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MAJOR MARK KINCAID LEWIS was born in 1902, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Mark K. Lewis. His father was the Auditor of Passenger Traffic for one of the Pennsylvania Railroad, retiring in 1935, and had also been the president of the Maple Shade NJ school board from 1922 through 1927. Major Lewis was killed when the B-26 medium bomber he was piloting in crashed on December 9, 1941 near Fort Bliss TX. Major Lewis was a 1921 graduate of Moorestown (NJ) High School, and of West Point, in the class of 1927. Memorialized on the Merchantville NJ War Memorial, he may have grown up there. His father and two sisters were living in Merchantville in 1930. He served under General Douglas MacArthur and directly under Dwight D. Eisenhower while in the Philippines, where he was responsible for training Filipino pilots and flight crews. Mark K. Lewis' off-post address was that of his sister, Mrs. James A. Welham, of 29 W. Walnut Avenue, Merchantville NJ. He was also survived by his wife, Mary, and daughters Carra Lee and Mary Anna, who lived with Major Lewis in military housing at Langley Field, Virginia; his father (who passed away on August 1, 1945) of 49 East Coulter Avenue, Collingswood NJ, and another sister, Mrs. Katherine Bennett, also of Collingswood. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. |
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KILLED IN AIR CRASH EL PASO, Texas, December 9, 1941 – Three Army fliers were killed and four injured today in the crash and burning of a B-26 two-motored intermediate bomber just east of Biggs Field, Army Airport at Fort Bliss. The dead were Major Mark K. Lewis, Jr., pilot; Major David P. Laubach and Staff Sergeant M. A. Miullo. The injured were Major S. W. McLennan, Corporal F. J. Rizzi, Corporal L. H. Whitman and Private W. S. Tracy. A flight of several bombers was taking off when the accident occurred. Major Lewis’s bomber evidently developed motor trouble and the plane circled back toward the field but crashed before reaching it. |
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ORAL
HISTORY INTERVIEW General William L. Lee was a lieutenant in the Philippines from 1935 to 1938. During this time he trained Filipino airmen in their fledgling Air Corps. These fliers fought bravely in the face of overwhelming numbers in superior aircraft when the Japanese attacked in December of 1941. An acquaintance of Mark Lewis at West Point, they were close colleagues and neighbors in the Philippines. Present at the interviewer were Maclyn Burg, General Lee, and his wife, Mrs. Lee. The topic is the high number of B-26 medium bombers lost in training accidents due to problems with landing gear and a problem called "runaway prop", which would cause the twin-engine bomber to go into a spin and crash. BURG: Now you tell General Eisenhower in one of your letters that a man by the name of... was it Mark Lewis? Was that... MRS. LEE: Mark Lewis. LEE: Lewis. Mark K. Lewis. Yeah he got killed out at... MRS. LEE: El Paso. LEE: Biggs Field, El Paso......he and Dave Laubach. BURG: On a B-26? LEE: Right. BURG: And he's an experienced man Eisenhower had known? LEE: He was an experienced man and Eisenhower knew him. He was with us in the Philippines, and Mark took my job when I left there to come home in '38. BURG: I see. He, too, was killed. LEE: In fact, we got him assigned to... they got him assigned... my job before I left even though he was a Captain and I was a Lieutenant. And Ike told him they were wanting him but I was the boss until I left even though Mark was Captain; and mark understood it. He was a real fine fellow. And we were neighbors, and we knew him before we went to the Philippines. And I wanted him to have the job because he was a good officer. He was a West Pointer, too... '27 class of West Point. Real fine officer. Well, Mark got killed... and Dave Laubach... the second day of the war on December 8th {December 9th, in fact} of 1941 at Biggs field in a B-26. BURG: Killed also... LEE: Killed everybody in the airplane except, well, Steve.... oh, what was that guy's name? One officer and one enlisted man. There were nine people aboard. Two of them didn't get killed, but this officer was terribly burned... face and everything... and they did lots of plastic surgery on him and got him somewhat half decent. Let's see, Dave Laubach and Jew Lewis. We called him Jew, but his name was Mark. He was {a} dark complected boy. He wasn't Jewish but we called him... nicknamed him that at West Point. And seven... there was a total of seven killed. There were nine aboard. So these two officers and five enlisted men were killed. One enlisted man was way back in the tail. He was saved. And this Major Stewart McLennan... that's what his name was... the other officer that wasn't killed... oh Lord, I don't know how long he was in the hospital, and then after he got out they kept doing plastic surgery. I haven't seen him in years and years, But that B-26! |
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