Sergeant Melvin J. Gardner
- First name: | Melvin |
- Middle name: | Jerold |
- Last name: | Gardner |
- Nickname: | Mel |
- Rank Doolittle raid: | Sergeant |
- Last rank: | Staff Sergeant |
- Service number: | 137783 |
- Date of birth: | 06 April 1920 |
- Place of birth: | Mesa, Arizona |
- Date of death: | 03 June 1942 |
- Place of death: | Myanmar former Burma, Birma |
- Place of the cemetery: | Tablets of the Missing at the Manilla |
- Name of the cemetery: | American Cemetery in Manilla, Philipinnes |
Additional info
Melvin Jerold Gardner was born on 6 April 1920, in Mesa, Arizona. His father was William Clark Gardner and his mother, Martha Alice Willis. The couple had 8 children. 5 daughters and three sons.
William Clark Gardner
Martha Alice Willis
Melvin was the second oldest. His brother Maurice was the oldest.
Melvin was a Mormon.
He attended the Union High School in Snowflake Arizona and graduated in 1938. He went to Linden elementary school earlier. Melvin was an active boyscout. He was interested in sports and he had a girlfriend named Virginia Harmon but they never married.
The family lived in Rantoul Township, Champaign, Illinois in 1940 and Supervisorial District 3, Navajo, Arizona . Melvin registered for military service in 1939. He died on 3 June 1942, in Myanmar, at the age of 22, and was buried in Taylor, Navajo, Arizona, United States. (remembrance plate)
Melvin Gardner later, after the Tokyo Raid, served as a gunner on a B-25C bomber assigned to the 11th Bombardment Squadron. On June 3, 1942 he took part in a flight of six B-25s from Dinjan, India to attack Lashio, Burma and then proceed over the Himalayas to a base in Kunming, China. The raid on Lashio was successful and the flight withdrew on course to Kunming at 10,000 feet in a thick overcast.
Melvin Jerold Garner (right) in China after bombing Japan and bailing out above China with Crew 11.
Suddenly, Gardner's and two other planes crashed into the side of a mountain. The others barely missed hitting the ground after pulling up sharply. Duquette (Crew 12) Gardner (Crew 11) and McCurl (Crew 05) died on the same day in the same accident on the same spot.
Because his body was never recovered, Gardner is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing in Manilla, Philippines. He is also memorialized alongside his parents at Taylor Cemetery in Taylor Arizona. His brother Kenneth is also MIA during World War 2 and that since 7 Februari 1943 at the age of 19.
His brother Kenneth L. Gardner was K.I.A. on 7 February 1943, in Naples, Campania, Italy, at the age of 19, and was buried in North Africa American Cemetery, Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia.
Kenneth L. Gardner
Below you see a picture of his father with his three sons. Maurice, Melvin and Kenneth Gardner.
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The Heroes of Doolittle's raid on Japan in april 1942
by Mr. Geert Rottiers
The book will be available soon.
