Staff Sergeant Jack W. Platz 37701365 MIA KIA

Staff Sergeant Jack W. Platz 37701365 MIA KIA US Army Air Corps. Born 21 February 1923 in Rocky Ford, Colorado. He attended high school in Moffat, Colorado, and was a well driller prior to entering service on 29 June 1943, at the age of 20. He received is preliminary training at Las Vegas, Nevada, Army Air Field; and served in the Southwest Pacific Area with the 320th Bomb Squadron, 90th Bomb Group, the famed “Jolly Rogers” Liberator bombardment group of the Fifth Air Force. It was the Fifth Air Force around which United States air strength in the Southwest Pacific was built, and which developed the low level skip-bombing tactics so highly effective against Japanese surface targets. As a B-24 aerial gunner, Sergeant Platz flew in the Fifth Air Force’s punishing raids against enemy objectives in the Philippines, Formosa, Netherlands East Indies, and Indo-China, neutralizing air fields and transportation facilities. He also took part in the Fifth’s bombardment support of the Borneo invasion after putting the oil center of Balfikpapan out of action, thereby eliminating the Dutch East Indies as a staging area for enemy reinforcement of the Philippines; and after the Fifth acquired bases in the Southern Philippines, followed with the concentrated hammering of objectives on Luzon and the reduction of Corregidor (PTO). On 20 June 1945 his plane ran out of fuel over Luzon after bucking through a heavy storm on returning from a mission, and the crew was ordered to bail out. Staff Sergeant Platz was not heard from again and was declared missing as of that date. He died at the age of 22. He was Awarded the Purple Heart Medal (PHM).He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Ora W. Platz of Moffat, Colorado. 

 

Source:

1- THE FIGHTING MEN OF Colorado – Asiatic-Pacific Theater World War Two – 1948

2- https://aad.archives.gov/aad/record-detail.jsp?dt=893&mtch=1&cat=all&tf=F&q=Jack+W.+Platz&bc=sd&rpp=10&pg=1&rid=6868377