Francis "Gabby" Gabreski - R.I.P.

[AA SLF]

Francis "Gabby" Gabreski, Americas greatest living WW-II Ace died last night. America has lost one more of those pilots that had the "right stuff". For you Brits - he was at Wheeler Field on Dec-7,1941 and then flew Spits in the BIG airwar as part of the Polish Sqdn.

See: <a href="http://www.westnet.com/~ssherman/usaaf_gabby.html" target="_blank">http://www.westnet.com/~ssherman/usaaf_gabby.html</A> This URL has a great bio on Gabreski and the airwar over England and Europe.

Sad, sad, sad!

dAAvid -

[ Crashy - thread edited to fix the link above ]

[ 02 February 2002: Message edited by: CrashDive ]</p>

[solotk]

I'm so sorry, apparently, he was a real gentleman. It appears one of the regular contributors on <a href="http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org" target="_blank">www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org</a> was a personal friend, so he's pretty broken up now. But, don't be sad, Gabby's back leading the "Big Wing" in the sky, at least , that's how I prefer to think of it

Tony

[polzin]

And the BIG wing will be a P-47 !

. .6 or 7 years ago, the EAA Convention in Oshkosh honored the P-47 and pilots who had flown them. On the way home, Gabby was involved in a car accident. His wife was killed. That upset me, now this.

[Flatus Veteranus]

There was a quarter-page Obit for Col "Gabby" Gabreski in the Daily Telegraph of 4 Feb, including a picture of him with a P-47 "Jug". I did not know that he flew Spit IXs with No 315 (Polish) Sqn, RAF before joining the US 8th Air Force (61st sqn, 56th Fighter group). Nor had I realised that the US's top-scoring "Ace" scored most of his victories in the "Jug", rather than the more renowned P-51, although I knew that the "Jug" did good work in the right hands. RIP

"The Captains and the Kings depart..."