Doyle Myron Lewis was born on September 24, 1925 in Murray Utah. His parents Doyle and Lenore (Bailey) Lewis were also both born in Utah. Doyle had a younger sister Alaire and a younger brother Keith. By 1930 the family was living in Denver but were back in Utah by 1940.

According to his sister Alaire, “Most people called him Myron but a few close friends called him “My”. He had blond hair and hazel eyes, and a whit and personality that immediately drew others to him. School was easy for him and music as well. He played the violin as well as the trumpet. He also had a wonderful tenor voice which allowed him to sing leads in the school musicals.

It was easy for him to make friends especially with the girls. They were always hanging around him. One day he told his mother he wished he could carry a baseball bat around to protect him from a couple of the girls. Of course he was only kidding.

Myron’s great desire was to fly a plane some day. When he was 17, he worked all summer to earn enough money to take flying lessons.

Doyle graduated from Jordan High School in 1943. Just before he went into the Navy air force he obtained his pilot’s license. The disappointment of his life was when the navy told him he was too tall to fly one of their planes. He enlisted in the Navy five months later on September 23 1943, the day before his eighteenth birthday. He convinced his parents to sign the papers and was sent to Idaho for training. Later he was sent to Hollywood, Florida to gunnery school. He also was sent to Memphis where he received his wings. His service number was 6607724. He reached the rank of Aviation Radioman 3rd Class.

Before being sent overseas, he was allowed to come home to Draper for a short stay. The word got around the first night he was home. The next morning he woke to discover four sets of little beady eyes staring down at him. His four youngest cousins, who loved him dearly, could not wait for him to wake. When he saw them, he burst out laughing and asked them what they wanted. They simply replied. “Take us for a ride on your bike”.

In June 1945, he was sent to the Philippine Islands. He served in Patrol Bombing Squadron (VPB) 119. This unit was equipped with PB4Y-1 Liberators and PB4Y-2 Privateers. It was based at Clark Air Base. The fighting ended in August of that year and he wrote home that he would be sent home soon. However, that was not to be. The rest of his regular crewmates were all sent home, but he stayed behind in a new crew, all from different planes.

He ended up as the radioman in a PBY4-2 Privateer. Since he had his pilot’s license, the pilot of his aircraft would often allow him to take over the plane and fly for a while.

VPB-119 and its 12 planes were moved to Puerto Princesa by November 2, 1945. It flew weather reconnaissance, shipping surveillance flights, and search and rescue missions. By mid December it moved to Guiuan Airstrip on Samar Island.

He wrote home that many Japanese troops were hidden up in caves and many were not aware that the war was over. The Army flew missions looking for these enemy troops and sometimes those planes crashed.

A search on www.aviationarchaeology.com shows a number of planes that went down in early January 1946. A C-47A crashed two kilometers from Gumab on January 5. An L-5E crashed three miles south of Manila on January 7. A P-38 crashed four miles from Puerto Princesa on January 8. Also on that date, an R-6A crashed at Clark Field. On January 11 a C-47B crashed near San Jose shortly after taking off.

ARM3c Lewis was one of 11 men in a PBY4-2 Privateer (#59584) in a flight of three VPB-119 planes looking for a lost C-47 on January 12, 1946. This was the plane flown by pilot Lt. William D. Regan’s crew #44. ARM3c Lewis was not a regular member of this crew. On this fateful flight he replaced the regular airman in his position, H.R. Labonte.

Some of Myron’s original crew found out what had happened and came to Draper to visit with his parents. One of them told his mother, “He was just too good to live.”

In 1948 the Navy began sending home the bodies of the young men whose parents wanted them buried at home. Upon the return of the body, a funeral was held in Draper, and the body was interred in the Elysian Burial Gardens in Murray, Utah.

In 2020 sister Alaire came across a letter that was sent to his father in 1946, telling how Myron was found and in what place he had been buried. It also gave the name the address of the young man, Francis Hauris, who survived the plane crash and walked through the jungle. Much to her surprise, she discovered that they had lived within a few blocks of each other and never knew it for 70 years. By then it was too late to meet as he had died just three years earlier.

In 1993 when Myron’s father was 91 years old and a widower, he moved in with me and my wife Aneladee’s family - she is his granddaughter. He didn’t bring much, but he did have one photo he kept by his bed - a photo of his son Myron.

As of this writing his sister Alaire is alive and well at age 93.

An interesting footnote, in June 2020 while researching all of the names of the 2,100 fallen from Utah to include in the Stories Behind the Stars pilot project, I found the name Ralph Brady. I recognized the surname and quickly found out he was my father’s second cousin. Ralph was killed on the first day of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Ralph graduated from Jordan High School in 1943, the same year as Myron Lewis. They knew each other. Alaire showed me a picture of them from her 1943 yearbook showing them both in the Jordan High School marching band.

-- Don Milne, Louisville, KY

From USNAVY.com:

Search for missing Army C-47. Homonnon Island, 10-47N 125-42E Pilot was returning from a special search for a missing Army C-47. Area of search was from the south tip of Mindoro to the northern tip of Panay.

At 1330 pilot contacted Tacloban Tower and was informed Tacloban was closed in. Between 1330 & 1335, Samar Tower called pilot informing him that Samar was also closed in and to proceed to alternate airports of Cebu or Palawan. Pilot acknowledged and said he was going to Cebu.

From his position in after section, F. C. Harris the only survivor, saw land just before crash. He felt the plane drop as if in a downdraft, then heard a surge of power as the plane tilted into a high angle of climb. Airplane failed to clear ridge and scraped along ridge losing bombay doors and #3 & #4 propellers. Plane then ricocheted over ridge on a heading of approximately one-hundred degrees, landing in a gully 100yds from site of first impact and broke into three sections. Bombay tanks ignited and set off .40 cal ammunition.

Homonnon Island. Crew: Pilot Lt William D. Regan USNR/Killed, Ens Charles R. Embry (A-1) USNR/Killed, Ens Warren A. Bright (A-1) USNR/Killed, AMM2c James W. Croft USNR/Killed, AMM3c Ellis E. Scott USNR/Killed, ARM3c Doyle M. Lewis USNR/Killed, ARM3c Robert M. Silva USNR/Killed, ARM3c Richard H. Barton USNR/Killed, ARM3c John H. Provost USNR/Killed, AOM3c Francis C. Harris USNR/Seriously inj (Fracture right arm & dislocated right shoulder), and AOM3c Ernest W. Graf USNR/Killed…" Contributed by Terry pb4y-2@sbcglobal.net

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? Related 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.

References

Ancestry.com for census records, Application for Headstone or Marker, Utah Military Records, Recollections and letters from Alaire Johnson.

https://www.popularpatch.com/navy-patches/squadron-patches/vp-119-patrol-squadron-patch for photo of VPB patch

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/82147 for info on plane crash.

https://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/USN/PB4Y.htm for info on plane crash.

https://www.vpnavy.com/vp119_mishap.html for info on plane crash

https://vpnavy.com/misc_14/vpb119history_01_14jul2008.jpg for photo of PB4Y-2’s from VPB-119

https://www.vpnavy.com/vp119_mishap.html info on final flight of Lt. Regan’s PB4Y-2.

Lewis, Doyle Myron (1925)