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Nile Kinnick Sr. correspondence regarding his son's fatal crash, 1945-1946
1946-01-11: Page 01
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Naval Air Advanced Training Command HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES NAVAL AIR STATION JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA 11 January 1946.. Mr. Nile C. Kinnick, 1114 South 79th, Omaha 4, Nebraska. Dear Mr. Kinnick: Your letter of 31 December reached me several days ago. Since then I have been undecided as to the best means of getting the information that you naturally desire. During the war years we were forbidden to keep individual war diaries -- for obvious reasons. Thus when we no longer have access to official records we have only memory to fall back upon in the reconstruction of events. The old squadron -- VF-16 -- has been decommissioned since victory over Japan and I'm sure that all of the official records of that squadron are now buried in some warehouse among those of an infinite number of similar organizations. There are only two sources that I know of for obtaining the exact location (latitude and longitude) of Nile's forced landing. One is from the Ship's Log, and the other from our official report of Nile's loss to the Bureau of Personnel, Navy Department. In any event I will ask both the Commanding Officer of the Lexington and BuPers to try to locate the exact position and forward it directly to you. As for the circumstances surrounding Nile's loss the important elements, as I remember them, are as follows. The Air Group was exercising in the Gulf of Paria. The sea was calm -- an almost totally enclosed body of water, and the weather was good. The ship was at all times within twenty minutes flying time of several airfields on Trinidad. The.exact nature of Nile's flight I can't remember but it is irrelevent in any event. I had just landed and was on the bridge when we received a radio message from Nile informing us that his oil pressure was dropping. He was instructed via radio either to return to the ship or proceed to one of the airfields on Trinidad, if he preferred, but to inform us of his actions. He elected to return to the ship keeping us informed of his engine performance and position. We were in the process of landing planes when Nile arrived in sight of the ship only a few minutes after his first message and were thus
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Naval Air Advanced Training Command HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES NAVAL AIR STATION JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA 11 January 1946.. Mr. Nile C. Kinnick, 1114 South 79th, Omaha 4, Nebraska. Dear Mr. Kinnick: Your letter of 31 December reached me several days ago. Since then I have been undecided as to the best means of getting the information that you naturally desire. During the war years we were forbidden to keep individual war diaries -- for obvious reasons. Thus when we no longer have access to official records we have only memory to fall back upon in the reconstruction of events. The old squadron -- VF-16 -- has been decommissioned since victory over Japan and I'm sure that all of the official records of that squadron are now buried in some warehouse among those of an infinite number of similar organizations. There are only two sources that I know of for obtaining the exact location (latitude and longitude) of Nile's forced landing. One is from the Ship's Log, and the other from our official report of Nile's loss to the Bureau of Personnel, Navy Department. In any event I will ask both the Commanding Officer of the Lexington and BuPers to try to locate the exact position and forward it directly to you. As for the circumstances surrounding Nile's loss the important elements, as I remember them, are as follows. The Air Group was exercising in the Gulf of Paria. The sea was calm -- an almost totally enclosed body of water, and the weather was good. The ship was at all times within twenty minutes flying time of several airfields on Trinidad. The.exact nature of Nile's flight I can't remember but it is irrelevent in any event. I had just landed and was on the bridge when we received a radio message from Nile informing us that his oil pressure was dropping. He was instructed via radio either to return to the ship or proceed to one of the airfields on Trinidad, if he preferred, but to inform us of his actions. He elected to return to the ship keeping us informed of his engine performance and position. We were in the process of landing planes when Nile arrived in sight of the ship only a few minutes after his first message and were thus
Nile Kinnick Collection
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