Clyde John Casterline was born 2 February 1923 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake county, Utah to Clyde “Cass” Munsey and Ethel Minerva (Nowers) Casterline; he was the eldest of three children; dad worked for the express company. Clyde registered for the draft on 30 June 1942 from Montana where the family was residing by the 1930 census. He was 5’10” tall, weighed 135 pounds with gray eyes and blonde hair; he had a scar on his left wrist and was working for Vaughn Ragsdale. He enlisted on 8 December 1942 (service number 19125203) indicating he had four years of high school and was working as a salesperson. Clyde married Bettie Sue Crow on 16 August 1944.

2Lt Clyde John Casterline (service number O-774017) was assigned to the 65 Fighter Squadron, 57th Fighter Group flying a P47 Thunderbolt “Balls Out” as a pilot taking part in the advance across Libya into Tunisia as a bomber escort group and for ground attack and dive bombing missions. As well as flying its own combat missions, it was given the role of supporting newly arrived groups as they entered combat. The 57th took part in the only occasion in which air attacks alone forced the surrender of a sizeable enemy garrison at Pantelleria in May-June 1943. They supported the Eighth Army in the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. They were with the Twelfth Air Force during the Salerno landings to protect Allied convoys off the south and east coast of Italy. They again supported the Eighth Army as it protected the beachhead on the Adriatic Sea in early October. In March 1944, the moved to Corsica with orders to attack rail and road communications in an attempt to isolate the German front line; on one day they knocked out six bridges. During a raid at a railway station Balls Out was hit and caught fire, being completely engulfed in flames and crashed on 21 January 1945; pilot 2Lt Clyde Casterline died in that crash; he rests in the Mountain View Cemetery, Dillion, Montana.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

SOURCES: Find-a-Grave; FamilySearch.org; Ancestry.com; Wikipedia

Clyde J Casterline