William J. Devlin was born on August 7, 1921, in Charlestown, Suffolk County, Massachusetts. He was the son of Philip and Isabel Devlin. He was married to Florence C. Smutek Devlin. He graduated from Charlestown High School and Peabody College in Tennessee. He served in the 49th Bomber Squadron, 2nd Bomber Group, as a Technical Sergeant and Radio Operator of B-17 #44-6369 during World War II.

On August 29, 1944, the B-17G #44-6369, flown by Lt. Duane Seaman’s crew of the 49th Bomb Squadron, 2nd Bomb Group, took part in a Fifteenth Air Force bombing raid against the Moravská Ostrava industrial complex in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. The aircraft had only recently entered operational service, delivered in mid-July 1944 and deployed to Amendola Airfield in Italy by early August, before joining long-range attacks on German fuel, rail, and industrial targets. On this mission, later designated Mission 263, nine B-17s from the 2nd Bomb Group came under attack by 89 German fighters, and within twenty minutes, eight of them were shot down over present-day Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with one additional bomber crash-landing in Hungary. During the engagement, Seaman’s aircraft was forced down and crashed near the locality known as “Settini,” approximately one kilometer south of the present memorial marker. Unlike many of the other losses from that day, which resulted in 41 American fatalities, with 28 buried in a mass grave at Slavičín, all members of Seaman’s crew survived the crash but were subsequently taken prisoner and held in German POW camps.

TSgt Devlin was held at Stalag Luft 4 Gross-Tychow, Pomerania, Prussia. He ended his military service as a Master Sergeant. He worked in the security department at United Technologies in Windsor, Connecticut, retiring in 1987. He was a communicant of Holy Cross Church and a lifetime member of the Western Massachusetts Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War in Germany. He died on February 16, 1995, and is now buried in the Mater Dolorosa Cemetery, South Hadley, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, USA.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com, www.leteckabitvakarpaty.cz