VOORHIES, DONALD

Donald Voorhies

Army Air Force

Yaphank

Donald Voorhies was born on May 27, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York to Howard Wyckoff Voorhies and Cornelia Ellen (Stillwell) Voorhies.

He served in the Army Air Force.

He was drafted on April 4, 1942 in Yaphank and sent to Camp Upton after induction. After several days of testing, he was assigned to the Army Air Force and sent by train to Cochran Field in Macon, Georgia for further training. Due to his previous schooling in radio, he was assigned to a communications group where he learned control tower operations and taught radio and Morse code. After making Technical Sergeant on September 1, 1942 in Alabama, he returned to Cochran Field and was placed in charge of a detachment of the 4th Communication Squadron.

He was sent to the Pacific on December 1, 1944 as part of the AACS (Army Airways Communication System), where he served in combat zones, mainly with fighter and reconnaissance squadrons, as the Allied Forces island hopped across the Pacific. Some of the islands he saw duty on were Watki, Biak, Hellandia, Tacloben, and Leyte. He and other AACS personnel were staged on various islands in the Philippines for the anticipated invasion of the Japanese home islands. The Army Air Force personnel were aware that atomic bombs had been dropped. He was on duty in the control tower (and apparently the only at his field listening to a radio) when an Armed Forces Radio broadcast broke though the normal aircraft chatter saying that Japan had unconditionally surrendered.

He was discharge on December 31, 1945 in New Jersey.

- Written by,

Don Voorhies, Jr.

Feb. 2006