This Medal of Honor recipient jumped on a live flare to save his crew

The Vietnam Warfare was nothing if not loaded with ironies at each conceivable stage. The bottom-ranking Medal of Honor recipient within the U.S. Air Pressure was a working example: John Lee Levitow’s final second of reality was much less attributable to enemy forces than it was to his personal ammunition — specifically, a unfastened, reside flare able to subjecting him and his crew mates to a fiery loss of life.

Levitow was born on Nov. 1, 1945, in Hartford, Connecticut. His ambitions progressed from civil engineering to the U.S. Navy and at last, on June 6, 1966, enlistment within the U.S. Air Pressure.

After coaching at McGuire Air Pressure Base, New Jersey, and serving in a variety of stateside items, Levitow was assigned in July 1968 to the third Particular Operations Squadron at Nha Trang, South Vietnam, because the loadmaster aboard a Douglas AC-47.

Based mostly on the near-immortal C-47 twin-engine transport of World Warfare II, the AC-47 was transformed to a gunship.

Moreover, the plane carried parachute flares to gentle up the battlefield in assist of floor forces.

As a result of its operations have been carried out principally by evening, the AC-47 was often called “Spooky,” however was additionally extensively often called “Puff the Magic Dragon” after the Peter, Paul and Mary tune.

On the evening of Feb. 24, 1969, Airman 1st Class Levitow was serving because the loadmaster aboard an AC-47, codename “Spooky 71,” because it patrolled the evening sky round Tan Son Nhut Air Base when a name got here in that the U.S. Military publish at Lengthy Binh was underneath assault.

Hastening to the world, the aircraft’s pilot, Maj. Kenneth Carpenter, put the aircraft right into a banked flip whereas Levitow set the ejection and ignition timers on a flare earlier than passing it to a gunner, Airman 1st Class Ellis Owen.

As Carpenter circled for a second firing move, nevertheless, an enemy mortar staff landed a shell on the aircraft’s proper wing.

The outcomes, as described in Levitow’s Medal of Honor quotation, have been devastating:

”The ensuing explosion ripped a gap 3 ft, 1/4 inches in diameter by means of the wing together with greater than 3,500 holes within the fuselage. All occupants within the cargo compartment have been wounded and slammed towards the ground and fuselage. The explosion ripped an activated flare from the grasp of a crew member who had been launching … flares to offer illumination for Military floor troops engaged in fight.”

Levitow suffered 40 fragment wounds in his again and legs however recovered sufficient to crawl throughout the cargo space, seize a crew member and drag him away from the open cargo door.

No sooner had Levitow acquired the airman to relative security, nevertheless, than he noticed smoke curling up from the flare storage. He realized that when the flare was jarred from the airman’s hand, it had been thrown again throughout the cargo space and was set to blow up quickly.

Levitow crawled up the cargo flooring to succeed in the reside flare. After rolling from his grasp a number of instances, Levitow lastly secured the flare and, holding it underneath his physique, crawled again to throw it out the open cargo door.

The flare barely cleared the airplane when it exploded, simply far sufficient away to spare the plane and its crew from destruction.

As Carpenter introduced his battered plane down at an emergency airstrip at Bien Hoa, Levitow logged his 181st fight mission.

After his launch from the hospital, Levitow would fly 20 extra such missions earlier than being honorably discharged in 1970.

On Might 14, 1970, Levitow was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Richard Nixon, the primary enlisted member of the Air Pressure to obtain the award.

Levitow went on to serve greater than 20 years within the Division of Veterans Affairs and the Connecticut Division of Veterans Affairs.

Levitow died of most cancers in Glastonbury, Connecticut, on Nov. 8, 2000. His stays are interred in Arlington Nationwide Cemetery.