The beginning…
Ed Poscavage
Final answer – P-47 D?
My tribute to Ed Poscavage
Ed Poscavage’s story had to be told. This is why Joe Palladino wrote it, and then shared it with me. How Joe and I met is through a comment he made on my blog Our Ancestors. His wife and I were related.
Genealogy is another of my passion.
There is no information about how Ed Poscavage’s P-47 D looked like. It might have been a P-47 M. I have no way to tell.
I decided to paint it using this photo which I colorized.
Ed Poscavage joined the Air Force in July 1944 according to his RCAF discharge papers. I have no further information about his transition from a Hawker Hurricane and the P-47 D, and when he was posted with 366 Fighter Squadron which sported orange tails!
P-47 M
P-47 M
Intermission – From the Hurricane to the P-47 D
This was in the draft section of the blog I had created in 2016 for Ed Poscavage. My interest was rekindled during the last Memorial Day which remembers the Fallen in the United States. Ed Poscavage was an American who enlisted in the RCAF after being washed out as a cadet in the US.
R.C.A.F.
RECORD OF SERVICE
POSCAVAGE, Edmund William (J26132)
Place & Date of Enlistment:
Windsor, Ontario – 21 January 1942
Postings:
No. 1 Service Flying Training School, Camp Borden, Ontario – on Appointment
Eastern Air Command, Halifax, Nova Scotia – 14 May 1943
No. 126 Squadron, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia – 17 May 1943
R.C.A.F. Station, Goose Bay, Labrador -27 July 1943
No. 129 Squadron, Bagotville, Quebec – 15 October 1943
No. 129 Squadron, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia – 31 December 1943
Rank – Reclassifications Appointments & Promotions:
AC2 21 January 1942 (Aircraftman Second Class)
LAC 17 July 1942 (Leading Aircraftman)
T/Sgt. (Pd) 30 April 1942 (Temporary Sergeant (Pending)
P/O 30 April 1943 (Pilot Officer)
T/F/O (Pd) 30 0ctober 1943 (Temporary Flying Officer (Pending)
Pay-Remustering & Classification:
P or O “S” 21 Januany 1942 (Pilot or Observer)
Aircrew I.T.S. 26 June 1942 (I.T.S. = Initial Training School)
Airman Pilot “S” 17 July 1942
Airman Pilot “SG” 30 April 1943
(SR) G.L. Pilot 30 April 1943
Service Courses:
Initial Training Course no. 54 at Toronto, Ontario,
from 25 May 1942 to 17 July 1942 Passed 79%
Elementary Flying Training course no. 63 at Oshawa, Ontario,
from 31 August 1942 to 23 October 1942
Passed 72.3%
Service Flying Training Course no. 70 at Camp Borden, Ontario,
from 7 December 1942 to 30 April 1943
Passed 72.17%
Mentions and & Awards:
Pilot’s Flving Badge, 30 April 1943
C.V.S.M 15 July 1944 (C.V.S.M = Canadian Volunteer Service Medal)
Punishments:
nil
Date 3 June 1944
CERTIFIED TRUE EXTRACT
(T.K. McDougall ) Group Captain
R.C.A.F. RECORD DIVISION
Ed Poscavage probably crossed the U.S. borders in Detroit on January 21, 1942, thinking about his training days at Maxwell Field. Ed enlisted on September 5th, 1941, and was sent to Maxwell Field, in Alabama. Very little is known about the time he spent there and the type of plane he had flown.
Little is also known about his mishap when he crashed his plane at Maxwell Field. He most probably flew this type of trainer.
Vultee BT-13
And had this kind of accident…
Or this kind…
I guess we will never find out unless someone leave a comment on this post.
This is what Maxwell Field looked like in 1937.
Jake Gaudaur tells us how it was like when he met Ed for the first time in his life.
In January 1942, I reported to a temporary RCAF locale that was called Manning Depot No 1 that was located on the CNE grounds in Toronto. It had been the building where cows were berthed during the annual, Royal Winter Fair. Dubbed “the cow palace” by the time I reported. I would learn that the name was well earned. On the same day I checked in, I was assigned a bunk next to an American named Ed Poscavage who had arrived the same day.
Jake and Ed became what you call AC2s.
I have a little booklet given to AC2s that a veteran shared with me.
Being both athletes and football players Jake and Ed had no problems with this first part of training and went to No. 1 Initial Training School, the Eglinton Hunt Club, in Toronto, Ontario. Both were in Course no. 54 according to Jake Gaudaur’s memoirs.
