1st Lt. Robert 'Bob' Steckroth

He was the co-pilot of Robert Earl Wildermuth’s ten-man B-24 Liberator crew. He sat in the right seat through the Pacific tour of November 1944 – November 1945, backing up the pilot Maxwell Van Valen across thirty-plus combat missions.

From Hazleton, Pennsylvania — the anthracite-coal-mining country of northeastern PA. He had been a second-year student at William and Mary College when he enlisted. Robert Earl’s memoir sketches him in athletic terms:

“Bob was an all-around athlete with a physique of a hard-working coal miner and star athlete. It was rumored that he was a Little All-American football player at William and Mary.”

Bob was the catcher on the 400th Squadron championship softball team that played its season in between combat operations. He was “an excellent pilot and loved to fly the airplane manually. He didn’t get much opportunity however and many times our plane flew on automatic pilot much to the chagrin of Bob.” Robert Earl’s closing note on him was a benediction: “Rob deserved to have his own crew.”

His postwar trajectory is open. The path forward sits at the William & Mary alumni records of the early 1940s, the Hazleton, PA local press, and the 90th Bomb Group veterans’ archive.

Sources: Robert Earl Wildermuth, The Big One: World War II (typewritten manuscript, c. 1989), Crew Members section.