Sgt. Thomas Arlington Morgan
Rison, Arkansas
1919 - 1942
Thomas Arlington Morgan was born on December 23, 1919, to his parents
Charlie and Ethel Herrington Morgan in the rural community of Herbine in
Cleveland County, Arkansas. He was the baby of the family; preceding him
were siblings Martin (born in 1915) and J. B. (born in 1917). His father
Charlie supported the family by farming and daily delivering a star mail
route by horseback. The young family got along fine, but things were to
get a lot tougher quickly when in 1920 Charlie contracted a particularly
bad strain of pneumonia and died at the age of thirty. At only
twenty-five, Ethel found herself with three small boys under five; Thomas
being less than a year old. She soon moved the family into the largest
town in the county, Rison, to look for job possibilities. She supported
them for the first years by working for Mr. Callaway as a clerk at his
local drugstore.
Martin enlisted in the Navy in 1934 and served his four years, coming out
in 1938 to rejoin the workforce at home by buying a café downtown and
looking at schools to attend. He also worked at the local business of
Moore’s Wholesale driving a truck and making deliveries. J.B. quit school
for a time and worked, then finished up his high school in 1938 and looked
for further education. Thomas went to school, graduating from Rison High
School in 1937 and attending A & M College in nearby Monticello, Arkansas
for a time. He eventually decided his fortunes lay somewhere ‘in the wild
blue yonder’ and enlisted in the US Army Air Corps on October 23, 1940.
Although we can’t be certain, we think his basic training occurred at
Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri. After that, he was located at
Scott Field, Illinois (also near St. Louis) where he attended training for
radio operators. He apparently then went to Langley Field in Langley,
Virginia. In July of 1941, he sent his mother a photo of a B26 from a
magazine telling her, “Most of my flying will be done in the new B-26 so I
am sending you a clipping of one so you will know what I am flying in. We
have 11 of them in our sqdn. But they are painted with the new camouflage
paint of the air-corps.” At the time of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941,
Thomas was still at Langley Field. He was immediately sent to the west
coast (Muroc, California and March Field in Riverside, California) where
the crews flew antisubmarine patrols along the coast. He wrote his mother
Ethel often, telling her where he was and what he was doing -- as best he
could -- sometimes resorting to clues and encouraging her to “read between
the lines”.
Martin re-entered the US Navy in December of 1941 and was immediately sent
to Little Creek, VA where he was trained and served as Chief of an Armed
Naval Guard aboard civilian merchant ships who were delivering supplies
and personnel all over the world. J.B. enlisted in the US Army in March of
1942 and eventually would be sent to North Africa, Sicily, and Italy where
he was assigned to a military police battalion which processed German
prisoners of war.
From the west coast, Thomas was sent to Hickam Field in Hawaii where he
wrote back home, “Well, here I am, where it all started.” He also wrote of
the ground crews being sent ahead, and of the planes being crated and put
on ships in San Francisco to make the trip to Hawaii. After being there
for awhile, he and the rest of his group were sent to Australia to Garbutt
Field near Townsville. In June of 1942, he wrote his mother from what he
called “camp”. He told her that he liked the country and people of
Australia, saying “they have been treating all the Americans swell.” From
what I have learned and can put together from the known history and his
letters, Thomas was a part of the original Marauder group who took part in
the first bombings from Australia on Rabaul and New Guinea, although we
don’t know exactly in which missions he was involved. Ethel received
several telegrams during the months of May and June 1942 from Thomas
telling her he was “safe and sound, seeing plenty of action”.
Ethel did her part for the war effort (above and beyond the fact of
sending all her children to serve) – she applied and was accepted to
attend training at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in nearby Pine Bluff, Arkansas,
which was just being built. She wrote Thomas that she was “going to school
to make bombs”. She was just about to finish the training in July of 1942
when she received the dreaded telegram telling her that Thomas’ plane had
been lost on a bombing mission to Lae, New Guinea, on July 4, 1942.
Thomas’ family has never truly understood just what happened on that
morning in July of 1942. Ethel received letters from his friends and
officers with various versions of the story, but never any concrete
information. To the best of our knowledge, he and his seven crewmates
perished on that 4th of July in 1942. Ethel was notified at the close of
the war in 1945 that his status was being changed from “Missing” to
“Killed in Action”. Despite that, she never gave up hope, believing until
her death in 1984 that he was still out there somewhere. (She did go to
work at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in early 1943, carpooling daily with others
from Rison, making munitions for the war. Both of her other boys returned
home following the war. Martin went on to be the Cleveland County Sheriff
for a time and then started his own successful business. J.B. was the
Rison Chief of Police and then the Arkansas State Revenue Collector in
Cleveland County for many years. Sadly, as it turned out, Ethel outlived
all her sons – Martin passed away in 1966 and J.B. in 1976.)
