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Show ?fewton Pilot Wins Praise For heroic Feat After Being Wounded The remarkable story of how a Newton naval pilot flew for six hours after having been wounded in the face and blinded in one eye by an exploding shell, has bt-cn forwarded to Mr. and Mrs rarley A. Petersen by the war department. de-partment. Lieutenant Elwin Andrew Petersen, Peter-sen, 24, naval pilot of a B-24 liberator li-berator bomber based in Tinian, was the principal figure in the incident which occurred Jajiuirv 2. The co-pilot on the plane was killed by tire shell which biust in the cockpit of the bomber. Lieutenant Petersen received fragments of the shell in one side of his face and in one eye, but stayed at the conuols ic-r more than six hours to lake Ills plane and crew to their bjse. He landed the plane at night, and according to the naval repoi t, hundreds of service personnel, who leaned of his plight via radio communication, had gathered at the airport and cheered as he landed. Mr. and Mrs. Petersen learned that Lieutenant Petersen has been evacuated to a naval hospital in the Hawaiian islands where his eye was removed and from there will go to Maryland. He entered the service December, Decem-ber, 4, 1931 and received his commission com-mission September 18, 1942 at Corpus Christi, Tex. He spent 16 months in ' the Aleutians flying pftrol and then returned to San Diego, Calif., for special training. He has been in the South Pacific almost a year. A brother, Dennis B. Petersen, shipfitter, 2-c, was killed October 7, in a plane crash as he was returning from service in the South Pacific. |