Lieutenant Chauncey Lee Preece, 22, of Provo, Utah, was killed July 17, 1943 when the P-38 aircraft he was piloting crashed in India. He was a pilot with the 10th Air Force, 9th Photo Squadron, on a photo-reconnaissance flight from Pandaveswar Air Base to Chittagong Air Base (both in India) when he crashed in bad weather south of Nanur.

He was born June 7, 1921, in Inkom, Idaho, the son of William Vernon Preece and Cora Lovice West Preece. He attended elementary school in Provo, then went to Dixon and Provo High Schools before graduating from South High School in Salt Lake City. He attended Brigham Young University and the University of Utah.

He enlisted in the Army Air Corps January 7, 1942 and took basic training at Oxnard, California. He earned his wings and officer’s commission August 13, 1942 at Victorville, California. He was stationed at Colorado Springs for two months before leaving for overseas in November 1942.

Lt. Preece married Una Loy Mason in Salt Lake City in 1942. He was survived by his parents, his widow, and one brother.

A memorial service was held at the South Twentieth LDS Chapel in Provo on August 22, 1944. He was initially interred in India, and his remains were returned to the States after the war. His family held a funeral in Aberdeen, Idaho, where they were living at the time, with interment at the Bountiful Memorial Park in Bountiful, Utah.

After Lt. Preece died, his widow got a condolence visit from a man named Barney, who had been a schoolmate of hers. Barney was a bombardier in the war. They fell in love and got married. Barney was Dr. Barney Clark, a dentist who was the world’s first recipient of an artificial heart. Following his death in 1983, just 112 days after the implant, she because an advocate for the American Heart Association. She died in 2015 at the age of 94.

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

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/98711635/chauncey-lee-preece

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