Trying to find info on 1Lt. L. R. Blackburn
I am trying to find any information on a pilot named L. R. Blackburn. He may have been with the 492nd Bomb Group but I am not sure. If so, he had been with the unit since it was still the 104th Observation Squadron, 59th Observation Group, based out of Atlantic City, NJ. in February 1942. A sailor from my home town of Leicester, MA. was killed in action on February 28, 1942 when his ship USS Jacob Jones, DD-130, was torpedoed and sunk off Cape May, New Jersey. That morning a 1Lt. L. R. Blackburn spotted the oil slick and survivors in the water and alerted a nearby Navy patrol craft which rushed to the scene and picked up the few survivors. I have not found any enlistment info on L. R. Blackburn on the U.S. Archives site. I have contacted the Maryland National Guard and they have no record of him. He does not appear on the burial records of the ABMC or the Veterans Administration either. All I know is that he was the pilot that morning in February 1942 and I know the lineage of the 104th Observation Squadron to the 517th Bomb Squadron, to the 12th Anti-Submarine Squadron, to the 859th Bomb Squadron. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Patrick McKeon