We recently lost a Second World War hero by the name of Bill Overstreet. He died at the age of 92 years old on December 29, 2013 at the hospital in Roanoke, Virginia. Captain Bill Overstreet was a Us Army Air Corps fighter pilot of the 357th Fighter Group in the Second World War. He flew over 100 missions during the war and shot down two confrimed enemy fighters. One the planes he shot down was in a dogfight in which he had chased the enemy plane following it under the Eiffel Tower! Captain Overstreet flew the Bell P-39 Aircobra in training in the United States. During a training flight he was forced to bail out when his plane spun out of control. During the war he flew the North American P-51 Mustang. His first mustang he affectionately named “Southern Bell”, but another pilot who was flying it failed to return from a mission. His next mustang he named “Berlin Express” because, they went to, “Berlin on a regular basis, so I named the rest of my planes, ‘Berlin Express’, said Overstreet. During the war he flew in the D-Day Invasion. He “is said to have chased German fighters so close to the ground that he had grass in his wingtips and barbed wire hanging form his tail” (Freeman, The Final Roundup). In recent years he was awarded the highest French Award, French Legion of Honor for his bravery during his service in WWII. Bill Overstreet will be greatly missed, especially in the warbird community. The sacrifices that he made will forever be remembered, by those who knew him and even those who did not.
Please see Bill Overstreet’s obituary for details regarding his memorial and burial services: http://oakeys.com/memsol.cgi?user_id=1204221
Also take a look at the full story of Bill Overstreet’s wartime experiences: http://www.cebudanderson.com/overstreet.htm
The Warbird Watcher 
[…] I said above, I chose to write about the P-30 because Warbirdwatcher published a post describing the accomplishments of Bill Overstreet. Most of his WWII career was […]