Frederic Cushing Cross Jr., US NAVCAD

Frederic Cushing Cross Jr. was a Naval Aviation Cadet classmate of my father in 1941 at NAS Pensacola. On August 3, 1943 Lt (jg) Frederic Cushing Cross Jr. with a crew of two departed Floyd Bennett Field, New York flying a Lockheed PV-1 Ventura (VP-128 Bomb Squadron) to investigate the report of a German U-Boat sighting 300 miles of the Virginia coast. Cross's PV-1 Ventura equipped with air-to-surface radar located the German U-boat, U-566 on the surface. Cross dove his PV-1 to attack the U-boat and in a hail of 20mm anti-aircraft cannon fire from the U-boat was mortally wounded.