Despite the romantic wartime tale, love did not last for Ralph and Lois. The couple divorced in 1947. All that remains is the wreck of the turret, now on display at a local museum in Bolsena, Italy. 
 
 Of the wrecked bomber's 10 men, three were captured by the Germans and finished out the war in a POW Camp. The remaining seven were saved and hidden from the Germans by Italian families. Truesdale also left his turret and let the name of his wife plunge in the water with the plane. Truesdale was among the crewmen captured by the Germans and taken in a POW camp. He managed to escape and remained hidden for three months until the arrival of the Allies. 
 
 The plane crashed into Lake Bolsena, the largest volcanic lake in Europe. All 10 men parachuted to the ground. 
 
 Once near Perugia, the group encountered heavy fire from German anti-aircraft. Seven B-17s in the first wave and 18 in the second suffered serious damage. "Ethel's" two engines were struck and damaged and the bomber spun out of control. 
 
 "Ethel" flew for the last time on Jan. 15, 1944. The final flight was part of a mission which involved the use of 38 B-17 Flying Fortresses divided into two waves. The primary target was the railroad bridge in the town of Certaldo, south of Florence. The alternate target was a marshalling yards at Poggibonsi, near Siena. 
 
 Writing a lover's name on the plane wasn't just Truesdale's idea. When it came to name their plane, the entire crew agreed to call it "Ethel," after the girlfriend of right waist gunner, Anthony Brodniak. The B-17 plane is shown at left. At right Antony Brodniak poses with his girlfriend, Ethel. 
 
 It turned out the words referred to Lois Eileen, the young wife of gunner Sgt. Ralph Truesdale. He was one of the 10-man crew aboard the four-engine aircraft B-17 USAF serial no. 4124364. Ralph Truesdale (R) and his wife, Lois Eileen, are shown here. Lois is holding their five-month-old child. 
 
 The recovered turret featured the intriguing hand-painted words: "Ileen Lois." "The words were still visible after 70 years underwater on the right and left side of the turret," said Mario Di Sorte, a historian who pieced together the plane's history. 
 
 Divers from the Research Center of the Scuba School of Lake Bolsena and the Fire Department of Viterbo identified several pieces of the plane scattered on the bottom of the lake. From a depth of 300 feet, they recovered the largest piece, the Sperry ball turret -- an enclosed capsule that protected the bomber at the belly of the craft. 
 
 A World War II wreck, which has been laying on the bottom of an Italian lake for 70 years, has revealed a forgotten story of love during wartime. The wreck, a B-17 "Flying Fortress" bomber, crashed in Lake Bolsena on Jan. 15, 1944. 
 
 A forgotten story of death and survival during wartime has been brought to light after 70 years as local people unearthed the remains of an American World War II aircraft known as the “Flying Coffin.” 
 
 Found in the forests of Selva del Lamone, a natural reserve near the town of Farnese, Viterbo, in central Italy, the wreck remains were identified as belonging to the heavy bomber Consolidated B-24 Liberator. 
 
 B-24s are recorded as having dropped over 630,000 tons of bombs during World War II and were the most heavily produced American aircraft. 
 
 The four-engine aircraft was notorious among aircrews. Officially designated the “Liberator,” the square shaped B-24 could easily turn into a death trap. It was hard to fly with its stiff and heavy controls, and so earned its name by its crews as the “Flying Coffin.” 
 
 Liberators had only one exit near the tail, making it almost impossible for the crew to reach the rear from the flight deck when wearing a parachute. 
 
 WWII Dogfight Evidence Found in Italy 
 
 According to historian Mario Di Sorte, the wreckage fragments found in Selva del Lamone belong to a B-24 ‘H’ model that operated within the 15th Air Force, 454th Bomb Group, 736th Bomb Squadron from San Giovanni, near Foggia in southern Italy. 
 
 “We were able to fully reconstruct its last flight, unveiling a drama which involved South African escapees, Italian civilians and U.S. pilots,” Di Sorte told Discovery News. 
 
 The B-24H took off from San Giovanni on March 3, 1944 for a bombing mission to Canino airport, south west of Lake Bolsena. It was one of the 277 bombers — all B-17 “Flying Fortress” and B-24 Liberators — taking off from airfields in Puglia to bomb bridges, train stations and airports controlled by the Germans. 
 
 The B-24H was part of an 18-bomber formation that dropped some 25 tons of bombs on the Canino airport, where the Focke Wulf 190 fighters led by German Luftwaffe flying ace Erich Honagen operated. 
 
 “Weather conditions and clouds prevented accurate bombing. Only half of the bombers actually dropped their loads, in many cases missing the main target area,” Di Sorte said. 
 
 Photos: WWII Wreck Reveals Wartime Romance 
 
 As two German fighters attacked the B-24H and its 10-man crew led by lieutenant William J. Goodwin Jr., only two men managed to parachute: sergeant gunner Wallace H. Cleveland and sergeant tail gunner John M. Ashby. 
 
 They were the only survivors of the “Flying Coffin.” 
 
