p38 pilot

Info

My uncle of the 449 became an accountant and worked for a bank. When Korea came he activated his reserve commission and was assigned to a b29 sq, at March AFB. He missed Korea but stayed in and retired a full bull.

His name will be amongst the 20,000-odd US MIAs from the last days of WWII.

(A little bit of history…) It is such a small thing but many former PoWs returning from Russia passed on the names of others they had been locked up with as a way to let their next of kin know they were on their way home; yet lots of them never turned up. The Soviets never announced how many former prisoners and evaders had made it across the eastern front line, merely that – at some point – there were no more allied personnel to return.
But there were allied military prisoners in Russia; there was possibly one million former PoWs and displaced persons detained in the Soviet sector, as well as German prisoners who, in some cases, were treated better than those they had fought against. Indeed, when the former Nazis were released there were debriefs where they gave descriptions or names of those they had known or met.
Even after the Korean war there were frequent reports of prisoners being transported through eastern Russia who spoke only English. Some of the crews of spy planes or other aeroplanes shot down in the cold war and declared dead by their own side were said to still be alive by released prisoners from Siberia, even down to names and details given that could only have come from those men themselves. Solzhenitsyn mentions an English soldier, who cannot speak Russian, at the prison camp in his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and apparently passed on the names of others he met after being deported from Russia in 1974.

The western allies returned all those that the Russians asked for – former prisoners killed themselves at transit camps in Germany and Italy rather than return, and it was reported that many returning Cossacks and their families were gunned down on arrival at Russian prison camps. The Russians at first denied that there were PoW camps in eastern Germany or Poland, then refused to let allied military authorities travel to the camps to check on the prisoners; in some cases it was reported that only men who escaped as the Russians arrived made it home, whereas other camps were treated well and repatriated when it was safe to do so. Families at home, who had received confirmation that their loved ones were alive but being held prisoner were later informed that that had been a mistake or that they had been killed in the last days of the war, before or during liberation.
And that was it; our governments washed their hands of the missing.

This is a horrible, nasty subject in which no country comes out of it very well.

There is a small chance that the man you are looking for is still alive – about 80 Japanese former soldiers were repatriated in 1992 – although the chances of someone surviving to be 90-100 years old (or more) in a Russian gulag is, admittedly, very unlikely.

Thanks for the information. I didn’t know any of it. The 449 sq. was based in India although Tom Harmon, All American half back at Michigan in 1940, was shot down in China, My uncle didn’t remember the kids name because as he said, “people came and went. My uncle was vey proud of the 449 because, as I told him Air International reported when the 449 showed up It had established air superiority in 30 days.

Thank you for posting this. I have to reflect that we live in a good paradigm where something like this, whether fact, disputed fact or opinion, can be published. A post such as this in too many places, unfortunately even today, could cost you your life, or perhaps 25 years cutting timber or digging coal in the permafrost. Thank God for participatory Democracy, the free vote, the free press and long life to the Key Forum, comrades! Today my father turns 99 and he spent 2 years cutting timber for Stalin between 1940 – 42. There is no greater pleasure than listening to the chuckle of an old man when he reflects on outliving Hitler and Stalin, Mein Kampf and Das Kapital, and all the cruelty that flowed from it. I do hope that you keep digging into the P38 pilot. A single person’s story is often the only way of comprehending a cruel time, so gigantic that it blocks out the entire sky.

His name will be amongst the 20,000-odd US MIAs from the last days of WWII.

(A little bit of history…) It is such a small thing but many former PoWs returning from Russia passed on the names of others they had been locked up with as a way to let their next of kin know they were on their way home; yet lots of them never turned up. The Soviets never announced how many former prisoners and evaders had made it across the eastern front line, merely that – at some point – there were no more allied personnel to return.
But there were allied military prisoners in Russia; there was possibly one million former PoWs and displaced persons detained in the Soviet sector, as well as German prisoners who, in some cases, were treated better than those they had fought against. Indeed, when the former Nazis were released there were debriefs where they gave descriptions or names of those they had known or met.
Even after the Korean war there were frequent reports of prisoners being transported through eastern Russia who spoke only English. Some of the crews of spy planes or other aeroplanes shot down in the cold war and declared dead by their own side were said to still be alive by released prisoners from Siberia, even down to names and details given that could only have come from those men themselves. Solzhenitsyn mentions an English soldier, who cannot speak Russian, at the prison camp in his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and apparently passed on the names of others he met after being deported from Russia in 1974.

The western allies returned all those that the Russians asked for – former prisoners killed themselves at transit camps in Germany and Italy rather than return, and it was reported that many returning Cossacks and their families were gunned down on arrival at Russian prison camps. The Russians at first denied that there were PoW camps in eastern Germany or Poland, then refused to let allied military authorities travel to the camps to check on the prisoners; in some cases it was reported that only men who escaped as the Russians arrived made it home, whereas other camps were treated well and repatriated when it was safe to do so. Families at home, who had received confirmation that their loved ones were alive but being held prisoner were later informed that that had been a mistake or that they had been killed in the last days of the war, before or during liberation.
And that was it; our governments washed their hands of the missing.

This is a horrible, nasty subject in which no country comes out of it very well.

There is a small chance that the man you are looking for is still alive – about 80 Japanese former soldiers were repatriated in 1992 – although the chances of someone surviving to be 90-100 years old (or more) in a Russian gulag is, admittedly, very unlikely.