, near Foggia, Italy.

On August 29, 1944, the 15th U.S. Army Air Force carried out Mission 263, known as the Air Battle over the White Carpathians, a daylight bombing raid on the Moravská Ostrava industrial complex in German-occupied Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic. The 2nd Bombardment Group’s 20th Bomb Squadron took part in the mission as one of the strike units. One of the aircraft involved was B-17G 42-38096 “Big Time,” which had already completed around sixty-five missions before that day. During the operation, the formation came under intense attack from German fighters over Moravia. “Big Time” was heavily damaged, lost altitude, and eventually crashed near Vsetín / Šanov in the present-day Czech Republic. Of the ten crew members on board, nine were killed in the crash, and only the pilot survived.

2Lt Goodman was one of the 28 U.S. airmen laid to rest in a mass grave at Slavicin, Czechoslovakia, before being exhumed and reinterred at Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial, Neuville-en-Condroz, Arrondissement de Liège, Liège, Belgium. He also has a cenotaph in the Cross of Christ Lutheran Church Cemetery, Concord, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, USA.

Source of information: www.leteckabitvakarpaty.cz, b17flyingfortress.de; ww2aircraft.net