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| Captain John Lukaszczyk was a C-47 co-pilot in the China-Burma-India Theater. The Morning Herald (Uniontown PA), 14 June 1941. http://www.miac47burmawwii.org/41-38656-b.html https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84554395/john-j_-lukaszczyk |
John J. Lukaszczyk never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
He was born on July 30, 1919 in Pennsylvania. His parents Frank and Sophia were born in what became Poland and Pennsylvania, respectively. His father worked as a coal miner and later as a bus driver. John had three younger brothers and a younger sister. By 1940 John had completed four years of high school. He was living at home and worked as a retail grocery clerk.
He volunteered for the army in September 1940. At some point after the war started he volunteered for the Army Air Forces and was trained as a pilot. John became a captain (in early 1945) in the 11th Combat Cargo Squadron, 3rd Combat Cargo Group. The 11th CCS provided aerial transportation in China, Burma, and India beginning in June 1944. Its main role was flying troops to the front and evacuating casualties to hospitals in India. Captain Lukaszczyk would have flown many dangerous trips over the Himalayan Mountains to China and back.
On March 4, 1945, Captain Lukaszczyk was the co-pilot of C-47 Skytrain #41-18554 on a flight with 4 crew and 23 passengers, including 15 female nurses. As the plane was making its approach to land at Dinjan Military Base in the upper Assam Valley in India, it made a turn too low, due to fog, and crashed and burned. All onboard were lost. This was the single highest fatality of American female nurses in WW2. At the time, it was the third worst air accident ever in India. In despair, the officer, who authorized the flight under less than optimal weather conditions, committed suicide. At the time of the crash, Captain Lukaszczyk had been waiting for his orders to return home to arrive.
His grave is at Sylvan Heights Cemetery in Oliver, Pennsylvania.
Last year on this date I profiled B-24 Charles Foard. You can read about Charles here.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
I created this video to explain why I started this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY.
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My God.
ReplyDeleteMy mom was there! She told me the story about 50 years ago. She could have gone on that plane, but decided against it. Her story is that they were returning from another base where there had been a party and that they were going to be late, an hour AWOL.
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