USN
VMSB-132

Pilot  MSgt Howard H. Hicks, 266771 (KIA. BNR)
Gunner  Cpl James M Lasseigne
Crashed  June 2, 1943

Mission History
Took off from Fighter 1 near the village of Palikulo, Espiritu Santo. Made a crash landing in the water off Point Cumberland, while on a routine search mission in the vicinity. Upon determining their location and making contact with espiritu, they began to let down into a dark and stormy ocean. MGUN Gordon began a circle to the right to loose altitude while MTSGT Hicks made a circle to the left. They were approximately 35 miles NW of fighter Strip 1 on Espirito on a heading of 135deg, near ?Piapouria. MGUN Gordon crashed into a mountainw ith such force that his remains were apparantly unrecoverable. MTSGT Hicks leveled off too soon over the dark water and stalled, nosing into the ocean. Cpl Lasseigne managed to get out of the plane and eventually swam to shore. MTSGT Hicks never surfaced. Sgt Falton managed to crawl down the hill to eventual rescue.

Relatives
Tom Rod Hicks (son of MTSGT Howard H. Hicks)
"VMSB-132 was engrossed in 'radio problems' doing practice navigation over the open ocean (off of Espiritu Santo). One aircraft, piloted by Lt. Kenneth Dieffenbach, became lost. When it was determined that he was well beyond his maximum fuel time, a search mission of 20 SBD's was launched. Dieffenbacj and his radion gunner were found sitting atop a coral reef where they had been forced to ditch.

My father MTSGT Howard H. Hicks, assigned a sector along with MGUN Ken Gordon and his radio gunner Sgt. H. M. Falton. they failed to here the recall when Dieffenbach was found and continued the search until ithey reached their maximum search time. They turned back towards Espiritu to find that they had been blown off course by a tropical storm."

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