Throughout the globe, as we drive from town to town, many times we see an aircraft on a pole outside of a VFW, town hall, or park. Many times we take note of the aircraft, maybe get out to snap a photo and look it over. Something we don’t always think about is that there may be a deeper reason that this airframe is there. Many times it is there to remind us that at one time this town proudly hoisted on its shoulders a person associated with this type of aircraft. This larger-than-life person is a symbol of what this town gave to the war effort. The successes and sometimes loss of this symbol was felt by the entire town. The aircraft displays in these towns are the community’s way of saying “They were one of us.” In a previous part of my life, I worked to help restore and preserve a number of these outdoor display aircraft. When starting a project, the first thing I wanted to know was, “Why is this here? Who are we honoring with it? What is their story?” I would always work to get the veteran, if they were still with us, involved. If the veteran had passed, we would engage the families. While they enjoyed seeing the progress on the aircraft, the thing that was most important to them was that they were remembered, and their story was being honored.
The P-38L Lightning in the EAA Aviation Museum is restored to honor Maj. Richard Bong. Our P-38, carrying his markings of Marge, reminds us all that the top-scoring ace for the United States came from the small Wisconsin town of Poplar. He was Poplar’s conduit to the victory in World War II. The Bong family have been longtime friends of our museum, and we have had the pleasure of hosting them and allowing them the chance to sit in the airplane marked as their loved one’s aircraft. Those moments will always be special to me. Recently, I have become aware of another hometown hero from Wisconsin associated with the P-38. While he didn’t get the fame of some of the larger aces, his service needs to be remembered and honored.
2nd Lt. John Lindstrom was born in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, not far from Green Bay, on May 15, 1921. He was the oldest of six kids and known to his friends as “Jack.” His childhood days were spent on Greenhill Street where his mother would sometimes have to send him to bring his father home from the taverns he would perform in as a singer. The kids would spend their time playing catch with the father and didn’t always like it because their dad was able to throw hard. There was a reason for that. John’s father had been selected to be a pitcher with the Chicago White Sox and attend spring training in 1916. During spring training he contracted polio, and that ended his baseball career.
John worked his way through school stocking shelves in the family grocery store. After high school, John was hired at the Neenah Foundry, a factory that has been a staple in the area since its founding in 1872. On December 7, 1941, the news broke about the attack on Pearl Harbor. While many wondered what this would mean for their future, John knew exactly what he needed to do. In early 1942, John enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces.
At this point, John had not gone to college as he had taken the foundry job right out of high school. A college education was a prerequisite to become a military aviator. John was on track to becoming an aircraft mechanic; however, that was about to change. When America went to war, all of America went. While men created most of the armed forces, for the first time to this degree, brave women stepped out from their traditional roles for the time and took factory jobs building materials for war. Our Rosie the Riveters helped create what FDR called the Arsenal of Democracy. The need for pilots to take the controls of the massive amount of aircraft our factories were pumping out around the clock was growing. Despite the Civilian Pilot Training program being used in this country prior to the outbreak of the war, we still had a large need to fill for pilots. The Flying Sergeant Program was initiated in 1942 to allow high school graduates who finished in the top 50 percent of their class to qualify for pilot training. John tested and qualified for flight school. As he progressed through school, he started flying some multi-engine training aircraft. It would not be a stretch for John to think he was going to end up in a bomber or cargo aircraft. To his surprise, he was assigned to fly the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
He was assigned as a member of the 14th Fighter Group, 48th Fighter Squadron. This unit was first assigned to the 15th Air Force in Britain. As Operation Torch was nearing, the newly formed 12th Air Force needed fighter support, and they were moved to North Africa. Now in the 48th, John was about to see extensive combat against a formidable foe. John took his P-38 on missions to escort bombers aiming to destroy Germany’s ability to produce anything that could assist in their war effort. John regularly got into dogfights against the Fw 190 and Bf109 while trying to provide a safe sky for the B-17 and B-24 bombers.