Recently, the genealogy society in the county where the family lived began
the project of honoring all their World War II veterans by interviewing
those living and requesting information from families on those who were
deceased. It seemed a perfect time to do a little research to see what I
might find about the uncle who I was never able to know. Since there was
no living person in the family who actually knew him well, I turned to the
internet. I was pretty astonished to find not only credible information
about the crash, but also a photo that none of the family had ever seen of
Thomas and the crew.
Thanks to that find and contacting this B26 website and conversing with
Trevor Allen, we now know that
this is the story of Marauder #40-1468 …
On July 4th 1942 eight B26's were scheduled to attack the airfield at Lae
in the early afternoon. The plan was for Lt Krell to lead the first
formation of four aircraft, which included Greer, Stanwood and Hayes of HQ
squadron while Lt Kahle followed with the second flight consisting of Lts
Johnson, Nicholson and Nichols from the 33rd squadron.
Krell arrived over the target at about 7,000' with Kahle's formation
following some distance behind. Dropping their bombs, Krell's formation
held their altitude, flew easterly then made a wide right turn back
towards the shore in the hopes of providing cover for Kahle, whose flight
was about four minutes behind. However, Krell's bombs had alerted the
fighters on the ground, and they were climbing to gain altitude just as
Kahle's formation passed over the target at 5,000'.
Everyone felt more secure with the added guns, speed and tightened
formation. The Zeros lined up on the right and a little higher in order to
get into position for their attack. One attacker Flyer 1st Class Mitsuo
Suizu, seemed unusually persistent. Suddenly he headed straight into the
formation from the one o'clock position and forced the B26's to descend.
Krell turned slightly to face the oncoming Zero. As it passed over his
left side at a closing rate of 500 miles per hour, the left waist gunner,
Sgt Norton, sprayed the cockpit with machine gun fire, possibly injuring
or killing the pilot.
The Zero shot through the formation so fast that the other planes barely
had any chance to react. In a split-second Nichols the left wingman of
Kahle's flight, lifted his wing just enough for the Zero to slide under
him. Johnson, in number four position, had nowhere to go. The Zero dived
straight into Johnson's fuselage. For a second the Zero's propeller
engaged that of the bomber, then it seemed that the fighter hit the
fuselage and rebounded off to slice of the bombers vertical tail with its
wing. The Zero drew away, and for a while the battered fuselage flew
straight and level as if nothing had happened. The tail-less bomber
continued its forward momentum for a few moments, wobbled, then went into
a fatal spin until it plunged straight into the sea a minute or so later.
Splashes from other pieces of both planes dotted the surface of the sea.
The stunned airmen watched breathlessly for parachutes, but there were
none.
Excerpted from: “Revenge of the Red Raiders – The
Illustrated History of the
22nd Bombardment Group During World War II”(Eagles over the Pacific,
Volume 2)
Authored by: Walter Gaylor, Don Evans, Harry Nelson and Lawrence J.
Hickey
Oddly enough, one of the co-authors of the above book was a 1st Lt. who
wrote to my grandmother Ethel following Thomas’ death, Walter Gaylor. I
had hoped to contact him to thank him for his generous and kind words
which gave her much comfort. Sadly, I have just learned of his passing a
few years ago. Another person who was a good friend to Thomas was Hubert
Newell from Dayton, Tennessee. I had also hoped to reach him, but have
recently discovered he has passed away as well. I do hope that if any of
the family members of Thomas’ crewmates find their way here, I would be
very interested in making contact. (They were: Lt. Milton L. Johnson,
pilot; Lt. Lawrence I. Werner, co-pilot; Lt. John F. Daley, Jr.,
navigator; Lt. Philip L. Jander, Bombardier; S/Sgt. William C. Smith,
engineer; and Cpl. Vernon D. Huddleston, gunner.)
Time is short, I think, but I do hope that there is someone out there who
remembers Tommy Morgan -- for I’d surely like to meet them.
A marker in Thomas’ honor stands beside his parents’ graves in a rural
cemetery in Cleveland County not far from where he was born. Another
memorial honors him far away in the American Cemetery at Fort William
McKinley in Manila, The Philippines. Following the war, the people of
Cleveland County, Arkansas erected a War Memorial in the Courthouse Square
and dedicated it on Memorial Day, 1946. The memorial was sponsored by the
local American Legion Post who changed their official name to bestow
honors on two of their war heroes that year. It was, and still is, named
the American Legion, Hall-Morgan Post 83, in honor of a Mr. Hall, a
veteran who gave his all in France during World War I, and our family’s
very own hero, Sgt. Thomas A. Morgan.
I know from his letters that he was located at these places: Scott Field
IL, Langley VA, March Field CA, Muroc CA, Hickam Field - Hawaii, Australia
Rebecca Morgan Cheney,
Niece of Thomas Morgan
8/22/07
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B26.COM
