Bruce Sundlun

Sundlun and his copilot Lt. Andrew J. Boles were able to bank the airplane hard to the left to avoid crashing into the town center and ditched it safely into a turnip field at Zomerweg 41 51.16878°N, 3.0989°W, south of Jabbeke.

Bruce George Sundlun (January 19, 1920 – July 21, 2011) was an American businessman, politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as 71st governor of Rhode Island between 1991 and 1995.

He was Rhode Island's second Jewish governor, and the only Jewish governor in the United States during his two terms.

In addition to politics, Sundlun had a varied career as a military pilot, federal attorney, practicing lawyer, corporate executive and university lecturer.

Sundlun was born in Providence on January 19, 1920, to Walter Irving Sundlun and Jennette "Jan" Zelda (née Colitz) Sundlun.

His grandparents were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants.

Sundlun attended the Gordon School, Classical High School (Providence) and the Tabor Academy (Marion, Massachusetts).

In 1933, while attending Boy Scout camp at Camp Yawgoog, he fell through ice on a pond and was rescued by a young John Chafee; and while in high school, he was a track star and excelled in long jump events.

Upon finishing college classes begun in 1938, he received a B.A. from Williams College in 1946 after serving during World War II in the United States Army Air Forces flying B-17 bombers in the 8th Air Force in England.

While still in college, Sundlun volunteered for service in the U.S. Army Air Forces Aviation Cadet Program on December 8, 1941, at Westover Field.

He was trained as a four-engine bomber pilot at Maxwell Field in Alabama, after basic flight training at the USAAC Southeast Training Center at Orangeburg, South Carolina, the Greenville Army Air Field at Greenville, Mississippi, and George Field in Lawrenceville, Illinois.

During overseas active duty beginning in June 1943, Sundlun served as a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot in the England-based 545th Bombardment Squadron, 384th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force at Grafton-Underwood Air Base.

On December 1, 1943, during his 13th bombing mission, his plane the Damn Yankee was damaged by flak during the bombing of Solingen, Germany, knocking out one of the engines and jamming the bomb bay doors in an open position.

On the slowed return trip to England, the damaged Damn Yankee was intercepted by a squadron of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters while over Nazi-occupied Jabbeke, Belgium, and they inflicted further damage to the plane causing its crash.

But after deciding that there was too much danger of capture or loss in the snowy Pyrenees, he made his way on stolen bicycles north-eastward across France and escaped into Switzerland on May 5, 1944, near Fêche-l'Église.

Before escaping into Switzerland, he was engaged with the Maquis in acts of sabotage near Belfort against German Army units under the command of Russian defector General Andrey Vlasov.

Once Sundlun entered Switzerland he turned himself in to Swiss authorities and was interned along with other Allied military officers at a hotel in Davos.

Within a few months after it was learned about his ability to travel in France undetected, Sundlun was recruited by Allen Dulles to work out of the U.S. Embassy in Bern under the auspices of the Office of Strategic Services in the early preparations for Operation Sunrise.

Later under the orders of Dulles, he reentered France to act as a bombardment spotter for the Allied invasion of Marseille in mid-August 1944.

After a brief service as a pilot of C-54 Skymaster cargo planes into Karachi, and over "The Hump" to Kunming after VE Day, he ferried bombers (B-24 Liberators and B-29 Superfortresses) from the U.S. mainland to Tinian in the Mariana Islands and into other bases in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

In August 1945, Sundlun attained the rank of captain, and left active service at the end of the war.

Despite ending his active service in 1945, he remained in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and rose through the officer ranks until he retired as a colonel in 1980 after serving with the 376th Troop Carrier Squadron at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, and the 459th Troop Carrier Group, Medium at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland He was a member of the Rhode Island Commandery of the Military Order of Foreign Wars, a military society of commissioned officers who served during wartime and their descendants.

In September 1948 Sundlun flew surplus B-17 bombers from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona to the newly created state of Israel to help form the Israeli Air Force.

He attended Harvard Law School, graduating with an LL.B. in 1949.

From 1949 to 1972, Sundlun was a practicing attorney.

In 1949, he was appointed by Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C., and later served as a Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General.

From 1954 to 1972, he was in private law practice in both Washington, D.C. and Providence, with the law firms of Amram, Hahn, and Sundlun and Sundlun, Tirana and Scher.

Sundlun was active as a businessman from the 1960s through the 1990s.

He was a pioneer in the jet charter industry in 1964 by being one of the founding members on the board of directors of Executive Jet Aviation (EJA), along with Air Force generals Curtis E. LeMay and Paul Tibbetts, and entertainers James Stewart and Arthur Godfrey, with retired Air Force Brigadier General Olbert F. "Dick" Lassiter as president and chairman of the board.

Shortly after incorporation in Ohio, Sundlun arranged financing for EJA by engineering a stock purchase by American Contract Company of Wilmington, Delaware, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

EJA initially began operations in 1964 with a fleet of ten Learjet 23 aircraft.

Several years later, a number of financial and legal improprieties were made by Lassiter including the purchase of Boeing 707 and Boeing 727 aircraft in violation of federal law prohibiting railroad ownership of large aircraft.

An order by the Civil Aeronautics Board for EJA to either dispose of the large airplanes or for the Penn Central Railroad to divest its $22 million investment led to the near collapse of EJA in 1970.

The company's creditors reacted by demanding the removal of Lassiter as president.

He received the Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters from the U.S. military, and in 1977 he received the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur from the French government.

Years later, on November 27, 1979, he was awarded the Prime Minister's Medal by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for his services to the State of Israel.

A monument commemorating the crash was erected on the side of the road near the crash site by the citizens of Jabbeke in 2009 and he was named an honorary citizen because his action saved countless lives in the town center of Jabbeke.

Of the ten-man crew, four were killed while in the plane, five were quickly captured by German forces on the ground, with Sundlun the only crew member able to evade capture.

Sundlun made his way across Belgium and France by stealing bicycles in the morning near the market centers of small towns and seeking aid from local Catholic priests in the evening.

After six months time cooperating with the French Resistance under the code name Salamander, he made several attempts to enter Spain near Biarritz, and later near Foix.