That’s our next stop. He earned his wings.
Ed Poscavage was testing Hurricane 5407.
Source: http://rwrwalker.ca/RCAF_5400_5449.html
5407
Hawker Hurricane Mk. XIICanada Car & Foundry, Fort William
BW832
first date: 20 July 1942 – Taken on strength
Delivered to No. 4 Training Command for No. 135 (F) Squadron at Mossbank, Saskatchewan on 20 July 1942. Still with this unit when it transferred to Western Air Command, and moved to RCAF Station Patricia Bay, BC on 1 October 1942. To stored reserve with No. 3 Training Command 4 August to 20 November 1944. Transferred from No. 3 TC to No. 1 Air Command on 15 January 1945. To stored reserve with Eastern Air Command on 27 June 1945. Available for disposal at Mount Pleasant, PEI from 27 November 1945, when it had 476:45 airframe time.
last date: 30 June 1947 – Struck off, to War Assets Corporation for sale.
We can only imagine Ed in the cockpit of 5405…
Work in progress – P-47 D and Ed Poscavage
Feel free to comment on the colors I have used.
Work in Progress – P-47 D
All my hobby supplies have arrived yesterday, and I just can’t wait to use my 1/4 oz cup instead of the paint jar.
I know how important cleaning my airbrush is. This is why I bought this and paint strainers.
I have watched a few YouTube videos, and I am confident I can master my 30 year-old airbrush.
I have hand-painted the red nose as well as the canopy frames.
I still have a few touch-ups to do before applying the decals.
Hard to resist… Yellow nose and orange tail
The temptation was there to use my Badger 350 airbrush once again for the nose and a paint brush for the tail. First I used the airbrush to paint the nose and the tail yellow.
I then mixed the yellow paint with some orange paint and I used a paint brush for the tail.
I then sent an email to Joe Palladino with those photos.
I think I should calm down a little and wait for this…
Reference
This is the only reference I have to paint my P-47 D in homage to Ed Poscavage.
His log book is nowhere to be found, and any reference on the Internet is what I wrote about him with Joe Palladino’s help.
I believe this is how close I can get using this black and white photo and information gathered on the Internet…
Imperial War Museum
Red spinner, red and yellow nose, and orange tail.
I will tell this to Joe when I send him my P-47 D as a gift.
Intermission – Little did I know back then…
Little did I know back then…
The year is 1959 or 1960. I was playing in the alley behind the apartment building where I was living on Davidson Street in Montreal. There were some Popular Science magazines in the garbage. I picked them up and looked into them.
The January 1944 issue was like having an epiphany…
It was my first encounter with the P-47 Thunderbolt, and there were lots more fighter planes I had never heard about except the Spitfire. In 1958 I was 10 years-old. So what does a 10 year-old kid do?
Cut the pages up?
Fast forward 60 years later…
Now I have all the reasons in the world to start building it in 2019.
Intermission – American Air Museum
While searching for information on 366th Fighter Squadron and how to paint my P-47, I visited the American Air Museum…
http://www.americanairmuseum.com/
Then I got thinking again about Memorial Day and Ed…
Click on the image above.
A search is never over till it’s over…
https://www.fold3.com/image/1/38859856
Major Sam Hitchcock CO 366th FS 358th FG P-47D IA+X
Intermission – The Story of Ed Poscavage
Posted last year…
Sometimes you find a story on the Internet that someone sent you the link of an article for you to read.
The source of this article was here, but is no more.
I had the kind permission of Republican-American to post the article written by Joe Palladino….
Athlete, war hero, legend
The amazing story of Naugatuck’s Ed Poscavage
Republican-American (Waterbury, CT) – Sunday, January 27, 2013
Author: By Joe Palladino ; Republican-American
The jubilant Toronto Royal Canadian Air Force Hurricanes celebrate their Grey Cup victory of 1942. The team of 21 is made up of pilot trainees, 15 of whom were sent off to war in Europe. Seven of them never returned. The coach, Lew Haymond, is in the RCAF uniform at bottom right. Jake Gaudaur, the future CFL commissioner, is in the top row, taking a swig of soda pop (probably). Naugatuck’s Ed Poscavage is slightly obscured in the middle of the photo. He is at the right elbow of Gaudar, with the large smile. (photo courtesy of Canadian Football Hall of Fame)
***
Could Edmund W. Poscavage be one of the greatest athletes the Naugatuck Valley League has ever produced? Is it possible that he is the best ever from Naugy High?
These are difficult questions to answer or even debate because most of us have never heard the name Ed Poscavage. Until now.
