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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Colin N. Jones was stationed at Hickam Field, Hawaii on December 1941. He was wounded, although not seriously, during the Japanese bombing.  The day after Pearl Harbor he and 10 soldiers from the Hawaiian Department were notified they had passed the exam for flight school given the previous August. They were put on the SS Lurline that sailed Christmas Day 1941 and landed back in the US on New Years Eve, becoming the first returnees of WWII.  They were on their way to attend the first cadet class held at Lackland Air Base in San Antonio, Texas.

He later flew missions out of both England and North Africa in B-24s. In mid-August 1943 he survived an air-to-air collision with a P-47 flown by Bud Mahurin  before Bud  became one of America's greatest fighter pilots.  He was shot down over the North Sea when the rear of his plane was set on fire, due to a rocket hit. He lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen and was later told he was rolled out of the bomb bay. He was extremely fortunate in that his parachute landed him on the small, 3x12 mile island of Texel, which  was the last piece of land between Holland and England.  He was saved from being dragged into the water when his chute got tangled up in the vanes of one of the two windmills on the island. Three others of his crew also landed on Texel, but the other 6 did not survive.

He spent 17 months as a POW and escaped while being marched back into Germany, joining up and spending two weeks with Patton's 13th Armored Division before being sent to Camp Lucky Strike, France. He came home on an LST and was on leave when Japan surrendered.

Based on both his war and later civilian experiences, he feels that he has an angel on his shoulder that takes the lemons that come his way and turns them into lemonade.