All in the Family

It looks as if other members of my family might have caught the genealogy/family history bug. My brother Allen may be the next victim.

I've previously blogged about the search for information about my Dad's World War II military service. When I received copies of reports of two accidents my Dad was involved in during his pilot training, I shared them with my brother Allen, who is both a licensed pilot himself and an artist of no small skill. Allen called me a few days ago to say that he had decided to create a painting of a P-51, the airplane Dad flew for most of his service. This led him to do research on the P-51, which in turn led him to do research on the structure and organization of the Air Force (or Army Air Forces, as it was known during World War II). During our phone conversation, Allen and I compared our memories of Dad's recollections of his wartime service.  I recalled Dad mentioning that he had flown with the U. S. 9th Air Force in England for a time, but I didn't know anything more specific. Using the data in the accident reports and my recollection as starting points, Allen did some internet sleuthing and now thinks he knows where and when our Dad may have been stationed in England. I went back to the website where I first found out about the accidents and reports,the wonderful U. S. Army Air Forces in World War II site and posted a query in their forums.

Remarkably, this query has already produced results. A user pointed me to The Newspaper Archive website with a brief article about my father:

The caption reads: "Big responsibility is in the capable hands of 19-year-old Second Lieut. William S. Leslie, above, Birmingham, Ala., who may soon pilot a B-24 Liberator over Axis targets. Believed to be the youngest four-engine pilot ever to graduate from an army air forces school, lieutenant Leslie completed his course at the Fort Worth, Tex., bomber base."

The clipping is from the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal, Thursday, 25 February 1943, p. 3. Apparently, the story about Dad being the youngest pilot ever to complete four-engine training was run by newspapers across the country. We still don't know how or why Dad made the transition from four-engine bombers to single-engine fighters, and we still don't know for sure where or when Dad was in England, but we are searching for clues. As Sherlock Holmes would say, "The game is afoot!"

More About My Dad

2nd Lieutenant William S. Leslie
9 Oct 1943, Age 20
So young!

Friday morning I got a long-awaited letter from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in response to my latest requests for my father's World War II service records. My search was partially successful. It confirmed that I had indeed found his wartime serial number (0-668096) and it also confirmed my long-held suspicion that his complete service records, if they were ever held there, were destroyed in a fire in July 1973. However, the letter also stated that, "[w]e used alternate sources to reconstruct some record data lost in the fire," and included two copies of a Certification of Military Service that includes his complete dates of service, including a short period as an enlisted man that I did not know about. I am so very proud.

The date of his enlistment conflicts slightly with some other information that I have (ironically, also supplied by the National Archives and Records Administration which oversees the National Personnel Records Center), so I may have to look into this further to make sure the details are correct. Also, although the caption on the original photo of my Dad identifies him as a 1st Lieutenant as of October 1943, I believe he was actually a 2nd Lieutenant at the time. The accident reports I mentioned in a previous entry bear this out.

I Found My Dad!

Caption on the back of the original photo reads:
"1st Lt. William S. Leslie, 20 years old, Oct. 9 1943"
(Scanned image supplied by William F. Leslie)

This was a big weekend for me. I found my Dad.

Early Saturday morning I received a long-awaited e-mail from Craig Fuller of the Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research (AAIR) website that maintains a database of accident reports involving World War II aircraft. The e-mail contained a link to a page where I could download copies of two reports of two accidents involving my father, William Stewart Leslie, during his pilot training in World War II. The serial number of the "Leslie, William S." in these reports matches exactly the serial number on a set of dog tags in my family's possession, so I know this is my Dad. Now that I know for certain his rank and serial number and the group and squadron he was attached to at the time of the accidents, I can use these pieces of information to try and locate more details about his military service.

In the first accident, he was returning to Camp Campbell (now Fort Campbell), Kentucky after a routine cross-country training flight early on the morning of 15 August 1943. He landed about ten feet short of the end of the runway because the sun was in his eyes, and when he landed, the spindle supporting the left landing gear on his Bell P-39F AirCobra broke, causing the landing gear on that side to collapse. The board investigating the accident concluded:

Bell P-39F AirCobra with U. S. Army Air Forces Markings

Although pilot did land a few feet short of hard surfaced runway due to the fact that his visual judgment was hindered because he was landing into the sun at 0830 o'clock, it is not the opinion of the board that this fact would have been a factor in causing the landing gear to fail. It is a known fact that landing gear spindles on P-39 Airplanes are light and delicate. It is believed that spindle had Crystallized and cracked.