Here are facts for which there is no debate: Poscavage, a Naugy grad, was a Greyhounds football star and national swimming record holder who went on to play both sports at Ohio State. Poscavage later starred on a Canadian military football team that captivated the Dominion by winning Canada’s Grey Cup in 1942.
That alone would have made Poscavage a legendary sports figure, but there is more.
Poscavage’s greatest glory came off the gridiron, as an American war hero and fighter pilot who flew 13 combat missions over Germany in World War II.
Surely, the handsome, six-foot, blue-eyed star would return to America and become a community leader and a much-admired Borough legend.
But Ed Poscavage never returned from war. His plane was shot down on a mission over Gersheim, Germany in 1945. He is buried at the Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in France, and for seven decades, his remarkable athletic accomplishments remained buried with him. His name lives on only as an engraving on a monument that stands for all-time on the Naugatuck Green, one of six dozen or so Borough citizens who died serving their country in the war.
His relative obscurity changed in 2012, however, when Canada’s Grey Cup celebrated its centennial. Canada’s all-sports television network, TSN, aired a series of documentaries, called “Engraved on a Nation,” that explored the game’s history. One show in that series, “The Photograph,” focused on the 1942 game, and the victory by the Toronto Royal Canadian Air Force Hurricanes, a team made up of young Canadian men training to become fighter pilots, and a strapping athlete from a place with the exotic name Naugatuck.
As the documentary took shape, something remarkable happened. For the first time in decades someone asked the question: Who was Ed Poscavage?
Who was Ed Poscavage?
How is it that an athlete as prominent and accomplished as Poscavage disappeared from memory? One of Poscavage’s last living relatives, his niece, Linda Tortorelli of Stratford, explained that the pain and loss was too great for family members to bear.
“My mother and my grandmother never talked about him,” said Tortorelli, who was 2-years-old when her uncle died in Germany. “They were just too heartbroken.”
The family hid away the pain and sorrow, and never talked about Ed Poscavage. It was not easy to turn away from his legacy, though. There are scrapbooks stuffed with photographs and newspaper clippings chronicling the Poscavage sports years at Naugatuck High.
When Tortorelli opened the scrapbooks she was stunned.
“I didn’t realize he was such a great athlete,” she said. “We knew he was a good swimmer, but not that exceptional.”
On the football team, Poscavage was a star left end on a team that had stars too numerous to mention, like Borough icons Frank Edmonds and Dick Tuckey, who went on to play in the National Football League for the Cleveland Rams and Washington Redskins.
Poscavage was All-State in football in 1932, and played for the Naugatuck team that beat bitter rival Ansonia, 32-0, in 1933.
Poscavage was at his best, however, in the water, where he crossed paths with a couple of other future Naugatuck legends. He once placed second in a Cross Harbor Swim on Long Island Sound, and the man who was third in that race would later leave his own indelible impression on NVL swimming as coach at Sacred Heart and Naugatuck, James Farrar.
Naugatuck High did not yet have a swim team, so Poscavage, who by this time had acquired the nickname “Yama,” starred with the YMCA team, swimming alongside another Naugatuck giant, the man who started the high school team and for whom the high school pool is still named, Alex “Gimbo” Sullivan.
Newspaper clippings tell of a swimmer who was a state backstroke champion and who set local and state records whenever he jumped in the water. Most notably, on June 9, 1936, Poscavage broke a nine-year national backstroke record in a meet at Yale’s Payne Whitney Pool [dash] it was not yet named for Bob Kiphuth [dash] when he swam the 440 yard back in 5:49.2. Poscavage broke his record the next day when he swam 5:43.8.
The meet was part of an invitational series at Yale that featured college champions leading up to the U.S. Olympic trials in Providence. Poscavage was not invited to the trials. “He was ninth,” Tortorelli said, “and they only took the top five.”
The 1936 Summer Olympic Games were in Berlin, and are best remembered for the track and field performances of Jesse Owens. It is not difficult to imagine that Poscavage, at the time, might well have rued his missed opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Germany.
He then went off to Ohio State where he swam and was part of a Buckeyes Big Ten championship, and two second-place finishes in the NCAA championships.
It is mentioned in the TSN documentary that Poscavage played football at Ohio State, but the school’s sports information department could not find his name on an Ohio State roster. However, a Toronto Star article from December, 1942, mentions that Poscavage was a “regular with Ohio State” at end on the football team.
Tortorelli said the family never mentioned football at Ohio State. “I remember hearing something about a broken arm,” she said.