On April 2, 1944, John was escorting bombers on a mission to strike the ball bearings and aircraft component factories in Steyr, Austria. He was flying as tail end Charlie in the formation, when an aircraft ahead of him experienced a mechanical problem and had to leave the formation. As John moved up, he received a radio call. The bomber formation was attacked by Luftwaffe fighters, and John turned his P-38 into action. Before the day was through, two Messerschmitt Me 109s and a Focke Wulf Fw 190s fell to his four .50 caliber machine guns and 20mm cannon. The headlines back home in the Kaukauna newspaper read, “Badger Flight Officer Downs Three Nazi Planes.” The local area had their hero to celebrate and felt that much more connected to the push toward Allied victory. Their hometown hero had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross with Four Oak Leaf Clusters and an air medal.
Three days later, on April 5, 1944, fortunes changed. That morning, John’s squadron of P-38s took off to fly cover on a target with a long and storied past: Ploesti. This center for oil production in Romania had been one target that the USAAF had struggled with on several attempts to knock out. John and his squadron fought their way into the target, covering the more than 300 bombers sent to destroy this valuable target. The bombers were able to score a direct hit and start their journey home.
As the Allied airplanes began to leave the target area, John’s P-38 was struck by flak. One of the aircraft’s fuel lines took a direct hit. John attempted to lean the airplane out to conserve fuel and limp the wounded aircraft back to base. Even upon doing this, the fuel leak was too massive, and he quickly became aware that he was not going to make it back. John alerted his flight leaders of the situation. They would stick with him until he was out of fuel and then John would have to bail out. As they approached the mountainous landscape of Nis, Yugoslavia, the time had come. The P-38 tanks were dry, and the engines sputtered to a stop. John made his squadron mates aware on the radio, and then rolled the damaged fighter upside down to fall out of the airplane and safely separate from it. He left the aircraft and dropped a few seconds before opening his parachute. His thought was that maybe that would help protect him from being shot at by enemy forces. What he didn’t count on was that his P-38 started to circle him on its way down and almost hit him again. The aircraft ended up making a hard, flat landing. He was able to watch all of this as he was descending in his parachute. He would later write, “Hanging there in a parachute, the world below looks small and you don’t seem to be getting any closer. Then suddenly, you hit.” John was now on the ground safe. Little did he know that the adventure was just beginning. One that would take more than two and a half months before he made it back to his base.
Just as soon as his airplane crashed to earth, local partisan fighters swarmed the aircraft to take any parts that could be used to fight. They recovered John and here he met members of the resistance guerilla forces who were fighting the Axis in the area. One of those partisans was Franjo Senicar, who ended up playing a major role in helping John get home. “He saved us from the German prison camps and led a group of us fliers through the mountains to safety,” John said, after the way. For the next three months, John fought on the ground with the resistance forces as they helped lead him back to Italy.
Like so many of our nation’s brave defenders of freedom in the Second World War, John came home and immediately got a job at the Kaukauna paper mill. He got married and started to raise a family in the peace that he helped secure. One day he came home from work to get a message from his wife that a call had come in from a legal office in Philadelphia. He returned the call, and to his amazement, it is one of the gentlemen fighting in the guerrilla forces with him. He had immigrated to Pennsylvania to work in the steel mills and wanted to know if John would sponsor him. John of course did, helping someone who had at one time helped keep him alive during the war.
Our museum is the proud home of John’s collection of artifacts, including official items such as his medals and paperwork as well as unofficial items like his diary that he kept while trying to escape capture while on the ground. These items help paint a picture of what life was like for one fighter pilot; however, they also paint a picture of what it was like for so many of our aircrew which fought in that theater. Most importantly, John’s collection is a shining example of one small town’s contribution to the war effort, and how those small towns all joined forces to defeat an enemy many thought was unbeatable.