In the second accident, he was leaving Camp Campbell for another routine cross country training flight on the afternoon of 25 October 1943 when ice formed in the carburetor of his North American P-51 Mustang, causing a sudden and and complete engine failure. The official report reads:

North American P-51 Mustang

"After about 50 minutes of flying there was a tremendous backfire and engine failed. Pilot made crash landing, wheels up" in a farmer's cornfield near Scottsville, Kentucky.

The board investigating the accident recommended "that pilots be directed to use full carburetor heat when atmospheric conditions indicate that moderate to severe icing conditions exist," and "That WILLIAM S. LESLIE, 2nd Lt. Air Corps, Res., be relieved of all responsibility in this accident."

I'm relieved to know that in both cases, the investigating boards concluded that Dad did not cause or was not directly responsible for the accident.  A pilot is always ultimately responsible for everything that happens on board his aircraft, but apparently in these cases there were mitigating circumstances. A severe enough accident might have caused Dad to wash out of pilot training, which I think might have broken his heart. Dad loved flying.

I admire his persistence, too. One accident is one thing, but after the second one, I would have considered the Quartermaster Corps or the Navy!

Searching For Dad

William Stewart Leslie (1923-2005)
Dad!

As I've said before, I'm a rookie genealogist, but I do know that the cardinal rule of this undertaking is to start with yourself and work backward. Wouldn't you know it, the moment I begin working backward to the generation preceding me, my father's generation, I run into a problem--and a possible solution.

I've also said before that as part of this project, I'd like to know more about what my father, William Stewart Leslie (1923-2005) did during World War II. Perhaps there were some things he didn't want me to know, or things he would have rather forgotten. One of my great regrets after his death in 2005 was that I had never asked him more about what he did during those years. He would tell us kids funny stories, things that made the whole experience sound like a lark, an episode of "Hogan's Heroes," or a Boy Scout camping trip. I knew that he served in the U.S. Ninth Air Force, was stationed in England for a time, and flew P-51 fighter planes, but that was about it. I never even knew what specific unit or units he belonged to.

After the dedication of the World War II Veterans Memorial, after he died, and after the release of films such as Saving Private Ryan and The War, Ken Burns's mammoth documentary series about World War II, I resolved to find out more about Dad's military service. I wrote to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis twice in 2007 asking for copies of Dad's service record, but they were unable to locate any information about him. It's possible that I did not have enough specific information about him to locate his records, or it may be possible that his records were lost. The NPRC sent me back a form letter explaining that a fire there in 1973 damaged or destroyed thousands of records, and from the way the letter described the damage to the building, Dad's records would have been stored where the damage was worst.

In the meantime, I did a Google search for "U. S. Ninth Air Force in World War II" and turned up the marvelously useful ArmyAirForces.com website. Here, veterans, children and grandchildren of veterans, researchers, and military history buffs can meet in cyberspace, ask and answer questions, and exchange information. There I learned that the military service that preceded the current U. S. Air Force was known as the U. S. Army Air Forces (plural) as distinct from the Army Air Corps. I also learned about Craig Fuller's Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research (AAIR) website which maintains a database of accident reports involving World War II aircraft. When I searched the database, I found that "Leslie, William S." of the 15th Squadron, 73rd Reconnaissance Group,was involved in two training accidents near what was then Camp Campbell, KY. One of them involved a P-51.

At about the same time, my brother Allen discovered a set of dog tags bearing what appears to be a serial number: "0-668096.T 42-43" On 17 May of this year I submitted a new request for Dad's service records to the NPRC with this new number as the serial number, in the hopes that this would lead to Dad's records finally being found, if they still exist. I'm still waiting for a reply.

In the meantime, I'm about to order copies of the two accidents that appear to involve my Dad, on the theory that such reports would certainly contain his serial number, rank, and information about what units he was assigned to. I also downloaded a sample accident report from AAIR's database to see what one looked like. What I found there encourages me that I may have found Dad's actual serial number. The serial numbers of the officers in the sample report match the pattern of the apparent serial number on the dog tag: a zero (or possibly the letter "O" for officer) and a hyphen followed by a string of six additional digits. Even if the serial number for "Leslie, William S." in the reports and the apparent serial number on the dog tag don't match, I think I'll be one step closer to finding out about this hidden period in my Dad's life.