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Grateful nations
This Memorial Day, Donald Modarelli’s family has a better picture of how the hero died in combat 65 years ago.
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — Second Lt. Donald Sylvester Modarelli’s parachute failed to open when he jumped from his shot-up B-17 bomber shortly before it crashed in the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands.
His body made an indentation in the ground several inches deep, according to a fellow crew member and Zwolle residents who saw him lying where he landed in a field.
Witnesses, both in the plane and on the ground, said Modarelli had a parachute on. Another said when he saw him on the ground, however, the B-17 navigator’s parachute was missing.
It was Jan. 11, 1944. World War II was raging in Europe. American planes by the hundreds were shot down in bombing runs over Germany, with many of their crew members killed, missing in action or captured to become prisoners of war.
Modarelli, a Youngstown native, was in the middle of the fighting, guiding bombing missions over Germany in his B-17, dubbed ‘Berlin Ambassador’ by its crew. He was assigned to the Army Air Corps’ 8th Air Force, 388th Bomb Group, 561st Bomb Squadron.
Born May 11, 1919, Modarelli grew up at 145 Wesley Ave. on Youngstown’s West Side. Baptized in St. Brendan Church, his parents were Sylvester, a steelworker, and the former Minnie Schettine, who was active in the women’s suffrage movement in the 1920s, said Donald’s niece, Marlene Fekete of Canfield.
Modarelli was a 1937 graduate of Chaney High School, where he was a member of the chemistry club had a role in one of the school’s June plays. After joining the Army Air Corps, he married a California girl, Shirley Megown, who lived and remarried in California after Donald’s death. Donald and Shirley had a son, David, whom Donald never saw.
Donald’s body was originally buried in Europe, but his remains were eventually moved to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Because of the conflicting reports about whether Modarelli was wearing a parachute when he leaped from the dying B-17, the details surrounding the final minutes of his life have still not been cleared up to the complete satisfaction of Modarelli’s only living sibling, Eugene Modarelli of Wooster.
Eugene, 74, thinks there are three possible scenarios: Donald was wearing a parachute when he jumped, but it did not open; he didn’t have a chute when he jumped; or after his body landed, his chute was stolen for the silk material from which it was made.
Thanks to years of research by Eugene and Fekete and other family members, aided greatly by Zwolle residents, Donald Modarelli’s family has a much clearer picture of what happened to their brother and uncle 65 years ago, making this Memorial Day even more meaningful to them.
A man from the Netherlands with whom Eugene and Fekete have corresponded, J. J. Tempelman, whose father was a partisan during the war and was an eyewitness to the crash, wrote about the Berlin Ambassador’s last flight.
He said the target that day was a German plane parts factory at Braunschweig, Modarelli’s plane took heavy fire from the ground and from German fighter planes after dropping its bombs and while returning to its home base.
According to a War Department Missing Air Crew report, Modarelli’s B-17 was returning from a bombing run. About 10 minutes after ‘bombs away,’ some five miles southeast of Dummer Lake, Germany, the plane pulled out of the group formation with two of its four engines damaged and not running. The plane maintained its altitude but was dropped behind the rest of the formation, accompanied by four U.S. P-38 fighters.
The plane was again attacked by German fighter planes and eventually crashed in a field in the outskirts of Zwolle in the Netherlands, more commonly known as Holland.
In a War Department Casualty Questionnaire, the bomber’s flight engineer, Technical Sgt. Charles C. Rigdon, said he was told by tail gunner Staff Sgt. Gerald Brinker that he saw Modarelli embedded in the ground wearing a chute that had not opened.
“I think he was shot by German planes,” Tempelman said in his letter.
Unknown to most of his family here, Eugene Modarelli has been searching for information about his brother’s death for several years, and having some success. The extent of his research was shared earlier this month when the family gathered here for the funeral of Eugene’s and Donald’s sister, Marie A. Scarsella.
