KILLED  IN  ACTION

On the evening of November 25, 1944, during the campaign to liberate the Philippines, the PB4Y-1 Liberator BuNo 32260 (ex-USAAF B-24J 42-109914), assigned to Patrol Bombing Squadron VPB-101, departed Morotai in the Netherlands East Indies to conduct a night bombing attack against Japanese forces.  The plane carried its normal eleven-man crew.  As the plane neared a group of enemy vessels, procedures were begun to drop its bomb load.  However, one of the bombs exploded prematurely causing extensive damage to the plane.  The damage was so severe that it was necessary to land at sea at night.  Six crewmembers survived the crash landing but unfortunately the pilot, LTJG Walton Killam Rodgers, was one of the five crewmembers killed during the incident.  Historical records are scarce concerning him but report that he entered the Navy from Massachusetts and was survived by his mother living in Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts.  The body of LTJG Rodgers was not recovered and his name is engraved on the Tablets of the Missing at the American Cemetery and Memorial in Manila, Philippines.

Submitted CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)

TRINITY COLLEGE 

Walton Killam Rodgers 

Class of 1938

0 bit pro patria

Walton Killam Rodgers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1915, the son of Ralph Bass and Elizabeth Killam Rodgers.

After preparing for college at Kent School, he entered Trinity in 1934 with the class of 1938.

Leaving Trinity in 1936, he moved to Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and worked for the Mersey Mills, a pulp and paper concern. In 1939 he joined the investment banking firm, F. S. Mosely Company, in Boston. He studied civil aviation in his spare time, and took flying lessons.

He enlisted in the Navy Air Corps in 1941, and received his wings at Jacksonville, Florida, in 1942.

After further training he was sent to the Pacific area. While bombing a Japanese tanker over an enemy harbour on November 25, 1944, one of the bombs exploded about ten feet below the bomb bay badly wrecking the plane amidships. The plane returned over eight hundred miles towards its home base. When it was within forty miles of its base the gasoline gave out. Six survivors were rescued, but Lieutenant Rodgers was not found. His death was confirmed by the Navy Department on November 25, 1945.