 The B-24H exploded before crashing. It split in three parts, leaving the Italian civilians who came to the crash site with a horrifying scene of death. 
 
 “Carbonized bodies were scattered around the wreckage, a body was hanging from a tree with his parachute, while lieutenant William J. Goodwin was seen laying on the ground wearing the oxygen mask with bandages stuffed inside,” Di Sorte said. 
 
 Seriously injured, sergeant Cleveland parachuted away from the crash and was captured by the Germans, ending up in a prison camp in Germany. 
 
 WWII Fighter Plane Recovered: BIG PIC 
 
 Sergeant Ashby was helped by the local family Sabatini along with two South African soldiers. They had escaped from a prison camp in Italy and were hiding themselves in caves owned by the Sabatinis. 
 
 While Asby was later captured by the Germans, also ending up in a prison camp, the South African soldiers met a terrible fate. 
 
 “Bobby” Robert Carter of the South African Engineer Corps and “Alfred” F.J.Crinall of the Rand Light Infantry South African Forces were arrested in the town of Farnese by the Germans on June 4, 1944. 
 
 “They were tortured for two days, forced to dig their own pit and then shot dead,” Di Sorte said. 
 
 The wreckage fragments will go on display in the Selva del Lamone natural reserve by the end of the year. Along with commemorative panels, they will recount the story of the American and South African soldiers. 
 
 Image: The heavy bomber Consolidated B-24 Liberator, known by its crews as the “Flying Coffin.” Credit: Mario Di Sorte. ||||| “For many years, I didn’t say anything about what happened in Albania,” Mr. Hayes said in a 2015 telephone interview with The New York Times from his assisted-living home in Medford. “After the war was over, Hoxha was ruthless. If he discovered the names of anyone who had helped us, he had them and their families executed.” 
 
 Mr. Hayes had no special role in the group’s survival, but by outliving all his wartime comrades, he became a last conduit for their story, which was related in a 1999 memoir by one of the nurses, and more recently in several books, notably “The Secret Rescue” (2013), by Cate Lineberry, whose account relied heavily on Mr. Hayes’s recollections. 
 
 The perilous adventure began two months after Italy surrendered and Allied forces invaded Italy to begin pushing the Germans back across Europe. On Nov. 8, 1943, the nurses, medics and fliers of the Army Air Force’s 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron took off from Catania, Sicily, bound for Bari, on Italy’s east coast, where hundreds of wounded troops awaited air evacuation. 
 
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 Their twin-engine cargo plane carried no weapons, but the pilot, First Lt. Charles Thrasher, 22, anticipated no fighting. With him were a co-pilot, radio operator and crew chief. The nurses, all second lieutenants, were 22 to 32 years old. The medics, including Mr. Hayes, 21, from Indianola, Iowa, were all equivalent to staff sergeants and ranged in age from 21 to 36. 
 
 An hour into the flight, the plane became lost in a huge storm over the Adriatic Sea. Its compass and communications failed. Blown 100 miles off course, it crossed the coast of Albania and was intercepted by German fighters and attacked by antiaircraft guns. It plunged to a belly landing in a marsh 25 miles inland. Willis Shumway, 23, the crew chief, was the only casualty, with a knee injury that left him unable to walk. 
 
 The disoriented Americans had no idea where they were. Fearing a fuel explosion, they scrambled out of the plane and encountered their first bit of luck. Striding out of a woods was a band of rugged-looking men with rifles and daggers. One spoke a little English. He was Hasan Gina, an anti-German partisan leader. He told the Americans they were in Albania. 
 
 Later, they would learn that they were 150 miles east of Bari, on the wrong side of the Adriatic, surrounded by German forces that had occupied Albania for months, and were caught in a civil war between rival partisan groups. 
 
 The Americans knew almost nothing of Albania, a small, mostly Muslim country that had changed little in centuries. The mountainous terrain was dotted with impoverished villages. There were no railroads and few roads. Mules and horses were the main transportation. There was little running water or electricity. Winters were brutal, food was scarce, and blood feuds were common among the ferociously proud peoples. 
 
 With only a general plan to reach the west coast and somehow cross the Adriatic to Italy, the Americans began walking in the wrong direction. Over the ensuing weeks, guided by the partisans, they trekked through mountains and valleys, sometimes cutting back or traveling in circles to avoid German patrols, living in the open or sheltering in villages and sharing cornbread with peasants. 
 
 The Americans were soon listed as missing in action, and War Department telegrams, beginning “regret to inform you,” were sent to their families back home. 
 
 The survivors, meantime, carried Sergeant Shumway on a stretcher made of seats from the plane; they later found pack animals for him. After five days, they rested at a partisan-controlled town called Berat, where they were cheered, mistaken for the vanguard of an Allied invasion to liberate Albania. They also met other partisan leaders, and learned of a British agent who had recently parachuted into the country. 
 
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 Their respite lasted only a few days. Then, they awoke to gunfire and the explosion of artillery shells as German forces entered the town. In the ensuing confusion, German planes strafed a truck carrying some of the escaping Americans. Three nurses were separated from the main group and left behind in Berat; they took refuge in a farmhouse, and remained in hiding in the area for four months. 
 
