Benjamin A. Bottoms

Benjamin Bottoms was a United States Coast Guard radioman who died while attempting to rescue the crew of a USAAF bomber that had crashed-landed in Greenland in November 1942.[1] Bottoms was the radioman of the USCGC Northland's Grumman J2F-4 Duck floatplane. When a B-17 bomber crash landed near Northland his aircraft was assigned to search for it. Bottoms's pilot Lieutenant John A. Pritchard sighted the bomber, and landed as close to the wreck as possible—four miles away. Pritchard and Bottoms were able to assist two of the injured bomber crew to their plane, and take them back to Northland. However, on their second rescue visit they encountered bad weather, and crashed. It took seventy-five years to locate their bodies.

Benjamin Bottoms
Benjamin Bottoms
Born(1913-11-01)November 1, 1913
Cumming, Georgia
DiedNovember 28, 1942(1942-11-28) (aged 29)
Greenland
NationalityAmerican
OccupationCoast Guardsman
Known fordied during a heroic rescue

Early life

Bottoms was born in Georgia in 1913, grew up on a farm near Marietta, Georgia, and graduated from Marietta High School in 1931.[1] He enlisted in the United States Coast Guard in October 1932.

Coast Guard career
Bottoms was the radio operator of this small floatplane, a Grumman J2F-4 Duck.

In 1934 and 1935 he served on USCGC Ossipee and USCGC Guthrie.[1] He was then able to complete radioman training, and served aboard USCGC Thetis, USCGC Harriet Lane and USCGC Ossipee. Bottoms was married on October 10, 1937. He received a shore assignment to Coast Guard Air Station Salem, from October 1939 to June 1941. He was then assigned to Northland as a radioman for its float plane.

Bottoms and his pilot Pritchard succeeded in landing on Greenland's icecap, on November 22, 1942, rescuing the three surviving crew members of an RCAF plane.[1] This was the first time a Coast Guard aircraft had landed on the icecap.

On November 28, 1942 the pair were able to make one successful landing near a USAAF B-17 that had crash landed on the icecap, and had brought the two most injured crew members to Northland.[1] Prior to their second landing an overland expedition to the downed B-17 had experienced its own disaster, with a sled falling into a crevasse. When Bottoms and Pritchard landed, and learned of this additional disaster they planned to take one more crew member to Northland, and return with Northland crew members to help search for members of the overland expedition. They took off successfully, but Northland's radioman heard their transmissions fade as they were struck by bad weather. After the weather cleared another plane found the wreck, and from above determined their crash had not been survivable.

The crew of the B-17 had been left with supplies, and no further attempts to rescue them were made until Spring, five months later.[1]

Mitchell Zuckoff 2013 account of searches for the missing airmen, Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II, was a bestseller.[2] In January the plane was erroneously reported as found.[3] As of 2018 searchers continue to look for the lost plane.[4][5][6] The wreck had been spotted, from the air, in 1943, but copious snowfall, and the movement of the ice has made it hard to find. During the summer of 2018 searchers used ground penetrating radar.[7]

Legacy

At Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama, a barracks and bachelor officer's quarters was dedicated as Pritchard-Bottoms hall in 1971.

In 2010, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Charles "Skip" W. Bowen, who was then the Coast Guard's most senior non-commissioned officer, proposed that all 58 cutters in the Sentinel class should be named after enlisted sailors in the Coast Guard, or one of its precursor services, who were recognized for their heroism.[8][9][10] In 2015 the Coast Guard announced that Benjamin Bottoms would be the namesake of the 32nd cutter, USCGC Benjamin A. Bottoms.[11] She was built at Lockport, Louisiana, by the Bollinger shipyards, and delivered to the Coast Guard on February 8, 2019. After completing her sea trials, the cutter will be the fourth Sentinel class cutter to be stationed in San Pedro, California, part of Los Angeles.

