ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 108114
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| Date: | Wednesday 22 December 1943 |
| Time: | day |
| Type: |  Lockheed P-38H Lightning |
| Owner/operator: | 337th FSqn /329th FGp USAAF |
| Registration: | 42-66920 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | Near Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, California -
 United States of America
|
| Phase: | Initial climb |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | |
Crashed when an engine caught fire shortly after take off. The pilot could have baled out but he chose to attempt an emergency landing in a vacant lot rather than risk the lives of persons in the populated area below. Lt-Col William Edwin Dyess did not survive.
William Dyess had been CO of the 21st Pursuit Squadron, based at Nichols Field in the Philippines, when the forces of Imperial Japan attacked that country on the 8th of December, 1941. In the ensuing Battle of Bataan 1st Lt Dyess led his unit with distinction and maintained the morale of his pilots and enlisted men despite the staggering loss rate of their P-40 fighters, the privation of living without shelter on hastily prepared jungle airstrips, and insufficient rations.
Taken prisoner in April 1942, 'Ed' Dyess escaped, along with several other US prisoners, from a penal colony in Mindanao on the 12th of April 1943. In July 1943 he was rescued and evacuated to Australia by a US submarine.
Dyess was able to inform the US Government and public of the cruel and inhumane treatment of American and Filipino personnel in the notorious Bataan Death March and in their subsequent incarceration in Japanese POW camps.
Sources:
http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/db.asp
' Doomed At The Start: American Pursuit Pilots in the Philippines, 1941-1942' by William H. Bartsch, pub. by Texas A&M University Press,1992.
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 04-Apr-2017 00:06 | angels one five | Updated [Operator, Total fatalities, Total occupants, Other fatalities, Location, Phase, Source, Narrative] |
| 04-Apr-2017 00:46 | angels one five | Updated [Narrative] |
| 31-Jan-2019 21:10 | angels one five | Updated [Time, Narrative] |
| 13-Feb-2020 18:28 | Iwosh | Updated [Operator, Location, Operator] |
| 30-Jan-2021 10:40 | Anon. | Updated [Operator, Operator] |
| 19-Jan-2022 07:42 | angels one five | Updated [Location] |
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