But in the Toronto Star story Poscavage details the depth of the top American college teams, where there is a “squad of about 60 men with first, second, third, fourth and fifth teams. With each position five or six deep.”
Poscavage, who also played and coached water polo at Ohio State, was probably on the football team, but deep in the Buckeyes’ depth chart and not on game-day rosters.
The Call to Duty
Poscavage graduated from Ohio State in 1941 with a degree in business administration. He had worked as a lifeguard during his summers, and briefly held a sales position with Sears, Roebuck & Co. But there was a war in Europe and Poscavage seemed desperate to get in it.
“He was the only son,” Tortorelli said. “He did not have to go.”
But go he did. Poscavage enlisted on Sept. 5, 1941, asked for the Army Air Corps, and was sent to Maxwell Field, now Maxwell Air Force Base, in Alabama. He did not last long in the Army Air Corps. Poscavage received an honorable discharge from the U.S. military after he crashed a plane in training. He walked away unhurt, but his dreams of being an American pilot were, at present, grounded.
In January, 1942, Poscavage took those dreams north to Canada, and enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). He arrived in Toronto with thousands of Canadian recruits, and marshaled in a building called the Cow Palace at the Canadian National Exhibition.
On his first day there Poscavage met and bunked alongside a young man named Jake Gaudaur.
Most Americans will not recognize the name Gaudaur, but he is a legendary figure in Canada. Gaudaur played on two Grey Cup champion teams, served as captain of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and later president, majority owner, director and general manager of the franchise that went on to win four more Grey Cup titles in his tenure.
Gaudaur was Canada’s Pete Rozelle. He served as CFL commissioner for 16 seasons, from 1968 through 1984, and is credited with pioneering the modern era of professional football in Canada.
Gaudaur is a member of the Toronto Argonauts Hall of Fame, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and the Burlington, Ontario Hall of Fame. He received the Officer of the Order of Canada in 1985, and in 2010, three years after his death, the Jake Gaudaur Veterans’ Trophy was established.
But most importantly, Jake Gaudaur from Orillia, Ontario, and Ed Poscavage from Naugatuck, Conn., discovered each other.
“They were best friends from moment one,” said Diane Gaudaur, Jake’s daughter. “My father always referred to him as his best friend.”
When Gaudaur met and married Molly Scott, a former figure skater, Poscavage was his best man. While training, Poscavage met a Toronto beauty named Cynthia Claire Dawson at, of all places, a swimming pool. Dawson was a swim champion herself. They married in October, 1942. Gaudaur was best man.
Poscavage and Gaudaur were two of 130,000 airmen who signed up to go to war for Canada. Gaudaur never got into the fight. He earned his wings, but Gaudaur was so proficient as a flyer that he was ordered to stay behind in Canada and train more pilots.
Gaudaur never had the chance to fight alongside his buddies in Europe. “At the time I was disappointed that the adventure was postponed,” Gaudaur wrote in a private memoir. “But I speculated that we would meet again in England.”
That meeting with Poscavage never happened.
Poscavage earned his wings in Canada, and that was his ticket back to the U.S. military. He resigned from the RCAF, came back to the States a certified fighter pilot, rejoined the Air Corps and was assigned to Europe.
The Photograph
The Canadian television documentary about the Toronto RCAF Hurricanes was called simply, “The Photograph.” The picture in question shows a jubilant football team as it celebrated the Grey Cup championship of 1942. The story behind that picture, and the team, is one of triumph, tragedy, joy and heartbreak.
With Canadian professional football players in active military service, the Western Interprovincial Football Union and the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union were shut down. These leagues provided the finalists for the annual Grey Cup game, so the 1942 Grey Cup was the first non-civilian tournament.
The military recruits trained under famed Toronto Argonauts coach Lew Hayman, who asked permission to pull together a football team. The Hurricanes were former college players, professionals like Gaudaur, who had already won a Grey Cup, and Poscavage, an American star.
The team of 21 players lost its first game, tied its second, and then won eight straight. Gaudaur was the snap back, Poscavage an outside wing.
The Naugatuck man scored two touchdowns in the 18-13 win over Ottawa in the Cup semifinal, and then the Hurricanes defeated the Winnipeg RCAF Bombers in the Grey Cup final, 8-5, on Dec. 5, 1942, before 12,500 fans in Toronto’s sold-out Varsity Stadium.
The tournament, the game, and the Hurricanes captivated the nation. The game was broadcast worldwide to the Canadian armed forces, and for a brief time at least, hearts and minds were turned away from war and death and loss.