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References
  1. Christopher Havern (2015-02-18). "Coast Guard Heroes: Benjamin A. Bottoms". Coast Guard Compass. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2019-02-08. Soon after the plane encountered a heavy snow storm and crashed on the ice cap. Bottoms’ last radio message to the ship was that they had a successful takeoff and that he needed weather reports. After the storm subsided, search parties from a nearby U.S. Army base and from the ship were organized to search for the lost aircraft.
  2. William Theissen (2018-09-24). "The Last of the Coast Guard's MIAs". Maritime Executive. Archived from the original on 2019-02-08. Retrieved 2019-02-08. The burial of the aircraft under seventy years of snowfall and the movement of the ice in which it is embedded have hampered these search efforts. The story of Pritchard and Bottoms and the attempts to find them served as the focus of the 2013 bestseller book “Frozen in Time” by Mitchell Zuckoff. In 2014, the Coast Guard Academy inducted Pritchard into its Hall of Heroes while Bottoms has been honored as the namesake for a new Fast Response Cutter.
  3. Ashley Southall (2013-01-14). "Search Crew Finds World War II Plane That Crashed in Greenland". The New York Times. p. A14. Archived from the original on 2019-02-09. Retrieved 2019-02-08.
  4. Caleigh Cross (2018-07-19). "Stowe native aims to recover lost heroes: World War II-era rescuers missing on Greenland glacier since 1942 plane crash". Stowe Today. Retrieved 2019-02-08. Pritchard and Bottoms are the only two remaining U.S. Coast Guardsmen whose remains have not been recovered and repatriated, Bradley said.
  5. "Pilot killed during heroic 1942 rescue mission honored by Coast Guard". CBS News. Hartford, Connecticut. 2014-11-07. Archived from the original on 2019-02-08. Retrieved 2019-02-08. The U.S. military has stepped up efforts to recover the plane that is now entombed in a glacier, including a mission to Greenland this summer by the Joint Personnel POW/MIA Accounting Command. The plane may hold the remains of the Coast Guard's last two MIA service members, Pritchard and his radioman, Petty Officer 1st Class Benjamin Bottoms.
  6. Scott Gross (2018-07-03). "75-year search continues for missing servicemen in Greenland". KTVA-TV. Archived from the original on 2019-02-09. Retrieved 2019-02-08. 'So the two-person crew, pilot John Pritchard and Radioman Benjamin Bottoms, took off,' Marley said. 'They managed a successful landing on the Greenland ice cap and hauled back the two most injured back to the Northland. The next day, they went back to the B-17 where they picked up the corporal in an effort to go back for supplies. On the way back, the plane crashed into the ice.'
  7. Patrick J. Kiger (2018-09-06). "Recovered 'Lost Squadron' Plane Leads to New Mystery". How stuff works. Archived from the original on 2019-02-09. Retrieved 2019-02-08. In addition to retrieving the P-38 from the ice, searchers will head to nearby Koge Bay and deploy several more radar-equipped drones in an effort to locate a Coast Guard Grumman J2F-4 Duck, a small, single-engine amphibious plane that vanished in a storm during an effort to rescue a crashed B-17 crew in late November 1942. They hope not only to locate the wreckage, but also to retrieve the remains of the decorated pilot, Lt. John A. Pritchard, Jr. along with those of his radioman, Petty Officer 1st Class Benjamin Bottoms and U.S. Army Air Corps Cpl. Loren Howarth, who also were on board.
  8. Susan Schept (2010-03-22). "Enlisted heroes honored". United States Coast Guard. Archived from the original on 2010-03-29. Retrieved 2013-02-01. After the passing of several well-known Coast Guard heroes last year, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Charles “Skip” Bowen mentioned in his blog that the Coast Guard does not do enough to honor its fallen heroes.
  9. "U.S. Coast Guard announces name for first Sentinel-class cutter". 2010-03-22. Archived from the original on 2010-03-25. Retrieved 2013-02-01. Previously designated to be named the Coast Guard Cutter Sentinel, the cutter Bernard C. Webber will be the first of the service’s new 153-foot patrol cutters. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen approved the change of the cutter’s name to allow this class of vessels to be named after outstanding enlisted members who demonstrated exceptional heroism in the line of duty. This will be the first class of cutters to be named exclusively for enlisted members of the Coast Guard and its predecessor services.
  10. "FRC Plan B: The Sentinel Class". Defense Industry Daily. 2014-05-02. Archived from the original on 2014-07-07. Retrieved 2014-04-03. All of these boats will be named after enlisted Coast Guard heroes, who distinguished themselves in USCG or military service. The first 25 have been named, but only 8 have been commissioned...
  11. "Acquisition Update: Coast Guard Reveals Names of FRCs 26-35". US Coast Guard. 2015-02-27. Archived from the original on 2015-03-05. Retrieved 2017-03-25. The Coast Guard recently announced the names of the 26th through 35th Sentinel-class fast response cutters through a series of posts on its official blog, the Coast Guard Compass.
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