ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 202495
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| Date: | Monday 4 December 1944 |
| Time: | |
| Type: |  North American P-51B Mustang |
| Owner/operator: | 26th FSqn /51st FGp USAAF |
| Registration: | 42-106518 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | east of Lang Chiai -
 Vietnam
|
| Phase: | Combat |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | |
2nd Lt George Gamble of 26th FS, 51st FG, a former baseball outfield in Minor League, was killed on 4 December 1944 when he was shot down in French Indo-China (now Vietnam).
George E Gamble Jr was born in 1916 in Monroe County, New York. He signed with the Sydney Mines team of the Cape Breton Colliery League in 1939, a four-team league at the heart of the hard-nosed coal mining community of Nova Scotia in Eastern Canada. It was a pretty rough league and the local miners were diehard fans. A number of times the Princess Colliery failed to operate because most of the miners were at the ballgame. And the miners didn’t like their team losing - the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had to rescue umpires on a number of occasions at Brown Street Park. Gamble hit .305 for the Miners and drove in 22 runs. In 1938 he joined the Rome Colonels of the Canadian-American League where he batted just .178 in 14 games.
Gamble entered military service on September 11, 1942. He served with the USAAF, earned his pilot’s wings as a fighter pilot and was posted to China with the 51st Fighter Group flying P-51 Mustangs.
On December 4, 1944, flying his 29th mission out of Kunming, Second Lieutenant Gamble was strafing a Japanese locomotive east of Lang Chiai in French Indo-China when his P-51B-10 42-106518 was caught in the explosion caused by a hit on the locomotive. The P-51 crashed almost immediately killing George Gamble.
Sources:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120610192938/http://www.baseballinwartime.com/in_memoriam/gamble_george.htm
http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/AARmonthly/Dec1944O.htm
http://www.mapmonde.org/asia/vietnam/tinh-cao-bang/lang-chai-1577763/
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 04-Dec-2017 10:14 | Laurent Rizzotti | Added |
| 13-Feb-2020 18:50 | Iwosh | Updated [Operator, Operator] |
| 23-Jan-2021 17:56 | Anon. | Updated [Operator, Operator] |
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