WW2 South Atlantic Fallen - PBM-3c Mariner radioman William Magie, lost in U-boat attack

Aviation Radioman 2nd Class William Magie served with PV-74 in Brazil.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86252582/william-frederick-magie
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_PBM-3_Mariner_of_VP-74_in_flight,_in_1942_(fsa.8b08013).jpg

William Frederick Magie, Jr. never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.

If you have enjoyed reading the stories of the WWII fallen, Can you help write some stories? It's a big project. The more help, the better.  Announcing "The Stories Behind the Stars", see https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org. This crowd-sourced national project has the goal of compiling stories of all 400,000+ of the US World War II fallen in one free-to-access central database. We are going to need a lot of volunteers. Anyone visiting a war memorial or gravesite will be able to scan the name of the fallen with a smartphone and his story will appear on the phone.

He was born on August 22, 1920 in Opolis Kansas. His parents William and Zella (Pickard) were born in Kansas and Iowa respectively. His father worked as a farmer and later as an auto service laborer. William had three older sisters and two younger sisters.

He enlisted in the military on December 10, 1942 from Missouri. He ended up serving in the US Naval Reserves were he reached the rank of aviation radioman second class. He was assigned to VP-74 which was equipped with PBM-3 Mariners. This was a seaplane patrol squadron that operated in the Atlantic with the mission of locating German submarines.

In March 1943 three PBM-3c's were sent to operated out of Bahia, Brazil. The plane ARM Magie was assigned to shared creditor in the sinking of U-128 on May 17, 1943.

On July 4, 1943 ARM Magie was part of the crew on BUNO 6571that was lost during a night attack on the German submarine U-199. The sub was equipped with quad-mount 20-mm AA guns which were a threat to the low flying, slow moving Mariners with a top speed of 200 MPH. The PBM-3 went down 47 miles south of Rio de Janeiro. There were no survivors.

His cenotaph grave is at Highland Park Cemetery in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Thank you ARM Magie for your sacrifice. Let's Earn It for William.

This profile was selected at the request of Bill DeArmond.

This is one of the final 50 stories (12) to be written as part of this project which ends on September 2, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. At that time more than 1,370 men and women will have been profiled. The project will live on in an expanded program to write the stories of all 400,000+ US World War II fallen. Visit www.storiesbehindthestars.org to learn more. We welcome your continued support and interest and encourage you to help write some of these stories.

Last year on this date I profiled Normandy Point du Hoc fallen Andrew McCorkle, 2nd Ranger Battalion and his brother. You can read about Andrew and James 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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WW2 Fallen 100 is supported by

The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation

“Where Every Day is Memorial Day”

http://www.tggf.org

References: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP-40

https://www.vpnavy.com/vp74_mishap.html

1920, 1930 US Census