Robert Martin Hyde

At only twenty years old, Second Lieutenant Robert Martin Hyde flew a P-51 Mustang into combat over Austria and survived being shot down, only to be murdered weeks later while a prisoner in Gestapo custody. Born in Wichita, Kansas, on 24 June 1924, Hyde was the only son of Charlie H. and Blanche Shepard Hyde and grew up in Higgins, Texas. He graduated from Higgins High School in 1941 and attended Texas A&M College before leaving in 1942 to enter military service. Hyde enlisted in the Army Air Corps on 3 November 1942 and, after completing flight training, received his pilot wings and commission as a second lieutenant at Eagle Pass, Texas, on 15 April 1944. He was subsequently assigned as a fighter pilot to the 4th Fighter Squadron, 52nd Fighter Group, Fifteenth Air Force.

The 52nd Fighter Group had flown Supermarine Spitfires in combat before converting to the North American P-51 Mustang during April and May 1944. Operating from Italy as part of the Fifteenth Air Force, the group became heavily engaged in long-range bomber escort, protecting Allied formations attacking targets across Italy, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.

On 16 July 1944, Hyde was flying North American P-51D-5-NA Mustang serial number 44-13474 during a bomber-escort mission over Austria. The Missing Air Crew Report index identifies Hyde, the 4th Fighter Squadron and the 52nd Fighter Group, and places the loss in the area around Alland, west of Vienna. Contemporary reporting from Higgins stated that his aircraft had been hit by enemy flak and was losing altitude before Hyde informed his flight leader that he intended to bail out.

Hyde came down by parachute near Sulz im Wienerwald in the Vienna Woods. When local authorities attempted to arrest him, he resisted, and forester Karl Neubauer was killed during the ensuing struggle. Hyde was injured and taken into custody for medical treatment. The Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Downed Allied Air Crew Database identifies him as Second Lieutenant Robert M. Hyde, service number O-719349, records his detention at Reservelazarett IIa in Baden, and gives his death as 11 August 1944 at Klausen-Leopoldsdorf.

Two Vienna Gestapo officials subsequently removed the wounded American pilot from the hospital and transported him to Gestapo headquarters at Morzinplatz in Vienna. There Hyde was severely mistreated for several days. According to postwar testimony given by Gestapo officials Johann Sanitzer and Viktor Siegel, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was informed of Hyde's case and ordered that the prisoner be executed. SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Mildner, then acting for Vienna Gestapo chief Franz Josef Huber, directed Lambert Schneider and another Gestapo official identified as N. Bernauer to carry out the killing.

On 11 August 1944, Robert Hyde was killed at Klausen-Leopoldsdorf. The Gestapo attempted to conceal the crime with a fictitious report claiming that the American lieutenant had been shot while trying to escape. After the war, Austrian authorities investigated Hyde's murder. Proceedings against Lambert Schneider for the killing were discontinued in January 1948, although Schneider was later sentenced to three years' imprisonment for illegal Nazi Party activity. Mildner and Bernauer could not be traced by the Austrian judiciary. The surviving evidence and postwar testimony are documented in the scholarly history *The Vienna Gestapo, 1938–1945: Crimes, Perpetrators, Victims*.

Second Lieutenant Robert Martin Hyde was only twenty years old when he was murdered. His remains were ultimately interred at Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France, in Plot G, Row 3, Grave 21. His cemetery record identifies him with the 4th Fighter Squadron, 52nd Fighter Group and records his awards of the Air Medal and Purple Heart. A memorial marker also commemorates him beside his parents at Higgins Cemetery in Texas. Hyde's short combat career, his capture in Austria and his murder while in enemy custody preserve the story of a young American P-51 Mustang pilot whose service and fate might otherwise have disappeared into the final year of the Second World War.