Warbird Information Exchange

I had some down time after my trip to the dentist this morning and was watching the history channel. They had a show on about the Neo-Nazis in America.
They discussed that the leader of the group during the late 50s/early 60s was a Navy pilot during WW2. Does any one have any info on his service during the war? What airplanes and where he was and what he did? He said in an interview that he "felt bad about killing Nazis."
His name was George Lincoln Rockwell and I read the Wikepedia article, it didn't have anything specific as to his flying experience during the war. Said he helped take Guam, but that was about it.

A little more...

George Lincoln Rockwell had come a long way from his birthplace in central Illinois, on March 9th, 1918. To be sure, his youth was far removed from the battlefields of New York City. He yearned to become a successful commercial artist, an ambition fulfilled when he won first prize in a national competition for the Cancer Foundation. But the Second World War changed his plans forever. Volunteering as a U.S. Navy pilot even before America's official entry into the conflict, he was persuaded to believe with millions of other betrayed Americans that Adolf Hitler was getting ready to take over Coney Island and the Statue of Liberty. Decorated by war's end for combat duty against German U-boats, he re-enlisted for the Korean War, rising to the rank of Commander. While stationed in Iceland, he met and married a beautiful Nordic woman, with whom he raised a family in the 1950's.

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

And just a little more...

Leaving Brown in the middle of his junior year in 1940, when it became obvious that the U.S. would get into World War Two, Rockwell enlisted as a seaman in the United States Navy in Boston, Massachusetts. By the outbreak of World War Two on December 7, 1941 he had entered naval aviation, and became a scout pilot and a fighter pilot. He served aboard the U. S. S. Omaha in the South Atlantic and off North Africa during the invasion. He was then sent to the Naval Photographic School for pilots and assigned to the U.S.S. Wasp, and from there went to the Pacific theater. He became a Commander of Forward Air Control Operations for Marine Corps assault troops. He was at Guadalcanal, Guam, and other Pacific hot spots. At the end of World War II he was commanding officer of a squadron in Hawaii, earning nine decorations.



Released from active duty, Rockwell attended Pratt Institute art school in New York, working part time in advertising and commercial art. In 1948, while still at Pratt, he won first prize of $1,000 in the National Society of Illustrators competition for a full page newspaper ad for the American Cancer Society. Although still in the ready reserves as Commanding Officer of a squadron in Washington, D.C. he launched a new magazine, U. S. Lady, for the wives of U. S. service men. In 1949, Rockwell founded the first big national advertising agency in the state of Maine. Recalled for the Korean War in 1950, he trained Marine and Navy pilots in close support of troops and then was transferred to Iceland, where he became commanding officer of a squadron at Keflavik.

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

It is interesting that a number of neo-Nazi, white supremacist types were naval officers. John Crommelin in his later years was a well known white supremacist. James Von Brunn, the guy that opened fire at the Holocaust museum killing a security guard...also a white supremacist and a naval officer.

Swede Larsen of Torpedo 8's racism and anti-Semitism are quite well documented in the book "A Dawn Like Thunder". However, unlike Crommelin, Rockwell or Von Brunn, Larsen's views apparently mellowed as he got older.