Edouard Jacques (1921-2013) was born in West Warwick, graduated from West Warwick High School and joined the National Guard in 1940 at the age of 19. In 1943 he became an Aviation Cadet and trained as a B-24 bombardier, earning his wings in Lincoln, NE in 1944. He married the love of his life, Marie […]
Edward Albert Johnson (1885-1949) was born in Newport, RI in January of 1885. He developed an interest in aeronautics and spent May-October, 1915, at the Curtiss school in Buffalo. He first soloed in 1915 and received Pilot License No. 32. He joined the Curtiss Aeroplane Company and became its representative in England. After the US […]
COL Russell Johnson (1926-2014), affectionately referred to as “Mr. Army National Guard Aviation”, took his first flight with his dad in 1929 and earned his private pilot license in 1943. He would eventually become one of the most experienced aviators in Rhode Island Army Aviation history.
Harry M. Jones (1890-1973) Described in a 1912 Providence Journal article as Rhode Island’s “1st home grown aviator”, Jones managed the very first air show ever held in Rhode Island that same year. He was also the first (and last) person ever to land a plane on the Boston Common. Jones was best known, however, […]
John J. Kapstein (1918-2016) is the only American buried in Moscow’s in Novodevichy Cemetery, roughly the Russian equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery. A native of Providence, he graduated from Hope High School and enlisted in the 103rd Field Artillery of the RI National Guard in 1934 by lying about his age. He eventually became a […]
Major Melvin Kimball is a World War II P-40 ace who was born in Providence and grew up in Greystone. He graduated from Hope High School in 1935, where he was a state champion wrestler. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1939, excelling in football and track. Kimball was one of the […]
Arthur Lasker was a World War II fighter pilot with the US Army Air Force. When the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945, many believed the war was over. Arthur E. Lasker, a young pilot from New York who was serving with the 36th Fighter Squadron, 8th Fighter Group […]
Leger was probably the first Rhode Islander lost in the European Theater during WWII. Trained as a gunner, he deployed to Palestine. Within two weeks of his arrival he was dead. Staff Sergeant Rene A. Leger was killed on August 9, 1942, when his Palestine-based B-24 went down during a raid against Rommel’s supply line […]
Raised in Providence, Harold Edminston Lemont, Jr. (1920-2003) was an aeronautical engineer and inventor who graduated from Moses Brown School, and Rhode Island State College (now URI).
Tiverton native LTC James Webber Lent, Jr. USMC (Ret) had the distinction of serving three combat tours in Viet Nam, flying three different aircraft with distinctly different missions. During these three tours, Jim flew a total of 842 combat missions and 949 combat hours, an accomplishment surpassed by only a select few US military aviators. […]
Lieutenant Colonel John M. Lepry US Air Force (Ret) (1917-2003), a Warwick resident, flew 101 combat missions in a P-47 Thunderbolt over Italy, France and Germany in 1944 and 1945. He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, five single action Air Medals and the Soldier’s Medal. He was born July 17, 1917 and graduated from […]
LT George S. Lima (1919-2011), a Tuskegee Airman, was born April 4, 1919, son of Cape Verdean immigrant parents who settled in Fall River. His father worked in a mill, while his mother and other family members ran a boarding house and a grocery store. When the Depression hit in the early 1930s, the family […]
Providence native Ogden R. Lindsley Jr. (1922-2004) moved to North Kingstown at the age of 14 and graduated from North Kingstown High School in 1939. He entered Brown University in 1940, majoring in Engineering. In January 1942 he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He trained as a flight engineer and as a door […]
Mary Ann Lippitt (1918-2006) was a descendant of an old and influential Rhode Island family that was very active in Rhode Island business and politics. In 1944 she learned to fly during a visit to Virginia, and was soon a skilled aviatrix. She worked as a flying instructor in Virginia and served in the US air postal service before returning to Rhode Island. She was one of about a dozen women pilots in the state.