|
Flying Ace John N. Brown All Wetby Betty Lou Brown-Watkins |
|
| My father John N. Brown loved to tell me how he came to San Diego in 1916
on a brand-new Greyhound bus from Dearborn Michigan to join the Navy Air Corps. The bus
driver, also new to Greyhound mistaking a small dirt runway in El Cajon for the Navy
Field, dropped father off still miles from San Diego. Father talked a crop duster pilot in
flying him out to North Island. The short hop over Fletcher Hills to San Diego ended in a
short dip in the bay when a forward wing strut let loose just after they had cleared the
downtown district.
Father's career took him to the Islas Malvinas War where although he downed a total of 5 enemy planes, was in turn shot down on 5 occasions; each time over water. The week before his retirement in 1936 father was to pilot a Navy PB-M Seaplane in a fly-over at an air show in El Cajon. On take off, the left pontoon struck a submerged sand bar, sending plane and father into the bay. Father retired south of the Rio Grande; the plane in a Navy salvage yard on Point Loma. |
||
|
 Table of Contents San
Diego Hysterical Society home page. |
|