For Eugene, the information logjam was broken in the late 1990s or early 2000s, when he “Googled Donald’s name and up popped” information about a monument in Zwolle dedicated to crew of the Berlin Ambassador.
The people of Zwolle, on Jan. 11, 1995, dedicated the monument honoring the Berlin Ambassador crew, which had maneuvered its plane away from the populated area of the city, avoiding a potentially large number of civilian deaths.
The inscription on the monument says, in part: “In memory of the brave young men who saved our town from a disaster.”
Annually on Jan. 11, the date the Berlin Ambassador crashed in 1944, children from two public schools who have adopted the monument, located on the site of the crash, conduct a memorial service, Mike Kleinlugtebeld of Zwolle told Eugene.
Kleinlugtebeld is researching the air war in and around his hometown during WWII, and plans to write a book about “all those brave men. I think it is important that my generation and future generations will be able to read about these men,” he said in a letter to Fekete.
“My main reason for wanting Donald’s story told is I feel it is of great interest to people here to know how heroes from a war so long ago still remain in the hearts of grateful people around the world,” she said.
Fekete, of Canfield, said her mother, Mildred, was very close to Donald.
“She mothered him and was his best friend. As a young girl, I remember watching her cry every time a war scene with planes going down came on the television,” Fekete said.
One of Donald’s nephews, Richard Scarsella of Boardman, said his uncle was like a family legend, and said his parents often talked about the war years.
”I always heard about Donald. My parents said my grandmother never celebrated Christmas again after Donald died,” Scarsella said.
Eugene, a Navy veteran, was 7 years of age when Donald left for the service.
“I cried up a storm when he left. There were a lot of years between us. He was the big brother and I was the pain-in-the-ass little brother. I never saw him again. None of us ever saw him again,” he said.
alcorn@vindy.com
DONALD SYLVESTER MODARELLI
History
Second Lt. Donald S. Modarelli was assigned to the Army Air Corps’s 8th Air Force, 388th Bomb Group, 561st Bomb Squadron as a navigator aboard a B-17 bomber, named the Berlin Ambassador by its crew. The plane was shot down Jan. 11, 1944, over the Netherlands while returning from a bombing run in Germany. Modarelli was killed when he jumped out of his plane and his parachute did not open.
Excerpts from Department of Defense documents, letters and reports from people with knowledge surrounding the crash give accounts of what happened to Moderalli in the last hours of his life.
Modarelli’s parachute did not open and he died. Also, I think he was shot by German planes. — J.J. Tempelman of the Netherlands, whose father was a partisan during World War II who helped rescue downed pilots, and an eyewitness to the crash.
Modarelli was embedded in the ground as if falling without means of restraint. — Berlin Ambassador crew member, T/Sgt. Charles Rigdon,
My husband received shrapnel wounds in one foot and leg. Some of it went into his parachute. He asked if there was an extra parachute on board. The answer was “no.” He finally decided to jump and had the breath knocked out of him on landing. Some young Dutchmen were gathered around him and two of them walked him over to a pasture next to the one he landed in, and there in a large indentation lay the body of Donald Modarelli. There was no parachute in sight and Gerald has never learned any details of his death ... whether he jumped without a parachute or if somehow it came off during his descent. When I talked to Rigdon, he said that Modarelli’s chute didn’t open. So possibly someone, Dutch or German, must have taken it before Gerald saw him. — Doris Brinker as told to her by her husband, S/Sgt. Gerald Brinker, tail gunner on the Berlin Ambassador.
I was born right before the war, and it’s thanks to people like your brother, his fellow crew members and many, many others, from many countries, that I live in a free country. They are not forgotten and they deserve our deepest respect and gratitude. — Edouard Renieri, Brussels, Belgium, in a letter responding to Eugene Modarelli’s posting on the Internet requesting information about his brother, Donald Modarelli.
Sources: U.S. War Department/eyewitness accounts.