The members of the Hurricanes completed military training in April of 1943. From a team of 21 men, 15 were sent to Europe. Seven never returned. One third of the team died in the liberation of Europe.
An American flyer
Once Poscavage earned his rank as Pilot Officer in the RCAF in 1943, he served with the Eastern Air Command in Halifax, the 126th Squadron in Nova Scotia, and at the RCAF Station in Goose Bay, Newfoundland.
His desire was always to serve the United States, so Poscavage resigned from the RCAF and was officially discharged June 3, 1944. He immediately re-enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was placed with the 366th Fighter Squadron, the 358th Fighter group. His wife Cynthia remained in Canada.
It took nearly four years, but First Lieutenant Edmund Poscavage was finally an American pilot. He flew 13 combat missions in his P-47 Thunderbolt, escorting bombers on missions in Europe, and attacking German airfields and installations. The missions had a horrific survival rate. As noted in the documentary, only one in four pilots got out of the war alive.
On March 11, 1945, Poscavage was part of a bombing mission on a strategic bridge in Gersheim, Germany. His plane was hit by enemy fire, broke up and crashed. Poscavage’s badly burned body was found two days later by American ground troops. He is buried in the Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France.
Poscavage died 10 days shy of his 28th birthday.
His devastated young widow, just 22 years old, moved to Naugatuck to be near the Poscavage family, and worked at UniRoyal. She remarried in 1963, remained in Naugatuck, and even coached swimming. Cynthia died in 1995.
Jake Gaudaur lost his best friend, and he carried that grief with him for the rest of his days. An accomplished artist, Gaudaur produced a charcoal portrait of Poscavage wearing his flyer’s headgear. Gaudaur kept the portrait in a private scrapbook. Gaudaur died in 2007, and the sketch remained hidden until daughter Diane uncovered it in 2010.
A trip to Naugatuck
Diane Gaudaur and her sister, Jackie, traced the histories of the young men who played in and won the most unique of all Grey Cup championships. Their work formed the basis for the TSN documentary, and eventually led to an emotional journey from their home in Ontario to Naugatuck to meet the surviving members of the Poscavage family.
Diane and Jackie visited Linda Tortorelli and her brother, the late John Blondis, in Blondis’ Prospect home in the spring of 2012. They brought framed copies of Gaudaur’s stunning charcoal sketch, and they listened to a record album of a Poscavage interview, intended for broadcast on WTIC radio. The recording was made days before his fatal mission.
“Being there, and making that connection, would have been so meaningful to my father,” Diane Gaudaur said. “I felt his presence while we were there, which is something I never felt before. It would have been as thrilling for him as it was for me.”
Tortorelli said that the contact from Diane Gaudaur, the many emails, photographs, and newspaper stories that followed, and the subsequent Canadian television documentary, gave her a new connection to the uncle she never knew.
“We have the letters that he sent home to my mother and grandmother,” Tortorelli said, “but all of this has brought him to life for us. I wish I had gotten to meet Diane’s father. I feel honored that (Diane and Jackie Gaudaur) would do this. I wish I knew about this a long time ago. Maybe it wouldn’t have made my mother or grandmother feel so heartbroken. It definitely helped me know him a little better. It changed my life.”
Diane Gaudaur said that Cynthia Poscavage called her father annually.
“She would always cry,” Gaudaur said. “I asked my father, ‘And what did you say to her?’ and he said nothing. This was not a chatty generation. Men were not over-sharing. And other than the teammates on that team, nobody knew this story. The is a new story for most of Canada. The players are all deceased. All that is left are the recollections of their children.”
Hall of Fame?
In 1972, Naugatuck held its first induction ceremony. More than 200 Borough sports luminaries have been enshrined. Edmund W. Poscavage is not one of them.
In fairness to the Borough Hall, an athlete needs to be nominated before he or she can be elected. When Poscavage’s Thunderbolt was shot down over Germany 67 years ago, his sports accomplishments and athletic prowess went down with him on that tragic day.
“When he died, the line was gone, and the name Poscavage was gone,” said a tearful Tortorelli, who said she will now work towards getting her uncle into the Naugatuck Hall of Fame. “He was handsome, a football and swimming star, he had it all. I wish I knew him. He had so much to live for. Who knows what he could have done.”
Ed Poscavage is the Naugatuck legend that no one knows. Poscavage was both star and hero, an all-state football player, a national record-setter, and a Canadian Grey Cup champion.
Hall of Famer? No doubt. Among the best ever from the NVL? I know of no man or woman more worthy of our acclaim.
My Forgotten Hobby II 