The story of Maurice Esters: Lt. Maurice V. Esters was forced to bail from his plane over the Adriatic Sea when his engine failed. Esters of Webster City, Iowa, graduated from flight training on May 28, 1943, at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, and deployed to Italy with the 301st Fighter Squadron in late December. On June 26, 1944, the squadron was returning from an escort mission when Esters, flying a P-47 Thunderbolt, broke formation over the Adriatic Sea. We were about 10 minutes from shore and he started dropping back, Lt. Charles A. Dunne wrote in a military report. I throttled all the way back, but still ran past him. I turned around to see him drop his nose, then pull up and roll over and drop away. Esters radioed mayday before parachuting from his plane. I circled and followed his parachute down. He climbed into his dinghy and released a green oilmarker on the water. I had no radio contact with him, Dunne wrote. I then became short on gas and left him in his dinghy and reported back to base. Maurice Esters was a very athletic man, and we circled him after he landed in the Adriatic Sea that day, Capt. Luther H. Smith Jr. said in an interview for the Fort Des Moines Museum & Education Center. He was on his raft and waved to us that he was all right moments before a huge wave swept him under. We never saw him again. Esters name is included on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial in Italy. According to a government database, he was awarded an Air Medal and a Purple Heart for his military service.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 16:12:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015