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Author: bbahler
Surnames: Middledorf, Lee, Payne
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
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Message Board Post:
WILLIAM F. MIDDLEDORF, 87, DIED FEB. 16, 2009
Downed Pilot Bluffed Way Past Gestapo
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 14, 2009; Page B04
William Frank Middledorf, 87, a retired Air Force colonel who as a downed pilot in
German-occupied France in World War II spent weeks masquerading as a deaf and mute
Frenchman to evade capture, died Feb. 16 at Capital Hospice in Arlington County, Va. He
had lung cancer.
(Middledorf was born in Lafayette, Ind., the son of Herbert and Thelma (nee Lee)
Middledorf. With his parents and brother James, he lived in Brazil, Ind., during his
childhood.)
Col. Middledorf's wartime account was featured in "Escape and Evasion: 17 True
Stories of Downed Pilots Who Made It Back" (1973), written and edited by Jimmy W.
Kilbourne.
On Aug. 15, 1943, Col. Middledorf was an Army Air Forces second lieutenant and B-17 pilot
engaged in a bombing run when his plane came under attack by German fliers and collided in
midair with another Allied "Flying Fortress." He and his crew bailed out 25,000
feet over northern France.
Col. Middledorf was separated from his crew during the parachute drop and landed in a
cornfield. A French woman waved him into a farmhouse and gave him civilian clothes, which
he was initially reluctant to wear. He said he feared he would be shot as a spy if
captured.
He was given falsified identification papers and a medical slip attesting that he was deaf
and mute. The pretense was needed to explain why an otherwise hale young
"French" man was not in a labor or concentration camp, according to Kilbourne.
During the next few weeks, French resistance leaders guided Col. Middledorf and a downed
Canadian pilot in the direction of the Pyrenees, the mountain region separating France and
neutral Spain. They eventually hopped a train, which hastened the trip but was risky
because they were riding in plain sight of Gestapo agents.
One Gestapo agent seemed to become too suspicious, prompting the resistance leader on the
train to flash a straight razor.
"If he comes back, I'll take care of him," the man said.
The German did not return. The Allied fliers made their way across the Spanish border on
foot but were arrested by a Spanish sentry and interned in a French Red Cross home.
"They had sentries at this place, but they didn't seem too alert -- security
wasn't too tight," Col. Middledorf said.
He and the Canadian slipped into town and called the British consulate after the American
consulate did not answer. The British officials came to their aid and took them to
Gibraltar, the British territory at the southern tip of Spain. From there, they were flown
to England.
William Frank Middledorf received a bachelor's degree in military science from the
University of Maryland during his Air Force career.
Among his post-World War II assignments was serving as a B-52 pilot and bomb squadron
commander in the Strategic Air Command at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. He retired in 1970
from the Pentagon as a deputy division chief in the directorate of plans and spent the
next 15 years as a Navy aircraft design specialist for the contractor Information
Spectrum.
For the past 10 years, he had done accounting, sales and administrative work at the Mount
Vernon Antique Center in Fairfax County, Virginia. He had lived in the Alexandria section
of Fairfax since 1965.
His marriage to Catherine Payne Middledorf ended in divorce.
Survivors include three children, Virginia Faucette of Potomac, Md., James Middledorf of
the Alexandria section of Fairfax and Robert Middledorf of Leesburg, Va.; a brother; and
six grandchildren.
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