{"id":27858,"date":"2014-01-09T01:38:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T04:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=27858"},"modified":"2016-10-01T23:48:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T02:48:26","slug":"two-famous-wwii-fighter-pilots-make-final-flights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/09\/two-famous-wwii-fighter-pilots-make-final-flights\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Famous WWII Fighter Pilots Make Final Flights"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 495px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.artcountrycanada.com\/krenzler-len.htm\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/images\/berlinexpress.jpg\" width=\"485\" height=\"388\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Len Krenzler&#8217;s famous artwork depicting fighter pilot Bill Overstreet\u2019s attack under the Eiffel Tower.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Two relatively famous World War II fighter pilots recently died.<\/p>\n<p>The first was William Overstreet Jr, who while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roanoke.com\/news\/article_378d4b12-7290-11e3-b390-0019bb30f31a.html\">flying a P-51 as a member of the 357th<\/a> Squadron famously chased an Me-109 <em>under<\/em> the Eiffel Tower in Nazi-held Paris, France.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Overstreet\u2019s most famous flight came while <!--more-->in solo pursuit of a German Messerschmitt Bf 109G flying into Nazi-occupied Paris. He maneuvered his plane beneath the arches of the Eiffel Tower, re-igniting the spirit of the French Resistance troops on the ground.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The second was Jerry Coleman, potentially more known as a baseball broadcaster but also a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/us\/former-yankee-great-distinguished-marine-pilot-jerry-coleman-dies-at-89-1.260649\">Marine fighter pilot in World War II and Korea<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After he joined the military, he flew Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers in the Pacific in World War II&#8230;In October 1951, Coleman found out that Marine pilots from World War II were not discharged, but on inactive status and that he&#8217;d be going to Korea for 18 months. He missed the bulk of two seasons.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Your country is bigger than baseball,&#8221; said Coleman&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The world is rapidly losing many of that generation. Regrettably, it has also lost much of the character for which that generation was so famous.<\/p>\n<p>You can read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2533373\/WWII-fighter-pilot-flew-THROUGH-Eiffel-Tower-dies-Virginia-aged-92.html\">more<\/a> of Overstreet&#8217;s story at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warbirdsnews.com\/warbird-articles\/wwii-veteran-aviator-bill-overstreet-p-51-mustang-berlin-express.html\">these sites<\/a>; via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maggiesnotebook.com\/2014\/01\/wwii-fighter-pilot-bill-overstreet-dies-chased-a-german-fighter-plane-under-the-eiffel-tower-in-his-p-51-mustang\/\">Maggie&#8217;s Notebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-layout=\"standard\" data-action=\"like\" data-size=\"small\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-share=\"true\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two relatively famous World War II fighter pilots recently died. The first was William Overstreet Jr, who while flying a P-51 as a member of the 357th Squadron famously chased an Me-109 under the Eiffel Tower in Nazi-held Paris, France. Overstreet\u2019s most famous flight came while<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[134,4560,5285,4561,149,4559,2,325,4558],"class_list":["post-27858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-air-force","tag-eiffel-tower","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-jerry-coleman","tag-marines","tag-me-109","tag-military","tag-p-51","tag-william-overstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}