World War II Flight Training Museum and
63rd AAF Flying Training Detachment
Douglas, Georgia
William Troy Church
William Troy Church
Theater: European
Highest rank: Captain (awarded posthumously)
Born: July 25, 1923
Died: Sept. 22, 1944First Lieutenant William Troy Church, 0-802251, son of Mr. Dennis A. Church, 1040 Mayflower Road, Ft. Pierce, Fla., was missing in action after a motor truck and train strafing mission between Nis and Cuprija, Yugoslavia. Very tall, slim, modest to the point of shyness, he was popular and liked by enlisted men and officers. He had volunteered to continue flying after completing Fifty missions and was lost on his seventy-fourth mission. Two FW-190's and one Me-109 were credited to his account and he wore the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with nine Oak Lead Clusters. Lieutenant Infanti last saw him bail out at one hundred fifty feet and then lost sight of him. Judging from past cases he might well still be alive.
From The 14th Fighter Group in World War II by John W. Lambert:
2nd Lt. Sterling Brubaker recalls his introduction to the 48th Squadron:
"On a cold, wet, and dreary evening I was ushered into a tent and pointed to a bunk. A wool-lined leather flight hat lay on the bunk. I glanced around to the other silent occupants of the tent, barely discernible in the dim light. 'Does that hat belong to any of you?' Silence, bordering, I thought, on hostility. I soon learned that the hat belonged to the recent occupant of that bunk, a popular and well respected pilot named Church, who had recently been killed.
Their conscious loss and anger over that loss was being played out as resentment that I should take his place. Within a few weeks two of many three tent-mates vanished over German territory, and when the third spent a night at an emergency field off the Yugoslav coast, I began to get a bit superstitious about that particular tent. It seemed to be jinxed."