Harlan Roy Palmer

First Lieutenant Palmer attended the University of Wisconsin where he was an outfielder on the varsity baseball team from 1937 to 1939. He played regularly as a pinch-hitter in 1937 and had a string of four successive pinch hits.

1st Lt. Palmer entered military service on December 18, 1941, eleven days after Pearl Harbor. He trained as a bomber pilot.

On November 11, 1943, a bombing mission to Rabaul was aborted due to poor weather. As the airplanes prepared to land there was a collision between two of them. The propellers of another B-24 cut off the rudder of Lieutenant Palmer's B-24 which dove into the ground, detonating the full bomb load, and killing all on board.