 The main group of Americans climbed on foot to a mountain village and were caught in a crossfire between partisan groups. “It was the first time the Americans had heard of the rival group, and they were beginning to realize they were in as much danger from the country’s internal battle as they were from the Germans,” Ms. Lineberry wrote in “The Secret Rescue.” 
 
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 They encountered other perils. “Some of the blankets offered to them to ward off the cold night air were infested with fleas and lice,” the author wrote. “Since they’d crashed, most of them had been unable to bathe, aside from splashing some water on their faces and arms from mountain streams or an occasional basin, and they were all filthy and now battling fleas, lice and the GI’s,” Army slang for diarrhea. 
 
 The Americans were often unable to find food. Facing starvation, they made tea by boiling straw and ate berries that worsened their diarrhea. Sharing with peasants was sometimes a culture shock. Mr. Hayes and another medic saw a sheep’s head roasted over coals, then split in half with an ax. 
 
 “The Americans watched wide-eyed as two women each took one-half of the head and ate everything, including the eyeballs,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “Nothing was wasted.” 
 
 As autumn waned, blizzards enveloped the Americans. Their clothing was too thin. Their shoes were worn out. “Though all their feet soon felt like blocks of ice and their bodies shivered, they knew they had to keep going,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “The snow was coming down so fast they could barely see the person in front of them, but they had to stay together to avoid losing one another in the blinding white storm.” 
 
 On Nov. 27, British intelligence in Albania learned from partisans that the American plane had crashed and that the nurses, medics and crew were alive, trying to reach the coast. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe, as well as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the families of the missing were told. 
 
 In December, an American rescue plan was developed, led by Army Capt. Lloyd G. Smith, 24, who was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under cover of darkness, he slipped onto the heavily guarded Albanian coast by boat and set up a base camp in a cave in the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic. Others joined him, and they moved inland to find the Americans. 
 
 The British, meantime, organized a second rescue effort under Lt. Gavan Duffy, a secret agent who with a small team had reached Albania months earlier by parachute and on foot. Through partisan contacts, he found the Americans in eastern Albania and began leading them westward, intending to reach the coast. 
 
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 But halfway there, at Gjirokaster, German troops blocked the way, and the Americans were too sick and exhausted to go on. He radioed for an American air rescue. Two C-47 cargo planes flew in with fighter escorts. But the Germans disrupted the landing, and Lieutenant Duffy called it off. 
 
 The Americans, after the euphoria of nearly being rescued, were crushed. But they resumed their journey, and with American and British help reached the coast. On Jan. 9, after a 63-day ordeal, 27 Americans — 10 nurses and 17 medics and fliers — boarded a British launch and crossed to Italy. 
 
 Three nurses remained behind in German-occupied Berat. Captain Lloyd Smith brought them to safety in March 1944. They rode pack mules most of the way to the coast and were met by a torpedo boat, which took them across the Adriatic. 
 
 After the war, Mr. Hayes returned to civilian life, attended Iowa State College and became an aeronautical engineer for North American Aviation, designing military planes and conducting studies for the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration until he retired in 1984. 
 
 He married the former Betty Allen in 1944. She survives him, as do two daughters, Margaret Bleakley and Victoria Sprott; two brothers, Karl and James; a sister, Virginia McCall; two grandsons and a great-granddaughter. 
 
 Harold Lyle Hayes was born in Pekin, Iowa, on April 11, 1922, to Ralph and Jenella Van Gorp Hayes. He graduated from high school in Indianola in 1940. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he was drafted, volunteered as a medic and by 1943 was in Sicily, flying evacuation missions. 
 
 “When he first returned to Allied lines, he had nightmares of being chased,” Ms. Lineberry wrote of Mr. Hayes. “Those faded with time, but as was true of many in the group, he rarely talked about his ordeal over the years.”
– An Italian WWII pilot who died battling US pilots 70 years ago has been found 13 feet underground, his remains still at the controls of a fighter plane armed with machine guns and cannons, Discovery reports. Lt. Guerrino Bortolani went down in a losing battle against Allied planes on March 11, 1944, and hit the ground so hard that he literally vanished into the countryside outside Padua in northern Italy. "The crash site is now a cornfield," says a member of the wreck-hunting crew that found Bortolani. "We were able to find the remains with the help of an elderly man, who on that day witnessed the fighter going into a nosedive and hit the ground." Bortolani was flying the best Italian fighter plane (the Macchi C.205) in a squadron led by the renowned Italian ace Adriano Visconti. But they went up against a daunting strike by the Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force—which had sent 111 B-17 planes over Padua to drop more than 300 tons of bombs. Allies said the Axis defense was "aggressive," but five German planes and four Italian planes went down. Bortolani was "dutiful until the end," the Week notes, sitting on his closed parachute and wearing a ring given him by a fighter pilot academy. Wreck-hunters found several parts of the plane as well, including the tail wheel, control stick, and pieces of the engine. Bortolani is expected to have a proper burial once relatives are found. (Read about a German U-boat found off North Carolina.)