LT Adams was killed while on a mission to Frankfort, Germany on Feb 24, 1944 at 11:58 AM.  The B24 “Black Widow” was shot down by a German FW190 and crashed near Bray, France. Five of the crew successfully bailed out and were captured by the Germans and interned in a POW camp. 

With the help of a grateful British historical researcher, Maurice Rowe, the story is now known in great detail. Mr. Rowe even found a record of the fighter track, the exact time of the shoot down and the name of the German fighter pilot who claimed the victory. The badly mangled remains of those KIA were first buried in a common grave in a French cemetery. After the war Joe's father, Frank B. Adams, while working with the US Army graves registration organization, found the initial burial site, identified one of the bodies as his son, and arranged with all of the next of kin for burial in a single grave site in the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St Louis, MO.

More details about the story of the successful search for the crash site of the Black Widow will be found at bogo.co.uk/air_research/aarecent.htm.   Scroll down the page until you come to the story of the Black Widow.

B24H "Sad Sack" crew in fall of 1943 at a base in the US.
Left to right: S/Sgt Paul Sallee, T/Sgt Earl W Lee, S/Sgt Vincent L Riel, Lt Koonse, S/Sgt John D Fletcher, Lt John T Carmody, Lt Joseph B Adams, S/Sgt Francis A Stewart (stdg), Lt Marvin W Garber and T/Sgt Anthony J Nardozzi. 

Sad Sack was the airplane the crew claimed as their own...it was the B24 that they flew from the US to England in the latter part of 1943. The Sad Sack nose art sketched and painted on the side of the B24 nose section was was done by Joe Adams' wife, Helen Bliss Adams. We have never been able to locate Helen to inform her of these details.  She remarried and whereabouts are not known. (On the day of the fatal flight the crew was flying a substitute aircraft known as the Black Widow with two substitute crew members...Hinton and Kieley).

Mission day crew/Plane # 42-7542/MACR 2248:

In the fall of 1941 Joe applied for the Aviation Cadet program. In early 1942 he was accepted as an Aviation Cadet and in September 1942 was commissioned a 2nd Lt Bombardier at Kirtland Army Air Field, Albuquerque NM, where he remained as an instructor until the early summer of 1943.

In June of 1943 he married Helen F. Bliss, an Albuquerque, NM girl. Soon thereafter he was transferred from Albuquerque to the newly formed 446th Bombardment Group that was training and equipping for duty with the 8th Air Force. In December 1943 the group arrived at their new base at Bungay, and began flying bombing missions against the Germans.