Review of “What Leora Never Knew” in “Lightning Strikes!” publication of the P-38 National Association

Lightning Strikes! is a publication of the P-38 National Association. Co-editor Steve Blake’s welcome review of What Leora Never Knew is in the latest issue:

This book, written by a P-38 National Association member, is a follow-up to Joy Neal Kidney’s previous book, Leora’s Letters, which was reviewed in the July 2021 issue of Lightning Strikes. The Leora of both titles was Joy’s grandmother, the matriarch of the extended Wilson family of central Iowa. The author is her family’s–and a regional–historian who has also published two other books on both subjects, which likewise include Leora in their titles.

The previous book discussed the effects World War II had on the large Wilson family, and to a lesser extent on the communities in which they lived. Leora Wilson had seven children–five sons and two daughters. Her sons all served in the war, two with the US Navy and three as USAAF pilots. Tragically, all three of her aviator sons were killed while flying US Army aircraft–one as the pilot of a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber that was shot down into the sea off the coast of northern New Guinea by antiaircraft fire and another who was killed in a crash while flying a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk on a training flight in Texas. The third, Second Lieutenant Daniel S. Wilson, was a P-38 pilot with the 37th Fighter Squadron of the 15th Air Force’s 14th Fighter Group in Italy. He went missing over Austria on February 19, 1945.

Leora Wilson died in 1987, as her granddaughter Joy was still engaged in her continuing research into what exactly happened to her three uncles in World War II, and to their remains. (This reviewer, a World War II aviation historian, was very impressed with the author’s determined and exhaustive research.)

While the fate of Flight Officer Claiborne J. “Junior” Wilson, the P-40 pilot, was well known, that of the other two sons and uncles were not known, until well after the end of the war. There were some unofficial reports that Second Lieutenant Dale R. Wilson–the B-25 [co]pilot–had been taken prisoner, giving the family what turned out to be a false hope. That was never confirmed, but if they were true he was likely executed by the Japanese, as were so many captured USAAF pilots and aircrewmen. Dale’s exact fate was never revealed and his remains never recovered. He was eventually declared officially deceased.

The family initially also hoped that Danny Wilson had survived as a prisoner of war, since he had simply disappeared during his attempt to photograph the damage his squadron had done to the train it just bombed and strafed. Although his squadron mates did see that his left engine was smoking, he actual fate was unwitnessed by any of them. His relatives’ hope that he would turn up as a POW after VE Day was sadly not realized. It was eventually learned that while flying very low to take the photographs, his P-38 had hit a tree and then a pole and crashed, killing its pilot. Lt. Wilson was given a proper burial by a nearby Austrian community and his remains were later located by a Graves Registration team and reinterred at the Lorraine American Cemetery in France, where they continue to rest.

Besides being a sober reminder of the lasting effects of war on families and communities, the book is also an example of how those family members cope with unimaginable loss and grief, while commemorating the sacrificed of their brave young sons, brothers, and uncles.

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Steve Blake

Lightning Strikes!, Vol. 37, No. 1, March 2024, published by the P-38 National Association, page 9. The front cover features the Collings Foundation Lightning taken by Hayman Tam, as professional warbird photographer and P-38 Association Life member, at the 2018 LA County Airshow.