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NEWS | Nov. 26, 2008

Paying tribute to a legend -- Tom Maloney

By Vic Johnston 1st Fighter Wing Public Affairs

Editor's note:  This article originally ran in The Flyer on May 14, 1993 and was written by then Tech. Sgt. Vic Johnston.  Thomas E. Maloney passed away Nov. 16 at his residence in Cushing, Okla. at the age of 85.  Memorial contributions may be made, to the Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, phone number is (918) 225-0644, in his memory. One may share condolences with the Maloney family at www.davisfh.net.

In May 1944 he became an ace, a few months later he was struggling to survive in German-occupied France.  The 27th Fighter Squadron remembers a living legend.  Meet...Tom Maloney.

He walks with a cane now.  Since his injuries in World War II his legs have never been the same.

His name is Thomas E. Maloney and he is a living part of the history of the 1st Fighter Wing.

Saturday Maloney was the guest speaker at the 27th Fighter Squadron's Dining Out.  He spoke about flying with the 27th and his World War II memories.

On Dec. 5 Maloney was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame.  Joining the ranks of Wiley Post, Will Rogers and Gordon Cooper in this elite club, Maloney is getting even more respect which he has never sought but which he so richly deserves.

The saga of then Capt. Maloney, of the 27th FS, starts just after a dive-bombing mission in his P-38 near Avignon, France.

By scoring five kills during the war, he became an ace May 31, 1944, and by Aug. 15 he had racked-up eight air victories.  On Aug. 19 he was already on his second combat mission of the day, his 64th, and last.  It forever changed the course of his life.

After the dive-bombing, Maloney's flight looked for targets of opportunity.  Repeatedly strafing a German train, Maloney's bullets caused secondary explosions sending debris and rolling stock higher into the air than his attacking aircraft.  One of his engines was hit.  It started losing oil pressure and he shut it off.  With an escort of three other 27th fighters he headed for the Mediterranean Sea.  His other engine began failing, and he was down to 800 feet above the water, too low to bail out.  He bellylanded the aircraft in the water.  Maloney said his P-38 floated "like a crowbar."  it started to sink immediately, even before it had stopped moving forward, almost taking him to the bottom.  The tall pilot squeezed into his inner tube-size dinghy and waved to his circling flight to let them know he was OK.  He expected a quick rescue.

Two ships passed him by.  He watched as flares were set off by the ships looking for him.  The inky black of the night and water shrouded him from view.  Hearing waves crash, he realizes he had floated near shore.  His plan was to get on the beach, bury his dinghy, and conceal himself long enough to see if the Germans were patrolling.  Once ashore he heard what sounded like a rifle click.  It was a mine; and it went off.

The blast gave him compound fractures in both legs and left several pieces of metal imbedded under the skin and in his left knee.  Chunks of his upper and lower legs were missing.  A piece of metal tore through his right bicep.  His face was torn by the explosion of the mine and burned by the powder.  He was also suffering an unbearable hotfoot.

"I tried to remove my shoe, but a piece of jagged metal had impaled my foot," said Maloney.  "My escape kit was still attached to my belt and I hastily undid it and used the pitifully small amount of sulfa ointment on some of my wounds, and then passed out.

"I had no reason not to think I would die."  Passing in and out of consciousness he managed to move on like this for days.

On the fourth day of his ordeal, Maloney managed to drag himself to a pool of water at the edge of a swamp, and quenched his parched throat.  by this time he was eager for human contact, even from Germans and he dragged himself toward an observation tower.  There he saw a German sign warning of a mine field.

"When I finally got to the tower there was a little cabin underneath.  The only thing inside was a box of mines and a hatchet.  I went back outside and found some baling wire and some boards.  I built a raft and headed towards the sea, but the route I took just dead-ended.  I spent the night on the bank and the next morning I decided to try to head back for the cabin.  I saw a Ford Model-T truck and six Frenchmen who were attempting to clean-up the mine-field."

He was rescued.  The friendly Frenchmen fed him.  It had been 10 days.  He thought the soup he ate that day was the best he had ever eaten.  Little did he know his stay in the hospital in Aixen-Provence would prove to be almost as bad as those 10 days after he ditched.

He knew no French, they knew no English.  The hospital staff had antiseptics but no anesthetics.  "They insisted on digging the shrapnel out of my legs and knee.  They would wheel me into the operating room where 10 to 12 people would grab me and hold me down.  It still hurts just to talk about it."

Maloney was determined to find someone speaking English.  "I gave one of my dog tags to a ward boy and he found a limey, an English soldier with a Cockney accent; he was slightly more understandable than the French hospital workers."  Three days after his rescue by the French he was awakened by a captain in the Army medical corps and given a shot for his pain.  The 21-year-old fighter pilot awoke in a hospital in Naples, Italy; recognizing a nurse he knew from Tunisia, his spirits improved.

Fellow 27th fighter pilots visited him every day the weather permitted.  On the day he was flown back home, a dozen P-38s from the 27th FS escorted his aircraft for the first hundred miles.

After rehabilitation Maloney was medically retired as a major in October 1947.  He went back to school, then went on to become president of his own oil and gas drilling company.  This is Maloney's fifth visit to Langley, "I kind of get embarrassed, everybody's so nice to me when I come."  

(A report by Col. Frank Pickart, for the Air Command and Staff College contributed this story.)